Fold My Laundry Please

Why, may I ask, is it so darn hard to adjust to something as simple as a MAJOR CHANGE in your daily routine?  I just can’t understand how school ending and bedtimes adjusting can so totally throw a person off of their groove!  I’ve been moving around like a zombie, half awake, half asleep, barely able to keep track of what day of the week it is, much less get on the computer to blog.  I’ve been trying to at least keep up with my blog reading, but even that’s been sketchy!  I think the transition period is finally over, though.  Phew! 

The details of this drastic transition are as follows.

First came KINDERGARTEN GRADUATION!  

Look at them.  Aren’t they adorable?  My guy is in the back row on the left in the green t-shirt.

"But it was the graduation ceremony!  Why is he only wearing a t-shirt when clearly the other kids are more appropriately dressed for such a milestone?  Have you no class woman?" 

Let me just say this.  When I got the boy dressed that morning, I did remember that he had his kindergarten PROGRAM that afternoon.  So I chose a clean pair of pants and a shirt that would stand out for pictures.  It wasn’t until this moment…

…that I realized that this PROGRAM was actually not a program but in fact was a GRADUATION.  How clueless am I?  I feel I must tell you that I did NOT burst into tears upon this realization.  My eyes may have gotten a tad bit moist.  And a tear or two or forty may have snuck down my cheek.  But I did NOT cry.  DID!  NOT!  Got it? 

And check out the head of hair on this baby that was at the GRADUATION!

Freaky, huh?  It was like he was wearing a wig!

Now that we got that out of the way, on to FIELD DAY!

Field Day was held on the last day of school and possibly the coldest day of summer.  It was cloudy, dark, rainy, and COLD!  48 degrees may feel okay when the sun is shining, but when it’s wet and dark out?  BRRRRRR!  So despite the fact that many of the kids were bundled up in the winter coats that us moms had just gotten around to washing and packing away for the summer but had to pull back out again because can you believe this weather, a good time was had by all.  I think a little splash of color is in order, don’t you?

The parachute was always one of my very favoritest things in elementary school!

And what better way to end the day than to go back inside where it’s nice and warm?

Or we could just hold the GRAND FINALE ASSEMBLY outside on the cold hard cement and eat popsicles.  Whatever.  And see that cute little girl in bright pink with the curly wurly pigtails who seems to be talking to Ethan while he ignores her completely?  I have it on good authority that she is "the most pretty girl in afternoon kindergarten."  Ah, young love.

And, yes, I know I put that picture up already.  But I like it.  So back off. 

"So now that school is over, what have you been doing with all of your ’spare’ time?" 

Well, I’ll tell ya.  It’s mostly been a flurry of doctor visits before our insurance runs out.  But I’ve also tried to fit in some fun stuff.  Like getting the kids signed up for this summer’s reading program at our local library*.  And going to this week’s free movie at our local movie theater*.  I even managed to get some kid-free time and go get my hair cut at my local hair salon*.  

But the biggest thing we’ve done is restructure our evening schedule.  Yes.  Schedule.  Don’t laugh.  So now my iPhone bleeps to tell me when to cook dinner.  And it bleeps to tell us when to eat dinner.  And it bleeps to tell the kids when to go get ready for bed.  And it bleeps to tell us to sit down and read books for bedtime.  And it bleeps to tell us to put the kids in bed.  We are completely dependent on technology.  It’s sad really.  Theoretically, I could remember to do all of these things myself.  In fact, I’ve done it before.   But usually I sit around and procrastinate until I’m tired and cranky myself and bedtime turns into scream-at-and-threaten-the-children time.  The downside to getting the children to bed on time?  They wake up that much earlier.  And I still haven’t fixed my own bed time yet.  (Note to self:  Set alarm on iPhone for Mommy’s bedtime.)  Hence the nearly constant half awake, half asleep, zombie-like state mentioned above.

"That doesn’t really account for all of your time, though.  Surely you could have reached out and said hello to us.  What else is going on, Melissa?"

Erm.  Well.  I’ve also developed a new habit.  An addiciton really.  *sigh*  This is really hard for me to say to you.  Okay.  Here it goes.  I’vebeenwatchingseasonfourofTheOfficetheamericanonenotthebritishoneyesthewholeseason!  Phew!  That was easier than I thought it would be!

