Every day we make new dirty clothes. Every single day the members of this household churn out dirty clothes like they’re going out of style. So while I might be able to get a lot of the clothes clean I will never, ever get all of the laundry done. Still, I can dream, right? I can hold on to the hope that one day all of the laundry will be clean. That someday I will be able to close the washing machine forever and buy laundry detergent no more. That one day I will be able to throw my laundry baskets away or at least decided to use them for toy boxes or some such. On that day, that glorious day, we will apparently all be running around naked because that is the only way it is ever gonna happen.

Hmmm, kinda puts doing the laundry into a new perspective. I’m thinking I’ll stick with doing the laundry because that there alternative is just horrifying. Still, I’m thankful for clean laundry. It’s a good thing.

Because I am a full-time aunt my insanity usually manifests by taking a large amount of children to do something fun all by myself. The last crazy thing I’d done was something like taking nine children to the playground by myself, but that was a while ago. I was due for something more extreme.

It was Arianna who provided me my opportunity. She had a flier from the library advertising Fall Free Movies. I like all three of those words. There was a movie playing Saturday that she had really wanted to see and so she was walking around the house with the flier randomly pouncing at her mother who kept saying Arianna needed to talk to her father. Arianna did only to find that Seth was needed in Morton Saturday morning and so we wouldn’t have transportation. “Hmmm…” I thought to myself. “I like pizza.” And then my brain caught up with the movie dilemma and started plotting.

“So,” I said to Seth, “If I could find a ride would it be okay?”

He said that if I could find a ride it would be totally cool. My brain, which was now excited about macaroni and cheese, started putting together different facts. Fact #1- I wanted to see this movie, too. Fact # B- Free movies are lots of fun for children and grownups alike. Fact # III- There was a Lansberry van just down the street and a lone Raquel all alone with the Lansberry children for two and half days. My brain and I agreed that she probably wouldn’t have any plans to go out on Saturday.

So I hatched my plan. I talked to Raquel about using the Lansberry van to take five Ben-Ezra children and five Lansberry children to the free movie. She thought I was insane (which I really appreciated) and then we ran the plan past the children. I made the mistake, though, of running the plan past Margary because the current plan had her staying home with Raquel. She looked at me over the banister and said, “I has car seat!” Really, how can you argue with that? And then Samuel started pleading her case by very reasonably suggesting a division of labor that would have him and Moriah looking out for Margary thus leaving me free to run crowd control on everybody else. Resisting at this point was a lost cause especially with Margary being so sweet. So after Samuel and I convince Moriah that no, Raquel would not feel left out by being left blissfully alone for a morning, we synchronized watches and agreed to leave the Lansberry house at 9:15 the next morning.

We almost made it, too. It was 9:20 when the Ben-Ezra kids and I went walking down the street. Seth had left a lot later than he’d meant to so he wasn’t that far away when I called him to say I’d forgotten to get the car seats out of the van. While we waited for him to get back I divided the kids up into buddy pairs. I might be insane, but the plan did not include losing a child at the movies. Seth showed up, we loaded up the car seats and the children, and we were off.

It was a fun movie. We were watching Monsters vs. Aliens which was made by Dreamworks with all those fun Dreamworks issues so I won’t say it was great, but it was certainly fun. There were some great lines, too, though I can only remember one. The children were all very well behaved, Justice only got scared at one really loud part and Margary was only very two once. It was at a most inconvenient time, but we didn’t lose her in the crowd and she stopped crying really quickly. I then steered my charges across a parking lot to the big white van and we were on our way home.

Well, almost on our way. I’d discovered at some point during the night that the plan might include stopping for ice cream. This part wasn’t nailed down until I got in the van and realized that yes, the plan did indeed include ice cream. Well, what are you gonna do? Plans are made to be followed, right? We stopped at Wendy’s and I had the joy of ordering twelve small Frosties. I then gave ice cream to eleven children for whom breakfast was long past. I threatened the Lansberry children with dismemberment if they were bad for Raquel due to sugar highs and then delivered them home.

The Ben-Ezra kids and I said farewell and then walked down to our house. I felt a happy glow. I’d just take eleven children to the movies then out for ice cream all by myself. I felt good. I felt crazy. I felt truly insane.

Walgreens Register Rewards program (disposition 3; attack varies from 1 to 7) vs. Raquel (disp. 7; attack 5, +1d thrifty-wise). Again, a win, adding stuff to my gear with no loss of resources.

I am such a geek!

As it happens today is Invisible Bob’s fourth birthday. We know because Justice told us. So tonight we’re going to have a party and celebrate all the good times we’ve had with Bob.

