I'm not sure about this whole thing

Scenario Scout came up with today: (5 1/2)

Pretend that I am a baby tiger and you are my owner and I am eating blood soup (she's really eating tomato soup). Pretend that you found me in the safari and my mommy tiger said it was alright, you could take me- she'll just make another baby- cause that's the spirit of Christmas.

Dinner

Can I post something on here and still maintain the respect of my readers?
(if I had it in the first place that is).

You may all be surprised to read this but my family and I, well we are not perfect. My house isn't always immaculate. Rules aren't always followed to the letter. Our yard looks like downright crap much of the time. This is a blog post I am writing partly in protest to the perfect little world I feel closes in on me sometimes. I read a great article and I wish I could sight references and give the person credit here, but it was quite some time ago. The article was about how the art of the family picture has changed drastically in the last few years. Photoshop is ruining the bad picture we all laugh at in those old albums (you that are privy to a certain family pic of mine may insert laughs here). Basically it was lamenting that red eyes are a thing of the past, and we can blur out imperfections in the background, etc. We can even see the pic right away, delete it so it is gone forever and retake a million times when before, you just took two and hoped for the best. I am really going to mess this up because there was something else I read and I don't remember if it was the same article or a different one, but this time it was talking about the perfect cookie cutter blog worlds we read about. Everyone has a blog- correct? Well, it is easy to show our best pics there and we can pick and choose to share only the wonderful, cookie cutter, Norman Rockwell moments in our lives (I would like to insert here that this is also happening on facebook. In fact, I have a few "friends" that every time they post a status update I want to pull my hair out by the roots from the sickening crap I read. Example: "Just got back from skiing with my family, went home, had hot chocolate, sang carols and now I am sitting in front of the fire with my hottie husband and we are sighing about what a beautiful life we lead." Parts left out: "kids fought all the way to the resort, I was mad and didn't speak to my husband for half the day because I detected a flirty voice when he said hi to the ski instructor, the fourteen year old went upstairs after the carols and smoked weed and we will be paying for the season passes we bought on the credit card for 8 years- but we had to buy them cause everyone else in the neighborhood has them and the ones that don't are going to be oh so jealous." (Ok, I probably sound a wee bit more cynical then I really feel, but that was a lot of fun.) Anyway, back to my point- in this world we are finding ourselves in, we can give and get the wrong impressions about everyone else's lives and start feeling bad that we actually have real problems and aren't perfect.

So that was a giant intro into what I was going to confess, which may or may not seem trite now, but whatever. This is all I was going to say: My family has gotten into a bad habit for the past while which is simply this: We have eaten about 97% of our dinners in the living room in front of the TV. It has bothered me for a while now, but I have done nothing about it. One time a few weeks ago we were eating dinner and Scout asked to watch "Cash Cab" which is usually our dinner program of choice. Scout actually asking for Cash Cab got me thinking and I thought, "huh. Is this what I want Scout's memory of family dinner to be?". I brought it up to Rob and he thought about it for some days and came back to me in total agreement that we need to change this. (We have had this conversation a few times, but never quite acted on it, just kept doing what we were doing.)

Well, I am happy to report that we have had dinner at our dinner table every single night this week and we are loving it. I no longer shush my child while she talks through the answer to a trivia question- we have our own silly conversations instead. I now have a table to put my plate instead of my lap or the coffee table. When Elle spills a bit of dinner it is not on carpet anymore (or rather the towel I would put around her place to catch any errant food- and if you've ever seen her eat- there is plenty). Just writing this I am thinking to myself- why the bip did we put this off? Cash Cab certainly isn't worth it.

So anyway, I am not ready to air all our dirty laundry, but this improvement we have made is working out so great, there are plenty more things my little family can work on-- but one thing at a time.

RIP, old ornament

Rob and I got engaged a few days before Christmas, 2001. That year we went to Pier 1 and bought a few ornaments just for fun (I think I had a small tree in my apartment and had little to put on it). I believe we bought three: a paper elephant, a teeny tiny purple glass ball and a cool frosted blue one. The elephant was played with by Scout on one of her early Christmases and it has no trunk to speak of anymore, nor does it have a loopy thing to hang it from the tree. The tiny glass ball got pulverized around the same time. The last survivor was this beautiful glass ball. This week it fell from the tree under dubious circumstances (Scout blames Lola which is certainly under the realm of possibility, but the very fact that she is blaming Lola is suspect to me.) Although she may have validly witnessed the crime, she also may be trying to cover her little bum. This event resulted in a small hole which broke my heart a little, but I hung it back up pretending it never happened hoping somehow it would either magically heal itself, or survive for years to come with a small hole leaving us with a tale about the Christmas where tragedy struck, but it lives on. My dreams of this were dashed yesterday when Scout had a friend over and this time (according to said friend, the ornament just fell and broke into a million pieces)- it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this story is suspect especially since we DO have carpet and not some freakishly hard cement flooring you might think we have according to this ornament's fate from two falls.

