Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

( Cut for Bigness )

Yummy.

azriona, this made me think of you.

( Perception versus Reality )

My daughter was teasing my son earlier about him being hatched, an alien, or possibly adopted (which is ridiculous and kind of a running joke, because if you look at either of my kids they are the spitting image of Chris and me). My son rolled his eyes at his sister, put his hands on his hips and said all condescending, "You know very well that Mom gave birth to me. She has the stress marks to prove it."

I just about died laughing. I was going to correct him, but decided maybe stress marks were more accurate than stretch marks, considering the last four years.

In other news, my mother is giving me stress marks... The memorial for dad is tomorrow and for someone who didn't want to do anything, she's sure in a tizzy about it. Like anyone in this family is going to care whether or not she vacuumed under the sofa. Like anyone in this family is even going to realize you can vacuum under the sofa...

There is nothing like hearing your favorite song ever butchered by 20 off-key fourth graders.  Fortunately the fifth graders were mostly on key and they were all totally adorable.  It was a cute concert, but oh my gosh, the chairs.  Cheap plastic things that I wasn't sure could support the weight of a toddler, let alone a full grown adult.  Fortunately they did, but whatever happened to folding metal chairs?  Plus if you have any sort of hips, which you do if you've borne two children, they were narrower than a certain headwriter's mindset.

My daughter filmed the parts of it my son was in, since DH, of course, missed being home for it by one day.  And the kids taught anyone who wanted to learn the Hustle how to dance it at the end.  Rose went up and danced with Tobias.  It was adorable.  Oh, for my knee to be good enough for me to do that sort of thing.  It looked really fun, the embarrassment factor notwithstanding.

Anyway, I'm laying on the bed with an icepack on my lower back because those chairs really were a hellish experience and debating on whether or not I want to go to abc.com and watch last night's episode of Dancing with the Stars (Nobody spoil me, please or I will ban you like a banning thing bans things, I swear, even though I've never done that before) or try to get a little more writing done tonight. 

( American Idol Spoilers, I guess )

Three Hilary Duff movies in a row.  Someone kill me now.  Or, you know, at least remind me why I decided to have children?  And why I ever thought hooking the Wii up to Netflix streaming was ever a good idea?

We are back from the science center and the Harry Potter exhibit and even though it was totally worth the $40 for the 4 of us, it was crowded and exhausting.  Still, it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.  It's a travelling exhibit and they used actual stuff from the movies.  The costumes were amazing (I thought of you, azriona).  And they had sections done up like the inside of Hagrid's house, Umbridge's office, and the herbology lab where you could pull up mandrakes and they would squeal.  It had the dragon and Buckbeak and a petrified Colin and all of the wands and potion books and the potion lab and just...so many things, too many to count.  It took about two hours to make our way through it and I was really glad they were only letting in so many people at a time.  Oh, the kids got sorted with the sorting hat.  Rose is a Hufflepuff (duh!).  And Tobias, it couldn't make up its mind whether he was a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin (and he's really a bit of both so that was spot on).  It had the quidditch robes and brooms and also three of the hoops and you could throw those, what do you call them, quaffles through them.  And the golden snitch was so beautiful.  And so was the egg that Harry has to open in Goblet of Fire.  I'm not the biggest fan, but still, I was very impressed.

The gift shop was fairly extensive (and expensive).  earlgreytea68, you will be happy to know they do, in fact, make a time turner necklace.  I was sorely tempted because it was so pretty, but it cost $60.  They wouldn't let me take a picture of it, either.  No keychains though, sadly.  We did get a few things.  We got a gorgeous set of metal book clips (like book marks), each with the crest of one of the houses on them, a wand for T, a chocolate frog for Rose with a trading card that had the Potter family on it, and two fridge magnets for me.  One says Hufflepuff (which I usually sort out to be when I'm not Ravenclaw), and the other says Hogwart's Express Platform 9 3/4's.



I've really got to find my digital camera.  The focus on T's DSI is not that good.

Anyway it was a good day, but I am super sore from the long car ride both ways, and even from sitting in the wheelchair.  Gosh, that thing was uncomfortable.  Not as uncomfortable as wobbling around on a cane and being ridiculously sick on my own two feet would have been, but still pretty bad.  I have a massage scheduled for tomorrow, thank goodness.  I will need it.

We had dinner at Red Lobster.  Their Seaport Shrimp and Lobster is fantastic!  I haven't had a meal out that good in ages.

Now I need to crash.  I just wish I had some sudafed.  I sorely need to breathe.

I have a guess and check story problem I am trying to figure out so I can help my son figure it out and all I am managing to do at the moment is bang my head against the wall.  The problem is this:

Russell had just served up 55 cones, some single scoops, some double scoops, and some triple scoops.  If he served up a total of 103 scoops, how many of the cones were single scoops, how many were double scoops, and how many were triple scoops?

Usually I figure out guess and checks algebraically, but I can't do that here because there is not enough information and I've gone through two pieces of scrap paper trying to figure it out otherwise.  We didn't have bloody problems like this when I was in the fifth grade!

Okay, I beta'd Wings of Gold and I beta'd No Cure, but I swear there was a third fic I was supposed to beta and I can't find it.  Worse yet, I can't even remember who it was by.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Kept my food down today, so that's progress.  I think the worst of this "flu" is over.  Just wish I didn't feel quite so much like drowned cat.

Took the kids to see the musical GREASE tonight. 


( GREASE is the word )


Damn, why did these thinky thoughts have to come along and ruin a perfectly good play?