Little Messages

After reading this post, Nina sent over some Hershey's miniatures with this note:

"I have been meaning to buy you candy bars, but I had only a *little* money. So I bought *little* candy!"

I had a pounding headache that morning, and the combination of chocolate and laughter did wonders for me.

***

After being up with Phillip one early morning, I put him down to sleep in our back room, where his squawks wouldn't wake anyone up. It seemed very important to me that when Darren got up to go to work, he would know where the baby was. So I wrote him a note before collapsing back into bed.

Fortunately Darren thought to check for Phillip himself, before seeing my note. Because what I wrote at 5:30 a.m. was:

"PJ's in the storage room."

Um. Pajamas in the storage room, check. But where's the baby?

***

Voice message from my sister:

"Hey, Sara -- I saw this sign I have to tell you about. I know it's true because it's on a church sign. It says, 'God has your picture on His fridge.'"

I hope it's not my first-grade picture, because I forgot to brush my hair for that one.

-- SJ

Resolution

1. It has been only two and a half months since I had a baby.

2. I've had four children.

3. I've had three c-sections.

4. I'm nursing aforementioned fourth baby.

5. I've been very undisciplined in my eating.

6. I spent the past year building Phillip's little body, not my own.

7. I'm 32 years old.

The above qualifications notwithstanding, it was painful to have to go clothes shopping today and buy jeans two sizes larger than I wore a year ago. Free play is over. Time to get back in the game and play by the rules.

-- SJ

Three!

Something momentous, life-altering, and earth-changing has occurred today. Surely you heard about it? Surely you HEARD IT OCCUR, no matter where you are as you're reading this today? Daphne turned three years old today!

Addie, Stuart, and Daphne consider this a morning of great import. Surely the rest of the universe does as well.

Daphne is our most conversational child. She was speaking articulately by age two, and hasn't stopped yet. She's in an disadvantaged spot in the birth lineup: third of four. But the family rumor is that she takes very much after her Aunt Lindsay in looks and personality; armed with that legacy, Daphne hasn't got lost in the shuffle. Her presence usually stirs things up, something like shooting a bottle rocket among roosting chickens. She loves letters and numbers, and spends half-hours at the time cutting paper into little bits. She's not easy company, but she's very sparkling and entertaining company. And with her blue eyes, dark lashes, and dimple, she's got her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

So today we celebrate three years of Daphne. All the same, she isn't one to stagnate. She's already talking about how on "my nother birthday," she'll be four.


Daphne wearing her birthday dress from Nana.

-- SJ

Thoughts While Listening to 80s Pop Songs

Did it bother Richard Marx, Bryan Adams, Journey, and all these other cool rockers that they worked and sang and sweated to produce songs that were used primarily by fifteen-year-olds to make Friday Night Dedications to each other?

-- SJ

Slideshow 2: Still Summer

Just imagine the shows I could put together if we actually ever DID anything!



-- SJ

Hair: Not Fair

We went to the pool today. Everybody's hair got wet. Everybody's hair air-dried...











... and now we know why my children should be grateful that they got Darren's hair genes, not mine.

-- SJ

Commencing Year Four

I'm in no hurry to finish up summer, so we officially begin school in two weeks when our weekly co-op starts back up. I'm teaching third grade, second grade, and pre-K all kind of smudged together. Inspired by Rachelle and Amy, I figured I'd post my school plans for the like seven people who would be interested in them. The rest of you are welcome to go back and read our archives until I'm done.

I don't like curriculum guides and I hate charts, but I and the kids all operate well on a routine. A couple of weekends ago, Darren gave me the Saturday off so I could find a quiet spot and work out a schedule. I have two goals: keep the kids interested in their work, and finish by noon.

With those goals in mind, it's impossible to cover all the important subjects in one day. So I've split the schedule into an A-Day and B-Day.

A-Day
9:30
Bible with all 3 older kids.
For A&S, this means going over the lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday. I haven't figured out what Daphne's part in it will be.

10:00
Math (Stuart)
Reading/Handwriting/Grammar (Addie)
Preschool workbook (Daphne)
I use Horizons math, which has a colorful layout that makes math look more fun. For RHG, I plan to incorporate whatever they're doing for co-op's Book Club class (make it good, Deige!). I also bought some Language Arts workbooks. For Daphne, I bought a great big "fundamentals" workbook. We've already done several pages, and she's an enthusiastic student. For those who didn't notice, I love workbooks. I'd be happy to spend the rest of my homeschooling career assigning workbooks.

