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Popping my head up for this year's Hallowe'en festivities.

Ros wanted to carve our two pumpkins herself. She kept one a secret. It turned out to be a Cap shield pumpkin she carved just for her mom. Awwwww.


( A couple of more Hallowe'en pics this way )

It's been a bit of a Marvel week in the Zed household. I talked the Sweetie into watching the first Cap with me this weekend. (He's a hardcore Marvel comics fan, but only lukewarm on the movies.) This led to this exchange.

Sweetie: Hey, that's Dum Dum Dugan. I recognize the hat. He's a Howling Commando.
Me: Yeah, all the Howling Commandos are in it. Falsworth, Gabe Jones, Jim Morita.
Sweetie: Wait, you know the names of the Howling Commandos?
Me: Of course. They're important in the whole Cap mythos.
Sweetie: Oh my god, I can't believe you know the names of the Howling Commandos.
Me: Heh.

All that reading a shedload of Stucky fic is paying off if I can match his Marvel geekiness. *g*

Friday, we're going to see the first show of Doctor Strange. (I'm taking the day off. The Sweetie is on his last week off before starting a new job.) This should be interesting. The Sweetie is a huge Strange fan, but can't stand Benedict Cumberbatch. I really want to see it with him because I suspect his head might explode. That, or he'll finally admit Cumberbatch is a good actor. *g*

This was the week for Rosalind's ice show, so that's pretty much been my whole week. There was a full run through on Tuesday, dress rehearsal on Thursday, one show Friday night, and a matinee and evening show today.

I volunteered in the dressing room for the dress and the Friday night show, which meant working with four or five other parents, depending on the night, to make sure twenty-four little girls had their skates done up, their costumes on, and their helmets buckled, getting them on and off the ice with minimal chaos, and making sure they kept occupied when they were not on the ice with the least amount of mayhem possible. Last year I only volunteered one night and felt wrecked at the end, but this year I made it through both nights okay. I think knowing what to expect--i.e. constantly being on call to answer questions and help little kids with everything from making sure the safety pins holding the flowers on their costume was securely fastened to holding the door on the toilet cubicle in the slightly battered arena dressing room we were assigned.

Ros had a great time, and was ecstatic that I let her wear makeup for the show. (She saw kids wearing it for last year's show and has bugged me all year to let her get some.) Since it has literally been decades since I've worn makeup, that meant getting her some eyeshadow and lipstick in not too garish colours. Here's a slightly goofy picture showing the results:


I let her practice with the makeup herself between shows today so she could bring it and put it on herself without me in the dressing room. I predict many upcoming battles on why she can't wear makeup all the time. She's growing up so fast! ::sigh::

The Sweetie and I had tickets for today's matinee, and I have to say the club does a really good job at putting together a good show. I'm amazed at how efficiently they get large groups of little kids on and off the ice, especially given what I know about how crazy it is backstage. From the stands it all looks effortless.

I took the good camera to try and get a picture of Ros on the ice. That was a bit challenging, given that I also wanted to enjoy those three minutes as much as possible. ( This one didn't turn out too badly )

During this section they formed a wheel with four spokes spinning around. After many interesting screwups during rehearsals, including a rehearsal where Ros' line managed to go through another line, they pulled it off for the show. It helped that Ros' line finally put Ros at the end. For the rehearsals they kept putting the smallest kid at the end, and since the end skater has to go the fastest, the poor kid kept falling.

Ros' number was called Sunshine, and the song they used was Sunshine Day, which I only realized after several weeks of watching rehearsals was sung by The Brady Bunch. YouTube has helpfully supplied a video of the song from the show. There's a blast from my childhood.


Tomorrow there will be much relaxing, and then on Tuesday the spring session of skating lessons starts. Yikes! At least we get the summer off.

I've only had a few minutes online this weekend. The Sweetie has swanned off to L.A. this weekend to attend the TCM Classic Film Festival (which given how many times I've swanned off to cons he's totally owed) so it's been a Mom and Ros weekend. Which has been fun--there was a Taekwando belt grading for Ros on Friday night, and the One of a Kind craft show, bowling with a friend of Ros' and her dad, and Hockey Night in Canada yesterday--but utterly exhausting. Every night I've planned on getting some writing/watching/computer time in after Ros' bedtime and every night I've ended up crashing along with her. Ros ran out of steam herself this afternoon (probably due to late night hockey watching followed by an early morning wake up--she insisted on getting up at 6:30!--and running around with a friend for an early afternoon play date) so I enforced an on-time bedtime and thought surely I'll get a bit of time tonight. But no, I'm apparently still knackered and crashed again.

All you single parents out there have my total respect.

I did, however, carve out an hour in between laundry and dishes when Ros was at her friend's place to watch yesterday's Badgers game. They took on Arizona, and while it wasn't quite as nail-biting a game as the UNC game, but it was still a great game and the Badgers players made some lovely plays. And now they're on to the Final Four for a second year. They're taking on Kentucky, so I'm not going to count too much on them taking it all, but I've definitely enjoyed getting to watch so much basketball.

In the wake of Ros' Harry Potter obsession, I picked up the first book this week. We're now three chapters in, and I have to say I'm enjoying reading it aloud far more than I did reading it to myself back when it first came out.

Having an appreciative audience probably helps. Ros giggled through the entire chapter of Harry getting all those Hogwarts letters. And she let out a long dismayed "nooooo" when the chapter was over.

