End of TV Turn Off Week

Did anyone know it even WAS TV Turn Off Week?



These are pretty good...check out the "ads" on Media Carta



And for what it's worth, I now have a TV-B-Gone coming in the mail. I used to be incensed that Wal-Mart had installed TVs every 20 feet to blare commercials at the masses, but now I don't mind.



I just don't go to Wal-Mart anymore.



Or shall I say Big Box Mart? (It's a JibJab thing, and well worth viewing...but I really DO recommend that you have broadband in order to see it. It's a four-minute download even with broadband. Hilarious!)

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Fat Girl

A piece I found quite by accident on a defunct page which had to be pulled up on the cached version...credited to Teri Heidenreich:

I've always been fat. I'm not one of those fat girls that have stories about when I was thin - because I was never thin. And I grew up with the knowledge that I was fat. When I was three years old I was playing outside with my friends and I got hungry. I came inside and asked my mom for a piece of cheese. I've always loved cheese - still do. She cut off a slice and handed it to me saying, "I'll give you a piece of cheese if you want it but I want you to know if you eat it you'll blow up as big as a house and no man will ever want you."

Add to that I've always been loud and extremely outgoing and you've got a good picture of me - the last person o earth my mother would ever want for a daughter.

I remember in grade school I was so envious of the shy, quiet, thin girls. It was always my summer resolution that when I came back to school in the fall I would not only be thin but quiet and shy - like all the good girls were.

That never materialized.

I first discovered that it might be possible to lead a real life without losing weight as my primary goal when I got away from my parents' house and went to college. I'd spent every year up to then planning and plotting how my life would begin after I had lost weight. Gradually I began to realize that how I ate and how I dressed were
actually my choice and not fully dictated by the embarrassment of my appearance. I stopped dressing like I had to cover as much of my body as possible and I stopped eating in public like I was trying to lose weight.

The first few times I heard someone call me beautiful it didn't even occur to me that they just might be sincere. It had never occurred to me that I could be beautiful.

Then I discovered feminism. Body-hair enriched, political-jargon clogged, liberal angry-white-suburban-fat-girl feminism; but feminism nonetheless. I had finally found a forum where loud brash intelligent girls could shoot their mouths off and be encouraged for it. And in feminism I found me - or at least a sketch of me. I was not disabled by my belly or a criminal because of my thighs. It was really OK to be full, to be strong, to be solid. I was amazed by these thoughts, enraptured. I bought fat-girl clothes and fat-girl publications, went to fat-girl dances and hung out with fat-girls.

One day I was walking along with a friend shooting my mouth off about the pervasive, disenfranchising, patriarchal culture of thin when we came across this sign:

WANTED
Models for art classes

My friend, also a feminist and tired of my rant, turned to me and said, " Well, Teri, this is your chance. Get your body type out there." It was almost a dare.

I had to do it. It was spiritually, politically, ethically, and morally imperative. How would all the other fat girls learn that it was OK to come out of hiding if they never saw anyone that vaguely looked like them? If I didn't do it, I'd be a coward and a hypocrite.

When I called they hired me on the spot - without, it may be noted, seeing me first.

I went out that day and bought myself a shortie fire-engine-red satin robe. I figured why not - if I was going be the only one naked in a room full of people, I might as well make one hell of an entrance.

Contemplating the sexy robe days later in a cold, dank room full of strangers, I wasn't quite sure I could do it. I toyed with the idea of tearing ass down the hall. I figured they would be too polite to chase me down, rip off my clothes, and make me stand on the podium. But I stayed, peeled my clothes off, item by item, cursed my sense of humor, and made my entrance in the red robe.

For my first pose, I sat twisted so that I was looking over my shoulder. I couldn't even feel my body. I didn't look at the student artists. I was terrified. Eventually, though, the pose began to hurt and that in itself brought me out of my fear.

