Took Mom to see Encanto before I left town. I liked it very much, but I suspect it won't be a huge Disney hit, which is a shame. Mom asked "what was the movie about?" afterwards, which is typical for her, but still, I admit even I'm a bit hard pressed to explain some of the magic stuff at the end.

The plot: once upon a time Pedro and Alma Madrigal got married, had triplets(!) and then had to flee for their lives. Pedro was slaughtered offscreen trying to give his family time to escape, which seems to have set off some kind of sacrifice miracle in which Abuela gets a magical always-lit butterfly candle and a magical house (the casita) builds itself and "it's bigger on the inside!" When they're old enough, which is around age 5 or so according to the Internet, the kids get some kind of ceremony and are gifted with a magical power and a magical door that leads to their own magical space. Except for our heroine Mirabel, whose door...closed up and went away and nobody knows why :(.

Mirabel goes through a VERY quick https://genius.com/24483520 rundown song as to what powers her family has, which I regret to say was so fast that even I couldn't catch it all (love you, Lin-Manuel, but that was faster than "Guns and Ships" even). Uh....?

Julieta, daughter #1/Mirabel's mom: cooks food that heals people. She's married to Agustin, he who gets bee-stung frequently (does he have a hive somewhere?).
Luisa: daughter of Julieta, super strength
Isabela: daughter of Julieta, super plant growing powers/basically strews flowers everywhere
Mirabel: daughter of Julieta, her magic door straight up disappeared on her special day somehow, so she got no power and for obvious reasons, feels like the family loser.

Pepa, daughter #2: has weather powers, is almost constantly followed around by a raincloud, married to Felix.
Dolores: daughter of Pepa, has super hearing, which would be a suck power but does come in handy in this one.
Camilo: son of Pepa, shapeshifter, turns into anyone else he wants to
Antonio: son of Pepa, talks to animals

Bruno: son #1, sees the future, has disappeared from the family over this, "We don't talk about Bruno!" Poor Bruno gets the blame for goldfish death. Oh, come on, you don't have to be psychic to know goldfish die at the drop of a hat.

Anyway: during Antonio's gifting day (which goes well, to everyone else's relief, but Mirabel is left out of the family photo), Mirabel goes back into the house and starts seeing cracks everywhere, and runs in and tells Abuela, but the cracks have disappeared. Abuela covers up the whole thing, but Mirabel overhears her saying privately that she knows about it and is worried. Turns out Bruno had one last vision of the house cracking and Mirabel being there before his disappearance. Mirabel tracks him down--he's literally hiding in the house and hanging out with rats--and Bruno doesn't really know what's going on, but thinks things could go either way with the house and doesn't know how that's going to go. He does seem Mirabel and Isabela hugging though, which kinda disgusts Mirabel because Isabela is "the perfect one." Turns out Isabela is sick of being perfect and doesn't actually want to marry the town hunk (Dolores will take him instead!), so that works out.

Waiting On A Miracle made me straight up cry immediately, which I don't normally do in the movies AND is a bad thing to do in a mask. That poor girl trying to hide her feelings about not having powers... Surface Pressure was also extremely affecting, like WOW. Poor Luisa and her issues and thinking she's worthless if she can't sling donkeys and churches around. That poor girl.

Basically, the whole thing is about whether or not the family is going to lose their miracle/house/powers--and they do--but it looks like that comes back at the end, presumably because of Mirabel. Is that her power?

Today's Hallmark:

An Unexpected Christmas: Girl gets forced to go to her ex's podunk hometown for work right before Christmas. Ex broke up with her because she was going places and his career is in the toilet, BUT didn't bother to tell his family this, so when she shows up at the train station, the family thinks she's there for the holidays and due to travel snafus of whatever, of course she's crashing at his family's house.
I will note that when his sister finds out the truth, she smacks him on the arm and says "What were you thinking?" and later threatens to marry Emily herself "because we're keeping her in this family." LESBIAN IN HALLMARK ALERT! Okay, so that was deduced before she made that last remark, but actually that is very sweet. Then she blackmails Jamie into being in her Christmas play. "I don't know why YOU'RE smiling, you're going to be running the confetti cannon." I like this sister and want her to have her own sequel. Otherwise: Emily is reasonably frazzled, her ex Jamie is sad and depressed.
Jamie is forced to wear a magical unicorn costume and ends up staggering around the stage, destroying the set. Okay, so that's pretty effing great. The boy looks sadder than Jeremy Renner.

Catching up on Producers stuff now that I'm home: why are guys in the "Along Came Bialy" little old ladies number? As in...they are being forced to dress up as little old ladies? I guess so...they're in it, anyway.

I ignored Scott all night, though it was slightly difficult when he got called in for a fitting after I did and later moved farther down the row from me. But ignored him anyway. In other annoyances, my knitting needle straight up BROKE and I am pretty annoyed on that. I have a KnitDenise customizable needle set that's ... I don't know how old, probably at least mid-2000's, and I've lost the occasional needle or broken a cord here and there, but this last one made me think, "Crap, either I look into getting some replacements or I buy myself a whole new set here." So much for finishing Dawn's duster vest soon, I was getting there too.

We rehearsed "Along Came Bialy," which is quite long/first act ender, followed by "Prisoners of Love." This got weird because when asked who the women prisoners were, Steve picked out four people and said they were in it, so Dannette and I and whoever else wasn't picked were just sitting there doing nothing for most of the hour. She was on her iPad (she showed me all the sweet stuff they have going at her school tech-wise) and I was looking at corgi pictures on my phone, and finally Dannette was all "are any other women in this or just those four?" and then the guys were all "Oh, it says women in there around measure 140," so I guess we're in it after all? Then we did the "Goodbye" song, which is a whole lot snarkier/better than the one in Shrek, which I said to Dannette/Arthur sitting by me.

And finally...with the omicron variant, we're all wearing masks forever. This wasn't a shocker to me (unlike others, I had no hopes of getting that removed in January), but Steve was all "I watched the South Park special last night and it took 30 years to end the pandemic in that...." At this point, wouldn't be surprised if it does.

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