Pirates, matey

Pirates, matey

Sheesh, first a book report and now My Thoughts on the New Pirates Movie. Whatever next? Gads.

The last one kinda sucked, frankly. This new one? This one is totally awesome. Dude, seriously. It has lots of twists, very few gross-out moments, Orlando Bloom now looks rather pleasingly like a man rather than a boy (y'all *do* know what I mean), True Love and Heartache and all sorts of good stuff. Plus the most amazing wedding ever. EVER. And Bill Nighy gets to have at least one day on set where he's not festooned with tentacles. It's a very long movie (nearly 3 hours) and I am not going to spoil it, but...it's good. We were amused. The only thing that was annoying during the movie came out of my own odd little mind, and kept on distracting me: there's a character who's Calypso the Sea Goddess, and just about every time they said "Calypso," my twisted imagination helpfully played the John Denver song about Jacques Cousteau's boat. ("the stories you tell..." oh lord help me it's going again...) Complete with "la da dee-heee, ee ee ee ee, la da dee-eee-ooo."

Now, when I was about 8 I was a huge John Denver fan, and despite being deeply, deeply uncool, I do still kinda like a whole bunch of those songs. I still remember far too many of the words to them, too. Same thing with Barry Manilow. (My imagination is now helpfully playing a parody record by either Frank Zappa, Firesign Theatre, or Monty Python, which begins, "and now, the sound of John Denver being strangled," followed by a takeoff on the opening lyrics to "Annie's Song" which really render it unfit for a moderately family-oriented blog like this one. Thanks, imagination; thanks a lot.)

Other things that did not suck: well, the last day of Thursday coop and associated staged reading of The Importance Of Being Earnest. I was team-teaching this workshop thing, and the kids really wanted to do a play, and J and I kinda went, aw...do we have to...ah, well, okay. I did a truly ruthless abridgement job on it (hi, Ruth!), to cut it down to less than three hours, and sent out a brief email, once, to the kids to please print it out, bring it, wear something sort of apropos and be ready. They didn't want to do just part of it, to their credit, and they came prepared, and J stage managed and people NOT ME twisted arms to get people to be quiet in the space, and we had ourselves a really funny play. I was amazed and touched and thrilled that it all worked out so well. The kids were great. I didn't have to nag anybody. Really, this is the way things are supposed to go, and usually don't, but now and then, apparently, they...do.

This morning, my kids all got up at a reasonable hour and started doing productive, educational things all by themselves. Amazing. Youngest was reading poetry, middle started and completed a sewing project, and oldest finished the aggressively-scheduled math for the week. Bonus heart-warming moment: classical radio playing, youngest stops and shouts delightedly, "Beethoven!" when he recognized the music. Yes, dear, that's right, it's Beethoven.

Oldest's birthday yesterday, which was also a good day. Youngest's birthday tomorrow. Must go shop for some of the few presents on the wish list. I only burst into tears while making breakfast, and later in the evening. I've had some fun distractions. I'm getting the hang of the online bill paying stuff, and learning to trust it a little bit.

Have a good weekend, all.