We all know I did yard work yesterday, because I've mentioned it about 5 times. Okay, so I'm out there on my hands and knees in the front yard, digging weeds out of the lawn. It's summer, over 90 degrees, and I'm wearing a tank top. Here is my internal dialogue:
I should put on sunscreen, because I'm going to burn. Well, I'm in and out of the shade here. I won't be exposed to the sun that long. It's my shoulders, they're nice and tan, so they'll probably just get tanner. It'll be fine. I don't need sunscreen. It'll be fine.
Needless to say, I got a sunburn.
It wasn't, however, just my shoulders. What I failed to realize when I was out there was that the tank top I was wearing was riding up, exposing a little strip of skin approximately two inches wide on my lower back. You know, where I'd have a tattoo if I was about 10 years younger? I first noticed it when I got out of the shower yesterday. My first thought was, oh crap, I'm stupid. Then, a few minutes later, I went running back over to the mirror to check the location of the burn again, and was relieved to find it several inches north of the crack area. Not only would I not like to think that I was out there in the front yard showing off butt cleavage for most of the day yesterday, but this sunburn is already stupid enough without it involving my buttcrack, don't you think? I mean, you would think I would have noticed if my pants had been riding that low -- but you would have thought I would have noticed that my top was riding up and exposing that little strip of skin too, and I didn't, did?
Now, the tank top I was wearing is what they call a racer-back, which means it leaves pretty much your whole shoulder blade area exposed to the elements. This is fine, as my shoulders and accompanying blades are old hands at weathering sunburn. I'd say they get a good one at least once a year, despite my best efforts. Not so for the strip of skin on my lower back. When I showed it to Reasonable Man yesterday, he exclaimed in shock.
"What, is it purple?" I asked?
"No, but it's pretty red," he said, because he's nice that way. A lot of people would probably have been more like, "Purple? Try magenta!" Or something like that. They might have used the word "crispy," which would have been fitting. We are talking about skin that hasn't been exposed to sun since sometime back in the 70s when my mom used to buy me those little girl bikinis. This skin doesn't have the year-to-year seasoning that my shoulder blades have. In other words, finding a comfortable sleeping position last night was kind of a job.
Thanks for those high-thread-count, silky, satiny sheets you gave us for Christmas this past year, Mom and Dad. I promise to wear my sunscreen from now on.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Monday, August 01, 2005
This Is Not Sexy, People
Is it just me, or is this HIDEOUS?:
This is a photo from an ad that assaulted me when I was minding my own business and looking at my Yahoo mail account yesterday. I know I've mentioned it before, and I don't mean to keep harping on it, but... damn! It's not just ugly -- it looks infected! Or maybe like an allergic reaction to eating shellfish or something. Seriously -- the whole gender issue aside, if someone with a mouth that looked like this wanted to kiss me, I'd be thinking about what course of antibiotics I needed to start on afterward. Yecch.
This is a photo from an ad that assaulted me when I was minding my own business and looking at my Yahoo mail account yesterday. I know I've mentioned it before, and I don't mean to keep harping on it, but... damn! It's not just ugly -- it looks infected! Or maybe like an allergic reaction to eating shellfish or something. Seriously -- the whole gender issue aside, if someone with a mouth that looked like this wanted to kiss me, I'd be thinking about what course of antibiotics I needed to start on afterward. Yecch.
Yard Work
Right after I wrote I was blowing off the gym to lie on the couch and read a book, I went outside and worked in the front yard for two hours. I found it strangely gratifying dig up these viney weeds in the front lawn. Reasonable Man is probably not going to be thrilled about the holes I left, but I think it was important to dig these suckers up down to their roots. Our front lawn is 10 years old, and it seems to be at a turning point -- we can either let it turn into one of those gnarly green patches that is really more weeds than grass like you see a lot in older neighborhoods, or we can fight for it and keep it a lawn. I don't get motivated to do this kind of crap very often, but I feel like I'm doing good work today. If only my damn iPod ear buds would stop slipping out of my ears...
It's 10:30 and I'm sitting here in my gym clothes. I don't think I'm going and I don't care who knows it.
I worked out 5 times last week and that was a good thing. I'm not going to make it 5 times this week and oh well. I think I had too much caffeine or something because my tummy feels all squirrelly and I'm anxious. I think what I need is to take off my shoes and lie on the couch reading a book for a while. Maybe I'll go pull some weed in the front yard...
I worked out 5 times last week and that was a good thing. I'm not going to make it 5 times this week and oh well. I think I had too much caffeine or something because my tummy feels all squirrelly and I'm anxious. I think what I need is to take off my shoes and lie on the couch reading a book for a while. Maybe I'll go pull some weed in the front yard...
50 Book Challenge: "Homework" Books and Lighter Fare
Part of the reason I'm not going to make my 50-book total by the end of the year is that for some reason I'm reading a lot of heavy books this year. Sci-fi takes me a while. Sometimes I pick up a mistake of a true crime book and I end up trudging through it instead of gobbling it up the way I do with the really good ones. Another thing that will probably slow me down is worrying about Enthusio and wanting to do some research on dealing with his issues.
I was really disappointed in The Highly Sensitive Child. I probably shouldn't have had such high expectations. I read the author's earlier book, The Hightly Sensitive Person, several years ago, and it was kind of a life-changing experience, in that it explained what had been "wrong" with me my whole life. I had always felt like things were so much harder for me to deal with than for anyone else. I knew that saying I was "shy" or "introverted" wasn't really the issue. I knew it wasn't just emotional sensitivity because it seemed physical too -- not being able to deal with extremes of temperature for any length of time, or uncomfortable clothing, or having volume too loud for TV or movies or music, or more than a little caffeine -- it all seemed to point at having a stupidly delicate nature. Turns out this is a trait I share with 20% of the population, more than the number with whom I share the trait of left-handedness. It was a huge relief to read this book that seemed to explain who I was, but at the same time, I knew that I hadn't ever fit the profile of the typical Highly Sensitive Child, who seems timid and hesitant -- by all reports, I was always a cheerful, open, friendly kid, from the time I was a baby. Enthusio has always been the same -- "shy" is about the last word I would use to describe him. I do feel very strongly that the Highly Sensitive label fits us both, between the strong emotional reactions to so many things and the many sensory issues that both of us seem to suffer from. But it does make sense that the book would naturally be more geared toward dealing with the issues of the typical HSC, so I guess I shouldn't have expected it to answer all my questions.
It did point me in another direction -- emotional intelligence. I've read that EQ is supposed to be a more accurate indicator of how well a person will do in life than IQ. A couple of years ago, I took an online EQ quiz and scored incredibly low, which I thought was kind of funny, since the last time I checked, I wasn't a total loser and had in fact managed to do reasonably well in life. But I would definitely like to read up on the subject, especially with regard to raising a child to have high EQ, because I think that could really help Enthusio. So this morning I ordered a used copy of Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman on Amazon.
Along those same lines, I was really proud of Entusio this morning. I took him to day camp, and they are going on a field trip to a miniature golf/arcade type place today. This situation seemed fraught with opportunities for Enthusio to get upset, so I checked with the lady at the front desk to get a sense of what the fee I'd already paid was going to include and what he might need to spend his own money on, and I talked to him about how to handle some different situations that might come up, like not doing well at the mini-golfing since he's never done it before and that sort of thing. He seemed very prepared for it. I am starting to think he has actually grown up a lot this summer and that day camp has been good for him.
Anyhow, now I get to choose something else to read, and, as though I didn't already have about 100 books sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, last night I picked up 3 more (Borders had a buy 2, get the 3rd free deal): We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro, a short, funny memoir-type thing; Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, about a girl placed in a class for slow learners who unexpectedly find success in a spelling bee, and Atonement by Ian McEwan. The book I recently read for one of my book clubs, The Reading Group, was not my favorite, but I was intrigued by some of the books the women in the book met to discuss, and Atonement was one of them. It looks kind of heavy, but the story sounds really good. I think I'm going to start with We Thought You Would Be Prettier -- it looks like one that will be easy to gobble down -- before I get to my other August book club selection, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a young adult book that I think will also be a quick one.
Maybe August will be my month for catching up on my total, although I am determined to deliberately choose quick books for that purpose. That feels like cheating.
I was really disappointed in The Highly Sensitive Child. I probably shouldn't have had such high expectations. I read the author's earlier book, The Hightly Sensitive Person, several years ago, and it was kind of a life-changing experience, in that it explained what had been "wrong" with me my whole life. I had always felt like things were so much harder for me to deal with than for anyone else. I knew that saying I was "shy" or "introverted" wasn't really the issue. I knew it wasn't just emotional sensitivity because it seemed physical too -- not being able to deal with extremes of temperature for any length of time, or uncomfortable clothing, or having volume too loud for TV or movies or music, or more than a little caffeine -- it all seemed to point at having a stupidly delicate nature. Turns out this is a trait I share with 20% of the population, more than the number with whom I share the trait of left-handedness. It was a huge relief to read this book that seemed to explain who I was, but at the same time, I knew that I hadn't ever fit the profile of the typical Highly Sensitive Child, who seems timid and hesitant -- by all reports, I was always a cheerful, open, friendly kid, from the time I was a baby. Enthusio has always been the same -- "shy" is about the last word I would use to describe him. I do feel very strongly that the Highly Sensitive label fits us both, between the strong emotional reactions to so many things and the many sensory issues that both of us seem to suffer from. But it does make sense that the book would naturally be more geared toward dealing with the issues of the typical HSC, so I guess I shouldn't have expected it to answer all my questions.
It did point me in another direction -- emotional intelligence. I've read that EQ is supposed to be a more accurate indicator of how well a person will do in life than IQ. A couple of years ago, I took an online EQ quiz and scored incredibly low, which I thought was kind of funny, since the last time I checked, I wasn't a total loser and had in fact managed to do reasonably well in life. But I would definitely like to read up on the subject, especially with regard to raising a child to have high EQ, because I think that could really help Enthusio. So this morning I ordered a used copy of Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman on Amazon.
Along those same lines, I was really proud of Entusio this morning. I took him to day camp, and they are going on a field trip to a miniature golf/arcade type place today. This situation seemed fraught with opportunities for Enthusio to get upset, so I checked with the lady at the front desk to get a sense of what the fee I'd already paid was going to include and what he might need to spend his own money on, and I talked to him about how to handle some different situations that might come up, like not doing well at the mini-golfing since he's never done it before and that sort of thing. He seemed very prepared for it. I am starting to think he has actually grown up a lot this summer and that day camp has been good for him.
Anyhow, now I get to choose something else to read, and, as though I didn't already have about 100 books sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, last night I picked up 3 more (Borders had a buy 2, get the 3rd free deal): We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro, a short, funny memoir-type thing; Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, about a girl placed in a class for slow learners who unexpectedly find success in a spelling bee, and Atonement by Ian McEwan. The book I recently read for one of my book clubs, The Reading Group, was not my favorite, but I was intrigued by some of the books the women in the book met to discuss, and Atonement was one of them. It looks kind of heavy, but the story sounds really good. I think I'm going to start with We Thought You Would Be Prettier -- it looks like one that will be easy to gobble down -- before I get to my other August book club selection, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a young adult book that I think will also be a quick one.
Maybe August will be my month for catching up on my total, although I am determined to deliberately choose quick books for that purpose. That feels like cheating.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Back before Mermaid was born, I used to think I would have normal kids. Girls -- I thought I would have two girls, with stick straight hair like I had as a kid, that they would wear in little short bobs, like I had. I didn't really think about who they would be, just that they would be, you know, normal.
When Mermaid was preschool age, I got myself pretty convinced that I, personally, was not capable of producing a "normal" child. I loved Mermaid, of course I did, but she wasn't "normal" -- she had an as-of-then-not-identified disability. She might be "normal someday, she might not. We didn't know. It might be a genetic thing, it might not. We didn't know that either. I didn't let myself think about it very much and convinced Reasonable Man that if we were going to have another baby, we needed to do it soon. When I was pregnant with Enthusio, we found out that what made Mermaid not "normal" had a name: autism. I still didn't let myself worry about Enthusio until other babies his same age that I knew of were starting to use some signs or words. Then I was in a quiet panic for nearly two years, waiting for him to start really talking. He did -- but not before I'd had his speech evaluated and begun the process of getting speech services for him started. The following year was one long, figurative sigh of relief. He was "normal."
Nowadays, I don't necessarily believe there is any such thing as a normal kid. From the time Enthusio was a baby, I've tried to keep my emotional reliance on him being my "normal" kid in check. That's not fair to him. He's a child too -- he has as much right to bad days and all of that as Mermaid does -- as any kid does. Still, there was no way for me to foresee the way things have developed over time. Mermaid is lacking in social skills as a result of her disability, and sometimes her inability to empathize with other people scares me a little. She still has bad days -- terrible ones, in fact, where she'll argue that the sky isn't blue just to keep arguing. She also has the emotional skin of a rhinocerous. If she tries something new and she doesn't like it -- fine, she stops doing it and she lets it go. If someone isn't nice to her, whatever -- she avoids that person in the future. She is confident and independent and she knows what she wants. She knows exactly who she is and is happy with that person -- and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
These are wonderful qualities to observe in my child, especially after how much I worried about her when she was younger. Seeing the self-possessed individual she's developed into has helped me relax about her quite a bit, even though I know we still have a tough slog ahead in the teen years.
At the same time, over the past few years I've started worrying about Enthusio a lot more. He's a great kid -- sweet, loving, smart, open, enthusiastic, the proverbial light of my life. He is also almost completely unable to deal with frustration. He falls apart and cries when he's feeling hurt, angry, or wronged in any way, however slight. He gets picked on at school or whenever he's in groups of kids his own age, and he seems to have problems making friends with other boys.
This is hard for me for a couple of different reasons. One is that the ways I'm discovering he isn't "normal" are the same ways that I wasn't "normal" when I was a growing up. Hearing about what he is experiencing is a lot like reliving the worst parts of my own childhood. The other is that, after absorbing the blow of Mermaids disability and weathering all the difficulties of her early years, I think I had myself convinced, not that Enthusio would never have any problems, but that any problems he might have would be a piece of cake. And instead, the things coming up for him are not only exceptionally painful for me personally, but I find myself facing them without the help of a team of specialists I had to help me with Mermaid.
