Magic!

I haven't blogged in a few days -- I guess the habit didn't catch on quite as quickly as I had hoped. In my defense, I have been quite busy! I finished two books (which have led me to consider "book reviews" as potential blog entries. Are you interested?), made a lot of progress with my project in lab, spent three nights out with friends (that is A LOT for me, by the way) and also spent some time getting the paperwork & things together for my new part-time job. For the latter I have still more paperwork to do in the store, so I'll be going in at noon tomorrow. On the upside, this trip involves filling out the forms for direct deposit of my paycheque -- the best part! My training is August 6th to 8th, but I do not know the times yet. I think it will be most of the weekend though, so I'm not planning anything else.

Tonight I'm babysitting for @YEGmamaMD which will be extra awesome because I made sure to pick up Harry Potter 6. I got both her young boys into Pottermania a year ago, and from what I can tell, they are STILL watching the DVDs EVERY DAY. They regularly quiz me with HP trivia, which keeps my own magic-lexicon in good working order, but when they ask me something I can't answer ("where is Diagon Alley?") I always demure, "Well, I'm a muggle, so I'm not actually allowed to know that". Is this merely tricking small children or am I nourishing young imaginations?

The fun part of sharing a child's world with a child -- as opposed to making the awkward and ungainly attempt of inhabiting it all on your own -- is that it ceases to be imaginary and actually gets to be real, because it actually is real for the child. Now, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the adult world and all it has to offer (namely sex, alcohol, cars and credit cards, just to name a few of the perks of blowing out 18 candles on your birthday cake) but still, nobody flies on brooms here. There's no centaurs or hippogriffs. And house elf most definitely does not do my laundry or dishes. But when I'm with children, I get to take a vacation to their world where those things do exist. And I don't mean that they merely hope for these things -- in a child's mind, they do physically exist! Magic does occur! It's all just somewhere else (England, mostly, as that's where our friend Harry Potter resides).

So while my friends are out enjoying the sex-alcohol-cars-and-credit-cards on their Saturday night, I'll be curled up with popcorn and my two young amigos, and we will be under the spell of childhood, which is the real magic in the universe ;)