Yes.  The Office is my new obsession.  (Don’t worry LOLcats, you’ll always hold a special place in my heart.)  I’d seen clips before and thought they were funny, but I never actually watched the show.  Not having a television will do that.  But now you can watch full episodes online for free!  And that’s all kinds of awesome!

So there you have it.  How I’ve spent the last week and a half in a nutshell.  A really, really long nutshell.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got the first and second seasons of The Office on order and I have to go wait on the from porch for the UPS guy to arrive.  He should be here in two or three days.  Ciao!

*Due to rising gas prices ($4.21/gallon for regular!), all summer activities will be confined to local locations.  That is all. 

Now that I’m back, you can start clicking on my Humor-Blogs.com link again! 

Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get right out to the movie theater and immediately see this movie. 

Iron Man.

Was.

AWESOME!!!

It is a rare thing indeed for our ever larger family to get ourselves out to the theater to catch a movie, especially within the first week of opening.  So shuffling everyone out of the car and into a dark cavern outfitted with stadium seating is a major event.  And at 10:30 am on a Saturday morning?  Unheard of!  Jon Favreau is one of my favorite directors and he did not disappoint this time, either.  Why do people go to see superhero movies?  To see our hero’s alter ego suffering through emotional and moral dilemmas?  No!  We go to see the action!  We want mutant powers!  We want high tech gadgets!  We want evil bad guys and strong female supports!  We want gold and hot rod red mechanical bio-suits!  And Favreau delivered right from the get go.  He even managed to fit in a brief history of Tony Stark without having the audience nod off.  And Robert Downey, Jr.?  Spot on, my friends!  And looking rather handsome, as well.  The rumor is that Iron Man makes a cameo appearance in the new Hulk movie and that there are plans to make an entire trilogy of Iron Man movies.  After today’s performance, I will gladly go and see each and every one of those!

What are you doing still sitting there?

Go. See. It. Now!

Humor-Blogs.com wishes it was cool enough to wear armor like that!

This was the movie we watched this evening.  I think maybe they used up all of their budget on CG dragons and didn’t have anything left to pay "actors" or "scriptwriters".  The movie quote that I felt best summed up this waste of time film?  "You don’t understand.  I have no idea what’s going on!"  Maybe on the DVD version, the special features will contain an apology from the director.

Last night, Andrew and I sat down to watch the movie, "Across the Universe".  It was really pretty good.  It was an artsy type of movie chock full of psychedelic imagery and Beatles songs.  It was enjoyable and disturbing at the same time.  I would definitely recommend checking it out, if only for the music.  And for Bono, who plays Dr. Roberts, because Bono is one of the coolest people in the world!  I do want to point out that this movie does have quite a bit of nudity and images of drug use and that it is rated PG-13 because of this; so if you’re a sensitive movie watcher, you might want to skip this one.

We watched this movie while the kids were still up and Ethan ended up parked next to us throughout much of it.  He kept asking questions like, "Why are they doing that?" and, "How come it the pictures are so weird looking?"  All of this prompted a discussion about making bad decisions in life and about the harmful aspects of drug use.  You know, one of those discussions you shouldn’t have to have with a 6 year old.  Finally he was quiet for a long while, watching the movie.  But he had one more question before the film was done.

"Is there a test to become an adult?"

You know, there probably should be.

Have you guys seen this movie yet?  It’s been out on DVD for a little while now and we just got around to finally watching it last night.  It was such a good movie!  It’s about a man who is going about his daily routine when he suddenly starts hearing a voice narrating his life.  The movie is mostly about him trying to figure out who the voice is and why he hears her.  One of my favorite parts is when Harold (Will Ferrell) is trying to figure out if his "story" is a comedy or a tragedy.  He spends the day with a little notebook, one page marked "Comedy" and the other page marked "Tragedy".  Whenever something happens he makes a little mark on one of the pages.  At the end of the day, he opens up the notebook and the comedy page has one mark while the tragedy page is completely full of little marks.  He then turns to Miss Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhall) as he’s walking out the door and says, "I know this won’t make much sense to you, but I think I’m in a tragedy."  How many times have I felt that way, myself!

Will Ferrell has done so many jerky sort of comedies lately (I like the jerky ones, too, don’t get me wrong) that I honestly didn’t realize that he could do something more serious.  This movie, while still a comedy, had Will doing what he does best, only with subtlety, if you can imagine that.  Quite frankly, he was perfect for the part.  Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhall, and Dustin Hoffman were also great in this movie.  It was well written and had a good message.  I must say that I’m going to recommend this movie to all my friends.  Hey, look at that, I just did!

