Top Ten! This is where it all gets exciting, baby. Let’s review last night’s dances.
Author: Lynn
Story teller. Web designer. Party planner. Pie maker.
The Progress of Parenting
First kid: Did not taste candy until he turned two. Only ever ate whole wheat bread. Had hot breakfasts of toast or oatmeal.
Second kid: Allowed to have one Smartie per day around age 1 and a half, when her older brother was toilet training. Only ever ate whole wheat bagels. Had breakfasts of cereal or frozen waffles.
Third kid: Just had a chocolate chip (“hash browns,” in her world) sandwich on white bread for breakfast.
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First kid: Never allowed to watch more than two half-hour TV programs per day.
Second kid: Watched a few shows per day; occasionally allowed to watch a movie.
Third kid: Just watched So You Think You Can Dance with Mommy over breakfast; has watched Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus about six times in the past week.
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First kid: Always drank diluted apple juice or milk.
Second kid: Diluted apple juice or milk; occasionally allowed a “coffee” (sugar and a spoon of decaf coffee in milk).
Third kid: Just had undiluted orange juice and chocolate milk with her chocolate chip breakfast sandwich.
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Parenting really wears the moral fortitude right out of you, doesn’t it?
One Minute Book Reviews — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time from the library, as it’s a pretty hot title right now.
What we have here is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, retold faithfully scene-for-scene and in similar language by Seth Grahame-Smith — except that there are zombies.
Just the high-concept is enough to make you want to run out and read it, isn’t it?
Elizabeth and Darcy are still dealing with snubs and misunderstandings and wayward sisters, but also the walking dead. Lizzy is a China-trained zombie slayer who kicks ass on a regular basis and is pretty hard in spirit, as well. Darcy is her equal with a sword at taking down the undead, and also, you may recall, pretty dreamy in spite of being rather proud.
They meet at balls, they exchange witticisms, then they slay some zombies. It’s a living.
This book is the very epitome of fluffy, but it was a quick, fun read. If you’re a fan of Austen, it’s almost a must read. The zombie encounters are both hilarious and exciting, and most suprising of all — actually seem to fit in the story. It’s amazing how quickly I accepted the fact that zombies were wandering around the fringes of 19th century England. I absolutely didn’t notice when the story veered away from a comedy of manners into zombie battling territory — it was seamless and fully integrated. The militia camped nearby finally has some actual work to do; all those boring passages of people travelling from one location to another are now nicely spiced up by zombie encounters.
Although the book is mostly just about having fun with the classics, I have to admit that there were places where it actually improved on the original novel, at least for me. Having Elizabeth be a cold-hearted killer shed quite a bit of light on her character — what makes her different than the other girls, what makes her catch Darcy’s eye, and what her own weaknesses of character are that must be overcome. Seeing Lydia throw away her calling as a zombie slayer in favour of frivolous flirting makes the whole business of boy-chasing seem so sad and wasteful — probably just as Jane Austen actually intended.
Not that this is in any way a deep book (despite the hilarious mock-book-club discussion questions at the end). It was fun, it was funny, and I’m buying a copy for my teenaged niece for Christmas, but that’s about the end of it.
One other thing: the cover art freaked my kids out. I had to cover it with post-it notes.
This book has been so popular on the bestseller lists that it’s already inspired a bunch of copycats — Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is already out, for example. I’ll be staying away from those in favour of something a little more serious (I hear Sea Monsters isn’t that good, anyway). But for a weekend at the cottage, this book will entertain without exactly keeping you up nights.
Grade: B+
Business is Blooming!
One of my posts is being featured this week on Five Star Friday! I love Five Star Friday — I’ve found many blogs there that I now read on a regular basis. Many, many thanks to whoever submitted my post — I’m super excited and grateful.
In other news, a few very nice people have left me awesome and much appreciated comments about how much they like my blog redesign.
Funny story, there. I’m hosted on WordPress, and while I love WordPress, one thing that bugs is that there are only about 30 different supported themes on the site, and they are completely uncustomizable (I think I just invented a word there). When I first started on WordPress, I picked Blix for my theme — it was the only one I really liked.
Over the years, I’ve often gotten bored with Blix and tested out a few other themes, but they always had something about them I didn’t like, so I always went back to Blix.
Last week, a bug appeared in the Blix theme — rather suddenly, for no real reason — and everyone who was using that theme saw their blog pages blow up. The text was still there, but the formatting was missing; text overlapped or wrapped funny and was just plain ugly.
WordPress was working on it, but after three days they still hadn’t found the problem, so I changed themes.
