Surprised by unicorns

I keep forgetting we even have a unicorn. It's much less common than dragons, around here. Twice now in the last two days Jonathan has totally boggled me - I was concentrating on other things and suddenly, bam! A unicorn enters the conversation!

Jonathan to Meg: "Go. Go quickly. Without unicorns."

Jonathan: "Gahh. I just tripped on a unicorn."

It's not even a whole unicorn. It's a stick unicorn, like a stick horse. And it has felt leaves in its mane. We got it from Ikea.

Supermodels and dragon collections

A well-meaning woman at the store complimented Meg on her glasses. "You look like a supermodel!"
This seemed to puzzle Meg, so I thanked the lady on her behalf. Sure enough, she asked me, "What's a supermodel?" I described it as someone who tries on clothes for someone to take pictures of them, which completely befuddled her. Adults are incredibly weird. She assured me she did not want to be a supermodel.

Meg also doesn't approve of princesses or fairies. She does not want any princess or fairy anything for Christmas, so don't get her any. The examining room at the pediatrician's office offended her deeply because it had princess stickers all over the walls, and she told me so very loudly, and furthermore that girls don't like princesses. Boys like princesses! A completely random passing doctor was apparently amused, or distressed, or something, and came in to try and persuade her that some kids, boys and girls both, actually do like princesses. She wasn't very successful.

This week we're listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on CD as we drive in the car. (We drive plenty.) Queen Lucy is apparently okay, not being a princess. I paused the story as we arrived at the dragon's cave and had Meg guess what Eustace would find inside.

"I don't know."
"What do dragons like to collect?" I prompted her.
"Stones?"
"Yes! What kind of stones?"
"Arkenstones?"
 Dragons do like to collect Arkenstones, so there. Ha!

I am so proud of Meg's cultural attainment. 

Fierce guardians of the library cards

I'm seriously having issues with the Berryville library. The librarians may have layers like onions, because they guard their library cards as jealously as an ogre its toll bridge. For background. Berryville has pretty much no bureaucracy and everything but the post office, even the library, is physically in the same building.

So I was caught flat-footed the day I tried to get my new library card, present address firmly in mind and two small girls in tow. I was informed in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to check things out I had to come back with suitable papers - they handed me a list - and have a nice day.

So I perused the list. Utility bill. Okay. So yesterday, while Jonathan watched the girls, I went back with a utility bill and two or three other items to prove our Berryville residence. They didn't like them either. Those papers were in Jonathan's name. (Because, guess what, he called to set up our utilities.) Aren't they in my name too? Obviously not. Could the librarian call Jonathan to confirm he's my husband? No. They don't do that. Bring them a piece of mail with my name on it. Any piece of mail will do. [Hmm.]

I left, defeated.

A sympathetic relative asked if I was considering identity theft yet.

So today, after church, and meeting our landlady, and after determining that I needed chocolate chips for a Death By Chocolate zucchini cake with ganache and that I had to go out to the grocery store, I dropped by the library again. I took several items of mail with my name and current address on it - an ad from the utility company, an ad from Garnet Hill, and some kind of insurance statement. "Any piece of mail will do" was replaying in my mind.

The Berryville library is closed on Sundays.

The entire Berryville county building is apparently closed on Sundays.

The end.



On happier topics, when Jonathan's parents came down last week, they brought a whole bin of my old toys, including a collection of stuffed animals. Meg is particularly fond of one I called Asenath, after Joseph's Egyptian wife. Meg doesn't like that name, though. "Have you seen Little Miss Kitty? She's white and fluffy. She's the one Mom calls Asthma."

I love her more than monsters, too

"Mommy, you're the best mommy and God's the best God of any other gods in the whole world! I love you and God more than monsters." She frowned. "I don't love monsters." Then she gave me a kiss. "That's because I love you so, so much."

She's so sweet.
Jonathan: "And quotable."

::update:: Meg came and kissed me again. "Just because I love you. QUOTE IT!"

Small doings

Quote of the day: "Edmund is a bad pentaceratops." Meg
Me: "Edmund isn't a pentaceratops at all, bad or otherwise." He's her friend.
Meg: "Yes he is! He's a pentaceratops!"
Usually she's better at identifying dinosaurs than that.

In non-dinosaur news, we had macaroni and cheese with salad for lunch. Meg ate her salad happily and I had to force her to try a bite of the macaroni.

