Grab a chair and a couple of root beers...

The Husbandly One surprised me yesterday with a brand new MacBook Air!!!

I was not expecting a new laptop this soon at all. I mean, I was hoping for one, since my Vaio died such an ignominious death (and I'm still hoping I can recover the hard drive), but not expecting one at any time before my birthday... maybe. So... I'm really happy!

Writing while out and about has been difficult since losing the Vaio. In fact, the last two times at the library while the kids were at their summer Animanga Club meetings was... frustrating. Trying to use THO's netbook sucked, because... one, it's Windows, and two, THO spilled liquid in the keyboard and thus, some of the keys are sticky, plus it's only got a partial version of Windows 7 (it came that way, if you want the actual full OS... you have to buy it. Extra. Yeah.) so it runs a little slow and it doesn't like using Word. I mean, it will run it, but it considers Word a bit dodgy and thinks less of you for using it.

I admire the Husbandly One's fortitude in using the damn thing.

The second time we were at the library, I borrowed the Impertinent Daughter's MacBook, and realized only after getting to the library that while I had installed Word for Mac on it (at her request, since her school uses Windows), I had not yet installed Pages... and the files on my USB drive were for Pages. I managed a work-around and did fine after that, but that should be one of my goals today, to install iWork on her Mac.

I finally asked THO about taking the Vaio somewhere to get it fixed, because, dammit, I need something to write on, something portable!! Dammit!!

And it wasn't like yesterday wasn't surreal on its own, you know? The Impertinent Daughter finished up the classroom instruction part of the driving course offered at the high school (by an independent driving school) and came home much earlier than I expected, and hit her own version of the Wall of Fatigue. So I left her at home to take a nap, with a guardian little brother, and went for a blissfully peaceful grocery shopping trip. And I'm glad, too, because that's where the surreal part of my day started.

It started with an unexpectedly deep voice behind me saying, "Can I get that for you, Mrs. J?" when I was on my tiptoes trying to get to a package well out of my reach. And I turned around, fully expecting to see my usual Helpful Tall Shop Assistant... and discovered one of my daughter's friends standing there. And I realized three things.

1. He was VERY tall.

2. His voice has gotten deeper since I last spoke to him five weeks ago.

3. He's old enough to work at the grocery store.




Two weeks ago, he was in first grade, shyly introducing himself to the Impertinent Daughter, with pale blond hair and apple red cheeks. Last week, he was sitting on the sidelines of a soccer game, tears streaming down his cheeks as I cleaned and bandaged his bloody knee while his mom was gone on a snacks run for half-time because the parent who was supposed to have brought snacks forgot. Yesterday, he was in fifth grade and excitedly telling me how he was going to be in marching band when he started junior high.

There is no way he's old enough to be working at the grocery store!!! NO!!!

Later, I was grabbing a bag of sugar, and heard, "Hi, Mrs. J!!" And there was a girl my daughter has known since... third grade. And... no. Just... no.

I found yet another teenager that my daughter played youth soccer with in the paper aisle. And it just went on and on, all these kids that in my head are still... little... and they're not. And then, when I was checking out, again, a girl from my daughter's class at the cash register, and a boy sacking my groceries, and saying, "Hey, Mrs. J, let me get the ice for you so you don't forget it."

AAAAAAAAH!!!! STAHP!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!

*hyperventilating*

It was bad enough when I realized three years ago that I could no longer perv on the high school boy's cross country track team, because... it was now half populated with boys I had known since they were four and five. But now, they're... turning into people!!

Totally skewed my world view, man!!

My daughter pretty much laughed at me when I got home and related all of this to her, and I had to confront the fact that my daughter is a senior and will be graduating next MAY!!!

*more hyperventilating*

Then, I went to get my hair cut, and she went along with me, and as my uber-awesome stylist was cutting my hair, she started saying, "Oh... my God." She'd cut more, huff, then go, "Oh. My. God." Then a grimace, another huff, and, "Omigod." Then, "Oh, my fucking GOD."

After the seventh repetition of this, I finally said, "Uh... what's going on?" Because the last time I heard that, I was 18 and the lady who had been cutting my hair since I was 11 was ready to kill my hair.

Ms. Stylist grimaced and said, "Your hair is frustrating me. It's never frustrated me before! I've been cutting your hair a long time, Auntie, and I've never seen it do this."

"Do what?" I asked, stunned.

"Well... it's... baby fine, and so... thick... and it's just... every time I cut a section and start to move on, something pops out and I realized I missed something, and I have to go back and cut it, and then something else pops out, and... it's kinda making me nuts here," she said grimly.

And that's when it dawned on me. My hair was coming back. The endocrinologist changed me off the Synthroid/Cytomel combo he had me on and put me on Armour Thyroid, because the S/C combo just wasn't helping. My hair was still falling out, I was still very fatigued, and just not getting better.

