Dani-Ellie

I still have my childhood copy of Wait Till Helen Comes with that exact cover. It was my favorite book throughout elementary school.

I finished The Vanishing Hour by Seraphina Nova Glass over the weekend, and while the story was good, the book itself could really have used a stronger copyedit. I caught a few misspelled words. At one point, a character mentions hearing canned laughter from a rerun of Ghost Whisperer (which was, y'know, a drama); all TV references change to The Golden Girls after this one mention. The most egregious one, though, is that I caught the POV going from third person to first person (or first person to third person) at least three times. It's almost like she'd started out writing in one perspective, then changed her mind and didn't catch all the instances of the perspective when she swapped it over. It's a shame, too, because the story was intriguing but the mistakes were distracting. I can read past misspellings and even some mild grammar mistakes but the perspective changing for a paragraph (or even within paragraph) takes me right out of it.

So, why am I not surprised that when Michael tries to shade the Mans family for taking Natalia in, he only ends up shading himself? "She had $500 on her food stamps card and they bought food!" ... What else were they supposed to do with it, Michael, go to Vegas? "They had her social security check signed over to them!" Well, why were you getting it in the first place, Michael? If she's an adult, shouldn't the money be going to her? At least the Mans family could actually use the money for her care instead of dumping her in a second-floor apartment in a rough neighborhood and fucking off to Canada. "You moved her in ... you met her three days ago!" ... says the man who took this child into his home sight unseen through a very clearly shady adoption across state lines on 24 hours' notice. I have never before watched something that has filled me with so much rage. The Barnetts are terrible, horrible people and the fact that no justice has been served for this little girl is infuriating. Natalia was failed at every. single. junction, and I still have two episodes to go!

So, let me get this straight, Michael. Natalia is a somehow an adult sociopath smart enough to figure out how to pose as a small child (not even a preteen or a young teenager where she would naturally have a little more independence, no, a small child) and game the system to get herself adopted into a family to terrorize them but also dumb enough to tell doctors and nurses and EMTs all about her plans to murder her adopted family and admit that she's reading a Bible so she can "get rid of these evil thoughts" on camera? Make it make sense, dude.

I went down a rabbit hole when this story initially broke back at the tail end of 2019 and even back then, I fully believed Natalia was indeed a child when the Barnetts adopted her. I am about 30 minutes into the first episode of this documentary and I am already so angry. Those pictures they showed of her smiling? She had baby teeth, for crying out loud. I don't believe the Barnetts that she was fully developed down below (which I feel icky that the nature of the private parts of a child is even up for discussion) but even if I did, y'know, precocious puberty is a thing that exists. Also, if Therese (the other girl with the same kind of dwarfism as Natalia but maybe not because Michael called it one thing and Therese's mother called it something different) was 6 when she met Natalia in 2010, how is she 14 when this documentary interviewed her? Unless they interviewed her in 2018, the math ain't mathing. But honestly, let's Occam's Razor this entire story. Which is more likely: that a psychopath managed to fool everyone and get herself adopted out as a child for the sole purpose of terrorizing the Perfect American Family, or a couple adopted a traumatized child with an attachment disorder?

I've gotten the occasional tonsil stone (mostly during asthma exacerbations when I'm using my rescue inhaler a lot) and while I've never had any near as big as portrayed on the show, yes, you can feel them and see them. I've never bled with mine, either; they're not attached to the tonsil, they form in the little pockets on the tonsil and can be dislodged fairly easily with a gargle or a cough (or a Q-tip if a cough ain't doing it). I called the crypto bro being a crypto bro the second he whined about his hard drive being tossed. Jee tucking the ring in to bed in the dollhouse made me giggle. That little actress is adorable and is doing a fantastic job! I mean, I'm sure they're just letting her do whatever she wants in the scene at this point because she's still a little young to really be taking direction. Whatever they're doing, though, it's working.

*raises hand* I was just shy of 17 when this movie was released. (In fact, going to see it for like the fourth time in the theaters was the only thing I wanted to do for my 17th birthday in March 1998, haha.) I was very much the target audience for the love story aspect of it and it got me hook, line, and sinker. My first viewing, after the kiss on the bow, I leaned over to my mother and whispered, "I want to rewind it and watch it again." When it was released on VHS, sometimes if I wanted to watch it but didn't want to cry, I'd just watch the first tape. That way for me, Jack and Rose both got on a lifeboat and lived happily ever after. I was never really a Leo fangirl but I was totally a Jack Dawson fangirl. Because I didn't think it was too much to ask for a guy to change my life in three days and save me from a maritime disaster. :) To this day, Titanic is my favorite movie. I went to the theater last weekend and my obsession has been reignited. Partly because I remember how it made me feel when I was 16 but also because I find Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio so utterly charming together that their energy is infectious. I found myself grinning like a doofus during my viewing last week pretty much up until the ship hits the iceberg and shit gets real.

