Reflections Upon Watching Super Nanny

We got home from holidays this week, and most of the week thus far has been spent playing house games: Catch-Up Email, Clear Up Garden Jungle, Lay Around On Couch, See What's On TV. You know, stuff everyone missed while away.

More than a few nights were spent going FLICK FLICK FLICK on the TV remote: Jeopardy! HGTV! Arthur! Coronation Street! (okay, that was me) Dr Who! MI-5! Midsomer Murders!

And thus it was that we happened upon an episode of Super Nanny one night. Do you know this show? It centers around a very earnest and very British 30-something former nanny and her attempts at rescuing middle America from its disastrous attempts at parenting. The parents are generally idiots; the kids are generally horrible. The twins were captivated. "OMG, I can't believe his mum lets him DO that!" gasped FDPG after one second of action, so I left the show on, intrigued at the parenting possibilities. Mind you, I sometimes wonder if they jack these kids up on all kinds of sugary substances before they commence filming, because it's hard to believe that any kid does ANY of this stuff unassisted by either sugar, allergic reaction, or violent video intravenous. The kids in this particular episode were running into other people's houses, hitting their parents, and generally behaving without any sense of propriety whatsoever. It was weird, alarming, and slightly unbelievable.

Anyhow, as we're watching, the two brothers do something totally and completely over the top with each other, and Super Nanny, as it her wont, interjects with a slightly patronizing cameo, which goes something along these lines:

Parents? Do you see this happening in your neighbourhood? How would YOU react in this case? Would you

a) Leave the kids to work it out themselves

b) Do nothing

(and here she pauses and looks very archly at us the TV audience, just in case we're not sure which one is the correct option)

c) take immediate action by intervening

At this point all of us had a vaguely disturbing flashback to something we had experienced earlier this summer, an incident involving a few kids we knew (one of whom has the uncanny knack of bringing out the very worst in his colleagues). An incident involving some bullying and a kid with some, umm, hmm, let's just call them social issues. An incident to which I was very sadly privy. And an incident in which none of the parents involved seemed to want to have much involvement with. An incident in which I was very clearly told to back off and leave the kids to work it out themselves. One parent (not the parent of the victim, I hasten to add) even went so far as to demand that I apologize to the kids for getting involved at all. And he was mad. Really mad.

Which made me sad. Really sad. Just what, I tried to ask him, are we teaching our children when we allow them to be cruel without just cause? Are we teaching them to be reasonable adults? Adults we will one day admire?

Or are we teaching them that they can do whatever they want? That we will never call them on their willingness to go along with one Badly Intentioned Idiot just to stay in the group?

But all that went nowhere. The entire event was left at a stalemate.

It makes you wonder, sometimes, doesn't it?

Great Moments In Tampon Literature

I'm back from vacation. Or should that be staycation? This is a new word to me, and, just like the word signage (or the phrases stepping up to the plate and thinking out of the box), I really really hate it.

Anyhow, I have a couple of funny stories and a few photos I'm willing to share, but the photos are all on R's laptop which is somewhere else right now. I took 829 photos in two weeks. Last year I took 45 more than that. This year, in a moment of fond maternal madness, I took 69 photos to document the twins' last day of being seven.

Obviously I am too intent on literally capturing the moment.

But I will leave you with some truly odd instructions I discovered on the Tampax literature in my package of tampons. My eye was caught by the phrase Read here about TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME (TSS). And being interested in most things medical I was curious what the symptoms of TSS were (well, besides wondering how we progressed to acronyming every single thing in the entire universe). Did you know that "about half the cases are associated with tampon use while the remainder occur in men, children, and women who are not menstruating"? I read that sentence three times before I gave up. No, I lie, I stumbled across this sentence before I dropped the paper and leant against the doorjamb in abject dismay:

"You can avoid the risk of tampon-associated TSS by not using tampons."

Then, being the curious AND interested in most things medical person that I am, I picked up the paper and read on. I came across these instructions, which left me gasping for air AND wondering if this is really and truly necessary. That was when I really did drop the paper. Into the bin. You have to wonder who writes this stuff. And why. Surely we're all born with a certain amount of common sense, no? If I were a conspiracy theorist I would shriek "this is a conspiracy to encourage women to think that they are worryingly stupid AND need explicit directions with their own bodies!"

But I digress. Read on:

Always remove your used tampon before inserting a new one.

Be sure to remove the last tampon you use at the end of your period.