10:45
Addie and Stuart switch subjects, and Daphne goes back to watch a video.
Yes, indeed, I'm incorporating video into my school schedule. I don't even care if it's educational. After all, I'll also have Phillip to throw wrenches into the works every morning.

11:30
Elective
I hope to find a Spanish curriculum to start Addie and Stuart on this year.


B-Day
9:30
Awana (A&S)
Bible (Daphne)
Addie and Stuart are both in Sparkies. Daphne will work on that vague "Bible" thing again.

10:00
Math (Stuart)
History (Addie)
Workbook (Daphne)
Our history for the fall and winter is a book called "World History and the Bible," which puts events in the Bible in context with the rest of the world.

10:45
Switch subjects; video

11:30
Elective
We're considering piano lessons. But I'm absolutely uninterested in having to cart kids to lessons, and entertain other kids during said lessons.

Thursday Co-Op
Book Club, Spelling, Science, P.E., Geography
Daphne will graduate from the nursery into preschool. When Stuart did preschool at co-op, he mostly learned "Sit." Daph, I think, will have to learn "Who Is The Boss Here?"

Darren will be teaching a class this year: every other Thursday he'll have the older boys (ages 9-12) for "Great Battles." Not only should the subject matter appeal, but I suspect the boys will be relieved to have a teacher with a deep voice and facial hair.

That's our lineup for fall. We've bought school supplies, I've got the books together, the schedule's all ready... now all I'm waiting for is my enthusiasm. It'll probably kick in the first morning I sit down with the kids and start to teach them.

-- SJ

Obscure to Obvious

Addie came in from outside with a ziploc bag full of water. I was ready to ask, "Addie, what is *that*?", but Daphne got there first:

"Hey, Addie! That's a bag of water!"

-- SJ

Just Discovered

So how many of y'all already knew about Pandora and didn't tell me about it? Seriously cool.

-- SJ

Retraction

I complained recently about the Cat Who books by Lillian Jackson Braun: "Mildly entertaining and highly irritating," was my verdict.

But I was a bit puzzled. I'd read several of the books years ago, and wondered why I hadn't noticed then just how annoying they were. I've figured it out now. Picking up the series again after all those years, I got a bad apple. The Cat Who Came to Breakfast sounds like Braun went away on an extended European tour and left instructions for her secretary to finish her book: "Just follow my outline and copy my style from my other books, and you'll do fine."

Since then, I've read The Cat Who Saw Stars and The Cat Who Lived High. They're the real thing, highly entertaining and only mildly irritating.

-- SJ

The Time Traveler's Wife, Personalized

This is an excerpt from the book, the chapter where Clare, age 6, first meets Henry, age 36. It's from Henry's point of view. One of the major inconveniences of his time-traveling is that he always shows up without any clothes.

Henry: I'm in the Meadow, waiting. I wait slightly outside the clearing, naked, because the clothes Clare keeps for me in a box under a stone are not there; the box isn't there either, so I am thankful that the afternoon is fine, early September, perhaps, in some unidentified year. I hunker down in the tall grass....

I hear a screen door slam and I peer above the grass. A child is running, pell mell, and as it comes down the path through the waving grass my heart twists and Clare bursts into the clearing.

She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is still wearing her school uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and knee socks with penny loafers...

[Clare spots him. Lots of conversation, during which he keeps a careful distance and doesn't tell her who he is.]

...But what I really need isn't money, it's clothing."

Clare looks at me doubtfully.

"Does your dad have any clothes he doesn't need? Even a pair of pants would be great."

"I don't know..."

"That's okay, you don't need to get them right now. But if you bring some next time I come, it would be very nice."

[They talk a little more, and then he disappears.]

-- The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger


So how would this play out in our own personal life? Probably something like this:

Darren: I'm at the Creek, waiting. I wait behind some bushes, naked, and wondering why Sara is so enamored of this place; the sand is gritty, the bugs are fierce, and wrapped around the prickly bush a tendril of poison ivy seems to be reaching out for me. I am thankful that the afternoon is fine, feels like July to my New England blood so it must be early September here, in some unidentified year. I hunker down on that blasted sand....

