Good and Productive

Let the spring cleaning commence!! I delved into my twice a year routine of cleaning out closets today and with gusto. Typically, I don’t do much nesting when I’m pregnant. And when I do, it generally manifests in cooking and baking, not cleaning. But I’m a bit of a freak about closets. I get crazy when the kids’ clothes get out of hand. The Girl has grown 7 inches in the last nine months and The Boy has grown almost 6 inches in the last year, so the majority of their clothing no longer fits and just gets in the way. There are tangles of t-shirts and socks mixed in with sweat pants and shorts and it just flat makes me crazy. Plus it was time to re-organize my own closet to better reflect, well, the clothes I can actually wear at the moment. It was the maternity overhaul I’ve done twice before in an effort to shove my regular clothes to the side and fully embrace and celebrate my growing belly for the next several months. I’m usually pretty good at not being too hard on myself about gaining weight when I’m pregnant or allowing my growing belly to change the way I feel about how I look. If anything I typically feel that much more powerful, it’s pretty cool. But I’ll take all the help I can get, hence the closet shift.

And we got the house mostly cleaned today and caught up on laundry. It was a pretty busy day all in all and I was grateful that I felt good enough to be doing it all. I’ve been struggling for the last week with recurring migraines that have been kicking my ass and I was just thrilled to be able to be productive today without also being in pain.

My husband and I called it quits late afternoon when the kids found play mates braving the rain and the cold to come and ask if they could play and we found The Breakfast Club on TV. I said lines along with Bender and the rest of the crew while my husband snored loudly in the background. It was a good day.

4/11/10 - That and This

Bloody migraines. Seriously.

I went to bed last night with a headache and woke up this morning with a migraine. Not even remotely close to how I wanted to spend my first weekend home. But oh well. At least it’s allowed me to just lie on the couch like broccoli and catch up on my DVR’d shows. And my husband gallantly took the kids and played and played and played. He got The Boy a little closer to being done with his homework, thank goodness. And he had to work yesterday afternoon. It was a pretty cool sight to see my husband on one end of the desk typing away while The Boy was on the other end of the desk diligently working hard on his homework. Made me smile.

What also made me smile was watching The Boy zoom down the street on his bike today. He learned how to ride his bike with no training wheels at the end of last summer, so he didn’t get a lot of time to get it down pat. And then with how wet this winter has been he hasn’t had much time to practice since then either, but it just thrilled me to watch him fly by this afternoon.

I finally got to watch Julie/Julia tonight. And it was lovely. I’m not a huge fan of Amy Adams so I was afraid she’d ruin it for me, but Meryl Streep made up for all of her shortcomings in just being brilliant. I think I would have been happier to just watch a movie about Julia Child’s life instead of this Julie character breaking up the timeline. But overall, it was lovely.

The Boy goes back to school tomorrow. And life as I typically know it resumes. Taxes go in the mail tomorrow finally, although I’m refraining from getting too attached to our projected refund as the bankruptcy estate may still take it. We did finally get our official bankruptcy discharge though! That was a happy sight for my eyes to be sure. It’s almost over. Maybe we’ll still be able to make it to Georgia to see my husband’s parents this summer – keeping my fingers crossed.

3/30/10 - How to Train Your Dragon

My mom and I took the kids to see How to Train Your Dragon yesterday. It’s a movie that we’ve been looking forward to seeing for a while now. First because we all love dragons, second because it just looked awesome. And it was. In its entirety.

The story was awesome and the moral was a really good one for my kiddos to see – just believe in yourself and that faith alone will bring you where you want to go. And yes, it’s an animated movie so it can’t show all the trials and tribulations people run across when following your heart’s path, but it didn’t spoon feed them a fairy tale either. It struck a nice balance, moral wise.

The animation was lovely. Especially in the dragons. They created all of these different dragons each with their own personalities and attack strategies. And yes, they were a bit goofy, because you know, they couldn’t very well create big scary dragons because it’s for kids. The dragons they had scared The Girl enough as it was. I’d hate to see what they would have come up with given more freedom to roam towards “realism.”

