During today’s visit, Evie and I discovered something absolutely amazing and wonderous:

Y’all.  Mary Poppins totally was in The Disney Store and left her umbrella!  There it was, just leaning quietly against a display of t-shirts marked down 40%.  Evie checked with the saleslady to confirm, and, indeed, she had been there!  What had she been doing there?  And why would an organized, put-together lady like Mary Poppins leave behind such an important accessory like an umbrella with a parrot head that talks?

We wondered.  We discussed.  We speculated.  Finally, through deductive reasoning and her own keen sense of Disney character motivation, Evie concluded that Mary Poppins left her umbrella in The Disney Store on purpose so that Evie could find it.  Mary Poppins wanted Evie to know that she was real and that she was magic and, ipso facto, magic is real.  This was no accident, folks.  Now Evie knows for sure that when she grows up she will be able to clean up her room with a snap of her fingers, make medicine poured from the same bottle change color and taste like lime cordial and also sing songs about her favorite things with a dimple-faced band of Austrian children.  No.  Wait.

But, most importantly, magic is real.

When I was sixteen, I visited Disney World for the first time and met and talked with Mary Poppins herself.  She was dressed in the frilly white ensemble she wore during the Jolly Holiday sequence, complete with parasol and British accent.  It only lasted for a couple of minutes, but I’ve remembered that through all these years.  It was delightful, charming and…magic.

Evie’s right.

**Mary Poppins, copyright 1964, Walt Disney Productions.  Chim-chim-cheree, SOPA.

I am fancy.  I have a pink dress with a frilly bottom, a pink bead necklace, a pink hairband and a pink, sparkly wand.  If I had the pink shiny shoes we saw in the Circle Store that my mommy said I didn’t need but I do, I would be the fanciest.  Then you and I would be twins!  I love to be twins.  My friend Chyler and I are twins because we are the same tall and we go to Lunch Bunch together.  Chyler has pretty curly hair, but I have straight hair.  I will get my hair curly before I come to you and my shiny pink shoes and then I will be a fancy twin with you.  My mommy says my hair is just fine and I don’t need shiny pink shoes.  My mommy doesn’t know sometimes.

I know that you have good food.  I like good food.  Good food is chicken nuggets, carrot sticks, yogurt, strawberries and the Hershey Kiss.  So you have all of those things for me, and I will eat them when I go to you.  Mommy and Daddy say I have to try other food, but that food is not good, so why do I have to try it, Paris?  I only eat good food, which is also ice cream and ham and cheese sandwiches.  We will eat together!  Like twins!

You are a mystery.  Mommy says “mysterious” but that is not right.  It is “mystery” because that is what Scooby Doo is.  I love Scooby Doo.  I get to watch it when I stay in my bed all night by myself.  My favorite is the Cat Creature.  If you are a mystery, you have Scooby Doo, and I will only watch it when I go to you.  I will not have to watch the news.

Mommy taught me a word to say when I go to you.  The word is “mousie”, and that is how you say “thank you” when you go to Paris.  Fancy Nancy is my favorite book today, and Fancy Nancy says “mousie”.  We love Fancy Nancy.  Mommy says she’s gonna write a book called Evie Peavie and make a bunch of money so we can go shopping when we go to you.  I have a bunch of money.  I have five dollars and two quarters and one dollar.  Daddy says one dollar is a hundred pennies.  One day I will have a hundred pennies, and I will buy sunglasses like Mommy’s.

Mommy will go with me to you.  We will wear our sunglasses, drink coffee and look bored.  Mommy says this is the way to go to Paris.  I can’t wait to drink coffee.  It smells good.  Daddy will go, too.  Mommy says Daddy knows a lot of your words, and not just “mousie”, so he can help us get around.  Daddy can carry me for a long time, and Mommy can’t.  Daddy never says I am too heavy.  My daddy is very strong and sometimes he smells like coffee.

Get ready, Paris.  I am Evie, and I’m going to go to you.

Love,
Evie

P.S.  First I will go to Disney.

I was dubious from the get-go about my ability to stick it out.  During the month there were days when cleaning my toilets seemed preferable to posting.  On those days I thought about you guys and how I’d put myself out there on November 1st.  If I failed, I’d have an audience.  I didn’t want y’all to watch me fail. 

Also, there was KeAnne.  Beautiful, wonderful, talented, infuriatingly diligent KeAnne.  She was dutifully posting every day.  I thought if she could do it, I could damn well, too.

True, there were days when a post on the The Evie Standard consisted of one or two sentences.  Those were the bad days, folks.  You know what I mean.  Those were the days when I was so tired that pressing buttons on a remote was physically draining, and my brain was leaking out my ears.  If you can believe it, I was genuinely afraid I’d forget to post one day.  I imagined jolting awake at 11:59pm and falling all over myself to get downstairs to throw something, anything up on the blog.

