Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Around Town

If Johnny Depp Were a Power-Puff Girl…

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pirate3He’d probably live in a Happy-Meal box. Laylee says he’s a girl. We say okay. He can be a girl… a girl with a soul patch.

Is it morning yet? Laylee just asked. Nope. It’s still light leftover from today that hasn’t fallen out of the sky yet. You’ve been talking to yourself in your room and singing songs in strange undiscovered Jujubese languages for 1.5 hours. If you do it for 10 more, then it will be morning.

Our playdate was small but enjoyable, carrying an unexpected pirate theme. Magoo started us all off by falling in the drink and threatening to be lost to Davy Jones’ locker. What happened with him was one of the most frightening moments of my life as a parent so far. We were standing next to a large fountain with a pool about 2 feet deep. Magoo had his back to the pool and I watched him fall backwards into the water. He sank down to the bottom and in the three seconds it took me to pull him out, he was completely submerged with barely an entry splash. As I grabbed him, I could see him flailing, his eyes looking at me in panic, not a sound coming from the water. All I can think is, “what if I had turned my back to get a wipe and then looked back and wondered where he’d gone. As it was, it took him a few seconds to catch his breath. How ironic that only a few days ago, I joked on this blog about how it’s possible to drown in a teaspoon of water. WATCH YOUR KIDS BY EVEN THE SMALLEST WATERSOURCE.

After some enjoyable visiting, the kids got antsy for some vittles and we headed off to Mickey D’s where we also enjoyed some pirate-y fun. Noses and ears were pierced… with cardboard.
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Strangely, although the happy-meal boxes claim that pirates like to eat fish, you only get a Pirates of the Caribbean game piece if you order beef. I know. Magoo ordered a fillet ‘o fish and they didn’t give him squat. The beef-eaters of the group all collected the same exact game piece which fit together not at all.

Also, what’s the deal with having happy meals based on a movie that none of the kids will be allowed to watch anyway? Captain Jack Sparrow as a stuffed doll? Next they’ll come out with a Tokyo Drift baby rattle for kids under 3.

It’s About Time – Seattle Area Bloggers’ Playdate

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If you live in or around the Seattle area or feel like making the trek up here, Karli and I are planning a blogging meet-and-greet/playdate for this Thursday morning at an undisclosed location. We’ve already met some of you, but who couldn’t do with a few more internet girlfriends?

Come and find out if I actually have a body attached to that floating head and if Karli ever wears shoes. If you’re interested, email me and I will send you the details.

We’ll be planning a moms-only dinner for later on in the year so stay tuned.

Can’t Touch This

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I like to get down, especially when I’m driving alone in my car. For that reason, I have not yet burned to the ground the radio broadcasting corporation that took away my favorite Seattle mix station and replaced it with a station called “Movin our-commercials-show-multiple-people’s-butts-shaking-and-bobbing-around-in-circles 92.5-FM.”

The station is REALLY hit or miss. One minute you’ve got some Nelly crap (no, not that Nelly) and the next, you get some sweet eighties dance tune.

On the way to Target this evening, they were playing some steaming-pile song, degrading women in general, yet glorifying those who walk around in daisy dukes and bikini tops… and they couldn’t even turn a rhyme… HELLO!! If you’re gonna rap over a bad generic Hip-Hop track about all kinds of skanky skeez, at least do it with some style. I still won’t listen to you, but at least I won’t call you out publicly on my blog.

So I ended up with Delila who instructed me to “slow down and love someone.” I personally like to love people very quickly because then I have more time to love more people. Please do not connect this paragraph with the skeez mentioned above.

In the parking lot, two girls were standing by their car, huddled up together and looking nervous. One mentioned to the other how fast her heart was beating and I thought, “I wonder if they’re meeting up with their internet boyfriends for the first time tonight. How exciting and scary. Does their mother know?” This line of thought brought to you by my viewing of the movie “Drive me Crazy”, starring that teenage witch girl, a movie which I attended in disguise, lest I be discovered by one of my film friends and mocked for the rest of my college career. Incidentally, this film also started a chain of events which landed me at a Backstreet Boys concert with sparkles on my chest and corn-rows in my hair.

