Well, we had a fairly low-key but still pleasant Thanksgiving. Jack, Anna, my mother and I went to a nice restaurant in the city which basically took care of Thanksgiving-day dinner stuff. Didn’t suck at all that mom picked up the tab. :) We went ahead and cooked a small turkey on Friday and ate off of that for the weekend.

On Saturday Jack took Anna to see Bee Movie in the afternoon. They’d already seen it, but the point of the exercise was to give me a couple of hours of free time, which was greatly appreciated. I managed to grind out another 500 words or so on my Lucifer novel, which is MUCH slower than I usually write, but I’m still in the slow and painful start of the book where I’m still trying to figure out the feel of it. However, I have a feeling that this is not going to be a fast book to write.

After they returned from the movie I bundled the kid into the car and left Jack to his own devices while I met my sister and her family at an indoor rock-climbing gym over in Slidell. After college (i.e. a couple of decades ago!) I very briefly dated a guy who did rock climbing, and so I gained a small amount of experience with climbing and rapelling. However, the indoor gyms are a whole ‘nuther animal, and really loads more fun for the novice since you can start out on “easy” walls and move up to harder walls at your own pace. Plus you always have someone belaying you, which takes away the ohmygodi’mgoingtofall aspect of climbing up a really tall wall. I had not intended to give it a try at first, but my sister called me a wimp and other similar names, and so I had no choice but to at least give it a damn try. And I actually made it to the top! Okay, so it was the “bunny slope” version of a climbing wall, but I still made it all the way up.

However, the HUGE surprise was Anna. After about 20 minutes of watching other people climb up walls, she decided she wanted to try it. So we rented a harness for her and let her go at it. She didn’t like the rope at all, so I let her free climb on the short walls (with me hovering anxiously ready to catch her!) She had a blast, and by the end of our stay there was scurrying up the wall like a little spider. I was, of course, ridiculously proud of the fact that my three year old was swarming up the wall with such ease. (I’ll take pictures next time!)

Then, on Sunday, I gave Jack some more free time to prepare for trials he has this week, and took Anna to see… yes, Bee Movie. (Sheesh!) Someday I’d like to see it without sixteen “I gotta go potty” interruptions.