I knew my hair was coming back, and I was getting it cut because it was like wearing a wool mop on my head. And I knew it was getting thicker, because I was having to use heavier pony tail holders to pull it back. But... I didn't realize it had come back to the original texture of being baby fine and deceptively thick.

Ms. Stylist kept cutting and cutting, and fluffing and fluffing, and cutting more, and finally, she said, "Next hair cut, we're thinning this shit out!"

*dies laughing*

After we got home, the Impertinent One and I settled in for a "Bones" marathon while the Impossible Son went off to do boy things with his friend across the street, and the Husbandly One texted that he was going to have to work late.

Yeah, he was totally off buying my new SHINY!!!

*dance of joy, dance of joy*

Coolest. Husband. EVER.

So... the Impertinent Daughter and I went and saw "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt 1" last night at our tiny local cinema.

It was hard to talk the Husbandly One into letting us go without him, but I pointed out that the Impossible Son now gets very freaked out at scary things, whether it's on TV, in the movies, or in a book, so it made sense to scout out the movie first and get a feel for whether we thought he could handle it or not.

I missed most of the ending of "Half Blood Prince," because the Impossible Son and I hadn't gotten to Dumbledore's death yet (we were still reading the book), so he was completely unprepared for it when it happened in the movie. I can't believe I was so stupid about it, but I didn't want to spoil the book for him, and had one of those, "Duh, Stupid," moments of thinking waaaay too hard and not clicking that, duh, he'll see the movie and know how the book ends!! *head-desk* I spent most of the time after Dumbledore's death holding him while he cried quietly with his face buried in my shirt and his hands cutting off the circulation in my arms. Not one of my more brilliant mom moments, no.

He very much wants to see this movie, so... I wanted to be sure and see how many "Impossible Freak-Outs" there would be, and... there's a lot. So... I'll have to balance how much he wants to see it against how many nights I want to spend several hours guiding him through pushing the bad dreams that will inevitably result away.

Anyhow, the Impertinent One and I were determined to go, so after receiving THO's blessings (and possible forgiveness for seeing it before he does), I went early to buy tickets... just in case. Small town, small movie cinema... it just pays be be prepared. I asked if they had sold a lot of tickets yet (it was almost 7 p.m.) and the cashier smiled and said, "So far, we've sold about 60, but we're anticipating selling out. There's been a lot of phone calls over the last week, and there's probably going to be a lot of people buying tickets just before we start the movie."

That sounded about right, so I paid for the tickets and hurried home, because it was getting COLD!! A front moved in last night, so the temperature was dropping, which... sort of added to the mood, you know?

Anyhow, Miss Priss and I had to repress our excitement and do our usual evening things. Eating dinner. Doing homework. Pretending to read the paper or watch TV while really watching the clock. Heh.

When it was finally time and we got to the cinema, we found that so many people had come to watch the movie that they had to open a second theater! And that one was filling up!! It was awesome!!

I had no idea there were so many Harry Potter geeks in our town!!

They had a trivia game for free movie passes, and I was polite and only answered one of the questions, and we got two free movie passes!! SQUEE!! So when (and if) the four of us go to see it a second time, two of us will go free! SWEET!!

And we had a lot of fun, too! At 14, the Impertinent One is old enough to whisper back and forth with me as we make jokes, or complain about things they changed from the book, or notice Things (Or People) That Should Not Be There, like the hapless member of the film crew who got caught in a shot during one of the forest scenes, and had to creep away through the trees in the background. That was worth a bit muffled laughter on our parts!

I do want to make one querulous complaint.

Okay, so... we see Bellatrix Lestrange in "Order of the Phoenix" in prison. She's dirty, has matted hair, torn clothes, but... her teeth are clean and quite nice. And they look even better when she shows up in the Ministry. Then we see her again in "Half-Blood Prince," and again, nice, clean teeth.

So... where the hell did the mossy, snaggly, possibly-borrowed-from-a-dental-hygiene-challenged-troll teeth come from??? I'm just sayin'...

Anyhow, we sat there for a moment after it was over, going, "WHOA!!" and just ... trying to process it all. OMG... it was... like riding a roller coaster on a cold day with a sharp wind, and you forgot your hat and your eyes are constantly watering, but you don't want to stop or close your eyes, and... WHOA!!!

And Steve Kloves? Thanks for giving Hedwig a total BAMF moment. I think I fell in love with you a little bit for that!

WHOA!!! Just... WHOA!!!

The Impertinent Daughter went back to school for half-days yesterday.

I know she was happy, even though she was also very nervous. But she handled it just fine, despite several bone-headed moves from the staff. Like the attendance clerk who expected Miss Priss to stand by her window and wait for the guidance counselor to walk down with her new schedule.

Hello? What part of "recovering from mono" didn't you understand?

Miss Priss lasted for about three minutes before she went white and started swaying.