I hear footsteps and I peer above the bushes. A child is running, pell mell, and as it comes down the cowpath my heart twists and Sara bursts onto the creekbank.

She is very young. She looks like Addie, except for her tousled hair with the cowlick in front, and she isn't wearing glasses. I try to remember when she got glasses, to try to guess her age; it doesn't seem fair that in addition to having to remember to write blog posts for her birthday and that she likes mustard and pickles but never ketchup on her hamburgers, I have to remember when she got glasses. Nine, she was nine the year she got glasses. She seems to be about six now.

She is oblivious; she isn't alone. Trailing behind her are two lanky boys, young teens, wearing cutoff jeans and no shirts. They have a handful of bottle rockets, which they light off at regular intervals and shoot into the creek. Sara pauses near my bush, and her brothers walk father down the bank, looking for snakes to shoot.

I can tell where Addie got her fashion sense: Sara is wearing a grubby shirt, cut-off jean shorts, and is barefoot. Both her knees are skinned; I'm sure she's shown me one of those scars later in life.

[Sara spots him. Lots of conversation, during which he keeps a careful distance and doesn't tell her who he is.]

"...But what I really need isn't money, it's clothing."

Sara looks at me doubtfully.

"Does your dad have any clothes he doesn't need? Even a pair of pants would be great."

Sara looks blank. Right. Her dad died three years ago and her mother hasn't remarried yet. "Um, or maybe your grandfather or your uncle?"

"Matt and Neil have clothes," she says. I'm still surprised by the broad accent. The Sara I know has a slight Southern lilt, not this drawl that gives "Matt" two syllables.

"I don't think your brothers are big enough." They also haven't used up their arsenal of bottle rockets.

"Oh. Wait a sec. I'll be right back." She scampers away before I can say anything about keeping secrets. I wait. [Insert poetic references to the splash and babble of the flowing creek, how it's beautiful like Sara's eyes, etc.]

After some time, I hear footsteps again. Sara reappears; I wonder briefly if she ever brushed her hair that morning. She's brought me some clothes of her uncle's: blue work shirt, denim jeans. The only difficulty with the clothes is that her uncle is still in them.

"Where'd you say he was, Sam?" Will asks. Sam, a nickname bestowed on her by her grandfather. My interest in the situation is heightened when I realize that he's carrying a shotgun. I remember long, languid conversations with Sara in years to come, when she tells me stories of her childhood years, such as how Uncle Will can shoot down a chicken hawk in flight with one bullet.

"Somewhere over here. Um..." Sara turns the wrong way, and I'm suddenly glad for her innate sense of bad direction. They walk several feet down the path, leaving me behind. I consider. Sara and I meet when she's twenty years old. Fourteen years from now.

That really isn't too long to wait.

[Wisely, he disappears.]

-- SJ

Hold the Chocolate

My neighbor, Nina, is an unflagging optimist who always has a book to recommend to me. She's got a good success rate: I loved The Giver and Little Heathens, as well as some YA historical or nonfiction books. When Nina likes a book, I always give it a shot.

But there have been a few that I've returned only half-read. Most recently that includes The Time Traveler's Wife. I don't consider myself qualified to give a review of it, however. Not because I didn't finish it, because I DID skim through to the end, and when did that ever stop me anyway? No, it's because I finally realized why I can't finish books like this -- or why I disliked Twilight, for instance. I don't like love stories. If the entire point of the story is the couple's passionate and undying love for one another, I get bored. Romance is like chocolate: I like it with my vanilla/cherry/coffee/orange/etc. flavor, but I'll turn down chocolate on chocolate with chocolate on top every time.

It is an interesting concept for a book: Henry involuntarily travels through time, but always within his own lifetime. The focal point is his relationship with Clare, his wife. He first meets her when he's 28 and she's 20. She first meets him when she's 6 and he's 36. The author manages all the jumping back and forth well. One aspect of it kept jarring me, though. The author seemed to assume that it was a positive thing that the protagonist saw his future wife grow up from age six till he met her in present time at age 20. But see, I'm glad that Darren never saw me before he did. We met at just the right time. Earlier versions of Sara might not have been so appealing.

