Until 2010, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences only nominated five films for Best Picture. Bizarrely, I never managed to see all the nominees when there were only five, but last year I made it to six and this year I’ve watched all ten.

Fun as it is to see more great films recognized, I like to speculate about which ones would make the cut if the Oscars were as they used to be and only five could score a nomination. Just for kicks, here is my ranking of this year’s Best Picture-nominated films:

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I haven’t reviewed any books since August, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading. In fact I’ve read ten novels in the past six months.This would be more impressive if, once upon a time, I hadn’t been an English lit major who read twice that many novels in half the time, plus wrote papers on them. On the other hand, back then I was a full-time student with no responsibilities but reading, while now I’m a full-time mom who–

No. I don’t think I can come up with a negative comparison, when I’ve clearly found time to read and occasionally write about it.

It wasn’t until I compiled this list that I realized I’ve been reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy; only one of the ten books is not sci-fi or fantasy. Which proves that despite my best efforts, I am a geek. (As if Battlestar Galactica being my number one top-ranked show ever wasn’t evidence enough of that.)

In addition to not having a broad representation of genres here, I also seem to have rated all my recent reads very highly. I hope this doesn’t indicate an indiscriminate taste in books; the day the Twilight saga appears on my reading list, you’ll know that’s the case. Until then, we’ll just chock it up to two things: #1, all these books are actually good, and #2, I don’t bother to finish books I don’t like. (If I did, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would make two non-fantasy/sci-fi reads out of eleven–but I quit after 100 torturous pages of it, which is ironic, as I didn’t even make it to the torture scenes.)

Onward to the reviews!

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While browsing Walmart’s Valentine card selection the other day, I kept coming across variations on a theme: “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to look alike. Good thing we’re both so good looking!” Apart from the fact that this trope is not particularly funny, I eschew cards emblazoned with it because it’s simply not true of Mr. Burt and me. (Though, come to think of it, I do wear a lot more t-shirts and hoodies than I did when I met him eight years ago…)

Now, if there were cards that said, “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to think alike. Good thing we’re both so exceptionally intelligent and clever!” I’d be all over those.

Then again, that truth may be self-evident without its being expressed on a greeting card.

We don’t go overboard on Valentine’s Day in the Burt house, but we do celebrate it. I mean, why wouldn’t you take advantage of an excuse to exchange silly cards and eat candy and have sex? Not to mention it’s such a cute holiday–and you know a holiday’s legit when it’s got its own kitchen towels and dishes. (I’ve got the dishes, but will be hitting Target or Kohls tomorrow for clearance decor.)

And sock monkeys.

When I saw the sock monkeys at Walmart, in Valentine pinks and reds (or robin’s egg blue or jailbird stripes for the men in your life) with hearts stitched on their chests, I caved to consumer pressure and bought a pair for Mr. Burt and the Burt Squirt. (Monkeys are a bit of a thing in our house, what with Mr. Burt being a code monkey and the Burt Squirt just being a plain monkey and owning a bit of monkey paraphernalia. But I won’t pretend that any other thought than Must have Love Monkeys! influenced my decision to buy.)

Friday night, Mr. Burt went out to do a bit of Valentine shopping for me. Before he left, I told him he didn’t have to make a big deal of it.

“I just got you something little and silly,” I said. And lingerie. But I’m not so into being Even Steven that I wanted Mr. Burt to come home from Walmart with silk boxers or, God forbid, a banana hammock, so I kept that part to myself.

As it turned out, our Valentine gift exchange was a little more Even Steven than I’d imagined. Actually, I had imagined that Mr. Burt might be taken with Walmart’s Love Monkeys (that’s kind of a disturbing phrase, and I will never use it again) as I had been, and wouldn’t it be funny if he got me one, too? But I didn’t really think he would, as just a few days prior I’d remarked about how much I’m missing that gene that cares about stuffed animals.

Anyway, Mr. Burt opened his Valentine present from me and drew out a black and white-striped Love Monkey.

I opened my Valentine present from Mr. Burt and drew out a red Love Monkey.

(And when a boy Love Monkey loves a girl Love Monkey very much…)

If the Love Monkeys alone didn’t prove just how similarly Mr. Burt and I think, there was also the little issue of our Valentine date destination.

Earlier in the week I’d emailed my mom to ask if she’d be free to babysit Saturday, and when she wrote back to ask what time she should come over, I asked Mr. Burt, who was at his computer, when he wanted to go out.

“Noonish,” he said.

“What do you want to do at noon?”

“Hang on, let me check.” He started clicking around with his mouse.

“Check what?”

He didn’t answer my question, just said, “Yep, that’ll work.”

“What’ll work?” I asked, confused and intrigued, because we hadn’t even discussed what we might do for Valentine’s Day, not having secured Squirt care until the moment before.

“It’s a surprise.”

