Quite A Character

For weeks now, I've had a blank social calendar. Not much going on. No invites for any member of the family. And then--BLAMMO! It feels like everything in the world all converges on one day.

Next Saturday, we have been invited to:

Run in the first 5K that's ever taken place in our neighborhood with proceeds benefitting our church;

Attend a "cream cheese party" (yes, I am serious) hosted by a friend in which participants sample holiday goodies made out of a certain brand of cream cheese which in turn showers the partiers with freebies and product coupons;

Attend the fifth birthday party of the daughter of our dear friends in Louisville;

Eat dinner at Jason's boss's house; and...

Watch our own lovely daughter make her dramatic debut in her school drama club's musical (Grade School Musical: Beyond The No Character Zone!)

Unfortunately the timing and importance of the last item trumps everything earlier in the list except for the 5K, which is the thing I would most like to have a really good reason not to do. (Oh, let's be honest: dinner with the boss is worse.) I mean, I like to run, but this is November, and running in gloves and a scarf isn't so much on my list of favorite activities. (Though I have been known to jog on Turkey Day morning just to have an excuse to carb-load later in the day.)

The kid and her drama club have been practicing for weeks now. Ains does not have a speaking part, but is part of the ensemble, and so far as I can tell is exceedingly dedicated to being in the chorus line. At random times this weekend I caught her back in her room with her practice CD for the show playing while she goes over her moves.

"Ahhh! Wait, I messed that up!" I would hear her say, and she would backtrack and make sure her hands were in the air at the appropriate musical cue. She's quite serious about all this. I have no idea where she gets either her perfectionism or her desire to be on stage.

We have a full week of daily after-school dress rehearsals in front of us which may quell some of her enthusiasm, but I can't help but think that the drama bug has bitten and once she hits all of her cues and hears the applause Saturday it's going to be a done deal: she'll be a drama diva for life.

Which means a lot more weekends spent watching grade school musicals.

If you've ever had the privilege of watching young kids attempt to sing and act, you know that even dinner with the boss might be a better gameplan for a November Saturday night.

How To Survive An Alien Uprising

"Do aliens talk like this (high pitched squeal), or do aliens talk like this (low rumble)?"



Ainsley asked this at dinner last night, one of only about 500 questions about aliens we've gotten since Halloween. What do aliens eat? How do they sleep? Do they get cold? What does their skin feel like? And on and on and on.



Part of this is due to Ainsley watching a few minutes of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind before bed on Halloween, and part of it is due to her winning a little green alien figurine in a school game at her Halloween party. She has named the little green dude, "Ale-Wee" and carries him around from after supper until bedtime. She washes him at bath time and covers him with a Kleenex at night. For a cheap toy from Oriental Trading Co., he's getting a lot of mileage.



So since she's so curious about aliens, I want to give her an education about them. The following is everything I know about alien races courtesy of years of watching The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, Close Encounters, Alien and Aliens, John Carpenter's The Thing, and E.T., among others. Ains, it's time you learned the truth about your leetle green friend.



1. Most aliens want to take over your body, either via black oil, a worm placed carefully into the ear, or some other way which will enable said parasitic larvae to later pop unceremoniously from your torso and slither across the floor.



2. Even the ones who don't want to snatch your body and hatch a parasite there may want to further study you. Even the nice aliens have been known to use tractor beams to suck children up into the mother ship.



3. Some aliens are super nice, and mean you know harm, and just want to get home. But even those have been known to steal your toys to make elaborate telephones and to scare the bejeezus out of little sisters.

4. If Ale-Wee ever gets out of control, you can try a couple of different known alien-immobilizing tricks: stick a sharp instrument into the area where his head meets his spinal cord; throw a glass of water on him; aim a flame-thrower in his general direction (under parental supervision, of course.) One of these must do the trick.

Okay, kiddo! That pretty much covers it. Don't worry, though. If aliens do exist outside of movies, they probably wouldn't try to hurt us or take over our planet or laser-beam the White House. Probably. So have fun with your little alien, and enjoy the fact that your parents have thus far not allowed you to watch scary alien movies that forever scar you against short creatures with oversized eyes and overlong arms. Not that I know anybody whose parents did that or anything.

How I Feel Today

I try not to be a publicly sore loser. I also try not to gloat during good times. So I will sum up how I feel today in this video. The girl in the pinkish-purplish dress? Yeah, that's me.

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

I've Been Dissed (Disenfranchised), Yo

So when you hear today about Kenton County, Kentucky having eSlate electronic voting machine problems...that's my county, y'all. And that's the type of machine I voted on this morning after waiting in line an hour.

