The Queen of Hearts is Always Your Best Bet

(The title of this blog is from Desperado, which has another line, "Don't your feet get cold in the winter time, the sky won't snow and the sun won't shine. It's hard to tell the night time from the day." which reminds me of the last blog post. But I digress.)

Thursday night we attended the midnight showing of Alice in Wonderland... in costume, of course.

I was the Queen of Hearts. Correction- I am the Queen of Hearts. I already walk around shouting, "Who's been painting my roses red?!" (or, as it were, my kitchen... sticky pink) and shouting "Somebody's head will rolll for this!"

But I usually do it out of uniform. Getting dressed into this costume normally requires getting laced into a corset. However, the reality of sitting in a movie theatre seat for over two hours laced tightly into a corset had me re-thinking that idea. I went with a bustier, instead. Next come the tights, and then bloomers with hearts printed all over them. At this point, I should put on my black leather granny boots, but I always forget.

I now stop dressing and do my hair and make-up. I put on the crown, brush my hair over the band, and secure it into a basic up-do that features a gazillion hair pins.

I apply black eyeliner, mascara, and fill in my eyebrows. I used to draw vertical lines to accentuate my "wtf lines" to make me look angry, but over the past year I've lost those, and have no desire to re-create them, even for one night. Red lipstick, in the shape of a heart (I got the good lips), and I'm ready to get dressed.

I have a four-layer petticoat that goes on over the bloomers. The dress itself has a three-layered skirt. I then attempt to put on my granny boots, but seem to have a hard time finding my feet in all the frippery.

Sadie had originally invited her best friend Aaron, whom I was happy to have tagging along with us, then Sadie decided to hang out beforehand with Joey, Frederick, and Josh, and meet us all at the theatre later. This meant Aaron had to come over to our house early and put up with the chaos that is our family- all alone!

And if that wasn't bad enough, he flat-out refused to embarrass himself by dressing up with us.

Here I am as the Queen of Hearts. See Aaron, in the background, looking thrilled to be with us?

Tess as Alice, Harris as the White Rabbit, and Arden as the Mad Hatter.

Trying to drive in the costume was a challenge. I rammed the crown into the ceiling of the van, and nearly closed the door on my dress. By the time I hauled in the entire dress, and got the door closed, I could barely see over the foamy layers to put the key in the ignition. The seatbelt helped tame the voluminous skirts, however it did little to quell the riotous laughter and good-natured teasing of the other occupants. Thank goodness I didn't have to stop for gas!

Arden under the Mad Hatter poster.

Sadie and Joey met us. Sadie was dressed as the caterpillar.

Arden posing with her celebrity look-a-like.

You may notice the absence of Paige. She didn't dress up, and refused to be in our pictures. I'm sure it's a teen girl thing.

When we got into the theatre, only seats in the first and second rows were available. I sat next to the Mad Hatter (yes, there was more than one!) who was holding a cane and a tea cup. Tess was seated on the complete opposite end of my row, and I still had her 3-D glasses. Rather than get up, I handed the glasses to the Mad Hatter and said, "Hand these to Tessa", whereupon the Mad Hatter gave them to the person on the right and repeated, "Hand these to Tessa", and so I heard it repeated all the way across, no one really quite sure who Tessa was, until Tessa received her glasses.

The movie was a lot of fun, even though I dropped my nearly-full box of nerds. As they plunged into the fathomage, I thought, "Well, I don't have those, anymore."

When I heard it hit the floor, there was a two-second pause where the box was on end. My fingertips clumsily felt for it, before knocking it over flat. The resounding cascade of nerds spilling from the box out onto the theatre floor became sarcastic applause.

By the end, even Aaron was "dressed-up".

On the way back to the house at 3am, Aaron commented that I was a horrible driver, because I kept sliding on the luge that is my driveway.

I didn't kill him, because I believe in instant Karma.

Here sits Aaron's car, stuck at the bottom of his luge of a driveway, in a perfect spot for slamming into.

I was all too happy to help pull him out.

If it looks like Ron is trying to kill Aaron, he is. Haha!