Saturday Six

Whoops, meant to do this as a Friday Five, um, yesterday. However, time got away from me and before I realized I'd never hit Publish Post, it was Saturday! So, here's a Saturday Six instead of a Friday Five:

1) If you had a theme song, what would it be?

2) What TV show does your life most resemble?

3) What's your favorite (all-time) comic? (As in strip, not comedian.)

4) What's a great song to crank up with the windows down while driving around in the summer?

5) The ice cream truck has just pulled up. You've got a crisp, cool $5 bill in your hand (in other words, plenty o' cash for whatever's on the menu.) What do you get?

6) What was the last movie you saw at a drive-in theater?

And my answers, which I'll share now, seeing as how I never actually responded to my own F5 post last week:

1) Most of the time, I'd have to say Walking on Sunshine by the one-hit wonders, Katrina and the Waves. Either that, or I'm Going Slightly Mad by Queen. Then there are the days that I think that the best theme music for my life would be this:



2) I've given this a lot of thought, and my answer is Sesame Street. Really, Sesame Street is the closest thing to life in my house: lots of dialogue with imaginary creatures and animals (stuffed and real), learning the finer points of reading and math, cute kids being amusing, and lots and lots of singing and goofing around. Yep, definitely Sesame Street for me.

3) I'd have to say that all time, my favorite is Calvin and Hobbes. Just a classic. Boy, do I miss the joy of finding a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes in the paper every day.

4) If the kiddo isn't in the car with me, I like to turn up Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Also, just about any uptempo Aerosmith song - again, only when the kiddo is not along for the ride. When she is in the car, we enjoy singing along to Hakuna Matata at top volume...

5) I've always been a Chocolate Eclair kind of a girl. Part of why this is my go-to choice is because I love this particular treat, but also partially because my mother would never let us get one of the really, really large treats. One year when I was a kid and we were down the shore on vacation, the ice cream man rang his bell at the entrance to the beach closest to where we were camped out that day. Mom and Dad didn't feel like making the trek back up to the street, so they bribed my cousin to take us up instead by offering to pay for his ice cream as well. Well, my teenaged cousin had no concerns about which ice cream we picked, so my sister and I seized the opportunity and scanned the menu for the largest of the typically-forbidden selections. We each chose a Rocket Pop, you know, those gigantic, red, white and blue ones, barely balanced on a too-small stick? We were determined to eat the entire thing before getting back to our beach blanket, where our parents would surely express their disappointment (including our cousin, who was "old enough to know better" and to "use common sense" and would doubtless be subjected to other, similar tirades which might then put us out of his good graces. He was a merciless tickler when provoked, so this was an especially scary consequence). We licked like mad as we began to weave our way through the hundreds of towels, umbrellas, coolers and bodies taking up every last inch of sand. Whether it was divine providence saving us from a scolding is unknown to this day, but we each made it no more than a few yards down from the boardwalk when our poorly balanced, rapidly melting Rocket Pops bit the dust, or more accurately, the sand. First my sister's took the plunge off of her stick into the sand, and the laugh hadn't even finished making its way out of my throat when mine joined hers. (Yes, I was not above having a laugh at my kid sister's expense. Not back then, and not to this day, come to think of it.) No amount of tears or cajoling could convince our parents to pony up for a second trip back up to the ice cream truck that day, but we learned our lesson that sometimes bigger isn't always better and from then on, opted for ice cream treats that were smaller and better balanced so that we'd actually be able to enjoy them all the way down to the stick.

These days, my ice cream truck visits are for the kiddo, not myself, and the kiddo always chooses the Life Savers popsicle. Every time. She rarely makes it all the way to the end before she decides she's done. That's something I admire about my kid - she never feels compelled to finish any sort of dessert just because, you know, it's a dessert. She'll be full and that's it - doesn't matter how much delicious sweetness is left on the stick, in the bowl or on the plate. When she's full, she's done with it. I don't think she's made it all the way down to the green layer yet, before tossing it out.

(Side note: We haven't seen the ice cream truck on our street since early May. We don't have Good Humor, we have a couple of local franchises, like Skippy and Mr. Scoops instead. Every other year that we've lived on this street, at least one of those trucks would come by, and usually both made a couple of runs over the course of the afternoon and evening, every day, without fail. This year, we've seen the ice cream truck exactly once. I'm guessing this has to do with the ridiculous cost of gas, but it doesn't make it any less sad. The sound of the ice cream truck bell is intrinsically tied into summer for me, just as much as the frogs in the pond and the neverending buzz of the cicadas, and it's made the summer feel just a little bit off this year.)

6) This is an easy one for me, as I've only ever seen one film at a drive-in theater. That was about 12 years ago when Hubby and I were living in New Hampshire. We checked out the area's drive-in one weekend when the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was playing. Unfortunately, there was bleed-through on the radio station that provided the movie's audio, so half of the movie was drowned out by a local call-in financial talk show. Even without the radio interference, I wasn't a big fan of the whole drive-in movie-going experience. Once the novelty wore off (which it did rather quickly), it was all too clear that the passenger seat of our Toyota Tercel was far less optimal a viewing location than the plush, reclining, stadium seats at the movie theater.

So there you go, now it's your turn! Please join me and answer either in the comments here or over on your own blog (and please let us know if you've answered on your blog so we can find you!)

Happy weekend, everyone!