Partial to the bean…

Ugh, I feel like crap. Last night I had wicked awful insomnia, and only got 4 hours of sleep. I had to be up early for a 6-hour meeting, but 3:30 a.m. is rather earlier than I intended to wake for the day. *sigh*

So that sucked. But the extra-super-worst-with-raisins-on-top part is that, thanks to last night’s crappy sleep, the cold germ that I’ve been successfully fighting off for over a week has finally triumphed over my body and I am siiiiiiick. Can’t breath and my chest feels all gross inside and my throat is weird and yuck. Blech. Waaah. Pity me.

In other news, it’s Halloween, as you may have noticed. Last night was the party at our school. Alice was a witch; pictures: prep work & result. Sammi was a panda, but I didn’t get a picture that really shows off her costume. Here are two fun shots, at least: the eyes that steal your soul & panda says “heeeeeyyyy!!!”

We’re doing trick-or-treat tomorrow (4:00 – 6:00; trick or treat in broad daylight just loses something, in my opinion, but I was not consulted before the decision was made). Sammi is panda-ing it up again, and hopefully I’ll get a better picture of the ensemble. Alice needs a more outdoor-worthy costume, because a sleeveless satin gown, fishnets, and platform boots do not really work well for walking around for 2 hours in 45°F temperatures. I’m not sure what her plan is, and I don’t think she is, either. Exciting!(?)

The thing about trick-or-treating this year, though, is that I finally made the decision not to go around our actual neighborhood. We’re also not going to leave anyone home to wait for kids to come to our house. For as long as we’ve lived here, we’ve always done both of those things, but it’s become increasingly pointless as time has worn on. I’m pretty sure we’re now the only kids who trick-or-treat on our street, so I’m henceforth cutting all of our neighbors loose; they can save all their candy for themselves. From here on out (for however many years of T.O.T. we’ve got left), we’re just going half a mile down the road to the chi-chi section of town, like everyone else. I can’t help feeling bad about this, somehow: Like it’s rude to not come to my neighbor’s houses and take their candy…? I guess I am visualizing them all being disappointed at not getting any kids to their house. Am I responsible for preventing that disappointment? Oy, the guilt!!

Alice and I went out to see The Social Network over the weekend, and we both enjoyed it. It’s a fast-paced 116 minutes with intense dialogue and lots of high-level geek- and legal-speak, but it was done so skillfully that Alice had minimal trouble following along. There were some really great performances in it, especially Justin Timberlake who is forcing me, against my will, to respect him as an actor. Alice was impressed by Armie Hammer, partly because he skillfully plays two different roles but mostly because his name is cool.

Look! Pictures from this year!! Woooww!!

The girls and I had our dental checkups today. No cavities, except for the one that we already know Sammi has, which abscessed a few months ago but which is now under control and kind of just hanging out in her mouth, waiting for the tooth it lives in to go live with the Tooth Fairy. We’ve all improved our brushing and flossing skillz since the last checkup, which meant less scraping and bleeding (although we all still had some of that, and Sammi cried about the scraping, a little). The only not-so-great news is that the dentist really wants us to be thinking about orthodontia for Sam — her jaw is narrow, and her teeth are crowded. It’s not an emergency, though, so (after discussion) we agreed that it’s okay to wait on this until after Sam’s done with speech therapy; we’ll talk about it again at our spring checkup, and then maybe go forward with an expander of some kind in the summer.

Secretly I’m still hoping that Sammi will end up following Alice’s path — there were at least 6 or 7 consecutive 6-month checkups when Alice was around this age where the dentist would say, “at the next checkup, we’ll probably have to talk about a referral for orthodontia,” but we stalled and stalled on it and Alice’s mouth gradually grew to accommodate her teeth perfectly. It may be, though, that Sammi really is built differently. We shall see.

I went to see Red today. It was pretty good — a little bit underwritten in spots, and I had no interest in the central romantic relationship (as usual), but I was well entertained, and Helen Mirren was rrrroowwrrr. If you’re going to go see it, I recommend you see it like I did: I went to a 12:50 show on a weekday. I was by far the youngest person in the theater, and the crowd was really into it, as you can imagine. Heh.

…it’s 10-20-2010!

Sammi has been complaining that her backpack is too heavy, so this morning I cleaned it out. Highlighted discoveries include: 1 pair jeans, 1 pair velvet leggings, 3 pairs socks, 1 belt, 1 t-shirt, 1 sundress, 1 pair fingerless gloves, and the form & check for picture day. Picture day was a week ago. Argh.

Never fear, I have made a series of phone calls and emails and have the school picture issue straightened out…

Super-cool and pretty art stuff: Tilt-Shift Van Gogh

The girls and I went to see Easy A tonight. I thought it was cute and relatively funny, with some stand-out performances (most notably Amanda Bynes, Patricia Clarkson, Thomas Haden Church, and the always-excellent Stanley Tucci). The dialogue was a little too clever in spots (like, what 17-year-old knows enough to call someone “Kinsey-6 gay”?), but overall it had a good feel, and called heavily and explicitly back to the John Hughes 80’s movies that I and so many of my agemates are nostalgic for. My only two other comments: (a) pretending to have sex is not the solution to a bullying situation, bleh, and (b) is it really true that, as soon as word gets out that a high school senior has had sex one single time, the entire high school grinds to a halt so everyone can stare at her in shocked disbelief and titillation? That’s not the way I remember high school AT ALL… Heh.

If you’re interested in knowing how I make beef vegetable soup, chicken corn soup, or split pea soup, you can now visit this page.

There was a fox crying in our backyard last night, around 10:30. It started kind of far away, but got closer until I was pretty sure he/she was right outside the bedroom window. The noise was both eerie and annoying. By the time it got close to our house (and therefore rather loud), I was worried that it was freaking Alice out, so I got up and went over to her room and talked to her a bit, and by the time I got back to bed the noise had stopped, so I guess I scared it off. This is what it sounded like.

(from the ever-so-useful Sounds of the Fox page)

I’ve shared these links on Facebook, and I wanted to share them here, too… They are very powerful. Please pass them on!!

Memoirs of a Bullied Kid

Letter to my daughter ( in the wake of senseless tragedy)

On Bullying.

It Gets Better

Finally, I have permission from Sammi to share this. The video cuts out halfway through the song, but you get the idea.

From the excellent Satiristas: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians:

It distresses me that young people don’t see college for the opportunity it is. I run them down at universities: “If you privileged little bastards drop below a certain grade point average, I want you pulled from your seat, a kid from the ghetto put in it, and I want your parents to pay their tuition. You get to learn, drink coffee, and hang out with interested, interesting people all day — and you’re not even paying for it! So many people want to go to college, but they’re in Compton or the South Bronx. Working at McDonald’s will be their best option. They want so much more; you have the opportunity and want so much less? It hurts me. You wound me when I get another of your typo-ridden letters.

I love that. I guess my follow-up question, though, dear brilliant Henry, is where is the balance point? I dove into the college experience and I drank a lot of coffee and I hung with a lot of amazing people, and now I’m a very well-educated and erudite housewife with no marketable skills. I know how to spell, though. So, yeah. Heh.