Monday, April 9, 2007

Easter was a day for funny things.

Major clobbered himself in the forehead twice with hard-boiled eggs because he thought they were cascarones (confetti eggs, dear Yankees).

Not once, but twice. And he crumbled them up in his fingers, hoping to free the confetti.

And yes, he was mighty pissed when he realized there was no confetti.

It's Scarier Than Black Pots.

Yesterday, we had to take a tour of the kids' great-great-uncle's place while the daddies were making sure the Easter Bunny had come by. Great-Great-Uncle's place is full of small palm trees and black pots because G-G-U got them at rock-bottom prices when a palm-tree truck turned over on the highway. (You think I'm kidding. Unfortunately, I am not.) We're wandering around in the cold, killing time and Maddy says:

"I think we should go back now. I'm getting scared."

I say, "What's scary? Why are you scared?"

"I'm scared of all of these black pots. These black pots are very scary. We should go back."

We start going back and there are lots and lots of black pots along the way. At the very end of the trail, there is a white pot.

I say to Maddy "Look out! There's a white pot at the end of the trail! Don't look at the white pot!"

She replies, "White pots are OK, Mom. White pots are OK. Black pots are not OK."

I guess I'm clear now.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

I'm aging.

In less than a week, I'll be celebrating my last twenty-something birthday. Monday is my 29th.

My twenties were not the same as most people's twenties. I got married at the age of 20 (but would have done it at 19 if I could have), bought my first house at 22, had my first baby at 23, had my second (and last) baby at 25. I've had a bunch of different jobs at a bunch of different companies (but I appear to have settled down now). I've taken college classes but not graduated. I've learned countless things and gone countless places, including Canada later this year.

What new stuff can possibly await me in my thirties?

I'm finished having children, so now it's just a matter of watching them grow. I've got more places to go (Scotland is on the table for the summer after my 30th birthday), and, presumably, more things to learn. I've got a few goals for my thirties as well: 1) lose 140 pounds. Hopefully, I'll have the Lap-Band to help me out with that. 2) Run a marathon. 3) Get a business plan (and capital!) together for the bookstore I want to own one day and 4) Get out of debt. Pay off the house, everything. Get the money together for my kids' college.


On the morning of my 25th birthday, my brother (who is five years younger) called me. He said: "Happy birthday! Did you hold your hands up over your head when you woke up this morning and yell 'WHEEEEEE!!'??"

Confused, I said "What?!"

"This morning, you started the downward slope of your twenties. It's alllll downhill from here."

Next year, I'll be 30 - he'll be 25. You can bet I'm going to call him first thing that morning and ask him that same exact question. For me, I will have just changed rollercoasters.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

We also saw Meet the Robinsons.

We had long promised the kids that we would take them to see Meet the Robinsons on the very first day. We looked at a few of the reviews and were not so sure we wanted to do it.

Plot: This one is going to be tough to sketch, so I'm going to have to do it very, very vaguely, because there are lots of "OH!" moments in this movie. Basically, there's this kid named Lewis who can invent things. He's an orphan, abandoned at an orphanage as a baby. He's had 124 adoption interviews and never been adopted. He decides he wants to find his birth mother and starts inventing a "Memory Scanner" so he can delve into his memory and see what she looks like (it's not clear how seeing what his mom looks like is going to help him find her, but hey - this is a kid's movie). It just so happens that a big company called Inventco is going to give the winner of the elementary school science fair an internship with their company, so Lewis plans to demonstrate his Memory Scanner there for the first time. The only problem with this is that a man has come back in time to foil his plan and ruin his life. And a boy named Wilbur Robinson has come back to stop that man. Lewis ends up going into the future with Wilbur and meeting Wilbur's crazy family, which was, to me, the best part of the movie. Because it's Disney, it all works out fine in the end (and had the whole theater crying happy tears for Lewis), but I'm not going to tell you HOW. It would spoil it.

The reviews said that there were seven screenwriters for this movie, and that you could really tell. Yes, it's frenetic, but it's supposed to be. And Mike and I boiled it down to this as we walked out of the theater:

This is a movie for geeks. If you are now, or have ever been, a geek, you will LOVE this movie.

Because we live in a small Texas town, there weren't too many geeks in attendance at our showing, and hence, a lot of really confused people walking out of the theater. We weren't at all confused. Maddy and Major BOTH just LOVED it, and Major was able to repeat back to us all the main plot points. It hit on all the right levels.

On a scale of Clifford the Big Red Dog: The Movie to Narnia, it's right up next to Narnia. It might even become the new benchmark. I laughed SO HARD at this movie, because I'm a total geek.

We saw The Last Mimzy.

So, we've gone to the movies quite a bit recently (or, at least, quite a bit for US), and so I thought I'd tell you about the two movies we've seen these last two weekends.

Last weekend, we went to see The Last Mimzy. Plot: A five-year-old girl and her older brother (I'd guess he was probably about 9?) find a mysterious box on the beach. Inside the box are some glowing things that intrigue the brother, and a stuffed rabbit that intrigues the sister. The longer they keep the mysterious stuff, the more amazing the kids become. They can draw things they've never drawn before, and the little girl becomes telekinetic, etc. The parents start to get really freaked out (the mom MUCH more than the dad - I wanted to SHAKE the mom, but I hate Joely Richardson anyway.) and they enlist the help of the boy's science teacher (Rainn Wilson) and his girlfriend who reminds me of Idina Menzel but isn't. The whole plot turns when one night the boy is messing with some of the mysterious toys and he sets off a nationwide blackout. The Dept of Homeland Security (headed up by Michael Clarke Duncan) gets involved and suddenly we get to find out exactly what this is all about.

Really, this is a movie for older kids. Maddy got it and she liked it (because, really, there was a five-year-old girl with a stuffed animal!), but Major was totally in it for the glitzy special effects. For the record, there is one scene where the Dept of Homeland Security storms their house, but I don't remember them having guns or anything, and it wasn't NEARLY as terrifying as the men in the white suits in ET.

All in all, it was cute, but not the best movie ever. Parts of it were completely unbelievable. On a scale of Clifford the Big Red Dog: The Movie to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I'd probably give it a Home on the Range. Not my favorite, but not painful to watch, either. We'll probably end up buying it out of the $5.50 bin at Wal*Mart when it gets there.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Actual 100 Books List of 2007

Here are the books I've actually read so far this year, in my quest to read 100 books. (It's actually really doable, you just have to read at least 8 books a month.)

December 2006
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Naked Republicans by Shelley Lynch
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
My Secret by Frank Warren
The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner

January 2007
One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Dance Upon the Air by Nora Roberts
Heaven and Earth by Nora Roberts
Face the Fire by Nora Roberts
Smitten by Janet Evanovich
Full Bloom by Janet Evanovich
A Loving Scoundrel by Johanna Lindsey

February 2007
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
The Pursuit by Johanna Lindsey
Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
Bittersweet by Nevada Barr
The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts
Elvis and Me by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley

March 2007
The President’s Daughter by Barbara Chase-Riboud
All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve
Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Red Lily by Nora Roberts

Hey, I never claimed they were all works of literary genius.

Currently reading: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Next up: About a Boy by Nick Hornby and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I stole this from Christy.

It's a list of 100 books. You bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you want to read and leave the ones you're not interested in plain.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20 Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) - I totally have this book and have never cracked it.
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) - This is actually on my bedside table, waiting for me to finish my Nick Hornby binge.
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

So, that's 45 from that list that I've read, and I want to read 22 more. Not bad.