Brave

Well, Pixar...you've done it again! Brave was so incredible, I absolutely loved it.

It has been too long since I've seen a Disney movie in theaters that has made me happy (please, don't even get me started on Tangled). The music, the animation...everything was spot on. The story was fantastic, to have a movie not focus on the "love story" aspect, but the mother-daughter relationship...specifically the mother-daughter relationship where the mother is trying to change her daughter. It hits a bit close to home, and seems very familiar. (Interesting that my own mother -who was sitting next to me at the movie- didn't pick up on that at all. Go figure.) 

The main character is Merida and despite her mother's insistence that "a lady does not place her weapons on the table," Merida remains a free-spirited Scottish princess who prefers archery over romance, much to her mother's chagrin. 

After Queen Elinor's attempt to marry off her first born goes awry, Merida follows her heart (and a will o' the whisp) in hopes that changing her mother may lead to changing her own fate. The princess procures a spell that ends up changing her mother into a bear. (Just for the record, if my mother got turned into a bear, she would be very mad at me...but probably still love me. I know because I asked.)

One of my favorite things about this movie is that it is set in Scotland. I love Celtic/Gaelic culture (being Ir-ish myself). I love the how whimsical it seems, centered around fairy tales and folk lore. I feel like I'd fit right in with all of that. I can see Princess Merida and I being good friends!

"Hey teacher, look!"

My students have so much fun out on the playground. There are slides to ride, monkey bars to climb on, tunnels to crawl through and sand boxes to dig in. Not only are our sandboxes full of magic, wonder and imagination...they are also full of junk. They're like the island of lost pocket-sized toys and other stuff. Until recently, I actually had a small collection of things my students have called me over to look at over the past couple months:

As you can see there is a marble, a penny, part of a watch buckle, some weird orange toy thing, a hex-nut, and of course, every preschooler's favorite plaything: a nail. 

I love that when they discover something new, their excitement bubbles over and they just HAVE to show it to me. Like today for instance, I was supervising the playground, making sure all the little kiddos were safe and I hear the yell "Hey miss Lauren, we found something...come look!" Right about now, you're probably thinking, 'hmm I wonder what they found' (don't lie...you're curious). Well, it was a dead bird. A very, very dead bird. With ants crawling all over it's poor, dead bird carcass. It was gross. They don't teach you how to deal with stuff like this in preschool teacher school...

I Wanna Rock!

I just saw Rock of Ages, and I don't care what anyone says; I loved it!! 

I can't help myself, I'm a fan of campy musicals! Is it a great movie? No. It's not even a good movie, but something about it just made me happy! I had to be really careful in the movie theater, it was hard for me to not sing along with these awesome songs (they just bring back so many memories of being 1 year old in 1987...)

The cast was full of some pretty big names, which isn't always a good thing for a movie musical. Tom Cruise was completely ridiculous, of course, but because he's just as nonsensical and self-absorbed in real life, he was perfect as a filthy, bewildered rock star. Alec Baldwin just seemed to be playing the guy Jack Donaghy must be in his nightmares, and there was no way I could take him seriously as the owner of a rock & roll club. Russell Brand just makes me laugh, not because he's necessarily that funny, but just because he is just such a cartoon caricature of a human being. Juliane Hough did a good enough job (well, the autotuners didn't have to work too hard at least). I'm pretty sure Catherine Zeta-Jones was being played by a robot, she just seemed so stiff...c'mon CZJ, you're a Tony winner now, loosen up a bit. Just to prove that big names aren't everything, I would have to say the best part was Diego Boneta's Drew. 

I have such a soft spot for guys who are easy on the eyes as well as the ears/guys with guitars (!!!) He's just so yummy!

This is Crazy

Contagious pop songs are one of my guilty pleasures. The top song infecting my brain these days would have to be Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me, Maybe. It is everything a pop song should be: it's catchy, it's bubbly, and it's just plain ridiculous. Who just goes up to someone and says "Hey I just met you, and this is crazy...but here's my number, so call me maybe?" No one. No one does that.

Oh wait. 

I do that.

Okay I don't do that, but I did that. 

Yesterday I had just had a horrible day at preschool. I had been kicked, hit and bitten by a 4-year-old. I had blocks thrown at me, I was called 'poo-poo-butt', and I had to chase said 4-year-old down the hall, twice, as he tried to run away. The entire time he was doing this, he was giggling like a sociopath. I was feeling terrible, and I was about to call my friends and tell them I wasn't going to meet them for dinner after all. But...that would be letting the 4-year-old win, so instead, I came home and changed into something cuter than my preschool garb. 

So there I was at dinner with my friends and sitting at the table behind K and S was the cutest guy (Like, totes, OMG!) But really, he had a super-sweet smile and to be honest, he looked a little bit like 'Jon'. I was smitten. 

Now, we all know I hate taking risks and I'm terrible at talking to guys. I am also trying to get over my I-should-be-wooed-and-was-not-made-to-woo thing, because when it's been 6 years since any kind of wooing has happened anywhere near me, it's probably time to do something. (Although I still think it'd be nice for some guy to take the initiative and sweep me off my feet...but I digress). So after a long discussion (where S pointed out there was a reason I had changed my clothes), we decided that somehow this guy was going to get my number. My friends gave me a choice: I could give it to him myself or they would give it to him for me. So I wrote my name and number on a napkin, and as we were leaving the restaurant, I kinda tossed it at him and muttered 'My friends are making me do this' and ran away. 

But I did it!

Do I think he'll actually call me? Not a chance. Do I regret it? Probably a little, but I'm never going to see him again, so it's okay (and if I do, we have a funny story of how we met!)

At least the day ended up being something other than the day a 4-year-old bit me (it's not like my day could've gotten worse anyway).