I seem to get myself good and worked up about this for a day or two every few months. This past Friday was one such day. This summer, as you know, Enthusio has been going to day camp. I hadn't really gotten the impression he was liking it all that much. When I go find him on the playground at the end of the day, he's usually by himself, or just on the edge of a group of boys who don't quite seem to be including him, and when I ask him if he's making friends, he doesn't really answer. We've heard about a boy named David who's been mean to him. He just seems somber and not himself when he gets home. Still, when I asked him if he wanted to continue for an extra two weeks, he said yes. So after puzzling over this for a few days, I started stressing and got out my copy of the The Highly Sensitive Child.
A few days perspective are telling me that I'm probably overreacting a bit. Enthusio is not a lost cause, and if I keep talking to him, reading, and going with my gut, who is better qualified than I am to help him grow up happy and healthy? I just need to remember that this parenting thing is going to keep throwing me curve balls, no matter what. Surely I've never been stupid enough to think I had it all figured out?
When Mermaid was preschool age, I got myself pretty convinced that I, personally, was not capable of producing a "normal" child. I loved Mermaid, of course I did, but she wasn't "normal" -- she had an as-of-then-not-identified disability. She might be "normal someday, she might not. We didn't know. It might be a genetic thing, it might not. We didn't know that either. I didn't let myself think about it very much and convinced Reasonable Man that if we were going to have another baby, we needed to do it soon. When I was pregnant with Enthusio, we found out that what made Mermaid not "normal" had a name: autism. I still didn't let myself worry about Enthusio until other babies his same age that I knew of were starting to use some signs or words. Then I was in a quiet panic for nearly two years, waiting for him to start really talking. He did -- but not before I'd had his speech evaluated and begun the process of getting speech services for him started. The following year was one long, figurative sigh of relief. He was "normal."
Nowadays, I don't necessarily believe there is any such thing as a normal kid. From the time Enthusio was a baby, I've tried to keep my emotional reliance on him being my "normal" kid in check. That's not fair to him. He's a child too -- he has as much right to bad days and all of that as Mermaid does -- as any kid does. Still, there was no way for me to foresee the way things have developed over time. Mermaid is lacking in social skills as a result of her disability, and sometimes her inability to empathize with other people scares me a little. She still has bad days -- terrible ones, in fact, where she'll argue that the sky isn't blue just to keep arguing. She also has the emotional skin of a rhinocerous. If she tries something new and she doesn't like it -- fine, she stops doing it and she lets it go. If someone isn't nice to her, whatever -- she avoids that person in the future. She is confident and independent and she knows what she wants. She knows exactly who she is and is happy with that person -- and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
These are wonderful qualities to observe in my child, especially after how much I worried about her when she was younger. Seeing the self-possessed individual she's developed into has helped me relax about her quite a bit, even though I know we still have a tough slog ahead in the teen years.
At the same time, over the past few years I've started worrying about Enthusio a lot more. He's a great kid -- sweet, loving, smart, open, enthusiastic, the proverbial light of my life. He is also almost completely unable to deal with frustration. He falls apart and cries when he's feeling hurt, angry, or wronged in any way, however slight. He gets picked on at school or whenever he's in groups of kids his own age, and he seems to have problems making friends with other boys.
This is hard for me for a couple of different reasons. One is that the ways I'm discovering he isn't "normal" are the same ways that I wasn't "normal" when I was a growing up. Hearing about what he is experiencing is a lot like reliving the worst parts of my own childhood. The other is that, after absorbing the blow of Mermaids disability and weathering all the difficulties of her early years, I think I had myself convinced, not that Enthusio would never have any problems, but that any problems he might have would be a piece of cake. And instead, the things coming up for him are not only exceptionally painful for me personally, but I find myself facing them without the help of a team of specialists I had to help me with Mermaid.
I seem to get myself good and worked up about this for a day or two every few months. This past Friday was one such day. This summer, as you know, Enthusio has been going to day camp. I hadn't really gotten the impression he was liking it all that much. When I go find him on the playground at the end of the day, he's usually by himself, or just on the edge of a group of boys who don't quite seem to be including him, and when I ask him if he's making friends, he doesn't really answer. We've heard about a boy named David who's been mean to him. He just seems somber and not himself when he gets home. Still, when I asked him if he wanted to continue for an extra two weeks, he said yes. So after puzzling over this for a few days, I started stressing and got out my copy of the The Highly Sensitive Child.
A few days perspective are telling me that I'm probably overreacting a bit. Enthusio is not a lost cause, and if I keep talking to him, reading, and going with my gut, who is better qualified than I am to help him grow up happy and healthy? I just need to remember that this parenting thing is going to keep throwing me curve balls, no matter what. Surely I've never been stupid enough to think I had it all figured out?
I've had some comments about not updating the old blog for a while. Here are my excuses:
1) I've been letting myself fall into that pattern of dreaming up long elaborate posts that I start and then don't finish. I know this is an issue for me and I try not to do it. So by the end of the day I resolve to finish both of the posts I've had sitting in the draft folder for the last few days.
2)I actually spent about 40 minutes finishing one of these posts this morning and then Blogger crapped out on me and lost what I'd written. Hmph.
I'm working on it...
1) I've been letting myself fall into that pattern of dreaming up long elaborate posts that I start and then don't finish. I know this is an issue for me and I try not to do it. So by the end of the day I resolve to finish both of the posts I've had sitting in the draft folder for the last few days.
2)I actually spent about 40 minutes finishing one of these posts this morning and then Blogger crapped out on me and lost what I'd written. Hmph.
I'm working on it...
Monday, July 25, 2005
50 Book Challenge: Harry Potter & Other Stuff
Okay, there's just no way I'm going to hit 50 books by the end of the year. Silly me, I thought I'd catch up during the summer. Turns out, this is the busiest summer of my life! Not only are there the many pre-wedding festivities of BLB and the Bride to enjoy, but I don't know what I was thinking, signing the kids up for so many activities. Day camp for Enthusio is great except for the fact that last night I realized I'd barely seen him in the last few weeks :-( Having him there is convenient but has hardly cut down on my driving -- between Mermaid's participation in swim team (daily practice plus bi-weekly swim-meets) and the DAC production of "The Wizard of Oz" (rehearsal twice a week has understandably increased to much more than that as the performances -- tonight and tomorrow night -- have approached), putting me in the car almost constantly. Pre-wedding festivities (last weekend, as you know, was the bachelorette cruise; this past weekend was the bridal shower, and a fine time it was!) are plentiful, and Saturday was a swim-meet in the morning, for which my parents came up, and then we went to lunch with them and to the pool.
So reading time has been limited, and I started out my summer with two long and somewhat difficult books: Children of God and Under the Banner of Heaven. Both very good, but not what you'd call light summer reading. Thus, instead of speeding through some frothy literary fun and adding to my list as I'd hoped, I've barely added a book title every couple of weeks.
My schedule did not prevent me, I am happy to say, from devouring the latest adventures of Harry Potter in two days. My assessment, unfortunately, is not good. In short, I thought the book was a major bummer. I'm not going to give away any crucial information at this point (unless my opinion is a spoiler for anyone, in which case, my apologies :-/), but I'll say this -- I can understand why things are set up the way they are to go into the final chapter of the series, but I still think it sucks. Also, I was disappointed in the way Harry's character was written. After the brilliantly-rendered sulkiness of a 15-year-old boy in book 5, I feel the author took a real step backward. In book 6, Harry is once again wide-eyed and bewildered -- there is little of the anger that we saw in book 5 and in my opinion, it should have, if anything, increased after the death of his guardian, Sirius Black, at the end of that chapter. In any case -- I am looking forward to an amazing 7th and final book, hopefully with a satisfying answer to any question you could possibly think to ask about the universe J.K. Rowling has created. I am still in awe of her talent, despite my feelings about book 6 and my very strong opinion that she could use some more forceful editing ("Too many adverbs!" she cried vehemently.)
Not everyone will share my opinion, of course, and if you want to read a detailed argument of why book 6 had to turn out the way it did, check out The Webbed Toe Yes, my husband, Reasonable Man, has joined the world of blog-writing. He twisted his ankle badly in a softball game this past week, which was his week off, and I knew he was bored, but I didn't know how bored until he told me he'd started a blog. He probably won't update it very often, if I know him, but his first real entry (after a brief introductory one) is pretty good. Don't read it if you don't want to know what happens in the new Harry Potter book though.
As for me -- I haven't decided what my next reading selection will be, but I'm thinking about the piece of chick-lit fluff currently sitting on my shelf...
So reading time has been limited, and I started out my summer with two long and somewhat difficult books: Children of God and Under the Banner of Heaven. Both very good, but not what you'd call light summer reading. Thus, instead of speeding through some frothy literary fun and adding to my list as I'd hoped, I've barely added a book title every couple of weeks.
My schedule did not prevent me, I am happy to say, from devouring the latest adventures of Harry Potter in two days. My assessment, unfortunately, is not good. In short, I thought the book was a major bummer. I'm not going to give away any crucial information at this point (unless my opinion is a spoiler for anyone, in which case, my apologies :-/), but I'll say this -- I can understand why things are set up the way they are to go into the final chapter of the series, but I still think it sucks. Also, I was disappointed in the way Harry's character was written. After the brilliantly-rendered sulkiness of a 15-year-old boy in book 5, I feel the author took a real step backward. In book 6, Harry is once again wide-eyed and bewildered -- there is little of the anger that we saw in book 5 and in my opinion, it should have, if anything, increased after the death of his guardian, Sirius Black, at the end of that chapter. In any case -- I am looking forward to an amazing 7th and final book, hopefully with a satisfying answer to any question you could possibly think to ask about the universe J.K. Rowling has created. I am still in awe of her talent, despite my feelings about book 6 and my very strong opinion that she could use some more forceful editing ("Too many adverbs!" she cried vehemently.)
Not everyone will share my opinion, of course, and if you want to read a detailed argument of why book 6 had to turn out the way it did, check out The Webbed Toe Yes, my husband, Reasonable Man, has joined the world of blog-writing. He twisted his ankle badly in a softball game this past week, which was his week off, and I knew he was bored, but I didn't know how bored until he told me he'd started a blog. He probably won't update it very often, if I know him, but his first real entry (after a brief introductory one) is pretty good. Don't read it if you don't want to know what happens in the new Harry Potter book though.
As for me -- I haven't decided what my next reading selection will be, but I'm thinking about the piece of chick-lit fluff currently sitting on my shelf...
Friday, July 22, 2005
Reasons I Haven't Been Online Much the Last Few Days:
1. I'm having the busiest summer of my life
2. Bridal shower on Sunday. The game I'm in charge of is AWESOME. (One of the other bridesmaids would rip me a new one if she knew I had revealed so much as the fact that there will be games at this shower in a place where the Bride would read it, but to her I say PHTHPBTTT!!!!)
3. Um, hello? Ever heard of this whole Harry Potter deal? You think I have time to post in my blog when there's 652 new pages of Harry to be read AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE?
2. Bridal shower on Sunday. The game I'm in charge of is AWESOME. (One of the other bridesmaids would rip me a new one if she knew I had revealed so much as the fact that there will be games at this shower in a place where the Bride would read it, but to her I say PHTHPBTTT!!!!)
3. Um, hello? Ever heard of this whole Harry Potter deal? You think I have time to post in my blog when there's 652 new pages of Harry to be read AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE?
Random thoughts about the bachelorette cruise before I forget them
1. Things I found out about Big Little Brother's fiancee, the Bride:
- she is a wild woman and does not shy away from attention
- she could probably out-cuss a sailor
- she is even more awesome than I thought she was before!
2. Some of the Bride's friends told me I reminded them of BLB. I took that as a major compliment.
3. I get no pleasure out of being completely blitzed, and I don't think I ever have. For one thing, whether I realize it at the time or not, I have never gotten absolutely, out-of-my-mind blotto without barfing. For another, as soon as I realize how drunk I am, the voice of reason is right there going "Stop drinking immediately. Get yourself some water. Sit down. Make sure someone knows where you are, etc." The only thing I want in that situation is to sober up immediately. And the next morning I remember it all in excruciating detail. Just once in my life, I'd really like to be that chick standing on a table, waving my bra around over my head screaming "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" and then wake up in the morning not remembering any of it. Is that so much to ask?
4. I missed Topless Titanic. Total bummer.
5. At the flea market near La Bufadora outside Ensenada, I laughed as I pointed out a tee shirt to the Bride. Emblazoned across the front of it: "Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck." A few minutes later, one of our cabin-mates, an excellent chick from Sacramento, came up to us, waving a tee shirt and going "look what I bought!" She said she probably wouldn't wear it out in public though.
6. The only people I've ever noticed wearing nautical/sailor-type clothes on a cruise were the people working the infirmary. Funny -- I never noticed the doctor on "The Love Boat" dressing like that.
7. At the Papas and Beers bar in Ensenada, I was hit on more aggressively than I have been in years by an extremely creepy Mexican man. To clarify -- he was not creepy because he was Mexican -- he was a creepy many who happened to be Mexican. Anyway, he came up to me, whispered "why are you so pretty?" and gave me some gum. WTF? A little while later, while scouting out a more comfortable spot for our group out on the deck, I inadvertently walked right up to him and subjected myself to his attentions again. Yeccchhh.
8. On the other cruises I've taken, I was always intrigued by the idea of having my hair braided in a cornrows-and-beads fashion like a lot of girls who have it done in Mexico, so this time I decided to go for it. I'd always suspected I was little old to be able to pull it off, and I was right -- I paid a couple of women $10 to do it in Ensenada, and it looked like ass. But since we had a bit of a hairdryer situation back on the ship (11 women and only one of us brought one), I decided to keep the braids that evening for formal night, as it made my hair pretty low-maintenance. In light of how ill I was for much of the rest of the cruise, this turned out to be a wise move.