Use tampons only during menstruation.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Great Moments In Procrastination: #328

It was a friend of mine's birthday yesterday, so we all went out for a drink at a waterfront restaurant. Right before we went out it occurred to me that I should have a card or something to give her. I was already in the throes of altering a dress that suddenly did not fit and that I was bound and determined to wear that very evening, which was a bit of a nightmare in itself (the house was hot, I was hot, the kids were peevish, and it was 98ºF on our deck), so the idea of making a card seemed too arduous to contemplate.

Chance of Peevishly Hot Sheila making a birthday card for her very good friend?
remote, baby, remote.

Then, in one of those charmingly fortuitous Great Moments in Procrastination, I was reading this blog, written by someone on a homeschool list I'm on, and she had a picture of this card on her blog. It was extremely cool, and even though I don't own brads, paper flowers, glass leaf beads and jump rings, much less have any clue what UTE is or where I can get it, I thought I would try a version of my own. Besides, FDPG has tons of origami paper and since she was outside in the pool I knew I could pinch some without her even noticing. And whaddaya know but it's surprisingly easy, if you follow the wonderfully detailed instructions).

The photo above is how the card looks lying flat (note that I am not providing WDI - I forgot until half way through, sorry).

And here is the card standing up. Note the oh-so-cool 3D effect. Thanks, Misti. Thanks, Bonnie. One Potential Crisis averted. Now on to finishing that dratted dress...
And yes, FDPG did notice her origami paper on this card but she said she did not mind, well, provided I make her one just like it for her birthday next week.

Muggle Chess

FDPG plays Muggle Chess. Next best thing to Wizard's Chess, she tells me. And there she is in the middle, a pawn in the game.

Random Summer Images

Layered popsicles. I saw them somewhere and had one of those AHA moments: finally a use for all those leftover bits of smoothie no one can manage. Now I pour it into a popsicle container, let it freeze a bit, and pour a bit of something else over top, poking a popsicle stick into it somewhere along the way.
This one's blackberry smoothie, mango juice, and rhubarb juice. The kids think the rhubarb is pink lemonade. Since they don't like rhubarb, unless it's peeled and sitting next to a dish of sugar, I am reluctant to disabuse them of this notion, although I heard Max whisper "I think it's really rhubarb" to Dominic the other day. Not so slow on the uptake, that kid.


My little window greenhouse was so successful at heating up, even with it's afternoon shade, that I eventually had to remove both windows. There is one centre window that I cannot remove, but I don't think I've ever had peppers grow so big before. These ones are easily 4' high. There is a Tigerella tomato on one side, dripping with fronds of tomatoes, and a bay tree and a lemon verbena plant on the other.



Our painted ladies became butterflies, right before our eyes. We let them out one warm morning, to sit on the geraniums before taking off into the wild unknown. And our black swallowtail caterpillars disappeared a while back, after which we fretted for a while, worrying that some greedy bird pinched them, but the other day I was watering in the garden and a black swallowtail was lazily floating around the flowers. It paused on some roses, then the scarlet runners, then the potato flowers. It was big and oh so gorgeous and I felt a glimmer of hope that this might have been one of our fennel caterpillars.

Look At Sarkosy

Harry Princes and Half Blood Potters

Has anyone seen it yet? We went to see it on Wednesday, first show of the day. We lined up with all the other HP keeners, standing in the hot sun wondering if it would be worth it. I'd even bought the tickets 3 days beforehand just in case. I stood there, wondering at my uncharacteristic temerity - it's so not like me to buy a movie ticket ahead of time. But this was Harry Potter, a world in the daily lexicon of the twins. FDPG was so excited that 5 people asked her if she needed to use the bathroom. Dominic kept repeating "I can't believe we are finally going to see it!" over and over again, while Max just sat there, not sure if he was excited or not.

Then we were in. A very mild-mannered theatre employee came out and said "Everyone here for the 11:30 Harry Potter movie can just go right in," which meant of course that all 300 people in all the various line-ups mobbed for the doors. I grabbed each twin in a Death Grip by the wrist and with Max close behind me we threw ourselves into the mass of teens, families, and older couples. It was a seriously distracting mix of people. It almost threw me off. Almost: we had to get in there and get 9 seats. Luckily I am not an easily distracted person when it comes to getting a good theatre seat, but that's only because I am extremely picky when it comes to watching a film in a large theatre space. I'm like Goldilocks: I need something not quite at the top, but not too low, and I hate sitting in the middle of the row. I need an end seat, in case I need a quick exit (I've done this all my life and have never once needed a quick exit so either I am excessively careful or I am more on the obsessive compulsive side than I care to admit), and I hate leaving for bathroom breaks (ask my kids, they will recite Sheila's Standard Lecture On Why Drinking Too Much At Movies Is Not Good).