Happy birthday, Invisible Bob!

Sometimes, because I’m a thoughtful geek, I like to take different bits of media I enjoy and rub them up against each other just to see what happens. I’ll take this song and that movie or this movie and that book, put them next to each other and ask myself questions like “Why do I like these bits of media?”, “What do they have in common?” or “Why am I rubbing this CD against a book?”. It’s weird what comes out of those conversations with myself. Other times a comparison will pop into my head fully formed. I’ll be talking to someone who’s got a kinda glazed look about a story I’ve been thinking about or a character that I connected with and all of a sudden I’ll think “It’s just like that thing over there!” And it always amuses me to see what gets connected.

So, I recently got hooked on a Nickelodeon show called Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s supposedly a kid’s show, but I watched a couple of episodes with the kids and found way more depth than I was expecting or they were appreciating. And then I oh so casually went to the library and got out all every DVD in the first season. I’m onto the second season and really mad that our branch didn’t have the fourth disc. They’d better have it next week or I’m gonna have to track down who got it out, go to their house and rip it apart ’til I find it. Not that I’m hooked or anything.

So, in a fantastical world that remains nameless the people are divided up according to the classical elements. You have the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes and the Air Nomads. Each element has a certain culture associated with it loosely based on various Oriental cultures. In each culture are those called Benders who are able to use and control their people’s element. It’s basically elemental magic, but don’t tell anyone I said that. The bending effects are really cool cause the bending is done like a martial art. So sometimes it’s like a wuxia fight, but with the ground opening up, fireballs, water whips, or miniature tornadoes. I totally geek out on that sort of thing.

Balance between the elements is preserved by the Avatar, a person from one element who is able to master all four elements. He keeps the peace between the peoples and when he dies he is reincarnated into the next element in the cycle. The current Avatar is a twelve-year-old Airbender named Aang.

So the Fire Nation starts getting uppity and everyone looks to the Avatar to keep order, but he’s freaked out about being the Avatar and vanished. One hundred years pass.

Aang is found encased in ice by a brother and sister of the Water Tribe living at the South Pole. The war of Fire Nation aggression has been going strong for the past hundred years and slowly but surely the world is falling to their might. Aang realizes he needs to step up and be the Avatar, but before he can take on the Fire Nation he needs to learn the other three elements. So he, Katara and Sokka set off on Aang’s six-legged, giant, flying bison named Appa (I am not making this up) to travel around and have adventures, I mean, go to the North Pole so he can learn Water bending.

It’s an odyssey story. You have a very unprepared character who’s kinda goofy and delighted with everything he sees preparing to step into his role and save the world. You’ve got Katara of the Water Tribe who’s a Water bender looking for a master and gaining in strength and power as the show goes on. And then there’s Sokka, Katara’s brother, who is very, very normal. Oh, I see, I said to myself, It’s just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

See, there’s the main character who’s a mystical creature carrying the strength and power of those who’ve gone before, but who personality-wise remains completely untouched by it. There’s the staunch, down-to-earth friend who starts out useful and only grows in power as the series goes on. Then there’s the final character who’s goofy, ordinary, comic relief and the heart of the group. Plus each season is basically episodic with a running through line that ties things together from episode to episode.

So now that I’ve figured out how this cast of characters is practically one and the same I need to figure out what about this grouping speaks to me so much. What is it about the whimsical and funny reincarnation of a being of great power that holds my attention? Why is the best friend/almost-sidekick so important? And why would the whole group fall apart without the average, ordinary guy? Maybe I’ll go rub the Avatar DVDs against the season of Buffy I own and see what happens.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Mr. Magorium and Mahoney, the young woman who works in his magical toy shop, are dancing on a sheet of bubble wrap in what I’m pretty sure was the center of Central Park. It looked like so much fun, the height of whimsy and playfulness.

Earlier this week someone in this house got a package in the mail that contained, along with what they’d ordered, a sheet of bubble wrap. Crystal let Noah have the bubble wrap and he came running out to the breakfast room to show me. He carefully laid it out on the floor and said, “It’s for jumping.” And then he and I took turns jumping and dancing across the bubble wrap.

It wasn’t Central Park, but hey, I’ll take it.

