Pop Goes The Kitty

This morning was one of those unusually quiet mornings in my house. Husband went to work. The kid was sleeping in. None of the TV's were on and the volume on my computer was turned all the way down. A spooky kind of silence filled my home.

As I was sitting at my computer doing important stuff (i.e. checking emails, reading Facebook, Twitter and checking out blogs) I heard a noise coming from behind me. At first I thought nothing of it, but after it happened a second time, I looked behind me and saw this...

Cali had managed to work herself into a box I had sitting in my scrapbook room (without me knowing it) and had popped out to apparently scare the hell out of me.

It was like that scene in Elf. You know the one. The one where Will Ferrel is checking the Jack in the Boxes and every time the clown jumps out of the box he jumps. Yeah. I levitated a good 5 inches off my computer chair and almost threw my mouse through the ceiling.

I swear...cats live to jump out of hiding spots and scare their human owners half to death. At least I know Cali does. I think she enjoys it. Just look at her face in that last picture. It's like she can't believe she got me to jump that high. I know she was thinking "Booyah."

A Gift

Shannon has an email friend named Myfy. Myfy is the daughter of a man that Michael works with. Shannon and Myfy have never met in person, but they have struck up a pen pal kind of correspondence with each other through email.

Recently Myfy asked Shannon how her Halloween was and Shannon told her it stunk because she was sick with the piggy fever and as such, was unable to dress up in her costume and go trick or treating with her friends. Myfy thought this was such a terrible story and wrote to Shannon saying how sorry she was.

When Michael went into work today, this bag was sitting on his desk:

It was a gift from Myfy to Shannon. In it was candy and a note. Myfy decided that she would take some of her Halloween candy (she even got her little brothers to donate some of theirs) as well as some other pieces she bought and give them to Shannon. She felt it just wasn't right that Shannon should miss out on all the fun and she deserved some Halloween candy.

I cannot tell you what this did to me. When Michael told me about it I almost started crying. This girl, whom Shannon has never met, went out of her way to take up a collection of candy and send it in for her. It was quite possibly the sweetest thing ever.

Shannon was beyond tickled by this. She went through all the candy, looking at each piece and saying how sweet it was that Myfy and her little brothers did this for her. It completely made her day.

Our Version of Halloween Fun

We had big plans this Halloween. Shannon was going to go to her best friend's birthday party while Michael and I were going to get copious amounts of take out food and watch Drag Me To Hell while we pigged out on it. But as the saying goes, life is what happens while you're busy making plans.

Or, in our case, it's more like "Swine flu is what happens while you're busy making plans."

Shannon went to school Friday morning with a slight sore throat. She had no fever, no cough, no nothing. When Michael and I picked her up from school she told us "I felt awful all day. My neck hurt and I felt so tired. I went to the school nurse and she took my temperature and said it was 99." That is when I noticed her cheeks were really flush so we took her home and checked her temp. It was 102.6. We immediately called her doctor who said "Bring her in NOW". Thankfully our doctor is right up the street so we got her in quickly. By the time we got there her fever was 103 so they did a strep test (negative) and a Swine Flu test (positive). They said we brought her in extremely early so they'd be able start her on Tamiflu right away which would help her from getting really sick.

The minute Shannon heard she had Swine Flu, she started crying. She was going to miss out on her best friend's party and Halloween which stunk because she is 14, she's getting older and pretty soon she wouldn't be able to go out anymore and this was going to be the worst Halloween EVER.

To say I felt like the world's worst mother (even though none of this was my doing) is an understatement.

But I quickly changed my attitude and thought "I am DETERMINED to make this Halloween fun for her, no matter what."

First thing we did? We took the Halloween candy we were going to hand out and put it in a bucket for her along with a giant chocolate cat we got her weeks ago from Godiva. I said I knew it wasn't the same as trick or treating but at least she still got a boat load of candy and we knew it was safe because we gave it to her and not some lunatic.

The second thing we did was put on our Harry Potter style hats and carve pumpkins.

My father gave her this wizard's hat several years ago for Christmas. One time she put it on and tried to read my mind by asking me to think of a number between 1 and 10 and she would guess it. I told her she got the number wrong on the first turn, but after that I told her she guessed correctly! This went on for 5 solid minutes. When we were done she said "This is the best gift Grandpa ever gave me!" My father loves this story and all Shannon has to say about it is "I was the stupidest kid ever."
I think this picture says "I'm so glad I'm stuck at home with my mom and dad on Halloween and not out having fun with my friends."
Notice the rubber gloves? She wasn't wearing those because we were trying to keep her cooties to herself. She was wearing them because she HATES the feel of pumpkin guts.
As you can see, Tamiflu is a miracle drug.
Here is my pumpkin. Let's call it "Bats In Jen's Belfry."
This is Shannon's pumpkin. I think this came out so dang awesome. Shannon said it was an homage to Salem's Lot which I am currently reading and telling her all about. Needless to say she will not walk by a window at night if the shades are up.
And here they are together. See the lid on my pumpkin? I cut it out wrong so that when I went to put it on, it felt right through and on to the lit candle. I had to pull it on and put it on crooked so it would stay there.