I think I’ll probably do this challenge again some time in the future, especially now that I’ve got one under my belt.  Notice I said some time in the future.  I don’t know when, parentals and parentals-in-law.  Simmer down.  It was good exercise, and in the end, it gave me something to be proud of.

Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there.  See y’all in a few days.  My fingers, they are tired.

Love,
K

Now, wait just a second.  Before you start feeling sorry for me, you should know that this is ironic.  I saw an opportunity to redneck up my house, and I took it.  I mean, what would you have done?  I ask you.  Plus, I knew my husband would have to live with it for 25 days, which made me a cackle and rub my hands together maniacally .

Thaaat’s right.  The lights are Hershey’s Kisses.  Red and green ones.  With hands and faces.  It’s my new favorite Christmas decoration!

The entire thing is held up by 1,287 pieces of Scotch tape because we’re renters. It’s what renters do. I give it a week up there. And when it finally does fall? I will put it back up!

The best part was after I finished taping the mother up, I told Evie to hit the lights so we could fully admire its glory.  The second the room went dark and the landing was illuminated with our string of softly glowing red and green anthropomorphic chocolate candies, Evie’s eyes grew wide and she gasped at the magnificent wonder before her. 

 ”I love it!” she exclaimed.  “Thank you, sweetheart!”  Then she ran headlong into my legs and hugged them.

It’s the first time she’s called me sweetheart.

I love Christmas.  I really, really love every almost every single thing about it.  The songs, the smells, the anticipation, the cookies.  But I absolutely, unequivocably and without a doubt do not love the rushing, stressing and 25-day freakout over buying Christmas presents.  Don’t get me wrong — I enjoy giving presents, especially when I know the recipient will really like what I’m about to give them.  Too many times, however, I’ve bought a mediocre to terrible gift for someone I love simply to check their name off my list. 

Also, online shopping is one thing, but shopping the brick and mortars is quite another.  During the holidays people go, quite simply, batcrap crazy.  There’s this look in their eyes, you’ve seen it, especially as we get closer to D-day.  It’s a mixture of panic, exhaustion and steely resolve.  They grab for the last Hilshire Farms basket before you get it, jump in line at Customer Service for free gift-wrapping and mill around the food court like deranged lab rats.  Crazy.  I prefer to stay home and make sausage balls with Eve or move my nativity scene around 2,132 times.  Like Alice, I don’t want to go among mad people.

Frankly, I think there should be a cutoff for Christmas presents.  I propose 12 years old.  After that, you will receive gift cards and/or cash until you reach 21.  After that, the party’s over.  I figure if you can vote and buy alcohol, you’re too old to be opening a stack of presents.  It’s unseemly.  Maybe this would relieve some pressure for the poor souls wandering the mall and bring the focus back to where it should be at Christmas: watching all 12 renditions of A Christmas Carol, singing your child’s version of “Jingle Bells” and driving around looking at people’s Christmas lights.  And cookies.

If you like to buy Christmas presents, that’s great.  Some people do.  I’m not suggesting there’s anything inherently wrong with that.  I just think it’s gotten out of hand, and I’m guessing most folks would agree. Last year on Black Friday a Walmart employee was trampled to death.  Not to bring everybody down, but if most of us concede that it’s gotten out of hand, what are we still doing  out there every year?

Just wonderin’.

Today, as Evie and Charlie were playing, Charlie decided to take a bathroom break in one of the pool’s restrooms.  He walked in and closed the door.  Evie walked over, opened the door and stood at the entrance.  Below is what I heard:

Charlie:  Eve.  I have to pee.

Eve: (doesn’t close the door)

Charlie:  Eve!  I’m peeing!

Eve:  (doesn’t close the door)

Charlie:  Close the door.

Eve: (doesn’t close the door)

Charlie:  Eve!  Close the door!  Close the door! I’m peeing! (slams door in Evie’s face)

Eve: (begins to cry hysterically)

Charlie:  (finishes peeing, comes out of the restroom)

Eve: (continues to cry loudly)

Charlie:  (curls up in a ball in a nearby chair, hands over his ears, face scrunched)

Eve: (continues to cry while staring at Charlie)

Charlie: (walks over to Eve, puts his arms around her and rubs her back)

Eve:  (accepts the embrace, stops crying, starts hiccupping and sucking her thumb)

I looked at the two of them and sighed.  Poor Charlie.  I thought about trying to explain things to him.  But, I figured that this wouldn’t be the last time in his life that  although he did nothing wrong, because she cried, it was still all his fault.

I will tell you this, though.  I’m sitting here watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and becoming irrationally yet increasingly annoyed with George Lucas.  While on a trip yesterday to see The Muppets, we saw that the Star Wars franchise is being re-released in 3-D.  Also, my husband told me that Lucas’s plan with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that ridiculous homage to a character who should now be writing his memoirs and advising post-grads and not running through quicksand with a tired-looking Karen Allen, was to have Shia LeBeouf take over that franchise and start anew.

