Well, I read Breaking Dawn in a couple of days. I thought it was okay; I'm happy that Bella got married, that Jacob is finally happy and satisfied, and that good seemed to triumph over evil. Do I have complaints? Absolutely. From a critical point of view, I think the story would have been better if there had been some tragedy. Here Meyer paints hereself into a hard situation. If the book is for innocent teens who need a thrill then all the references to house breaking sex are questionable, right? If the novel is for mature women who like a thrilling fantasy, hey, we can handle a sacrifice. Kill off Esme or something! And yet I find myself defending Meyer. Most of the ideas that she presents about sex are false, I believe, but I think that it provides an opportunity to talk about intimacy and what is good and what is just plain disturbing. Most teen girls are very curious about sex and there's a lot of bad stuff out there. The book isn't graphic. So I guess I don't mind my 13-year-old reading it, so long as we talk about it.
Or am I just defending my lame parenting?
My very wise mom rarely interferred in my choice of literature, and I don't regret that.
There has been one book Beulah has checked out which I nixed so far, and I did that because of the detailed nature of the scenes.
So maybe I don't mind vague notions about sex as long as we don't start describing how one thing leads to another?
I'm rationalizing again, and I have to go make dinner.

The Worked and the Gory

Okay, after just having purchased novel number four of Stephenie Meyer's vampire fantasy, I have to consider that there just might be a niche out there for pioneer vampire stories. I am not intending to be disrespectful, it's just a whimsical juxtaposition of genres which seem to captivate many in my demographic!

Every once in a while I need to record some of the fun things that get said around my house.
Beulah, for instance, recently quiped, "I can easily spend two hours primping and not get bored." She didn't understand why that was funny. Speaking of her primping, she has this lip gloss from Bath and Body Works that is supposed to smell like a chocolate dipped strawberry. It is by far the nastiest artificial fragrance I have ever been around. Whenever she whips it out--in the car, at church, on the sofa or in the park--we can sense its stink immediately. She claims that if she gets another lip gloss for her upcoming birthday, she'll throw it away.
Goose is asking, "Where's John?" all the time. I don't know why. She and Husband talk about opening the door and closing the door, with the door being the mouth. Right now she's saying, "Gimme a bowl, please" to T-Bone.
Speaking of T-Bone, he has a grape-sized watermelon growing. He wants to unlock the Post Token at Pirates Online.
Cheeseball got sunburned the other day when he sat out in our neighbor's sandbox for several hours. She had filled the box with water and just let the hose keep running while the kids sat in the sandy mud. A good way to spend a few hours, provided you've applied sunscreen first!
Janey has taken to tying up the children and calling it "play." We had a conversation and that's not going to happen again. She is looking forward to painting her room.
Husband is taking his practical test for a license this Friday.
I am looking for exciting new ways to present zucchini. The good news with me lately is that I've finally made a spaghetti sauce that Husband and I both really like.

You put it in a trash can?!

So we took a fun trip down to San Diego for a few days. We played in the waves at La Jolla Shores (even I went boogie boarding and I caught a few waves all by myself!) and went to the cove--the kids saw a couple of different types colorful fish swimming around. We went to the Museum of Man and saw some dried up mummies and the Fleet Science center where we raced little sail boats (Cheeseball beat me both times). We went swimming with some fun cousins and we went for a couple of hikes. On one of our outings we were walking past a bird sanctuary of sorts--it's where the San Diego river (ha ha) meets Mission Bay. The kids were being a little naughty and went down into where the river would be, had California not been in a drought for the whole 35 years of my life. There were big rocks lining the "banks" of the river and the kids were climbing on them. (Yes, it smelled like a sewer and I did call them up but they were having such a good time I just held Goose and kept a blind eye.) Well, all of a sudden Husband is holding something up and I see it looks like a munition. He brings it up to me and tells me that Janey had found it. As soon as he saw it in her hands, he called out, "That's a bomb! Don't drop that!" And so she drops it nose first onto the rocks. We are very grateful that we're all still here. After Husband brought the item up, the kids magically climbed out the the river rocks (I guess weaponry is more exciting than stinky riverbeds) and had to touch it. I was worried it was going to come home and end on on my mantel. (thank goodness we decided the theme for the basement would be pirates and not WW2). But we saw a trash can and so we stuck it in there, thinking we could call some authority person and have them come pick it up. As we were walking away, we saw a San Diego city truck drive by. Hero (that's my dad) flagged it down and went to talk to the driver. All I heard was, "YOU PUT IT IN A TRASH CAN? " Hero tried to explain that we didn't want to carry it, didn't want to put it back, and wanted to have a specific place to tell someone to look. Anyway, we were cleared away and the good city worker got on his walkie talkie and was soon putting up yellow caution tape across the road. After we walked about a block or two, another city truck came up a put the caution tape on the other end of the road, thus sealing it off.

