Author: Shane

Quote Monday is going to end up on youtube

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evelyn: “Can somebody take him?”
Me: “Evelyn, picking up your brother is like picking up trash off the ground. You should have left it alone, but now you’re responsible for it.”

Sara made me write that one down.

Ollie: “Every number is a word if you put an ‘H’ in front of it. ‘Zero’ turns into ‘Hero’. ‘Hun’ like, ‘come here hon’, ‘Who’ like, ‘who is it?’, ‘He’ like ‘him’, ‘Whore’ like ‘horror’…”
Ollie: “What? Why are you laughing?”

Ollie: “I wish I could possess mommy and daddy. Because then we could have candy whenever we want.”

::Sara getting the mail::
UPS Guy: “That package wasn’t me. I think the mailman is going to end up on youtube…”

 

Free Fiction – Her Path Lay Forward on Cast of Wonders

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I almost missed this one, since it came out on Christmas day as a special Christmas episode! I am very pleased to present my story “Her Path Lay Forward” in the PREMIER young adult, audio fiction magazine, Cast of Wonders.

My story is the second story in the episode, starting around minute 14 (although I don’t recommend you skip my friend Dave‘s story in the first half, of course!)

Here is the “story behind the story” for Her Path Lay Forward:

My children were looking at the scorecard of the excellent game Dixit, and they were debating about the character facing down the dragon in the picture.

I overheard their discussion: “I think it’s an old woman,” said my daughter. “No,” said my son, “it must be a boy. An old woman can’t fight a dragon.”

An old woman can too fight a dragon! In fact the more I thought about it, the more I thought an old woman was the PERFECT person to fight a dragon.

Specifically my grandmother Agnes is one of the strongest, most capable people I have ever met, and no matter how difficult a task she has been faced with in her life, she always does what needs done.

Alex’s First Birthday

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I don’t know if I should start by saying “my how time flies” or “look how far we’ve come”.

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Alex babbles basically non-stop. Whoever thought we could have a kid that talks MORE than the two we already have? He basically understands everything that you’re saying to him, even if he can’t answer back as much as he’d like. For example, he can point to every body part if you ask him, as well as basically everything in the house.

For some reason he can shake his head “no” just fine, but when he tries to shake “yes” he does it with his entire body. This makes for a VERY ENTHUSIASTIC yes, especially when you understand what he’s saying (usually by handing him something he wants or taking him somewhere he wants to go). If you ask him, “How old is Alex?” he will stick up one finger, he will make a goofy face on command, and he can stick out his tongue.

Okay, so here’s a list of things that he says. Some of these were actually after his birthday but before I wrote this post (there are pretty much new things on the hour these days):

“Na na” can mean many things: no, Nala, banana, or that emoji thing that Evelyn gave him for Christmas. “Da da” can mean me, or sometimes dog. “Da” (singular) means down. “Ma ma” means Sara, of course, but also sometimes more. “Ma” (singular) means cat (as in “meow”). He can say door, bird, apple, “vroom” (for car), “whoo” (for owl), up, “wa wa” (for water), bib, and book.

He also signs some additional words, like more, all done, eat, water, train, banana, book, bath, night night, “yummy”, milk, and book.

We were keeping track of how many steps he took in a row, but he’s pretty much just straight up walking now. He can also climb up the stairs, which makes it tricky for trying to watch him downstairs. His favorite toys are anything he can carry around the house while walking, but seriously, his all-time favorite toy right now is just the little cookies from the Melissa & Doug set play-kitchen set.

He continues to have strong opinions about food, and he definitely has a sweet tooth (bananas are still his favorite). We hadn’t really given him any dessert until the holidays, but now that he knows what it is, he absolutely flips out if we try to eat any without him. He doesn’t really like to drink anything.

All in all, Alex definitely keeps us on our toes! He is now officially a typical, talkative, opinionated one year old!

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Moana

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The day after Christmas, the kids and I went to see Moana (mild spoilers ahead).

Now, I’m going to start off by saying that I very much enjoyed Moana. I want to say that right off the bat, because I’m going to send some mixed messages in my review here.

Moana was perfect in every way. A little TOO perfect. Like, so perfect that it almost falls into the “Uncanny Valley:

the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.

I don’t just mean the plastic-skin-eyes-too-big-for-the-head-Bratz-style animation, I mean everything about it. This movie is as formulaic as formulaic can be. I played this game with Sara:

Me: “I bet you can guess every single thing about the movie without me telling you.”
Sara: “Is there woman-empowerment?”
Me: “Plucky girl with a hilarious sidekick? Check!”
Sara: “Let me guess…she has to go on a journey. To find herself.”
Me: “Check!”
Sara: “And someone important to her dies, like maybe her dad.”
Me: “Her Grandma! Check!”
Sara: “And there’s a guy…”
Me: “…and they don’t get along at first! But they’re stuck together so they have to make the best of it!”

You get the idea.

It feels like every movie Disney has made for the past 20 years has been leading up to this. Each Disney Frankenstein has gotten closer and closer to fooling the Turing test, and now they’ve finally cracked the code. They took every good part of every Disney movie, learning each time what worked and what didn’t, and then somehow mashed them all together seamlessly.

And the worst part is? It works! It’s such a good movie! You would think that a movie that follows this closely to the script would have no heart, but it does have heart! And a great soundtrack! (yes, I am aware that Lin Manuel was involved, and I am not exactly an unbiased source, but) And jokes where there should be jokes and sadness where there should be sadness and not a single hair out of place.

And it totally works. I’m like one of those birds that can be tricked by a superstimulus into feeding some other hatchling while my own babies starve.

I know I’m being manipulated, and I still like it anyway. DAMN YOU WALT DISNEY!