Unexpected pleasure

Sunday nights around our house normally mean getting the girls ready for another school week, finding your own supper, and a new episode of Brothers and Sisters, if there is one. Of course, the writer's strike intervened this year, so we've had some down time from that show, and it was the end of Spring Break. There wasn't a lot of homework to check (I hope), and we're all so relaxed we forgot to do laundry or write lunch checks anyway. Oops, I should go write those checks.

An unexpected pleasure came my way when I glanced at the TV listings online and realized PBS was showing Jane Austen's Emma tonight, and it was five minutes until showtime. I flipped to the right channel, and Todd headed to the bedroom with his computer. He liked the recent Hollywood production of Pride & Prejudice, but I think he's afraid he'd have to give up his man card if he watched too many of these movies and liked them.

I watched a few minutes alone, then my 10-year-old showed up. She wanted to show me something she was creating on the computer in the other room. She sat beside me patiently for a little while, watching the movie, and eventually asked when there would be a commercial. I explained the channel doesn't have commercials, and she wasn't too happy about it, but before she knew it, she was completely engaged in watching Emma. And she was getting it.

Usually, she's in bed at nine(ish) on school nights, but an hour later, a few minutes before nine, she asked if she could watch the rest of it. She's hard to wake up in the morning, so that's never an easy question. Do I let her stay up, knowing she's going to have to be physically dragged out of bed in the morning? Or make her go to bed and perhaps miss the opportunity to cultivate an interest in some of the greatest literature of all time?

I let her stay up. :-) A few minutes before the end of the show, she even asked if she could run up and turn her TV on and watch the last few minutes while she brushed her teeth and got ready for bed.

And before I tucked her in, she asked if it was a series--she wants to know when the next one is showing.

(And it's too bad there's only one more left--Sense & Sensibility is showing the next two weeks, but we missed the first four! Hmm, there are DVDs ...)