Seriously, Lucas.  The eighties are over.  Hey, I miss them, too.  They were awesome.  You were awesome.  Go out on high note, dude.  Here’s an idea:  come up with new movie.  No.  No.  I mean an entirely new movie. 

By the way, The Muppets?  A very good movie.  Jason Segal really gets what the Muppets meant to my generation.  The world may be too cynical now for a comeback, though.  But, Miss Piggy, I want you know that my daughter, Evie, loves you as much as I did.  And thank you, Mr. Henson, for giving us something that is genuine, sincere and timeless.  Thanks for not messing with perfection.

(I’m looking at you, Lucas.)

I have mixed feelings about this.  I think there are definitely pros to reading digital copies of books.  First, and most important to my liberal-commie-bastard self, downloading books saves trees and reduces the use of other non-sustainable resources it takes to produce printed copies of books.  Second, downloaded books are more portable.  I can whip out my phone and read whenever and wherever I have a free minute.  Third, downloaded books take up no physical space, which makes room for more shoes.

There is one con: downloaded books are not books.

I’ve loved to read all my life.  I credit my mother, who devoured books when I was growing up.  She was always reading at least one thick paperback, and I was always surrounded by books.  The act of reading was like second nature.

But I’ve also always loved books.  The dry, pulpy smell, the comforting, familiar heft in your hands, the way they look lined up on a bookshelf.  A book, especially a really good book, becomes a companion as you make your way through its pages.  It literally opens up a world to you and contains that world while you’re away, waiting patiently for your return.  When you read the last word on its last page, you can close it, stare at the front cover for a few seconds and then hold it to your chest while the story settles over you like a blanket.  And if you ever want to read it again, there it will be on the bookshelf, its spine bent back from your first reading, the chocolate ice cream stains on the back flap from where you took it to the kitchen, the scattered, raised bumps on page 243 where you cried when the best friend died. 

You can’t get any of that from a Kindle.  A Kindle, like a cold, indifferent lab technician, provides the book to you without even making eye contact and walks back out of the room.  I plan on reading in bed tonight, and I know it’s not going to feel right to curl up with my smartphone. 

Publishing is slowly but surely going the way of the digital reader.  There are some publishers who are still holding out, but we all know that in fifty years books will have gone the way of the VCR.  Electronic publishing is easier, cheaper, and the people like it.  It’s inevitable. 

I’ll still keep and re-read my favorite books, though.  After all, I’ve never had to plug my copy of Jane Eyre into the wall to charge it.

watching A Christmas Story

this is livin’, y’all

1.  Today I removed Evie’s existing carseat and installed her booster seat.  I figured since she kept flinging her legs over the sides of her old carseat thereby honoring approaching drivers with a daily flashing, she was getting too big for it.  Little kid carseats are strapped into the backseat of a car using a complicated rope and pulley system that would probably contain its occupant even in the case of Rapture.  I found out today that you simply toss a big kid booster seat into your backseat all willy-nilly and throw a seatbelt across it.  I decided to see it as a metaphor for my grip on Evie growing weaker and weaker.  Then I decided to play 3-D bowling on my smartphone.

2.  For lunch Evie had a slice of pizza and water to drink.  She took a sip of her drink and observed, “Mommy, water is not very exciting.”

3.  Charlie’s mom, Oolie, told me that upon seeing Charlie’s bed strewn with toys and clothes, Evie shook her head, rolled her eyes and declared, “Boys.”  She then proceeded to “fold” Charlie’s clothes and tidy up his room.  Much learned have you, young Jedi.

4.  Evie’s Aunt Boo and Uncle J gave her a pink tricycle a couple of years ago for Christmas.  At the beginning of the summer, Evie could barely make the pedals turn with her little feet.  Today I watched her zip around the courtyard in it, taking the little hills without a second thought.  It’s amazing what they learn to do when you’re not looking, isn’t it?

5.  Evie let herself out the locked front door and into the courtyard.  Once found by her almost hysterical mother, she was given a very stern talking to, probably her sternest yet, and told that if she did it again, she would get a spanking.  Please, Evie, don’t do it again.  Please. 

6.  Last Sunday, Evie said a bad word in church.  While being led to Sunday School, she said, “Sh–, I forgot something!”  Her Sunday School teacher couldn’t wait to tell me about it after the service.  In fact, she could barely get the story out without laughing.  Her daughter and my friend, Susan, was helping with Sunday School that day, and she had a great time making fun of me.  I love my church.

7.  While getting ready for her first choir performance, I tried really hard to convince Evie that putting her hair up in pigtails was a good idea.  I suggested that most of the other little girls would have their hair up.  Evie still refused, saying, “I just want to be different.” 

8.  Evie and I were riding along in the car in reflective silence.  Suddenly, she informed me that when she grew up, she would have big boobies. 

9.  Evie knows the lyrics to almost every song on Adele’s new album and is not afraid to belt them out.  She also enjoys Beyonce, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga and Kelly Clarkson.  So far she is not a Belieber.  But that’s not really music, is it?

10.  Dontcha just love Evie?