It's been a pretty good one.

Where to start...

Friday started out with some concerns, but moved into happiness and joy pretty quickly; I am determined to have happiness and joy.

Without going through all the details, let's hit the high points.

***

The Spots, because they may be saints, took the children on Friday night through Saturday afternoon. So I dropped the children off on Friday night, and was almost home when I realized I had not left the car seats. I wasn't far from Winter's apartment, so I picked up Winter and we drove the extra hour to drop off car seats. And then, because it was open, we went to Denny's. We were reliving our youth, evidently. Winter asked for some clarification on a comment I had made about my family -- this resulted in us staying there until 12:30 (I had planned to go to bed early) with me giving the Cliff Notes version of my life in the early 1990's.

On Saturday I went with a neighbor to a local celebration of women, where some influential women from the area were recognized and then a play was presented on influential women through time. (She came by Thursday night, in the process asked how I was doing, I said I was a little down, and things went from there.)

The first part was nice. It was fascinating to listen to these women discuss some of their experiences in leadership. I even got a little teary once or twice. (Now that I have children I cry at everything.)

And then there was the luncheon and the play.

***

I have quickly gone through and read the entries I have missed over the past few days while off the computer. One of the entries I caught was Netter's recent experience with a play. I am not usually one for one upmanship, but I promise that the only reason why her experience may have been worse was because her event charged.

There was quite the menu, which included green Jell-O salad.

Have I mentioned I live in the Jell-O belt?

Yup.

And then there was the play. I can't even begin to tell you. It was just ... wow. It was really something.

Now, I admit that it was a non-professional production. And that's fine. I did a lot of theater growing up, and understand we're not all Olivier, but oh, wow...

The play was a bunch of song/skits about influential women through time, like Eve, and Abraham's Sarah, and Ruth, and Pocahontas, and Betsy Ross, and the pioneers, and Dear Abby...

I don't think I can even describe it. But let's say that if I were Eve or Sarah or Ruth, I might come and haunt whomever the playwrite was. The women weren't presented as anyone to admire, but as moderately neurotic and manipulative and odd because, you know, this was supposed to be a comedy.

The two women who sang about Ruth wore cowboy hats and boots and bathrobes. One of them wore a holstein hat, obviously bought at the local Party Palace, and they broke into a country western stylized song about Ruth's life. The one who was sans holstein hat read the lyrics from notecards which she held right up in front of her face. (Actually there were several obvious uses of note cards or even sheet music being used. It's hard to take you seriously when you have your sheet music right in your face and you're in a play, and it's not, um, part of the character.) Mostly the song was about everyone dying and Ruth hanging out with her mother-in-law.

The Pocahontas number was completely Disney from the costume(complete with the necklace) to the bright red tee-pee in the background to the smoke signals to the song about what Pocahontas did, according to those who haven't read history.

Betsy Ross was presented as a greedy old lady. The pioneer women sang about crossing the plains a la Elvis Presley, complete with "Ah uh huh" and swinging hips. Dear Abby was comforting the souls of lost women everywhere. She did have a British accent, which was quite a lovely accent.

***

It was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to honor women. Mostly it was scary.

Afterwards several women said things like, "Wasn't that cute?", etc. All I could respond with was, "Wow. That was really quite the thing, wasn't it?"

That's why one should always drive oneself to such things -- if I'd been smart enough to do so I could have taken off, complaining of Jell-O poisoning, and found a nice coffee shop to write in.

***

Yes, yes. I know. I'm a horrible person and I'm going to hell.

***

The Spots brought the kids back, and while the kids were supposed to be napping, we watched Love Actually, which Akanthos suggested. I really enjoyed it. I laughed a lot. It was one of those feel good movies, and I did feel good afterwards. Then we had a nice dinner, sans Jell-O¹.

Later that night we watched Great Expectations. It wasn't any better than it was back in 1998 when I saw it the first time.

I saw it with Rice in the theater. I was so excited -- it was one of my favorite novels modernized, and it had Ethan Hawke, and Tori Amos, and oh, it should have been lovely. But when it was over, though we couldn't put our finger on it, Rice and I both felt hollow, as if something was missing. I haven't watched it since, but I have listened to the soundtrack a great deal.

So I decided recently to Netflix it, just to see if my impressions from ten years ago were accurate, and if that was the case, could I pick out what was wrong? The answer was yes. Yes, my impressions were correct, and yes, I picked out several things that needed to be fixed. That was cool. And so was the soundtrack.

We finished everything off with Garden State, which I really enjoyed. It was a fine movie about what happens when you're on the verge between being young and being an adult. It's about being in your mid-twenties, and trying to figure out where life is going.

It, too, had a fine soundtrack.

***

A weekend full of laughing isn't a bad weekend. I laughed a lot.

I have never thought I was one for romantic comedies, but these (excepting for Great Expectations) weren't your average romantic comedies.

1 I am not opposed to Jell-O. It's a perfectly fine concoction. But it's appearance, particularly in its green variety, as a constant staple in this part of the world never ceases to amaze me.