Fundamental

I have to be pretty careful about how I plot my errands if I'm running them with Kiernan. If I need to hit a store that is in any way close to a bookstore, I need to be aware of that and pad the outing with an extra thirty minutes. An hour to be safe. Because if we are venturing near a bookstore, Kiernan will know it. And he will want to go inside.

I'm not complaining about this, it just is. How could I complain about such a thing? My son loves to read. He loves bookstores. I am proud and pleased. It's just that running errands is so radically different once you have a child, and that is one of those things I never could have anticipated going in. B.C. (Before Child) I could conceive of going out to run all of my errands in one fell swoop over a couple of hours. Five or six stops easy. Now? I'm lucky to get half that. Because of things like the bookstore.

Again, I'm not complaining. These interludes, between the errands, give up some of the sweetest moments.

Today I needed to run to the pet store after picking up Kiernan from school. I had to get fish food and cat food, and I also needed to give Wendy some alone time at the house as she is in crunch time for her book. There's an easy pet store near to Kiernan's school, located right close to the CostCo I frequent, but I hate that pet store. It is dark and dirty and dingy and the people who work there really couldn't care any less if you paid them to. I hate that place.

There's two pet stores I will go to. One is right next to Trader Joe's and it's called Kahoots. Great place. Whenever Kiernan and I make a trip to Trader Joe's--my favorite store in the world--he asks if we can stop by Kahoots and check out the animals. They often have guinea pigs. Sometimes they have chicks and ducklings. There's a good chance we'll see a tarantula. It's a good, clean smelling place and it feels good to stop by. Plus they have given us discounts on straw bales for the harvest festival at Kiernan's school the last two years.

The other pet store I like is called Pet Smart. It's one of the big stores, but the newish one in Woodland Hills is a real gem. Clean and open and bright. Nice vibe. And a lot of animals for Kiernan to check out. Our M.O. is to start with the wall of fish, work our way over to the cat adoption area and read about the cats that are up for adoption and try to figure out which cat is which. Then we grab some cat food and make our way to the dog areas: big glass walled observation rooms where the dogs at doggie day camp play. From there we amble over to the guinea pig and hamster area. Next to the reptiles and amphibians. Finally we move to check out. I like Pet Smart because the animals look well cared for and I have yet to go into the store without being asked if I need help.

Nobody at the dingy pet store near Costco even makes eye contact with you. I don't want to name any names, but let's just say the name of the store rhymes with "Get-go". Oof. Even just typing that makes me shudder.

Anyway, Pet Smart is located in a corner mini-mall with a couple other favorite stores, the best being BevMo (great wine warehouse store) and Borders. If we're going to Pet Smart, Kiernan's going to request a stop at Borders.

So today I built a stop at Borders in and we went in and spent about forty minutes. He started by plucking a book off the shelf and "previewing" it. "Previewing" has changed. It originated as a way for me to sneak a little more sleep in in the morning. Kiernan would call me in to his room when he woke up at the crack of dawn when Wendy was away on a trip. He'd want to read a book. I'd tell him to preview the book--that is, page through it and look at the pictures--and then I would read it to him. While he previewed it I'd doze for a few minutes. Let's just say I'm not a morning person in most respects. Nowadays, however, previewing entails Kiernan essentially reading the book to himself before we read it to him.

The book he decided to preview was called Paco and the Giant Chile Plant. Kiernan spent about ten minutes "previewing" it while I snapped a bunch of pictures. Then he looked up and announced that he didn't really like the book and didn't want to read it. He sensed that I would have a limit on the amount of books I would read this day, and he wasn't about to waste valuable Daddy Reading Time on this silly book. He moved on to a goofy superheroes book instead.

At any rate, as I said I amused myself with taking pictures of him while he previewed the Paco book. Behind him, on the Mo Willems shelf, I found a little stuffed Pigeon. I love that pigeon. So I grabbed that guy and got him talking to Digger, the Planet Hero from Mars, who had accompanied us into the store.

That's all. I just want to close by saying that I meant for this to be a short post. Sometimes writing these things is like going into a bookstore. You mean to go in for just one thing, and suddenly an hour is gone.

And you couldn't care less.