So we are downstairs sitting on the couches, drinking the coffee I made from the beans The Cake Lady brought. 

CL:  The boys are being to quiet.  We should check on them.
K: They’re FINE.

The fact that I am such a moron amazes me too.

CL:  Seriously.
K:  Listen.  We have nothing upstairs.  Not even nothing dangerous.  Just nothing. 
CL:  But we haven’t HEARD them.

The Baby was asleep but I decided to check on The Boy and His Lovah so his mother would feel better. I did the low crawl up the stairs and listened at the bedroom door.  They were going on and on and on and on about nothing.  I have no idea where they get it.  We went back downstairs to go on and on and on about nothing. 

K:  I told you. 
CL:  I know you did, but I don’t trust them.

10 minutes later they came down the stairs.  Without their shoes.  Which, might I add, is something I NEVER would have noticed.

CL:  Where are your shoes?
Harrison:  I left them upstairs.
K:  I’ll get them. 

I raced up the stairs and threw open the door.  My sinuses could not have cleared faster if I had stepped into the Roman baths. I raced back down the stairs.

K: Where is it?
The Boy: I don’t know, Mom.
K: Where is the bottle of Vick’s Baby Rub?
The Boy: Mom, what are you talking about?
Harrison: We don’t have it.

I snatched him up because he was closer and shoved his feet into his mother’s face.

CL: Yep. Where is the bottle?
Harrison: We didn’t do it, Mom.
K: Where did you put it on?
CL: Just tell us and it will be okay. We just need to know that you didn’t eat it.

Not exactly. It won’t be okay. I don’t care if you ate it. I just want to be sure that when I step into the bathroom, I won’t lose both feet from underneath me.

K: Yeah, what she said. Where did you put it?
Harrison: Just our feet.
CL: Good. Why did you put it on your feet?
The Boy: That’s where it goes.

Nana. We have Nana to thank for that one.

And the bottle is still MIA.

If your bored, you can also find me over at PBS waxing unpoetic about my former dating life and Pride and Prejudice. Leave a comment so I look popular. You don’t even have to tell me I look pretty…

In case you needed the link …. It’s the shirt on the baby crying hysterically. 

But onto more important things.  I’m freaking out.  Freaking out.  FREAKING OUT.

I have to write a review of Pride and Prejudice over at PBS.  I know.  I KNOW!!  FREAKING OUT.  What were they thinking?  Sure The Baby sleeps with my Jane Austen doll and The Boy climbs into my lap and asks me to read Jane Austen.  Other qualifications?  I hardly think that repeated viewings of Pride and Prejudice on Saturday mornings (Saturday morning cartoons for the single girl) constitute any experience in All Things Jane.  So The Husband asks me if I have decided on what to write.

K:  I’m going back and forth between a 2008 Match.com leading man comparison and saying Darcy was an ass.

Silence.

D:  Yeah, do you think that is such a good idea?
K:  But he was.  And Lizzie forgave him too soon.  And what about her?  Desperate to believe that oh-so-sad story Wickham was sporting.

Silence.

K:  She reminds me of someone.

Silence.

K:  Oh, no.
D:  Yes.
K:  I.  Am.  Lizzie.
D:  Yes.  Yes, you are.
K:  Crap.
D:  You know, you are quick to say Darcy was an ass.  There were class issues there that I think you just don’t understand.

Silence.Heavy, heavy silence.

Mr. Left Coast is telling me about class issues? Um, I don’t think HE dated the Choate alum. Thank you very much.

K: Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t lecture ME about Pride and Prejudice.
D: I’m just saying that maybe you should think before you call Darcy an ass. That’s all I’m saying.

Well, thank God that’s all he is saying….

Winners are up at Mommy Needs a Review for the Bloggy Giveaway AND the Daddy Maternity shirts. Go check it out.

The Boy:  Mom.  Mom.  Mom.

K:  Quit splashing me.  Yes, Ethan?

The Boy:  Mom, are you reading Jane Austen?

K:  Yes, as a matter of fact I am.  And if you splash me one more time, you are getting out of the tub.  Do you understand?

The Boy:  I unerstand, Mom.  I unerstand.  Mom, that’s Jane Austen?

K:  It’s Emma.  Jane Austen wrote it.

The Boy:  Mom, when I get out of the tub, can we play with your Jane Austen doll?

K:  Only if you promise to tell your father about it when he gets home.

The Boy:  I tell him, Mom.  I tell him we play Jane Austen.

K:  That’s why I love you, buddy.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Perhaps one of my most favorite lines of all in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen is, by far, one of my most favorite writers ever.

So when I got an email from MotherTalk, the subject line caught my eye. Would I like to review the movie Becoming Jane? That’s like asking if ice cream is good any time of the day. I hit that reply button so fast my eyes were swimming. I was curious to see exactly how this fictionalized account of a young Jane Austen would play out. I chose to go with zero expectations.

Now is a good time to admit that I am a Jane Austen snob. A Jane Austen purist. Jane. Austen. Obsessed.

As a condition for accepting my husband’s marriage proposal, I may have required him to watch all 6 hours of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. It took me two years to realize that my wedding dress that I bought off a rack was exactly like the one Gwyneth Paltrow wore in Emma. I have been known, on occasion, to pop Pride and Prejudice Part I into the dvd player to pass a Saturday morning. I probably spent HOURS on the phone discussing the absurdity of making a Pride and Prejudice movie that ran less than 6 hours. With Colin Firth nowhere to be found. I have Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility (or Sense and Sensitivity as Kate likes to refer to it) stacked on my nightstand for those moments that I just need a decent, reliable, amiable read.

So how was it? Hands down, Anne Hathaway’s performance was fabulous. My girl has had a tough run getting past the sweetness that is The Princess Diaries and I’m thinking people will finally start to take her seriously now. Coming on to the screen with the wit of Lizzy, I began to see glimpses Marianne and even Emma on occasion. Her portrayal contained the exact amount of spunk I imagined a young Jane Austen to have. As Austen’s love interest in the film, James McAvoy’s Tom Lefroy made me want to climb up and lick the screen. The chemistry between Jane and Tom was just that good. Let’s all admit it. We all know that the Perfect Man would have Darcy’s intelligence, Wickham’s rakishness and Willoughby’s dreaminess.

Writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams cleverly wove Austen characters into the people surrounding Austen in Becoming Jane without offending your intelligence. Clever because you were constantly surprised that a character that you assumed would fit into a mold actually had the traits of a very different (or even more than one) Austen character. Without offense because it is more realistic to believe that Austen’s characters in her novels were not replicas of the people she knew but the sum of her life experiences.

Loosely adapted from the early life of Jane Austen, this fictional account of what might have been was a great way to spend an evening in a theater. You should check it out.