In other news, my summer shoe collection has kept shrinking. One can't really wear boots year-round, and I keep outgrowing or wearing out my old sneakers and sandals. My pink flowered Converses bit the dust ages ago and these days the whole brand is too narrow for me. I looked at Keds, which do come in cute gingham print, but they weren't that inspiring. Mostly what's available right now is neon running shoes, which would be fine if I liked running, looking like I go running, or neon. I'd really rather have something a little more... discreet. Dressy. Versatile. So today I found a lovely pair of leopard-and-gold sneakers. I saw them and decided they spoke to my soul AND would match pretty much all my casual clothes, which is a little terrifying, but there you have it. They were on clearance. I can't imagine why.

The unicorn egg

We have developed a mystery. We got a unicorn egg for Christmas with no return address.

It's a white egg about six inches long that splits open to project rainbows. I think it works on a principle of LED lights and a curved mirror, and I never knew such a thing existed. Did we need a unicorn egg? No. Is it awesome? YES. It is especially awesome in connection with Meg's new star projector nightlight. I will treasure it always. Jonathan, on the other hand, started singing about Strongbad and his crystal fortress.

However, I do not know who would have mailed us one all the way from China. (Naturally, China would be a final refuge for unicorns, where else?) We guessed it was from Jonathan's parents' business partner, but he doesn't know anything about it.

So, my friends, if you sent us a unicorn egg, please let me know so I can thank you.

Cultural reasons

Meg was abusing her spoon privileges by splattering milk off her tray, so Jonathan confiscated it.

Meg: "I need a spoon! I need a spoon!"

Jonathan: "I need it for cultural reasons."

Me: ::snicker::

Meg: "I need a spoon!"

Jonathan, taking heart, and acquiring a mostly Scottish accent: "No. Today is the traditional Day of Spoon-Taking, as exemplified in the folk song "Johnny will ye no gi'e me back ma spoon," to which the traditional chorus goes, "No I willna gi'e ye back your spoon," traditionally sung from the highlands to the lowlands. And, of course: the traditional spoon dance." Which he proceeded to do, with a lot of hopping around and some spoon-waving, neener-neener style. Briefly there was an L for loser on his forehead too, but we decided that wasn't authentic.

Meg: "I need a SPOON!"

I tell you a mystery

Today was Meg's long-standing two-year-old appointment with her new pediatrician. I found the paperwork the new office had sent me, filled it out, filled out (and got Jonathan to fax) the records request for her old pediatrician which I meant to do in December but lost the paper, and called both her old pediatrician and new to make sure everybody knew where records were being faxed.

I got directions and the address, and made it home from grocery shopping to leave on time, and we found the place with no problem. We were ON TIME. This is news, y'all.

Only the receptionist had no record of our appointment. Or of Meg. Or of the doctor's name in my calendar. And the paperwork I'd filled out had been discontinued two months ago.

?!

I should have suspected something was wrong when I didn't get a reminder call, but some offices don't give them.

Double-checked my calendar and my notebook. The doctor's name I wrote down was actually a different pediatrician who had also been recommended by friends. All I can figure is I got mixed up somewhere, because I made a lot of doctor and dentist appointments the day I set it up. But what I want to know is, if the appointment was actually for Other Doctor, how on earth did I get blank paperwork from the office at this address?

Since this office had also been recommended by friends, I set up a new appointment for Friday. The poor records lady confided to me she had a migraine. Meg and I had the good end of the deal, because we went home by way of the toy store train set and then it started snowing.

The mythical island produce stand

It all sounded so innocent. Here we are on Chincoteague, and Kay and I are up for doing dinner tonight. Meg's just down for her nap and should sleep another couple of hours. There's supposed to be this produce stand on Church Street, which is just a couple of blocks over, so we should run see if they have fresh asparagus for dinner! Wouldn't that be yummy with a little melted butter?

Yeah.

So cheerfully we venture forth. Only Kay's car is parked in the back and everybody would have to move for us to get out, but it's okay, we'll walk; I'm wearing my high-heeled cute boots from Lexington, but it's not far. First thing, we discover a shortcut to the beach and the dollar store. Nice.

