Monday, October 1, 2007

Watch Out Thomas and Monday Movie Review

Okay, now he's done it, Thomas the Tank Engine has gone too far. I really resisted the Thomas craze for a long time. I didn't like the idea of giving feelings to an object which in real life has none. I find that confusing to children and I am not super happy with all the crashes those silly trains seem to have and the "good little engine" or "useful engine" thing drives me batty for many reasons. We had Brio track and trains before this, but around the time my oldest turned 4 years old, I was pregnant with my second, and our house was in chaos because we were installing bamboo floors, I caved. Boy, did I cave. We have so many trains with faces (once people knew Parker was a TtTE fan that was all they bought for him) and many of the bridges, special places, etc. It is insane. I always try to find the good in everything so I was happy with my kids learning words like "cheeky" which they probably wouldn't run into on a daily basis without Thomas and I am happy that the US version of Thomas changed the "Fat Conductor" to "Sir Topham Hatt". Then the lead recalls and more lead recalls. I explained the issue to the boys who already know all about lead since we moved to this old house about a year ago. Now they are pretty much on board to send Thomas on his way down the rails. I am sort of taking advantage of a bad situation, but so be it. They love to play with trains and I don't want to take that away. I like the open-endedness (pretty sure I made that word up) of building track and seeing what they come up with. They really do spend a lot of time with the trains, but they would do with with trains which are not pretty colors, named so that you have to keep buying the latest one, etc. This is a picture of "Rosie" (a friend of Thomas) drawn by Parker. The boys are excited that I'm looking into stocking made in the US trains with no paint and no faces...Parker said he might paint his with non-lead paint. Farewell, silly, cheeky little engines.

Monday Movie Review: Two Weeks
Two Weeks
Most of you know we don't own a TV, but we do watch movies from time to time on the computer. When I saw the trailer for "Two Weeks", I made a note to pick it up from our favorite locally-owned video store (the owner is a cyclist and has a great assortment of foreign and obscure movies so we love to support him). I really like Sally Field and both Rob's mom and my mother died young of cancer so I had to check this out. Rob was not so quick to run out and rent it, but in the end he gave it a thumb up. I think they did a good job showing the reality of dying of cancer and how families deal with it. I wish they had developed more of the characters better. We were confused on which woman was which son's wife and didn't really get to like any of the adult children except maybe the oldest son. I liked how they incorporated the mother answering questions while she was still well enough. From a vegan standpoint, I didn't really appreciate the scene where she is eating the meat on the bone (can't remember what type of meat it was), but I do understand what the idea behind it since eating can be a difficult thing in the late stages of cancer. It is rated R, but I had no issue with Parker watching it (Dema was already asleep and Parker fell asleep as well, but it did bring up interesting questions from Parker who saw his grandmother die when he was 2 years old and remembers much of it.) Overall, I would recommend the movie and possibly watch it again. It brought up some feelings about my own mother's death and just made me wish (as I have daily since she died over five years ago) that we had been able to bring her home to die. That is my big wish (as far as death is concerned), that I am able to die at home. I believe in home birth, home school, and home death.

PS. Happy World Vegetarian Day!

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