When the exercise was over and I put that glowing robe back on, I took a deep breath and went around the room looking at over twenty pictures of my naked body. Their pictures. My pictures. I started next to a group of young, self-conscious art students - the shy, pretty types I had envied when I was younger. They had drawn me
bulbous, dumpy, horrible, crackled through with cellulite. The men in that group had drawn me like a medical illustration: a torso, an arm. Although they were artists, young and unsure of their skill, I recognized myself in their pictures. Looking at myself on their easels was like coming home.

I moved on to a trio of older women - mothers of grown children and grandmothers. They had drawn me full, rounded, luscious, a Venus perched on a wooden box. That's when I realized that none of the students was drawing me; they were all drawing themselves, using me as a guideline. After that I could breathe.

That night I came home and looked at my full, naked self in the mirror for the first time in my life. There I was. You are here, I breathed.

Since then I've come to feel my body. I used to try to stay away from my outlines, my skin. It was like trying to will myself psychologically thin. But now I've moved into my body. I can feel myself from my belly to my butt, from one hip to the other. And I now see my body, fully. I'm not a size or a style or a number. I am a poem, a song. I move and exist in time and space. I guess you could say that once I allowed myself to be seen I could see myself.

And I no longer doubt people who say I'm beautiful.

Work

New client site just went up...not only do I like this lots, but their products are just the coolest things EVER. (Of course I would approve!)

Forever Mine Designs

Their hosting company is insane...they force me to go through some web-based java FTP program, and then the server is set to read and recognize asp files before html...and in fact they prefer htm files!! ARRRRGH! The thing disconnected me six times while trying to upload the site; seems to me as though it's some sort of self-preservation feature on the (used-to-be) current site. It took quite a bit to drive the stake through the undead website's heart.

The two folks who run this business are designers themselves, and they picked up the site from a template and modified it accordingly. Basically they got through a LOT of the site and then got bogged down with work and they were looking for someone to just put the rest of the pieces in place and figure out the little strange quirks it was showing and just FIX the &^%$*#! thing. I can relate.

It did, unfortunately, take TWICE as long as I'd quoted them....12 hours, all told. What started out as putting the puzzle together turned out to be redoing and resizing almost all the photos, and redoing two of the galleries besides. I hate it when that happens. So now I'm really reluctant to try and charge them double my quote, despite the fact that that's how long it really did take, and despite the fact that the Spec Creep monster came in and took over.

This one also had a definite deadline because they're working a baby fair on Saturday and they're trying to get moms-to-be to look at their baby announcements. If you're in the market for any kind of elegant, modern invitation or announcement, I think these guys rock.

Hmmm....other than that, I got some weed and feed for the lawn, which I intend to put down tomorrow. I also got the joy of paying personal property taxes (whee!!!), but that job DID involve a trip to the bank. That's exciting for the kids, because Friday is customer appreciation day and they set out cookies for their patrons. (Kid joy!)

Warm and Cold Running Rain

This is an insanely quick update, since I'm obviously not going to have time for any other kind.



I just finished part of a client's site...I was mostly waiting for images, but when I got them they'd pretty much revamped their entire catalog and renamed each product...ACK!! So while I quoted them based on the time I THOUGHT it would take me, I'm about three hours over that estimate since the whole thing snuck up on me. Oy. And the thing REALLY has to be done, like, tomorrow. I hate coming this close to the wire...it scares me. You just KNOW something's going to blow up.



