full of hot air

enemy #1 of the mann household these days: the balloon. it all started a few weeks ago with the debacle otherwise known as the movie "up" -- that new pixar flick about an old man who hitches his house to enough helium balloons to lift it off the ground and on a worldwide adventure. cute enough premise, and those colorful balloons in the commercials looked so fun! i did my parental duty before taking liam to see it, researching to make sure it was appropriate for a four-year old. every article i read gave it a glowing review, and one columnist even commented that it was so tame that he couldn't figure out what gave it a PG rating instead of G.

well, mr. know-it-all movie reviewer man, let me just tell you what this momma thinks. i'd hazard a guess that the PG rating might just come from the pack of wild dogs that are an integral part of the story. the fang-bearing ones who ferociously bark for almost two hours while on their mission to capture a certain bird and kill it. the ones that turned my sensitive child into a trembling mess, burrowing his head into my shoulder a half-hour into the movie. the ones that ultimately resulted in him hightailing it to the nearest aisle as fast as his two legs could carry him while flinging an "i'm outta here, mommy!" behind him.

you might argue that it's the dogs i had trouble with. but really, it's those dadgum balloons, because had disney not marketed the movie with those balloons in every poster and trailer and commercial, i doubt i would have shelled out $15 at a matinee to suffer through it. and those aren't the only balloons that have wreaked recent havoc in our lives.

11 p.m. last night found chris and me precariously perched on our bed, armed with a flashlight, tweezers, scissors, and even a knife, trying to untangle a string from the motor of our ceiling fan. a string that had once been attached to -- you guessed it -- a balloon that susanna had brought home from the grocery, which had somehow made its way up the stairs, into our bedroom, and then gotten sucked into the blades. by the time we realized what had happened, the balloon was history, but the ribbon was so tightly wound around the inaccessible part of the fan that we had no choice but to dismantle the entire thing to remove it. 45 minutes later, chris drilled the last screw back into place and collapsed into a fatigued heap.

but not before he said, "NO MORE BALLOONS." you don't have to ask me twice.