About three or four blocks later we find Church Street, with the help of Kay's iphone. Left or right? Um... Left. We walk. And walk. I decide I'm desperate enough to ask directions, so I stop at the hardware store and ask the man behind the counter if there's a vegetable stand around here. He jumps up and leads me out to the road.

"Yeah! See that boot, right there?"

Are we talking a lawn ornament? I see houses, yards, a giant half-buried anchor, and a boat trailer. "Oh, you mean the boat?"

"Yeah, the boot. The produce stand is right behind that boot."

I thank him and we walk on. We pass a Strings 'N' Things music store, with "Hey darlin" on the sign and the owner sitting in the front yard. I wave.

The produce stand is labeled, but it looks more like a construction site. However, we've come all this way, and I'm not about to go home without at least trying for some asparagus. We weave past the trucks and piles of bricks into the room with the blaring music. The proprietor is busy sanding boards.

"Got any produce?" I ask. That's not going down in any "great lines of the century" compendia.

The proprietor very politely explains that this early in the season, there's not enough business to sell produce during the week, so he's working construction now but the stand will be open on the weekend. We thank him and leave him to his cabinet, repeating "Got any produce" at intervals. Brilliant.

After that, we decide to walk downtown and find a grocery store. Or something. We wander past the post office for stamps and a t-shirt place for postcards, and Kay's iphone directs us to a grocery store. About now my feet are killing me, so we pause and sit on every bench we pass and stand up really straight in between. I toy with calling Lisa to come rescue us. Oh well.

Frozen green beans in hand, we head home. I take off my socks and shoes and go barefoot the last block. As Kay pointed out, the main thing about any adventure is to make it home with all appendages attached. Check!

General update

I realized I hadn't posted for a few days, so I thought I'd drop in. Next week (and the week after!) are looking full.

Today was a quiet and book-full Sunday. I read an entire YA book from yesterday's library run, Elizabeth C. Bunce's Star Crossed. It was pretty good, though a little too magic-ey to be a complete favorite. But it sucked me in well enough to read in one sitting and I want the sequel when it comes out. So that's a recommendation. It reminded me a little of the Attolia books and of the Stardust movie. Also, in case you're wondering like I was, the main plot does not involve lovers. Yes!

Skimming through my blogs, I'm so impressed with what everybody's doing with themselves. Maggie is writing period letters to go with her historical reenactment, authentic ink and handwriting and all; Holly is writing very intelligent legal-political columns; and all my other bloggers seem to be coming out with lovely springy projects and pretty houses and food, or organizing medieval source websites, or losing thirty pounds, or something. Of course that's what they do, but still.

One side effect of motherhood nobody warned me about is how it seems to turn your brains to mush. Jonathan tells me Meg hasn't eaten my brains, just my oomph. Either way, cooking real non-prefab food has been almost nonexistent around here lately, at the pasta or pancakes level. I did manage to hem a [FABULOUS if I do say so myself] maxi skirt yesterday and take in the waist. Does that count? I've never been a terribly high-energy person, and I know comparisons are odorous, as Dogberry put it, but it would be nice to feel really clever and effective. And a perfect housekeeper, who never has crusted blobs on the table. Yep. That would be lovely. Do perfect housekeepers even exist? Aren't they mythical, like the haggis-beast?

Coming up, we've got batches of company, a doctor's appointment, and half a spring break in Chincoteague with friends. And in less than a month, Jonathan graduates! WOOHOO!

War pig

Today we came across a vanity plate reading "warpig." I had an instant vision of the Great Battle Sows of the North galloping up a hill, little red capes fluttering behind them. Grunt! Grunt! Jonathan's vision included Canadian flags as the capes.

Haggis is a real critter

...according to 18% of Britons in this poll. Either that, or a Harry Potter character.

Ack!

Training dragons

Jonathan's parents were kind enough to come babysit Meg last night, so Jonathan and I went on a date! We saw How to Train Your Own Dragon (in 3D, so for an extra $3.50 each. Surprise!). It was, if not actually a fun movie, at least a movie with fun parts.

The 3D was great. It added a lot. You'd look over a hill, and a dragon would really jump out at you. Ack! The animation was very nice - beautiful, in places, and quite detailed, right down to the limpets on the ship. And that meeting hall, with lovely carvings - ahh. I'd live in Burk happily.