Next week is Lauren's last swimming lesson for this set...we're seriously considering private lessons because I've been doing some observation and calculation. It seems that my daughter is getting bored sitting on the edge of the pool, and is anxious to swim. Due to the number of kids in the class, however, she gets about 7.5 minutes of actual swim time and instruction per 45-minute lesson. While the kids are taking turns, those who aren't currently swimming are supposed to sit quietly on the edge of the swimming pool. While she isn't technically being BAD, she's not exactly being a model of patience, either. From what I've figured, each kid gets about 15 minutes of practice per week. Each session lasts for four weeks, so you pay $35 for about an hour's worth of actual instruction. They have private lessons for $42, where you get three, one-half hour sessions with one-on-one instruction...a total of 90 minutes of instruction. A mom who was sitting next to me had her kid in private lessons, so I hopped over a chair and said, "So! I notice you have your daughter taking the private lessons...how's she liking that?" Apparently her neighbor advised her to go with private lessons, "otherwise the kids just end up sitting on the side," and she's completely thrilled with the results. So now we're deeply considering this possibility, especially since you can get  a discount with semi-private lessons (usually two siblings or really good friends)...and their favorite teacher is also available for the lessons.



Hmmmm.



Tomorrow is the Super Heroes exhibit at the Science Center...and it was supposed to be David's first day at Frontiers, but the host's kid got sick, so that's been postponed. No word on when it's going to be back. Saturday David's supposed to take a class at the Apple store on iPhoto.



Speaking of iCrap, our homemade PVR blew up the other day...powered down and wouldn't come back. This, of course, puts my iSpouse in a mood and a half, and he spent a great deal of time tonight trying to separate a CPU from a massive heat sink using a hair dryer. Unbelievably, it worked! I'm just SO impressed.



I got out the seedling trays and the window boxes yesterday and the kids had a fabulous time helping me fill them with dirt. It had also started to rain, so by the time we were done the kids were pretty much caked in a thin layer of mud. I let them go stomp around in the ginormous puddle in the street to clean off...their fascination for this particular puddle is my own fault. I used to take David out there in the warm, Spring rain, and when he said, "Schnickelfritz!" (a German term of endearment for kids), I'd grab his hand and run with him down the driveway and into the puddle, then back up into the garage. This was just beyond fantastically fun in his mind, so the puddle still retains this magic allure. Well, that and he's five years old and it's a puddle, for Pete's sake.



While we were filling the boxes, I asked him, "So, what do plants need to grow?" "Soil, sun, and water!" he answered promptly. "And what are we providing right now?" "Soil! And it's RAINING!" Ah, quite true. Two outta three ain't bad.



Tidbits: Lauren is getting deeply into unicorns now, and she loves the Lunesta moth on TV. According to her, he glows in the dark and puts people to sleep, and she loves him and wants him to come visit her at night. David informs me that he is starting to outgrow Thomas just a little bit, and he's getting more and more into the idea of Superheroes, and thinks he wants to watch Superman Returns at the OmniMax. (I'm none too sure about this!) Mom has sent her cold and icky weather this way, so today we had to shut all the windows and we spent some time nesting on the couch under a comforter reading...of all things....a kid's dictionary while the cold rain spattered against the glass. The dictionary was the kids' pick, believe it or not!



And for your Useful Site of the Day: You Send It, a site for sending oversized files so your email doesn't blow up.

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Yarding and Working

Whew!

Well, I have officially just about killed myself on the outside of the house this weekend. On Thursday the kids and I were eating lunch outside on the deck and it was such NICE weather! The breeze was blowing and I commented, "Hmmm...you can hear the wind blowing through the grass. We're going to have to mow that this weekend. Lots to do, guy, lots to do." Much to my total annoyance later that afternoon, I discovered a City Wrist-Slap document affixed to our front door. Blah, blah, blah, housing association, blah, blah, grass exceeding length limits, blah, blah, open trash container (yes, it's called a combination of a flip-top lid (courtesy of YOU, the City) and the wind), blah, blah, fines and imprisonment, rant, rant, follow-up inspections, governmental interrogations, UN black helicopters, whatever. They can most seriously bite me on forty different levels, y'know? That's like when you're a kid and you've just initiated a plan to clean your room, and your idiot parents walk by, spy you picking crap up, and say, "Clean your room!" Seriously. Bite me.

