Friday is date night!

Sterling and I need to be better about date nights. Usually we just hang out together killing gnomes in World of Warcraft, but it's nice to do different things too. Our goal for the usual date night is a budget of $10, no babysitter to arrange, and only 30 minutes of prep time.

Tonight is Halloween, so I'm picking some of my favorite thrillers (notice I didn't say horror, those are just icky). I know some people can't stand black and white movies (more's the pity), so I've got a BW or a Technicolor for you to chose.




The first one is Psycho. The original brilliant version by Alfred Hitchcock released in 1960. Unlike most of today's scary movies, this film relies on building suspense, great storytelling, and creeptastic acting, particularly by Anthony Perkins. Hitch bought the rights to the novel for $9,000 then bought up every novel he could find so he could keep the ending a secret. Ah, those were the days...no internet leaks and spoilers. This was the first American film to show a toilet flushing on screen. Walt Disney refused to let Hitchcock film at Disneyland in the late 1960s because Hitchcock "made that disgusting movie Psycho." I admire both filmmakers but apparently they didn't admire each other.




The Technicolor choice for a thriller is still kind of old. You will live. Wait Until Dark stars Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman caught in a web of drug deals gone wrong. This movie scared me so bad when I watched it, I kept saying out loud, "What's she going to do? What would I do? ohmygoshomygoshomygosh."

You can probably get these videos from your library they are such classics, and that would leave you with 10 bucks for treats. Since we're all sick of candy, try some frozen grapes and popcorn (not mixed together, ew).

The Sleeping Beauty: Easy Piano Picture Book - Catherine Storr - Used Books - Paperback

The Sleeping Beauty: Easy Piano Picture Book - Catherine Storr - Used Books - Paperback


The illustrations are quite lovely. Different from the iconic Disney images but still romantic and pretty.

We're going in a new direction

I'd like this site to be a more interesting/informative place, so I've decided to take a cue from my brilliant little sister Amelia and talk about some great works of literature and music on this site. I'm hoping my organization and research now will pay off in instant homeschool projects later (insert sneaky eyebrow wiggle).

This week's theme will be Sleeping Beauty. I know, roll your eyes, kids' stuff. But by the end of the week you may be surprised at the power behind this fairy tale. Today is Musical Thursday! I play beautiful music on the CD player while making pancakes. Then while they are finishing their sticky breakfast I play some piano. It's the only time of day when I can play more than three measures without an interruption. Today's selection was actually inspired by my Grandma Landes, who introduced me to the magic of musical storybooks. She would play the Nutcracker music and tell us the story of the ballet using another book in this series. I was only able to find Sleeping Beauty. I'd like to find the Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and A Christmas Carol from that same series.

The music is pretty easy, no super tricky rhythm but it has its fair share of accidentals. Still, my kids are a forgiving audience. I love love LOVE Tchaikovsky's music, and this sounds really beautiful even though it is so easy. Eleanor recognizes the music from the movie, and I hope someday to take her to the ballet.

My attempts at Southern hospitality (sigh)

