Party of Five

On Valentine's Day, I wrote of the newly discovered plan of my son to ambush surprise a classmate with a Valentine in her locker.  I was scared of entering this stage of his life.  I wasn't prepared for him to be at this stage in his life. As it turns out, it may have been much more innocent than at first suspected.  Maybe. As his mother, of course I was itching with curiosity all day.  It took everything I had to not meet him at the door and question him endlessly... "What happened?" "What did she say?" "What's her name?" I restrained myself and played it cool. . . . . For about 5 minutes. When he came home it was the usual conversation with his siblings, the search for the after-school hunger craving, and settling in for a full evening of homework.  As I walked through the dining room where he sat figuring out the value of "x", I (very) non-chalantly asked him how his Valentine's Day was at school. "Eh,...

It's Valentine's Day.  Generally not a day that I get overly excited about.  There's the hearts, the flowers, the little naked cherubs, blah, blah, blah.  It's not that I get shafted by Mr. D. for Valentine's Day (Hello... spa day)   I'm just not big on sharing "special" days with the rest of the world population...although the chocolate can be a major perk. Relax...I didn't forget about him.  He's getting what could quite honestly be the most perfect card (don't you love being able to find that perfect card?).    And there's also Triple Chocolate Cookies for him.  Well, us...because it's chocolate, and he knows that he'll have to share.  ;) The last few years, I've discovered it's rather fun to shower my children with valentines on this day.  Maybe it's because I don't have to go crazy or overboard to surprise them with little fun treats that really make their day, and remind them of how absolutely inc...

How could I, one who claims to love musical theater, have waited 5 weeks to see this movie? Eh.  Chalk it up to any number of excuses, the fact is I couldn't get to the theater to see this movie before now.  And the fact that it was showing at our local little movie theater where ticket prices were only $5.50 a piece, plus a medium popcorn, large cherry coke, and peanut M&M's came to less than $20...yeah, I'm happy to say I was a cheap date tonight. At any rate, five weeks after the movie opened, I was finally getting to see Les Miserables. Mr. D. and I have seen it on stage...decades ago...way back when we were still young and stupid in love.  I've read the novel...the ridiculously long novel.  There was the screen version awhile back with Liam Neeson, and it was adequate enough, but let's face it...in my musical loving heart, that film was missing something.  The music!  I've always loved my soundtrack that I've owned (for decades), it was actua...