So Friday morning I hauled out the mower and got the front half of the lawn done while the kids planted what must've been a thousand marigold seeds along the front walk. I got about halfway through the side yard and ran out of gas (natch!), so I abandoned the mowing in favor of a hoe, which I then took around to the front garden area and hacked up and buried every weed I could find. The kids got bored after awhile, and I went back over their work, busting apart more marigold seed pods and spreading them out more evenly, eventually watering them to lessen their chances of blowing away. Then I went to the north side of the house and hacked up a ton of weeds and encroaching grass over there...by this time the kids decided to come back out and play on the jungle gym, and they got to come over and see the worms I dug up and even a few worm eggs. Of course then THEY had to dig, so they found tiny rakes and trowels and I told them to knock themselves out...there was nothing in that garden area, anyway. They had a blast. I moved over to my veggie garden and hacked up everything in there, too, and churned it around so the weeds would rot a little faster. By this time I was just DONE with yardwork, so I hauled the kids in and threw them into a bath (joy!) and cleaned the grime off my own sad self. Oh, I am so SO sadly out of shape...I hurt for hours after that little eco-maniacal display.

The next day I spent a great deal of time figuring out ways to shrink the lawn...I'm still not sure what we're going to do...and we went to TLC to get a bush to fill in the blank space in the foundation plantings along the garage. Doug tried his hardest to tell me it was a boxwood that we needed, which I totally denied. He then went on to inform me that boxwoods were called boxwoods because people usually cut the bushes into the shape of boxes. I was too incredulous to respond. I don't have any documentation to prove it, but I strongly suspect that it has much more to do with the fact that the plant comes from the genus Buxus. This assurance of the need to buy a boxwood went on until I pulled out the original landscaping plans drawn up in 2002, which confirmed what we needed was a dense yew.

So we went to TLC and picked a yew, along with some kind of bug poison...we have a very bad sort of borer which has decimated the dwarf cherry tree, and is hard at work on the crabapple, too. Turns out the cherry tree is actually three trees spliced into one...the root ball is one type of tree, the trunk is another, and they graft a weeping cherry onto the top. I had NO IDEA this was the case when we got it, or I'd never have purchased it. The poor thing is being attacked at the trunk, and of course it's trying to save its own life, so now the root ball and trunk are sending out offshoots, and the poor thing looks like a Franken-tree. Since only the cherry and crabapple trees seem to be affected, I wondered if it was just a fruit borer, but they said that it doesn't seem to matter much, they'll attack anything. So we're going to put the bug stuff on the affected AND the healthy trees as a preventative.

And finally yesterday Doug got gas for the mower and finished off the lawn, and I used the weed-eater to trim around the house, down the driveway, and around all the posts, trees and the sandbox.

I have also come to conclusion that we've GOT to start mulching around the sandbox. And the jungle gym.

My neighbors in the back of us also informed us that they have termites. Oh, joy.

Even More Pet Food Woes

So I was reading in the paper this morning that there's yet more recalling going on, this time for rice that's been used in pet foods. A quick search on Google news will also show you that corn gluten has been put on the list for containing melamine. (Here's a big list of all the recalls, though not guaranteed to be complete.)

The article I was reading made the vague suggestion that the addition of small amounts of melamine can psyche out laboratory tests done on various glutens so that they appear to be higher in protein than is nutritionally factual. (Motive, anyone?) It's also mentioned that melamine is an illegal fertilizer in the US, but a perfectly legal one in China.

I think the grandest news of all is that there's an investigation going on now as to whether or not they've taken the contaminated stuff and dumped it onto hog farmers, who (of course!) feed it to their pigs. To wit, "It's also possible that melamine has landed onto California tables, with state agricultural officials announcing late Thursday that they've quarantined a pig farm where lab tests showed melamine in hog urine."

Um...does anyone but me find this totally insane?

The following article is one of the tinfoil-hat-wearing, Dale Gribble Society variety, but is interesting.