On the way home from Target, I was lucky enough to catch MC Hammer doing his stunning rendition of his original classic You Cannot Touch This on the posterior-shaking radio station. I car-danced like it was my job, and at 9:00 at night, it basically is.

On my post yesterday, creatively entitled “Dude.,” Anonymous said “You get a lot of comments, so what exactly are you insecure about?”

I think it’s time I come out with the truth. I am insecure about the fact that although, like the great MC Hammer I am “dope” “on” “the” “floor”, I am not, however, “ma”-“gic” “on” “the” “mic”. There you have it. My rap skills have been slipping lately. We have yet to christen the new house with a real, no holds barred, Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battle.

I feel your collective gasp before it escapes your keyboards and I am ashamed. If I ever find the Karaoke machine in the 6’ high stack of boxes that is my living room, I will remedy the situation. Then? Once I’ve brushed up on my skeelz on the microphonizzle, insecurity… she will be gone. Until then, it doesn’t matter how many comments I get or how many times Laylee bolster’s my confidence with questions like, “Mommy, can you please use some covering-up makeup? You have some red spots on your face,” I will remain insecure.

Enchiladas = Hospitality

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All restaurants are called “towns” in our household. When we leave our little corner of suburbia and head to where the shopping is, I tell the kids, “We’re going to town.” Eventually that transformed into, “Hey, let’s go eat at town,” and finally last month as we walked through the airport, Laylee pointed out the food court by saying, “Hey! They’ve got a BUNCH of LITTLE TOWNS here!”

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One of our favorite towns is “Enchilada Town,” Laylee’s name for any Mexican restaurant, most specifically the one down the street where everybody knows your name because your name is always Niña or Niño if you’re under the age of 23.

For a long time I wondered why so many Hispanic kids were named Niña. I was also horrified that anyone could name their daughter Hermana when I saw the list of “sister” missionaries in our church bulletin and it included a girl who’d gone to El Salvador. Hermana Leslie Pennington. I mean, Leslie’s a good enough middle name, but Hermana? That’s just cruel.

I am not so good with the Spanish but we love Enchilada Town because they’re so warm and inviting there. (Never mind that every time I say Enchilada Town, I’m reminded of this video.)

My husband’s parents and three sisters came up this weekend to help us move in and fix things around the house. We have worked them HARD. My goal this afternoon when they get home from church is to fabricate some semblance of hospitality to lull them into a sense of vacation-esque security before I hand them paint rollers tomorrow morning at early-o’clock in the AM.

My plan is to make chicken enchiladas for dinner this evening, despite the fact that I had to stay home with “sick” kids. Laylee had a fairly high fever last night and is now medicating with a healthy dose of animation therapy and play doh, not ingested, just “tasted” repeatedly.

Magoo’s not so much “sick” as he is “sick of” sitting still (yeah, right) for 3 hours at church every Sunday. 5 months till he’s old enough to attend the children’s nursery and we’re counting down the days. That kid is an adorable wreaker of havoc. Most women like to have the contents of their purse emptied out but there are always those select few who don’t enjoy sitting through Sunday school with a lap-full of tampons and chewing gum. To each her own, I guess.

So this afternoon, there will be food, fun, and everyone will be called something with an enyay. Tomorrow, it’s back to work!

The Lake House — Not a Horror Movie

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In the past I’ve reviewed books on this site but I don’t remember doing a full-on movie review. Since I’ve shared my English majorness with you, I think it’s time I whipped out my Film majorly skeelz.

Over-run with boxes, expecting company tomorrow to come help us get some serious work done, I decided the best course of action was to ditch my responsibilities and head out for a latenight movie with Karlita.

We decided on The Lake House, although every time we hear the title we both think it’s a horror movie masquerading as a Nicholas-Sparks-style chick flick. There was no horror. A bad cream turtleneck sweater on the ever-so well-postured Mr. Reeves, but no real horror to speak of.

We had our concerns about Keanu but he was not nearly as wooden as Al Gore in this role and even managed to relax his neck for two or three scenes. More disturbing to me was how Christopher Plummer begins to look more and more like Old Mrs. Harris from the Anne of Green Gables movies as he ages. And he seems to die a lot. In fact, he’s died so much in movies that I was surprised to see him in this one and playing a jerk too, not something I like to see done by Captain von Trapp.

piratey thingsThere were a ton of people pretending to be a pirate (at the theatre, not on The Lake House — Arrrr). I know that sounds strange and it was. Several people were pretending to be one pirate. One guy was the eye patch, another one the pock-marked nose, while 5 other guys dressed up as the remaining toes. Okay, it’s late. But there were many many pirates at the theatre. For fear of having my deck swabbed or something, I restrained myself from taking pictures of them but I guess they were all lined up to see Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest triumph.