9. Speaking of 11 women -- I've never travelled in a large group of women before, and it was fun if fraught with politics. Fortunately none of them really involved me, and while I caught wind of tension here and there, none of it really bothered me. Consdering the wide range of ages and personalities amongst the 11 of us, I think on the whole it went rather well. And most importantly, the Bride seemed to have a kick-ass time :-)
I guess that's it for now....
- she is a wild woman and does not shy away from attention
- she could probably out-cuss a sailor
- she is even more awesome than I thought she was before!
2. Some of the Bride's friends told me I reminded them of BLB. I took that as a major compliment.
3. I get no pleasure out of being completely blitzed, and I don't think I ever have. For one thing, whether I realize it at the time or not, I have never gotten absolutely, out-of-my-mind blotto without barfing. For another, as soon as I realize how drunk I am, the voice of reason is right there going "Stop drinking immediately. Get yourself some water. Sit down. Make sure someone knows where you are, etc." The only thing I want in that situation is to sober up immediately. And the next morning I remember it all in excruciating detail. Just once in my life, I'd really like to be that chick standing on a table, waving my bra around over my head screaming "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" and then wake up in the morning not remembering any of it. Is that so much to ask?
4. I missed Topless Titanic. Total bummer.
5. At the flea market near La Bufadora outside Ensenada, I laughed as I pointed out a tee shirt to the Bride. Emblazoned across the front of it: "Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck." A few minutes later, one of our cabin-mates, an excellent chick from Sacramento, came up to us, waving a tee shirt and going "look what I bought!" She said she probably wouldn't wear it out in public though.
6. The only people I've ever noticed wearing nautical/sailor-type clothes on a cruise were the people working the infirmary. Funny -- I never noticed the doctor on "The Love Boat" dressing like that.
7. At the Papas and Beers bar in Ensenada, I was hit on more aggressively than I have been in years by an extremely creepy Mexican man. To clarify -- he was not creepy because he was Mexican -- he was a creepy many who happened to be Mexican. Anyway, he came up to me, whispered "why are you so pretty?" and gave me some gum. WTF? A little while later, while scouting out a more comfortable spot for our group out on the deck, I inadvertently walked right up to him and subjected myself to his attentions again. Yeccchhh.
8. On the other cruises I've taken, I was always intrigued by the idea of having my hair braided in a cornrows-and-beads fashion like a lot of girls who have it done in Mexico, so this time I decided to go for it. I'd always suspected I was little old to be able to pull it off, and I was right -- I paid a couple of women $10 to do it in Ensenada, and it looked like ass. But since we had a bit of a hairdryer situation back on the ship (11 women and only one of us brought one), I decided to keep the braids that evening for formal night, as it made my hair pretty low-maintenance. In light of how ill I was for much of the rest of the cruise, this turned out to be a wise move.
9. Speaking of 11 women -- I've never travelled in a large group of women before, and it was fun if fraught with politics. Fortunately none of them really involved me, and while I caught wind of tension here and there, none of it really bothered me. Consdering the wide range of ages and personalities amongst the 11 of us, I think on the whole it went rather well. And most importantly, the Bride seemed to have a kick-ass time :-)
I guess that's it for now....
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Last night, after I'd unpacked and told Reasonable Man about my weekend of wild, drunken fun/misery, he laughed and said "you have this wild streak in you, but it only comes out when I'm not around to see it!" And he's kind of right. I have been living a delayed adolescence in the past few years (when I'm not carpooling, helping with homework, and fixing PB&J, that is), but I think part of that has to do with all the awesome chicks I've become friends with in that time, and all the fun times I've had with them. There is something about being out in a group of girls that kind of unleashes the wild streak in me, I guess.
Official Cruise Degenerate!
On the first day of the Bachelorette Cruise, I was so tired from having gotten up at 4 am to go to the airport that I found myself a lounge chair and a patch of shade on the pool deck, sucked down the last of my fruity frou-frou cruise drink, curled up on my side, and fell into a deep sleep. Sometime later, cruise employees became concerned about me and some of the girls in my party group had to let them know that I was just tired, not passed out from too much drinking.
On the second day of the Bachelorette Cruise, I actually did have far too much to drink, staggered around for a while, tried to fall asleep in a window seat outside the club where my party group was dancing, yakked all over the floor, and had to be taken back to my cabin in a wheel chair.
On the third day of the Bachelorette Cruise, I was so violently ill from the activities of the previous evening that I had to be wheeled down to the infirmary to get an injection to make me stop tossing my cookies. Though the doctor I saw agreed with my hypothesis that my condition was due to the debauchery of the night before, I was informed that on the off chance I had something contagious, I needed to stay in my cabin for the remainder of the cruise. Several hours later, feeling better and emboldened by my newly rediscovered ability to digest food, I busted out of my quarentine room and went to see the midnight comedy show with my party group.
I don't think I need anymore qualifications to declare myself the official Bachelorette Cruise Degenerate. Thank you, thank you -- it's great to be a winner.
On the second day of the Bachelorette Cruise, I actually did have far too much to drink, staggered around for a while, tried to fall asleep in a window seat outside the club where my party group was dancing, yakked all over the floor, and had to be taken back to my cabin in a wheel chair.
On the third day of the Bachelorette Cruise, I was so violently ill from the activities of the previous evening that I had to be wheeled down to the infirmary to get an injection to make me stop tossing my cookies. Though the doctor I saw agreed with my hypothesis that my condition was due to the debauchery of the night before, I was informed that on the off chance I had something contagious, I needed to stay in my cabin for the remainder of the cruise. Several hours later, feeling better and emboldened by my newly rediscovered ability to digest food, I busted out of my quarentine room and went to see the midnight comedy show with my party group.
I don't think I need anymore qualifications to declare myself the official Bachelorette Cruise Degenerate. Thank you, thank you -- it's great to be a winner.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
50 Book Challenge: Trudging Along
I posted recently that if I read 4 more books in the space of about a week, I'd be on pace to finish reading my 50 books by the end of the year. I then took another couple of weeks to finish the book I was currently reading, Children of God, Mary Doria Russell's sequel to her well-regarded sci-fi novel The Sparrow, which I read around the beginning of the year. It took me a while to get through The Sparrow as well, so it didn't surprise me that its sequel was a long haul. I'm not really a big sci-fi reader, especially if there's a lot of sci mixed in with the fi.
Generally, I enjoyed Children of God, and I would recommend it to anyone who has read The Sparrow and wants to know what happened to the surviving characters. But I am struggling with the question of whether maybe, just maybe, Russell overplayed her hand. Her first novel takes place over the course of approximately 6 years in the life of the main characters (more time passes due to the fact that the main character spends time travelling at light speed) who travel to a distant planet to make contact with a civilization that was detected there, ending with shocking revelations about how the mission went terribly wrong. The sequel takes place over the next 40 or 50 years and answers pretty much every question about every character. It was an interesting, well-written read, and at the same time, I have to wonder if it was necessary. Interesting question.
Now I'm back to my regular stomping grounds of true crime -- I'm a third of the way through Under the Banner of Heaven, the story of murder in a family of Mormon Fundamentalists by Jon Krakauer. So far, good stuff!
Generally, I enjoyed Children of God, and I would recommend it to anyone who has read The Sparrow and wants to know what happened to the surviving characters. But I am struggling with the question of whether maybe, just maybe, Russell overplayed her hand. Her first novel takes place over the course of approximately 6 years in the life of the main characters (more time passes due to the fact that the main character spends time travelling at light speed) who travel to a distant planet to make contact with a civilization that was detected there, ending with shocking revelations about how the mission went terribly wrong. The sequel takes place over the next 40 or 50 years and answers pretty much every question about every character. It was an interesting, well-written read, and at the same time, I have to wonder if it was necessary. Interesting question.
Now I'm back to my regular stomping grounds of true crime -- I'm a third of the way through Under the Banner of Heaven, the story of murder in a family of Mormon Fundamentalists by Jon Krakauer. So far, good stuff!
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
0 for 2
Yesterday I had the unsettling experience of arriving to pick up each of my children at their respective activities and discovering that each of them were distraught and sobbing. This is not a situation any parent enjoys encountering once on any given day, but twice was really too much.
I went to pick up Enthusio at day camp after dropping Mermaid off at play practice and running some errands. The core program at day camp ends at 4 pm, but you can pick them up any time up till 6:30, since it also functions as daycare. Mermaid's play practice starts at 4 pm, and over the past week, Enthusio has demonstrated that he is happy to hang out and play for a while after 4 pm snack time. Also, he's tired when I pick him up, and yesterday was particularly hot, so I assumed he'd prefer to go right home when I picked him up rather than have to go to the store with me. So I went to Rite Aid and Safeway and had a coffee before I got him. Thus, it was close to 5 by the time I went to pick him up.
I went out to the playground where the kids usually are when I pick him up, only to discover no one was out there. That was fine -- it was HOT and I didn't blame the kids for not wanting to be out there. I'd noticed some kids playing in a classroom as I'd passed through the school, so I assumed they were all doing inside activities. I stuck my head into a few different classrooms and he wasn't in any of them, so I headed for Enthusio's "Bunk". I could see as I was going down the hall that the light wasn't one in his classroom, but I figured I could at least go in there and grab his stuff so we wouldn't have to go back there once I found him. I opened the door to the dark classroom -- and found my son, running around and crying. His face had that really dirty, swollen look he gets when he's been crying a long time, and he ran over to me and hugged me. As we gathered up his things, he told me he didn't know where his group had gone or where he was supposed to be, and he'd been by himself crying in that classroom a long time.
Now, on the one hand -- the front desk and the camp office were right down the hall and all he'd have had to do was go out there and ask whomever was there to help him figure out where he was supposed to be. So we went down to the desk and I explained what had happened and in a very non-blaming kind of way explained to Enthusio in the girl at the front desk's presence that the adults at day camp are there to help him and he needs to ask for help if he's lost and no one wants him to sit in a classroom by himself crying if he doesn't know where to go. The girl at the desk agreed with me and told him it made her sad to know he'd been so upset. So now he knows what do to in that situation, and he calmed right down and was fine by the time we got in the car to go home.
On the other hand, it does bother me that no one noticed he was missing for however long (half an hour?). They make a big deal of the fact that you can't just drop off your kid or pick them up out front -- you have to walk them in and sign them in, then come in and sign them out at the end of the day. But when I go to pick him up, I just go out to the playground and get him, we get his things from his classrooms, and I sign him out -- usually without anyone taking any particular notice. I'm not worried about some stranger coming in and trying to take him, but it does strike me that the kids in the program are not especially well-accounted for after program hours, and that doesn't thrill me. I'm going back and forth about whether I want to talk to someone there about what happened yesterday or just keep reiterating to Enthusio that if he's ever unsure about where he's supposed to be or who is in charge at any given time, he needs to speak up and ask.
After Reasonable Man got home, I left Enthusio with him and went over to the Davis Art Center to pick up Mermaid. There was a short parents' meeting scheduled for after practice so I was planning to stay for that. When I arrived, the cast was working in a classroom with the door closed, but after I sat down to wait, the director emerged with Mermaid behind her, in tears. I immediately assumed it had to do with the time -- she gets pretty worked up when she doesn't get out of class right at the appointed time and that sort of thing -- but then she said she had a headache. Her director seemed very concerned, which was comforting after the whole day camp thing, and I gave Mermaid a Tylenol since she said her stomach wasn't bothering her yet (she threw up as soon as we got home). So that pretty much sucked. Mermaid often gets headaches when it's really hot, and I don't know if she had enough fluids during the day yesterday, so I'm really encouraging her to drink a lot today.
Both kids are fine today. Mermaid is still excited about doing her play and Enthusio was happy to go to day camp. But it made me feel bad. As I've mentioned before, I don't feel much in the way of guilt about putting my kids in the care of others. I know it's good for them to get out and be involved in activities with other kids. But this summer seems different, I guess because I've got them both so busy. I've never wanted to turn into one of those parents who over-schedules their kids in a zillion different things, and I've been careful to take each of their personalities into account when we picked their activities. An hour of swim practice a day, or that plus play practice a couple times a week, is plenty of activity for Mermaid -- she needs lots of down-time -- while Enthusio needs to keep busier or he gets bored and rambunctious. Nevertheless, I do feel the guilt really kicking in when I start to feel like they are unhappy or overwhelmed in their activities, much more so than I ever get when they are home -- which is pretty ironic when you think about it.
I went to pick up Enthusio at day camp after dropping Mermaid off at play practice and running some errands. The core program at day camp ends at 4 pm, but you can pick them up any time up till 6:30, since it also functions as daycare. Mermaid's play practice starts at 4 pm, and over the past week, Enthusio has demonstrated that he is happy to hang out and play for a while after 4 pm snack time. Also, he's tired when I pick him up, and yesterday was particularly hot, so I assumed he'd prefer to go right home when I picked him up rather than have to go to the store with me. So I went to Rite Aid and Safeway and had a coffee before I got him. Thus, it was close to 5 by the time I went to pick him up.
I went out to the playground where the kids usually are when I pick him up, only to discover no one was out there. That was fine -- it was HOT and I didn't blame the kids for not wanting to be out there. I'd noticed some kids playing in a classroom as I'd passed through the school, so I assumed they were all doing inside activities. I stuck my head into a few different classrooms and he wasn't in any of them, so I headed for Enthusio's "Bunk". I could see as I was going down the hall that the light wasn't one in his classroom, but I figured I could at least go in there and grab his stuff so we wouldn't have to go back there once I found him. I opened the door to the dark classroom -- and found my son, running around and crying. His face had that really dirty, swollen look he gets when he's been crying a long time, and he ran over to me and hugged me. As we gathered up his things, he told me he didn't know where his group had gone or where he was supposed to be, and he'd been by himself crying in that classroom a long time.
Now, on the one hand -- the front desk and the camp office were right down the hall and all he'd have had to do was go out there and ask whomever was there to help him figure out where he was supposed to be. So we went down to the desk and I explained what had happened and in a very non-blaming kind of way explained to Enthusio in the girl at the front desk's presence that the adults at day camp are there to help him and he needs to ask for help if he's lost and no one wants him to sit in a classroom by himself crying if he doesn't know where to go. The girl at the desk agreed with me and told him it made her sad to know he'd been so upset. So now he knows what do to in that situation, and he calmed right down and was fine by the time we got in the car to go home.