Pets, Food Safety, China, the FDA, and Your Health

Choice tidbits:
"The FDA just announced that it wants the word “pasteurization” to replace “irradiation” so that food can be treated with radiation and consumers won’t know."

(Food and Water Watch backs up that claim)


"As Wal-Mart enters the organic marketplace, it plans to grow its “organic” food in China."
Well, they've obviously done such a stellar job with the wheat gluten for our pet food, I think it's high time that they be put in charge of the coveted "organic" label, which has (until now) at least meant MINIMAL tinkering with the human food supply.

I assume you all know by now, too, that they want to put cloned meat and milk on the market, too? Obviously without labeling it...putting a small cloning insignia on the label would take all the fun out of it, I suppose. What would those irradiated, cloned hamburger packages look like, anyway?

Defending Ourselves

Hey, look! Someone else agrees with me!


Schools need to teach students to be aggressive

Articles of Impeachment Against Cheney?

From the Washington Post...there's an attempt on the horizon to impeach Cheney?



Articles of Impeachment To Be Filed On Cheney - The Sleuth

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From Boring Day to Good Day

David had Science Center Homeschool class today...this time it was Geology. They poured plaster into small paper cups and made fossils with small shells. They picked out regular river rocks and tested what would happen if they sanded the rock, tried to scratch it, or got it wet. They gathered around the giant erosion table (model riverbed with light sand, gravel and water currents) and used small, plastic models to build "Dinoland" and "Peopleland." Then they released a flood of water and watched what happened to the dinos and trees, and the little, plastic houses. ("See, Mommy? It knock-edd all deez ovah.") They did something with volcanoes; I'm not entirely sure of what they did, but according to David they mixed something in a beaker and David got to be the one to drop a tablet into it, shake it up "--and it EXPLODED!" This report is delivered with a big gesture of arms and the kind of maniacal expression of glee that can only come from a five year-old boy who has been granted permission to blow up stuff.

We looked at diagrams of tectonic plates and Pangea, and we even got to go to the Fossil Lab, which pretty much trumps everything else...David got to see and handle real, fossilized bones of an honest-to-goodness Triceratops dinosaur. Homeschool classes rock.

I also picked up a bust-your-own geode for him at the gift shop, along with a gyroscope, which I didn't show to David but gave to Dad to keep in his store of Really Cool Things to Whip Out At Educationally-Appropriate Times. Oh, and the guy at the gift shop was great...he gave me my change (28 cents) and I looked at the quarter. "No State Quarter," I commented. "You want one?" he asks. "I have a roll of the new ones. Montana." YES!!!! David flipped. "I don't haff DIS one!" he exclaims. He carefully tucked the quarter into his Science Center bag so as not to lose it, and I notice that it went into his quarter collection map before bed. I think we're only missing nine more at this stage of the game. Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah (all coming out this year), Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii (not available until 2008). The acquisition of the Hawaiian state quarter will, for some reason, be the absolute culmination of David's joy. He desperately wants the Hawaiian quarter. He also desperately wants to go to Hawaii, but that's beside the point. ("Why can't we go to Hawaii? We could take a airplane.") He also wants to go to Africa, Mexico, and potentially South America. And he wants to see the Grand Canyon. Thus we now see the downside of teaching him Geography...

While David was in class, I took Lauren all around and we watched the big Energizer ball machine (you sort of have to see it to get the idea of it), checked out an Egyptian mummy of a baby (kinda gruesome and fascinating), went to the Structures area and pushed buttons to create strong winds on model skyscrapers, and build some block bridges. And we went to the Build-A-Bear shop, where she got to pick out a pink teddy bear with a white heart on her tummy, whom Lauren promptly named "April."

I asked everyone if they were having a good day (uh, hello?) and David says, "Yeah! Dat goes from a Boeing Day to a Good Day!"

Let's Roll

Remember that Patriot Act thing I was talking about in the other entry? This is my favorite sentence from the story: "The new law seemingly would remove such cases from federal court and require the FISA court to hear them in secret."