Sterling had warned me it would be like this. He knows me better than I know myself. I wish I wasn’t such an introvert, but I just didn’t think it would be so hard to move thirty minutes away from all my friends to a new home. Why not just find a place closer to your friends? you may ask. We looked. Our simple requirements were: affordable, available immediately, dog-friendly yard. Unfortunately the places that met those requirements only revealed we had more than just three requirements. Requirements like, not reeking of nicotine. Not in a creepy neighborhood. Not full of trash. Praying and searching, we had to go farther a field than we had originally hoped. We ended up finding a neighborhood of townhouses in The Woodlands, TX, that was closer to Sterling’s new job than our old neighborhood was. Closer by fifteen minutes. With gas prices still as high as my dad’s lemon meringue, we thought that might be a wise decision. The area had two parks, two libraries, a Wal-Mart, and our favorite grocery store, HEB. And it was only four minutes away from church. I think secretly Sterling didn’t believe another neighborhood could have convenience similar to our previous location. The house itself met our original requirements and had some huge improvements over our former residence. Such as, all the plumbing works as intended, no extra rooms to get dusty for no reason, two big pantry areas with doors that little fingers can’t open. No more flour parties while mom is scrubbing the upstairs toilets!
So you’d think everything was great, right? Beautiful new home, gorgeous wooded location close to everything, marble standup shower and garden tub in the master bathroom. We had arrived! My introverted self could just wander blissfully around the house where all the doorknobs matched the light fixtures which matched the water faucets. But woman cannot live by brushed nickel alone. Woman cannot live alone. Woman certainly cannot live with only two kids as company day in and day out for months. I slowly realized that I needed a friend. And my daughter REALLY needed a friend. She always asked if she could go play with the little girls in the window (a group of kids ride around on their bikes and play after school). The trouble is, I didn’t know their families, and I’m pretty sure it would be extra difficult to make acquaintances because the first thing everyone asked us when we moved in was “Do you speak Spanish?” When I said no, the little kids pointed to Eleanor and said, “Does she speak Spanish?” I shook my head and they went back to their games.
It’s now been two months and I still haven’t really met anyone. Oh we’ve gone on walks and waved to people, but did I mention I’m an introvert? I’ve only had one best friend in my entire life. Someone I could tell anything to and she’d understand or at least not think I was a total weirdo. Or try to solve my problem, like my sweet husband. Or be too busy, like my mom.
Well, that’s not totally fair. My mom listened to me totally unload on her the other day over the phone. She thought maybe I could make some cookies and take them to some neighbors and start chatting them up. Chatting them up. Right. Couldn’t I just read an economics textbook instead? Or maybe run five miles? Or maybe have an emergency C-section? These things, I can handle.
But when she pointed out that I had to do this for Eleanor (and I realized I didn’t want her to grow up lacking the social courage I do), that was a kick in the pants. It was such a hard kick that I went searching for affordable cookies I could make with what I had on hand. I found a great one on Prudence Pennywise’s blog. http://prudencepennywise.blogspot.com/2008/10/chocolate-buttermilk-cookies.html

Okay, so I had two plates of delicious cookies, I had even frosted them. But the boot was still kicking. I wanted a backup plan for these introductions in case I simply choked up, threw the plate on their doormat and ran away. So I made a little card out of a 5X7 notecard and some tinfoil stars, listing the names of each family member. Ostensibly a Halloween treat, but with the ulterior motive of a cheat sheet about the Mann family in case the guest lecture went bad.
I put the baby down for a nap, grabbed a plate of cookies and my sweet little girl (wearing a matching shirt and skirt, miracles never cease). Armed with her exuberance, we went to meet some neighbors. I started at the first door next to us. Knocked. No answer. Stand around for a bit. Move on to the next door. Eleanor knocks with me, and a little dog barks in answer. But that’s the only answer. Well, third time’s the charm. There’s even a car out in front of this door. Knock again. Another dog’s greeting. Stand around for a bit. Knock again. Stand around, then move on. I wondered if anyone was watching this housefrau and her little girl wandering aimlessly with a plate of cookies through the neighborhood in the middle of the day.
Finally on the fourth door, a woman yanked it open. She had her hair up in a scrunchie and was swathed in a red bathrobe, barefoot. This is pretty much my nightmare. Bothering people when they are busy. Bothering people who are in various states of dishabille. Well, maybe she wasn’t as uptight as I am. I said, “Hi, I’m Adrienne Mann, and we just moved in and although we all just went through a hurricane together, I still haven’t met very many people. And uh, here’s some cookies I made for you.”
The woman regarded it like a plate full of poisonous snakes. “Oh, no thank you.”
In the dead moment that followed, I cast about for some recovery. “I noticed you have a dog club sticker on your front window, what kind of dog do you have?”
“Oh, I don’t have a dog anymore, I didn’t have time to take care of it.”
“Really?” Maybe she had kids she was busy with, like me. “What do you do?”
“I work for Continental Airlines.” Okay it was time to go.
“How nice, well, it was nice to meet you, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, it was nice to meet you too.”
I turned away, and heard the door slam shut. Still armed with my cookies and little girl, I was no longer aimlessly wandering. I went straight home. And ate cookies.

Kid picture

This was taken in the mountains of Utah this summer. Pictures of the new house coming soon. I keep thinking we need to have the whole house clean at the same time to take the requested pictures, but duh, I can just do 1 picture a day. Which is about the rate of tidiness I can handle in this giant toybox that is my house.