On the other hand, it does bother me that no one noticed he was missing for however long (half an hour?). They make a big deal of the fact that you can't just drop off your kid or pick them up out front -- you have to walk them in and sign them in, then come in and sign them out at the end of the day. But when I go to pick him up, I just go out to the playground and get him, we get his things from his classrooms, and I sign him out -- usually without anyone taking any particular notice. I'm not worried about some stranger coming in and trying to take him, but it does strike me that the kids in the program are not especially well-accounted for after program hours, and that doesn't thrill me. I'm going back and forth about whether I want to talk to someone there about what happened yesterday or just keep reiterating to Enthusio that if he's ever unsure about where he's supposed to be or who is in charge at any given time, he needs to speak up and ask.
After Reasonable Man got home, I left Enthusio with him and went over to the Davis Art Center to pick up Mermaid. There was a short parents' meeting scheduled for after practice so I was planning to stay for that. When I arrived, the cast was working in a classroom with the door closed, but after I sat down to wait, the director emerged with Mermaid behind her, in tears. I immediately assumed it had to do with the time -- she gets pretty worked up when she doesn't get out of class right at the appointed time and that sort of thing -- but then she said she had a headache. Her director seemed very concerned, which was comforting after the whole day camp thing, and I gave Mermaid a Tylenol since she said her stomach wasn't bothering her yet (she threw up as soon as we got home). So that pretty much sucked. Mermaid often gets headaches when it's really hot, and I don't know if she had enough fluids during the day yesterday, so I'm really encouraging her to drink a lot today.
Both kids are fine today. Mermaid is still excited about doing her play and Enthusio was happy to go to day camp. But it made me feel bad. As I've mentioned before, I don't feel much in the way of guilt about putting my kids in the care of others. I know it's good for them to get out and be involved in activities with other kids. But this summer seems different, I guess because I've got them both so busy. I've never wanted to turn into one of those parents who over-schedules their kids in a zillion different things, and I've been careful to take each of their personalities into account when we picked their activities. An hour of swim practice a day, or that plus play practice a couple times a week, is plenty of activity for Mermaid -- she needs lots of down-time -- while Enthusio needs to keep busier or he gets bored and rambunctious. Nevertheless, I do feel the guilt really kicking in when I start to feel like they are unhappy or overwhelmed in their activities, much more so than I ever get when they are home -- which is pretty ironic when you think about it.
I Made It...
... to my exercise class. Now it's five minutes before 10 a.m. and Yahoo Weather says the current temperature is 77 degrees outside, but that's bullshit. We are going to COOK here in Davis today. But that's okay because other than dropping Mermaid off at swim practice and then picking her up an hour later, I don't have much reason to leave the confines of my air-conditioned house.
I Had a Plan
I had a plan, this morning, to get up at a reasonable hour (7:15), get on my workout clothes, fix breakfast for the kids and me, make Enthusio's lunch for day camp, drop him off, and take Mermaid with me to the gym so I could take the stability ball class at 8:30. This seemed like an even better idea than before when my clock radio turned on for the second time (I hit the snooze) and the guy on the radio announced that it was already 75 degrees out and it was going to be a hot one. Even more reason to get my workout done early. I arose, dressed, put in my contacts, and came downstairs, where I fixed myself some breakfast and drank a diet soda.
Thirty minutes later, I'm down here and ready to go. The children, however, are still upstairs sleeping.
If you have kids, you know that sleeping in is not a taste that, once acquired, you want to discourage in them. Weekends and vacations become a lot more pleasant once your children stop wanting to arise at the buttcrack of dawn, no? So, even though it's only one morning, I am loathe to go up there and mess with them. KWIM?
Nevertheless, I'm proud of myself for getting up when I said I would.
Hark! I hear a stirring from above...
Thirty minutes later, I'm down here and ready to go. The children, however, are still upstairs sleeping.
If you have kids, you know that sleeping in is not a taste that, once acquired, you want to discourage in them. Weekends and vacations become a lot more pleasant once your children stop wanting to arise at the buttcrack of dawn, no? So, even though it's only one morning, I am loathe to go up there and mess with them. KWIM?
Nevertheless, I'm proud of myself for getting up when I said I would.
Hark! I hear a stirring from above...
Monday, July 11, 2005
Busy weekend
This past Thursday was the 60th birthday of my dad. And his twin brother, my uncle Clark. Here they are at my wedding 13 years ago -- aren't they cute?
My dad is on the right. He's wearing a tuxedo and my uncle Clark was wearing a funky outfit with one of his cool vests and they swapped accessories. See? How cute is that?
(BTW, don't ask me who that asshole posing in the lower right hand corner of the picture is. I have no idea and I don't know who invited him either.)
Anyway, we headed down to my parents' house on Friday night to celebrate the big event, and a good time was had by all. My dad followed his usual celebratory path of drinking several glasses of wine, telling me he loved me about 18 times, telling me how much he's looking forward to going camping with the kids and me next week about 25 times, offering to draw up plans for construction project we're planning to create a breezeway between our house and our garage, which he claimed will be "sexy," and spilling red wine on the white carpet, which has been a specialty of his for years. None of which I'm complaining about, because my dad totally rules. Rock on, Dad! My uncle Clark doesn't like to be fussed over but he seemed to have a good time too. It was a fun evening, capped by watching the jazz dance from Will's Winnie-the-Pooh play and both kids' performances from the talent show on video -- and then we headed home. We were all in bed by 11:30 that night.
Unfortunately, we had to be up early the next morning, as Rachel had a swim meet at 8 a.m. I think it was because they concentrating on the butterfly stroke last week at her practices, but the races she chose were the 25 fly, the 25 breast, and the 50 fly. The 50 fly! Man, the one was tough. So few kids wanted to swim it that they only had one heat. Rachel enjoyed this meet as much as she had the first, despite finishing last in each of her events again. I'm trying hard to stay low-key about the whole thing, but I have to say, it would be nice to see her finish ahead of at least one kid in one race before the end of the summer. At least she doesn't care -- it would bum me out a lot if it bothered her. I can live with it bothering me a bit :-/
When we got home, Ryan was getting ready to go to the office. Actually, he sitting there working on the computer, just as he had been when I got up in the morning, and when when we got home, he worked some more and then had a quick lunch and then headed to the office. Didn't come home till about 9:30 that night :-/ He is remaining cheerful about how much he's had to work lately, mostly I think because the end is in sight. The brief he's been killing himself to get done gets shipped out Wednesday, and then he'll take Thursday to get his desk or order, so to speak, and then starting Friday, he's off for a little over a week. So that's good.
I spent the rest of Saturday doing laundry, balancing the checking account, shopping online, and enjoying the commercial-free rebroadcast of Live 8 on MTV. Actually, upon realizing they were going to show a number of acts I didn't care about sitting through, I watched the second half of "Moulin Rouge," which I'd started the day before (that movie rocks if you have seen it) and then went back and scanned through what I'd DVRed of Live 8. Highlights for me: well, obviously all the Beatles songs sung by Paul McCartney and others (George Michael coming out to join him on "Drive My Car" seemed like an odd choice, but I like George Michael so whatever); when the guy who I guess was the lead singer of The Verve came out during Coldplay's set and they did a long, very cool version of "Bittersweet Symphony"; and seeing Robbie Williams whip up the crowd in London. I love Robbie Williams, and I know he doesn't have a huge following here, but seriously -- that British crowd was loving them some Robbie Williams. Anyway, that was really cool! I'd barely taken notice of Live 8 leading up to it, but after hearing about it last week, I was sorry I'd missed it, and evidently MTV had taken a drubbing for cramming so many commercials into the live broadcast, so it ended up working out well for me at least that they rebroadcast it on a day when I didn't have a whole lot going on.
Shopping I did: I found shower curtains for our master bathroom, and I got Mermaid a new bathing suit and a swim robe (monogrammed with her name) from Land's End. The shower curtain is significant because our master bathroom is the very last room in the house that has been left unpainted, and I'm anxious to get it done and I'd picked a general color scheme but I wanted something a little more concrete than "these three colors" as a jumping-off point. The shower curtain I picked is fabric, and I was about to order it from one place where they were ~ $50 a piece (and I need two because our tub is extra long), which was hard to swallow for a shower curtain -- but then I looked around and found them for less than half that on another site! So yay, Bullock's Framing & Decorating! Anyway, once I get the shower curtains, I can use them to pick paint colors and maybe think about some accessories...
Yesterday, we took the kids out to breakfast (Ryan was feeling bad about having not seen them all day Saturday) and then a sitter came over, and we took off for San Francisco to see "Les Miserables" at 2 pm. That was pretty cool! I love seeing plays, and I especially love musicals, and this one was pretty amazing. I thought I only knew one song from it -- "On My Own," which Michelle Kwan skated to several years ago -- but I recognized a couple of others too. "On My Own" was still my favorite song, though, sung by what turned out to be my favorite character, Eponine, the doomed daughter of the sleazy innkeeper and his wife, in love with Marius, who loves Cosette. I thought Eponine was much cooler than Cosette, but she was kind of too cool for Marius too, and she was doomed and all, so I guess that was part of why I liked her.
Ryan and I were starving once the play was done around 5, so we walked around a bit and ended up at Morton's Steakhouse, a very upscale restaurant. They had this "verbal menu presentation," which means they bring out this cart with raw steaks, raw vegetables, and a live lobster with its claws taped up so it can't attack you, so they can show exactly what you can order. I could have done without that! The poor lobster tried crawl off the plate while he was sitting next to me, and I couldn't blame him, I have to say. Also, I was pretty relieved when the waiter handed us printed menus when he was done, because there was no way I was going to be able to remember everything he'd told us. I had filet mignon, and Ryan had some cut I can't remember, cooked cajun style, plus we shared an order of mashed potatoes, and then we shared a really amazing chocolate cake with Godiva chocolate sauce inside. Mmm! Very nice. We discussed the play and the characters and all through dinner and enjoyed ourselves. Had a nice nice drive home in the red machine, spent some time with the kids before we put them to bed, and then caught a new episode of "Six Feet Under."
All in all, a very nice weekend :-)
My dad is on the right. He's wearing a tuxedo and my uncle Clark was wearing a funky outfit with one of his cool vests and they swapped accessories. See? How cute is that?
(BTW, don't ask me who that asshole posing in the lower right hand corner of the picture is. I have no idea and I don't know who invited him either.)
Anyway, we headed down to my parents' house on Friday night to celebrate the big event, and a good time was had by all. My dad followed his usual celebratory path of drinking several glasses of wine, telling me he loved me about 18 times, telling me how much he's looking forward to going camping with the kids and me next week about 25 times, offering to draw up plans for construction project we're planning to create a breezeway between our house and our garage, which he claimed will be "sexy," and spilling red wine on the white carpet, which has been a specialty of his for years. None of which I'm complaining about, because my dad totally rules. Rock on, Dad! My uncle Clark doesn't like to be fussed over but he seemed to have a good time too. It was a fun evening, capped by watching the jazz dance from Will's Winnie-the-Pooh play and both kids' performances from the talent show on video -- and then we headed home. We were all in bed by 11:30 that night.
Unfortunately, we had to be up early the next morning, as Rachel had a swim meet at 8 a.m. I think it was because they concentrating on the butterfly stroke last week at her practices, but the races she chose were the 25 fly, the 25 breast, and the 50 fly. The 50 fly! Man, the one was tough. So few kids wanted to swim it that they only had one heat. Rachel enjoyed this meet as much as she had the first, despite finishing last in each of her events again. I'm trying hard to stay low-key about the whole thing, but I have to say, it would be nice to see her finish ahead of at least one kid in one race before the end of the summer. At least she doesn't care -- it would bum me out a lot if it bothered her. I can live with it bothering me a bit :-/
When we got home, Ryan was getting ready to go to the office. Actually, he sitting there working on the computer, just as he had been when I got up in the morning, and when when we got home, he worked some more and then had a quick lunch and then headed to the office. Didn't come home till about 9:30 that night :-/ He is remaining cheerful about how much he's had to work lately, mostly I think because the end is in sight. The brief he's been killing himself to get done gets shipped out Wednesday, and then he'll take Thursday to get his desk or order, so to speak, and then starting Friday, he's off for a little over a week. So that's good.
I spent the rest of Saturday doing laundry, balancing the checking account, shopping online, and enjoying the commercial-free rebroadcast of Live 8 on MTV. Actually, upon realizing they were going to show a number of acts I didn't care about sitting through, I watched the second half of "Moulin Rouge," which I'd started the day before (that movie rocks if you have seen it) and then went back and scanned through what I'd DVRed of Live 8. Highlights for me: well, obviously all the Beatles songs sung by Paul McCartney and others (George Michael coming out to join him on "Drive My Car" seemed like an odd choice, but I like George Michael so whatever); when the guy who I guess was the lead singer of The Verve came out during Coldplay's set and they did a long, very cool version of "Bittersweet Symphony"; and seeing Robbie Williams whip up the crowd in London. I love Robbie Williams, and I know he doesn't have a huge following here, but seriously -- that British crowd was loving them some Robbie Williams. Anyway, that was really cool! I'd barely taken notice of Live 8 leading up to it, but after hearing about it last week, I was sorry I'd missed it, and evidently MTV had taken a drubbing for cramming so many commercials into the live broadcast, so it ended up working out well for me at least that they rebroadcast it on a day when I didn't have a whole lot going on.
Shopping I did: I found shower curtains for our master bathroom, and I got Mermaid a new bathing suit and a swim robe (monogrammed with her name) from Land's End. The shower curtain is significant because our master bathroom is the very last room in the house that has been left unpainted, and I'm anxious to get it done and I'd picked a general color scheme but I wanted something a little more concrete than "these three colors" as a jumping-off point. The shower curtain I picked is fabric, and I was about to order it from one place where they were ~ $50 a piece (and I need two because our tub is extra long), which was hard to swallow for a shower curtain -- but then I looked around and found them for less than half that on another site! So yay, Bullock's Framing & Decorating! Anyway, once I get the shower curtains, I can use them to pick paint colors and maybe think about some accessories...
