S here, and last night M and I stayed up to watch all of The Sound of Music on TV. Why? Because he’d never seen the whole movie before. And because watching movies with M when he’s in a totally goofy mood is hysterical.

For example, take the rather slow schmaltzy scene where Maria is in the moonlit garden, moping about the fact that she came all the way back from the nunnery only to learn that the Captain is engaged to the Baroness. M watched about 10 seconds of her standing in the dark garden, then began, “Now, if this were a horror movie, this is where you’d see the chainsaw….”

We also had a lot of fun with the ads. We seldom watch commercial TV, so it’s easy to forget just how ridiculous some of the ads and ad-placement are. For example, what is there about a family-oriented movie featuring a nun who chooses to become a stepmother to 7 adorable children that screams “Let’s advertise birth control pills?” M also pointed out how strange it was that the birth control ads featured only women, usually going around in pairs — because we know how many female couples need the pill — doing inane completely-non-reproductive activities like cutting their own hair and painting their walls orange. Whereas the ad for a woman’s razor did feature a male/female couple and what looked like some pretty serious foreplay. Very strange.

“Clean” is a relative term.

This is the Christmas ghost who appears when M takes the cover off his comforter so we can wash it before Grandma comes to visit and sleeps in his room.

S here. It’s almost Christmas, so not only are there Santa Clauses and jewelry ads every time you turn around, but we also occasionally see the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. Certainly we hear their story at church, and see them in Nativity sets, and they have bit parts in at least a few of the TV specials. We picture the young mother holding her quiet baby on her lap, and even though we know about the whole “no room at the inn so they’re in a manger” bit, overall it’s still a joyful, peaceful, hopeful image.

I can’t help but contrast that with what M and I saw during our volunteer shift at the soup kitchen yesterday.

In winter, people start showing up to eat well before dinner is actually served. Partly they want to get out of the cold, and partly the soup kitchen is just so much busier in the winter when food costs compete with heating bills, that maybe they’re hoping for first crack at the extra groceries before things run out. Last night, folks were arriving a good 45 minutes before any food was ready to appear.

And at one table, there was a man and woman with their two little girls. I’ve seen them at the soup kitchen before; the parents are probably in their 20s, and the girls are probably 2 and 4. Last night, the younger girl was being held gently on her mother’s lap, just quietly waiting. And the mother was quietly waiting too, with an expression of such absolutely bleak resignation on her face that it made me want to cry. She looked so totally defeated by what her life has come to: bundling up to go out through the bitter cold and then sit in a loud, crowded church basement just waiting for someone to provide food for her and her children.

So that’s the mother-and-child image stuck in my head this Advent season. Merry Christmas-in-a-Recession, everyone.

Before the election yesterday (primary election for a Senator to finish out Ted Kennedy’s term), each person in our family wrote down a prediction for how the vote would turn out. This wasn’t just predicting the winner; this was predicting what percentage of the vote each Democratic candidate would get. And this morning we compared our predictions to the actual results. Check it out.

If anyone out there is looking to hire a political analyst, M is available after school most weekdays.

Question: what do you do when you take the afternoon off from work because your child’s school has a half-day and you have vacation time to use up?

Answer: Lots of chores and errands. So far, I’ve taken the car for its inspection sticker, bought milk and bread and bleach, swapped out the semi-broken clock-radio in the bedroom for one with a functional alarm, washed a bunch of dishes, and (with M’s help) picked up the last 2,897 pinecones out in the yard.

But the most fun we had was going on a blue underwear hunt. Ever since a recent incident that also involved M’s black jeans and a washing machine, our underwear and socks have been rather blue. It didn’t look too bad when M’s undershirt poked out above his shirt collar; at least the laundry hadn’t turned pink instead of blue, or he’d probably have stopped wearing undershirts. But in successive washings, the blue was starting to fade towards gray. And this time of year is just too dreary without starting the day by putting on blue-gray underwear. So M and I went through the hamper and dresser drawers and frisked ourselves and rounded up every last piece of blue underwear and blue socks, and they all got a close encounter of the bleach kind.

M’s tendency to mumble and slur words together has only gotten worse with the addition of orthodontia, so I finally went online and looked around for do-it-yourself speech exercises that might help. One site suggested having the child look in the mirror and recite something he knows by heart while exaggerating all the facial movement that happens as he speaks. It’s meant to strengthen facial muscles and (in M’s case anyway) will also teach him to speak a bit more slowly and distinctly. Yes, I want to ruin his chances at a career as the guy who spews out 60 seconds of boilerplate legal disclaimers in the last 15 seconds of a TV or radio ad.

So M and I had a little discussion to identify what things he knew by heart, and he headed into the bathroom to practice. The Pledge of Allegiance segued into the first dozen digits of Pi which segued into the Lord’s Prayer and then an interesting assortment of songs.

Luckily, it was an exercise in speech, and not an actual test of memorization. He omitted “one nation under God” from the Pledge, and I don’t think it was done as a deliberate political statement. He managed 11 out of the 12 digits of Pi correctly. And the Lord’s Prayer got rephrased as “Lead us not into temptation, for thine is the power of evil,” which I really hope is not part of his personal theology. At least the first few lines of “I Believe I Can Fly” seemed to come off OK.

So far my favorite Christmas ad is one in the drugstore flier for a “Tranquility Fountain or Smokeless Ashtray — Wow! $5.99″

Wow indeed; you can stub out your cigarette in a tiny stream of water that flows over midget rocks. That would sure minimize the smoke.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be two separate products, united only in their price and in the ad department’s need to fit two more products into one small box to make a nice symmetrical layout on the “gifts under $10″ page. At least they didn’t merge the smokeless ashtray with the $5.99 pet bed.

But still, the Christmas ad reminds me of my favorite roadside sign ever, outside a family’s home-based business: “Wedding Invitations Toro Mowers.” I’m picturing fancy script fonts and little tractor logos requesting the pleasure of your company.

S here, and I drove M and two of his friends home from math club after school today. On the down side, this meant I had to endure the smell of a car full of sweaty teens. (Don’t ask me how they work up a sweat at math club. I don’t want to know.) On the up side, I stayed quiet enough to enjoy the best part of driving carpool: the kids forget a parent is in the car with them, and so they chatter about all the things that are really on their minds, without the parent having to drag ideas out of them a phrase at a time.

M and his two friends have evidently invented some kind of verbal role-playing game. It includes secret burrito powers, magic chocolate that may or may not be magic poop, the wisdom of turtle-land, a stone jackalope, and a large number of other equally random things. (Someday these guys will outgrow bathroom humor, right?)

The most amusing dialog came when M announced, “The evil warlock pops up and challenges you. What do you do?”

M’s friend replied, “Oh no! I’m not ready to fight the evil warlock”

M reassured him, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to fight him yet, this is just a difficult chase scene. Now, do you take the path to the left, the right, or the center?”

This is now the drawer we store the cat in.

And this is his spot at the table.