Math and Marriage

People need a basic level of emotional, mental, and spiritual health if they are to get married.
"A marriage is not an addition of two people it is a multiplication. For example, if two healthy people marry, they do not have 1 + 1 = 2 relationships. They, as a couple, have 1 x 1 = 1 (whole) relationship. As the math shows, their marital relationship will be fulfilling and complete.

"On the other hand, if just one person in the relationship is not healthy, then the couple has 1 x 1/2 = 1/2 of a relationship. And if both people are not healthy, then the couple has just 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 of a relationship."

So, with this example, you can see how an individual's level of mental, emotional, psychological, and intellectual health INVERSELY affects the overall quality of a couple's relationship.

--From a letter on Dr. Laura Schlessinger's website

My Golden Post! (isn't that a breakfast cereal?)

This is my 50th post on this blog.

Today I broke down and went through Holly Lisle's Plot Outline course and really boiled down my main character's wants, needs, and fears. She's such an intellectual that it was hard for me to use her biography as a stimulus for action (plot). But the big disaster in the opening motivates her to action and also introduces a world-class action hero and another intellectual for her to play off. Anyway, I jotted down 20 scenes I think I need more like 100, but it's a start. Maybe it's the amateur in me but I hate writing without direction. My characters are finally squared away, now I just have to throw them into disasters (or help them create their own).

I Like Ike!

I guess I'll give you the highlights of Hurricane Ike and hope it is of interest to someone. We went into this disaster without health insurance because Sterling had only been at his new job for a few weeks. I was about 11 weeks along at the beginning of this, so I was still morning sick a little bit, my nose was so sensitive I couldn't open my spice cupboard without gagging. I did every bit of our laundry and all our dishes in anticipation of the power going out. We had paper dishes/utensils, snack food, a pot of rice, bread, peanut butter, 4 cases of 24 1-liter bottles of water AND 6 extra gallons, Gatorade, granola bars, canned chicken and dog food (for the dog). We had bought some little toys for the kids to keep them busy over the weekend while the power was out.

Friday, Sept. 11 2008
The hurricane begins. The power dies around 8:00. It gets darker and darker and louder and louder. The wind through our backyard is bending 200-foot pine and oak trees about 45 degrees in big gusts. We have a big picture window in our master bedroom so the parents sleep in the hallway, the kids don't make a peep. The hallway floor is hard and the wind is loud, so we don't get a lot of sleep. In fact, I don't think Sterling slept at all, he was patrolling the house all night. I took a Unisom.

Saturday, September 12--If it's yellow let it mellow
We wake up to a tropical storm. Water in the streets and fallen trees everywhere. We see cars driving down the main road behind us, and I wonder where they are going. Do they know something we don't? Do they really need gasoline that badly? What? Once the rain stops, we go on a family walk, the weather is beautiful. All our neighbors are outside cooking on their grills or staring at the holes in their homes. The damage is all from falling trees. One house had an entire corner of an upstairs bedroom sheared off by a pine. For most of the morning the entrance to our subdivision was blocked by a huge tree trunk across the road. The fire department came through and helped people chop down trees and remove road blockages.
What we ate (this is the main source of entertainment throughout the day): Deli sandwiches and leftover rice/cinnamon/ sugar mixture and cereal with lukewarm milk. All our windows were open so we could smell the delicious grilling of steaks and chicken from the neighborhood. We weren't sure about the water safety or pressure, so we didn't flush any toilets.

Sunday, September 13--You can't get a charcoal grill for love or money
No one slept last night because of the electrical storm. It was at least four hours of what looked and sounded like a German blitz. Yes folks, that makes it two nights in a row that my husband has missed sleep. The kids had a great time running up and down our hallway between their rooms and our room. If you looked outside without blinking during a lightning flash, you felt blinded. I normally like electrical storms, but this stopped being fun at about 3 AM. We woke up without power still, but I discover that we have hot running water! There's as much traffic out our window as a normal day, so we decided to go out in the car to see what we could see. A local grocery store was open, but no gas stations were. We had a full tank, so we decided since we had used up fuel to get out here, we should stock up on some stuff. Shopping was surreal. I guess they had generators to power the bare minimum of light. So what was once a bright well-stocked American supermarket looked like something from Soviet Russia. Dark, empty, with long lines. Except the employees were smiling. Only 25 people were allowed in the store at a time. All the produce and meat sections were empty and dark. The dairy and frozen aisles were blocked off with pallets and caution tape. We got unsalted pretzels, pudding, ice (free, 2 per customer), fruit snacks, a little more water, and some soda pop. They accepted credit cards, but I don't think they would have taken a $100 bill as it was too big to break. What we ate: Granola bars, apples, trail mix, chicken salad (after which we threw away the mayo), pudding. Again accompanied by the mouthwatering smells of charred meat.

