Villainy and Lemonade

I love the summer....I can't imagine why anyone would not be a teacher...just because of summer break. :) Grace and I went to the Farmer's Market today because we got it in our heads yesterday that we needed to make fresh lemonade and fruit salad. Having never made fresh lemonade, I told Grace that this would probably be a fantastic disaster. What fun! So we bought our lemons (and strawberries and plums and peaches and blackberries and flowers) and headed to the store for the other things we needed (like one of those weird looking, round, pointy things that you impale helpless fruit on to rob them of all of their juices....do those things have a name???). And then it was off to home to make lemonade. Now, here comes the really strange part....keep in mind this is me and Grace I'm talking about here....nothing exploded! No limbs cut off, no falls, no bonks to the head, no emotional trauma or moral angst....just lemonade. (In my oh-so-saucy tacky, plastic pitcher that I had to have last summer....yes, I actually quested for a tacky pitcher.) Check it out....

I also took this picture of the rest of our Farmer's Market goodies....just because I thought they looked so pretty and summery. :)

Now, on to the villainy....which in no way is related to lemonade other than the two ideas knocking around in my head on the same day. I am so freakin' &^%$#^^&**^%%$%$ (insert all of the bad words you wish here) TIRED of this whole evil step-mother thing in kid's movies! Do these people know how HARD it is to be a step-mother?!? Without the assistance of kid-geared media continually driving it into children's brains that step-mothers are hideous, evil-doing, selfish, maniacal poo-poo heads??? And I'm not just talking about the old stories....no, this goes beyond Cinderella and Snow White. Grace was watching a Polly Pockets movie the other day....guess who the bad guy is? That's right, kids, the soon-to-be step-mother. The soon-to-be step-mother who actually says she wants Polly out of the picture so the father won't spend so much time paying attention to Polly. Good grief! Now, imagine this idea processed by the mind of a 7 year old who is cutting looks at her very own step-mother throughout the movie. Yeah, I need this. Why can't we have the people who are bad guys in real life be bad guys in the movies, too? I'm sure Grace would be appropriately horrified by some money-hogging oil executive or an eeee-vil dictator from some random, un-named middle eastern nation. Geez. My tirade is over.....for now.