march 31, 2001. I am so excited! Tomorrow is April and then there's only one more month to wait before Dav's comic book comes out. The wonderful comic store in Halifax ordered 20 copies after we put in our order for 2! We went down there today to pick up some oddments and had a grand time. The first time we visited, I was utterly overwhelmed with stimulation and we had to leave after 10 minutes. Fun overload, you know? This time I was ready to pop and we browsed just about everything in the store. The Boy looked around for things he might enjoy when his birthday arrives in May. Meanwhile, I found a copy of the second issue of Gloomcookie, something I've been looking for ever since Little Spider's boy "wrecked" my first copy. Now I have a complete run of 4 again, something that should no doubt put me on the speed dial for goth comic collectors all around the world. Or something. I taught my first lesson on Friday, and was coincidentally supervised that period. I really have very little to say about the experience other than nothing ever changes: there's always 3 girls putting on makeup & whispering constantly and there's always the one boy who has a constant fund of smart-assed remarks for his neighbor. The boy who wrote the poem is, of course, not in this class - but his older brother is. Oddly enough, while the first brother was almost painfully shy, this one is quite extroverted. He has shaggy curly hair, causing some of the kids to refer to him as 'Sideshow.' I find this quite amusing. He's a charmingly vocal island in a sea of sullen lumps of adolescent flesh, which I appreciate. Have I ever mentioned that I hate Leah McLaren? I hate Leah McLaren. She's a Globe columnist a couple of years older than me, and she often makes statements about her age group or her generation that are supposed to be universal but actually only apply to spoiled urban princesses. Two weeks ago she wrote that no woman in her 20's wants to date a man of similar years because they're clumsy idiots - sheep dogs was how she put it. She then went on to say that she hasn't had a boyfriend under 30 since she was a teenager (which would make her a whore where I grew up but never mind). This irritated fellow columnist Russell Smith, who writes interesting novels about educated men in Toronto trying to figure out what they want to do when they grow up. His response to her is scathing and does much to restore my faith in him as a writer and a human being. The Boy immediately began searching for her weekly column to see if there was a cat/dogfight developing. No such luck. Instead, her vacuous article concerned a magazine she likes (this is something we all need to know before we can go into a new day, of course). And just when I thought that Leah McLaren couldn't sink any lower, she wrote this gem: Pop features a couple of lengthy Q & A interviews with designers and a buffet of bite-sized celebrity Top 10 lists. The results are thoroughly engaging, if not, er, intellectually rigorous....Entertaining and easily digestible as it is, there's something undeniably disturbing about this magazine's fixation on information in the form of litany. Obsessive list-making is one of the early signs of autism in children and obsessive compulsive disorder in adults. But then, the last thing Pop would claim to be is mentally healthy. Disturbing is good. So is a bit of madness. Good for you, Leah! Way to show solidarity with those not living in a mentally hygienic urban princess fairy tale! Way to trivialize serious problems! Bitch. Most exciting news for last: today the Boy & I went down to see the kittens in the animal shelter. They're reasonably dry now, although they have yet to open their eyes. They mostly squirm around each other and squeak most amusingly when their mother gives them a licking. I can't convey how captivating this is to us. We watched them for a good 20 minutes without a thought of moving on. So, long story short, the Boy's campaign of terror has finally succeeded. I agreed to adopt a grey & white male kitten. We have tentatively named him Thomas Marlowe, after the saint & the playwright. He comes home in May and he will be my kitten. I've waited my whole life for this, and I'm afraid that I'll be a bad "mother." But I suppose there's only the one way to find out...