I had already asked if we could just walk to the guidance counselor's office ("No, no, she'll be here in just a minute or so, just stand there and wait!"), so I caught my daughter under the arm, and turned to Mrs. Moron and said, "I'm taking my daughter to the front office to sit down," and started walking.

Of course, Miss Impertinent didn't make it that far, but it was okay, because there's a bench just outside the office, and once she was sitting on it, she was fine. Of course, I think somewhere in the attendance clerk's mind, she was convinced I had kept my daughter home out indulgence or something, or maybe I'm just a super overprotective mother in her mind, but seeing Miss Priss' white face and shakiness went a long way toward convincing her that Miss Priss had been genuinely ill.

Otherwise, everything else went fine.

Picked her up at what would have been lunch for her grade, made a quick stop at the store, and she pretty much went straight to bed and crashed when we got home. Once she was awake again, she was happy, and told me that not only had her friends missed her, but people she didn't really know that well but were in her classes missed her, too, and she got lots of hugs and enthusiastic greetings.

I know she's worried about recovery, though. She's so tired and feeling so weak, that she told me yesterday that she didn't know if she could do soccer camp this summer, because she's lost so much stamina, etc. I said, "Well, that's up to you, but I think if you start slow, you can build yourself back up again. You're not going to be able to play soccer this season, that's true, but I think by summer, you'll be back to running everywhere, and getting into as much mischief as usual."

We'll just have to see what we can do to help her.

The Impossible Son was happy to have her back in the car in the morning. "Now it feels like I'm going to school!" he said happily. He told me last week that he enjoys talking to me and having me all to himself in the mornings, but... he missed having his sister in the car. Even if she was sometimes grumpy in the morning, he still liked having her there. Which made me go "Awwww," but I know what he means. It took him a while to adjust to not having her at the same school when she went into sixth grade, and he said once, "When I start high school, will we be at the same school again?" and I had to tell him no. Why? Well, while she'll be a senior when he's a freshman, the schools in our town are set up so that freshman have a campus all their own, separate from the high school. So, while he might see her when practicing after school sports (because all practices are held at the high school) he won't see her during the school day. And that made him sad all over again!

So, I have the house to myself in the mornings again, and I'm starting to write again, which is good, and hopefully, I'll get back into a groove and start posting fic again. What a long dry spell this has been! You guys have no idea, I have been suffering writing withdrawals something awful!!

You know you're a music geek when you're watching a movie with your family, and then a passage like this comes up...

Zoe: "So, how did it go today?"

Poppy: "What, with our flying flock of little feathered friends?"

Zoe: "Yeah."

Poppy: "It was good, they loved it, flap-flap-flappin' away they were!"

Zoe: "Were they?"

Poppy: "Yeah, bless 'em!"

Zoe: "Had to nip it in the bud with my lot before they went nuts and flew out the window."

Poppy: "It's okay, then, was it?"

Zoe: "Oh, yeah, played 'em Stravinsky after lunch just to calm 'em down."

Poppy: "What'd you play?"

Zoe: "Rites of Spring."


I laughed hysterically at that. The Husbandly One blinked and looked at me as if I had suddenly lost my mind, and the Impertinent Daughter frowned and said, "Okay, Mum gets it, but evidently, the rest of us are just totally lost on this." And the Impossible Son said, "I don't get it."

And in case you're wondering, the characters weren't talking about birds, they were talking about their primary school students, who had just finished a project to turn paper bags into bird masks/helmets, whatever. It's from the movie "Happy-Go-Lucky," which wasn't quite as good as the movie trailer makes you think it will be. That was pretty much the only moment where I laughed hard enough to get breathless. Never thought I would say this, but... some exposition would have been nice. It was kind of... plotless, like a movie in search of a story, or something. Or a theme. Or a plot. A plot would have been good, yeah.

I'm glad "Knowing" and "Happy-Go-Lucky" were free rentals. Sure would have hated to blow six bucks on 'em!!

And as for yesterday... well... you know, it's been what... five weeks? And I'm still sick? I was having a momentary pity party for myself, but I'm better now. Basically what had made me so unhappy was realizing that I'm not going to be able to go watch the Impossible Son play in the 3v3 Live tournament tomorrow, or go to the Austin Aztex/Portland Timbers game afterwards, which I was really looking forward to. I don't miss my kids' games willingly, let's put it that way, and I was really looking forward to watching Mr. Manzie's team play. But it's going to be 104 tomorrow, and Auntie would melt, apparently, so... Auntie will stay home. *pout*

I've got other worries on my mind, but... not ready to share them yet.

Can't wait for the new Harry Potter. And Ponyo in August!

Oh, shocolate, the Impertinent Daughter said the only thing that makes the fact that you've seen the new HP movie already bearable is that you SHARE all the goodies with the rest of us!! *merry laughter*