Romance is in the Air
Chinua and I had two real-live dates this week. I feel like we're getting our fill before we enter NEWBORN LAND again. Newborn Land is great but very attached. It's a sleepy milky cuddly place with lots of crying and little free time. The thing I didn't understand about Newborn Land the first time through was that it doesn't last forever. This consequently made it seem longer. With YaYa, my second baby, I understood that it would be temporary, and just enjoyed Newborn Land for the strange country that it is. It sped by. With Muffin, the mystery baby, my third child, Newborn Land may seem like a blip on a screen. (A blip? I'm totally using that metaphor without really understanding it.)
Anyways, tonight we ate food and talked about all sorts of nerdy things, our favorite thing to do on a date. Renee and Crystal, our friends who live here with us in the trees gave us a night out for a present, putting the kids to bed for us, and I hear they were angels. (They always are. Ha ha.) On Sunday our other zany friend Derek brought the kids home from church for us while we stayed up in Eureka and saw the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the theater. It's not a super regular occurrence for us.
The movie was wonderful. I think that they did a pretty amazing job. The Pevensie kids especially were great (where do they get those perfect actors who are only, like, eight? Actually, forget it, my not-quite-two year old, YaYa, already has twice as much drama as I do in her little finger) and the witch was almost too great. I can see her becoming an underground favorite, simply because she always looked so cool and she fought with two swords. Of course, Aslan is so built up in my mind that it is hard for the directors to make him special enough, but they did a good job. And the only other thing that I felt was missing, which would have been pretty much impossible to achieve, was that rambly, friendly writing style of C.S. Lewis-- which is so much the genius of his books. You know, when he talks about kidney pies and other yummy things like that. I cried, during the movie. I also cried, earlier in the day when we sang Christmas carols at church. I cried today when I was apologizing to Chinua for yelling at him this morning. I'm a little pregnant.
It went well with Derek watching the kids, too, if you're wondering. The only thing I questioned was the way we got home right before bedtime and as Derek was leaving our cabin he mentioned that all they had eaten was a cantaloupe. A cantaloupe? I guess you ask for it when you get your notorious bachelor friend to watch your kids. He's a little... unconventional.
It's great for Chinny and I to be out alone. Before we left he proudly showed me the garage that he is overhauling here at the Land. When we were driving we looked at each other with silly grins and said over and over again, "Look... it's just us." Or, "Hey. Where are the kids? Oh yeah! they're not here." (Snicker) We love it. We love each other. Chinua is really my favorite person in the universe.
Speaking of my superstar husband, though, I'll have to give you a couple of quotes of his. They're pretty brilliant.
"Do I look all right?" (Me)
"You're prettier than the witch." (Which doesn't sound like such a weird thing right now when I have it down on paper, but it was said with this kind of implication that I look like the White Witch in the Narnia movie, only I'm prettier. Thanks.)
And when I was trying to brag about my awards in highschool for Literature and Art:
"Of course you won-- it's Chilliwack." (In other words, it's a small town and you'd have to be a clown not to win.) Serves me right for fishing. But Chinua is known for his strange compliments. He still thinks that saying my feet look like salmon is flattering. What a guy. Who wouldn't be swept off her salmon feet?