A Big Week
This entry was posted on 12/15/2011 11:11 AM and is filed under blather, Family Fun, Movies.
Last weekend, Jay took his team to North Dakota, which is notorious for hiring referees from among the parents of the team you're playing. It's been so long, Jay had forgotten what a really severe "homering" felt like. We almost managed to win both games (we did win the second) anyway.
For the long bus ride, Jay asked me to pick out something to watch on his computer from our extensive home movie/tv collection.
This is really hard to do because Jay hates movies. He really does. And the tiny handful of movies he likes, he won't watch twice. Not if he remembers that he's seen them.
But when a person is stuck on a greyhound for eight hours, anything is better than nothing.
I picked four completely different things so he had a legitimate choice. He watched the sixth Harry Potter movie; The Halfblood Prince.
He loved it.
Jay has not read the HP books. He has not seen HP I, II, III or IV. But he has seen HP V; the Order of the Phoenix, only because the evil character Delores Umbridge reminds him of someone he used to know.
He did have one complaint about the Halfblood Prince; bad ending.
"Well, yes. Snape killed Dumbledore. That's how the book ends." I explained.
"But it doesn't have an ending at all!" Jay insisted.
"No, there's another book. They made it into two more movies."
"There's another movie?" (seriously, is he the only person in the English speaking world who didn't know how many Harry Potter books/movies there are?)
"Two more. We have them."
"WE HAVE THEM??" I've never seen my cinephobe husband so excited about a movie. "PUT THE NEXT ONE IN!"
So, at 10:30 Saturday night, we started the Deathly Hallows part I. Jay had me pause it a few times to explain things. He caught on fairly quickly. We got about half way through it before succumbing to exhaustion. We watched the rest of part I and part II on Sunday. Despite not having read the books or seen the earlier movies, Jay understood the evil of horcruxes, the psychological link between Harry and Tom Riddle and the significance of 'the wand chooses the wizard'. He hated Snape so much it was very satisfying to see his reaction to the revelation of Snapes' true role in events; the deep undercover agent and unsung hero of the entire war and the bravest man Harry ever knew.
Snape really is a great character and Rowling drew him perfectly.
When the epilogue of the last movie faded, Jay turned to me and said "Now, That was an ending."
Indeed.
But by the time it was over, it was 11:00 and Josie and I had to get up early the next morning to get to Egan for her driver's road test. After failing her first attempt and not even getting out on the course in the two other times we tried, (too many people once and a blinding rain storm + hail the second time) she made this appointment six weeks ago. No way did we want to miss it.
The forecast was for sleet but that didn't happen.
We managed to peel ourselves out of bed and get on the road by 7 for an 8 O'clock test. We had plenty of time.
Or we would have had plenty of time if I hadn't gotten us lost no less than four times.
I don't know; we've been out there so many times but everything looks different in the dark! First of all, in the past I must have always taken Cedar instead of 35 but on Monday I took 35. I exited behind a semi and couldn't see the signs directing me to Cliff rd and I thought I went right when I should have gone straight because neither of us recognized anything. So we backtracked and went left instead of right but we knew that was wrong immediately so I had Josie call Jay for the address. He assured us that it was on Cliff road, so we back tracked again and hauled ourselves miles down that road yet saw nothing familiar. Another call to Jay revealed that we must have taken Cedar so go all the way down there. At this point, I was too far south down 35 so I got off on 13, planning to back track but 35 going north was a parking lot so I had to improvise. I knew 13 went all the way across to Cedar so I stayed on it, planning to back track there. Before we hit Cedar, we saw that 13 crossed none other than Cliff road!
We zoomed right by that intersection.
A mile later I was able to turn around and head back to Cliff road.
You may think that all was well by this point but you'd be wrong.
Turns out, I chose the wrong way on Cliff road. So I zipped into a parking lot to turn around. By this time, it was ten to eight and Josie was beginning to panic. I turned around in the nearly empty parking lot of the tool and die company and in the three seconds it took me to do that, a huge semi rig appeared. It pulled up to a locked gate and stopped, effectively blocking our only means out of the lot.
