Becoming the Woman I (Used to) Hate, Bomb Scares and Racist Disney

What do all these things have in common?
Well, nothing except for the fact that they all were a part of my day.

The first one occurred while I was cooking dinner tonight. I was making spaghetti sauce from scratch, and about halfway through, I realized something: I was not using a recipe. And I had been doing that for several days now. That's right, after (almost) five years of marriage, I can successfully throw together a meal with whatever the heck I have stuck in my fridge. Now, when I first saw my mother-in-law doing this a few years back, I thought, How does she do it?. My mom is a decent cook, but she always shopped-by-recipe and had meal plans for the week stuck up on our refrigerator. I rarely ever saw her make things without using a recipe (or measuring cups and/or spoons), so cooks who could just "eyeball it" completely baffled me. But now, I can say I have joined their ranks.

The bomb scare happened while I was watering my garden this morning. Usually, this is a pretty peaceful and painless procedure, but right in the middle of dousing some Birds of Paradise with the hose, I heard bomb sirens go off ALL OVER THE CITY (haven't heard those since the good ol' 80s). And I thought, oh crap, who's bombing us now? I ran inside to find the Dean of Students on his way outside, and I frantically asked him what was going on. To which he replied, "It's just a drill." Good grief, why couldn't he have warned me about that when he first arrived? We don't have a television or anything, so there was no way we could have known. And one minute later, my neighbor calls to assure me everything's OK. Thanks.

Number three was during our evening movie time. While the students are in class, I usually have a movie or some sort of distraction to keep my son entertained, since he's holed up in the guest bedroom with us. Tonight's magical presentation? Dumbo. Yes, a movie fraught with drunkenness, racism and physical abuse. The ACLU and Animal-rights activists should be all over this one. Cracked blog has a hilarious list of the history of racism (or racial stereotyping) in Disney's Cartoons. I'm not sure if it's really funny or really sad. Maybe a little bit of both.