Let's All Go to the Lobby

On Tuesday I told the children if it rained, we would go to see Cars after basketball camp.
It did not rain, so we went to the beach. They were disappointed. I had underestimated the universal human urge to spend extra money on passive entertainment, even in the face of an opportunity to spend the afternoon doing something that other people spend hundreds of dollars to do for a four-day weekend.

It did not rain on Wednesday.

Today it did not rain, but they had their last piano lesson of the school year from three to four, and it was really not enough time/too late to go to the beach, plus NSBR was eating in the city tonight, so I decided to take them to Cars and then to Friendly's for dinner afterwards.

Some highlights:

*Cars is very cute, very clever, very entertaining. But full of imaginative inconsistencies that bother people like me and NSLR. To wit: these humanoid cars, living in their own whole world, have love affairs and spouses but not, apparently, children. Where do the dashing young race cars come from?

*Since R.'s diagnosis we all drink diet soda when we drink soda at all. But S. asked "Can I have anything I want to drink," and I said yes. She ordered a horrendous concoction, a festival of artificial coloring and high-fructose corn syrup called "The Cotton Candy." When she finished it, she looked up at me and said with complete sincerity,

"And you claim that I never try new foods."

*The trailer for Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear's new movie, Invincible, wins a big prize tonight. It is rare that a trailer makes even a big sap like me tear up. And you would think the trailer for a movie about football had no chance, no chance at all. But when Vince Papale's father says to him, "When I told you not to get your hopes up, that didn't mean I wasn't," it killed me. It's like the quintessential parental sentiment.