Later that night

Scratch that. Just had work interrupted by a terrified K who demanded that I take that book out of the house. Close to tears and near hysterical, she all but shrieked, "No more Roald Dahl!" I tried to calm her down. Come on, it can't be that bad. She wouldn't have me even utter the title of the book (Witches). "Take it out of the house. Please take it out of the house." Roused by her noise, C burst into the room all concerned. K dissolved into tears, all but inconsolable.

When we finally got her calmed down with hugs and kisses, rosary beads plus permission to sleep in C's room, I asked, "Was it really a bad book?"

She answered definitively, "Yes."

"Didn't it have a happy ending?" I asked.

"No," she replied flatly.

"But -"

"Just. Take. It. Out. Of. The. House," she chanted in a way that made the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on edge. What could be so bad about that book, I wondered to myself. Dahl wrote Danny Champion of the World and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and Matilda - all three of which K enjoyed, by the way. Sure, he also created the stories in Tales of the Unexpected, and the TV series scared the pants off me when I was a kid. But I thought that was more due to Alfred Hitchcock's creepy narration and the circus music that played in the opening credits. Not so much the stories themselves.

When she was finally asleep, I located the book and gave it a quick skim, taking more time at the final chapter.

In the book, witches are just like you and me. You just don't know they are witches. The three ways you can tell - witches are bald, so they must wear wigs. Witches have blue spit. I forget what the third one was. Anyway, the narrator/protagonist is turned into a mouse by a head witch. But over the course of the book, even as a mouse, the narrator is able to save all the children in England as well as defeat the head witch and the entire coven with the help of his grandmother, who is, naturally, human. In the final chapter, they are having a conversation about whether there are any more witches in the world. The grandmother answers that there must be. The narrator, who is at this point, still a mouse, is dismayed. Together they unhatch a plan to locate all the witches in all the world and defeat them. In the final paragraph, they agree to set off on a great, new adventure.

In short, it's a fairly upbeat, quite hopeful even. However, I must agree with K. While it's not a sad ending, it's not a particularly happy one, either. After all, how happy can it be if at the beginning of the book, you were human, and at the end of the book, you are still a mouse?

Rainy days and Sunday

It's been a good weekend, if rainy. We started with The Queen Friday night. Very very watchable. A good screenplay - just the right kind of talky. Good to have seen Borat one week followed by The Queen the next. Targetting The Good Shepherd which seems to have a cast of a thousand Oscar winners.

We opted to sleep in and just hang out Sunday morning. The second time this weekend since C's soccer training was rained out. It's the weather. What else is there to do on a rainy Sunday, after all? K and C are old enough to have a say in issues like when we'll go to mass, where we want to eat for lunch. They can be quite civilised when they choose to be, that is, if you can drag them from their books. C asked for more cheese. T replies, "I gave you some already." C pointed to his empty English muffin, retorting, "It's already a tepid memory." What a vocab. You have to laugh.

Yaya was on her day off, and she's decided to use the time to her advantage by taking a class at Holy Trinity College on Adam Road. She's currently enrolled for Basic Computer every Sunday from 1pm-4pm for the steal price of $10 a month for a 12-month course, organised for household helpers. Good for her.

The kids wisely get their Kumon worksheets out of the way. C, recently appointed Class Monitor, tries in vain to get away with doing just one, but we manage to convince him. He finishes both, but his time is on the slow side, at an average of 30 minutes each. Unlike K who gamely concentrates and manages to do one in 8 minutes and the other in 9 minutes. When she really wants to make good time, she tries to get one of us to race with her. Her idea of a race is having us give her a one-minute headstart. To my chagrin, I once raced her on one sworksheet, gave her a headstart and she finished in 7 minutes. I finished in 11. Scary. It pleases me that she's getting on in math and no longer seems intimidated by it.

Working on the story, but it's tough going. Woody Allen says he plots things in his mind before he writes, and then the writing goes very quickly, once the thinking work is finished. I tried to do the same, but it doesn't help when things start to change on the screen, veering away from the plan you thought was pretty much set. It's also weird when characters emerge more strongly than you had intended. We shall see, we shall see.

Procrastinated with the Sunday paper. Allowed myself to get peeved by Sumiko Tan's inane column in Life about her, her, herself and her unbelievably puerile little personal epiphanies. I don't mind reading about someone's personal life - in fact, I enjoy it - but I do mind it when the conclusion is something a pre-teen-aged girl could come to, with a lot less whiney reflection. It's terrifying what's passed off as human insight these days.

Then out we ventured for Pepper Lunch, some birthday gift shopping, a leisurely bookstore browse and later, coffee. Trying to get the kids to read better. K chose wisely - Roald Dahl. But C could not be budged from his Bionicle series. I felt a little better when I saw a kid reading the same book. He was at the very least, a fifth grader. At least, he's reading beyond his vocabulary. I shouldn't complain. Mass at 6pm, then dinner at Spizzas.

Now suffering Sunday night "I-don't-want-to-go-to-the-work" malaise. Fortunately, the sentiment is not shared by the members of my family.