Josie and I stared at it for a few beats.
"Are you kidding me?" I said.
"AAAAAHHHHGGGGG!" she explained.
After scoping the situation and deciding that my mini van really wasn't up to jumping the curb and plowing across the boulevard to Cliff road, I put the van in park and went over to the semi. The driver was perfectly nice about moving his big ass rig out of our way and soon we were on the way down Cliff road (again) and in the proper direction.
Three miles down Cliff, my gas light went on. At this point it was 7:58 and we were less than a mile from the testing site. I assured Josie that being a minute or so late was okay and in fact, much better than running out of gas on the course and besides, the rear window of the van was so muddy (no sleet but it was misting out and our rear windshield wiper doesn't do a very good job) so I pulled into a station, put ten dollars in the tank and washed the windows.
We weren't even five minutes late for her appointment and she got out on the course ten minutes later.
Her instructor looked like a slimmer version of Santa Claus.
I wasn't nervous when I went into the building to wait. After all, if I can get and keep a licence, how hard can it be for Josie to get one?
But I looked up from my book a few minutes later and saw Josie and Santa parking the car.
"That was too quick!" I thought, my heart sinking. "What happened??"
I watched out the window, trying to read Josie's body language and figure out what happened.
Fortunately, I know her so well that I was able to properly interpret the meaning of her skipping down the wet sidewalk, with a huge grin on her face and giving me two thumbs up through the window as good news.
She passed.
We filled out the paper work (I only signed on the wrong line once), paid the fee and were on our way; two licenced drivers!
At least I didn't accidently drive out onto the course and do several 180s while trying to find the exit, like I did with Zack back in September.
Good times.
The Picket Fence Christmas party was Wednesday. It's always a lovely affair and Joanne served wine this time. So there I was, drinking a glass of Cabernet at 1:00 in the afternoon, eating chicken puffs and cookies, talking with long time customers and meeting a few new ones.
It was fun. Katie came, bringing along a new portrait she'd just finished for one of the ladies. Mom and Dad dropped by. Dad has been a friend of Joanne's for over seventy years.
MJ brought Bananas and Punkin, who were both looking so cute you'd think Walt Disney drew them. Punkin was her usual delightful self, ready to wreak some havoc if her mother would just put her down, which MJ is far too savvy to do.
It was Bananas who went bonkers when she was told she couldn't go hide out in the work room. So they only stayed for about fifteen minutes. MJ is not one of those mothers who looks her three year old in the eye and says "Mummy needs some grown up time, so sweetums needs to find her inner peace. If Mummy lets you have your own way, can Mummy talk to someone over the age of six for five minutes? Please?"
No, MJ is not a touchy/feely, new age, inner peace type of parent. She's the sort of mother we all had; she looked down at Bananas from her superior height and said "Fine. You need a nap that bad, we're out of here."
Of course, in the end, MJ's kids get the naps they so desperately need and are delightful people because of it, while Sweetums's Mummy may have gotten a few more minutes at the party by teaching Sweetums that screaming and crying gets you what you want.
Dr. Spock should be exhumed and shot.
If I ever write a book on raising kids, that's my title.
I was so exhausted after making small talk for three hours that I had to take a nap when I got home. You may think it was the wine, but I only had one short glass and I know it takes two big ones to knock me out. It's the being with people part that sucks the life out of me.
Later on, while Jay cooked us dinner, Josie and I watched an episode of 30 Rock, where Jack tells Liz "You took this job because you're funny and weird and socially retarded."
Josie laughed really hard and I said "He just described my entire family."
Being in the same room with 'others' takes such a huge toll on me that I let Josie take my car to school today. Not only did it mean I got to sleep in (till 8:10!), it means I'm stuck in the house by myself until after school.
Heaven!