And now I give you…Regulus by Ben Gillbanks. Totally not designed by me in any way. But I like it, and it’s nice to have a change every once in a while.
So welcome to the new face of Turtlehead. Now award-winning.
I’m Going To Have To Kick Tre’s Ass, And It’s Not Going To Work Out Well For Me, I Think
Last night I snuggled under a blanket with a warm cup of tea and a box of tissues, and got caught up on this week’s Dance! Show! Canada! on CTV!
The dancing was a mixed bag.
The judging, as usual, made me angry. Why do I bother to watch the judging part? Sheesh. At least Mia Michaels, although toned down from her American-version appearances, offered some actual criticism. I love her. She can sit on my couch.
I told myself I’d just write a few quick notes on SYTYCD Canada this week, and then I composed this post in my head, and it was thirty pages long. When it comes to dance show, I cannot be contained! Somebody stop me!
Tara Jean and Everett did “theatre” — and a fair bit of tapping — with Sean Cheeseman. Big surprise here — I LOVED IT. I’m a tapper myself, and I’m so, so very happy to see someone tapping on dance show, but on top of that, the number was so fun and peppy and dynamic. Everett was awesome, of course, but TJ was really good, too.
Sean is now officially my most favourite choreographer on SYTYCD Canada. I loved this number so much, I rewatched it three times, and TJ and Everett vaulted over everyone else to become my two favourite dancers. The power of the CHEESEMAN cannot be denied.
Melanie and Cory did jazz with Melissa Williams. This one was only okay. I am SO over vampires. You wanna do something fresh? Try zombies or werewolves next time, Melissa. Anyway, Melanie was awesome as usual, and Cory was a little weak in technique — but still cute as a button. I do think they deserved bottom three, but it was a close call.
Austin and Corynne did a salsa with Tony Meredith and Melanie. Oh my God, people, this was SO BAD. It was quite possibly the WORST number I have ever seen on Dance Show, EVER. Corynne was just so awful! Her hips were frozen like an 80-year-old woman. She looked uncomfortable throughout, her sex factor was -10, and I don’t think she glanced at her partner throughout the whole routine. And Austin! The judges (stupid judges!) said that he was “committed,” but did they look at his face at all? Austin’s idea of “sex face” is something akin to my own “surprised to have stepped in a puddle of barf face” (sadly, I’ve had to use this face more than once this week). And as usual, Austin showed no interest in having a partner, no interaction with the audience, no chemistry at all. Good heavens, this was awful. I couldn’t even watch it a second time for amusement’s sake.
Kim and Emanuel did hop hop with Luther Brown. I liked the choreography here, and Kim was rocking as usual. Emanuel was dreadful, though. I am really starting to dislike him in a huge way. His ego is ballooning out of control — the size of his head will soon pass Austin’s — and he’s lost all sign of humility. He’s starting to believe that he can throw out any crap and Canada will love him — and that isn’t true, now, IS IT, CANADA? I felt strongly that this number belonged in the bottom three, and I was disappointed when Kim and Emanuel were safe. I hope everyone is voting for them just for Kim’s sake, and Emanuel goes home soon. If he or Austin wins this thing, I will be PISSED. OFF.
Jayme Rae and Daniel did contemporary with Blake. My mom hates Blake, but I really like him a lot. He’s my second favourite choreographer on the show and does some original and moving things. This piece was no exception, and I loved it. Stacey Tookey could learn a lot here — what makes this piece good is a specific idea (walking away from a wedding, as opposed to nebulous things like “remembering” or “breaking up”) combined with original movement and a perfect interpretation of song. I really like Jayme Rae and thought she was da bomb here. I also really like Daniel and I think he’s been a great partner and shown quite a lot of versatility. I would have rated this performance as the second best of the evening, and the fact that it ended up in the bottom three really worries me.
And I can’t even talk about the judges’ decision to send SOMEONE home. SO. WRONG.
Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t NOT talk about it. Taking Daniel out of the top 10 means that several fantastic numbers by Jayme Rae and Daniel are now not an option for the tour. Keeping Austin in the top 10 gives you nothing in terms of performances; Canada hates him and will probably vote him out right away; and dooms some poor girl into probably getting voted out because she was paired with Mr. NoChemistry. It’s not smart, it’s not fair, it’s not sensible. JUDGING FAIL.
Anyway.
Amy and Vincent did a jive with Tony Meredith and Melanie, and you know what? It wasn’t bad! Vincent was great, but Amy was also okay, for the first time this season. She seemed a lot more relaxed than usual and they had a bit of a spark between them, for a change. I would have put this number in the top 3 and I think they deserved to be safe this week. Crazy! I know!
