It is starting to all look green to me.

Good news. Carolyn has been asked to sing back-stage in Oz to help the smaller children who are on stage and having to perform, dance and sing. Sometimes the singing on stage gets a little lost behind the dialogue and dancing. Not to mention the harmonies. So, Carolyn and a few other older girls are going to be wired for sound back stage to fill in the weaker parts. My plan to have all my children sucked into the theatrical world with no means of escape is working. BAH ha haha ha...(imagine that with an evil overtone.) Who says that stage moms are crazy?

Ah.....Sunday Evening

So, I am listening to A Cuban in London's pick for today, Besame Mucho - Performed by Cesaria Evora, one of my all time favorite songs. I always crack myself up when I realize that I am "singing" along despite the fact that I don't speak Spanish. I am also using the smooth tones and delicate bass and drums to drown out my darling daughters slamming their bedroom doors and yelling at each other. Some day, I will miss painfully those sounds, but for today, I am opting for Besame Mucho.

So, I am now reading 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin. Although I have had to slow down on my reading a bit so that I can crochet the hats for Oz, I am making good progress. I chose this book from the list of dangerous books because the author lived for most of her married life in New Orleans. I also checked out a piece of art by Maurice Utrillo when I checked the book out from the library. Utrillo is an artist that lived and painted during the Impressionistic time in France, and died in 1955. I love the painting but haven't been able to find anything out about it yet or a copy to post on my blog. It is a nice work labeled Montmarte and I really like it. I love checking out art work from the library, because I have such a hard time committing to a piece of art enough to actually purchase it I guess.

We now have a new President, and I watched the inauguration as much as I could while still working. It was fun to watch and the crowds were just indescribable. I am optimistic about President Obama and hope that he will have the intelligence and the support he needs to make some positive changes to this country.

Another big news story week before last was the Miracle on the Hudson. I was sitting in the Emergency Room waiting area a week ago Saturday, waiting on Joey to have his broken finger attended too (cow herding accident) and crocheting hats while listening to some broadcast on one of the cable "news" channels about this unbelievable occurrence. The reason for the crash, experts believe, is geese. Yes, Canadian geese flew into the engines causing them to both lose power. So, the commentator of this news program begins pontificating about how the solution to this problem is to kill all the geese. Kill all the geese? Really? Is that possible? If so, then can we kill all the cock roaches also. I know that they don't cause planes to crash. Or do they? How do we know that somewhere, sometime, there isn't a pilot like me, who sees (or even imagines) that a cock roach is within 20 feet of him/her, freaks out and does the freak out dance that I do, causing the plane to fly into a flock of geese that are flying along minding their own business and ....ok....

In the words of the late, great Gilda Radner: "Never mind."

Go listen to Besame Mucho.

America's Next Top Model

So, last year I crocheted 4 little yellow hats for the 4 little ducks in the Angelo Civic Theater's Youth production of "Honk, Jr." This year, the youth production is "The Wizard of Oz." Guess what? I get to crochet green hats for the eight Emerald City beauticians. I love doing this. So, I asked the girls to model the hats for me and true to form, they made it a production. Make-up, lights, props, the whole nine-yards. The strings hanging down the sides/fronts will be gone by production and are only still on the hats because we haven't decided yet what to put on the tops. It never hurts to keep a string attached, despite what most people think!

P.S. Bibianna made the hat that Mopsy is modeling. Not sure how she got in there twice.

 

A Clockwork Orange

As I mentioned in the last post, I read "A Clockwork Orange" last week as the first book for my 2009 reading challenge. I gave the book 5 stars. It was a disturbing and powerful novel about a very disturbed young man, Alex. The novel, narrated by Alex, was in a "slang" that was completely made up by the author. (A feat in and of itself that is remarkable.) I have to say that when I saw the movie (years ago) being a young woman from Texas, I thought that I was just having a hard time understanding British English. However, after reading the book I realize that wasn't the case. For the first two-three pages, I was having a little bit of trouble reading this foreign language, but by the middle of the first chapter, I was able to use the words I knew to at least grasp the general meaning of the words even if I didn't completely understand them. The novel was also quite brutal (killing, assault, rape, murder, drug abuse, etc.) and I think the slang helped make that more tolerable.

Another difference from my memory of the movie and the novel is that in the movie I thought the protagonist was between 18-20 years of age. In the novel, he is only 15 at the beginning. The most important difference though between the novel and the movie is that the novel that I read had all 21 chapters as originally published in England by Anthony Burgess. The American version ended after chapter 20 as did the movie.

