Potter, Party, Poop.

That's what the last two weeks have been all about!

First, the Potter thing. Whoo boy what a thing! Our local hometown closed down for a huge Harry Potter Festival. I'm not kidding, the place was shut down. Even the next town over got into it and offered up their historical museum as a haunted house tour. There was a Hogwarts express between the towns and everything. Every store had a name from the books, including the bookstore which renamed itself "Flourish & Blotts" and still had that sign up when I left town over a week later. It was crazy. There were fire breathers and stilt walkers, a guy we went to high school with who looks like Hagrid, and of course a couple of my relatives. (We're everywhere.)

The fire breather was awesome. Not because of his fire skills which were probably pretty good, although I wouldn't know since I don't eat fire. Looked good to me. In a don't-be-stupid-enough-to-do-this kind of way. I liked the fire breather simply because of this:

FIRE GUY: My name is John! I come from a little town north of here called Linwood! It's full of rednecks...

HEIDI AND HER KIDS: Whoo! (clap clap clap)

FIRE GUY: ...and it's fulla HICKS!

HEIDI AND HER KIDS: WHOOOOOOO! YEAHHHHHH! YEAH HAHAHAHAAAA! (high fives all around)

Then he had all the kids repeat after him: John is stupid don't play with fire.

I kept a close eye on Bucky after that though, let me tell ya.

We missed out on the Chocolate Frogs and Butterbeer, which was sold out by the time we rolled into town. Drat! This is the last book! No more book release parties! No more chances to try Butterbeer! But it was okay. The people watching was worth it. Letting my kids run down the centre of the main street was worth it.

There was a countdown at midnight, the line up dispersed as the books were handed out, and a quiet calm settled over the town. Kids were ambling along with their noses in the book as parents guided them home.

The next day though, was just as big a deal....the QUIDDITCH TOURNAMENT! How, you ask, do you play a fictional game involving flying broomsticks, in real life? You know, I don't know. The kids got it. The game was altered slightly to accomodate for being earthbound, and it was, by the looks of it, a raging success!

This is how they got around the complication with the Snitch, a little winged ball that the players are supposed to catch to end the game:



I guess it was like soccer, with five extra balls, three hula hoops for goal posts, and a prolonged game of tag thrown in there.

I'm not a soccer mom. We just don't get organized sports in this family. I was surprized that Bucky wanted to play!



Each kid got put in a "house" just like in the stories. Bucky was thrilled to be on the Slytherin team, with Coach Voldemort. I wish I'd gotten a picture of Coach Voldemort...instead, here's more Bucky in his Slytherin T shirt and his mane of curls, and the ubiquitous hat.




I dragged the Girl, a couple of lawn chairs and a bottle of water and a can of sunscreen and didn't we just hunker down and watch a four hour Quidditch match. I've read six of these books, and I've read "Quidditch Through the Ages" as well as seeing the movies and I still don't follow. The kids all played like they'd been at it for years.

Bucky was so into it. He even buddied up with a couple of his team mates. Didn't ask their names of course. Boys. A kid from our church was on his team and it took him until halfway through the afternoon to get talking with him. Not so good with the social skills? Ha!

In daylight we went back to get a look at Arthur Weasley's flying car!



Can you believe this? I don't know where the heck they found it.




I figure I know a thing or two about old cars but this stumps me totally. Does this logo look vaguely proto- Audi???



It looks just like the cover of the Chamber of Secrets.



What fun. Then we got in the car and drove around on the dirt roads looking for places with For Sale signs. Just for s**ts and giggles.

Speaking of which...

The rest of my week had a lot to do with excrement. After Phoenix gave me the old Rapid Involuntary Dismount (yes, okay, fine, I admit it, he bucked me off and yes my pride got hurt worse than my body, okay, fine?????) I didn't feel like doing much. I hobbled out to the corral, got a kid to push the wheelbarrow over for me, and we picked some piles of poop to take over to the compost.

Try to suppress your disgust for a second and take a look at this. No seriously. Look.




It's so perfect. Each little oval shaped plop is so uniform and intentional. How can I have been looking at this stuff my whole life and still find it so fascinating?

I'll have to figure out how to show you a video of Bucky's little manoever called The Crap-O-Pult.

I know. Genius. Such a fine line between work and play.

Speaking of play...

Good ol Jethro works a lot of long hours. This year, after almost twenty years in the music business, he was given a little prize. Thrown a bone, you could say. We threw him a party on Sunday. It was an opportunity to visit with the hometown crowd, the relaitves, people who've known him for most of his life. Well, when I say WE threw him a party, I mean, more accurately, my mom got the idea, talked to his Dad, and they put it together. I just sort of clamped my hand over my mouth, freaked out about how much it would cost and how many people might potentially show up, and wondered how the hell I ever planned my own wedding 17 years ago.

(If you want to see some pictures, go visit Biddie!)

I had a moment of awkwardness when a fella showed up early on and I didn't recognize him. Oh crap- did we go to school with him? Is it one of our buddies who's changed so much in the decade since we last saw him that we don't know him anymore? Is he a musician? Engineer? Producer? Studio owner? I knew he wasn't from church or related to me.

As it turns out, he was the reporter that Grandpar had called up for the occasion. The poor guy had to sit through two hours of note taking to get a small special interest story in the "Local" section of the city paper.

There was a photographer and everything. Crazy. I guess we better get used to this....everybody loves the "Small Town Boy Done Good" story. This is the third time we've had a newspaper story done. My man has an internet presence. Crazy eh?


A few things I've learned about newspaper interviews:

1) They will always cut-and-paste something from his website's bio...which I wrote.

2) They will always get something wrong.

3) The entire tone of the article depends on how the interviewer and the subject interact.

The party was a real small town deal, a total opposite to the parties we went to when he actually won his award. We held it in a small community centre, with a few fruit and veggie trays for refreshments and no alcohol. Half of the people there were my cousins/ aunts/ uncles. The air conditioning had no chance of keeping up with all of our hot air. I was actually white knuckled for the entire weekend leading up to it. I'm a very tense combination of Party Animal and Recluse, and these two sides of me live together awkwardly. I was into Party Animal mode but the Recluse part of me kept wanting to flee. I didn't flee. I greeted all the long-losts and spoke lovingly of my talented husband and even posed for pictures.

Edit- I must make it clear that this party was really put on by my mom and his parents...who sat there beaming and glowing the whole afternoon! Grandpar got to go through the photo albums with the reporter, Grandmar smiled like the queen and my mom greeted everybody at the door! My dad chatted with his siblings between carrying jobs. He's good at carrying stuff. So even though it was Jethro's party, it was really all about the parents!

Now I'm home again, back in fast internet land, and deciding which photos I'll subject you to next...stay tuned.