The main characters, Hiccup the Viking lad and Toothless the Night Fury dragon, were by far the best part about the whole movie. Hiccup is funny, sarcastic and smart. He’s also a pitiful physical specimen for a Viking. But still, awesome in spades. Toothless is of the most feared variety of dragon. He has this amazing lightening fire breath and is almost impossible to see at night. He’s so fast you can hardly see him. And, he has retractable teeth, hence his name. Also? He has the best facial expressions. And apparently a better understanding of human nature than most humans. If Hiccup teaches Toothless a bit about trust, then Toothless teaches Hiccup everything else.

The cherry on the top of the movie however, was getting to listen to Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson unveil their Scottish brogue in all of its glory for 90 minutes. I was in heaven; smiling at every rolled “r”.

The Boy gave it a resounding thumbs up. The dragons scared The Girl. I loved it.

Happy Valentine's Day

I find Valentine’s Day to be utterly loathsome. But I think I regaled you enough with my abhorrence of this day last year. And I’m actually in a good mood today. So if you are looking for my more snarky side, please, feel free to look up last year’s post.

For everyone else, let’s talk movies! I took The Boy to see Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief today. We got him the books by Rick Riordan for Christmas this year in an attempt to get him really interested in stories instead of him always thinking that reading is only a chore to be done in school. So we’ve been reading them before bed every night. Not only are the books really good, but it also gives The Boy and I a chance to connect every day which is lovely. But we’re both totally sucked into the books and we are just starting the third one. So when we saw that they had made a movie of the first book, we were both totally stoked and I thought it would be a really fun thing for just him and me to do. So we met some good friends at the (sold out) movie theater today and strapped in for some super fun frolicking through Greek mythology. Instead it was like they took all the characters’ names and then decided to tell a totally different story. I think maybe they sat down with the author and said, “OK, we really like your story Mr. Riordan, and we’ll use it for inspiration, but we have other ideas. You’re ok with that right?” I mean, yes it was a good movie. It just had very little to do with the book on which it was supposedly based.

My husband and I have a long standing love affair with zombies. So how better to spend Valentine’s Day than to watch Zombieland? We have both wanted to see it for forever and it was well worth the wait. We both loved it.

Movies, a big fat box of chocolates, time with my Boy, a super sweet card from my hubby. This may very well be the best Valentine’s Day ever.

Whack Job Status

Well, I spent all day working on this week’s story for 52 in 52 and I’m fairly sure that this will seal the deal with my readers thinking I’m a complete whack job. Believe me when I say that I truly had no idea I was going to be drawn to writing these kinds of stories. I really thought I’d be writing these in-depth stories about the human condition, hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I started writing sappy love stories and romances. Those would make more sense than the crazy thrillers I’ve been writing the past several weeks.

Instead I’m writing about a bank robber who can eat the money he steals only to have it cut out of him later, and a nightmare coma experience and now a black widow serial killer. Where is this stuff coming from?!? As I’ve stated over and over again, I do not read these kinds of stories. I’ve never read these kinds of stories. I can’t even watch these kinds of movies most of the time. I’ve never been able to. While my mom relishes in Stephen King books and all of my friends adore horror movies, I’ve always shied away from them and loudly cursed when my favorite actors take roles in movies that I know I won’t be able to watch.

My imagination has always been worse than what I could read or watch you see. Gremlins gave me nightmares for months. The People under the Stairs had me so jittery I honestly thought there might be something wrong with me. And my dreams took the fairly benign story of Hearts in Atlantis to a place Mr. King never imagined. See I don’t really need the help coming up with big, bad nasties to populate my dreams. I do just fine on my own without any inspiration.

So it’s amazing to me that I can write these stories. Spend all week planning them out; thinking through the intricacies of character and story. Because I’ve not had a nightmare yet. My dreams have become more vivid to be sure, but I’m sleeping just fine for the most part.

What a crazy creative journey I’ve begun.