First we watched 20 minutes of movie trailers. I usually like movie trailers, but this time they were a weird mix of slightly, err, mature movies, and ones we'd already seen when we'd seen Up! I sat through the chortling of my children as they watched guinea pigs flying through the air, as a kid asked for the gift of telephonesis, and as a giant pancake landed on a school. I surreptitiously withdrew the three bags of popcorn I'd made at home and stashed in ziplocks in my purse. I whispered "Don't eat this all before the movie even starts" and "try not to get the yeast all over your t-shirts" to everyone. I made sure FDPG knew to plug her ears in case things got scary: an excellent trick because in my experience the sounds are sometimes scarier than the action. And closing one's eyes does not require handwork, whereas plugging one's ears does (sometimes I feel a bit like James Bond, navigating my way through this Minefield of Complicated Mothering).

And once again Dominic whispered, oh-so-loudly, "Why do they always have all these trailers before the movie? We came here to see the movie, not these stupid trailers. We've already seen half of them."

Can't you just see the old man he's going to be?

Then the film started. You could almost feel the intake of breath. There was a serious level of excitement in the air.

(warning: reading further could spoil the movie for you)

The film diverges from the book in quite a few places, in case you were wondering. Some of them are quite fortuitous. There was more humour than I remember from the novel. And, if you're like me and you like the touches most directors sneak in as a sort of signature, another bird gets whacked outside Hogwarts. But I was not prepared for all that humour. This movie plays to laughs. Plays for laughs. There's hardly any creepiness in it, which was nice for poor old FDPG, who really quakes at anything and everything. She only had to plug her ears once, and I only had to cover her eyes once (in case she snuck a glance) and that was where the Inferi were grabbing at Dumbledore and Harry in the cave. They even snuck in a Blatant Comic Device in the character of Lavender Brown, who has some scene-chewing moments (and reminded me slightly of British actress Lucy Punch). And there are a number of Unexpectedly Witty Rejoinders between Harry and Dumbledore. There's also one incredibly deft and witty scene with Snape, Dumbledore and Slughorn in the Infirmary with Ron (I had to fight not to write "in the library with a candlestick"), ruminating about love. It's positively brilliant.

Some of the divergences are not so fortuitous. There is one scene where everyone raises their wands as a tribute, but instead of seeming like a bit of well-placed respect, it struck me instead as the sort of thing you'd see in a pop concert, with the audience asking for more. I don't know. It fell flat for me. And the fact that McGonagall initiated this, err, gesture, seemed even more wrong. There were other, small differences: Luna replaces Tonks as the one who finds Harry in the Slytherin Coach under his Invisibility Cloak; Harry is first sighted in a café picking up waitresses and reading the Daily Prophet in PUBLIC; the Weasley twins are hardly in the film at all; the Death Eaters burn down the Weasley house.

Oh the horror of it all!

But Luna is my favourite character so I wasn't too bothered by that bit. I love Luna. I love her batty, slightly breathless demeanour, and I love the way she drifts around in strange outfits. I also love how kind she is to everyone. She is unfailingly understanding.

And don't hex me but I was glad to see Michael Gambon (as Dumbledore) leave. He's always rubbed me the wrong way. I loved him in Gosford Park, among other things, but in my opinion he plays Dumbledore too befuddled and daffy. I miss Richard Harris. He was Dumbledore for me: wise, careful, clear. But he died before they could film the rest of the onslaught.

I do find it curious how so many of the Truly Bad Characters seem to be also the best-dressed ones. Malfoy is positively glistening with cool charismatic savoir-faire. He has a long black coat, slim black trousers, and slicked back white hair. He looks amazing. Almost as delicious as his father, Lucius (the image of Lucius at the Quidditch World Cup [Goblet of Fire], telling Arthur Weasley, through wonderfully gritted teeth, that Arthur's nosebleed seats will enable him to see the rain coming sooner than everyone else is one of my very favourite scenes ever). Similarly Snape always whips in and out of every scene in the blackest black imaginable. He's like a well-dressed and deeply malevolent bat, flapping around the film. Bellatrix is less well-dressed, certainly, but her sister Narcissa looks pretty snappy.

Finally, while I really really enjoyed the film, I had one quibble: it plays as a series of small vignettes (as opposed to a coherent story). I did not enjoy that. It was disorienting. I think that was why it doesn't seem to be a long film, when it actuality it clocks in at two hours and thirty minutes.

Oh, and before I forget, where the hell did Fawkes go? I was hoping the movie would play with this, but it didn't.

I'm still wondering.

Sheila's Movie O'Matic Rating: 8.5/10