Well, it does break my heart, but this picture is now the only remaining tangible evidence of my last remaining sentimental ornament from mine and Rob's first Christmas together. (Wait, we were dating the year before, but not so seriously and were not engaged, nor did we buy any ornaments.)
Anyway, that ornament was special to me and I hate to see it gone, but life happens.

Especially with a rambunctious little girl and one big great Dane.

Sigh.

At least we still have the detrunked elephant.

That WOULD be a miracle

Scout 5 1/2-

I don't remember what led to me telling Scout the entire story of Jesus on the way to ballet yesterday, but she asked me to, so I did. I started with His birth and went on from there. When I got to the part about how He healed the sick, blind, and lame, she took that in and then said, "maybe He could touch Elinor so she could walk".

I swear that girl thinks of everything.

Rant

I'm really annoyed right now, so I ask you all to indulge me while I rant.

This particular rant is about my child's elementary school parking lot. First order of business:


I have been to two events at my child's school where the parents are invited. Both times of course the place was very crowded. This over capacitated the parking lot. But no problem, there is a church with a huge parking lot RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET. So, I parked there and saw another mom I know and we walk in together to watch our children march in the Halloween parade. As I am approaching the front of the building, I notice that the entire red zone at the front of the school is totally full of parked cars. I made a joke to the other mother about how maybe blocking the entire red zone(ie- place where the fire trucks park if there is a fire), may not be the best idea at an elementary school where our children are (the other mother didn't seem to care) and then I dropped it. About a month later, one night there was an art show at the school and Rob and I and the kids went. They had a program and I think every parent and grandparent were there and you couldn't even fit into the gym. It was soooo crowded and I am sure over capacity. Again, we parked at the church across the street and as we walked in, AGAIN, the entire red zone was full of parallel parked cars. I pointed it out to Rob and this time it was just annoying to me. SERIOUSLY! What in the world makes you feel entitled to park in the red zone ANYWHERE just because the parking spots are full??? Let alone, the elementary school where hundreds of our children are? Especially when there is a perfectly fine half empty parking lot RIGHT across the street? No one is going to tow you out of an LDS church parking lot I assure you. And shame on the police department for not towing every single one of those cars parked in the red zone. I am no champion of safety here, but I know what is right and what is STUPID in certain situations.
1. You don't ever park in red zones anywhere, especially schools overflowing with children.
2. You don't speed in school zones.
3. You never ever park in handicapped spaces. Which brings us to what happened yesterday....

Scout was picked up by her carpool and as they were leaving the lot they were backed up into and got in an accident. The lady that backed into them, not only was driving a giant SUV, she had a huge decal advertising her husband's dental practice in the back window (decal letters, not the wraps that you can see through). She pops out and talks to the mother driving Scout home and was like, "I don't think it was anybody's fault". What the crap? Other mother (Scout's car) was not speeding and didn't see her. The SUV lady told the cops that she even saw the other car. What the crap again? Anyway, she was cited for backing into someone and also, was cited again because she happened to be backing out of a handicapped spot for which she had no business being in. This seems like another case of total self entitlement and this all just makes my blood boil (Self entitlement and laziness! One of the many reasons Americans are getting fatter- we can't walk across the street? Or park a few spaces further away instead of taking up a spot reserved for someone that legitimately can't walk?).

Ok, rant over. I feel somewhat better. Thanks for reading.

What Emily's Been Watching, November Edition

I ran into a big stumbling block on the first day of November. My Salt Lake County library card expired after 8 years. If you've been keeping track, I moved to Utah County, but kept my card (shhh), since SLC has an incredible library system and I couldn't give it up. Cedar Hills has of course- no library. They do however try to compensate by reimbursing you for the library fee of surrounding cities. That's cool enough, so I got an account at American Fork. Guess what? American Fork has the most woeful selection of movies ever. It's probably more like what renting a video at the library is like in normal places though. Except I would expect more artsy and foreign movies of which I saw NONE, all they had was pure crap. I kept putting in movie titles to the data base and coming up with nothing. I canceled my Netflix like a year ago because our laptop died and that meant I could no longer watch streaming movies in bed. (I am not going to sit at my computer desk in our uncomfortable chair and watch movies.) Also, SLC had a great selection of movies- pretty much they had everything- so I was totally set without Netflix. Well, this has all ended and my selection of movies I watched this month will demonstrate this. No fear though- I am restarting my Netflix account, so things should improve and movies WILL be seen again.

