Les Mis: A Fangirl's Review

(Spoilers abound, but we all know the story by now, right?)

Oh, Les Miserables.  I wanted to love you.  I was one of those girls who fell in love with you at a fairly young age, and it happened completely through my cassette tape of the original Broadway cast album.  (I didn't see the show until at least three years of obsessive soundtrack listening.) Like so many other girls (not that I realized it at the time), I knew that Eponine was not just the role I was born to play but my sister in unrequited love.  No one could understand her like me!  When I finally saw the show, it was bliss.  Oh, how I cried--beginning, middle, end.  Les Mis rocked my world.

Christmas WTFery: The Polar Express

I took Charlotte to a special showing of The Polar Express this morning.  I figured it would be a fun, Christmas-y thing to do since we won't be decorating or making crafts (see last year's Christmas entry for more on that).  I've never read the book, nor had I seen the movie, so I was a blank slate.  What follows is not a review; it's more like a Festivus-style airing of grievances.

A Quest

Me, resting.

I know that I should be on a quest for something substantial: enlightenment, maybe, or adventure.  But no--I'm far shallower than that.  I have been wearing boot-cut jeans for fifteen years, dammit.  I want something else.  So I'm on a quest for non-boot-cut jeans that don't make me look like I'm walking around on two state-fair turkey legs.  Because y'all: I am pear-shaped.  A size medium top at J. Crew fits like a dream, but I have to wear pants so big that they can barely bring themselves to carry them in the store.  It's ridiculous.  And the conventional wisdom for pear-shaped people is that we must wear boot-cut jeans to balance ourselves out.  I get it.  But...fifteen years.  I need a change.

Anatomy of a Mental Health Day

I didn't go to work yesterday, and y'all, it was awesome.  Here's what I did:

• Slept an hour later than usual, then had some coffee and read Jezebel.
• Got Charlotte ready for school, dropped her off, and went back home. I could totally handle being a stay-at-home mother of a school-age child.
• Walked on the treadmill while watching Season 3 of RuPaul's Drag Race (Manila and Delta Work's LSFYL to "Macarthur Park" was pretty incredible), then had some candy.  As one does.
• Made some soup.
• Had delicious soup while watching What Not to Wear.

That was pretty much it.  It doesn't sound like much, but I haven't taken a sick day when no one was sick since before Charlotte was born, and it felt like such a luxury.  I might have to do it again sometime in the next six years.