Wander

I've spent the last couple of days sick, and it's both a bad time and bad timing. Plans to go down to Super Bowl Village and check things out are gone, since I haven't even been able to leave the house for a few days here, let alone expend that kind of energy. Kaylee was dying to do that zipline, and so was I, but that would have been tough anyway since it's a 5-hour-wait line to get on. I would like to be able to take her down and check out the Super Bowl hoopla though-it's not like this happens very often. *sigh*

The Super Bowl stuff is all over the TV and news. Celebrities have hit town, airports are getting busy with fly-in traffic, and there is a whole load of activities going on down there. I have to say, Indianapolis and whoever is in charge of setting this stuff up has done a truly excellent job as hosts. I'm impressed. :)

I did just see an interview where Tom Brady had nothing but nice things to say about Peyton Manning, and sounded nothing but positive and almost humble. I think I heard something crack in the atmosphere at that one. Maybe he's actually growing up? I won't hold my breath yet.

Kaylee's got a Science Fair project coming due fast, and we've been too sick to do much about it. We have a start though--she has a hypothesis, a list of items needed, an experiment, and a poster board. Now she just has to fill it in. I hated these things when I was in school and it's not any better as an adult. ;)

My dad's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer this week, and has surgery coming up on Monday. Doctors are optimistic that it was caught in time to be treatable, but it will obviously be a difficult experience for her.

One thing I've done while sitting/lying here ill is read "The Hunger Games" trilogy. It's supposed to be a "young adults" series, but I'd say it works just fine for "mid-aged adults" too. Kaylee had asked me about reading it, and I'd seen a preview of the movie coming out soon, so I wanted to read it first. There isn't anything inappropriate in it, but it is fairly gritty. On the other hand, she's been reading some grittier stuff, and I certainly did at her age and I'm only a little warped, so... ;)

To keep some of you from having to look it up, basically the story is about an annual game called "Hunger Games" where two kids, a boy and a girl from each of 12 existing districts that are all that are left after America falls to civil war, are put into a large landscape (arena) and forced to fight to the death with only one survivor, whose district then gets food, money, etc. The kids are age 12-18, and it's a lottery-based drawing system. Your name gets put into the drawing once when you're 12, twice when you're 13, etc., and you can put your name in more often in exchange for more food for your family. This year, a 12-year-old frail girl is called to fight, and her older sister goes in her place to save her life, knowing her sister wouldn't survive a moment. The people in charge make it a carnival, televised, dress everyone up, parade them around, then set them loose to murder each other, all live on tv for the rest of the districts to see detail by detail, then parade around the winner again like a king/queen. Sounds creepy, but the story is about this 15-year-old sister who becomes a hero, who starts a revolution to change the world.

It was after reading this series, and recently a Dean Koontz book too, that I was reminded of something. I read everything I could get my hands on when I was a kid, but the stories I loved the most all had something in common. "Lord of the Rings", "Chronicles of Narnia", "Swiftly Tilting Planet", "Huck Finn" & "Tom Sawyer", "Island of the Blue Dolphins", and so forth. The same thing I like in Dean Koontz and often Stephen King books too, still. The heroes are kids. Kids that nobody takes seriously, kids that are scared to death but do what needs to be done anyway, because nobody else is doing it. (Okay, so hobbits aren't kids, but close enough that the premise stands. ;)) In the Koontz book I just read, a 10-year-old scrawny book worm of a kid shoved an autistic girl behind him and held a bayonet he could hardly lift in front of him to fend off a monster, knowing he was going to die, but knowing that nobody else was there to protect the girl and he couldn't just stand there and not try. His mantra was to do the hardest thing, because it was the right thing to do, and he didn't want to be like his father, who always did the easiest thing. Do you remember what it feels like to be a kid? Maybe for some people it's rainbows and unicorns, but sometimes it also feels helpless, powerless. Nobody takes you seriously, and you have no control over even the most basic things in your life. What you eat, when, what you wear, where you go, when you sleep, often times what you say, nothing. (Side note: Reason #3 I didn't try to make it in the military, as much as I respect it.) As a kid, I lived vicariously through the scared, normal children who went through the wardrobe and become courageous kings and queens, fighting mighty battles. The Harry Potter series falls into that formula, and so does this Hunger Games series. Courage can be contagious. What can I say--I'm 39 and I still root for the underdog. :)

I guess that's about all I'm going to be up. My head is all blocked up ON medication right now. Ugh. Oh. I had to pick up Kaylee from school today, and it was the first time I've left the house. I was still not feeling well at all, but my Jeep was out of gas so I had to stop at the gas station. As I was filling the tank, I heard Kaylee scream from inside the car. I turned and looked at her, and she screamed again "BLUE ONE!" at the top of her lungs. I finally understood her, and she was pointing at the nose of a slug bug that was hidden around the corner. It made me smile, and from inside the car she screamed "HA! I FINALLY MADE YOU SMILE!" Made me feel bad that it has obviously been a few days since I felt like smiling, and made me warm and fuzzy that she was trying to make me smile. :)