For that matter, the author seems to think that the protagonist could meet younger versions of himself and be perfectly happy in his own company. Come on, imagine yourself today sitting in a room with yourself ten years ago. It would not be a happy time. I'd criticize myself to pieces, wonder why my chin has to look like that, and -- well, okay, I'd probably still laugh at my own jokes.

With these thoughts in mind, I tried to imagine what would have happened if Darren and I were in that strange situation: Darren at age 36, thrown back in time and meeting Sara, age 6. Stay tuned!

-- SJ

Random Bits from Darren

I am on an e-mail list that sends out weekly meditations. Last Friday's e-mail, from Liane's dad, had an excellent observation on persistence that I thought was worth sharing.

"Consider the metaphor of the sledge hammer and the boulder. Probably many of you have tried to split a large boulder with a sledgehammer by bringing many blows to bear on it. I've tried it a few times. I can recall the sting of the hammer and it's quick rebound as I pounded on and on. To any critical observer the whole scene was an exercise in futility. It was as far away from a breakthrough as you could possibly get. I never kept a count of the blows, but I can still remember the pure astonishment I felt when at last the boulder split open with what appeared to be only one blow. The fact is however that every blow was of critical importance. You could never have arrived at blow number 89 (when the rock split) if you hadn't faithfully brought forth 88 blows before it. We think of breakthrough when we hit number 89, but if we act in faith God sees every blow as a breakthrough."

******

A girl I knew when growing up is now running an NGO over in Kenya. Anna is an amazing writer, and I keep hoping that she will get a book deal. Check out her blog; you'll be glad you did.

******

I recently got voice recognition software at work, so this post is half dictated and half typed. It's fun to use, and even more fun to see what the computer thinks I'm saying sometimes :-) Once I get used to it, I think it will really help my productivity, because I can talk a whole lot faster than I can type.

******

There was an interesting article on homeschooling for Muslims in one of our local papers this weekend. in the article, Julia Duin (an awesome reporter on the religion scene) links to Kinza Academy out in California. According to Kinza's website, "Islamic educational philosophy rejects the idea of teaching a child before the age of seven and specifically tells us to let children play."

Last year, when my employer was engaged in a California lawsuit regarding homeschooling, there was an amicus brief filed by the Seventh-day Adventist church claiming that its founder, Ellen G. White, believes that children under the age of eight should be taught by their parents at home rather than being educated in a formal school setting. She believed that during the first six or seven years of the child's life, special attention should be given to his physical training, rather than the intellect. "Up to [age 8] children should be left, like little lambs, to roam around the house and in the yards, in the buoyancy of their spirits, skipping and jumping, free from care and trouble."

I am in some sympathy with these views, but I think both Addie and Stuart have benefited from the formal instruction we have given them already.

******

And that's all from me. Happy Monday!

-- DJ

Nicky

(Guest poster today because, what the heck, it's Saturday)

Stuart’s back! un klkkkjkjkjvbcvcv bgffdfsddAZ. Sorry, that was nicky. Nicky is my octopus. Hjjjkkuuuuuuuuuui He likes to type.

-- SMJ and NOJ (Nicky Octopus Jones)

Chain of Demand

I love Daphne very much. She's fun and beautiful and affectionate.

That said, she's driving me crazy this morning. How? Nothing out of the ordinary. Daphne operates by what we refer to as "the Chain of Demands."

Between 8:50 and 9:00:

"Can I watch a video? Can I have breakfast? Ooh, I like scrambled eggs! Can I help? I will help. Can I have cinnamon toast? I want some cheese. Can I have cheese? Oh, that's cinnamon crackers! Can I have a cinnamon cracker? Why not? But I WANT to talk!"

Then she ate her breakfast. I sat down to the computer.

"Can I watch a video now? Where is my kitty? Mama, find my kitty. Can you take the dress of this doll? It won't come off. Where is my puzzle? Mama, find my puzzle! You HAVE to!"

It's 9:23. There's a long day ahead of us. A long, demanding day.

-- SJ

Mundania 25

* It's been about a year since Kelly and Pete gave us our cat, Puddles:



She's a much-beloved part of our family. That's how we think of her. She views us as pretty decent servants. She spends most of these summer days outside, and bangs on the screen when she wants us to let her in. When Kelly brought her to us, she said, "She's a mouser." Kelly, you weren't quite right. Puddles is a mouser, a moler, a birder, and a little baby bunnier. And guess who gets to dispose of her conquests. Hint: not Puddles.

