I know.  You didn’t know I was gone.  Because I didn’t tell you.  Because I’m busy and negligent like that.

We took a weekend trip to Seattle to see the inlaws and grandparents.  The trip was great fun.  The plane rides were not.  More on that later.

But the best part is that we are childless for the week!  That sounds terrible.  Like we couldn’t wait to get rid of her.  But I will confess to jumping up and down like a kid in a candy store when I finally got out of bed this morning (at 10:30!!!) and realized that my day was entirely at my disposal - MUWHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Little Button is staying with her grandparents for the week and though we will miss her terribly, I think I really did need a break.  She’s been waking up entirely too early and been very MAMA-MAMA-MAMA-MAMA and sort of whiny lately and I HATE The Whiny.  It is beyond my parenting faculties to put up with The Whiny.  There is nothing about parenting that makes me want to walk off the nearest cliff like The Whiny.

I could tell that my temper was shortening by the end of our trip when we couldn’t have a dinner out without her throwing food everywhere and squealing at the top of her lungs, and then throwing a fit when she had to sit in the highchair and then sliding down and getting stuck in the highchair and then having a nervous breakdown because she was stuck in the highchair and we couldn’t get her out fast enough.  There’s only so much I can take and my fuse was cut pretty short.

Tonight we’re going to go this place called a “Theater” and we’re going to watch this thing called a “movie.”  It’s where you sit in these big chairs and watch a huge television that plays something other than Bob the Builder or Veggie Tales.  Did you know they made those?  And they bring you food and drinks (God bless Studio Movie Grill) whenever you want.  And there are no children around.  And you can get in for free with COUPONS which we happen to have a ton of and which expire this month so this will officially be Movie Marathon Week.

Honestly, I don’t know what we did all the time before we had Little Button.  I worked a lot more, and we saw a lot more movies.  But that still doesn’t seem like it would fill all the time.

Anyway, now I’m working on catching up with emails and comments and templates and blog reading.

BECAUSE I CAN…

Texans.  They talk funny, their eyes don’t focus, and their skin kinda rots and comes off their bodies in flakes.  But nobody’s perfect.

-Guy Noir, Prairie Home Companion

Saw Prairie Home Companion tonight.  It was…odd.  It bugs me when movies don’t tie up all the loose ends.  I enjoyed it, but it was one of those movies that didn’t have a plot.  Stuff happened, but it wasn’t actually ABOUT anything.  Probably makes more sense if you have any experience whatsoever with the radio program.  J used to listen to it when he lived in Minnesota.  He’s even sat at the table in the diner that the movie’s end was filmed at.

Before we left, I asked J if he would be totally embarassed to be seen with me if I didn’t wear makeup.  Being the good husband he is, he said of course not.  Actually, he said “Yeah, that would really ruin my evening,” which means the same thing.

So I did it.  I left my hair (mostly) wet, ditched the makeup, and wore ordinary shorts with a slightly-too-large-to-be-flattering t-shirt, and sneakers. (more…)

I learned something about my attention span tonight.

My husband and brother are in the living room watching Weatherman. I made it through the first 15 minutes of the movie and had to leave because sitting through it was just. too. painful.

I learned that a movie really has to have some semblance of a PLOT if I’m going to devote my time to it.

On the bright side, the memory upgrade for my laptop showed up today, so it no longer takes 15 minutes to start up my computer. Yay!

OK, here’s my problem with this movie.

So the guy starts this revolution by killing the government officials and getting the entire country of Great Britain to stand up to its government, yada yada.

And in the midst of this, he dies.

So there are a lot of newly independent thinkers, revolutionists who refuse to be taken advantage of and controlled by their government anymore, and now they have no government to be controlled by and no leaders to follow in creating a new form of people-ruled government.

No plans have been made to reconstruct the government, no “constitution” has been drawn, they are just suddenly and violently without a governing body. And the leader who gave them hope and who fueled the revolution is dead, leaving behind no leaders to guide the people in their restructuring of the country.

And yet the hope is that somehow this country pulls itself out of this predicament and establishes a new form of government while avoiding mass pandemonium, chaos and depression to become a successful, people-ruled republic.

Given the lack of success thus far in replacing a corrupt government with a democratic situation in Iraq, with a firm transition plan and the aid of outside assistance, I just don’t buy it.

I don’t think it’s really that possible for a country to successfully change its form of government overnight, particularly when trying to change from a system in which they are limited and repressed, into a system where the people rule themselves in a structured manner.

I think that in ending the movie with the celebration of Parliament’s end, the creators greatly neglected the inevitable TOMORROW. You can’t just kill everybody and expect a happy ending. Then your story becomes nothing more than a tale of vindictive violence.

Of course, there may have been some answer in there that I missed, as I was absent from a chunk of the movie in the middle. As it turns out, V’s little Vendetta was nothing compared to the havoc those cheese fries wreaked on my insides - so I got to spend some quality time observing other people’s shoes in the women’s restroom.

I get to be in a Cantoni commerical as the pregnant lady on the couch. Of course, at this stage that will require some padding, but I’m totally looking forward to it. And I really want that couch. It’s 5 feet in diameter and perfectly round. It’s called the Cuddle Lounge. Check it out on their website.

Even cooler than getting to sit on a comfy couch in front of a camera, is the fact that this commercial will help to alleviate some of the repressed guilt I have over not applying my 4 years as a theatre major to my carreer.

SU-WEET.