Is it Ironic?

The thing about Alanis Morissettes' song Ironic is that nothing in that song is actually ironic, it just all kind of sucks.
There is absolutely nothing ironic about having "10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife". Isn't it inconvenient? I guess the irony is that it isn't ironic at all. And if that's the way we're thinking, I guess I could call what happened the other day at Target 'ironic' (when really, it just kinda sucked).
I need to preface this by telling you a little bit about 'Stacy'. Stacy was a girl I went to Jr. High and High School with. She was pretty and popular and (in the words of my dance teacher) a bit of a 'witchie-poo with a b'. As an early teen, I was awkward, I was naive and I was too small. I wasn't allowed to wear blue nail polish (which was totes, like, the height of coolness), and nothing I wore was a brand name. I actually wore clothes from the children's section until I was 15, because, as my mom said, "the clothes fit and they're cheaper". I had few friends and Stacy made sure to point all of this out to me on a regular basis.
So flash forward 10 years later, and I see Stacy and her fiance registering for wedding gifts at Target. Who would have thought?
Then Stacy pretended like we were actually friends or acquaintances or whatever (I'm guessing more for the fiance's sake then for mine). And then the question I dread being asked nowadays: "So what are you up to?" I mean, I'm wearing cut-offs and my Color Run t-shirt at Target in the middle of the day, so clearly I've got a lot going on in my life right now. (Okay, I was shopping for supplies for a BBQ, so things aren't terrible). Plus, I love my job, teaching preschool is wonderful, so I try to focus on that. But there's still that whole dirt-broke-and-single-living-with-my-parents thing that I love bragging about so much. I just went right back to feeling like that awkward naive little girl with the wrong clothes and always two steps behind everyone else in the growing up department.
It figures.

What if life were more like theatre?

When I watch the Superbowl, I rarely know what's going on and the people around me are far more into it than I am. That's what it's like for everyone else when I watch the Tonys. (And by 'everyone else' I mean my parents).

There were times tonight when I literally squealed at the television. Like during this fabulous opening number:

Right? Isn't that just wonderful? Yes. Yes it is.

I am convinced that Neil Patrick Harris was born to host the Tonys. I don't care if he never does anything else in life but annually host the Tony Awards. 

I was a little underwhelmed by the Newsies performance, (of course the choreography was incredible, I guess I'm just overly attached to the movie). I was, however, thrilled that Matthew Broderick performed with his Nice Work If You Can Get It cast. Maybe my love for Ferris Bueller has transferred onto the actor himself, but I can't help but love Matthew Broderick, and I am thrilled that he is back on the Great White Way! Needless to say, I am anxiously awaiting the release of the Nice Work cast recording.

As much as I love the Tonys, I always get a little bummed being so far away from the 'action' of it all. The odds of me getting to see a Tony-nominated musical or play are pretty slim considering I'm dirt broke and living in Central California. At least I get a little taste of what's out there. Of course, that just makes me want to see it more.

A lot of other stuff happened too, but it's kind of past my bedtime. So...here is Neil to sum it all up for you (Please keep in mind that CBS scheduled the Tonys to run until 11, and this number didn't air until about 11:05)

aaand scene!

Forever Young

Last night I went to a baseball game with some friends and even though our team got smoked (15-4...wah wah) and I suck at eating sunflower seeds (I just don't have the patience to get that little seed out of it's shell, is it even worth it?) it was still a good night. I really do enjoy baseball, it's easy to follow and I usually have a vague idea of what's going down on the field. We got to sit in a box because of a 'friend of a friend' situation, and that was really cool! The fireworks got cancelled, which was a bit of a bummer, but after the sun went down the blazing heat subsided leaving us with a rather pleasant evening.
In the box next to us was this family, a mom, a dad and two young daughters (I'd say probably about 5 and 7). Anyway, this happened:
Guy: "You're probably around 15, 16...right?"
Me: "Actually I'm 26"
Guy: "I'm so sorry...I was just hoping you could talk to my daughter, she wishes she was a teenager."
So I proceed to tell the girl to enjoy being a kid, growing up is not all it's cracked up to be yadda yadda...
Then the guy asks me: "Ok, now how much do I have to pay you to tell her to stay away from boys?"
Me: "That is a speech I will give for free!" Which led into my "Boys-are-gross, they-are-nothing-but-trouble, they-all-have-cooties" schpiel.
I've always looked younger than my age, so when I actually was 16...I looked more like I was 12.
In fact, I was so convincing as a 12-year-old my parents would usually make sure I got a kids' menu at restaurants. I hated it. Not only was that down right offensive, but it was also humiliating and traumatizing and 'ohmygoshI'dratherdie'. But now I think it's funny. It's a compliment. 10 years from now (when I'm close to 40...ack!) it'll be nice to get mistaken for someone in their twenties!

An actual picture of me from my high school years...I think I'm 15 here, even though I look like a 5th grader.

What time is it?

It's summertime. Almost.

Most people get excited about summer for various reasons: BBQs, swimming, camping trips, no school, etc, etc, etc...
Yes, I like BBQs, and camping trips, and baseball games, but the whole 'no school' thing doesn't apply to me (teaching summer school...and such). Actually,  I'm not really a big fan of summer. Hot weather makes me all complain-y.
I hate wearing shorts because I'm really bad at shaving my legs. I don't think I've ever shaved my legs and not shed a little bit of blood as a result.
I hate that swimsuits come in two styles: Cute yet skimpy or Something a nun would wear to the beach. Just because I'm not a size 2 doesn't means I'm in my 50s. So, until I track down that elusive modestly cute swimsuit, you won't see me in the pool.
I'm just not a summer person...can we just skip it?