* Now that we're adults, my sisters and I are good friends and have mostly forgotten what it was like to have to live in the same house with each other. One thing has stayed with me all these years, however. Hey, Rose, remember that thing you used to say when you walked into a room? "Whatcha doin', hutchahooin'?" Even if you don't, I do. More so now that Stuart has been hit by the same inspiration. He now replies to questions with, "Nothing of interest collinterest," or "All right carolite." Not that I want revenge, but I'm hoping one of your kids develops a habit of trailing off at the... end of what she's....

* Addie's always pleading to read our books. She claims she's read all the kids books in the house, and she might be right. Still, we keep turning her down. Today I finished a Cat Who book, and as soon as I put it down, she pounced. "Can I read this one?" I thought about it, and decided there wasn't anything terrible in it. "Okay, fine." I told Darren an hour or two later that I doubted she'd get past the first chapter. Except when I saw her next, she was on page 67 and thought the cats were pretty funny. Um, yes, we let our eight-year-old read murder mysteries.

* Speaking of the Cat Who books, I've read several of them, including the one that Darren and I listened to on our honeymoon. They irritate me in a variety of ways. The author thinks she's created a cozy small town "400 miles north of everywhere," yet her hero can get Rochefort and smoked Gouda cheese without having to order it in. Her small-town paper, the Moose County Something, has a "night desk" for collecting news after closing time. And she has no touch for names at all. Her sins include a toddler named Sandra (in 1994), a "young mother" named Marge (2002), and a college student named Cathy (2002). So why do I read these books when they irritate me so much? Ask me after I've finished the next one, and maybe I'll have figured it out.

* Of all the cute nickname possibilities for Phillip, I'm very sorry to admit that the one that's stuck is... ready for this?... Phillipy Dillipy. Created by Stuart, or did I not need to mention that?

-- SJ

Slideshow

I've finally figured out a way to make your basic slideshow with pictures and some music. Having uploaded it to YouTube, I'm now figuring out how to "embed" it into my post.



If you can't get it to play, I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. Try clicking this link instead.

The show is nothing fancy, but... well, I'm pretty proud of it anyway. Not much plot, but the characters are very likable.

-- SJ

And Now Back to Daphne

Daphne's conversations are a whole lot like watching TV news. You know how during disasters the news stations interrupt all programming to cover what's going on, only they don't actually have enough material to fill up the time so they just repeat the same news over and over until something new trickles in? Yeah. We live with that.

If Daphne were a news anchor, here's how her report would go:

"We're here today with Mama, who will tell us if we're going to the grocery store today. Mama? Mama? Are we going to the grocery store today? We are? Later? So there it is, we're going to the grocery store later. Is Daddy going with us, Mama? Where is Daddy? At work? So he can get money to pay for food? For those who just joined us, we're here with Mama to find out when we're going to the grocery store. When, Mama? Later. We're going later. But not Daddy, because where is Daddy? At work? To get money to pay for food? Mama, to get money to pay for food? Right. This just in: Stuart called me a cuckoo bird. Mama, Stuart called me a cuckoo bird. I'm not a cuckoo bird. Mama, I'm not a cuckoo bird. Later, we're going to the grocery store, right Mama? And Stuart called me a cuckoo bird but I'm not. Where is Daddy?"

All. Day. Long.

Just this morning, as I was making breakfast, I tuned in to hear Daphne asking, "What is that? What is that? What is that?" I said she must have heard the baby crying. "No, I mean that. I'm pointing at the mint jelly, Mama."

Sometimes we have to interrupt the broadcast to hide under the covers.

-- SJ

Five Years

We started our blog five years ago yesterday.

Darren had been following blogs for some time already. I rolled my eyes at him and called him a geek. Then Amy started her blog, and I became a faithful reader. And secretly wanted to start my own, but virtuously decided to be responsible and not fritter away time online. Then Darren created this blog so he could comment on others' posts.

Absolved from the blame of *starting* the blog, I was free to start posting. It's not exactly that I took it and ran with it. More like broke the sound barrier with it.