We came home and tried to do some research but the picture of the serial number didn't work too well (the autofocus picked husband's shirtand not the "piece".) Anyway, from what we could remember and deduce, we surmised that it was a 81 mm mortar shell, and yes, it was designed to explode and destroy and no, it hadn't exploded or destroyed yet. I don't know what it was doing there. We checked a map of San Diego to see where old muntions have been found or where old test sites were and none correlated with the area. I had a friend whose soccer teammate died back in 1983 when he and friend found played with a munition shell they found in Tierrasanta. We were probably not in any danger, but I am a believer in prayer and I'm grateful that we were all safe.

The first week of summer (okay it techincally isn't summer, but my kids are out of school, and that's my benchmark) has gone pretty well. Every June I have high hopes that I can teach my kids how to work, and every mid-June, I have thrown my hands up in the air. But this summer I have a new strategy: I developed a "Chore Buddy Chart." I have typical jobs that I do on specific days: Laundry on Monday and Friday, Bathrooms on Tuesday, and Dusting/Wiping on Thursday. And so I have assigned each of the older children a day to be my chore buddy and help with that particular task. The kids rotate days every new week. So far, so good.

My garden is making me anxious. Why aren't those carrots coming up? I planted them a month ago! I even planted a "second planting" two weeks ago, going on pure faith. We were disappointed to learn that the soaker tubes weren't actually watering the areas where the boys had planted their corn and watermelon (Grrr!). I found some other places for their seeds, and they planted again. But it's getting later in the season, so I' don't know if the watermelon will have time to develop well. I'm a little apprehensive for their success. Janey's green beans and squash are coming up, though, and the tomato plants have some flowers, and best of all the apricot trees have fruit on them. So all is not lost.

I finished Killer Angels. What a fabulous read. I want to go to Gettysburg so bad that I'm almost considering driving my family across the country to do it. I want to see Little Round Top and see the ridge that Armistead was able to breach before he died.

And on a final note, Boon Dog passed his Canine Good Citizen test.

We are in

Husband and I are in the midst of Jane Austen immersion therapy. We enjoyed the older BBC version (1985, without Colin Firth) Pride and Prejudice on Sunday and Monday, and last night we watched the 2005 version with Keira and the MI5 guy. Why can I watch this story over and over again and still get excited when Elizabeth finally accepts that she loves Darcy--that he is the ulitimate honorable man--and then lets him know of her affection. I first experienced P&P at my grandparents' house, with Husband. I believe we watched the colorized Laurence Olivier version. I was completely ignorant of the story (even though I had just graduated from college with a degree in English! Some day I will write a list of all the books I didn't read in college but have since found and enjoyed) and I was absolutely delighted with the storyand the characters and the ridiculous costumes, and frankly I found Sir Laurence very amiable. Then I must have read the story and then saw the 90s BBC version, with the diehard's favorite, Colin Firth. I loved it, loved it, loved it. It is one of my greatest joys that I was able to introduce the story and movie to one of my young friends from church, who had been babysitting for me. When she returned the DVDs we talked about it and I told her my favorite part was when Darcy gets out of his pond and is dripping wet as he comes across a very humbled Elizabeth. Perfect. Her favorite part was when he was in the bath, by the way.
We saw the 2005 version in the theater with my brother and sister and their spouses and my parents. I was prepared to be loyal to Colin, but I was wonover by the beautiful music and the extra dramatic license--how he stands in the rain and confesses he loves her and then how they walk towards each other through the misty dawn and he stumbles with his words as he tells her her loves her again, and then finally the Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy kissing scene at the end... (don't mention it in front of my daughters--they will try to ruin it for you). I know dear Jane didn't put any of that in the book, but hey, it works for me.
Husband puts up with all of this very well. It doesn't hurt him that he's extra handsome and adorable and will share ice cream with me as I'm in raptures over lines like, "She is tolerable , I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me," or "I defy Sir Lucas himself to produce such a fine son-in-law," etc.
Well, Husband requires the use of his computer and unfortunately mine is not working so I must be off.