Ch-ch-ch-changes

This is going to come as a shock to you, but I recently made a big switch-up in my life: I learned that eMeals now has a Paula Deen menu and switched from 30-Minute meals to that for a while. I know, I know: How are we going to make that work with James's gout? I'm not sure we can! So maybe I'll just save a few weeks' worth of menus while using these vegetarian meal plans I found and that we are using this week. Note that if you choose to do it, you can start at the bottom, like I did, so it will be seasonally appropriate. Also that there is a shopping list at the end of the menu; I realized that after I'd hand-written my shopping list like a Neanderthal.

Okay, so that's not the only thing. Though I'm a little offended by your lack of enthusiasm.

Also, the Lakeline Disney Store closed Monday, so I'm not sure what we're going to do when Mal wants to spend hours browsing toys now (and, yes, I realize that's probably why they closed). I wish this area had a cool local toy store, but I haven't found any closer than a 30-minute drive.

Waiting for the store to open the last day; watching the animated window for the last time.

A serendipitous thing happened this weekend, too: a woman in a local homeschool group posted that their church needed childcare help for MOPS. They're too far away, but I thought that'd be perfect for Mal and me: a place to go with new toys, friends to play with, and I would actually pull in a couple of bucks in the meantime. I found the closest church with a MOPS program and it turns out that they actually have something at the same time every week (instead of every other week) and they were pretty desperate for people, so we started this week!

Where James used to work, the employees could purchase company stock at a slightly-discounted price. They'd withhold from each check, saving it up for 6 months, then buy the stock. Even if we sold it immediately (we didn't), we'd have been ahead because of the discount. Two things: That has saved our family butt, as it were, during this season of unemployment. But also... James didn't receive the money that had been collected from the couple of months before he stopped working for this company, so we were waiting for the stocks to show up at the end of the year. They didn't. James ended up having to contact them, and they're cutting him a check. This seems shady to me. They're legally obligated to return all monies owed to employees in 48 hours, and no one should have to follow up to make sure they got ALL of it. Oh well. It'll be nice to have a little cash infusion in a couple of weeks.

James has received a job offer, and should start work toward the end of the month. So yay! Mal will be terribly disappointed that his dad isn't here during the day, though. Maybe the weather will warm up so they can have a special day together. I say this because I think it'd be cool for them to spend a lot of time bonding, not because I want a day to myself. No. That's not it at all.

Speaking of that, though... The night before last, I'm pretty sure Mal slept through until 6 AM before asking for "deedees." And last night, he sat straight up in bed, crying and whining, and let me lie him back down and cover him up without nursing. Baby steps, I guess.

Mal has been watching portions of Star Wars for months now. He usually only watches certain parts of certain movies, so I have those parts memorized, then really don't remember much about the rest. For instance, his favorite scene in "A New Hope" is where the Sand Person (Tusken Raider) attacks Luke. He'll literally back that up and watch it 15 times in a row. But he'll watch that movie until just after the scene at the Cantina, then he's about done. I think he's only seen the Death Star blow up once, because we made it a point to fast forward it to that little chunk for him to watch.

With "Empire Strikes Back," he'll watch more of it, but his favorite is Hoth. He's watched the Hoth segments of the movie repeatedly, mostly when Luke escapes the Wampa and when they take down the AT-ATs. When we play these scenes out, he gets frustrated that we don't know the exact words. He also thinks "Seagulls" is canon, because, you know, he's 3.

For "Return of the Jedi," he watches until the gang escapes Jabba the Hutt, then he's sort of done. He likes where Wicket meets Leia, and because he has an Endor Micro Machines set, really wants to see the logs take down the AT-STs. That's about it.

And he's watched the opening scene of "Phantom Menace" several times, losing interest after the arrival at Thede. Then he has kind of played around with the other two prequels, but he doesn't know anyone but Amadala and Jar Jar, so he doesn't really care.

Actually, Mal wants to play AT-AT take-down right now, so I must go rope him until he falls. Isn't being a mother fun?

A Guaranteed Spoiler-Free Review of My "The Last Jedi" Experience

The day that tickets went on sale for The Last Jedi, we bought them. We chose today instead of yesterday (opening day) because they were less than half the price. I chose 5 PM instead of noon in case James was working by now. We had a discussion beforehand about whether the widespread availability of pre-sale tickets in theaters with reserved seats will eliminate the cultural phenomenon of camping out to get good seats for the midnight premiers of big films (although now I think they start them at like 7 instead of midnight, but still say today is the opening day?). Anyhoo...

This was our second whole-family movie outing in under a month. It would be our third, but Mal bowed out of the last one, and actually said about an hour before time to leave today that he wanted to stay home. Normally, I'd let him (as I did last time) but 1) he cried TO go once the time actually came.. and I'd already refunded the tickets and 2) I really wanted to see The Last Jedi!

Fortunately, he was calmed down and ready to go when we went. Actually, he was bummed that his dad had a Stormtrooper shirt and he didn't, so I pulled out a shirt I bought him for next summer, and it was gigantic, but it has 4 Stormtroopers on it, so he was pretty happy.

Since we knew the movie was going to be 2.5 hours, we got there right as the previews started, and James and D went on in to bookend our seats while Mal and I stocked up on snacks. We missed about 10 minutes of previews, but still saw a lot.

Then it started. When the iconic Star Wars music started, Mal began humming along. Cue D's hand covering the facing ear and an overt squirming in the comfortable theater lounger. I reminded Mal that we have to be quiet at the theater, though he's welcome to sing along with the theme at home.