Glitz and Glamour Overshadowed

Let the awards season begin! I love awards season. This time last year I wrote about how much I love to be a peeping tom on the glitz and glamour of the whole thing. About how much I loved the fancy dresses and the women dripping in diamonds. And that still holds true.

Except for two things. The first is that there just doesn’t seem to be very many “serious” movies this year. There is The Hurt Locker and Precious which both look amazing, but other than that, there’s Avatar, Nine, 500 Days of Summer and Invictus pretty much. Of those, Precious and The Hurt Locker are what I would consider “typical” Oscar nominated films. The others are comparably fluffy. I just think it’s interesting. It just wasn’t really a year for heavy movies. And if the Golden Globes were any preview (which they often are) Avatar is going to make a clean sweep.

The second is that the whole thing, all of the excess and typical joy and over the top-ness of the award season is currently being vastly overshadowed by the earthquake in Haiti. I haven’t written much about the earthquake because, really, what is there to say? It’s a horrific situation for this country that simply cannot catch a break. It’s heartbreaking and just to think about it makes me want to cry. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about any of it because we can’t even afford to buy carrots right now, let alone make a donation to the Red Cross. So all I can do is try to keep all of those people, all of those children, in my heart and thoughts and fervently wish that someone steps in to take care of these people whose entire lives are beset with tragedy.

Mo’nique was so sweet and honest when she won for her role in Precious, Sandra Bullock looked gorgeous, Kate Winslet looked simply overjoyed to no longer be in the spotlight, Jason Reitman has got to be one of the nicest (and most talented) people in the business right now and George Clooney should be kicked in the shins for hiding his face with that beard.

Foresight in Poetry

I was going to write about the fantastic movie we saw last night – Up in the Air. I was going to pull out all of my poetic abilities to share with you the gorgeous performances in this incredibly lovely, and multi-layered, movie. I was going to express my absolute surprise at how well Anna Kendrick held her own on the same screen with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. Basically I was going to spend the length of today’s entry gushing about the movie in general, because I absolutely loved it and I think Jason Reitman is a genius.

But there’s really only so many ways you can say lovely, brilliant, gorgeous and wonderful. Yep, that about does it on that account.

So, what’s next then?

Well. I’m still not sleeping. Which has rendered me a bit out of whack. More than a bit actually. I’m having a hard time keeping up with the outside world it feels like. I was all impressed with myself for actually getting Christmas cards and my in-laws’ holiday box out the door on time. And then I come to find out that we don’t have my brother-in-law’s correct contact information and not only did my husband not ever get through to him to wish him a happy birthday the beginning of the month, but that they also never got our messages saying thank you in every imaginable way for the extraordinarily generous check they sent us for Christmas. Things like that, and feeling like every piece of clothing I own is perpetually covered with dog hair, make me feel all kinds of out of sorts. Which isn’t something to which I’m particularly accustomed.

I am also still finding myself weeping at every blessed thing I see. Which is highly irritating and I’m sure my husband has started wondering if I need to be dealt with in some way.

Essentially, after three days of quiet alone time, I’m still wound tighter than a drum it appears. Lovely. I wonder what it will take to relax already. Perhaps in ushering in the New Year tomorrow, the constant anxiety will be replaced by the good feeling of waiting for good things to happen.

Date Night

I am showered and shaved with my hair done, make-up on, perfect outfit picked out (including the Mojo Boots) and jewelry chosen. I am more put together, arranged and polished than I have been in months. Why you ask? Because I have a raucous mama’s night out planned? With dancing and cocktails and fancy food? Not so much.

I have a date night with my husband planned. Since I’m home for a few days sans the children we figured we should try to make the most of the time we have. Typically our “dates” consist of sneaking out for a movie at about 11am then hurrying back to the house. They are hurried, low in the conversation department, in the blinding daylight kind of affairs. Neither of us try all that hard to elevate our appearances beyond the effort we put in on a day to day basis.