Monday, Sept. 14 --What if the power comes on again?
Finally got a good night's sleep. Still no power. We had kept thinking power would come right back so we hadn't gotten rid of our meat. Well, today we needed to get rid of our meat. The garbage had been picked up this morning so we had rotting meat smell in our can in the garage for another week. It got so bad we had to put it out by the curb. Our neighbors loved that. We couldn't put it in the back yard because we have a dog. Our fridge and freezer smelled so bad I couldn't open it without retching into the sink. Sterling's office is shut down, so we all hang out today. I was dying for something warm in my belly this morning so I made some instant oatmeal with our HOT RUNNING WATER. Without this, I would've left for Uncle Mark's by now and just left our dog in the backyard I guess. Maybe left Sterling home too. We only have one car though. Besides all these reasons, I had just spent 4 weeks staying in other people's homes without my husband. Doing that again wasn't that appealing. Plus gas prices were super high, and what if the power came back on again?

Tuesday, Sept. 15 --Fruit snacks don't grow mold, do they?
The problem with 72-hour kits is that 72 hours is about how long you can stand to eat it. The Wal-mart next to us opens up, and although they have ice, they don't have coolers. We don't have anything left to cool anyway. We watched On the Waterfront for an hour on our laptop's battery.What we ate:Our 4-year old fruit snacks for lunch. The trailmix has some nuts in it that taste like sand. Sterling tries to eat Campbell's thick and chunky chicken noodle straight from the can. That put a damper on the evening. I tried to use some of our cheddar cheese and a can of refried beans to make a bean dip. We had olives too. I thought that was pretty yummy.

Wednesday, Sept. 16-- One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Sterling goes back to work, and I'm alone. I sing "Five Little Ducks", "5 Little Monkeys", and "10 Little Indians" about fifty times each. That makes one thousand little ducks, monkeys and indians, two hyper kids and one crazy mom. We eat instant oatmeal again. Not very filling, but it's warm. Sterling took the laptop to work to charge it. We had purchased some cups of soup for lunches and dinners. I knew the temperature of our water was technically not hot enough to cook them properly, but we were so hungry and sick of peanut butter. Even the kids stopped eating sandwiches. So I said a prayer over the cups of soup asking a special blessing that they would cook enough to be edible. And Voila! Lukewarm pasta and broth! It was like mana. By the end of the week, we still had no power, but the McDonald's in the Walmart had opened so we had that Thursday and Friday for dinner. Warm food and cold drinks. It was great. I will forever love McDonald's because of this week. Mail was coming daily, people had put their tree refuse by the side of the road to be picked up (some piles were bigger than an SUV). We were technically getting the right amount of calories but not enough protein and veggies so we were feeling hungry and listless. We bought a box of 10 puzzles at Walmart and we've done a puzzle almost every day. Sterling gets home from work around 6 and it gets dark at 7, we turn on a battery-powered lamp to get ready for bed and Sterling reads with a flashlight while I conk right out. The weather was cool all week, so we didn't really miss the AC. By Sunday it was 90 degrees every day though. Oh, and this is only the first week.

Brave New World

What an interesting summer. I had plans for a busy July visiting family and introducing my kids to my favorite things about Utah, but as soon as I got out of our Nissan X-Terra I realized I was pregnant.

REALLY pregnant. I was as sick as a dog for 2 months. My poor mom and mother-in-law. It was all I could do to keep up basic personal hygiene. Sometime in late August I picked up a random Janet Evanovich novel and was so disgusted by the level of writing that I sat down and cranked out about a page per night for a week. It was a lot of fun to re-read my old stuff. Then we got back to Texas to a new house and were just learning our way around the kitchen and neighborhood when Hurricane Ike hit, and we were without all electricity for two weeks.

All in all, it has been a strange season, but I'm back to writing.