Bush administration seeks to expand surveillance law



And interestingly enough, Doug says that as he was driving home from work the other day, he pulled up next to a cop car which was labeled "Homeland Security." Not the local city police department or the county sheriff, or even the state troopers. Just "Homeland Security." 



Did anyone else get the memo about when we became an official police state? I think I may have missed the actual ceremony for the switch-over.



Oh. And one more thought on the VA Tech thing. This is terribly un-PC of me, so you may either want to step out for coffee or tell yourself not to put your fist through the screen until you've reached the end.



I get that people...way too many...have died. I get it that families have lost their kids, their siblings, enormous chunks of their lives. I do, I really do. So please know that this intends no disrespect to either the families or the ones they've lost.



----------------------------



Apparently (whew!) there's no more talk of expired visas and disgruntled foreigners, which will (please!) take Homeland Security off the table in regard to the case. At least for now. And of course the radio (mainly NPR) is absolutely stuffed full of pundits and commentators debating the need for greater security, greater gun control, and the validity/stupidity (depending on who's on the panel at the time) of the school's security responses.



There's much debate on how far to restrict firearms. "If he couldn't get the guns, he never would have killed those people," vs. "If everyone took to packing heat, the gunman would have been downed in 5 seconds and lives would have been spared." And there's much debate on security versus freedom. "We expect our kids to be safe in school!" vs. "We have a free and open society, and I don't think we're willing to trade that in just yet."



It seems to me that it's totally unreasonable for all of us to sit back and wait for others to take care of us. If Columbine taught us anything, it taught us that if you find yourself in a shooting situation, you'll have to get yourself or the injured outside the building yourself, as security officials sure aren't about to rush in and rescue you. They'll let you bleed out while they're busy assessing the situation.



So if we're really, honestly interested in making the nation as a whole a safer place to be, wouldn't it be worth considering putting each and every individual person through self-sufficiency training of some sort?



I started thinking about this when I read that some of the victims had perhaps been lined up and shot execution-style. "Cho's extraordinary killing effectiveness suggests someone who was
trained, or who trained himself, in "execution-style" killing,
according to the federal source."



The Making of a Mass Killer



So I'm envisioning a guy with a couple of guns and no respect for human life busting into a classroom and ordering people to line up, and our gunman goes down the line and starts firing into people.



Have we really trained our citizenry to be so defenseless as to stand there and sort of hope the guy runs out of ammo before he gets to them? School is a place where you're certainly pressured to conform, and do just what you're told and be sheep-like. But I'd think that if you're in that lineup and you see a couple of people go down, you've gotta figure that your number is coming up. You have nothing left to lose anyway, why aren't 15 people mobbing this madman and ripping his gun(s) away? Didn't we do it on Flight 93 during 9/11? Wasn't the wanna-be shoe bomber (Reid?) taken down by fellow passengers? I know it's way too easy to armchair quarter-back, but what's wrong with us???



I remember seeing a newsy sort of show where they had a man coming into some of the public high schools and staging fake attacks to show the kids how easy it was to get killed, and then trained them on how not to be sitting ducks. (Tip: The best way to get killed is to barricade yourself into a closed, windowless room with no hope of escape. Hiding behind desks makes you an easier, unmoving target.) One of my favorite tips: Rip the fire extinguisher off the wall, pull the pin, and let loose. Fill the hallway...the extinguisher emits a sort of smoky vapor like dry ice, yet a million times better. It makes a big smoke screen, so the shooter can't see where everyone is running, which makes it harder to aim and much harder to follow you. Also ensure that kids don't hesitate to break expensive equipment, like a computer CPU, to bust open a window to escape if necessary. CPUs can be replaced. Your middle-schooler can't.  



If you really want a safer nation, don't you need a more savvy citizenry? But what are we told? "Do what they tell you to, it's safer," and "Don't try to be a hero. Leave it to the experts." Critics say that those who initiate any kind of resistance might be killed. Well, yes. But it's likely that they're going to get killed anyway. I'd much rather die trying to save my life, and the lives of others.