But tonight is different. Tonight I am going all out. Why you ask? Because I can. And because I deserve to look pretty and my husband deserves the effort. I actually kind of like getting all gussied up. I know I look like a totally different person with makeup and my hair really done. And the transforming power of the Mojo Boots has been well documented already. I like to wear gorgeous, huge earrings which show off my neck because I have short hair. I like the confidence that the extra effort lends; that due to the effort I can walk across a parking lot with my head held high, not caring what size my clothes are or what how old I am. Plus, I like to give my husband something nice to look at every once in a while. Not to mention the fact that he does a little mental happy dance every time I take the time to shave my legs.

So we’re off to dinner at a local BBQ joint that just relocated to downtown and has burnt ends and fried okra to die for. And then to see Up in the Air.

It should be a lovely, slow paced evening and I cannot wait to just spend some quality time with my husband.

12/23/09 - Wraptastic

Here is the only thing I really dislike about Christmas: wrapping presents. I’m not very good at it, it takes forever and you spend all of this time with the paper and bows and tissue paper and ribbon and what not and then in about 7 and a half minutes, it all winds up in a big black garbage back heading for the dumpster.

I had a half marathon wrapping session this evening so that I didn’t have to do all of it tomorrow night. And I turned on Love Actually, like I always do when I’m wrapping presents, which made it mostly bearable. Until I tried to stand up after sitting on the floor for two and a half hours. Then there was pain and I promptly felt really, really old. But I love that movie, so in the end it all worked out.

And my children are going to pull in a haul the likes of which I’m not sure they’ve ever seen. I mean it is almost obscene. Both sets of grandparents and family friends banded together to fill any gaps left by our anemic finances. They are going to be in heaven come Christmas morning. I told them this evening that they could open one present tomorrow before bed, but unlike like when I was a kid and presents would start multiplying under the tree starting about a week or so out from Christmas, we don’t put any presents out until Christmas morning. So not only do the kids wake up to presents from Santa, but all of their other gifts as well. The looks on their faces are always priceless and make every single, painful wrapping moment so completely worth it. So we’ll pick one out for them tomorrow, a small one, just enough to whet their imaginations as they turn over what else might be waiting for them when they wake up.

We spent the entire day doing crafts and transforming the house into a very merry place indeed. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that my husband can make it here tomorrow. All I want for Christmas is to have my family together. Pretty please?

12/1/09 - MNO

**Sorry this is late, but I got home really late last night and plum forgot to post it!**

I’m pretty much an introvert by nature. And typically I contract, withdraw and generally crawl under the covers when life gets out of hand. But over the last year, I’ve really learned that I’m so much better off surrounded by the people I love, and who love me, in those times of crisis as well as those times of joy.

And I cannot say thank you enough to my friends right now. Even if I had thought about pulling in on myself through all of this, they wouldn’t have let me. They’re not letting me use any excuse to thwart their attempts to help me in whatever way they can, big and little (of course it’s all huge at this point). They are all being so completely loving, supportive, funny, wonderful, kind people right now that I’ve no idea what I would do without them.

So when the weekly Mama’s Night Out rolled around last night, my husband all but kicked me out the door. I can’t remember the last time I actually went out; between not having any money and just wanting to hang with my hubby, I just haven’t been able to get myself to go out. But out I went last night. And it was the perfect ending to a truly shitty day. I haven’t laughed that much in a very, very long time.

We went to a favorite neighborhood hangout that has the best mojitos in town and at one point I looked around our three pulled together bistro tables and there were 12 gorgeous, talented and successful women gathered there, all laughing and connecting in a way that only girlfriends can. I caught pieces of conversation covering everything from our children and upcoming New Year’s resolutions to our favorite exploits from our younger years and our current sex lives…ahem. It was such a glorious sight and did my heart good.

Plus there was the added bonus that about half of us went to the late showing of New Moon after three hours of raucous giggling. We were just about the only people in the theater, so we were free to revert shamelessly back into teenage girls drooling over beautiful boys.