Not sure on the exact timeline but Laura had just turned 7 in season 1. The first episode features Laura's birthday and Laura says as much when she's talking about having the dream about her teacher punching her in the face ("I'm seven years old and what's the point!"). Lexis is 9 as of the djinn episode because Kristen mentions her age while telling Mathilda that her daughter has the same tea set. Lynn is 14 as of the last episode of season 3. Lila is the only one whose age hasn't been expressly stated (if I'm remembering all this right) but there should be a bigger gap between Lila and Lexis than the gaps between the other girls because Kristen has a miscarriage between them, which was what led her to RSM Fertility. I'd probably put their ages as the start of the series as: Laura, newly 7; Lexis, 8; Lila, 10 or 11; Lynn, 12.

There were no fake phone 911 calls, just a lot of fake employee call-outs so Josh would have to cover a lot of shifts during the prime nuttiness of the Santa Ana winds since he always bragged about not having to work during full moons, another time for prime nuttiness.

And Zach sounded like he was seconds away from breaking down a couple of times. Wow.

Maybe some of it’s a holdover from Titanic. I’m not so big on Leo now but I was definitely one of those squealing teenage girls who wanted a Jack Dawson because I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a guy to change my life in three days and save me from a maritime disaster. :)

This is it, exactly. For me, my cable & internet bill was ~$175/month. My cable & internet package was actually only $120 but the rest of that $55 was from taxes and fees. For example, I was paying a ~$20/month "regional sports fee" when I don't even watch sports. I tend to watch more streaming than cable, and what little broadcast TV I still watch, I watched on Hulu the next day anyway. So I canceled my cable and kept my internet service. I already paid for Netflix and Paramount+ anyway, Peacock comes with my Comcast internet, and we get Hulu through our mobile phone plan. I added HBO Max because it had both Rizzoli & Isles and Cold Case. Even with the addition of HBO Max, I'm still saving ~$60/month.

I think the girls are delightful. (Caveat, they're delightful on my television. If I knew the 4 Ls in real life, their particular brand of chaos probably would be a little much for me.) I think they bring a lot of levity, life, and energy to the show. I don't know if this is still the case, but in the beginning, the Kings used to let the young actresses just say whatever came to their minds when they were all talking over each other, and some of the stuff they came out with was hilarious.

It's from Bye Bye Birdie. That was also the fastest and most intense hour of TV I've seen in a while.

This episode was fairly disturbing (OMG ANDY! and OMG MOM TERRIFYING AND HURTING HER OWN KIDS FOR LIKES and I mean, don't get me wrong, I love disturbing but holey sheet) so I will just say that the Bouchard girls doxxing Leland out of his position at the church is something I never knew I needed.

I would willingly watch an entire of episode of Ben, Kristen, and David in a car on a random road trip.

For me, this was fine. I am a few years older than my brother and sister and thus learned the truth about the Tooth Fairy before they even started losing their baby teeth. Knowing the truth while they still believed was kinda fun for me. It made me feel a little more grown-up that 1) I knew the truth, and 2) my parents trusted me not to ruin the magic for my siblings. Rebecca really didn’t have a lot of options there. The very idea of the Tooth Fairy was freaking Randall out. She had to do something to ease his mind without taking the experience away from Kate and Kevin, especially since Kevin was excited.

Hair/Makeup, maybe?

IMDb will give you where to watch options when you look something up.

Man, the little girl playing Karen steals absolutely every scene she is in.

I'm late to the party in discovering this show, but I gotta tell ya, that ridiculous Feliz Navidad toy gave me the biggest jump scare I've had in a good long while.

In the parish I grew up in (Roman Catholic), you can take communion if you haven't been confirmed. However, you cannot take communion until you have been baptized and had First Penance. I was in second grade when I made my First Communion. (I was never confirmed and consider myself agnostic now.) It's possible Father Paul baptized Ali and had him go through First Penance, as he was a teenager and had reached the age of reason. He also might have been confirmed, which sometimes happens right before First Communion when you enter the Church as an adult. I'm not sure if he would have been considered an adult yet. That being said, I was surprised when Ali reawakened because I was under the assumption that he hadn't taken it, either.

Thank you for mentioning this one. I borrowed it from my library after reading your description and just finished it tonight. I enjoyed the heck out of it!

I finished Riley Sager's latest, Survive the Night, yesterday and loved it to pieces. I really enjoy all of his books. Each story has been different so it doesn't seem like he has a formula yet and I like the care he takes to make sure the conclusions make sense. (Which you would think would be a normal thing but I read a lot of thrillers and sometimes I feel like authors feel like they have to come up with big twists in order to get people talking, whether or not said twists actually make sense for the story.) Every one of his books has been an immediate "oh hell yes" for me.

I don’t read the last chapter of a whodunnit first but I will flip to the last page or two of a missing-kid book. Not to find out the whos and the whys, just to make sure they, y’know, find the kid. Because a missing kid is one story and a missing-and-dead kid is a vastly different story and I want to know ahead of time which one I’m getting.