Weird Happenings

We've had several weird things happen in the last couple of days, yesterday being the weirdest day.

First, Hibi took a long walk. When she called me (yes, I've just bought her a cell phone--and though I never thought I would do that, I'm glad I did!) she was almost two miles from home. She told me that she was just walking, and a man came up to her and asked, "where are you going?" And she said "I'm just walking." He then handed her a twenty dollar bill and walked off! Bizarre. Of course, all my mama bells were going off when I heard this, and when we tried to call her a few minutes later and she didn't answer, Paul rushed over to pick her up. Of course she was fine (and $20 richer)--she just hadn't heard the cell phone ring because she was walking on a busy street. I have no idea what to make of what happened. I guess just someone being nice? Random acts of kindness? Seems to Paul and me that we'd rather someone had practiced acts of kindness in a slightly different way.

She'd been home for not very long, and I was in the basement, when Paul called down that he had heard gunshots. 7 or 8 of them, he said. He walked in the direction he'd heard them from, and some people on the corner had looked up when they heard the shots and two teenagers were running away. It took the police quite a while to get to the right place--even though Paul had called 911 and told them where it had happened, they still were all over the place. Finally they found the right place and they taped off the area. I haven't heard anything more about it...nothing in today's paper or online. This happened one block from our house.

The next weird happening is just ironic, since we recently watched Little Miss Sunshine. Paul and I watched it without kids first, because we'd heard from some sources that it's "definitely not for kids!" But it was definitely the kind of humor that we enjoy and I vote the ending scene as one of the best scenes in moviemaking history. It was painful and hilarious, totally inappropriate and totally apropos at the same time. So, I thought carefully about whether my kids would be comfortable watching it. It is littered with the f word, so if you're uncomfortable with that, don't watch! And the grandfather is your classic dirty old porn-ogling man, but loveable in his own way. And I thought, no violence, and no actual sex scenes (though you do see some of the porn the grandfather enjoys, it is quite mild). If you can handle all these caveats I highly recommend it!

Anyway, the movie's main character is a little girl who is competing in a little girls' beauty pageant. And what's ironic is that Hibi received an invitation in the mail today to compete in a "young miss" beauty pageant! When I showed it to her, she was dumbfounded for a few seconds. And then she became a paper shredder who wants to shred the paper into as many pieces as she possibly can.

I sure have a good 13 year old.