The story editor failed, though. And the guy in charge of characters. The plot hit a whole rainbow of cliches: villains are misunderstood rather than actually evil, the (also misunderstood) teenager will keep secrets from his parents but that's okay, teenagers know best and will save the world for the grown-ups, Dad will apologize in the climax, etc. The characters were also pretty cliche'd and shallow, with a couple exceptions. We had a fat fanboy, two really annoying bickering siblings, a warrior chica, and a fawning rival for the chica's hand.

Said chica... sigh. There is, in fact, a place for lady warriors. Eowyn from Lord of the Rings has a rather good one. But I don't see why every movie needs a girl wearing (ferret?) skulls on her belt who needs to prove she's Just As Good As Any Stupid Boy At Boys' Activities. I want to see a heroine who has feminine qualities, somewhere, somehow. If women aren't allowed to be women, but have to be men, isn't that kind of denigrating to women? Just asking...

The most interesting character was the dad's friend, the blacksmith and dragon-fighting-trainer. He was a sensible person, fun to be around, and gave good advice (except for his unenlightened prejudice against dragons who after all had only been trying to kill him his entire life, but oh well). There was one really good scene where the blacksmith and the dad have an actual conversation about what to do with Hiccup (main character). The blacksmith advised they let accident-prone Hiccup learn to fight dragons like he'd been begging to, on the grounds that he would get into trouble one day and really should be equipped to handle it. The dad actually took this advice. I only wish the plot hadn't then invalidated this sensible decision by making the training totally unnecessary.

The dad and the blacksmith had a great relationship. They're obviously both brave and great guys. There's a lot of medieval instances of such friendships, from Roland and Oliver on down, so I thought that really fit in this movie. In the last scene we get to see them working together (oh yeah!). It would have been much more fun to have lots of scenes with those two, rather than so many with the selfish and puerile teenagers. Also, possibly then the dad could have spent most of the movie showing his virtue rather than apparently being dumb.

The biggest gaping plot hole was the ending. Spoiler! We all come together, men, teens, and dragons, by fighting the ginormous other dragon. I'm really not clear why we should make friends with normal dragons but it's great to kill the big one. Er? Surely the giant dragon was only wicked because someone had kicked him as a dragonling? But except for being wildly inconsistent, that was a good scene, in which nearly everyone got to be heroic.

So. Overall, it was a perfectly adequate movie. Technically it was great, but it could have used a lot of refining.

Why we aren't spies

"Maybe you want haggis for breakfast - variety and mystery in one meat! And maybe a little self-deception too, if you believe the tales of the haggis-beast." Jonathan

Uh-oh. Nobody's told him haggis-beasts are for real. See? I found a picture on the internet. I think they have long hair like those highland cows, to keep them warm in those long cold winters. A similarity with Scottish cattle would also explain why haggises don't taste good: I definitely don't recommend hamburgers in Scotland. (Though pretty much everything else we ate was wonderful. Except the Chinese food.) But that's by the by.

In other news, we've been discovering just how much we converse at night when one or the other of us isn't actually awake. Several times Jonathan has given me the equivalent of "yes, dear," and rolled right over. I hear that I greeted Jonathan when he came to bed last night, and thanked him for getting up to take care of Meg. I have no memory of this. At least our automatic response systems are polite.

And probably we shouldn't take up espionage anytime soon!

Dragonishness

Lars Walker has an entertaining rant up about the new Dreamworks movie "How to Train Your Dragon." I observe from the trailer that in addition to the other stereotypes it appears to feature an armor-wearing chica.

We might go see it anyway, but thus far I'm unimpressed. Dreamworks has been pretty hit-or-miss with its productions, but I'm willing to forgive it much for "Kung Fu Panda."

I failed

Yesterday afternoon, John Who Goes to Conferences stopped by my desk. We chatted a minute about this and that, and then I noticed he was fiddling with some kind of knit armband with a purple logo on it.

"What's that?" I ask.
"You don't know?" (Clearly not.) "Blockbuster last Fourth of July, also 1985?"
"I was in Scotland last Fourth of July..."
John taps it meaningfully, as if by looking more closely at it, I will comprehend all. I rack my brains for movies that came out last summer. It's not Kung Fu Panda, and it's not the classic Batman symbol, but maybe there's more than one?
"Batman?"
"TRANSFORMERS! Transformers. Robots in disguise!" And with that, he went off shaking his head. I definitely failed.