After the pumpkin carving was done we settled down with pizza and began a Halloween movie festival. We started out with "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!", a perennial favorite (especially when Snoopy starts howling while Schroeder plays the piano. It always makes me laugh). Then we showed Shannon "Psycho". She had never seen this so it was that much more fun. She jumped at least 3 times and in the end proclaimed it "The most suspenseful movie" she's ever seen. We capped our evening off by turning off all the lights and listening to the original, uncut Orson Well's version of the War of the Worlds from October 30, 1938. That was very cool.

I hope you all had a great (and germ free) Halloween!

I've Got Mad Driving Skills

Yesterday was nasty, cold, rainy and all together unpleasant day. One of those days where you stay in the house watching movies or reading a book under a cozy blankie.

That is, unless you're me.

I had a lot to do out in the rain. I had to go to Wal Mart to get laundry detergent and other sundries. I also had to pick Shannon up from school, take her home to get her a snack, then drive her back up to the school for clarinet lessons.

All of that went fairly well, that is until we got home for her snack. There was a large branch blocking the entire width of the driveway.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this branch hanging precariously over the end of our driveway. When I pointed it out to Michael he said "I'd better call someone to cut that down."

No need for that anymore.

Luckily, I have mad driving skills so I was able to avoid running into the branch. Instead I swerved, went off the driveway and onto the yard where I hit our garbage can because it was, in fact, garbage day. Picture if you will a move that is cross between Action Jackson and Clark Griswold. It was that graceful.

Thankfully I didn't hit it hard and the garbage had already been picked up because if I'd hit it with force and sent garbage flying everywhere, I would have sat down in the rain and started eating my own hair.

The branch was huge. I mean HUGE. And of course, it was raining, which made the entire experience that much more enjoyable. I dragged the behemoth branch to the top of our driveway, which I'm sure was comical for all those driving by. Nothing like watching a woman drag a huge tree limb up a long driveway while soaked and covered with mud.

Good times people. Good times.

When all this was said and done, I had 10 minutes to change my clothes, make myself some coffee and take Shannon back up to school for her lessons. Of course, she was in a great mood and extremely understanding to my plight. She didn't nag me AT ALL about us running late.

In the end, we survived. And I gave you all something to laugh about. I'll be here all week folks!

A Harsh Realization

The other day, I walked into the living room and Shannon asked "Have you seen this ad Mom?" I looked at the TV and said no, I hadn't, so she rewound it and we watched it together.



When it got to the end where the dog runs up to the little girl, I got a tad bit misty-eyed and said "Oh my gawd...that ad tried to kill me!"

Shannon said "I know, right? I started crying!" Then she added "They are showing that at the wrong time of the month for me."

My daughter is not only old enough to make PMS jokes, but she is now old enough to understand them and make them effectively.

That's messed up.

Weekend Update

What a weekend I had!

Well...it's more like "What a Sunday I had!" because Saturday was a blur of sleeping in, under cooking muffins for breakfast, going out to lunch, shopping at Target for things I had no idea I needed, copious amounts of rain and a showing of The Wizard of Oz at our house.

I'd show you pictures of it all, but I didn't capture any. Sorry.

Instead I'll show you picture of my Sunday which was WAY more fun.

We got up bright and early Sunday morning and headed into Boston and the Museum of Science to see the new Harry Potter exhibit.

Warning: The Harry Potter dork quotient is going to be very high on this post. If you're a Potter fan (i.e. spaz) like me, you'll understand everything I say. If not, I apologize ahead of time.

Photography was not allowed in the exhibit, which I was kind of upset about, but then I thought it was okay because it meant I was going to get to see everything and enjoy it, instead of looking at it through my camera lens, which is usually what happens to me.