What ever happened to "Let's Roll?"

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Animal School

From one of my lists...this is a little Flash movie which you WILL want to watch. Excellent work. Go here:



Animal school


and click on the purple button in the middle which says "Animal School."

St Louis Book Fair

Anyone looking for specific books?



They'll have at least 1 million books at the fair, including rare books and first editions. Preview is Thursday (April 19) from 4 to 10 p.m., while there's no charge for Friday, Sat and Sun.



stlouisbookfair.org



And for those in the areas of Indianapolis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, etc. you need to know about the marvels of MegaBus. It's possible to get tickets for under $10.



Megabus homepage



Dude.

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Police State

So we have another school shooting. If you don't already know that, you must be living in a cave. I heard it on NPR when we were sitting down to lunch and my reaction was a bug-eyed stare and ask, "Why??" One shooting in a dorm...sure, getting back at an ex. Happens a LOT. Shooting one, two, even five people in a class. OK, the person in question was...er...disgruntled, and wanted to take out the aggressors. Not exactly the type of thing advocated in anger management class, but within the realm of understanding. Lining up the entire class and shooting every one of them? Pardon my French, but WTF?



Doug sits down and with prophetic vision says, "Just watch. They're going to call it terrorism." A school shooting? Oh, come now.



And this evening on the news they're starting to say the shooter was a Chinese man who was here on an expired student visa. Which of course would bounce the ball into the Homeland Security court, which scares the hell out of me. Once again, I'm bug-eyed. They really are going to call it terrorism. "How did you know?"



Many of the blogs now are starting to rant on gun control. Not broad enough of a vision, in my opinion. Homeland Security doesn't bother with gun control. They play with broad and unauthorized wiretapping, enemy combatants, and other assorted KGB-like exploits. How incredibly convenient that now, with the Dems dominating Congress and questions about the Patriot Act coming to the fore, we suddenly have another big "terrorist" attack. This will undoubtedly require lots and lots of new rules and broad, sweeping governmental powers. We all must be protected, after all.



Yeesh.

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Cinderella

We rented Cinderella for David and Lauren to watch on the drive to Grandma's house, but lo and behold, we somehow ended up with the live performance version, which the kids obviously weren't interested in at ALL!! Big bummer! So I went back to the video store and they got me the Disney version (well, technically, the live one was also labeled "Disney home video" and the title was in the same font, with no pictures at all to tell you what's up.)



I brought it home, of course, and put the kids in front of it in a few days. I ended up watching it with them, because you never know what you're going to have to explain. We get to the part where the evil step-sisters have ripped Cinderella's homemade dress to shreds. and she runs from the scene, and I look over at David. He's got his knees all drawn up and is looking at the screen out from under his dinosaur baseball cap with huge tears welling up in his eyes. My five year-old boy is crying over Cinderella! I didn't say a word to him, of course, but rather asked Lauren if she thought the step-sisters were nice ("No!") and then told her to just wait and see what happened next. It took a while for David to come back around again, but when the movie ended he jumped up out of his chair and shouted "Again! Again!"



I said no (mean mommy that I am), and that it was time to go to the grocery store. Lauren was having none of it, however, and announced "I'm going to be Cinderellie!" and off she went to her room, making a beeline for her dress-up clothes. Oh dear.



She got out the long, pink dress with dropped bell sleeves (and a three-layer, long skirt and criss-crossed bodice) and insisted on wearing it. So we compromised and I told her she could go to the store dressed as Cinderella as long as she would wear a white turtleneck underneath so she wouldn't freeze. That was totally OK with her, so on went the turtleneck, the pink princess dress, the white "dancing shoes" and the silver/fake jewel-bedecked tiara.





A three year-old in this manner of dress garners a lot of attention at the grocery store, mainly from women aged 45-70.

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