The college years

She squeezed out an intro post between school, homework and work. So there ya go.

Personally, I can’t wait for the post she writes while hopped up on chocolate covered coffee beans.

When I was a kid I was pretty well loved and had just enough of the cool toys to be slightly spoiled. My castle was kept at Little Nanny & Grampy’s house, in the sunroom with the built-in storage benches along three walls. The left-side bin on the middle bench was the spot for My Toys. The dog slept on the middle one, occasionally jumping up next to me to investigate the lid being open.

At some point, the castle and all the pieces came to live at my house, when I was a grown-up and had two children to enjoy it and the grandparents were downsizing. They figured I could be responsible enough to keep it at that point.

Somehow the pieces did survive my children, thsoe two and the next two (although one of the horses has a broken leg) but the biggest part – the castle itself – got lost in our move around Miramichi. I am still convinced, Mom, that it is over in Michelle’s upstairs bedroom closet in the back somewhere. You may have to show her a picture to see if she recognizes it, because she may think it belongs to one of her kids (or a sibling, maybe it got moved to Dave’s old house, who knows?).

The dragon I swear I saw recently, Emma had a huge story about him and I have this urge to tear apart the house to look for him. I have an overwhelming urge to take his picture.

***

The other news from the weekend may seem unrelated. Meaghan is almost done the first coat of painting the kitchen. She got antsy this week over the fact I took most of the wallpaper down and left the rest, papery bits too high to reach without some serious equipment. Oh, the curse of ten foot ceilings.

At any rate, by the time she fell into bed last night, all but the most stubborn bits of paper were gone from the walls, some trim removed and some cleaning happening. We’ve cursed the guy who lived here before yet again over stupid stuff we found. Re-cutting doorways and no header, for example. It’s hard resisting the urge to rip apart most of it to re-do it, and just let the girl simply PAINT the room, darn it. It desperately needs it and a fresh look will keep both Ron and I from dismantling the whole thing for at least a year or two.

Previously, it has country-check blue and white wallpaper with a rosy 80’s beige on the ceiling and bulkheads over the white cabinets. (seen here) This in a room with no natural light until at least mid-afternoon in summer. It’s a cave on winter mornings.

Not this winter though. We have almost a whole can of paint from when we did the kitchen in the last house. The color? Yellow. A bright golden yellow we love that makes us smile.

Now, onto the stuff my family wants to read. ;P

Emma joined the summer reading club at the library, and next week is the last week. She said she’d read 30 books and she’s done so already. It’s every Wednesday at 10:30 am, which even then I sometimes have trouble making on time.

But today and tomorrow afternoon, we headed (and will head) to *another* local library and do a Movie Making workshop. There’s only four kids including Emma, and it’s supposed to be for kids in grade 4 and up, but they said she could go. Cuz, you know. They know her.

She did a lot of talking and I told the fresh-faced young man to tell her to stop any time. The other kids were kind of shy. The movie will be performed with puppets and burned onto DVD. (note to self: get blank DVD) It involves a farting robot dog, his owner, a girl wizard and a dragon. Hijinks ensue.

We were at the library twice this week. They started the summer reading club and we had arrived just after everyone else in charge of that had gone on their lunch hour. The meeting was the next day, so we could sign up then.

As a side note, Meaghan & I hadn’t realized it was lunchtime, and joked that as long as Ron (at home) had bread and peanut butter, he wouldn’t starve. When we got back home, Ron was just finishing up his peanut butter on toast.

Anyway! They had a book sale. I filled two boxes full of romance novels, not even looking at most of them, just going for particular covers. They color-code certain lines, so I grab the ones I know I like. That’s how I got this:

Funny enough, but it would have been even funnier (and serve me right) if I had read it already. I lugged home two boxes and gave them $13. Meaghan didn’t find anything. I also checked out a couple quilt books.

Next day, we hustled there bright and early (for us), got there just in the nick of time. Boy, they start on the dot for story time… anyway, it was a Canada Day theme as it was Tuesday before Canada Day. After the story, and the singing (that’s when Meaghan escaped upstairs), the library helpers asked all the kids stuffed in the basement what they liked best about living in Canada. Some answers were:

“my sisters lives here”

“it’s green”

“it’s big”

“it’s nice”

And then she called on Emma in the middle of the crowd. In a clear voice, with perfect enunciation, she volunteered her answer.

“Because it’s better than the United States!”

And beamed.*

I slid just a little further back into the alcove nearest me and watched all the parents giggle and cover their semi-shocked open mouths. Then we had the chaos of craft time and nobody pulled me aside for anything. We made a toilet paper roll beaver, and had 12 pairs of scissors to share with something like 57 children.

Then I got Emma all signed up for the club where she promised to read thirty whole books all by herself, by August 12th. They are going to let us come back for next week’s meeting too.

* the beaming was because she Followed The Rules and was Being Quiet, not shouting her answers and also raising her hand at the appropriate time. “Wasn’t I quiet when she said to be quiet Mommy? Didn’t I do good at raising my hand?” “Yeah honey, you did great.”

It will be her first day of “real” school.

Yes, we have already sent one kid off into the wild blue yonder of “real life”. But this time was different, and my feminist cred is gonna slip here, but… this time, it’s a girl-child! It’s totally different!

