carpets (again!) & concerts

I am taking your continued carpet suggestions under advisement. You guys are still pretty rabid about this topic! There are two options that tempt me more than the others:

• Do a moss green carpet instead of the blue.

This would tie in well with the rest of the house, which has a lot of green in it. We also like green. However, I would be forced to buy further samples. They're only $6 for six samples, but still, I've ordered three sets of six so far.

• Do the blue, with a small number of random striped ones thrown in.

This way I can stay with the blue, which I like quite a bit, but there would also be a bit of oomph to the carpet. However, not sure if it would look weird and piecemeal to do this or not. I like the idea but can't visualize if it would be good.

There are a bunch of other good suggestions; some not my style, and some that wouldn't work in this room for one reason or another. I'm also listening to the 'general' carpet advice - you guys are so SAGE. And LEARNED. And WISE. You rock.

Our Christmas tree is up and half-decorated. We bought some bulbs and ornaments to put on it, but they don't come with the little hook thingies and we don't have any. We went downtown today to buy some and stopped at the first hardware store, a local independent place. They had none.

Then we went to Home Hardware. Sold out.

Then we went to the drug store. Sold out.

Alas and alack. We bought some paperclips - they're the plastic-covered coloured ones because that's all there was to be had - and we will hang the ornaments with those.

I'm not really annoyed by the fact that we can't get whatever we want, whenever we want it, in this small town. I think there's something to be said for having to work for what you want or make do with what you've got. Maybe next year we'll buy some real hooks, or maybe we'll just stick with our paperclips.

I remember when I was younger my mom would store her hookie thingies in baby food jars. I'm not sure why - I guess that's what she had available at the time - but now I've developed a very strong mental association. These two items, decoration hooks and baby food jars, each remind me of the other item.


So last week the elementary school across the road put on their Christmas concert. Mark and I snuck in. Well, we didn't sneak, but we certainly weren't sure if they'd let us in without a kid, but they did. The concert was HILARIOUS. This was the formula:

• Audience waits five minutes while children are shuffled into various positions on stage.
• Children stand stiffly staring at us for another minute or so.
  
• 30 children sing a song that apparently only six of them know the words to.
• Children stand stiffly staring at us.
• A microphone is thrust into a child's hand. It says a line while three other children stand stiffly with their hands outstretched, awaiting microphone.
  
• The next three children say a line once they get the microphone.
• Children stand stiffly staring at us.
• Audience waits five minutes while a different set of children are shuffled into various positions on stage.
• Children stand stiffly staring at us.
• The entire above sequence was repeated about six times, then the concert was over.
  

A few notable events in the concert:

• Cute skinny kid with glasses who had a line and pronounced his "r"s like "w". Like this: " SANTA AND HIS WAINDEAW WILL AWWIVE VEWY SOON!"
  
• Cute short blond kid who didn't sing a single word of the song, but looked very, very proud to be on stage. He didn't even try to look like he was singing. Stared at the girl next to him with pride for the second half of the song.
• A small selection of little girls who were wearing extra fancy party dresses under their costumes. Looked very festive.
• Mrs. Claus. Was she chosen because she was the, er, most matronly-shaped child, or was she chosen because she was capable of memorizing seven or eight separate sentences? We may never know.
• For variety, the children sang a swingy Christmas jazz song. Then the children sang a Christmas rap song. The jazz was better.