Date Night (2010) [PG 13] :Comedy. Rob and I watched this one night while I helped him strip cabinets. We would rather had watched Shutter Island, but decided this one was a better flick to be working on cabinets to, since it was a movie you could watch while doing something else as opposed to Shutter Island, a film you want to pay attention to every minute. It turned out to be a pretty good choice. It was about what we expected- a few laughs, but mostly fairly stupid- but it did star two talented, funny people. Let's put it this way: we could have picked something worse. So if you have a project to do and want something playing in the background, Emily can recommend this. It did have the Thom Yorke look alike guy in it (that was just a fun fact).

Babies (2010) [PG] Documentary. I have been wanting to see this since I heard of it. Then, I saw a trailer for it, and ever since, I had REALLY been wanting to see it. Perhaps it is my status as a mother, especially one that has a little baby barely out of her first year of life. Perhaps it is just cause I am a chick who likes babies. I don't know, but it was cute and it will make your ovaries hurt whether you have them or not. It is a French documentary and it basically follows 4 babies through their first year of life. One lives in a hut in Africa, one in a little goat farm in Mongolia, one is a hippy baby from San Francisco (yuppie hippie not Haight and Ashbury hippie), and the last is a little diva baby in Tokyo. It was interesting seeing 2 from middle of nowhere, outskirts of the world juxtaposed with 2 from big and modern (yet culturally different) cities. All four being raised in very very very different environments, but of course, there were many similarities beings as how they are babies. That's the thing about babies, which I took away from this- babies are babies (I also took away from watching the 2 year old Mongolian older brother an appreciation for having had my kids 4 years apart. What a pill!!) There is a funny scene where the Japanese baby is playing with this toy and she is frustrated and keeps dramatically falling over. Made me laugh. But oh how that little baby from Namibia won my heart (the opening scene of the trailer, showcasing this baby, was what jet propelled me to see it- she won my heart in like 2 seconds). I have no idea if it was a girl or a boy- the name and the clothing were not gender specific to my American ears and eyes, but I suspect she was a girl. She was SO cute and SO smart. I was tempted to feel bad for her/him every time I saw her(him), but I couldn't do it. She was happy and healthy and smart and content and very loved. There was a funny scene where she is just lying on her stomach in the dirt, playing with it and eating it etc. Directly after it shows the hippie baby at a baby yoga class and you were obviously supposed to reflect on that and all that means and I did. Emily recommends this movie if (big surprise) you like babies. In fact, if you like babies, this is one not to miss. There is virtually no dialogue and what is said, is not translated or subtitled and I don't know about you guys, but I am only able to understand one of the four languages spoken. This is not really a factor though, you just watch the babies. There is also plenty of nudity, but it is of the National Geographic variety.

The Big Chill (1983) [R]: Comedy/drama. So I've heard about this movie my whole life but had never seen it. I needed something this week to watch while I did my eyebrows and folded laundry and Scout was at school. This was On Demand, so I gave it a go. My opinion: eh. It was ok. I have heard of The Breakfast Club being referred to as "The Little Chill" and I must say, I like The Little Chill better. Not that I didn't dislike this movie, I just wasn't "wowed" in any way. Perhaps it is a generational thing, meaning it speaks to a specific generation that I am not a part of. I can tell you with authority that the filming really sucked. Perhaps it is just a product of early 80's mid set, where these things weren't considered. I don't know, I do know that I am no authority on filming, but that should tell you how bad it really was- that it bothered me and I noticed. I am inclined to believe that perhaps since The Breakfast Club has been compared to it, I was expecting a character reckoning at the end where everyone learned something about themselves and came out changed people. In a way, these people did, but not as drastically, which made the ending fall flat a bit. Despite all I've said, I liked the movie well enough and Kevin Kline (as always) was a definite high point of the movie. Emily can't decide if she recommends this movie or not. I suppose it won't kill you to see it, it IS a good film about a specific generation and time in one's life (specifically, if you graduated college around 1969 I'd say). "Won't kill you to see it" something tells me I am being a wee bit hard on this movie.