On Beauty and the Beast

Zoey was on a kick a while back watching this movie every day. The only reason she strayed from Cars and Toy story was because in desperation I told her this was her friend's FAVORITE movie so she agreed to watch it. I'm not sure if I'm happy to have had a change of pace in movies or annoyed that everytime we watch this movie something else bothers me about it.

I admit when I watched the movie for the first time in theaters back when I was like 6 or something, I cried when I thought Beast died. I still sometimes hold back a sniffle. So it IS a good movie.

1. Belle can't be satisfied. At least twice in the movie she bursts out in song about how she wants "so much more than this provincial life." It's good to aim high, but I can't help but feel like she's being demeaning to all the other people in that cute little town that love and appreciate the lives they have. Not to mention her single father inventing more liabilities than useful inventions just to give her that little life. So ungrateful!
2. Mrs Potts has a 4 year old son. At the end of the movie once everyone is human again. We see that Mrs. Potts looks to be in her late 50s, early 60s and Chip, her son, is about 4 or 5 years old. It also seems pretty clear that Belle's dad is also interested in Mrs. Potts confirming the idea that Mrs Potts is in her later years. So I'm wondering who in the heck gets a mid 50 year old women pregnant and then leaves her. I mean, where's Chip's dad? How does she even get pregnant in the first place? Most women that age are going through menopause or already done. So maybe Chip is adopted, but what kind of broken family did he come from in that case? But then there's the part where Mrs. Potts as the teapot tells hip to get in the cupboard with his brothers and sisters and there are a ton of them! How many kids does this old lady have?! It's just weird and doesn't make sense ok. All they had to do was make chip Mrs. Potts grandson and there's nothing else out of place.

Ok but there are parts of the movie that I love, like:

Beast: I'll show you to your room.

Belle: But I thought....

Beast: Do you want to stay in the tower?

Belle: No.

It's the inflection in Belle's response that cracks me up, it's totally me and Zoey.

Me: Lets go to the store

Zoey: I wanna watch Max and Ruby

Me: Do you want to stay home by yourself?

Zoey: No (with the same inflection).

And then there's the scene when Beast tries to get Belle to come out of her room and go to dinner. That's me and Zoey every day.

I guess I didn't realize it until now, I am a Beast! To be fair Zoey is a stubborn Belle too! Sometimes I love the movie, but sometimes I can't stand to watch it again. Forever is the cycle with kids and their movie obsessions.

Quiet!

Typically when Ian starts getting into things over and over after I tell him not to, that's pretty much his way of saying he is bored. Like today he would not stay out of the dog's water and it was driving me crazy. So I decided to take him to the play room and we'd play together. I rotate the kids' toys every couple of weeks and have taken out all the musical toys for this round. While Ian and I are playing on the toy guitar, Zoey gets interested in all the fun we're having and comes over to investigate. It goes something like this:

Me: "Here Zoey, you play Piano, Ian will play guitar, and I'll play drums"

Zoey bangs a few keys on the xylophone piano and Ian pushes a few buttons on the toy guitar and I start rocking out banging and smacking and generally being loud and crazy on the drums and any other object I can bang on near by. About halfway through our rock out Ian and Zoey stop and just watch me be obnoxious. When I finish, Zoey picks up a small stuffed turtle and says:

"Here mom, play with something quiet"

And walks away. Awesome.

No AC or DC

That's Air Conditioning and Direct Current...does the band AC/DC actually stands for Alternating Current/Direct Current?

So Saturday night as I'm enjoying some quiet time before bed, so excited that Brandon is coming home from Brazil super early in the morning, I notice it feels a little warmer in the house than it usually is at that time of night. I don't think anything of it and go to bed. I have got to have my house at like 68-70 degrees to get a decent night's sleep. I wake up at like 1 in the morning and am sweltering, check the thermostat, and it's set right, but it is 80 degrees. Awesome, the AC is broken and we're in the hottest summer on record, 100+ degree days as far as the forecast can see.

On Sunday we check the coils just to be sure it isn't another Freon leak like it has been the last two times the AC went out. Coils are fine. We make it through Sunday without sweating too bad since we have two units, one to cool upstairs and one to cool downstairs. The other unit is compensating and with the fans on in the house, it stayed about 77, which is bearable.

My thought: lets just call someone in the morning, we'll survive.

Brandon's thought: I can fix this! Didn't I ever tell you if I didn't do IT I would have done HVAC, there's money there!

My thought: Oh boy....well, 2 other people we know have ACs that just went out and I know it isn't a freon leak which we couldn't fix ourselves anyway...I guess I'll let him try.

