Friday night we took the boys out on our regular Friday night date: dinner at Los Tres Amigos and then hanging out time at Barnes & Noble. We've been doing this for a couple of months now and I love it. It's sort of an unofficial date right now and I think we should make it an official family date night so that we can look forward to it each week. It's one of the only times during the week that Pants gets to see other kids, and even Cheeks got to play with another baby. If things work out as planned with our mother's helper, though, I do plan on beginning to take Pants to the Lynn Meadow's Children's Museum each week for their Bear Cub Club playgroup. We'll get to it.
When we get to Barnes & Noble, we definitely have a routine. Pants and Al hit the magazines so that Al can get something to read while Pants plays at the Thomas the Tank Engine train table. I take Cheeks and hit the Starbucks coffee line, then browse the new fiction tables. I don't usually buy anything, but that night it was all I could do to not buy four books. They had put out new displays on the tables and the selection was like a feast for the famished. Everything I picked up looked good enough to devour on the spot.
Since Cheeks was still strapped into his car seat, he started fussing and I had to get us moving, so I began wandering. I had picked up a paperback copy of Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs but decided to hunt for a hardback version instead. I figure, if I'm going to rebuild my library, I might as well do it right.
I found the Biography section and the hardback I wanted, but then spotted the beautifully simple cover of Looking For Mary: Or, The Blessed Mother and Me by Beverly Donofrio. I scanned the description and immediately put down the Burroughs memoir. I can read that one anytime, but this Mary book seemed to demand my immediate attention. Any summary with the phrase "a 'lapsed Catholic' inexplicably begins collecting Virgin Mary memorabilia at yard sales" is the book for me. Right up my alley.
I began reading it that night and I can already feel the hunting instinct creeping up on me. I know that's not going to be the point of the book, but I can't help seizing on the "memorabilia-hunting" aspect of it. By the way, using the word memorabilia in reference to the Virgin Mary is just entertaining to me. Like she was a tour that passed through.
One night only!
The Blessed Mother and the Supreme Beings!
Get your tickets now or burn in hell for all eternity!
Subject to service charges and convenience fees.
Writer. Mother. 