Have you guys seen this show?  It is hilarious!  I’m not sure when it’s on tv (we don’t ever watch live tv anymore), but I do know that it’s on NBC.  I bought the Season 1 DVD set for Andrew as a birthday present last month.  We’ve been watching a few episodes every night with a cup of hot cocoa and some kind of snack that’s most likely bad for you. 

It’s about a guy named Earl (played by Jason Lee) and his karmic journey through life.  Earl used to be a bad person, crime was a way of life and intentional bad deeds were the norm.  Then one day he wins $100,000 from a scratch lottery ticket and then promptly gets hit by a car and loses the ticket.  He decides that what happened is the result of karma, and so makes a list of every single bad thing he’s ever done, determined to make them right so that karma will be good to him.  Each episode deals with his attempts to cross items off his list, occassionally having to write new things on there. 

Here’s my list of reasons why I love this show:

• It’s written by someone with a brain.
• Earl and his family are all totally believable characters.
• It’s about trailer park people but it’s not based in the South.  It’s actually based in Camden, NJ.
• It’s a completely original story line.
• The story is such that the show could go on for a very long time without ever getting stale.

And I’m sure there are more reasons, but there is a mug of cocoa and some chocolate chip cookie dough demanding that I sit down in front of the television right this very minute and watch a few more episodes of "My Name Is Earl".

I suggest you do the same.

We finally finished watching Season 5 of Smallville late last night.  Our poor children were kept up until the very last episode finished because we kept thinking each of the episodes on the last disc was the season finale for some reason.  It was a constant stream of "We’ll put them to bed after this episode.  I’m pretty sure it’s the last one!"  It was somewhere around midnight when we finally got them in bed and they were exhausted!  Feel free to nominate me for Mother of the Year, because I’m pretty sure that making television a priority over a good night’s sleep for my children clinches the win for me!  At least we got them to bed before my husband and I sat down to watch this week’s episode of Heroes that we had Tevo’d. 

We really enjoyed watching Smallville, despite the fact that the producers should have hired writers that actually know what a comic book looks like.  Maybe one of them might actually read one…about Superman.  I guess being Ultrageek (you have to read that in a deep, booming voice, just in case you need further proof of my geek status) makes it difficult for me to enjoy geek-ish things sometimes.  We felt the same after watching all the other seasons, too.  The first time we watched Smallville was last year.  I had gotten Andrew a box set of Seasons 1-3 for Christmas a year and a half earlier, but never got around to sitting down to watch it.  We were having a lazy day and decided we would watch one episode before making ourselves get off our bums and actually do something that day.  About a week later, we were desperately trying to find a store that still had Season 4 in stock.  It had just recently come out and most stores were already sold out.  After calling around, we found one in a store about 45 minutes from our house.  Andrew got out of his pajamas and hopped in the car to pick it up.  As soon as he got home, he got back in his pajamas and we both plopped our sorry selves on the couch and absorbed it as soon as we could.  We have been waiting to get a hold of Season 5 ever since and we finally had a little extra money to pick it up this weekend.  So, even though we think the writing stinks, there are a few characters that we wish would go away, and the storyline between episodes doesn’t always seem to be compatible, we practically put life on hold to watch Smallville.  We barely eat and shower, much less get dressed or leave the house!

So what is life like since Smallville?  Well, not terribly interesting.  Andrew’s job search still goes on.  There was a job fair held by LDS Employment Services at one of the church buildings nearby, today, so we spent a fair amount of time there.  I tried to keep the boys still and away from Andrew while he schmoozed people and handed out resumes.  Fun stuff.  Then we hit the grocery store to get a few things and grabbed some Arby’s on our way home.  We ate by the TV while we watched Cars (the rest of the family had seen it in the theaters, I unfortunately had to spend that time in the theater lobby while a baby threw up all over me and then cried for two hours).  We actually got the kids to bed on time this evening and I’ve spent a nice relaxing couple of hours while I got caught up on all the blog reading I had missed the past few days.  You people with lives….PFFFFFT!  What’s up with that!

Can’t type.  Watching Tom Welling Smallville Season 5.  Be back later…