After Borders we went to WalMart in search of Back to School sales. It was almost embarrassing. I didn’t have much money to spend there, but I kept geeking out over school supplies and adding stuff to the pile in my arms. After a minute I would put it back and find something else to drool over. Like staplers. Or Sharpies. Or mechanical pencils. For some reason I kept coming back to the mechanical pencils. I had to say out loud several times “I have mechanical pencils. I don’t need mechanical pencils”, but I wouldn’t listen to myself. I had to put several packages of mechanical pencils back while we were there. When we went to check out the cashier asked if we were students. Raquel said, quite truthfully, “No, we just like school supplies.” He didn’t believe us. He said, “Yeah, I can be sarcastic, too.” We tried to explain that really, we were just geeky about these things, but he wouldn’t listen.

We knew we needed to get milk sometime that evening so after WalMart we headed out to get milk, but first we stopped by Kade’s. I was going to get a decaf mocha Kadecino which is like a coffee drink with ice cream. I was so excited. I was childishly excited. Even the hassle of navigating construction traffic to get to Kade’s couldn’t put a damper on my excitement. So we pull into the drive through and I’m bouncing in my seat excited. The guy comes to the window. Ooh, so happy! I’m gonna get a Kadecino! He opens the window and says, “I’m sorry, ladies, but we were just closing.”

Despair.

I was pleasant to him cause it’s not his fault the people who run the place close at 9 like they say on the sign. And it’s not his fault that we got there at 9:03. But as soon as he’d closed the window and we pulled out I gave vent to the deep agony tearing at my soul. I think I said something like “But I wanted a Kadecino!” in a really whiny voice.

No matter, no matter, we would simply have to soldier on without a decaf mocha Kadecino. I was all prepared to do without when I remembered there was a Steak and Shake close by. A shake was like a Kadecino, right? The only problem was I was now in the wrong lane turning in the opposite direction on a road full of construction road blocks. Still, I was optimistic- I gave up on the whole idea. But then I saw the golden arches off in the distance. Off in the distance in the direction we were currently traveling, I should say.

There! I said. Or maybe Raquel thought of it. Yes, now that I think of it it was Raquel’s idea. Which was gracious of her because she didn’t want a coffee drink to begin with. She was thinking maybe she would get a smoothie, but that was more to keep me company than anything. And now she was pointing out new and different places she could not be that excited about going to. Really, it was very sweet.

I figured out how to get to the golden arches shining out through the dark. This is no mean trick because these golden arches reside in Peoria, Il, the land of “You can see it, but you can’t get to it.” But get to it we did and we pulled into the drive through. I was excited again. Now I was going to order an iced decaf mocha bliss. It sounded complicated, it sounded girly and I was going to say it with a straight face. Any minute now I was going to say it. Any minute. Eventually we moved to the other lane that didn’t have a minivan in it that was no doubt full of children who kept changing their minds. It was a good choice. The new lane moved quickly, almost as quickly as a fast food drive through. We get up to the funky speaker/microphone thing and Raquel relays her order through me. And now is my moment. I lean in and I say “And may I have a medium decaf iced mocha?”

Very polite, I thought. Clear, concise, polite. Yes, as ordering went I was very pleased with myself. But the person on the other end took issue with my order. “We can’t do that in decaf.” I was incredulous enough that she went and asked her manager (that’s what she said she did anyway. I wouldn’t surprised if she’d just turned off her microphone and hummed for a minute), but he was adamant. She said, “None of the iced coffees can be in decaf.” Okay, weird, but okay. So then I ordered a hot decaf mocha. This’ll do it, I thought. Surely this is me weaseling a decaf mocha out of them right under their noses. But no, of course, I was wrong. But now she was kinda snippy. She said, “No, ma’am, I told you. We can’t do that in decaf! None of the mochas can be in decaf.”

Raquel confirmed later that she’d previously said that none of the iced coffees could be in decaf and so my second order made perfect sense. I toyed with getting a caffeinated iced mocha and just not sleeping last night, but Raquel suggested we just cancel the order and leave. So we did and we headed out once again to get milk.

I was peeved. I was really loudly peeved actually. All of my excited-over-a-Kadecino energy was now floating around my body looking for something to do so I talked loud and long about how I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get a decaf mocha. Raquel said some random things about it being a mix or something ridiculous like that, but I was convinced it was a conspiracy. But then I remembered! Up ahead, in the direction we were traveling, there was a Steak and Shake. Shakes are still an awful lot like Kadecinos.

So we got shakes. They weren’t mocha, but they were Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate and were very tasty. And by the time we got to the Steak and Shake Raquel had had enough time on the hunt to realize she did want a shake so I wasn’t stuck drinking alone.

Someday I will have a decaf mocha Kadecino. On that day I will dance in the parking lot. Perhaps it’s a good thing for Raquel that I didn’t get one last night.

The Justice Dance