The Severed Cortex

Robert's mom's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. We have a bunch of outdoor furniture that needs to be moved to the storage area outside of town. Normally those two statements together would have no tie-in at all, but I devised a plan to put the two together.

Originally I was supposed to pick Robert up around 10:30, but around 10:00 his mom called and asked could I come by later because they were shopping for clothes. I showed up around 11:30 and Robert was waiting next door at his grandmother's house. The first words out of his mouth were, "What are we going to do"? I told him that we needed to do some work in order to earn some money to buy his mother a birthday present, and then maybe afterward we could go see a movie. He thought it was a good plan, because obviously it was.
We arrived at the house and immediately set at moving all the furniture. Technically, with some clever packing, I can get all the furniture in the truck at one time. It takes some real clever packing and a lot of bungee, but I thought this time we could make two trips. We managed the patio table and four chairs, the umbrella, umbrella stand, and all the coconut lined planters in the first move. In the second trip we managed to move both Adirondack chairs and their accompanying 'ottomans', for lack of a better word. The Adirondacks are really light and Robert figured out how to pick them up and carry them on his shoulders because they are way too much to wield for a 10 year old attempting to carry something that's almost as tall as him. For both trips, Robert was in charge of helping me move some of the smaller things as well as being in charge of the keys to the storage locker and he performed the tasks well. For his hard work, he earned $4.

After closing up the storage area we went to Kohl's to search for some slippers for Robert's mom. (We thought that might be a good idea for someone who is pregnant and will be spending a lot of time around the house) Robert picked out a really fuzzy pair of them. At the checkout, I suggested that he take half his money and spend that on a gift for his mother. You could tell he didn't want to part with the $2, but he knew it was the right thing to do. While doing so, he asked to make sure that I was buying the candy at the movies. I told him I would.

We checked out, an ordeal because Kohl's was jam packed, and headed to the theater to check out Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. I'll have to say that overall the movie was pretty average. You'd think with Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman that it would be an above average movie, but average is about the best grade I can give it. I thought Jason Bateman was better than anyone, and I thought Hoffman phoned in a quirky performance. Portman was sort of wooden the whole time as if she really didn't want to be there. There also could have been tons more special effects to make the toys even cooler. If not for the story line, the film would be terrible. Of course kids don't care about that stuff and Robert said he thought the movie was pretty awesome.