Alas, we managed. We stuffed what she really needed into her new room downtown (easy), I spun her around the grocery store (she’s familiar with it, knows how to shop), impressed her new roomies with the fact she knows how to cook more than KD (one guy’s face looked like he just saw heaven), and then…

And then I had to just… Leave her there. That was the hard part.

Skip past the melancholy glaces into her half-empty room, the mental fingers in my ears as I try not to think about it…

The smiles when I see an email that says, “I bought second-hand curtains, they’re awesome!” (paraphrased, not a direct quote), or the note on Twitter that she unfurled her freshly laundered blankets that night and found emma’s pajama pants tangled up in them. Or seeing how she has a stuffed full calendar of people to visit, things to do, places to go.

Yeah, she’ll be fine.

Not so sure about the rest of us.

Her idea was to take her barbie dolls and do her own version of America’s Next Top Model. She had no prompting for us, and all I really helped with was suggesting how she could set up the backdrop and what to use. (and I actually adjusted it after a small crying jag because it kept falling dooowwwwnnn… OHNOES!)

Anyway. Here’s Lakeville’s Next Top Barbie Model.

This is the group shot. Click through for the rest of the set on the right of the page. I’m on the edge of my chair wondering who will win.

(p.s. She also made runway videos, but I haven’t posted them anywhere. But still. She made ‘em. )

To be fair, the sunsets are rarer than Emma in a princess dress. For her costume, all Emma did was root around in the dress-up pile a bit.

It was just her and I roaming the neighbourhood, as Meaghan is far too mature for something so childish, Sarah had to work, and there are no little kids near here. Seriously, we were the only ones out walking. Every so often a minivan would stop at the houses around us, but that was it. Nobody came to our door. (Is okay, more treats for us!)

We went to eight houses and were gone about an hour and half. We went maybe 500 yards. At each house, we had to come in (both of us) and close the door (it was cold, almost freezing), then pick out candy and catch up on the news. About halfway through we came to a house with a dog. Emma is, for reasons unknown to us, terrified of dogs. Any dog. Even chihuahuas. If it barks or wags, it scares her. The first dog they had she hadn’t noticed until she got near the door, so she was pretty wary. The second, someone had let out from a room upstairs and literally came charging in from seemingly nowhere, so she was pretty rattled. (Okay, utterly terrified and screeching.)

The owners felt really bad, so after a bit the lady came over to Emma with a sleeping kitty in her arms. “That better be fake,” I said. It was, and thankfully the BATTERIES to make it purr were worn out as well.

It’s okay there too, because Emma brightened right up and has lugged that thing around ever since. Not sure I’m going to visit them again soon, not because of the dogs, but I’m cautious of what else they might give her to lug home.

On the candy front: we had only purchased one box of small chocolate bars to give out because we knew we would not see a lot of kids. The key to not having a load of candy is not going to a lot of houses. See above where we visited eight places; each one gave out LOTS. Emma still came home with a cloth grocery bag more than half full. A few cans of pop, tons of bags of chips, loads of chocolate and four apples – she has plenty.

YES. We accepted APPLES from people we KNEW.

Anyway.

Today I had to run around a bit so I took Sarah to buy markdown candy for her own stash. Which she proceeded to graph results for after she unpacked them at home. (and took pictures)

At one grocery store, there were some young guys from Jamaica in front of us joking around and flirting with the clerks. A guy they knew was behind us that they were talking to over our heads, and eventually one of the guys said “Feel da rhythm!”

I muttered, “If dancing breaks out, I’m a-taking pictures.” They laughed.

Now, I have to look up – waaaay up – and he’s fully grown. I’m kind of astounded.

Happy Birth-o-ween Addison.

So, we went to see Wall-E.

And here’s where I’d love to tell you what a moving, wonderful story it is, but … I have no words. The words I just typed don’t even begin to describe it. A magnificent film that should receive every award in existence would not even begin to cover it.

Within the first minute, my eyes filled with tears. Ten minutes in I was just trying not to sob. I’m sure any feeling adult in the room was the same. And in the ending scenes it was the same. A roller coaster, swept along in the imaginative storyline, the world – indeed what could very well be *our* world – Pixar has not only done it again, they have blown their previous works out of the water. The competition should be quaking in their boots as anything else is just a cartoon.

The technical details of the animation of a garbage-ridden planet will leave you breathless in its horrific degradation. And this isn’t a film where the pure beauty of a class of professionals pushing themselves to the limit and breaking boundaries is such a joy and awe-inspiring moment. No, it’s the combination that you rarely see; one of fine craftsmanship in both the view and the storyline.

I can barely even express the storyline – the depth of feelings intertwined with what is shown on the screen, the sparse dialog that leaves you welling tears and laughing in the next moment.

And while the irony of it was not lost on me – leaving the theater and seeing the garbage on the floor, overflowing the two meager bins, being assaulted by Wall-E merchandise cropping up in stores now at limited quantities and low prices – there’s still the spirit of Pixar embedded in the file, thumbing its noise and wagging a finger even as it receives funding from its own corporate overlords.

Somehow, we don’t mind, for the creative talents they employ and the stories they have to tell need to be told, need to be unleased in almost any way possible. As long as we don’t fully succumb to the lure of consumerism.

Which, I think, was their ultimate point.

Meaghan: “What are we having so far?”

Me, distractedly rummaging though fridge; “Pork things.”

Smart-mouth; “How about potato things?”