My mom came with me

and I was worried she wouldn't like the movie as much as I did. Or that I wouldn't like it as much the second time. But I liked it even more. And she did too. And this time, we weren't the oldest people in the theater.

I want a do-over!

Starting yesterday morning.

I have the next 10 days carefully choreographed in my head. It's all about holiday cooking and holiday celebrating and Christmas preparations and packing for vacation and haircuts and last minute errands and then hitting the road exactly on time. If you ask me what I have planned for next Monday at 1:30, I'll have an answer.

So yesterday when my car keys accidentally went to work with Justin and Grace and I were stuck at home all day, it threw my plans off. But I readjusted. Work Tuesday, add Monday's stuff into Wednesday and we are back on track.

I got my keys back this morning but then my car wouldn't start. It wouldn't start for Justin either. So I called AAA and prepared to wait. About one hour they said. Only 40 minutes later Justin called to say that the highway was closed and he had been sitting at the bottom of our hill trying to get out that whole time. The AAA guy eventually got here and my car turned on instantly. Just in time for me to go rescue Grace from school. But far too late for it to make it worthwhile to go into work.

But I just readjusted again! I'll work Wednesday, send Grace to daycare this afternoon as planned and try to get everything I needed to do Monday and Wednesday. The first part went well, I dropped her off at daycare and headed to the grocery store. And then I got a panicked, confused phone call from a mom in my son's class that they had instituted an evacuation order but she didn't know what that meant.

I spent several fruitless minutes trying to contact the school. Eventually I learned from NPR that due a gas main rupture, they had evacuated all of the children to the highschool and all parents were to proceed immediately to bus stops to prepare for the kids' imminent arrival home. So I did. Drove to the bus stop. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. No more communication from the school. No updates on the radio. 3 1/2 hours later, the bus finally showed up.

The highway was still closed. So we backtracked through the countryside, carefully navigating the icy roads thanks to the winter storm we also have going on and I finally stumbled into the house shortly before 5:00, having accomplished absolutely nothing today other than make the AAA man come to my house for no reason and sit at my son's bus stop whilst playing Tetris on my phone for 3 1/2 hours.

It probably does not make sense then that I am going back out, all by myself, to go to the movies tonight. It makes sense in my head, I really want to see the movie Twilight again and in those carefully choreographed plans I had yesterday morning before everything went to hell, I thought I might get a chance to go to a matinee on Wednesday. But now I have to work AND do everything I planned to do yesterday, today and tomorrow, all during my lunchbreak. So I'm going to the movies tonight. And that's that!

I've created monsters

Yesterday afternoon shortly before Justin came home from work, I discovered a game on Facebook called "How Big is Your Brain?" I was happily playing this game when Justin came home. Justin took one look at the game and wanted to play. And play and play and play. And a certain element of competition set in. So he played some more. (He is standing over my shoulder waiting for me to finish blogging so he can play some more.) ((I am not!))

Okay then.

He walked in the door from work tonight and said "honey, set me up!" And then he missed dinner. He still hasn't caught up to my high score but he's close. And it's driving him crazy.

In the meantime, Charlie wanted in on the action. So Justin let him play. And darned if the kid didn't do pretty well! But now he's addicted too. He's raised his score from "Dog" to "Gorilla" to "Average Joe." Which just sent him into muttering about "Joe" since he is still very scarred from the "Joe the Plumber" references during the Presidential campaign. He does not want to be Joe. So he asked to play again in the morning.

Which leaves just my little Grace, who piped up right before bed, "Daddy, can I try?" And then she scored almost as high as her brother. And asked to play again.

We only have one computer in this house. It's getting ugly.

Starting the season early

Normally we don't even think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. But because we are going to be out of town for almost two weeks in December and will lose two weekends of preparation time, we had to start planning early this year. And today the weather cooperated with getting us in the spirit. It is cold and blustery and the flurries which flew all morning long finally started sticking this afternoon.

I took the kids to a holiday open house at an art store and they got to see Santa Claus. I switched from my regular mocha at Starbucks to the Peppermint Twist Mocha. And we tuned the satellite radio to the Holly station. We came home and I made the first fire of the season. The cats are curled up right in front of the fire place and their appearance of absolutement contentment matches my mood exactly.

Because I can't embed the official video

Here is some will.i.am from Oprah last Friday

Top 10 signs election addiction season is over at my house

10. When he couldn't find me in front of the computer last night, Charlie thought I went missing.

9. Justin turned on Countdown after dinner and after 5 minutes, switched to poker.

8. Yesterday I moved our i-tunes library from the old computer to this computer. And made new playlists. And spent my fun money on new music instead of campaign donations.

7. I'm back to thinking Andrew Sullivan is insufferably verbose rather than witty and prescient.

6. Since I didn't have the compulsive need to check 538.com 74 times yesterday, I caught up on the laundry.

5. The Disney packing list is at the top of my to-do list.

4. I started dinner at 4:00 yesterday instead of fifteen minutes before Justin was scheduled to arrive home.

3. I updated this blog two days in a row.

2. I read two (not very well written) books since Sunday night.

1. The radio in my car is turned back to XM Kids instead of CNN.

Coincidence?

My blog entry from a year ago today says that Grace had a stomach virus on that day. Grace has a stomach virus today too. I hope this means she'll be healthy from now until next November.

This turn of events made me feel the most sorry for Justin. I was away this weekend and he did a wonderful job getting the kids to all of their scheduled events, doing the yardwork, grocery shopping, cleaning up the house and taking them to do some fun things as well. He was super mom and he was feeling it when I came home last night. He was in a great mood, happy I was home, happy that things were so under control, just all around happy. Then Grace started throwing up and the picture of quiet, happy order quickly degenerated into mounds of laundry, chaos and crabbiness. He eventually went to bed with a very defeated look on his face. At some time in the middle of the night he turned to me and said "I don't like the throw up." He's got a point.

Feeling mostly reflective tonight

"When you get to the top of the mountain, please remember me"

The night before we do