A Movie Review. Sort Of.

I heartily recommend The Spiderwick Chronicles. But don't take young children. Those beastie thingies are a bit frightening. The Charlie Bucket kid from Willie Wonka is in it. Twice. He plays twins. Very convincingly, by cracky!

The #1 son did not go with The Pony and I. He was busy feuding with the HP people about NewLappy's data recovery disk after replacing the hard drive. It seems that the first two people he talked to LIED to him last Wednesday, swearing that it had shipped separately from the hard drive replacement, and would be here on the 15th. I dropped him off at my mom's house, where he was told by "Erdnis, Mom. I don't know what country he's from, but he sounds like Apu at the Quickie Mart" that the first two representatives he had talked to had 'misled' him. Now the recovery junk is on the way, overnight FedEx, expected to arrive Feb. 21. Yeah. You do the overnight math. I have chastised the boy thoroughly for purchasing another HP product. I declared a moratorium on HP after all the trouble we had with The Pony's Christmas computer. #1 would hear none of it, and used my $1000 scratcher winnings to get NewLappy at Office Max. Now he's reaping the benefits. I, on the other hand, am quite pleased with my New Delly, which has not crashed once since we welcomed him into our Mansion.

Getting back to the movie...The Pony and I both took our glasses. We got the two seats at the very back. That's where I like to sit. Nobody sat in front of us. We staked out our territory with our coats, and went back for the refreshments. It was Pony's birthday, you know. I didn't even make him take in Dollar Store candy. We got sodas and popcorn and Reese's Pieces. The Pony even chatted with me until preview time instead of burying his head in his DS Lite. He's a pleasant little fellow. He doesn't ask for much. No $200 mall/arcade trip for him. No bowling party. No sleepover. He just wanted a movie.

Near the end, I made a trip to the bathroom. That's because DUH it's crowded when the movie lets out, and we were going to dinner with HH for my birthday from Monday. I rounded the corner of the corridor, and came face to face with a CLOSED door, decorated with streamers of yellow plastic caution tape. Yep. The women's room was CLOSED. I can't imagine a restroom faux pas serious enough to block off the ladies' room. Unless somebody gave birth in there or something. Anyhoo...the counter boy said, "You'll have to use the men's room, ma'am." I looked at him like it was a trick. I put my hand on the door handle and peeped in. I knocked. "I don't think there's any men in there," assured the counter boy. Hmm...he didn't seem real sure. I went in. The urinals were pristine. The stalls, not so much. It was kind of like the bathroom in Daddy Day Care, after that overgrown un-potty-trained kid went in there. I chose the least of three evils, scoured the seat with folds of toilet paper, and did my business. All the while hoping some guy didn't come in and berate me for being a peeper.

You see, once upon a time, when I still had my gallbladder, it malfunctioned at school, and my aunt, an administrator, rushed me to the emergency room. The principal at the time was a bit nervous about this, wanting to call an ambulance, thinking I was having a heart attack, but we persuaded him that this way would be faster, and she was family and all, and he gladly let us go. The triage people were not so concerned as the principal, and told us to cool our heels in the waiting room. My aunt whiled away the minutes by chortling to The Nanny, while I alternated between cringing with pain and fighting back nausea. The nausea won, and I dashed around the corner to the bathroom. It was a one-seater. Thankfully, the door was propped open, and all I had to do was run in, bend over the toilet, and vomit. So urgent was my need that I did not have time to close the door. When I stood up and stepped to the sink to wash my face, I saw a man in the mirror behind me. He was holding a red-and-white Igloo cooler. Something tells me that it was not his lunch in there. I said, "Oh. I was sick. I didn't have time to close the door." He gave me blank look like Hank Kimball from Green Acres, and said, "Well, this IS the men's room." Ever since then, I have been leery of entering men's rooms. Not that I make it a habit or anything, but I've joined a crowd of women storming the men's facilities at the old Busch Stadium. Hey! It's better than that drain at the bottom of an outdoor stairwell at the old Strassenfest! I really need to learn how to resist peer pressure.

Oh, but the movie was entertaining. On the way out, the crowd backed up as women mumbled, "It says closed. I guess we can't go in there." The counter guy told them, "I can run the guys out of the men's room if you want." No. They decided to wait. I, on the other hand, smugly marched out the door into the cold, cranked on the LSUV, and drove My Little Pony to CiCi's Pizza for his birthday dinner.

Not exactly my restaurant of choice, but The Pony doesn't ask for much.