Friday, December 23, 2005

Lost Vs Survivor

There are many things, loyal readers, that you don't know about me. Someday we must sit down and discuss tortoises, and you'll begin to understand what makes me the woman I am today. But for now, may I discuss one of my other passions: Lost.

Yah, that television show, not what I was that one night in the San Jacinto Wilderness (see! I bet you didn't know about that, either! I'm an enigma, I tell you. An ENIGMA!). Lost has restored my faith in this freaky world of late that fiction can be stranger than truth. We didn't get into it until the very last episode last season, but those few minutes hooked us, and we're goners. Forever planning our schedule around Wednesday night. I've even been lustily looking at TiVo, considering how that could save us from missing the last few telling seconds of a Lost episode, as happened a few weeks ago, when we missed "Dad?" WHO saw THAT coming?! (Thanks, sj, and some readers of her blog, for filling me in on that hole in my life). Ok, that, and the kids would love to be able to see Diego save the whale twenty times a day.

For several years, we've also been addicted to Survivor. Ok, so sue me, I like some reality television, I've diminished in your eyes and I'm prepared to accept that. But, compared to Lost, well, Survivor is losing its appeal. I even missed a few episodes this last season. Heck, we didn't even know this last Survivor *started* until a few episodes into it.

Look at the two: they have certain similarities. I mean, both have groups of people trying to manage life after being marooned, cut off from friends, family, and creature comforts. Both are (usually) in beautiful tropical locations. Both have scantily-clad divas and toned buff man candy. But, Lost doesn't have Jeff Probst. And Survivor doesn't have a polar bear. I like Jeff well enough, I'd like his job, actually, but he's not a polar bear (nor, despite all evidence to the contrary, am I). I'd like to see a polar bear decide who gets voted off next season. "The maw has spoken!"

Lost has an honest-to-goodness HOBBIT! The bad-ass hobbit who takes on the Witch King, nonetheless! How can you top that? Maybe by adding the Minbari heroine of Babylon Five, who warns about The Others as she warned about the Shadows over a decade earlier (wow, my geek side is really showing in this entry). Star quality aside, there's an island Gaia, walking paraplegic, haunted survivors, whispers in the forest, a bizarre BF Skinner experiment (or IS it?), intriguing hidden pasts of all the castaways, and did I mention a polar bear?

Survivor has starvation, eating icky food, bickering, and the mysterious Medi'cs who come and cart you off if you happen to fall in the fire (Kooooochaaaaa!). Not a hint of a polar bear anywhere. I hear the producers have discussed a cold-winter clime Survivor, but canned it on the limited bare skin factor.

Oh, I'll still watch Survivor. It's like reading Frank Herbert - Dune was a fantastic book, so I started reading the rest in the series, and by Children of Dune I had to force myself to finish because I had put that much effort into it I couldn't just lose my investment. I have to say that Survivor is easier to stomach. But I think we need to snazz it up.

Perhaps abduct a few contestants at inopportune moments. Spread out some pit-fall traps to thin out the crowd. Add some contestants in the middle of the thing. Include a few people who don't speak English, and at least one knife-wielding madman. There was a hint of perhaps some doom to come when the last Survivors ate the freaking sacrificial chicken (Ugly American, thy name is Survivor. Ya' know, just don't eat the chicken. You have three measely days left, you don't need to eat the chicken. The Mayan gods haven't eaten in a looooooonnnnnng time, you think you have it bad?), but the thunderstorm didn't hold a candle to the deadly, screeching, black-smokey monster of Lost. Now, if the Mayans had come back to demand restitution for the loss of their sacrifice, there may have been some intrigue there.

You know where I'll be next Wednesday night.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Recess

A hint of the past, that smell that always brings you back to recess, pulled pigtails, blunt scissors, and all That which is Grade School.

A light scent of a mixture of paste and heavily-fortified mystery meat, with a hint of warm milk. I caught it on my way through the school library to my daughter's kindergarten classroom, where I am lucky enough to volunteer twice a month (barring kidney stones, a teething baby, office meetings, and the Bends - or whatever I had, 'cuz you know, with Post-partum depression, those descents and ascents come up at you suddenly - which has kept me from the classroom for over two months).