A surprise would be fun–except that I had this not-so-surprising feeling that Mr. Burt was going to take me ice skating. I had no good reason for suspecting this. We hadn’t discussed ice skating, not in relation to Valentine’s Day; a few weeks earlier the Groupon had been for ice skating, but when I mentioned it to Mr. Burt he was in the middle of a computer game and it’s a crapshoot whether he’ll hear you or not when you talk to him while he’s gaming.

Sure enough, Saturday rolled around, and when Mr. Burt asked me if I had any idea where we were going and I told him I thought he was taking me ice skating, his mouth fell open and he said, “How did you know? I didn’t give you any hints at all.”

It was true. We hadn’t discussed our Valentine date at all. And I hadn’t seen his email confirming his coupon purchase, because we have separate email accounts on separate computers. And the coupon he’d purchased hadn’t even been the Groupon one I told him about before.

“That’s not fair,” Mr. Burt whined as we drove down the tollway toward Stonebriar Mall. “I wanted to surprise you.”

I patted his arm consolingly. “You couldn’t have done anything differently. There’s just no accounting for ESP.”

We’re just a couple of Love Monkeys, with two hearts that beat as one.

(And we’re not too shabby on the ice, either.)

Everyone knows that the cardinal rule of grocery shopping is to get in the shortest checkout line. It is absolutely crucial to follow this rule when you’re grocery shopping with your baby, because babies have a tendency to be angelic throughout entire the entire shopping trip, then come unglued the second you get to the checkout and can’t hold them because you’ve got to unload your buggy, fish your wallet out of your purse, pay, and be otherwise incapacitated.

Unless, of course, a Walmart cashier claims your baby as her baby.Which is what happened to me–inevitably, I suppose given my relationship with Walmart.

Two weeks ago I was speeding toward the checkout lanes, eyes scanning each conveyor belt for the one with the fewest groceries. The shortest lanes–indeed, open and completely empty, as it was bright and early Monday  morning–were the 20 Items or Fewer registers (Yes–the signs actually say “20 Items or Less,” but that’s grammatically incorrect so I refuse to write it), but as I was doing a week’s worth of shopping, I passed them by without so much as a glance.

Until one of the express cashiers called out, “Hey, baby!” which stopped me in my tracks. Not because I thought I was getting hit on, but because the cashier, a middle-aged woman, was speaking literally– I’ve been stopped enough while grocery shopping to know when someone is talking to the Burt Squirt.

I paused in my pursuit of the shortest checkout line to indulge the friendly (and no doubt bored) cashier, pleased to see that I recognized her. Once upon a time, she told me the Burt Squirt was juicy. She’d checked me out lots of times since then–not surprising, since I do my grocery shopping every Monday around the same time, though she wasn’t normally in the express lanes, for which, as I mentioned, I had too many groceries. So, after we exchanged pleasantries (or rather, she flirted with the Burt Squirt: “Your mama didn’t see me, but you saw me, and you grinned, didn’t you, baby! Yes, you know me, big boy!”), I started to wheel my cart around in search of another register.

“Y’all come over here to me!” she said, and wouldn’t hear my protests about having a good deal more than twenty items. “I gotta talk to my baby, see what new with him!”

It was at this point that I realized, to my chagrin, that I’d never bothered to find out her name, even though it had been right there pinned to her blue polo shirt for me to read every time she’d rung up my groceries. Tempie–I could remember that, since the Dallas Classical radio station’s daytime announcer is named Tempie.

As Walmart Tempie rang us up, she kept up a running conversation with Liam, as well as with the customer behind me in line: “This my Monday baby! Look how he smile at me! Oh, he waving now–he know it time to go, mmm-hmm, he know it!”

Last Monday Tempie wasn’t working the self-checkouts, but was back at her usual lane–which happened to be the shortest, so I got in it. Before she’d even finished scanning all her current customer’s groceries, she’d spotted us farther back in line and was saying, “There’s my Monday baby! He smiling at me–he know his friend!”

His friend.

She wasn’t his cashier.

He wasn’t her customer.

Friends.

For the first time since I began making dreaded weekly grocery shopping trips, it occurred to me that more goes on in Walmart than just hurrying in, checking off all the items on my list, and hurrying back out again. (More, even, than having another funny encounter to add to my collection of vaguely amusing anecdotes.)

Today I broke the cardinal rule of grocery shopping. I didn’t get in the shortest checkout line. I looked for Tempie, and I got in her line, which was, in fact, the longest. But the smile that lit up her tired face when she saw the Burt Squirt was worth the wait–if, indeed, we did wait any extra time; I thought the rhythmic beep beep of the bar code scanner accelerated, as if Tempie was in a hurry to finish up with her other customer so she could talk to the Burt Squirt properly.

Or maybe she didn’t work any faster. Maybe I just realized there was no need to rush, that there are more unpleasant things I could have been doing this morning than listening to a grocery store cashier tell a total stranger how nice my–her–baby is who comes to see her every Monday.

Even if–especially if–it’s at Walmart.

