While I'm cranky and ranting, a couple more things:

First of all: fireworks. I love the big "civic" sort of fireworks shows. But I cannot stand the little, do-it-yourself fireworks. Every corner in my town boasts a fireworks stand. Some of the churches are doing them as a fundraiser. I wouldn't mind it so much, but people have been setting them off every night since Thursday, and my nerves are about shot. And the kids - I have seen SO MANY unsupervised kids playing with fireworks - lighting bottle rockets while holding them in their hadns, for instance. I'm amazed we don't have more children losing fingers.

Coming home, a kid threw a bottle-rocket into the street and it exploded not far from where I was driving. (I'm dreading tonight. I probably should have picked up some Benadryl or something to make me sleep through it).

Second: the new Willy Wonka movie. Am I the only one who's more than a little creeped out by the way Johnny Depp portrays Willy Wonka? At least in the ads I've seen, he makes the character sound a bit like he's on 'Ludes. Or like he's some kind of bizarre science-project-gone-wrong melding Oscar Wilde and Peter Pan.

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Johnny Depp. He's probably one of the few actors alive today that I really enjoy watching. But something about his portrayal here - it's just, in the age of the Michael Jackson trial, there's something really disturbing about it to me. In the original version, Gene Wilder had the man-child thing down: he understood that MAN was part of the equation. And he acted irritated at times. He didn't look at a character point-blank, and in a cheerfully loopy voice, exclaim, "You're really weird!" (That's the line that bugs me the most. I don't think Willy Wonka would use 'weird' in that way. Someone or something would have to be a looooooot darker to merit a 'weird,' he'd use it in a more Poe-like sense, I think. Like the "Weird Sisters," you know?)

Third: The Wal-Mart has reconfigured its yarn section. Yay for that. They now carry a lot more of the diverse yarns from Caron and Bernat. But - most all of the "basic" (i.e., non-hairball) yarns are carried only in BABY colors - ice blue, sugar pink, duckling yellow, and minty green. Nothing I would even vaguely consider using for a garment to be worn by someone older than 18 months, and something I'd seriously think twice about for someone UNDER 18 months (What is it with pastels and babies? Wouldn't you think primary colors - or any bright color - would be easier to keep clean and less prone to show stains? Or for that matter, why not just plain bleachable white cotton?) So they have like twelve new yarns, but only four colors of each.

And what about babies that don't look good in pastels? I mean, Hispanic kids typically look better (to my eyes) in bright colors than in pastels - a lot of them, the pastels just don't look right with their complexions. And real pale European American babies - well, they just look downright sickly in pale green or pale yellow.

They do have the Moonlight Mohair; it's like $7.50 a skein. Cheaper than Hobby Lobby but my previous comment - that the average Wal-Mart shopper 'round here will not drop that kind of dime for a yarn - stands.