Worth Every Penny

$3 worth of face painting right there

Did you know that if you don't have children you can't enter Fairytale Town?  Don't ask me how I know that....
Fast forward a few years and two fairytale town tickets later and we are in like flynn.  The girlchild is now about the age that I can force her to do things that will remind me of the good, old days of my childhood.  Things like face painting, eating a whole bag of cotton candy, staying up late to make chocolate chip cookies.  It's a rough life for her I know.

The 2nd Happiest Place on Earth

Joe's Crab Shack just might be the 2nd happiest place on earth. 

Reasons why it makes me happy:

1. Crab, Duh!  And lots of it.

2. My children will willingly eat whatever they are served there

3. It is so boisterous inside that no one can tell that my monsters are being wild

4. Tasty and delicious drinks that come in mason jars

5. Dancing in aisles and if you poke the girlchild with a crab cracker long enough she will hop up and dance to Love Shack too

6. There's no crying at Joe's Crab Shack!

 

My Sister's Keeper

When I was in high school we had to write a paper on nuclear energy.  The pros and cons of using it as an energy source versus the hazards of storing the waste.  It's a tough debate, even today.   I was pro- Yucca Mountain at age 16...for the record.

When I was in college, we discussed the medical ethics of stem cells and bioengineering.  You can do great things with science.  But should you?  My Sister's Keeper would have fit in nicely as assigned reading. 

I honestly enjoyed every page of this book, it was the right mix of humor, family drama, and serious decisions.  In it, we meet a family that decides to bring a third child into their world in the hopes that her cord blood will save her sister's life.  Kate was diagnosed with leukemia at age 3.  Several relapses and marrow transplants later, Anna is encouraged to donate a kidney in hopes of again saving her sister.  But where do you draw the line?  How do you choose between two children that are both your own.  What would you do if you were the one choosing?

Naturally, after reading the book, I wanted to see the movie.  I can't believe how different the two are.  This is most definitely a don't judge the book by the movie situation.  

A Polliwog's Tale

This is a story about a little girl who graduated from preschool a couple months ago and her pet polliwog.

Studying polliwogs was one of the last lessons they did before summer break.   And don't even think about calling it a tadpole....it will be a good ten minutes before you will be able to get a word in edgewise.

On the last day of school, the girlchild comes home with said new friend in a sandwich bag with strict instructions to feed it fresh boiled lettuce everyday. 

Boiled lettuce.  Everyday.

Oh, really.  Over the course of the next 6 weeks I meticulously boiled lettuce and fed it to the polliwog a grand total of zero times.  The tadpole managed to survive just fine on goldfish flakes.  We kept the creature on the kitchen window sill so that we could remember to feed it we could watch it's ever changing, and metamorphesing body.

As a free range child myself, we used to catch tadpoles...because back then they were called tadpoles....by the thousands and keep them in a mayo jar in some non-disclosed location.  I can't honestly remember if we ever really fed them or what, but every so often we'd take them out of the jar hold them in our little muddy hands and then put them back.  And then one day my favorite sister of all got sick.  Really sick.  Beaver fever sick.  And so tadpoles were banned from my childhood.  I can honestly say that they never captured our attention long enough to pay attention to their teenage-tadpole years.

Fast forward some uncalculated years and I have a polliwog sitting on my kitchen counter.  Turns out it was pretty fascinating to actually see the shrinking tail and emerging legs.  Did you know that they actually form their front and back legs under their amphibious skin and then one day they just pop out fully formed?  I did not.  And now you do too.

After the changing was done and the creature could be identified as a frog, the inevitable question came.  "Mom, can I keep him??  Please!"    And while it was pondered for a nanosecond it wasn't to be.  Because after all, where would he live?  He can't share a house with pinchy the crawdad. Because he is currently doing jail time for massacring the goldfish.  And Wally the welfare fish would eat him in a heartbeat.

But isn't he just the cutest little thing?

So we set him free to find his own way in the world.



The Land of Painted Caves

The Land of Painted Caves is Jean M. Auel's last book in the Earth Children series.  This historical fiction series started with Clan of the Cave Bear first published in 1980.  I'm kind of glad that I wasn't old enough to read the books as they were published.  I am quite the impatient person and the relatively short amount of time I waited for the Land of Painted Caves to come out was grueling.

I'm not sure who pays attention to these sorts of things but I think this has to be in the running for the longest running series from start to finish:
Clan of the Cave Bear - 1980
Valley of Horses - 1982
Mammoth Hunters - 1985
Plains of Passage - 1990
Shelters of Stone - 2002
Land of Painted Caves - 2011

The Land of Painted Caves starts out where The Shelters of Stone left off.  Ayla, Jondalar and Jonayla are living together with the ninth cave.  The story follows Ayla as she finishes her training for the Zelandonii.  I felt like the book focused more on the social interactions of the group than on the physical demands of living as hunters and gathers.  While still good, I also felt like the book repeated so much of the previous ones (the memories, songs, rituals) and could have done without some of the redundancy.  The plot also paralleled so much of the Mammoth Hunters plot that I thought "are we really going to have this drama again??"

Even with my complaining, I'm glad to have read Land of Painted Caves.  I'm still in love with Ayla and all the knowledge she has of being a hunter and gatherer as well as her skills as a medicine woman.  Reading the books makes me want to take a wilderness survival class or grow more herbs in my garden....or maybe I would already know these things if I hadn't have gotten myself kicked out of girl scouts as a child.  Dang, I should have thought that through a little more.

Anyone for a game of Pooh Sticks?

Dusk - July 15th

New Car Coasters

The husband and I decided that after living in our house for 8 years, it might be time to actually get a bed frame and quit living like college kids.  Because really, how long can one live with their mattress on the ground? 

8 years apparently.

The thing is, getting nice furniture is like getting a new car.  You try to keep it as like-new looking as long as possible.  Translation: NO unprotected cups on the wood finish!!

So, one short round trip to Sacramento and back and I now can have my water and sleep with it too. 



Now....I just need to install the pigeon spikes to keep the cats and children from using the headboard as their personal stage.