11/28/09 - New Moon

I talked my husband into seeing New Moon with me. Those of you who think I’m a big silly silly for loving the Twilight series as much as I do should probably just skip ahead to tomorrow’s post.

I loved, loved, loved this movie. New Moon is my least favorite book of the series so I didn’t have high hopes for the movie (especially after the debacle that was the first movie), but it was awesome. The new director, Chris Weitz, did an amazing job of staying really close to the book without it feeling like he was going page for page. He even managed to bring in some pieces that were left out of the first movie back into this one to lay down some history.

The acting also had a huge uptick. You can tell that the actors finally get their characters now. Kristen Stewart really got inside of Bella (she’s still my least favorite character at this point), Robert Pattinson finally got comfortable inside of Edward and Taylor Lautner flat is Jacob. They were all so wishy washy and strange in the first movie, like they couldn’t figure out what to do with themselves (I don’t know if that’s a product of young actors or lack of direction, I suspect a bit of both). But they nailed it this time around.

The effects were brilliant. The wolves were amazing. I was thinking they’d probably make the mistake of trying to use real wolves interspersed with CG moves, which would have looked utterly hokey. Instead they created these creatures from scratch and it’s like they picked them right out of my brain they were so good.

The only bone I have to pick is the casting of the Volturi. I can overlook the concocted fight scene between Edward and Felix in the end because they made it work on screen, but the casting of all of the Volturi just did not resonate with my imaginings of the characters. I mean Michael Sheen is a great vampire, but he’s just not Aro in my opinion.

But overall, I adored the movie and I’m going to see it again with girlfriends on Tuesday evening. Tee-hee…

11/27/09 - Black Friday

Aaaaahhhhh….Black Friday. I always have every intention of skipping it altogether. Of staying in the house or at the very least only going out to places that have absolutely nothing to do with the exchange of money for goods. But I always have to peek at the ads and I inevitably find some deal that I just can’t pass up. So I always find myself out in the throngs of people, cussing loudly as soccer moms cut me off in parking lots and blue haired ladies push me out of the way to grab the last copy of some DVD. And I always end up wondering what the hell I was thinking getting out in this mess?!?

But this year? This year I got lucky, because even though there were a few enticing deals out there, I have no money to spend, so any urge I may have had to fight the masses got taken care of for me. Such a relief.

My husband and I did think, however, that it would be a good day to see a movie. Wow were we wrong. The movie we had chosen was sold out for most showings by 2pm, so we were out of luck. So we just enjoyed the drive back and forth from my parents’ house (which is about an hour) in the relative quiet of having no children in the car. It was a chance for the two of us to share some space, which is always appreciated.

I ended up making beef stew for dinner by my dad’s request (trying to make up for him having to take over Thanksgiving dinner duties for me and my migraine from hell). He was happy, so my mission was accomplished. The kids spent the day with my mom at a bounce house place she found in town, so they were happy (and tired) campers when they got home

All in all it was an easy, quiet day, which is pretty far from how my normal Black Friday goes, so for that I am grateful. Except for the parking lot at the mall where the movie theater was, but I guess we couldn’t get away entirely unscathed.

Confessions, Part Two

I’ve several things which if asked point blank, I would deny outright. Because these are things the little bit of my ego and “cool girl” status just couldn’t take copping to. But here I go. I’m going to cop to them. For all to read about. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Confessions, Part Two.

I loved, loved, loved Def Leppard when I was in middle school and early high school. I knew all the band members’ back stories. I felt a certain “kinship” to the drummer because he was an amputee like my mom. I loved their music and thought they were just about as cool as it gets. Now this particular confession is not deniable because of the band itself, but because I was seriously punk at the same time as this foray into hair band Mecca started. There’s no greater treachery to my punk/Goth/new wave roots than to admit to loving a hair band.