I love it when we make the news. And I really love it when I hear that my vote may not have counted.

The Cincy news sites are saying that those votes will be counted even though the machines have been shut down, but I can't help but worry. I double-checked my ballot and everything looked right, and I am not one to select a straight ticket on principle. But knowing that the machine I cast my vote on this morning has ceremoniously been unplugged for "irregularities"...yikes.

At least my mom's vote will count--I took her to the polls after I had voted (and sat in envy when she only had to wait in line 5 minutes at her tiny little precinct) and saw that the only machine available to her was one of the older machines (in our county, they don't have paper ballots as an option, thus the long lines for one or two machines.) And Jason said he voted on one of the older ones.

So there's that to comfort me.

But I can't help but think...is this really the best we can do? When everyone knew turnout would be 80%?

Only in Kentucky.

Holler back, kids. How long did you have to wait? And are you, too, possibly disenfranchised?

Blurg.

Trivia For Dummies

You've gotta be freakin' kidding me.

I saw the commercial for this last night. Really? Seriously? Three levels? Easy, medium, and hard?

If everybody with 3 brain cells knows it, can you call it trivia?

Oh, hell no.

I want Trivial Pursuit to stay MY game. The game I can do well at when I play with my well-educated (aka geeky) friends. The questions are supposed to be hard. That's kinda the point.

I am not an athlete. You will never find me draining 3s on a basketball court or winning the Flying Pig marathon. You will, however, find me with a bunch of pie pieces in my little plastic pie during a cut-throat late-night match of Trivial Pursuit. Especially if my uber-smart librarian friend is on my team.

Please don't take away the prestige in that. I wouldn't ask for you to create an "Easy" category for college basketball that would let me play with the likes of Michael Beasley (who the internets tell my geeky ass was one of the best college basketball players last year). So don't let the intellectual non-elite of the world be able to keep up with me on that wheel-shaped board.

If that sounds harsh, I am sorry. But my brain is the only thing I've got going for me. It is littered with useless facts left over from an expensive liberal arts education that prepared me for little other than binge drinking, graduate school, and, well, Trivial Pursuit.

And the three levels aren't the only change I have a beef with. According to descriptions there will be a track that lets players "steal wedges" (cheat!), "move opponents' pieces" (cheat!), and "more" (cheat cheat cheat!)

That just isn't right.

If you can't run with the big dogs, get off the porch. Go play your own "trivia" game (they already make Trivial Pursuit for Kids!) Leave Trivial Pursuit as that sometimes frustrating game with the questions only the most litter-brained can answer. If you think it's the "genius" edition instead of the "genus" edition because you have no idea what "genus" might mean, leave the game the frack alone.

Leave something sacred to the geeks. Let us continue to be the best at something besides quoting obscure cult movies and fixing problems with your computer.

Thank you.

Rock the Vote

Hey, y'all.

Here I am, 9:30 on a Monday night, watching the SNL election special, thinking about this loooong election season.

I came out of my left-sided closet on this blog some time ago. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Because here's the thing: I really and truly think it's great that there are people out there who have a different point of view than I do. I would never try to convert any one, because, hooray! We're allowed to disagree in this country. I am very fond of the idea that it takes both sides of the coin for there to be a coin. (This makes a lot of sense right now after some cold medicine and Wild Turkey American Honey bourbon to quiet my cough, so bear with me.) And I hope I didn't offend anyone with my Sarah Palin Halloween post...I just had a lot of fun that day. Don't hate me because I loves me some Tina Fey.

So here's my point:

Vote.

Vote for McCain. Vote for Obama. Vote for Barr. Write in Ron Paul. Just vote.

Because if you don't, you can't complain.

And complainin' is what this blog is all about.

Just kidding! (Mostly.)

Have a great election day. Agree to disagree with me. And let's rock the vote.

I Are The Champion, My Friends...

But my feet...will be hurting...'til the end... (bum bum BUM)

That picture I posted didn't do me justice (and I'm not bragging, it just didn't capture my Sarah-ness.) I won our faculty costume contest. I have walked in governor Palin's shoes all day and my feet are killing me. I have great sympathy for her now for no other reason than it's no fun being this "pretty" all the time.

Several students said,

"Mrs. Cranky, you look really pretty today."

And I am much cuter in full Palin makeup than I usually am.

Others said,,

"Wait...who are you? Are you supposed to be that one chick who's running against Obama?"

I have no response for that.

And still others said,

"You look as good as Tina Fey!"

Which, seeing as how Tina Fey is currently my favorite celebrity-type person, is very flattering while at the same time grossly untrue.

It all makes me so darned happy...