Ros and I worked together on our jack o' lantern this year. She worked on a design, I transferred it to the pumpkin and she did most of the carving. It worked out pretty well.



Tonight it was a cold and rainy night, but that didn't stop Ros and her friends from trick or treating. Ros wanted to be a cowgirl, so we put together bits and bobs from Value Village. The vest was adult-sized, but we had it altered down to fit, and there were no cowboy hats her size, so we settled for a kids version of the Indiana Jones hat. She was insistent that she wasn't going to wear a bandana, in spite of the fact that it looked pretty adorable on her. (I couldn't get a picture with the bandana.)



We went out with one of her friends, the friend's cousin and the cousin's three-year-old sister. Ros was in her element helping the three-year-old up and down the steps of the houses in our neighbourhood. (She loves helping younger kids. She's dying to be old enough to start babysitting.)

In spite of the fact that the Sweetie and I are huge film buffs, or perhaps because of it, Ros has shown absolutely no interest in movies for years now. She's always saying "Film just isn't my thing, mom," and trying to get out of going to daycare any time they have an outing to a movie theatre planned.

I am determined to change this. And since she's turning into a serious sports player and fan, I have decided to do it with... sports movies!

First up tonight was Bend It Like Beckham. Girls playing footie! How perfect is that.

The ground rules we've set are that Ros has to stay in the room whilst the film is playing, but she doesn't have to pay attention if she doesn't find it interesting. She was all happy because she thoroughly intended to ignore the film and work on her latest Lego set. Except she didn't! She got totally sucked into the film and watched it all, clapping when our heroines' team won, and getting tense when it looked like things weren't going to work out.

At the end, Ros wouldn't admit it was worth a thumbs up, but apart from a bit just before the end where things looked tense and she cried a bit, she totally seemed to enjoy it.

Next up: a local theatre is doing a screening of The Bad News Bears. That's a slice of my childhood, and hey, if foul-mouthed kid baseball players get Ros watching a movie, I'm all for 'em.

Seeing as she's such a hockey fan, at some point I'm going to have to subject myself to The Mighty Ducks.

So, does anyone else have suggestions for eight-year-old-friendly sports movies?

A belated weekend post.

We took Ros and three of her best friends to Canada's Wonderland (our local amusement park) this past Saturday as Ros' birthday party. Since I'm the parent who likes rides, I was the one nominated to go on the big coasters with Ros' friends. (Ros is both too short for and not yet interested in the big rides.)

I was looking forward to it. I used to love going on coasters, wooden and metal, looping and not. I'd ride them all day if I could. But it's also been about twenty years since I've done it. (The Sweetie hates heights and gets motion sick, so Disney excepted, we've never really done amusement parks together.)

Most of the coasters were fine. I didn't love them as much as I used to, but had fun. But then we did the Stunt Coaster, and I lost it. It's not a very high coaster, and there aren't any loops, so I thought how bad can it be? But it shoots off at high speed from the start right into a rising spiral and then through a bunch of tight turns and sudden drops. I screamed for about the first thirty seconds, and then spent the rest of the ride convinced I was going to die of a heart attack. When we finally stopped I was practically shaking, which was when Ros' eight-year-old friend I was sitting with turned to me and said "That was fun! Let's do it again!"

It's true: three eight-year-olds are braver than me.

Oh, and I screamed so much, my voice is down to a husky squawk. I had to both run a big meeting at work today and coach Ros' soccer game tonight, so the lack of voice made both interesting. (I think I'll pretend the voice is Lauren Bacall sexy rather than a raspy mess.)

Yesterday I alluded to the mad scheme I was going to try. Today we gave it a whirl.

What happened was, after we'd planned out what parks we were doing (Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom) and picked our FastPass rides, Ros decided that she wanted to try the Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios. Working out the logistics, I figured the only way we could do it was to use the early morning Magic Hours opening today at the Studios park, run for the Tower of Terror at rope drop so we could get in right away without FastPasses, and then whip over to Animal Kingdom for our first FastPass on the safaris. All of which meant getting up before six and being on the first bus at 7:15.

I figured since this was my mental idea, Ros and I would do it and meet the Sweetie at the Animal Kingdom. Ros, however, managed to convince her dad to come along. (And when I say convince, I mean she said "Daddy, would you come, too?" Yeah, he's a pushover.)

We managed to pull the whole thing off.

( Photographic evidence of the madness this way... )

The ice show is done!

Ros did a great job at the afternoon show. She and the other girls did a really great job with their number, and they all had a great time. And Ros had the biggest smile when we threw her bouquets of flowers at the end.

( Here are a couple of pics of the show. )

In the things that amuse me category, the Sweetie and I were looking at the group shot of Ros' number, and he pointed out that the dwarf costumes were all gold, blue and shades of red, just like the uniforms in Classic Trek. Which puts Ros in command gold. *g*

Ros has decided she wants to walk in the local Easter Parade with our martial arts school. Which meant a trip to the dollar store to get Easter accountrements.


The ears also came with a little tail. It should look adorable with her martial arts uniform.

In related news, the Sweetie also got Easter gear to wear. (He'll be walking with her. I, having driven like a maniac down from my mom's to get them to the parade staging area in time, will be having a brief rest before I go to watch the parade.)

The Sweetie made me close my eyes before he modelled his purchase, and then asked me one thing.

Sweetie: So, is this worthy of Howard Donald?

( Click here to see the Sweetie's Howard Donald-worthy outfit )