This is what happens when you have a kid who likes books and two parents who really like books but you cheap out on the bookshelf in his room and buy a piece of flatpacked, chipboard junk from Target instead of a proper bookshelf for your kid: one night, as your wife is putting the boy to bed, the fucking thing explodes.

And then you have to go into your job at an Actual Furniture Store on your day off and order your kid a new bookshelf, because hell if I’ll let this nonsense happen again.

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He’s five.  I was reading more or less fluently by the time I was his age; he’s a bit behind where I was, but I suspect he can actually read basic sight words better than he lets on.  His school doesn’t start explicit reading instruction until next year, I think, and I’m fine with letting him/them take his/their time.  We (mostly my wife) read to him every single night, and he occasionally gets mad at me when I go to the comic shop if I don’t bring him with me and don’t buy him anything– and it’s not because he wants the toys.  There are tons of kids’ books in the basement from my years of teaching; he’s inherited all of them as soon as he can actually read them.  I’m looking forward to it.  I don’t know that he’ll ever turn into the fan of the written word that I am, and I’m going to try not to push him into it too much.  But it would be nice if he’d get around to learning to read.  🙂

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The slump appears to have broken at work.  I did more business yesterday than in the two full weeks before then, and did as much today as I did all last week.  I’m already at an above-average week and the weekend hasn’t hit yet.  Which: good.  I was getting tired of feeling like I suck at my job, especially after a solid week of training that was supposedly going to make me better at it.

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I have thoughts about diversity and comic books.  I may share them with you, tomorrow.