Yesterday, we took the kids out to breakfast (Ryan was feeling bad about having not seen them all day Saturday) and then a sitter came over, and we took off for San Francisco to see "Les Miserables" at 2 pm. That was pretty cool! I love seeing plays, and I especially love musicals, and this one was pretty amazing. I thought I only knew one song from it -- "On My Own," which Michelle Kwan skated to several years ago -- but I recognized a couple of others too. "On My Own" was still my favorite song, though, sung by what turned out to be my favorite character, Eponine, the doomed daughter of the sleazy innkeeper and his wife, in love with Marius, who loves Cosette. I thought Eponine was much cooler than Cosette, but she was kind of too cool for Marius too, and she was doomed and all, so I guess that was part of why I liked her.
Ryan and I were starving once the play was done around 5, so we walked around a bit and ended up at Morton's Steakhouse, a very upscale restaurant. They had this "verbal menu presentation," which means they bring out this cart with raw steaks, raw vegetables, and a live lobster with its claws taped up so it can't attack you, so they can show exactly what you can order. I could have done without that! The poor lobster tried crawl off the plate while he was sitting next to me, and I couldn't blame him, I have to say. Also, I was pretty relieved when the waiter handed us printed menus when he was done, because there was no way I was going to be able to remember everything he'd told us. I had filet mignon, and Ryan had some cut I can't remember, cooked cajun style, plus we shared an order of mashed potatoes, and then we shared a really amazing chocolate cake with Godiva chocolate sauce inside. Mmm! Very nice. We discussed the play and the characters and all through dinner and enjoyed ourselves. Had a nice nice drive home in the red machine, spent some time with the kids before we put them to bed, and then caught a new episode of "Six Feet Under."
All in all, a very nice weekend :-)
Friday, July 08, 2005
How Much Independence?
A couple of weeks ago, we were driving along and Mermaid, who is 10, asked me, "Mom, when will I be able to go to the store by myself?" It is a question I've been pondering ever since then. When I was 10, I had been allowed to ride my bike to the shopping center approximately 2 miles away and spend the afternoon there for a year or two. With friends, of course, but unsupervised by adults nonetheless. The store Mermaid is asking about is a 2-minute walk from our house, and she's talking about walking over there by herself to get something we need in the house, not hanging out there for any length of time.
It seems like I've been having conversations about this sort of thing with other parents I know a lot lately. We all (unless we had those parents who were always driving us places, which I did not) got ourselves back and forth to school or to friends' houses, walking or riding our bikes, from fairly young ages. Starting in third grade, I used to walk or ride my bike over to the house of my best friend, who must have lived at least half a mile away. Starting in first grade, I used to walk to school a mile away accompanied only by other first graders. I don't think any of the parents thought anything of this.
And yet, I don't know any parents around here who let their kids walk to school without an adult. You can practically see the school from our upstairs windows and my two kids have never gone there unescorted. Everyone says, well, things are different now -- but as far as I know, no kids have ever been taken between here and our house, or in the surrounding areas, and when I really think about it, I wonder what exactly is so dangerous? We even have a tunnel that goes beneath the street, making it so that virtually the entire journey would be taken on bike paths rather than on the street. And if I didn't want them to have to use the tunnel, I could easily escort them across the street, which is close to the house, and then stand there and watch them ride all the way to the school from there. Same with going to the store, as a matter of fact, although there is a major intersection to cross on the way there as well.
So on the one hand, I think it would probably be fine to let them go back and forth to school on their own, or maybe even let Mermaid go to the store. In some ways, she is very grown up, and if you tell her a rule about something like that, she is going to obey it. On the other hand -- Mermaid is developmentally disabled. It sucks, but it's the way things are. She is grown up in some ways and very naive in others. And it can be hard to predict when those others are going to crop up.
I know that we have a tendency to treat her like she's younger than she is. It's been going on for a long time -- for instance, on her 3rd birthday, it suddenly occurred to us that she didn't really need to keep sitting in her high chair for meals anymore, and we went out and bought a booster seat (by contrast, with her younger brother, we weren't even bothering with that booster seat by the time he turned 2). In the last few years, she's occasionally started asking to be allowed some kind of freedom or another: to play out front without an adult, to stay home alone while I run a quick errand, that kind of thing. Each time, it's gone fine. I suspect letting her take a 20-minute walk to Safeway to pick up a loaf of bread would go fine too. But for some reason, that one is harder to swallow.
In any case, I did let her have a bit of a trial run this past week. After her swim practice on Tuesday, we went to the shopping center so I could get a pedicure at the nail place just a few businesses down from Safeway. She is usually famished after swim practice, so I gave her some money and had her walk over to Safeway by herself and buy a bottled smoothie. I went over exactly what she needed to do wrt paying for it and all that, and she listened with a patronizing look on her face, because after all -- how many times has she gone through the check-out at Safeway with me? Anyway, she did just fine -- she was proud of herself, and I was happy she'd been able to do something like that without having to cross any streets. Who knows, maybe one of these days, I will send her over to Safeway for a loaf of bread :-)
It seems like I've been having conversations about this sort of thing with other parents I know a lot lately. We all (unless we had those parents who were always driving us places, which I did not) got ourselves back and forth to school or to friends' houses, walking or riding our bikes, from fairly young ages. Starting in third grade, I used to walk or ride my bike over to the house of my best friend, who must have lived at least half a mile away. Starting in first grade, I used to walk to school a mile away accompanied only by other first graders. I don't think any of the parents thought anything of this.
And yet, I don't know any parents around here who let their kids walk to school without an adult. You can practically see the school from our upstairs windows and my two kids have never gone there unescorted. Everyone says, well, things are different now -- but as far as I know, no kids have ever been taken between here and our house, or in the surrounding areas, and when I really think about it, I wonder what exactly is so dangerous? We even have a tunnel that goes beneath the street, making it so that virtually the entire journey would be taken on bike paths rather than on the street. And if I didn't want them to have to use the tunnel, I could easily escort them across the street, which is close to the house, and then stand there and watch them ride all the way to the school from there. Same with going to the store, as a matter of fact, although there is a major intersection to cross on the way there as well.
So on the one hand, I think it would probably be fine to let them go back and forth to school on their own, or maybe even let Mermaid go to the store. In some ways, she is very grown up, and if you tell her a rule about something like that, she is going to obey it. On the other hand -- Mermaid is developmentally disabled. It sucks, but it's the way things are. She is grown up in some ways and very naive in others. And it can be hard to predict when those others are going to crop up.
I know that we have a tendency to treat her like she's younger than she is. It's been going on for a long time -- for instance, on her 3rd birthday, it suddenly occurred to us that she didn't really need to keep sitting in her high chair for meals anymore, and we went out and bought a booster seat (by contrast, with her younger brother, we weren't even bothering with that booster seat by the time he turned 2). In the last few years, she's occasionally started asking to be allowed some kind of freedom or another: to play out front without an adult, to stay home alone while I run a quick errand, that kind of thing. Each time, it's gone fine. I suspect letting her take a 20-minute walk to Safeway to pick up a loaf of bread would go fine too. But for some reason, that one is harder to swallow.
In any case, I did let her have a bit of a trial run this past week. After her swim practice on Tuesday, we went to the shopping center so I could get a pedicure at the nail place just a few businesses down from Safeway. She is usually famished after swim practice, so I gave her some money and had her walk over to Safeway by herself and buy a bottled smoothie. I went over exactly what she needed to do wrt paying for it and all that, and she listened with a patronizing look on her face, because after all -- how many times has she gone through the check-out at Safeway with me? Anyway, she did just fine -- she was proud of herself, and I was happy she'd been able to do something like that without having to cross any streets. Who knows, maybe one of these days, I will send her over to Safeway for a loaf of bread :-)
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
This just in:
http://www.zebranest.net/0705news.html
You know, it's all fun and games till someone gets their legs chewed off...
(Compliments to my brilliant friend Becky!)
You know, it's all fun and games till someone gets their legs chewed off...
(Compliments to my brilliant friend Becky!)
Day Camp
Yesterday was Enthusio's first day of day camp. I'm not sure if I have actually mentioned it here in this space, but I know I have mentioned it maybe or a million or a zillion times in the last month since I signed him up, to everyone I meet: he's going to day camp! At the private school that is a 2-minute walk from our front door! With flexible drop-off and pick-up hours! He gets to swim an hour a day, plus play sports and do arts and crafts and go on field trips and other fun stuff! So yay, day camp! All through July!
Yesterday I took him over there in the morning. As we approached the building, he said "Mom, I'm a little nervous." I said that was okay, people get nervous about new things, and I decided to stay with him for a few minutes as he was getting settled. We went inside and told the lady at the desk it was his first day. She looked up his classroom (or "Bunk") and pointed out the door to us, and before I could give him a kiss or even say goodbye to him, he had run off down the hall and gone in, backpack thumping his back as he went. So great, I thought. For Enthusio, telling me he's nervous about something new is not unusual behavior, nor is jumping in feet-first anyway, so I figured all was well and I went about my business.
At 4 we went to pick him up, and we were directed to the backyard area where they were having snack. About 50 kids, all wearing hats, were hanging around picnic tables, and popcicles were being handed out. I scanned the crowd and couldn't find Enthusio -- I finally had to ask my daughter to point him out. He was playing some kind of game that involved jabbing with two other boys, and I went and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked happy to see me. I asked if he'd gotten a popcicle, at which point he dissolved into tears. "No, they cost a dollar!" he sobbed. I tried to calm him down and assured him that I had a dollar and he could get one, feeling annoyed that I hadn't been informed about the dollar popcicles ahead of time. The camp counsellor in charge of the popcicles went about obtaining the one he wanted (they'd already been taken back to the freezer) and assured me that he would have been given one either way but she'd already asked him to wait a minute and calmed him down once (she said all this in a nice way). Whether that meant they would have given him one and then demanded a dollar from me at the end of the day, I don't know, but it did make me feel a bit better to know he wouldn't have simply been left empty-handed in a sea of popcicle-eating children. Note to self: everything not expressly mentioned on the page I read costs extra. Whatever.
We went home and I gave him some time to recuperate and enjoy his popcicle before I asked him: "So, Bud, how was it?"
"Okay."
Not good. I mean, this is Enthusio we're talking about. If anything is remotely good, you are going to hear about it. Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not feeling guilty about sending him to this place. Yes, it's essentially really fun daycare, and yes, I'm home and can provide him with nurturing and stimulation and all that crap that mothers are supposed to provide. Yes, I have been telling people that I signed him up for day camp so his sister and I can have a relaxing summer. Yes, I've been looking forward to him starting there. Yes, yes, yes. BUT. I also did it because I thought it would be fun for him -- way more fun than staying home with the girl and me. She and I are very much on the same wavelength when it comes to relaxing summer days. We like to sit and play on the computer, listen to music, maybe take a nap (okay, that last one is mostly me). Enthusio prefers a more active day. He likes to ask questions. He likes to run around. He likes to make noise. I like those things too, but MY GOD. Since he started school, it seems like I can't do enough to keep him stimulated on the days when he's home, and as a result, he spends a lot more time than I would like watching TV and playing on the computer. So while, YES, I was expecting to enjoy the peace while he was away at day camp, and guilt-free, I might add, obviously I saw benefits in it for him too. I thought it would be fun.
I will, however, feel guilty having him there if he hates it.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not yanking him out because he seemed less than thrilled on his first day. Obviously the dollar-popcicle incident took some of the wind out of his sails, and it's a long day (9-4) so I would have been surprised if he wasn't exhausted by it. After he's had a few days to adjust, it's likely he'll start thinking it's great. But if he doesn't, that's okay too. I'm not going to make him go every day for the next four weeks if he can't find anything in it to get excited about after he's had some time to get used to the whole thing.
After all, we do call him Enthusio for a reason.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There was a request for help pseudonyming my daughter in this space before. Never mind -- I'm just going to call her Mermaid.
Yesterday I took him over there in the morning. As we approached the building, he said "Mom, I'm a little nervous." I said that was okay, people get nervous about new things, and I decided to stay with him for a few minutes as he was getting settled. We went inside and told the lady at the desk it was his first day. She looked up his classroom (or "Bunk") and pointed out the door to us, and before I could give him a kiss or even say goodbye to him, he had run off down the hall and gone in, backpack thumping his back as he went. So great, I thought. For Enthusio, telling me he's nervous about something new is not unusual behavior, nor is jumping in feet-first anyway, so I figured all was well and I went about my business.
At 4 we went to pick him up, and we were directed to the backyard area where they were having snack. About 50 kids, all wearing hats, were hanging around picnic tables, and popcicles were being handed out. I scanned the crowd and couldn't find Enthusio -- I finally had to ask my daughter to point him out. He was playing some kind of game that involved jabbing with two other boys, and I went and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked happy to see me. I asked if he'd gotten a popcicle, at which point he dissolved into tears. "No, they cost a dollar!" he sobbed. I tried to calm him down and assured him that I had a dollar and he could get one, feeling annoyed that I hadn't been informed about the dollar popcicles ahead of time. The camp counsellor in charge of the popcicles went about obtaining the one he wanted (they'd already been taken back to the freezer) and assured me that he would have been given one either way but she'd already asked him to wait a minute and calmed him down once (she said all this in a nice way). Whether that meant they would have given him one and then demanded a dollar from me at the end of the day, I don't know, but it did make me feel a bit better to know he wouldn't have simply been left empty-handed in a sea of popcicle-eating children. Note to self: everything not expressly mentioned on the page I read costs extra. Whatever.
We went home and I gave him some time to recuperate and enjoy his popcicle before I asked him: "So, Bud, how was it?"
"Okay."