I have to say, I feel like the women of the top 10 are much more interesting than the men. If only we could have a top 4 that was all female! In any case, here’s a quick seeding of the top 10 for the first week of individual voting:
1. Kim
2. Everett
3. Melanie
4. Tara Jean
5. Vincent
6. Jayme Rae
7. Amy
8. Cory
9. Emanuel
10. Austin
If only we could send four people home this week, my stress level would be so much lower.
Our House Is a Bomb Shelter
This week has been an interesting culinary experiment at our place.
I usually do the grocery shopping on Tuesday mornings for the week. I look over the week’s menu, make up the shopping list, and run around trying to pick up everything we need while the older two kids are in school.
But this week, the Captain was home sick on Tuesday. He was so tired and sad that I just couldn’t bring myself to drag him to the Superstore.
By Wednesday morning, Gal Smiley had joined him on the couch. Sir Monkeypants and I weren’t feeling too good, either.
This morning, I felt like crap but since we way overdue for groceries, I dragged myself and Little Miss Sunshine into the van — thankfully the older two went back to school today.
Halfway to the grocery store, I remembered I was supposed to be taking the van in for an oil change. It hadn’t had one in more than nine months. Apparently that is bad, so oil change won out. The garage people were freewheeling with the tsk-tsks, let me tell you.
So now, this makes three days we’re overdue for grocery shopping. It might not sound like much, but since I moved to a menu system a couple of years ago, I only keep enough in the house for one week’s worth of meals. This has really cut down on our waste.
But it does interfere with our ability to survive in crisis situations. If only we had a concrete bunker downstairs filled with Spam!
It has certainly been interesting trying to forage for meals for five every evening. We’ve basically resorted to everyone having their own meal — whatever they want to eat that they can find in the cupboards. I’ve found a few things in the depths of the freezer to defrost, too — just scrape a way that freezer burn, kids! Our frozen veggie and canned fruit stock is quite dimished, as well, but at least we continue to survive.
I guess we could survive a nuclear winter, after all. For at least four days, anyway.
Tomorrow, we MUST get out to replenish the larder. In addition, due to the house-wide illness, the laundry is piling up (we missed Laundry Day Wednesday), toys are in every room of the house, books and magazines litter every piece of furniture, and blankets and pillows are scattered on the floor of every room.
Being sick is like having a vacation from housework; I finally give myself permission to just let it all go to hell and curl up the couch in front of the TV instead. It’s kind of a crappy vacation, though — like going away somewhere only to have the airline lose your luggage and face pouring rain every day.
I’ll take it, though.
Last Woman Standing
I missed Dance Show last night because I am busy fighting a plague. The whole house is infected, and it’s been three nights now since Sir Monkeypants and I got any sleep. Someone is always coughing or barfing or crying or sneezing giant green gobs of goo.
This morning I have a tickle in my throat and a sniffly nose but NO! I will not succumb. HEAR ME ROAR.
Anyway, between trying to do too much PTA work and keeping everyone relatively comfortable, Dance Show will have to wait. Alas.
On Family
There’s a great discussion going on over at XUP’s about extended family — cousins, grandparents, uncles, and aunts. Her post was inspired by Guillermo’s blog, which is a fascinating discussion of what it’s like to be an immigrant in Canada; Guillermo got us all thinking about how one of the things an immigrant gives up is all those great big family dinners and weddings and christenings — the sense of being part of a tribe, rather than just a nuclear family.
Growing up, my mother’s family was very close. My grandparents were married for more than 65 years and were the rock of that side of the family, and right up until I was an adult, all of my mother’s siblings and their children got together at least four or five times a year at Nana and Papa’s house. Every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, at a minimum, would mean a big dinner, giving an oral report to my aunts and uncles about how school was going, and playing with all my cousins.
Those were good times.
When I hit adulthood, I moved away. First an hour or so away, then to Ottawa, which was six hours away (closer to eight when travelling with three kids). I must admit, I really couldn’t wait to get away. I missed my mom, sure, but I wanted to make some space for myself. I wanted Sir Monkeypants and I to have a chance to figure out what our marriage was going to be without third party interference or advice. I wanted us to make a home of our own. We still went down to visit for most of the major holidays, but we also built our own life here.
Then we had kids, and suddenly I realized why people move to be closer to their parents when they have children. I’m sure if my parents or Sir Monkeypants’ parents lived in town, they’d be driving me crazy with their comments and their dropping by and their expectation that we’d have dinner at their house every single week.
But I do miss that feeling of having an extended family. I miss having other adults around that my kids look to as authority figures, other adults to help in bringing them up. I miss having a house crammed full of people every time you turn around. I miss seeing my nieces and nephews getting bigger, hearing about the details of their lives, seeing them getting to know my own kids.