When I was in college I followed wrestling. Not the school sponsored, takes immense skill and strength and is also an Olympic sport wrestling. The guys dressed up in copious amounts of spandex all decked in makeup acting out invented personas of varying degrees of sociopathic nature. My best friend in college, her husband and I used to pay actual money for the pay per view events. We’d plan them for weeks. What we were going to eat, what drinks we were going to have on hand, who we’d invite. I even watched the shows by myself sometimes. Oh, yeah, I was a total geek for Sting, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (aka The Wolf Pack), Triple H and I’m fairly sure I had a dream once or twice about Goldberg.

Lastly? I am so totally in a dither, over the top, can hardly contain myself excited about New Moon opening on Friday. I won’t get to see it for a couple of weeks, if that, but I still cannot wait. Seriously. Cannot. Wait. I stalk Stephenie Myers’ website. I’ve read the books all the way through 4 times in the last year alone. Oh yeah, I’m a total Twlighter.

There you go. Please don’t hold it against me.

Sunday Outlook

Good news for the day? The Boy hasn’t thrown up for about 12 hours and it appears that his fever may have broken.

Bad news for the day? Since he’s feeling better, I have to actually get off the couch and do something productive, like clean my horrendously messy house or, you know, shower.

My husband has already gotten a jump on laundry (bless his heart) but I really should at least dust and vacuum today. With all the wetness we’ve had as of late, the kitchen floor is covered in muddy paw prints both large and small (not to mention the small animals made up of St. Bernard hair that drift from place to place as they ride the currents generated by passersby). And there is an embarrassing amount of dust everywhere because this is the first weekend I’ve felt like doing anything but being put out of my misery for at least two weeks. Not to mention that I am now a month behind on thank you notes from The Boy’s birthday party, ahem.

(Aside: the trailers for The Men Who Stare at Goats make me giggle ridiculously as well as bounce like a school girl at the thought of George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey all being in the same movie together.)

There is also a killer football game on today – Vikings at the Steelers. I adore the Steelers. And even though Brett Favre’s off season personality disorder grates on my nerves a bit, he’s having one of the best seasons in a long, long time. And it’s been fun to watch him play again. So this is a hard one for me, but I think I’m going to root for the Steelers while simultaneously being happy when the Vikings have pretty plays. Seems like a good middle road on which to travel given that my Colts are playing the silly Rams today and the game is not being televised. (ARRRGGGHHH, stupid refs throwing flags on innocent rubs, which takes away a touchdown that then leads to Big Ben getting sacked on the next play.) I’m also hoping for a fantasy football redemption today, aka a big fat win thank you.

10/24/09 - Sick Boy

Wanna know the absolute loveliest way to be woken up on a Saturday morning before the sun is up? Listening to The Boy vomit. It was such a perfect, and gentle, way to start the day.

I shouldn’t complain too much because my husband actually got up with him and let me sleep a bit longer. But still. Knowing before you’ve fully extricated yourself from your chosen dream world that your day will be spent tending to a sick boy, is not the best way to start your weekend. And other than feeling really badly for The Boy who couldn’t even keep down water for most of the day, the day was not actually so bad. We decided to let him watch Transformers and Spider-man (two movies he had never been allowed watch) and he and I spent the day on the couch drifting in and out of nap mode interspersed by him running to the bathroom. And I must say that having a vomiting child actually gets easier as they get older because they recognize the signs and can make it to the bathroom instead of throwing up where they stand or sit.

The other huge difference, for me at least, with older kiddos who get sick is that my worry level goes way down. Especially with The Boy. He hasn’t met a sickness yet that he hasn’t bested. The worst he ever had was probably a massive viral ear infection he got as a toddler for which we went through 3 rounds of antibiotics before the docs deduced that it was viral and it lingered for more than a month. But even then, he didn’t let it keep him down. He is just such an extraordinarily upbeat kid that it takes an awful lot (or being extraordinarily tired) to make him whiny or to take away his smile.

And I never get to cuddle with Boy anymore. So although I would never wish one of my children to be sick, it was an opportunity to steal back a few moments of snuggle time with my sweet boy who is getting so very, very big and gradually needing me just a little bit less.

