Updates

Well, here are a few updates: Sunday morning, I was opening the silverware drawer to get a spoon to stir up my chocolatey Ovaltine and Viola! it was full of spoons. Just as mysteriously as they had disappeared, they had now re-appeared. Where they were- kidnapped, trapped somewhere, gone on a spoon adventure- who knows.

We have decided to help Milo our hamster feel more fulfilled in his life with us. We re-oriented his cage and we are taking him out for more exercise in his purple hamster globe. We also put in his cage cut up pieces of egg carton which he chews on and drags around and arranges in is sleeping area. This home improvement project appears to consume a lot of his time and he spends less time chewing on his cage. I try to talk to him and praise him for being such a great little addition to the family, but it always seems to be a one way conversation.

I met my deadline for my March 1 article. The article itself started out craptastic, but eventually I worked it into mediocre by the time I turned it in. I'm hoping the accompanying pictures and great layout will help.

Allison now has purple hair. She's had magenta hair in the past as well as most recently having golden blond-ish streaks. She'd been looking to do something "different" and found her hair color Saturday-which turned into a big mother-daughter extravaganza. First we went to a play called "The Giver"- Allie is reading the book and talks all the time about it, so when I saw that Oregon Children's Theater had a production of the book as a play, we decided to go. It was pretty impressive. The actors were great and it had good production value. Allie gave it high marks too. I haven't read the book, but I guess it is all the rage with the Jr. High set. From the play I concluded it was kind of a junior version of Orwell's 1984. The culture of the people in "The Giver" is all uniform- everything is all grey, there is no color- there is no pain, but there is no love either. Everyone is living in a very controlled way- everything is decided for you by the community. Everyone is assigned their job at age 12. The main character is assigned the job of "Receiver" basically the recepiticle of memories of the "before time" when people felt pain, love, heard music and saw color. This boy is to hold all the memories for the community, which he recieves from an old man called "The Giver" who is soon to be "released" meaning killed. I won't say more, but its a great book because its all Allie and her friends can talk about. Her class is arguing the advantages of the community is its safe- no war, no hunger, no pain. But the flip side is all uniformity and no love, no color, no music. Need I say which side my purple haired, music loving, individualist daughter is arguing for?

After that we picked out the hair dye and and dyed her hair a dark brownish color with purple highlights, it actually looks pretty good. Then Allie's best friend and her mom called and asked us to meet them at the movie theater to see "Aquamarine" a film designed especially for "tween" girls. It was tolerable. Me and the other mom sat apart from the girls- which you know, its not cool to be seen with your mom I guess!

These movies are very formulaic: 1. cute girls who are best friends 2. parents who don't understand-and usually a dead parent/divorce parent thing happening to one of the characters 3. a new girl who upsets the balance but becomes part of the group 4. a really, really mean and spoiled girl who gets her comeuppance at the end 5. The cute boy who everyone likes, many times he's shown in slow motion to emphasize his cuteness 6. a shopping and "make-over" movie montage accompanied by girl-empowering pop music 7. the "best friends" fight but make up at the end 8. The movie concludes with a neatly wrapped up "life lesson."

That's pretty much it. I feel like checking in with Allie and telling her- hey, not everything ends in a neatly wrapped "life lesson"- but I have a feeling she already knows that.