This blog, and the community of blogs I follow, turned out to be much more than frittering time online (because of course there's none of that). It became indeed a way to "keep up." It's allowed my long-distance friendships to stay fresh. I've made some very good new friends via blogging. Best of all, it gives me an outlet for writing. (Darren posts to convey information. I post because I want to write and maybe some information gets in while I do it.) It was partly because of my blog that I found a place on a magazine as a freelancer.

So, when we began this blog in 2004:

* We'd been married for three and a half years
* We had two children
* Addie was 3, Stuart was 2
* In general, I found motherhood overwhelming and not so much fun
* I hadn't discovered Nancy Drew computer games
* I had not yet discovered that my fascination with names wasn't a universal interest, like breathing
* Darren and I had never had a fight
* Oh, wait, we still haven't
* Yeah, but we've discovered that not all conflicts involve outright arguing
* I was fairly obssessed with blogging.
* Ha! Not all things change.

Thanks to those friends and family who have come along for the entire ride. Thanks to those who joined us later. Here's to Keeping Up for another five years!

-- SJ

The Song Hunters

Listening to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" recently reminded me of the early 90s, when my best friend Debra launched a summerlong quest to record the song off the radio. She kept her radio on all the time (we always did anyway), with a blank tape in the cassette recorder. The play-record buttons were pressed, and the pause button was on. As soon as she heard the song, she'd fly over to her player and unpause the tape.

I think she managed to get it in batches: first we'd listen to part of "Total Eclipse," then Vanilla Ice, and then there would be a Wilson Phillips, and then MC Hammer, and then another snatch of Bonnie Tyler, and that's how that summer's soundtrack ran when we were at her house. At my house, we listened to a different mix, depending on what I'd recorded off the radio on my own tape. (Of what I remember, that included "The Final Countdown," which I thought sounded SO COOL, "Forever Your Girl" by Paula Abdul, for which my older sister is still laughing at me, and "Squaredance Rap.")

Remembering those tapes, it suddenly struck me as funny. We lived in a small town with no access to a music store. Back then the library didn't even lend out tapes. The idea of downloading any song you wanted to from a world wide computer database was just science fiction. If you wanted a song you heard on the radio, the easiest thing to do was set up your blank tape in your recorder -- stuffing the little holes on top of the tape with notebook paper to make sure it was recordable -- and set it to Record-Pause. Then you lay in wait, hoping the DJ would play the song you wanted. Then when it did come on, you tried to catch it within the first few bars, silently fuming as the DJ talked throughout the entire intro. Once the song was safely captured and recording, you desperately hoped nobody came into your room in the next five minutes.

*Tape silence*
*click of pause button*
DJ/Righteous Brothers: "...third caller to win two tickets to see Bon Jovi in concert May 24! Oh, my love/my darling/I've hungered for your touch/a long..."
Sister: "Sara, Mom says you have to put away dishes --"
Sara: "SHHHH! I finally got this song and you just ruined it!!"
Righteous Brothers: "...and time can do so much/are you/still mine?"
*click*

Just this week I downloaded three new songs and added them to a playlist. Then I rearranged the playlist and downloaded it onto my MP3 player. It's my own customized music mix, without clicks or interruptions. Pretty cool. Pretty scifi. That's what Deb needed the summer she was stalking "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Still, there's something to be said for the thrill of the chase. Those tapes were our equivalent of deer heads mounted on the wall. We hunted, we captured, we were victors. And we created our own summer soundtracks, clicks and all.

-- SJ

And the Righteous Brother's song excerpted above, which was the ultimate in soul-stirring to my fourteen-year-old self, is titled...?

More YouTube

I regard YouTube as an cultural education tool. Anytime I run across a pop culture reference I don't understand, especially a Top 40 song I've never listened to (which, starting about 1991, is pretty much every one), I race over to YouTube and watch a video. There are some pretty worthless gems on that site.

My friend Deidre told me not to post any more awful YouTube links like Miranda. As compensation, she told me about Literal Music Videos.

The videos themselves were at the forefront of music videodom, and look like they were taped with home camcorders. They simply beg to be parodied, and somebody has obliged. He's changed the lyrics to narrate exactly what's happening. Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" made me laugh till I cried. Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" deserved everything it got.

-- SJ