Not good. I mean, this is Enthusio we're talking about. If anything is remotely good, you are going to hear about it. Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not feeling guilty about sending him to this place. Yes, it's essentially really fun daycare, and yes, I'm home and can provide him with nurturing and stimulation and all that crap that mothers are supposed to provide. Yes, I have been telling people that I signed him up for day camp so his sister and I can have a relaxing summer. Yes, I've been looking forward to him starting there. Yes, yes, yes. BUT. I also did it because I thought it would be fun for him -- way more fun than staying home with the girl and me. She and I are very much on the same wavelength when it comes to relaxing summer days. We like to sit and play on the computer, listen to music, maybe take a nap (okay, that last one is mostly me). Enthusio prefers a more active day. He likes to ask questions. He likes to run around. He likes to make noise. I like those things too, but MY GOD. Since he started school, it seems like I can't do enough to keep him stimulated on the days when he's home, and as a result, he spends a lot more time than I would like watching TV and playing on the computer. So while, YES, I was expecting to enjoy the peace while he was away at day camp, and guilt-free, I might add, obviously I saw benefits in it for him too. I thought it would be fun.
I will, however, feel guilty having him there if he hates it.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not yanking him out because he seemed less than thrilled on his first day. Obviously the dollar-popcicle incident took some of the wind out of his sails, and it's a long day (9-4) so I would have been surprised if he wasn't exhausted by it. After he's had a few days to adjust, it's likely he'll start thinking it's great. But if he doesn't, that's okay too. I'm not going to make him go every day for the next four weeks if he can't find anything in it to get excited about after he's had some time to get used to the whole thing.
After all, we do call him Enthusio for a reason.
There was a request for help pseudonyming my daughter in this space before. Never mind -- I'm just going to call her Mermaid.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Ahhhhhhh....
So, after running around like a bus driver with my head cut off for the past two weeks, today begins a week of relative relaxation. In the last two weeks, my schedule has included:
Two trips a day across town to the Davis Art Center for Will's play practice
One or two trips a day (depending on if we stay to watch or not) across town to the pool for Rachel's swim practice
Trips to the gym
Having people over for dinner three times
One trip to the Bay Area to help plan a bridal shower
Having houseguests for two nights
One book club
Attending parties at the homes of two different friends
Attending the performance of Will's play
Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting right now
Now don't get me wrong. This is all fun stuff. In fact, in case I failed to appreciate how much fun all this stuff is, in direct contrast to my experience is that of my husband, Reasonable Man, who has been so utterly bogged down at work the last couple of weeks that he went in to the office and worked all three days this weekend. So -- not complaining. Really. I love having friends and family come to the house, and this weekend was awesome -- my brother and his fiancee were here and we took the kids to the pool both afternoons and hung out and relaxed, and in the evenings we watched DVDs and it was great.
Nevertheless, today is quiet, with Enthusio having started daycamp this morning, and now it's just the girl and me here and it's pretty fabulous. And tonight it will just be our little family here having dinner tonight and that will be pretty nice too, just because it's been well over a week since we've done that, and you know what? A quiet evening at home with the family can be a nice change of pace for a gal with an active social life like mine, you know?
Two trips a day across town to the Davis Art Center for Will's play practice
One or two trips a day (depending on if we stay to watch or not) across town to the pool for Rachel's swim practice
Trips to the gym
Having people over for dinner three times
One trip to the Bay Area to help plan a bridal shower
Having houseguests for two nights
One book club
Attending parties at the homes of two different friends
Attending the performance of Will's play
Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting right now
Now don't get me wrong. This is all fun stuff. In fact, in case I failed to appreciate how much fun all this stuff is, in direct contrast to my experience is that of my husband, Reasonable Man, who has been so utterly bogged down at work the last couple of weeks that he went in to the office and worked all three days this weekend. So -- not complaining. Really. I love having friends and family come to the house, and this weekend was awesome -- my brother and his fiancee were here and we took the kids to the pool both afternoons and hung out and relaxed, and in the evenings we watched DVDs and it was great.
Nevertheless, today is quiet, with Enthusio having started daycamp this morning, and now it's just the girl and me here and it's pretty fabulous. And tonight it will just be our little family here having dinner tonight and that will be pretty nice too, just because it's been well over a week since we've done that, and you know what? A quiet evening at home with the family can be a nice change of pace for a gal with an active social life like mine, you know?
Friday, July 01, 2005
Celebrity Items of the Week
Okay, so Brooke Shields is now blasting back at Tom Cruise for the things he said about her taking anti-depressants to deal with her post-partum depression with an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, and I said "yay" to that. Someone needs to call the man on his shit, and it's gotten to where I almost wish he'd personally attack me in public just so I'd have an excuse to call a press conference and rip him a new one. I guess that's not going to happen, though, so this morning I have to live vicariously through Brooke Shields and her Op-Ed piece I haven't actually read.
Here's my problem with Brooke Shields though. I know she went through hell with the PPD and all, and she certainly has my sympathy for that. What I'd like to know, however, is, why did she jump on the Celebrity Mom "life is bliss now that I have a baby/this is so much better than being a high-paid, pampered actress/look at my spotless home, gorgeous baby and perfect life but ignore the fact that I probably have a staff of 12 people to make it possible" bandwagon for the first year of her daughter's life if it was so miserable? Because that's just gross. Like those things don't seem phony as it is -- how many magazine covers did Brooke get with her "finally I have my miracle baby!" story, and it turns out she was crawling around in the murky depths of PPD the whole time? I'm going to have to argue that perpetuating the myth of the perfect, blissed-out new mom at the same time one is battling crippling post-partum depression at least approaches the level of crap Tom Cruise is currently spewing about the dangers of psychiatry and anti-depressant medications. I haven't read Brooke's book about her PPD experience and maybe I should, as I'd like to see if she deals with this contradiction of image and reality at all.
Speaking of Celebrity Mom Profiles: two of the most egregious examples I've ever seen have hit the presses in the past month. First, Joan Lunden, looking very blonde and airbrush-perfect on the cover of Good Housekeeping, with her two sets of twins, toddlers and newborns. Clearly the woman is completely insane, but still, if that's not the worst case of maternal oneupmanship in the history of momdom, I don't know what is. Second, and possibly worse: Kelly Ripa, in a top that bares her perfect little midriff, declaring "My body is so much better since I had kids!" on the cover of TV Guide. Okay, a) this is not why I subscribe to TV Guide and if I wanted crap like that being delivered to my mailbox, I'd subscribe to women's magazines, and b) do you think it's maybe possible that the reason Kelly has a better body since she had kids is that she also has become a higher-profile and higher-paid celebrity/actress in that time and has more money to spend on things like a personal trainer, a nutritionist and a cook, as well as more pressure on her to remain tiny and thin? Ugh. Go away, Kelly.
In other news, I wish I'd had this blog two years ago, because if I had, I would have proof of the prediction I made about two years ago. It had recently come to light that pretentious, competent yet hugely over-rated actress Gwyneth Paltrow had cozied up to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, and my husband pointed out that the two of them were the whitest people he'd ever seen. I replied that it was true that they were well-matched physically, and therefore it was shame that he would probably break up with her and end up with Jennifer Garner instead. My logic was thus: Gwyneth had once been engaged to Brad Pitt, who eventually went on to marry Jennifer Aniston. Gwyneth was also involved Ben Affleck, who was, at the time I made this prediction, engaged in a low-profile, low-key romance that no one probably even remembers with a little-known actress named Jennifer Lopez. Given this evidence, it seemed safe to say it was likely Coldplay Chris would also move on from the more uniquely-named Gwyneth to another famous Jen, and Ms. Garner, of "Alias" fame, seemed like the biggest Jen on the horizon at the time.
Now, as we all know, my prediction did not come to fruition. Coldplay Chris impregnated Gwyneth, married her, and now they have a child named after fruit. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are divorcing. Ben and J. Lo never made it to the altar in the first place. After their break-up, J. Lo wasted no time rushing to marry former flame Marc Anthony, while Ben actually took a few months to heal and reflect before becoming involved with the woman he has now impregnated and then married -- Jennifer Garner.
Don't I deserve bonus points or something?
Here's my problem with Brooke Shields though. I know she went through hell with the PPD and all, and she certainly has my sympathy for that. What I'd like to know, however, is, why did she jump on the Celebrity Mom "life is bliss now that I have a baby/this is so much better than being a high-paid, pampered actress/look at my spotless home, gorgeous baby and perfect life but ignore the fact that I probably have a staff of 12 people to make it possible" bandwagon for the first year of her daughter's life if it was so miserable? Because that's just gross. Like those things don't seem phony as it is -- how many magazine covers did Brooke get with her "finally I have my miracle baby!" story, and it turns out she was crawling around in the murky depths of PPD the whole time? I'm going to have to argue that perpetuating the myth of the perfect, blissed-out new mom at the same time one is battling crippling post-partum depression at least approaches the level of crap Tom Cruise is currently spewing about the dangers of psychiatry and anti-depressant medications. I haven't read Brooke's book about her PPD experience and maybe I should, as I'd like to see if she deals with this contradiction of image and reality at all.
Speaking of Celebrity Mom Profiles: two of the most egregious examples I've ever seen have hit the presses in the past month. First, Joan Lunden, looking very blonde and airbrush-perfect on the cover of Good Housekeeping, with her two sets of twins, toddlers and newborns. Clearly the woman is completely insane, but still, if that's not the worst case of maternal oneupmanship in the history of momdom, I don't know what is. Second, and possibly worse: Kelly Ripa, in a top that bares her perfect little midriff, declaring "My body is so much better since I had kids!" on the cover of TV Guide. Okay, a) this is not why I subscribe to TV Guide and if I wanted crap like that being delivered to my mailbox, I'd subscribe to women's magazines, and b) do you think it's maybe possible that the reason Kelly has a better body since she had kids is that she also has become a higher-profile and higher-paid celebrity/actress in that time and has more money to spend on things like a personal trainer, a nutritionist and a cook, as well as more pressure on her to remain tiny and thin? Ugh. Go away, Kelly.
In other news, I wish I'd had this blog two years ago, because if I had, I would have proof of the prediction I made about two years ago. It had recently come to light that pretentious, competent yet hugely over-rated actress Gwyneth Paltrow had cozied up to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, and my husband pointed out that the two of them were the whitest people he'd ever seen. I replied that it was true that they were well-matched physically, and therefore it was shame that he would probably break up with her and end up with Jennifer Garner instead. My logic was thus: Gwyneth had once been engaged to Brad Pitt, who eventually went on to marry Jennifer Aniston. Gwyneth was also involved Ben Affleck, who was, at the time I made this prediction, engaged in a low-profile, low-key romance that no one probably even remembers with a little-known actress named Jennifer Lopez. Given this evidence, it seemed safe to say it was likely Coldplay Chris would also move on from the more uniquely-named Gwyneth to another famous Jen, and Ms. Garner, of "Alias" fame, seemed like the biggest Jen on the horizon at the time.
Now, as we all know, my prediction did not come to fruition. Coldplay Chris impregnated Gwyneth, married her, and now they have a child named after fruit. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are divorcing. Ben and J. Lo never made it to the altar in the first place. After their break-up, J. Lo wasted no time rushing to marry former flame Marc Anthony, while Ben actually took a few months to heal and reflect before becoming involved with the woman he has now impregnated and then married -- Jennifer Garner.
Don't I deserve bonus points or something?
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Chicken Soup
Isn't it amazing when one of those old-wives-tales/conventional wisdom-type thingies turns out to be true? Last night I went to a friend's house for a spa-products party, and had too much wine. Today I'm more or less functional but the stomach has been a little iffy. After I dropped Rachel off at swim practice, we headed home and the first thing on my agenda was to eat something, as it had been a while and I was feeling a little queasy. I happily located a can of chicken noodle soup from Trader Joe's that I didn't even know we had, so I heated it it right up. Fifteen minutes later, I can't tell you how much better I'm feeling. What is it about chicken noodle soup, anyway? The TJ's kind is awfully good, but I'm usually happy with the cheap old sodium-rich Campbell's variety as well. I used to have it for lunch each day during the urpy first trimester of my pregnancy of Will, and it was one thing I could always count on to go down without a fight. I know they've actually done studies of why it makes us feel better when we're sick but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Downloading Music
For Christmas 2003, my husband got me an mp3 player. At the time you still had the two choices: you could get a cheap one that would hold about 10 songs, or a considerably more expensive one that would hold 50 hours of music. Ryan picked the more expensive variety because he spoils me and also because, 10 songs? Useless. Anyway, the model he picked was the RCA Lyra. I quickly set to work filling the thing with songs. Unfortunately, RCA had apparently formed some kind of unholy alliance with MusicMatch, which is, in my opinion, the worst of the various music-organizing programs available. Not to mention the fact that I already had Windows Media Player, Real Player and iTunes on my computer, so obviously I wasn't terribly excited about putting another one on the computer.
People who have put their music into new programs before know what happens: you have to relabel a lot of stuff. If you got anything from a P2P network, it undoubtedly is mislabelled in some ridiculous way -- either the song is called by some random lyric or the artist's name is mispelled, or you've got an ABBA song with the genre listed as "jazz." People kill me, they really do. Now if you're you just going to put the song on a CD, it doesn't really matter how it's listed on your music software, but if you're putting in an mp3 player, it does matter. I mean, maybe one day you only want to listen to 80s music while you're running, which is the main activity I needed my mp3 player for. Each song needs to be labelled properly for the mp3 player to categorize it properly. I don't know, maybe I'm just a stickler for this kind of thing, but I don't want Madonna popping up when I've got it set to play R&B or something like that. I like my music organized.
So I tried to make it work with MusicMatch. I spent 7 hours one weekend relabelling over 1000 songs on the computer. I downloaded what seemed like constant MusicMatch updated versions. I even paid to download songs from Music Match. This was where I lost patience. I'd been downloading songs from iTunes, but in order to put them on my mp3 player, I then had to burn them to a CD and then use Music Match to rip them off the CD. Only Music Match didn't really like ripping music off CDs, so this usually took a lot longer than it should have. I thought, this is retarded, and in an attempt to eliminate the middle man, I looked into Music Match's download service. I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked iTunes -- like the Music Match program, it was stupid and confusing and slow -- but I found 4 songs I wanted and I opened an account and bought them. And then I tried to put them on my mp3 player, only to discover that while my mp3 player was compatible with Music Match only, the format that songs downloaded from from the Music Match download service came in was not supported by my mp3 player. Huh? Music Match is presumable aware that it has a captive audience with the RCA mp3 player owners, but puts the songs out in a format that said mp3 players won't recognize?