Fortunately, there were a couple of props from the movies in the lobby of the Museum of Science. The fist thing we saw was this giant chess piece from the Wizarding Chess scene in the first Harry Potter movie.
This thing was enormous. It's one thing to see it in the movie, but something different in real life...
Shannon looks impressed with it, doesn't she?
Actually, she really was impressed with it. Obviously she was discussing the finer points of Wizarding Chess with Michael and her grandmother.
Here's a full shot of it for you. I'm choosing to believe this is the piece Ron rode on in the movie.
Once we got into the main section of the museum, I saw this out of the corner of my eye and fah-reaked out. It was the Flying Car!
There were a ton of people standing around looking at this car.
See? They wouldn't get out of my shot. Infuriating.
It was the actual car! Ron and Harry both sat in this! Too cool!
A close up of the name of the car...
And a close up of the license plate. I love this car and want one in the worst way.
The corridor that lead to the exhibit was lined with flags from each of the houses at Hogwarts. It was very cool.

Unfortunately, this is where the pictures at the museum end. The exhibit was a lot of fun. It was mostly costumes and props from the movies, but it was so cool to see it all in person. We got to see Ron's wand (there was no Spell-o-Tape on it, which I thought was lame but it could have been the second wand he got after he broke the first one) as well as the Howler his mother sent him in the second movie (I really wish I could send someone a Howler. How awesome would that be?). Some of my favorite things we saw were the wardrobe that had the Bogart in it from the third and the Skivving Snackboxes from the fifth movie. Shannon's favorite items she saw were the dress Hermione wore to the Yule Ball (which she said was better in real life) and all the Dark Arts items (go figure).

I should have taken pictures in the gift shop because it looked like a store in Diagon Alley. It was so cool. I bought my fair share of crap (actually, more than my fair share) including a wand. I wanted to take it home, point it at our cat Cali and say "Wingardium Leviosa!" but I thought that might not work so I'd try "Levi Corpus!" but then I thought floating the cat around the house might be cruel so I didn't. Shannon got herself a T-shirt that says "Dumbledor's Army" on the front with the signatures of all the members on the back. The fact that she got this speaks volumes about her personality.

It was lunch time when we left the museum, so we headed over to the North End to have lunch at our favorite restaurant, Limoncello's.
While we were eating lunch, Shannon decided that she would pull a My Name is Earl and close her eyes in every picture I took of her. Here is number one.
This is my still life Italian lunch shot.
Here is what I had for lunch: the Rosette Limoncello. It is Rosette pasta, montasio cheese, mushrooms, prosciutto and white truffle oil. I'm fairly certain it is 15,000 calories, all from fat and I don't give a damn because it's like Heaven on a plate.
It was so beautiful out yesterday. The restaurant had these flowers lined up out front. They were so bright and pretty I couldn't resist.
I got a shot of Shannon (picture number two with the eyes closed), my mother-in-law and Michael together outside the restaurant. Interesting fact: right around the corner from the restaurant is Paul Revere's house. Pretty cool, huh?
After lunch we walked down to our favorite bakery called Lyndell's and got several savory treats. While Michael was paying I was able to capture picture number three in the ongoing "Shannon has her eyes closed" series of the day.

I hope you had a good weekend as well. Anyone do anything fun and exciting?

My Day With Kreg

A month or so ago one of my virtual bff's Lorrie celebrated her 500th blog post. She asked her friends and readers to pull out their crayons, glitter and any other art supplies they could get their hands on and make her cards congratulating her on this feat (I've got to remember this tactic. The next time I feel like I need a pick me up, I may just do this). She received some great cards (even a big piece of toffee that had a hand written message on it) but the one that got the most attention was a full size poster her reader Kreg had sent of himself.

Lorrie, being the creative and always funny person that she is, decided she would take Kreg all over New York City and have fun with him. The post she wrote about that adventure was one of her funniest by far.

It was then she decided to hack Kreg apart and send the parts to her other online friends, a la Flat Stanley style, and have them write blog posts about their adventures with Flat Kreg. I was one of the lucky ones to get a piece of Flat Kreg.

I had a hard time deciding what I should with Flat Kreg. After all, the possibilities were endless...

My husband (the MIT grad) suggested I do a cloning experiment on Flat Kreg. I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with the implications that would arise, but then I thought I could put all the clones to work. One could clean the house, one could do the laundry, one could do the grocery shopping and one could be my personal assistant and treat me like Mariah Carey.
After the cloning, I thought "I know! I can help Flat Kreg with his Halloween costume!" I decided he should go as the Black Eyed Peas.

Just let that one sink in for a minute.
It was such a beautiful fall day that I thought flying a balloon and having fun with it outside would be great, but then I worried about Flat Kreg floating away and we all know how that might turn out...
In the end we decided to just go in and watch America's Funniest Home Videos. Because really? There is nothing more fun than sitting around and laughing at men getting hit the crotch, people wiping out on bikes or homely babies making funny faces. See? Flat Kreg loved it.