The movie hits the ground running, and so did the kid who was sitting on the opposite side of D. Restless and a few seats away from her parents, she would pull the foot rest up, put it down, climb over it to play in the floor, etc. Because I don't have sensory processing disorder, I didn't really notice it at first, even though the ground was vibrating a bit independently of the movie.

Mal seemed to be enjoying the rollicking action sequences, but was less enthusiastic about visiting Snoke's throne room. I'd offered to let him sit in my lap, and when Snoke showed up was when Mal took me up on it. After a few minutes, he began to squirm. "Do you need to go to the restroom?" Yep.

I carried Mal out (thank goodness for the new spacious recliner rows!) and he did, indeed use the restroom. After we washed our hands, I told him, "On the walk back to the theater, I want you to get all of your wiggles out!" So he went down the hall flapping his arms and kicking his feet out and making more noise than he could do in the theater without being disturbingly loud.

When we went back in, he sat in his own seat for a bit until something else intense happened, when he wanted back in my lap.

About this time, the little girl on the other side of D got the hiccups. Hiccups are very close to the top of the list in terms of aggravating D's misophonia. "I'm going to go sit over there." Thus D spent the rest of the movie in a cubby in the aisle, just beside the fire exit.

Actually, with D gone, I could let Mal move around a little more without worrying he'd accidentally make contact. It was then that I really realized how much the girl on our row was climbing around. I was surprised D hadn't said something to her, because a full empty seat away, it was starting to get on my nerves. Eventually, her dad took her to get some popcorn.

"I need to go potty again." This time, I picked Mal up and carried him like a ventriloquist's dummy up (waving at D on the way past) and out of the theater. We sprinted to a different bathroom, wanting to hurry back because exciting things were afoot, movie-wise.

Mal giddily did his crazy walk back to the theater, clearly tiring out for the day, as he kept falling down. We again passed the people on our row and sat down. The girl in the row came back with the pricey Execution Trooper collectible popcorn head thing and was babbling to herself. I tried to make my "shh" sound sweet and maternal. Lord knows I had to keep reminding Mal. What got me about her was that it was clear her parents put her at the end of their line of people and just forgot about her. Actually, her dad DID ask her to stop putting the chair up and down about the time Mal said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

Fewer than 10 minutes had elapsed since we'd left the previous time, so I told James we were not going to come back to the seats. We went to the bathroom, Mal complaining that I wasn't carrying him. I suspected that he'd said he wanted to go so I'd do the carry/running thing, and he did not, in fact, need to go. But he was eager to run in the hallway. I told him we weren't going to do that and could either go stand in the back of the theater so I could see the movie, or just stand outside and wait for our family. He said, "Daddy came to the movies without me!" Um, no. You left him, silly.

Oh, he also said, "But I *am* going to run up and down the hall!" Wrong-o.

We went back in and sat on an out-of-the-way stair, but Mal started coughing. From then on, every time we stepped out into the hall, he was fine. But then we'd go inside and he'd start coughing so hard, I knew we were being distracting. I was able to see pieces of the movie in fits and starts, but for the last 45 minutes really had no idea what was going on.

At one point, Mal was content to walk up and down the ramp (don't worry; it's set up so that no one in the theater could see him) while I stood at the end and watched a bit. But eventually, I could hear him passing gas and whisked him back out.

"Did you poop your pants?" "Yes." He didn't. He's had a bit of an upset stomach due, I believe, to the drainage and coughing and not eating much over the past few days. Nevertheless, we went into the restroom and he said, "This place smells funny" before gagging. I thought that was it and he was going to be sick. I asked, "Do you need to throw up?" He said, "No! I don't want to barf!!"

I waited with him a LONG time, and he didn't go, so I begged him to slip back in so I could catch the end, and we did. Like literally. I stepped inside, and the screen went black then "Music by John Williams."

Mal started bawling, "I want to see it again!"

I was able to stop his yelling by the promise of ice cream on the way out, and then sent him and James on while I got refills of popcorn and soda and D watched the closing credits. While D and I waited for James and Mal, I asked about something in the movie, but D refused to discuss it with me in public lest anyone overhear any spoilers.

We all got to the car, and I was trying to get Mal's sleep diaper on in case he fell asleep in the car on the way home. He did not. But he did cough pretty much nonstop in the 3 freezing minutes it took me to get the pants/shoes off, diaper on, shoes back on. D was sitting in the front seat, hunched over, breathe holes covered with a t-shirt. And this was the entire ride home.

So my review of "The Last Jedi" is, as I told James: I cannot see another movie with our entire family again. It's too stressful. I can probably handle D's stuff. And I can mostly handle Mal's stuff. But both of their stuff together is too much.

Also, I'd really like to see "The Last Jedi" in its entirety very soon. The parts I saw were impressive.

Finally, sometimes it's difficult not to be a little jealous that some families can "just" go and do stuff and be pretty confident that it will work out. We try and plan and attempt to accommodate everyone, but, gosh, it's hard.

We have a vacation planned for late next year. The reason we're planning it so early is to fit these differences in. But we've given D the choice of whether to go or not, because traveling is particularly anxiety-provoking (noises, lots of potentially sick people, uncertainty, etc.). So if you hear later that our family vacations don't always include the *whole* family, just remember this three-hour outing and know that it's better for us to do what works for EVERYONE, even if it's not what I'd consider ideal, which is that we'd all do it together.

And may the Force be with us all.