Liking what I Like

The people in my life are extraordinary. Some are extraordinary writers; some are extraordinary artists and/or actors. Some are extraordinarily compassionate and open-hearted. Every single one of them is an extraordinary thinker in one way or another. And I’ve spent most of my life just trying to keep up with them.

I’ve spent time trying to keep up with them by rebelling against them of course. By rejecting their favorite authors or directors, artists or schools of thought. Thinking perhaps that if I could shoot down these chosen masters that perhaps even though we disagreed I’d still be at their level.

I’ve also spent time devoting myself to being an utter cultural snob. Only choosing the artsy movies, the indie bands, the out of mainstream books, the underground thinkers. Attempting to elevate myself above the common trends by only exposing myself to the best.

Over the years however I’ve pretty much just accepted that most of the people around me are just flat smarter than I am. And that’s totally cool. I mean first of all, they choose to hang out with me even though they’re smarter and they constantly challenge me and I think that rocks. But I’ve also had to strike a kind of balance between the challenge and just what I like.

And much to their dismay, I really like things like Dan Brown’s books, beat ‘em up blow ‘em up movies, Dawson’s Creek, tomato beers and queso dip made with Velveeta. I could totally overanalyze myself and trace back their etymology to some childhood event or how they may be tied to a very special memory thereby forever tying them to my internal list of favorites. But at the end of the day, I just like what I like. And I’m cool with that. I don’t really care anymore that I look at a piece of modern art and think that The Boy could do it better. I don’t mind when friends laugh at me for getting emotionally invested with teenage TV characters embroiled in overwrought angst.

They love me anyway and that’s just how I roll. I’ll take their challenge any day just as soon as I’m done watching X-Men.

10/12/09 - Day 'o Star Wars

What to do on a day when my husband has the day off, the children are with my parents and I am still feeling crappy? How about lie on the couch all day and have a massive Star Wars marathon? Yes, please.

We meant to just hang out, enjoy the quiet, delve deeper into the first season of Six Feet Under and maybe watch a movie. Instead, we happened upon one cable channel doing a mammoth Star Wars marathon and got totally sucked in. After watching Episodes 2 and 3 on TV, I pulled out our DVD’s and we watched the last three blissfully without commercials.

The Boy is sort of on the Star Wars bubble. I mean he’s totally into Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated series that started last year. We have a Friday night ritual of making dinner and then sitting down to watch Clone Wars while we eat. So he knows that particular set of character thoroughly, which is pretty cool because he gets an expanded view on characters that we mostly only got to hypothesize about unless you picked up the books, which I did not. He gets to know more of the individual Jedi; their personalities and traits. Which is actually probably my favorite part of the series. But we’ve set him down a couple of times to watch the original Star Wars movies and he gets intermittently bored. There is quite a bit of dialogue and not that many super cool, engaging for a 6 year old boy light saber fights. Even Episodes 1-3 have more action in them than the original three.

So I get it. But it was awfully fun to sit back and watch the originals. Took me right back to my childhood and the initial awe I felt at watching this whole new world unfold before my eyes. Wanting to get more into the mythology of Star Wars but not having the faintest clue as to where to start as none of my friends were quite as intrigued as I was.

It will be with great pleasure to take The Boy and guide him backwards towards the beginning of the Star Wars universe.

Post-Movie Deep Thoughts

I took the kids to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs today. This story in particular is really tied to a very specific piece of my childhood. Our Wyoming friend, J, used to create books on tape for children’s books and this one was my absolute favorite one. I think he may even have “cast” me to read a couple of lines once, and that was a thrill to be sure. It is just such a fantastically heartfelt story that really ignited my imagination on so many levels.

There was the obvious question of what food would I have ordered from the machine? What would I love more than anything to have super sized? What would a gigantic meatball actually look like? And the biggest question, would food that big still taste good?

But sitting there watching it today, and sobbing at the end, it brought a whole different set of imaginings with it. The entire central theme of unrequited and malnourished dreams and relationships really struck a chord with me. I mean, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I was a ridiculous crying puddle at the end purely because I’m just generally really emotionally raw right now. But regardless of my emotional stability at the moment, it’s a potent message that bears consideration.