Old medieval things of interest

Here the reader may learn of Pictish princesses and the name Eithne (or Enya). Eithne was a convert of St. Patrick and also the mother of St. Columba. The post also looks into why a particular Pictish Eithne got a mention in the Irish annals. I tend to agree with the theory that she had something to do with the church, and was therefore of interest to the Irish monkish annalists.

The lady Aethelthryth, my dragon's namesake, also gets a mention. Hat tip: Unlocked Wordhoard.

It is a lovely place, my house*

It's very nice, having a house.
This is the bookshelf, obtained with such great effort. It leans a trifle drunkenly, but a bookshelf it is.




This is the dragon Aethel- thryth, made by Amelia for me. She looks good on the medieval lit shelf, but Beowulf makes her nervous.

And, last but not least, this maple lives outside my kitchen window. :-)

*However, my house contains no Turkish Delight whatsoever, so trekking here midwinter to betray your siblings will do you no good.

Mummy 3

"Mummy 3: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," which Jonathan wishes to subtitle "The Sad Abuse of Jet Li," has its moments. Kind of. But chiefly it's an awful little film.

It was doomed to fail because they didn't get Rachel Weisz back to be Evie O'Connell, and she was rockin' awesome. Maria Bello is not rockin' awesome. The script...I'm not sure if even Weisz could have saved it, but Bello certainly didn't. :-( Brendan Fraser and Jet Li were amusing, but they couldn't quite carry it off. It's basically the plots of the earlier Mummy movies with Pirates and the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. (I'm serious: the Evil Emperor gets Orc music. That's how you know he's Evil.)

Basic plot: that great kid Alex is all grown up and boring-ized and is excavating the Emperor's tomb in China and sorta-kinda has a girlfriend who tries to kill him but he doesn't mind, and his parents turn up in China and go all heavy-parent and insult her. But that's okay, because the evil (we aren't sure why, but they say so) Emperor is about to be wakened from the dead, and Alex's girlfriend's mission in life is to keep him from becoming immortal by preventing him from drinking at the Pool of Something-Or-Other in Shangri-La. The O'Connell parents forget they don't like her since there's a much more obvious threat. But the O'Connell parents have mysteriously become boring and suspicious since the last movie, and don't believe the girlfriend when she says the only way to kill the Emperor is by stabbing him through the heart with the special dagger her mother cursed. Naturally, The Worst occurs.

So the yetis hop in and out of the movie in an anime sort of way, and Evie's brother Jonathan is as greedy as ever, and the girlfriend's mother calls up an army of the dead to combat the Emperor's undead terra-cotta army. Why do otherwise rational beings want conquest-happy undead Emperors running round loose? Why do people persist in bringing back the souls of people who died badly and are likely to be very angry? And why, why, why do movies with unimpressive plots have to have dialogue as bad as all that?

Anyway, they eventually get it sorted out, kind of, and all the undead armies conveniently dissolve into dust, and Jonathan determines he's really going somewhere without mummies now. So he picks Peru. The last line of the movie was, "Then mummies were found in Peru..."

Dragonishness

Olwen has quite recovered from her run-in with the magician or old age or Entropy, whichever it was; a battery transplant cured her ailments, and she's been her amiable self ever since.

However, ::deep sigh:: my computer Chrysophylax (the silver-loving Dragon of Turion) has been exhibiting signs of bewitchment. I tried to wake him up Sunday morning to do Sunday school, and he went into one of those endless loops. Daddy was able to joggle him into Safe Prompt Mode or some such, so I could do my word processing, but the network was completely off and Chrysophylax refused to acknowledge such mundane allies as CD drives or printers.

He did, however, work grudgingly with jump drives, so we were able to do a spot of memory-sharing and I made it to church all right.

I left him up all night, because I wasn't at all sure he'd ever awake again if I let him sleep, which perhaps explains his dragonish behavior today. Daddy got him into Last Good Configuration Mode, which was...not very good, actually. He's been temperamental. He burned one good CD backup and then started snarling error messages. Further, he won't let the kitchen computer burn backups of his data. You'd think I was trying to snitch his hoard or something.

I guess I am, come to think of it.

But it's my hoard, and he's supposed to be caretaker. Stewards are supposed to give their trust back to its owner...

I hope to coax him next with a really big jump drive.