In order to put the four songs I'd downloaded from Music Match on my mp3 player, I had to burn them to a CD, use iTunes to rip them from the CD, make another CD with them on iTunes, and use Music Match to rip them back. How stupid is that?
Fortunately, soon after, I checked the RCA website and found that there was new software I could download to reformat my mp3 player so that we didn't have to use Music Match anymore. I happily uninstalled that asinine program, glad to be rid of it forever. Unfortunately, not long after that, my RCA Lyra mp3 player died for no apparent reason. Chock full of my carefully and lovingly labelled music and fully charged, it simply refuses to power on. I've thought about sending it in to be repaired, but since it's no longer under warranty, I'm guessing that like most appliances these days, it's probably more expensive to repair than it is to replace.
So last week I went and bought myself an iPod shuffle. It's tiny -- you stick it in a USB port in the back of the computer to charge it as well as to transfer music to it, which is as easy as dragging and dropping. And I've always loved the iTunes software, which I've been using for quite a while anyway. And all is well in the world of Tracie's digital music. It's a beautiful thing.
People who have put their music into new programs before know what happens: you have to relabel a lot of stuff. If you got anything from a P2P network, it undoubtedly is mislabelled in some ridiculous way -- either the song is called by some random lyric or the artist's name is mispelled, or you've got an ABBA song with the genre listed as "jazz." People kill me, they really do. Now if you're you just going to put the song on a CD, it doesn't really matter how it's listed on your music software, but if you're putting in an mp3 player, it does matter. I mean, maybe one day you only want to listen to 80s music while you're running, which is the main activity I needed my mp3 player for. Each song needs to be labelled properly for the mp3 player to categorize it properly. I don't know, maybe I'm just a stickler for this kind of thing, but I don't want Madonna popping up when I've got it set to play R&B or something like that. I like my music organized.
So I tried to make it work with MusicMatch. I spent 7 hours one weekend relabelling over 1000 songs on the computer. I downloaded what seemed like constant MusicMatch updated versions. I even paid to download songs from Music Match. This was where I lost patience. I'd been downloading songs from iTunes, but in order to put them on my mp3 player, I then had to burn them to a CD and then use Music Match to rip them off the CD. Only Music Match didn't really like ripping music off CDs, so this usually took a lot longer than it should have. I thought, this is retarded, and in an attempt to eliminate the middle man, I looked into Music Match's download service. I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked iTunes -- like the Music Match program, it was stupid and confusing and slow -- but I found 4 songs I wanted and I opened an account and bought them. And then I tried to put them on my mp3 player, only to discover that while my mp3 player was compatible with Music Match only, the format that songs downloaded from from the Music Match download service came in was not supported by my mp3 player. Huh? Music Match is presumable aware that it has a captive audience with the RCA mp3 player owners, but puts the songs out in a format that said mp3 players won't recognize?
In order to put the four songs I'd downloaded from Music Match on my mp3 player, I had to burn them to a CD, use iTunes to rip them from the CD, make another CD with them on iTunes, and use Music Match to rip them back. How stupid is that?
Fortunately, soon after, I checked the RCA website and found that there was new software I could download to reformat my mp3 player so that we didn't have to use Music Match anymore. I happily uninstalled that asinine program, glad to be rid of it forever. Unfortunately, not long after that, my RCA Lyra mp3 player died for no apparent reason. Chock full of my carefully and lovingly labelled music and fully charged, it simply refuses to power on. I've thought about sending it in to be repaired, but since it's no longer under warranty, I'm guessing that like most appliances these days, it's probably more expensive to repair than it is to replace.
So last week I went and bought myself an iPod shuffle. It's tiny -- you stick it in a USB port in the back of the computer to charge it as well as to transfer music to it, which is as easy as dragging and dropping. And I've always loved the iTunes software, which I've been using for quite a while anyway. And all is well in the world of Tracie's digital music. It's a beautiful thing.
All the cool blog-writers do it...
I was thinking of giving pseudonyms to all the people I might write about in my blog. My husband would be Reasonable Man (a joke from when he was in law school) and my son would be Enthusio (the Matrix-style name we came up with for him during the 15 minutes between when we bought him a pair of sunglasses and when he lost the pair of sunglasses when we were on vacation a couple of months ago). I didn't come up with one for my daughter yet. Then I realized that the brilliant screenname I came up with for myself is "tracie" and I'm not even sure if Blogger will let me change it. I guess it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be calling other people by nicknames if my own name is right there on every post.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Rock On, Flylady
Today I set my Flylady Yahoo Groups membership to "no mail." I'm not leaving the group, but I decided that I could cut three seconds of computer time out of my day if I didn't have to delete the message digest I receive once or twice a day, unread. I haven't hardly looked at them in months.
For those of you who don't know who/what Flylady is -- it's a website devoted to helping Sidetracked Home Executives (SHEs) get their houses and other areas of their lives under control through establishing routines. You start small -- by cleaning and shining your kitchen sink -- and move on to bigger and better things, always encouraged to take baby steps, work in increments of 15 minutes, and not to feel behind. There is lots of talk of taking care of yourself, getting rid of junk that is taking up space around the house, and banishing negative thinking. If you become an accomplished Flybaby, your house will stay neat due to your routines, your finances will be in order, your appointments will be kept, your meals will be planned, you will lose weight, and there will be less chaos in your life. I think it's probably a great system for a lot of people.
It doesn't really work for me.
Part of the problem is that they strongly advocate getting away from "emergency cleaning" by establishing habits that will spread the housework around so it never feels like you're doing much. I like this idea in theory, but in practice, not so much. Here's the thing: my energy and motivation come in fits and spurts. Some days I lie around like a slug all day, playing on the computer and neglecting the children. Other days I go to the gym, then come home and clean the whole house, install shelves, wash all the sheets, paint a couple of rooms, and weed both the front and backyards. Oftentimes, I do this in response to the fact that people are coming over. Generally, I hate doing housework, but I like to entertain, and I like my house to look nice when I do so, so it doesn't seem like a big deal. Ryan doesn't love it when I go into manic cleaning mode, and neither do my kids, but then again -- it doesn't happen very often. The rest of the time, I tidy a lot but don't actually clean all that much. My family doesn't mind, so neither do I.
The other reason the Flylady system didn't really work for me is that, well, I don't mean to brag or anything -- I am no champion housekeeper -- but I don't think I was ever quite far gone enough to be desperate enough to embrace it. For instance, the shiny sink thing. I've always liked a nice shiny sink, and while I don't keep it that way every single day, it's something I do regularly enough. There is much talk of getting laundry under control, and not that I don't sympathize, but I've never really had trouble staying on top of laundry, and I can't really relate when I hear about people living out of multiple laundry baskets and never being able to find anything to wear. We do the dishes regularly. My kids' rooms are usually a wreck, but we have gotten into a loose system of cleaning them pretty thoroughly every month or two. And while I have definitely taken to heart the Flylady theory of clutter -- that you can't organize it, you can only get rid of it -- and have been moved to get rid of a lot of junk that was taking up space in drawers and closets around the house, I do feel like I keep a pretty good rein on stuff lying around the house.
Anyway, again, I don't intend to quit the group altogether -- I like to go to the website and poke around some -- I guess I've decided I don't need to hear from Flylady anymore, in a way because I give up. I don't feel bad about it, though -- I do feel like I learned a few valuable things along the way.
For those of you who don't know who/what Flylady is -- it's a website devoted to helping Sidetracked Home Executives (SHEs) get their houses and other areas of their lives under control through establishing routines. You start small -- by cleaning and shining your kitchen sink -- and move on to bigger and better things, always encouraged to take baby steps, work in increments of 15 minutes, and not to feel behind. There is lots of talk of taking care of yourself, getting rid of junk that is taking up space around the house, and banishing negative thinking. If you become an accomplished Flybaby, your house will stay neat due to your routines, your finances will be in order, your appointments will be kept, your meals will be planned, you will lose weight, and there will be less chaos in your life. I think it's probably a great system for a lot of people.
It doesn't really work for me.
Part of the problem is that they strongly advocate getting away from "emergency cleaning" by establishing habits that will spread the housework around so it never feels like you're doing much. I like this idea in theory, but in practice, not so much. Here's the thing: my energy and motivation come in fits and spurts. Some days I lie around like a slug all day, playing on the computer and neglecting the children. Other days I go to the gym, then come home and clean the whole house, install shelves, wash all the sheets, paint a couple of rooms, and weed both the front and backyards. Oftentimes, I do this in response to the fact that people are coming over. Generally, I hate doing housework, but I like to entertain, and I like my house to look nice when I do so, so it doesn't seem like a big deal. Ryan doesn't love it when I go into manic cleaning mode, and neither do my kids, but then again -- it doesn't happen very often. The rest of the time, I tidy a lot but don't actually clean all that much. My family doesn't mind, so neither do I.
The other reason the Flylady system didn't really work for me is that, well, I don't mean to brag or anything -- I am no champion housekeeper -- but I don't think I was ever quite far gone enough to be desperate enough to embrace it. For instance, the shiny sink thing. I've always liked a nice shiny sink, and while I don't keep it that way every single day, it's something I do regularly enough. There is much talk of getting laundry under control, and not that I don't sympathize, but I've never really had trouble staying on top of laundry, and I can't really relate when I hear about people living out of multiple laundry baskets and never being able to find anything to wear. We do the dishes regularly. My kids' rooms are usually a wreck, but we have gotten into a loose system of cleaning them pretty thoroughly every month or two. And while I have definitely taken to heart the Flylady theory of clutter -- that you can't organize it, you can only get rid of it -- and have been moved to get rid of a lot of junk that was taking up space in drawers and closets around the house, I do feel like I keep a pretty good rein on stuff lying around the house.
Anyway, again, I don't intend to quit the group altogether -- I like to go to the website and poke around some -- I guess I've decided I don't need to hear from Flylady anymore, in a way because I give up. I don't feel bad about it, though -- I do feel like I learned a few valuable things along the way.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Showing Off My Kids
I'm not good at keeping my webpage updated anyway, and since I've been writing this blog, it's gotten even worse, so I'm just going to share some photos here...
A few months ago I was with some friends and we had one of those photos taken where you dress up in old-fashioned clothes. I'd never done it before and I thought it was really fun, so I decided to have one taken of the kids instead of a regular portrait -- I knew they'd think it was fun, and it came out really cute!
Will played tee ball for the second time this spring and here's his picture from that:
The owner of our gym (who is also a friend of ours) took this picture of Rachel in gym pool recently. It may appear in ads for the gym in the local paper as well. I just thought it was really cute -- kind of a snapshot of Rachel's summer, since she loves swimming so much :-)
A few months ago I was with some friends and we had one of those photos taken where you dress up in old-fashioned clothes. I'd never done it before and I thought it was really fun, so I decided to have one taken of the kids instead of a regular portrait -- I knew they'd think it was fun, and it came out really cute!
Will played tee ball for the second time this spring and here's his picture from that:
The owner of our gym (who is also a friend of ours) took this picture of Rachel in gym pool recently. It may appear in ads for the gym in the local paper as well. I just thought it was really cute -- kind of a snapshot of Rachel's summer, since she loves swimming so much :-)
Friday, June 24, 2005
List Mania!
Favorite Current TV Shows:
Veronica Mars (duh)
The Amazing Race
Arrested Development
Lost
Entourage
Desperate Housewives
Six Feet Under
Favorite Actors In Movies and TV Today:
Jeremy Piven
Topher Grace
Ewan McGregor
Jason Bateman
Tobey Maguire
John Cusack
Edward Norton
Favorite Actors in Movies and TV Today Whom I Don't Think Are Remotely Hot:
Paul Giamatti
Peter Dinklage
the guy who plays Hurley on Lost
Steve Buscemi
Favorite Deceased Actor:
River Phoenix
Favorite Actor I Wish Would Make More Movies Where He Doesn't Wear Costumes Designed to Disguise the Fact That He's Awfully Cute:
Mike Myers
Favorite Movies of All Time:
Strictly Ballroom
Moulin Rouge
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Sideways
Dazed and Confused
So I Married An Axe Murderer
Notting Hill
Empire Strikes Back
Chicago
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Favorite 80s movies:
Say Anything
Sixteen Candles
The Lost Boys
The Karate Kid
Stand By Me
I Guess They're Pretty Good Actors But Give Me a Break:
Russell Crowe
Renee Zelwegger
Gwyneth Paltrow
Please Explain All the Fuss:
Titanic
Mystic River
Jennifer Lopez
Ashton Kutcher
Hilary Duff
Supermodels
American Idol
Please Go Away And Never Come Back:
Paris Hilton
Jessica Simpson
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Ethan Hawke
Demi Moore
Cindy Crawford, Kelly Ripa, and all the other Celebrity Moms who make me sick
Celebrities with Whom I Generally Want Little to Do Except When They Are Making Spectacles of Their Personal Lives:
Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes
Britney Spears
Whitney Houston
Mariah Carey
Celebrities Whose Personal Lives I Couldn't Care Less About
Ben Affleck
Jennifer Aniston
Brad Pitt
Angelina Jolie since she stopped being freaky
Reasons Target Is My Favorite Store:
You can get almost anything you need there.
Their Cherokee cropped stretch jeans are cut just right for me and the first pair I bought, in my regular size, got too big even before I started losing weight so I had to buy a smaller size, but I still probably paid less for two pairs of them than I would for one good pair of cropped jeans someplace else.
A lot of their stuff looks really cool because they care about design
Really cheap boxes of cereal bars that Rachel likes
Good prices on juice boxes
On Target.com, if you're looking at clothing, you can click on "red"or "green" or whatever and they'll show you everything they have in that color
Bummers about Target:
We don't have one here in Davis
Their pants never fit Rachel
Last week when we went there to buy a Gameboy, they didn't have any so we had to go to Game Stop. Then when we went there again the other day, they had a whole bunch of Gameboys.