The main premise of the novel is that a person who is "altered" to remove free-will, therefore the ability to be evil, is worse than the evil itself. Without spoiling the plot, chapter 21 really puts the whole premise in perspective and I am glad that I had the publication that included that chapter. I have thought about this book for several days now, and I think that I agree with that premise despite the fact that it would be nice to flip a switch and make it impossible for an evil person to do evil. It is as interesting a premise today as it was back in the 1960's and oddly enough, although written in the 1960's, the setting is in the "future." I would highly recommend this book, but make sure you get the version that has 21 chapters.

Stay tuned for book number 2!!!

Long Story Short

Since the last post, I have seen two movies (Valkyrie with Joey and Carolyn, and Marley & Me with Bibianna and Carolyn), read "A Clockwork Orange," did some after Christmas shopping with the girls and got about $200 worth of stuff for about $50, have been through winter, spring, and summer-like weather, had a bad case of allergies, now have a stomach bug, Carolyn and I joined the local production of Oz as prop assistants (Bibianna is the Barrister Munchkin), and the girls started back to school. It has been a fun filled week. AND...TODAY...(drum roll please), Carolyn actually got her driver's license....finally!!! Woo-hoo. I didn't let her drive home though because it was 5:00 traffic and I have already mentioned the stomach bug. Wasn't sure I was up to it; she understood. However, I have a feeling that my days of driving Carolyn around town are limited. :)

(P.S. I took pictures with Joey's camera despite the heckling from other people at the DMV and the embarrassment of Carolyn. As soon as he downloads them for me, I will post them.)

Another week of on-call behind me

Well, I made it! I made it through another on-call week. It was really an easy week (although I hate to say that because I don't want to jinx my next on-call week) but even the easy week is sleep deprived and just the stress of being on-call is exhausting. So, I checked out at 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, picked the girls up from a fun day of building props for the Sound of Music, took them to get "pedis" and then went home and got into bed. I don't know why, but the very best thing about getting off-call is getting into bed, on Joey's side and going to sleep. Sleep, beautiful sleep with no cell phone ringing to remind me that the process on server A has stopped, or may have stopped, or really hasn't stopped but for some reason it decided to send out an alert anyway. Sleep, sleep, it is the most restful, luxurious sleep and I don't know what it is that is so comforting about getting into Joey's spot but I awake feeling completely refreshed and at ease.

Either tonight, or tomorrow, I am planning to go to Hastings and purchase my first book to read in 2009. As you can see from the sidebar, I have added my name to the list of people who accepted the challenge for The Year of Reading Dangerously. I am still learning how all these really cool blog things work, but this one looked easy enough. For my first book, I have chosen A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I have seen the movie and always wanted to read the book, but never have.

Happy New Years Day....kitchen 1, Genna 0

Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year.
Rice for riches and peas for peace.
- Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John on New Year's Day.


OK, I already have broken my vow to never clean the kitchen again (although I have to admit that my real "perfect" husband cleaned the kitchen for me after the second mess today) so I am scratching that resolution off my list and making number 2 a vow to enjoy my family more...look at the good versus the bad. Some day, they won't be around here to be messing my kitchen while insisting that they are not responsible and WILL NOT clean up after someone else. So while they are here, I am going to try to remember how lucky I am to have them here and to accept the role of housekeeper/mom with more dignity and grace than I have as of late. I am also hoping that my perfect real husband will also decide not to put "getting a new wife" on his resolution list.

And, with that said, I have to say that this welcoming of 2009 has been one of the best "in with the new out with the old" times I have ever had. Last night, at the stroke of midnight (central time) we all gathered in Bibianna's room (had to really work to get her to wake up) and counted down to 0...hugged and kissed and then all went to bed. This morning, poor little Bibianna was so upset because she missed the celebration. When we all assured her that she didn't miss is it, and she could tell that she had drank some of her sparkling cider from her champagne flute, she was astonished. Which leads me to question....what exactly is in that sparkling cider?

Today, I made a huge pot of Hoppin' John to ensure that we have good luck for the rest of the year. Carolyn reminded me many times that it is bad luck to believe in superstitions, but I was not detoured from making one of my favorite dishes anyway. Joey made a chocolate pie. Of course, another tradition that Carolyn and I started a few years ago and now Bibianna joins in, is the Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi network. We tune every TV in the house (except Joey's) in to the SciFi channel so that we don't miss one minute of the marathon that we are not sleeping through. We also make sure that we are stocked up on junk-food deluxe so that we can have a marathon party to go with the marathon Twilight Zone. Great way to start 2009!