A few years ago we realized that we were missing that sense of community in our lives — it takes a villiage to raise a child, and all that — and we made a conscious effort to create an “surrogate extended family” for ourselves. We invited the neighbour’s kids over for dinner; we made regular playdates with old friends who had kids the same age as ours. We made an effort to chat with people we saw on our street, and I got involved with the PTA to give our kids a stronger sense of belonging somewhere.
There’s still something missing, though.
We do the best we can; although I gripe CONSTANTLY about the drive down and keep threatening to stop doing it altogether, our visits south are really important to us. We encourage our kids to call their cousins (especially Sir Monkeypants’ sister’s boys, who are close to the Captain in age and are serving as his “brothers” since we refuse to produce a baby boy for him). We write letters to their grandparents and send them care packages of school art.
And we do get to see them a few times a year, which is better than having them across an ocean.
I don’t ever want to move from Ottawa; this is my home, it’s where my heart is. But sometimes I do wish the world were just a wee bit smaller.
Kicking Ass and Turning Five
I am not a runner. Gym was my least favourite class in school. The only B I ever got in high school was in gym, and that’s because my A+ in the health/classroom portion offset my C-minus physical abilities.
Middle age seems to be agreeing with me, though, because I actually had a great time at the Army Run yesterday. It was a gorgeous day, clear and sunny and crisp along the canal. Thousands of other runners were there, which was inspiring and really made me feel like I was part of something big.
Most of all, I made it, and it was GOOD.
I managed to run-one-minute, walk-one-minute most of the time, and I finished my 5K in 39:35 — that’s less than 40 minutes, baby. I’m pretty proud. Yesterday I wore my little “you did it!” dog tags around the house all day. Because I’m a survivor.
Also, I am totally ignoring the 70-year-old man who power walked along with me the whole way and ended up finishing about five minutes ahead of me. Kind of made me wonder why I bothered to run the race, you know?
My favourite conversations from the run:
One lady to her friend: You’re doing great! We’re almost there!
Other lady: STOP LYING TO ME.
10-year-old Girl to her Mother: Mom, we can’t keep stopping like this! We have to keep running, it’s a RUN. I’m not going to wait for you any more!
Mom [panting]: Just. One. More. Minute.
Man to his young son: You’re doing great, kiddo. Oh hey, a garage sale! Let’s just pull over for a sec!
Son: I’m going to say that to you in two hours when you’re at 20K in the half marathon.
So cute.
In other news, Gal Smiley turns five years old today! It feels a little anti-climatic, since she already had her big party, so I’ve already been through all the hand-wringing and dirge singing about MAH BABY GROWING UP. In fact, we’ve had kind of a hard week around here with her — a few potty issues, continued finger sucking, a refusal to eat breakfast unless spoon fed — so I’m kind of hoping for a little maturity now that we’re the big FIVE. Fingers crossed.
This morning we gave her our present, which was “REAL LIVE” walkie-talkies, and she was very happy. This afternoon I was able to lie around on the couch for 15 minutes while Gal Smiley went upstairs, and then I used the walkie-talkies to explain to her how to get Little Miss Sunshine up from her nap and out of her crib.
I’m thinking the walkie-talkies could be the dawn of a whole new era I like to call, “Parenting from the Couch.” Next up, remote diaper changing!
There’s A Lot To Be Said For the Army
Hey, remember that 5K run I was going to do? It’s tomorrow!
I was really enthusiastic about training for it for about, oh, two weeks back in June. Then I totally fell off the wagon. Sitting around in the backyard was so much nicer than running, you know? And it was too hot. Or too rainy. Or too dark. Or too buggy.
And seriously, how could I have been expected to go running when So You Think You Can Dance was on?
I’m still going to trudge downtown in my running shoes (but not my free run-associated shirt, because apparently that is GAUCHE) and line up at the starting line. I plan to do a run/walk combination and I hope to make it through to the 4K water station without collapsing. I keep imagining I’ll be like Michael Douglas in Running, attempting to finish the marathon at the Montreal Olympics after a bad fall leaves him with all kinds of blood and guts hanging out and broken bones and whatnot (horror show running starts at about the 8:15 mark):
I KNOW. Can you believe that this movie is not even based on a true story? The days before Lifetime were grim, indeed.
Anyway, if you’re downtown at the Army Run and you see me hobbling past, feel free to give me a good old, “Go, Michael! You can make it!”, and I’ll meet you at the finish line for doughnuts and a discussion of bad 70s cinema.
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