My morning was filled with shoe-tieing, craft assembling, and helping the kids draw the correct number of ornaments on their number-comprehension worksheet Cristmas trees. But the highlight of the day as a 40-year-old Mom was the same highlight of the day when I was a five-year-old girl: Recess. Duck duck goose, shadow puppets, and tag. Cool, my co-workers refuse to play those with me. I don't know why, because darned if it isn't nice to go out on a beautiful day and be silly. Breaks here consist of coffee or cigarettes, neither of which I imbibe, so I pretty much work the day straight through. Now, if we had a rousing game of Princess and the Dragons twice a day, well, I just might enjoy work again.

There were the occassional startles, like when I heard my eldest pipe up about something Mommy said. That's always a heart-stopper, "Oh geeze, what is she going to let slip this time?" Luckily she didn't go off on a rant about the local animal control officers or Evil Lord Bush (she gave him that title, by the way), but went on about some Learning Tool I bought last night. Whew, that was close!

I missed our office "Holiday Party" for the morning fun and lunch at home with a nursing baby. I'm so glad I had a good excuse. The only thing worse than an office party with people I barely know is missing recess.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Events of the weekend

We've been busy baking cookies and building decks this weekend. The deck has been in the works for, oh, two or so years. We're great at starting projects, but finishing? Bah! That's for wimps!

deck

The cookies are the moral opposite of the deck - we're going to a friend's house NEXT weekend to bake cookies, but butter cookies are such an q (sorry, A insisted I press the q there) endeavor, I thought maybe we should bake a bunch so we could just decorate them next weekend, and save the frusteration of the darned dough slipping all over the place while trying to roll it out.

cookies

(N insisted on putting on the facial flour for effect)

And then, this morning, N asked if she could go outside. I agreed, as long as she got dressed.

It's maybe 55 degrees out there. Downright balmy to youse Noreasters out there, but kinda chilly for us.

She put on a sundress, and asked if that was ok. Sure, if she wears shoes. So on go the sandals.

She quickly comes back in from the cold and decides that a jacket is in order.

Several seconds out in the wilds, she returns deciding she needs something to keep her legs warm. So, the snow pants go on.

Here she is, in sundress, jacket, snow pants, and SANDALS. It's quite the ensemble.

dress for success

No, it wasn't an "all N weekend," I just haven't taken any non-naked-time pictures of the other girls. You know how it is.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Things are getting a bit easier now

S, the baby, at ten months will now actually play without having to be held all the time. It may have to do with being able to crawl very well now, or perhaps it's that that upper front tooth finally came in and she's not so miserable.

Oh, yah, so you'd think with the extra arms Hubby and I now have, the house would be cleaner, or maybe dinner would get cooked earlier than bedtime.

Are you kidding? Now she's too fun to play with! I'm not wasting my limited time at home doing chores.

happy baby

Friday, December 02, 2005

Caving In or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Furby

The two oldest girls have been asking for a Furby for months. Not just asking, but coming up and in stereo, in the most polite of voices, begging for a Furby on a weekly basis.

furby

Hubby and I have been scared of these creatures since their debut in 1998. They're like Barney - FREAKY! Maybe it's the resemblence to Gremlins, or even worse, Hobgoblins . We were adamant that we would never have one in the house.

And then two little adorable moppets start asking for one. We told them in no uncertain terms that we would not let them have one because they were, well, FREAKY. They scared us. They were disturbing.

Then, the other day, it hit me. If the only reason we didn't want them to have a Furby was because we got the heebie-jeebies anytime we saw one, and not because they were dangerous, too expensive, a frivolous desire-of-the-minute, or honest-to-goodness Demons From Hell (although they come close... perhaps just a minor Demon from Hell's suburbs, like Blythe), then what kind of message are we sending our kids? Yah, ok, common sense, you've got me on that, and a curb on rampant consumerism, that too. But in the grander scheme of things, when they come home with purple hair, I'm still going to love them even if they are a bit different. Embrace diversity, all that stuff.

So, Furby will be under the tree this year. In all its gray and pink glory, talking like Oobie and asking if we're friends.

Is it immoral to tell a lie to a robot?

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