It was with some reluctance, but I did step back and let Brandon give it a whirl. Now you gotta know, when Brandon gets it in his head to do something, he is super persistent. Like so much so he will sacrifice sleep, and it basically haunts his every thought until he accomplishes his goal. That can be great, but it's really not necessary to stay up til 11:00 at night on a Sunday to diagnose an AC issue.

Truth be told, he did figure it out that it was a busted capacitor and he stayed home from work on Monday to install a new capacitor..which he had already done before the kids and I even got up. Now there's some dedication. The catch is he wound up blowing a fuse that took the rest of the day to figure out why the thermostat wouldn't come on even though the new capacitor was working.

So 43 dollars later, I admit, my husband fixed the air conditioner. Kudos to you Bran Bran!

And just because I am a little geeky, here's a little information on capacitors. A capacitor is basically a primitive battery. It has two plates separated by a certain distance. A charge gathers on one plate and at a certain capacity, the charge will jump to the other plate and release the energy. The capacitor in the AC system is a little smaller than a soda can. It is used to basically jump start the fan on the condenser system (that's the unit outside your house) when the thermostat tells the AC to turn on. It works very much like the battery in your car to jump start the engine.

The first indicator the capacitor was bad is that Brandon could hear the condenser fan motor receiving energy, and if he gave the fan a push with a stick through the grate, it would run with no problem. The second indicator was the capacitor itself, when it's "blown" it actually appears to have "exploded" from the inside, there is some bulging on the top or sides, and in some cases a leakage of fluid. Ours was just bubbled up on the top and the terminals on top were no longer exactly perpendicular.

And just in case you are curious, the reason we knew it was unlikely to be a Freon leak is that almost always once the volume of Freon reaches a certain level, it doesn't move through the system like it should without the pressure and the condenser will get very very cold and ice over from condensation. Last summer we had two Freon leaks and the condenser was covered in ice both times.

Hopefully you don't have your AC go out in such horrendous weather, but in case you do, maybe this will help you do some self diagnosis before spending hundreds on an AC repair man!

Hand Puppets

I've really been on the lookout lately for new activities and games to engage Zoey in to keep her busy and interested. She's her father's child for sure, easily bored. I found these cute patterns for some toddler hand puppets, off the bat they seemed perfect for her. I took the opportunity during Quiet Time to whip some up. The pattern ended up being too small for her and didn't have any seam allowances for turning so I just zig zagged them together and overall for an hour of work, I'm happy with them.

Bear, Owl, Frog, Bunny, Pig, Cat

The Help

When I saw the previews for the movie coming out, I was really interested in seeing it. When I realized that it was based on a book I decided that this will be for sure the one movie I see where I've read the book first. So I got the book and read it over 3 days (yes, I'm slow, but I have two kids that won't let me read while they're awake!). There may be some mild spoilers here so if you intend to read the book, you should skip this post.

Initial thoughts:

• Man it feels good to READ a real BOOK! (Well actually it was an ebook, but that's beside the point)
• Good set up, I liked the characters.
• The switch up between characters' point of views and different accents was confusing at first
• 60's is not my favorite time period to read in, but I continued hoping it would be funny and amusing book.

After halfway through, my thoughts were:

• Life in the early 60s just sucked!
• This book isn't as funny as the movie made it seem (except for one part about 6 paragraphs long I was laughing so hard I was crying. It was funny because it's true.)
• Seriously, the women's healthcare was so bad that they didn't know what an incompetent cervix is and what a simple fix it is? It's shameful. Bless modern medicine!!

At the end my thoughts were:

• eh, it was an interesting read, but it's not something I'll ever read again.
• I'm not really looking forward to the movie so much anymore unless they focus on the last 1/4 of book.
• The ending just left me feeling kinda bitter.
• I enjoyed the author's notes and can see all her inspiration in the characters. I wish I had read that portion first.

My reccomendation: I'd tell someone to pass on it unless they are really interested in issues of the 60s and segregation. Overall I didn't feel like it had a broad spectrum appeal. I know many people that have said they loved it, but I guess it just isn't really the genre or style of writing I enjoy.

Mushroom and Chicken Alfredo

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts
1/2 lb pasta of your choice
1 cup whole milk
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup shredded parmesan
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 box mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp butter
1.5 Tbsp flour
dash cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp dry thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Heat olive oil in pan and cook chicken 8-10 minutes til brown on both sides and cooked in center. Remove from pan to plate. Add 1 Tbsp butter to pan and  saute mushrooms until tender. Remove from pan. Wipe out pan, add 2 Tbsp butter, garlic, cayenne, and thyme, cook 2 minutes. Add flour, cook 1 more minute, add milk and cream, reduce heat and cook until thickened, about 10 minutes. Reduce heat to very low and sprinkle Parmesan in small batches and carefully stir in to avoid lumps. Cook 5 more minutes. Add mushrooms and chicken back to sauce if desired and serve over cooked pasta.