More often than not these days, the Burt Squirt’s feet look like this, in need of a little TLC at bath time. Because, at eleven months old–that’s right, eleven months, which means invitations have been sent for the first birthday party–the Burt Squirt’s primary mode of locomotion is walking.

Actually, that’s not quite true. About the little dirty feet, not the walking. It’s wintertime, so most days, the Burt Squirt wears socks, the removal of which reveals lint, not dirt. Of course, soggy lint stuck between sweaty little toes isn’t exactly pleasant, but parenting is all about perspective: toe jam is less gross than poopy diapers. But wintertime in Texas means that in between freak cold snaps and snow storms, we get the occasional day of 80 degrees, which means barefoot walks in the grass at the Dallas Arboretum–yes, even for babies.

The Burt Squirt took his first steps at nine months, while on Skype with Mimi and Papa in Minnesota, and now is toddling quite proficiently, even if his swaying gait with his arms up for balance is a bit reminiscent of a baboon. A month ago we had to coax him to walk, but now he’d rather walk than crawl, and pretty much only crawls if he’s fallen down in the middle of a room without a piece of furniture or person on which to pull up. Because the boy put the foot in front of…the other foot and didn’t bother to learn how to stand himself up before he took of walking.

He has, however, figured out that banana puffs are a yummy snack, as well as a source of future blackmail great amusement for Mom and Dad, though we first endured a few false starts that resulted in the Burt Squirt being quite possibly the only baby ever to gag on–and, consequently, throw up–a food that’s designed to dissolve almost instantly in his mouth. I’m beginning to fear he’s inherited the hair-trigger gag reflex that makes it impossible for his mother to swallow pills, as all of the stage three baby foods that involve chunks and/or thick textures come right back up again. Technically we’re following the pediatrician’s advice to be eating stage three baby foods by now; the Burt Squirt gobbles up the stage three jars of apples, pears, bananas, strawberry bananas, squash, and sweet potatoes–in addition to stage two everything else.

The fact that he’s only got 2.5 teeth–we just felt his top left tooth cut through two days ago–probably plays a big role in the food issues, so I’m antsy for more to come in–unless they look like the banana puff teeth, in which case he can just go on slurping down purées for the rest of his life. (Come to think of it, this would save us a lot of money in the long term, in both the dentistry and tooth fairy departments.) At least I’d never be deprived of that gummy smile beaming up at me…

The Burt Squirt is still, very much, a mama’s boy. He can have all the toys he could want all around him, but he’ll abandon playing with them to be wherever I am. (If only he realized that the way to a mother’s heart is not to give her a heart attack by climbing two flights of stairs when she runs upstairs for all of thirty seconds to check the clothes in the dryer–that’ll teach me not to put up the baby gate.) Or maybe it’s just that the contents of the kitchen cupboards really are more interesting than all the baby stuff that’s placed so easily within his reach. I don’t claim to be gifted at math, but I think even the finest mathematical mind (especially when afflicted with Mommy Brain) would be hard-pressed to keep count of how many times a day I put the tupperware back in its cupboard. (For an added bonus, that once perpetually messy cupboard is now constantly organized; who needs a Smart Spin?) He’s also obsessed with the dishwasher, which, coupled with his continued love affair with the vacuum (though in all fairness, who wouldn’t love a Dyson?) gives me great hope that in a few years time, the Burt Squirt will willingly take over all housework so Mommy can get back to writing books.

But in the meantime, Mommy will happily settle for reading books–the Burt Squirt’s current favorite being B is for Bear (though I’m managing to find the time for books that don’t rhyme or have fuzzy teddy bear ears to pet). That bit of baby-lit was a gift from Uncle Greg and Aunt-to-Be Meaghan, who have relieved us of the responsibility of indoctrinating the Burt Squirt to grow up and become a Baylor Bear. Though they may have their work cut out for them, as Uncle Peter and Auntie Ashley seem to be determined that the Burt Squirt will be the youngest-ever player drafted to the Minnesota Vikings (who might have made it to the Super Bowl if Brett Favre had had the Burt Squirt to throw to). And the Burt Squirt does already like to play ball–even if his version looks more like a puppy playing fetch (complete with panting and his tongue sticking out…though that could also describe Michael Jordan). He also likes music, particularly playing Daddy’s guitar, which is kept on a stand in the office where he can toddle right up to it and strum away (usually with his fingers, but occasionally with tupperware bowls or toy firemen), or the piano, which is a little less accessible but makes a lot of great noise. Or maybe he’s going to be the next Gunther Gebel-Williams, as seems likely by the way he laughs in the face of Dorrie hissing at him, and how he got the hang of chasing her around playing with her with a cat toy after I showed him how.

It’s so much fun to see The Burt Squirt’s interests coming out a little more with every passing day, and Mr. Burt and I are excited to see where his talents and passions lie in years to come.

And speaking of years, where–No, I won’t finish that thought. I may have Mommy Brain, but I refuse to be reduced to a total Mommy Cliché. Instead I’ll just say I’d better get cracking planning the party to celebrate the first year!