I worry on a regular basis that because our financial situation won’t allow us to put the kids in extracurricular activities that I am shortchanging them from discovering their passions. I also worry that because I’m so not an artsy crafty type of mom, that I’m also taking those opportunities to create away from them. My children know that I love them fiercely, but I often wonder if they will grow up and tell stories of their childhood that sound like “yeah, my mom loved us a lot, but…” and that scares me. But at the same time I’m not entirely sure how to stop it.

I know that there will always be something lacking from every childhood in retrospect, I guess I just hope for my children that it won’t be something that I could have so easily provided if I’d been just a little more aware.

Mad Love for Subtlety

I have some mad love for Timothy Olyphant. It has been one of those things that has grown over time. I did not love him immediately. He had to grow on me a bit. But now? Now there is mad love.

I think he may very well be one of the most subtle actors I have seen as of late. He has this ability to narrow his eyes the slightest bit or turn up the corners of his mouth or hunch his shoulders in what seems the most minor of ways and the whole tone and tenor of the scene changes.

Unfortunately I think that very subtlety is what has kept him off of the main stream radar for so long. The first movie I remember seeing him in is Gone in 60 Seconds (“Are you ok? Are you sure? Because you just went through a wall.”) But I caught a movie on HBO not too long ago that he did the same year and I’d never heard of it – The Broken Hearts Club. It was a lovely little character movie that he just relaxed his shoulders, and his jaw muscles, into.

He has also had a few roles that were pretty forgettable. Like Fritz in Catch and Release and the guy who threw Mark Wahlberg out of the band in Rock Star (he is not so very pretty with a mullet by the way).

But where I really grew to appreciate him was in watching him play Sheriff Seth Bullock on Deadwood. There have been several times that I have just come to the conclusion that he is a pretty one dimensional character and then some surprise in the story will arise and prove me wrong. Not because of overt and dramatic choices, but because his once stony face softens and he suddenly has tears in his eyes. Or because he displays a sense of humor in the driest sense. And I love his sense of righteousness as the bad guy in Live Free or Die Hard. He’s smooth, clean cut and wicked smart.

But, call me shallow if you’d like, I am a total sucker for his billy bad ass character in Hitman.

Adventureland

I’m not really a big slapstick movie fan. I don’t much like gutter humor and making me feel dumber than I already am doesn’t do much for my sense of humor. So when I first saw the previews for Adventureland, I almost immediately discounted it thinking it wouldn’t be anything I’d be interested in. And then I saw that Ryan Reynolds was in it. Damnit!! I love that guy. I’ve had mad love for him since Two Guys, a Girl, and A Pizza Place when he was Berg way back in the day (funny aside, before I met my husband I wanted my boyfriend to be a combination of one half Berg and one half Niles from Frasier). He’s got instinctual comedic timing and is just so very, very pretty.

When the movie came out it got some really good reviews. And one of my favorite bloggers really loved it. So I figured what the heck and we watched it tonight.

Of all the ways I could figure out how to describe it, I think I’d have to go with sweet. It’s just such a sweet, sweet movie. There are a few attempts at American Pie-ish gutter humor, but feeble ones at best so they are forgiven. But mostly it’s smart and sweet and actually really fun to see Kristen Stewart just be in a character instead of infusing it with so much angst. And Jesse Eisenberg is one of my new favorite actors (although I’m fairly sure I’m old enough to be his mother). He’s so understated and honest. Netflix tells me he was also in The Squid and The Whale, but I wasn’t a big fan of that one so I probably just blocked him out with the rest of it.

There just aren’t very many movies these days (it seems at least) that are so thoroughly sweet and romantic in such an honest and raw way. Without all the stickiness and silliness that get attached to hide the vulnerability that comes with just laying it all out on the table. And there is something utterly refreshing about a movie willing to leave it all out there, painting a picture of first love.