Pre-Preschool

Zoey is a pretty complicated creatures as toddlers come. When she was an infant, she was quite content to sit quietly, half-heartedly play with a toy but to just sit and exist. She's decided she needs to make up for all that sitting around by being a maniac child bouncing off of every couch, screaming, and being otherwise not entertained by toys. I have yet to find some toy or activity something that captures her interest for more than 10 minutes. In the beginning it wasn't so bad, she would bounce from toy to toy, mope around the house bored, but lately she's started getting more vocal and even violent about her boredom. She will scream just to hear herself scream and beat on Ian until he won't stop crying, throwing toys, being willfully rebellious. It was really starting to grate on my nerves and I generally was just not feeling good about myself as a mom  for all the disciplining I'd have to do. Most of which was entirely ineffective anyway.

Then, it come to me very strongly that Zoey needs and craves structure, activities, things to engage her. Sounds like "duh!" right? I guess I thought that too but I knew it would mean a lot of extra work for me. I decided I was going to do it and if the extra work meant a happier kid, then it would be worth it. I sat down and wrote out a general schedule of our day to break it up into time-able segments that she could look forward to each day. I bought a timer and a book of ideas and activities to help me with the school time of the day. So far I've just done Google searches of "preschool curriculum" to find worksheets and activities while I wait for my supplies to get here. I also stocked up on tons of kid crafting supplies. It takes me about 30-40 minutes to plan the lesson and activities for the next day.

We're on day three of the regime and I can't believe the difference it is making. As she is learning the types of things we do each day during whatever time it is (It's Quiet Time now we do this, or it's school time now we do this) she is much more cooperative because she knows when she will get my attention, when she needs to entertain herself, when we will learn something, when we will eat, when we play outside etc. School time is definitely her favorite because there is something new to learn and new crafts or activities to do each day. She really craves that change, but also craves the schedule. I can't wait for it to stop being so hot outside so we can take more trips to the park or just play games outside in the afternoons. The mornings and all go very well, but by afternoon after Ian wakes from his nap and eats, the kids seem to need to go somewhere or be outside. That's usually where things have been breaking down and the fighting ensues and the calm activities, like reading and puzzles aren't interesting anymore. I've tried to do "exercise time" then where we sing wiggly songs or play Just Dance, but Zoey has almost no interest in doing those things, but Ian will get in on the action sometimes.

I've tried to be really positive about all this, the kids are happier, but I feel less accomplished because I don't have the time to do my own chores around the house. I guess as the kids are more able to entertain themselves during free play times, I'll be able to get in all the things I need to do as well without all the interruption. It's a good start, I hope I can keep it up

Kicking and Screaming

I don't know why, but I've always resisted change. When Windows XP came out, I really fought installing it for months and months. I didn't care that it was so much better than Windows 98, that it was cooler and had better security (well can't say much for it prior to service pack 2) and yadda yadda. I'd have none of it. Windows 98 never did me any wrong, it wasn't broke and worked just fine. Finally I broke down and installed it fresh and I turned to my friends and said, "You were right, this IS better!"

There was just the conversation I had with Brandon before he left for his business trip to Brazil, "Thanks for making me get this sprinkler system, the lawn is so pretty and the garden is so happy!" And the water softener...the TV....come to think of it Brandon's been right a lot, dragging me along kicking and screaming until I finally open my tight shut eyes and realize, hey this ain't so bad, I think I even like it!

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, I've fought starting a blog for a good many years. I can't say I've had an excellent reason for resisting, but among them:

• Everyone is doing it and I don't want to be like everyone else.
• Blogs are for people that don't know how to write html or other web languages.
• I don't want Joe Crazyperson reading about myself and family
• It's just a fad and will blow over in a couple months, like Gigapets.
• I'm lazy.

With that said, I've obviously started to open my eyes and think, eehh maybe I'll give this blogging thing a chance. I'm sure you're just dying to know the reasons:

• Blogs are easy, and if I so choose I can even inject a little html just to make me feel better than people that don't
• Security is better these days, though annoying for the end user.
• Many notes I write on Facebook are probably getting missed by people who might have liked to read them
• Dear friends and Family who do not Facebook or live nearby will have many sleepless nights wondering if Ian finally jumped off the TV stand or if Zoey actually learned to play by herself for 10 minutes.
• I don't journal or feel compelled to write many notes on Facebook because I don't want to spam up people's feeds. Here, you visit if you want to.
• I'm lazy, and that needs to change.

I won't promise any certain frequency of posts or number of pictures or details so great you fall asleep just waiting for the punchline. All I say is, I'll give it a try.