My New Favorite Fairytale

After finishing the good books sent at Christmas from my brother's family, and Robin Hood, I've moved on to reading fairy tales to the children at bedtime. On Easter, my mom presented me with a book that belonged to my grandmother. It's a Reader's Digest collection titled "The World's Best Fairy Tales" and it's quite good. The boys are eating these stories up, "Read another one, Mommy." It even has some decent illustrations. On Thursday and Friday I read the Hans Christian Anderson story called "The Snow Queen*" for the very first time and it is now my favorite fairy tale. Here is my summary.
It begins with an evil mirror breaking, the shards of which fall and corrupt those they pierce. A boy named Kay gets a splinter of this mirror in his eye causing him to see everything that is beautiful as ugly and also one in his heart which begins to turn it to ice. He then meets up with the Snow Queen and she chills him even further with her wicked kisses. But Kay has a faithful and loving friend, Gerda, who goes looking for him and has many adventures along the way winning people to help her on her journey for she is true and loyal to her friend. Eventually she finds him and he is nearly frozen in the Queen's icy castle, where he is trying to spell the word "love" to free himself but he can't remember how. Gerda rushes to him crying, her tears melt his frozen heart and as he too, begins to cry at the sight of his dear friend, his tears wash away the splinter in his eye. He then remembers how to spell "love" freeing him from the Queen's power. After a long journey home, hand in hand, they discover they have grown up and it is summer.

Also we watched Disney's "Enchanted" last weekend, and since we are becoming well versed in fairy tales, it was even more fun. The children were identifying which parts belonged to the different stories, and since parts of the movie are in cartoon, Little Miss was also pleased with the choice.


*The version that I have linked is slightly different than the one in my book, but only in little details.

kind of a mom

Watched "Nanny McPhee" tonight with the kiddos. And they were having some trouble understanding who the women in the household were at the beginning. Being middle class kids of the twenty first century it's hard to comprehend the idea of servants, cooks and housekeepers. It's made clear that the mom has died at the beginning of the film, which is the reason a nanny is needed, however, my children were perplexed with the roles of the scullery maid and cook. "Is she the mom?" they persisted in asking. "No," I replied, "she's a housekeeper. You know she brings out the food and cleans up." To which my daughter (age 4) responded matter of factly, "That's kind of a mom." I'm trying not to let that oversimplified job description irk me... and let it be a reminder to get my kids to help out more, especially with the cleaning up!

A Red Door Day

Since I've been posting for a few years now, I'm sure I must have mentioned how depressing I find New Year's Eve, and just the whole New Year hubbub etc. This year isn't any exception...but I'm doing my best to fight those new year-pre-post holiday blues.
Last night was dance "therapy" and today I fought them with a very "hands on" approach. Starved for physical touch and wound tighter than a corkscrew from the stressors of single motherhood I took a "Spa Day." I thought that would be a good way to start off the year.

On my birthday a few of my friends gave me gift certificates for "spa treatments" so today I redeemed the Red Door half day of treatments that my cousin so graciously gave me. I started with a deep tissue massage (I upgraded from the "Signature Massage" which is a Swedish one, which in all honesty feels like being petted and caressed which I find a little bit creepy from a stranger) and I HIGHLY recommend it. Darlene, my masseuse, used her elbows to iron out all my kinks and recommended that I come in regularly like every 4-6 weeks for deep tissue massages, and perhaps the knots in my upper back won't get so bad. Now wouldn't that be nice? ( She worked out most of the spots, but I could have taken another 50 minutes easily.) Then a facial with Jenella ... cool name, eh? She was keen to notice my sensitive skin and was careful not to aggrevate it. She also used this tool, that kills all the bacteria on my skin with heat, I forgot what it was called, but that was a first for me and it didn't even hurt. Then on to a pedicure and manicure followed by a "complementary make-up refresher." The mani- and pedi-cures were good especially since I asked Anna the nail specialist not to cut my cuticles.... that always hurts and then stings and kind of ruins the whole relaxation experience. The color I chose for my toes, Sasha, was the same that several other women there kept choosing, I noticed this while I was waiting for my makeup. The makeup refresher was an odd experience. I've never ever had anyone apply my makeup for me, (maybe my sister did once, but I'm pretty sure she just showed me by demonstration)... anyhow, this woman had never seen me before or how I normally do my makeup and so I guess she did pretty well. I asked for a "fresh look" which to her meant lots of brown eyeshadow and pink lip gloss. She also applied some blush and mascara and lined my lower eyelids with a white liner, which I never do and I thought that it looked sort of Bambi eyed. I didn't look like a drag queen but I also didn't look like me so after I dressed I wiped about 30% of it off, blotted the gloss applied my own lip color and looked almost normal. Then I did a little shopping, got a portabella mushroom salad and tomato bisque at Donna's and came home to watch Spiderman 3.

Spiderman 3 was awesome. I wish more hero movies like that were out there. The themes of responsibility, goodness, forgiveness that are woven through the plot are classically refreshing. I know everyone has probably seen this film several times already, but this was my first viewing and it was a great movie to end a great day.

Guess who?

OK, you probably guessed who easy enough, but can you guess when?

Today I've been organizing and tidying and throwing out bunches of junk that has been cluttering up my desk and making room for the scanner. I found this old first grade (possibly kindergarden) picture in the heaps. I discovered this cool program on my computer that will organize pictures into photo album pages. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but what a neat-o concept, eh?

Last night I saw Harry Potter 5. It was super good, I had forgotten much of the plot in that one. In fact when I started reading HP7, I had to go back and skim through HP6 because I had forgotten some really important events. I read #6 while pregnant with L and pregnancy clouds my memory. So I absolutely positively LOVED Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was superb! Even fundamentalist-witch-hating-Christians who dare to read it will see how beautiful the story is.

*MK at Ganap! clued me in to a great review of HP7 from Christianity Today. Read it here.

Winter's Last Hurrah

It would figure that the day after I planted pansies, we would get lambasted by a wintery mix of weather. Last night after some consideration, I decided to venture out into the storm to get a movie. Four wheel drive? No, two foot walk. It took me about an hour and a half to walk a little over a mile, select a movie, and trudge back home. Considering that I've spent close to 45 minutes contemplating movie choices in the past, it wasn't so bad. This time I knew what I was after: Project Runway. MK recommended it, I watched disc one of season one last week and was hoping to get disc two, but Blockbuster wasn't carrying season one so I skipped on to disc one of season two. I had a jump hem on a jacket to do by hand while I watched and ooh, it was good. I think I'm hooked. Although I can't help sympathizing with the anxiety some of the designers face. It reminds me very much of college, bizarre, open ended projects to do with unusual criteria. I find watching Project Runway inspiring though. I especially like watching the processes the designers go through. I'm also a little intimidated by what these people can do... I'm mostly self-taught, and I'm not sure why I didn't pursue fashion in college. I think it's a bit too cut-throat for my personality. I'm not a competitive person, but now I see what kind of skills these designers have and I wish I had taken classes when I had the chance. One more thing to add to the to do list: take design classes.

Black Current L.L. Bean Comfort boots: $39.95
Two videos at Blockbuster: $8.38
Watching the snow fall against the black night sky while my feet stayed not only dry (after sloshing through several deep puddles of slush) but warm: Priceless

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