Twilight-aholics Anonymous

So this past week has been completely consumed with re-re-re-reading the Twilight books. It started as just going to "refresh my memory" of Twilight before I went to go see the movie--like I don't practically have it memorized. But I found that once I finished the first book, I wasn't able to stop myself from moving on to New Moon, and then Eclipse, and finally Breaking Dawn AGAIN. It was almost a compulsion. And I could not manage to put the stinking (wonderful, amazing, thrilling, lust-inducing) books down once I started them, so once again, my family has been a bit neglected this past week. I keep waiting for Phil to tell me he's going to start making me sleep on the couch if I stay up reading until 2 a.m. one more time. Oh yeah, and I'm exhausted because I have been staying up till 2 a.m. reading! The kids don't seem to understand that Mom has an odd form of OCD and needs to sleep past 8:00 because she has been awake until all hours. They, like, want breakfast and stuff. I know one day they will be able to fend for themselves and forage for cereal and granola bars in the morning while I sleep in, but at ages 4 and 2, they aren't quite there yet. I am considering having them trained.
Anyway, all of this preparation was leading up to the release of the movie this past Friday, which of course I wasn't able to see on opening night, because of my silly job, but Alison and I made it to a Sunday matinee. I was really excited to see it, but also a bit nervous. I knew it couldn't possibly live up to the book I love so dearly, but would it be a fitting tribute? The author of the books, Stephenie Meyer, was very closely involved with the making of the film, so my hopes were high, but from what I had heard/read from the critics, you would either love it or hate it. Incidentally, I believe that most of the critics who hated it haven't actually read the books, so boooooo to them. Well, I was truly impressed. They were able to take a 500+ page book and condense it to 2 hours of film, without losing much of why I love the book to begin with. I can't wait to see it again; maybe I'll drag Phil with me (tee hee hee). Now I can start counting down to the release of New Moon, which was greenlit by the studio after the raging success of Twilight's opening weekend--over $70 million from the midnight shows Thursday night/Friday morning through Sunday. One of the biggest opening weekends ever.
In other news, apparently the ear infection odyssey is not complete, but was only on hiatus. Amy's ear tubes fell out a month or two ago, and Saturday morning, she woke up at 6 with a low grade fever, crying her eyes out and worrying her right ear to pieces. Of course it was a Saturday. Fortunately, our pediatrician's office runs a drop-in clinic on Saturday mornings, so Phil was able to take her in (saint that he is) and get her checked out. The verdict: massive ear infection in need of serious antibiotics and frequent doses of Motrin. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this is not the beginning of what we went through when she was a baby, but you know me, I'm not very optimistic. A guy I work with said he and his wife were told that their kids would get one infection after the tubes fell out, and that would be the end of them, but I've never heard anything like that. I have a fairly good recollection of the conversations we had with the ENT before her tubes were placed, and I didn't hear anything like that. He did say that the infections may come back after the tubes came out, and she might possibly go on to need another set, but that was pretty rare. We'll keep our fingers crossed.
Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Things will be pretty different this year for us, as my parents are headed to Minnesota to see Dad's family, and we don't even have to go to El Dorado to see my in-laws! In a huge break from tradition, Peggy and Rick are making the trip here and we are celebrating at Kevin and Ashley's house. I'm pretty glad we don't have to haul the dog down to their house--he can't seem to act right around any people but us. And he has a hard time with us sometimes too. For example, this afternoon I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room to find our 60 pound Lab standing on the top of the end table by the couch. He had apparently hopped up on the ottoman, then over to the sofa, and from there, the end table seemed like the logical next step in his journey. I watched him for a minute, as he tried to figure out a) what he was supposed to do up there, and b) how he was supposed to get down. Just as I was starting over to help him get off the table without scratching it, he went back down the way he got up. (Sigh) I'm not sure what we are going to do with him. I was pretty close to running for the camera, though. It would have made a great shot! Gobble Gobble, everybody!