Five things I love about my new oven

1. It's not mustard yellow.
2. The oven door opens.
3. It's self-cleaning.
4. The right rear burner works.
5. The drawer under the oven opens. Trust me, in our living quarters any gain in storage space is a blessed event.
   

Thanksgiving

Here are the highlights and lowlights of Thanksgiving:

• Surprising my parents--My siblings and I have been planning a surprise family reunion for a year now, and we managed to pull it off without anyone spilling the beans to my parents. My brother, S, arrived with his family the Friday before Thanksgiving. When my parents arrived on Tuesday night, they were shocked to see him here. After they recovered somewhat, my dad asked, "So is K [my sister] arriving tomorrow morning?" "'Fraid not," I said, which was technically true because she wasn't arriving until Wednesday night. Of course, I slipped up Wednesday morning while talking to my SIL in the same room as my mom. I was worried that my mom had heard and would only pretend to be surprised when K showed up. But she was just as stunned to see K as she had been to see S, and I'm pretty sure she can't fake the tears. (By the way, this is the reason I've been so silent on the blog this month. I was paranoid about inadvertantly saying something about the reunion.)
• Spending time with my family--It has been seven years since I've been together with both of my siblings at the same time, although I have seen them individually more recently. It's been 10 years since all of us, including Michael, have been together. They're a pretty good group, if I do say so myself.
• Getting a family picture taken--We found a professional photographer willing to take on such a large group for such a small job. He worked very quickly, so I was worried about the quality, but when he dropped off the CD of pictures, I was impressed.
  
• Baking pies with Mom and my SIL--We all like our desserts, so we ended up making 15 pies. For 19 people. I do still have one apple pie in the freezer, but only because of the next item (and only lowlight).
  
• Oven dying on Wednesday night--Actually, the oven heats fine. The door just won't open. (We had to pry the door off the oven to get out the meatloaf before it burned.) This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, because we put K and her family in the apartment, which has an oven. But instead of being able to use two ovens, we had to make due with cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 19 people in one oven. It was a little more hectic than I had planned. (On a positive note, my new, non-mustard-yellow oven is arriving tomorrow!)

It was my best Thanksgiving ever, and I'm so glad my family members were able to make the trip out here. Thanks, guys!

Fun with pot lids

LW and I spent a good portion of the evening yesterday playing with two pot lids he'd liberated from the kitchen cabinet.

In no particular order, he pretended that they were

• ice cream cones we had to lick
• bowls of soup we had to slurp
• shields to protect us as we went to "find the creatures"
• ears
• "school bus" cake we had to eat
• flowers we had to sniff
  

I have a bone to pick with you people

OK, so not all of you. ;-) Just whoever recommended those vampire books.

Starting in August, I've been hearing people talking about the Stephenie Meyer vampire books. The first person was Michael's mom, who mentioned to Michael that she was thinking of getting me one of them for my birthday. Michael--after asking me if I'd heard of them, which I hadn't--discouraged her, saying he didn't think I was into vampire books. (I enjoy watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I wouldn't say I'm into vampire stories as a genre.)

Then, people started raving about them on message boards I frequent. People who usually recommend the latest literary novel and intelligently discuss Shakespeare. Once I was aware of them, it seemed that everyone was talking about them.

So when I talked to my sister this week and she mentioned she had read them and enjoyed them, I decided that maybe I wouldn't wait until January to read them. I have been in a funk this week with Michael gone, a good fluffy book might be just the ticket.

I was in luck. The first book had just been returned to the library and I was able to check it out on Wednesday while waiting for EM to finish his trumpet lesson. It has about 500 pages; I stayed awake until 2:30 reading.

Thankfully, the library is closed on Thursdays. When I picked the kids up from school on Friday, I stopped at the library to drop off the first book and see if the other two were still in. They were, so I checked them both out. The librarian commented on my "heavy reading." Heh. I was quick to disabuse her of that notion. True, the books have 500 pages each, but they are fluff. Pure fluff. Literary candy corn.

And just as addictive.

I finished book two at 9:00 that night, and decided that I would start, just start, book three. Heh. Seven and a half hours later, I finished the last page and turned out the light.

But here is my real complaint. I thought this was a trilogy. Three books. Read and enjoyed. But book three doesn't have the sort of finality one expects from the conclusion to a trilogy, so looked at the covers more closely. Just as I feared. It's a series. One cover even used the term saga.

And the next book isn't due out until October 2008.

*sigh* I don't like series. Rather, I love series once they are all finished. I hate waiting for authors to finish series. For one thing, they tend to want, you know, a life. Sometimes they get fickle about finishing, or, heaven forbid, die before they finish. And I'm convinced that the longer an author works on a series, the more likely he or she is to make changes to the characters that I don't like.

It's going to be a long year.

(And no, I'm really not mad. And yes, in spite of the series thing, I'm glad I read them now.)

IM 1, Branson MC 0

While we were in Branson, we attended a dinner at the condo development that was designed to give us a sampling of the different shows we could attend that week. While we ate, different acts stopped by to do a number or two from their show and pass out fliers about show times and prices. Holding the show together and entertaining us in between acts was a singer/MC.

We were sitting front and center, and there were very few kids, so when the MC wanted to tell a joke, he asked, "Why did the turkey cross the road?" and pointed the microphone at IM. She blinked and said, "Because the chicken was on strike."

Not the answer he was expecting. The crowd laughed and he asked IM if she thought that up on the spot or had heard the joke already. She admitted it was the latter, and as he turned away, she said to me, "Anyone who's read Jokelopedia: The Biggest, Best, Silliest, Dumbest Joke Book Ever would know the answer to that!" The MC saw that she was talking, so he asked her to repeat what she'd just said. So she did.

The crowd roared. The MC gave her two CDs of his music. IM buried her head in my lap.

*sigh* And I wonder why I have a hard time teaching her when she's being funny and when she's being sassy.

Preschool side-effects

Now that LW has settled into preschool, I'm noticing some unexpected side effects:

• He is showing some (small) progress in picking up after himself. Specifically, when I go to get him, he says, "Pack up" and puts what's left of his lunch either back in his lunch box or in the garbage can. We are still working on tranferring this behavior to home.
  
• He is obsessed with the toilet. "Me use toilet!" he insists several times a day. Of course, he is almost never able to perform, so it's largely wasted time.
• He is slightly more willing to walk on his own instead of being carried. My back appreciates this. (Those of you with light babies, take a moment to be thankful.)
• He knows songs I don't know. Actually, I might know them, but I don't recognize them from his descriptions. He finds this more than a little frustrating. (Note to self: Ask the teachers if they know which song is the "Garbage Truck Song.")