Can you think of any other producer who gets top billing above the director? Me neither. He smells of money so people show up. And he’s got The Depp, Legolas, and that really popular British girl with the long skinny neck who looks like Natalie Portman.

Anyway, we were not seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Revenge of the Guy With Worms for a Beard at 12:01am so we did not have to stand in a line stretching to the Karate Dojo, nor were we required to superglue a parrot to our shoulder.

We were required to buy matching “gourmet” pretzels with “cheese” sauce.

pretzel

So, the movie is about Keanu Reeves dressing in Shabby Scruffy Lumberjack Chic style (which I find highly attractive until the turtlenecks begin to surface for the anti-climactic climax) and Sandra Bullock trying to convince us that she’s a very sad and haunted young doctor, the kind who went to medical school.

That’s basically the plot in a nutshell. The long version includes a time portal mailbox where they send letters back and forth across a 2 year time gap, sort of like that Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, The Love Letter, only in miniature. It ends with her doing something that would have stopped the whole movie from happening in the first place, except instead it brings Keanu Reeves back to her so they can kiss peckishly and walk off arm-in-turtle-necked-arm.

The final kisses are just not very satisfying. Never Been Kissed — great kissing. However that movie had the word “kiss” in the title. This movie was not called “Kiss at the Lake House” or even “Lovin’ at the Lake House.” I should be lucky there was any romance at all, since the word romance was also conspicuously absent from the title. I have to give credit where credit is due. The move most certainly did contain a Lake House.

It also contained great lines, just lame enough for Keanu to deliver perfectly, like “She’s more real to me than any of that stuff.” The stuff, yes, the stuff. If she’s more real than the stuff, you’ve definitely got a keeper on your hands, Ted. You should probably plant a stolen tree outside her luxury apartment complex in downtown Chicago. No one will ever notice it’s there… except the girl… and then she’ll be in love with you, ba-da-bing!

Now the writing in this movie wasn’t nearly as bad as Star Wars Episode II, which coincidentally starred that girl who looks like Natalie Portman, or was it HER look-alike? Anywho, the worst romantic line of all time occurred there, something akin to, “I hate sand. Sand is rough and coarse. But you are not rough and coarse. You (stroking her skin) are soft and smooth.” At least that’s the way Dan says it to me when we’re re-enacting and doing scene-work.

Speaking of posers, there was one good passionate moment in the movie. Never mind that it made no sense for Sandra Bullock to be making out with Keanu Reeves, whom she’d never met before, at her birthday party, being held at her boyfriend’s house, which she later denied, saying that only Junior High kids “make out.” Um, sorry, NU-UH. I make out all the time and Junior High? I was too busy collecting key chains and playing in the band to make out with anyone. Duh! Wasn’t everybody? I mean besides sad-for-no-real-reason-haunted-by-their-unexplained-tragic-past doctor-types.

Anyway, the passion, the slow dancing, the nuzzling = good, the kind of scene we look for in an escapist mom’s-night-out kind of movie. They were dancing to a song that Karli and I decided we liked. I said I liked it except for the fact that the guy singing it sounded like he was trying to sound like that one not-dead Beatle. You mean, Paul McCartney? Yes, him, not the train conductor drummer guy.

So it turns out the song is by Paul McCartney who is apparently so pathetic that he can’t even do a good impersonation of himself. But we like it and will probably buy the CD to recapture the moment, not the nose-nuzzling moment, but the moment in the theatre when we discovered who was singing and almost laughed ourselves into a seizure.

It may not be his fault. He could have recorded it 2 years from now… in the future. Everything sounds different in the future. He could be doing an impression of the 2006 version of himself. Karli figures if they have the time travel technology available to use in the movie, why not use it in the recording studio too, see if any of the audience members are ept enough to pick up on it.

I would definitely lift my left pinky toe for this movie. Thumbs? Not so much.