Most Embarrassing Songs on my mp3 player:
... Baby One More Time by Britney Spears
Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille
Wannabe and Say You'll Be There by the Spice Girls
Glory of Love by Peter Cetera
Mmbop by Hanson
Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John
numerous selctions by Barry Manilow
Movie Performances That Totally Blew Me Away:
Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge
Lili Taylor in Dogfight
Tobey MaGuire in Cider House Rules
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley
Holly Hunter in Broadcast News
Paul Giamatti in Sideways
Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski
Nicole Kidman in To Die For
Favorite Reason For Having a Blog:
I can go on and on about stuff I like (or like to complain about) and no one can stop me
Veronica Mars (duh)
The Amazing Race
Arrested Development
Lost
Entourage
Desperate Housewives
Six Feet Under
Favorite Actors In Movies and TV Today:
Jeremy Piven
Topher Grace
Ewan McGregor
Jason Bateman
Tobey Maguire
John Cusack
Edward Norton
Favorite Actors in Movies and TV Today Whom I Don't Think Are Remotely Hot:
Paul Giamatti
Peter Dinklage
the guy who plays Hurley on Lost
Steve Buscemi
Favorite Deceased Actor:
River Phoenix
Favorite Actor I Wish Would Make More Movies Where He Doesn't Wear Costumes Designed to Disguise the Fact That He's Awfully Cute:
Mike Myers
Favorite Movies of All Time:
Strictly Ballroom
Moulin Rouge
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Sideways
Dazed and Confused
So I Married An Axe Murderer
Notting Hill
Empire Strikes Back
Chicago
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Favorite 80s movies:
Say Anything
Sixteen Candles
The Lost Boys
The Karate Kid
Stand By Me
I Guess They're Pretty Good Actors But Give Me a Break:
Russell Crowe
Renee Zelwegger
Gwyneth Paltrow
Please Explain All the Fuss:
Titanic
Mystic River
Jennifer Lopez
Ashton Kutcher
Hilary Duff
Supermodels
American Idol
Please Go Away And Never Come Back:
Paris Hilton
Jessica Simpson
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Ethan Hawke
Demi Moore
Cindy Crawford, Kelly Ripa, and all the other Celebrity Moms who make me sick
Celebrities with Whom I Generally Want Little to Do Except When They Are Making Spectacles of Their Personal Lives:
Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes
Britney Spears
Whitney Houston
Mariah Carey
Celebrities Whose Personal Lives I Couldn't Care Less About
Ben Affleck
Jennifer Aniston
Brad Pitt
Angelina Jolie since she stopped being freaky
Reasons Target Is My Favorite Store:
You can get almost anything you need there.
Their Cherokee cropped stretch jeans are cut just right for me and the first pair I bought, in my regular size, got too big even before I started losing weight so I had to buy a smaller size, but I still probably paid less for two pairs of them than I would for one good pair of cropped jeans someplace else.
A lot of their stuff looks really cool because they care about design
Really cheap boxes of cereal bars that Rachel likes
Good prices on juice boxes
On Target.com, if you're looking at clothing, you can click on "red"or "green" or whatever and they'll show you everything they have in that color
Bummers about Target:
We don't have one here in Davis
Their pants never fit Rachel
Last week when we went there to buy a Gameboy, they didn't have any so we had to go to Game Stop. Then when we went there again the other day, they had a whole bunch of Gameboys.
Most Embarrassing Songs on my mp3 player:
... Baby One More Time by Britney Spears
Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille
Wannabe and Say You'll Be There by the Spice Girls
Glory of Love by Peter Cetera
Mmbop by Hanson
Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John
numerous selctions by Barry Manilow
Movie Performances That Totally Blew Me Away:
Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge
Lili Taylor in Dogfight
Tobey MaGuire in Cider House Rules
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley
Holly Hunter in Broadcast News
Paul Giamatti in Sideways
Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski
Nicole Kidman in To Die For
Favorite Reason For Having a Blog:
I can go on and on about stuff I like (or like to complain about) and no one can stop me
Thursday, June 23, 2005
50 Book Challenge
If I can read 4 books by this coming Thursday, I will be on pace to read my 50 books by the end of the year. I'm just saying.
Actually, if I don't pick up the pace a whole lot over the summer and get pretty far ahead by the time November rolls around, I'm not going to make it anyway. Damn, this is harder than I thought.
Actually, if I don't pick up the pace a whole lot over the summer and get pretty far ahead by the time November rolls around, I'm not going to make it anyway. Damn, this is harder than I thought.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Rachel's Latest Obsession
Lately Rachel is obsessed with the cat. Emma is nearly 13, so she obviously pre-dates Rachel in our family. We have lots of pictures of the two of them together when Rachel was a baby. That was before Emma got smart and demanded to become an indoor-outdoor cat. She made herself scarce most of the time after that. When we moved into our current house, she made her displeasure about being moved evident by peeing on the carpet, mostly in one corner of the living room. That was when she became an outdoor cat and took up residence mostly in the garage, where she perfected her hobby: vomitting on our cars. Since that time, she's become elderly, and sometimes when she's really lapping up the attention I deign to bestow on her when I'm coming and going, I wish we could move her back into the house. Alas, this is impossible because of Buster, who heads right for the garage to harrass her any time he manages to escpape from the backyard, in spite of the fact that she kicks his canine ass each and every time. One time she cut his eyelid, left one of her claws sticking out of his nose, and peed on him, which is, I believe, the literal definition of adding insult to injury. I cannot begin to understand why he keeps messing with her.
Anyway, for some reason, after ignoring her for about the last 6 years, suddenly Emma is on Rachel's radar again, and Rachel goes out to the garage several times a day to visit her. I'm sure Emma enjoys this a whole lot. Well, maybe she actually does. We have to ask Rachel to remove her person from Buster's little 11-pound frame several times a day, but I know Emma doesn't put up with that sort of thing and will use her claws when necessary. She does enjoy pretty much any human attention she gets anymore. Since Rachel is suddenly so attached to Emma, I thought I should probably explain to her than, even though Emma appears pretty healthy right now (despite not having been to the vet for several years :-/), it's possible she might not live too much longer. Normally, this sort of comment doesn't have much effect on Rachel, but this time she was actually paying attention, and it alarmed her. Since then, every time we go into the garage and Emma isn't there in her usual spot on the blanket on top of a computer box in the garage, Rachel becomes concerned and asks "where's Emma? Did she die? Is she dead?" and I have to assure her that Emma is probably fine. One of these days I'm going to be wrong, though, and that's not going to be a good day.
Anyway, for some reason, after ignoring her for about the last 6 years, suddenly Emma is on Rachel's radar again, and Rachel goes out to the garage several times a day to visit her. I'm sure Emma enjoys this a whole lot. Well, maybe she actually does. We have to ask Rachel to remove her person from Buster's little 11-pound frame several times a day, but I know Emma doesn't put up with that sort of thing and will use her claws when necessary. She does enjoy pretty much any human attention she gets anymore. Since Rachel is suddenly so attached to Emma, I thought I should probably explain to her than, even though Emma appears pretty healthy right now (despite not having been to the vet for several years :-/), it's possible she might not live too much longer. Normally, this sort of comment doesn't have much effect on Rachel, but this time she was actually paying attention, and it alarmed her. Since then, every time we go into the garage and Emma isn't there in her usual spot on the blanket on top of a computer box in the garage, Rachel becomes concerned and asks "where's Emma? Did she die? Is she dead?" and I have to assure her that Emma is probably fine. One of these days I'm going to be wrong, though, and that's not going to be a good day.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Duct Tape
The packing tape holding my laptop together didn't hold, so I had to upgrade to duct tape. The speaker that needs holding down with the tape is silver, so perfect, right? Only the last time I bought duct tape, for some reason instead of classic silver, I bought a roll in bright red. I don't know wtf I was thinking -- maybe I let Rachel pick? I will admit that it's always easy to find in the kitchen cupboard where I keep my hardware essentials. And you know, I'm stuck with it for a while, but while I love duct tape as much as the next gal, the last roll I owned was the first I had ever bought my own self, and it took years to go through. I suppose I could just, like, Freecycle the red roll and go buy myself some in silver, but that would feel like admitting defeat or something. Anyway, for now I have a bright red testament to my own stupidity in attempting to fix my own laptop yesterday. I didn't even cut the tape straight, so I'm sure you can imagine how classy it looks.
Starbucks is trying to kill me...
... or at least ruin my diet. Not only have they brought back the Mocha Malt Frappucino (not available in the lite version) but now they've put out a Chocolate Mint version of those bottled Frappucinos you can get at the grocery store or wherever. I grabbed one at the Quick Step (or whatever the hell it's called) mini-mart on the way to Rachel's swim practice today because I was afraid I was going to get all sleepy like I did the last time, and MMMMMMMM. Those suckers are 4 WW points a pop and there's no way I'm only going to drink half at a time -- plus I skipped the gym this morning due to my crazy schedule and Will sleeping in past 8:30 a.m. (rock on, Will!), so I guess we're having a light dinner tonight...
In honor of the good folks at www.taquitos.net (listen up, hens!):
This snack was discovered by Tracie at Safeway.
I'd post a review of it there but they don't appear to care about beverages. But Jeremy cares way too much about chips.
In honor of the good folks at www.taquitos.net (listen up, hens!):
This snack was discovered by Tracie at Safeway.
I'd post a review of it there but they don't appear to care about beverages. But Jeremy cares way too much about chips.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
My Laptop...
... is literally being held together by packing tape. It works just fine. There was some stuff with it seizing up this past week when I was using Windows Media Player, but I just started using iTunes instead and it's been just fine. The only problem with it is that the hinge has been broken for some time, so either it's completely wide open, or it's closed -- nothing in between. Quite the PITA! And this morning I made it worse by prying open the little speaker thing on one side to see if I could get the lay of the land and maybe fix it myself. Yeah, that's always a good idea, right? Anyway, I sent emails to a couple of places in town that do computer repair asking how long I would have to be without my computer if they were to fix it for me. That's my main concern, of course -- not how much it costs or whether it's done properly -- and I want to know down to the minute how long I'm going to be deprived. It's a sad thing, what an addict I am.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
So:
This morning I got up and went to Weight Watchers. Didn't really know what to expect -- I was "good" (as in staying reasonably within my points and exercising consistently) for most of the week, but didn't journal the last two days, and last night, after snacking a lot during the afternoon, we went out for Mexican food (to the place where I'm usually not "good"). I limited my chip intake but still had a good amount, then ordered pretty well. But then we got home and I ate a good deal of dessert. Still, staying on plan for most of the week worked out, as I was down 2 lbs, making it a total of 6 lbs lost. I would like to lose 20-25 more -- 20 to get to my WW goal weight and then possibly the other 5 or so depending on how I'm feeling at that point. Regardless -- I will continue to attend the meetings each week once I reach my goal because I know that's the only way to maintain my weight loss. I will not fall into that trap of complacency again!
Came home and helped Ryan and Will load up the minivan for their Campfire camp-out, and they took off. I hope they have fun and don't get rained on! Now it's just Rachel and me. I think we'll go get our nails done and go out to lunch, maybe do some shopping. Tonight I'm going out with friends for a girls' night, although there is no particular plan as of yet. We'll work on it. I'm looking forward to having the day with Rachel. It wasn't till fairly recently that I realized how easy it is to have just her. Will interacts with me a lot more, but he interacts with everyone and everything a lot more too, meaning that he needs to be monitored a lot more. Rachel is just really laid back when we're out.
Tomorrow, I predict there will be a lot of lying around. Ryan and Will are bound to be tired after camping, I imagine we'll go out for dinner somewhere kid-friendly, as I am not cooking on my birthday. Not expecting a big celebration or anything though, and that's fine. Other than tonight, I'm just looking forward to a nice, low-key, relaxing weekend.
Came home and helped Ryan and Will load up the minivan for their Campfire camp-out, and they took off. I hope they have fun and don't get rained on! Now it's just Rachel and me. I think we'll go get our nails done and go out to lunch, maybe do some shopping. Tonight I'm going out with friends for a girls' night, although there is no particular plan as of yet. We'll work on it. I'm looking forward to having the day with Rachel. It wasn't till fairly recently that I realized how easy it is to have just her. Will interacts with me a lot more, but he interacts with everyone and everything a lot more too, meaning that he needs to be monitored a lot more. Rachel is just really laid back when we're out.
Tomorrow, I predict there will be a lot of lying around. Ryan and Will are bound to be tired after camping, I imagine we'll go out for dinner somewhere kid-friendly, as I am not cooking on my birthday. Not expecting a big celebration or anything though, and that's fine. Other than tonight, I'm just looking forward to a nice, low-key, relaxing weekend.
Friday, June 17, 2005
This and That
So Katie and Tom got engaged yesterday. At the Eiffel Tower. In Paris. Because, you know if you're on a publicity tour in Europe and you want to propose to the girlfriend everyone kind of suspects is actually your beard because you're acting so freaky about the whole thing, you definitely want to pick the most obvious landmark in the most obvious city to do the deed, right? I'm just saying.
Today marks full week of summer vacation, and thus far we are surviving. This week has mainly consisted of driving back and forth to the gym and driving Rachel back and forth to swim practice, with assorted errands thrown in. I have two more items to add to my "Things to Accept about Summer" list. One is that despite the fact that swim practice is great for Rachel, it is going to guarantee that her hair looks like crap for most of the summer, and it is also going wear her out and make her crabby in the late afternoons and evenings, at least for the first few weeks while she's getting used to it. Also, she already has a better tan than I'm going to get all summer long. One thing that remains to be seen is whether she actually learns to swim any faster. We went to watch her practice on Wednesday and it was kind of funny because, while it was obvious that she was enjoying it all immensely, she was also consistently a half a lap behind the rest of the girls in her group. Now don't get me wrong -- I don't really care if she ever starts winning races, and I'm not arguing that she could swim faster and beat everyone if she really wanted to. I bring it up because I find it amusing. They do this thing called "over and under" where they swim across the lane lines, and I couldn't help noticing that when Rachel was going over, she would slide quite gracefully over the line into the water. Gracefully and languidly, as a matter of fact, as though she was enjoying herself so much that she was actually taking her time with on purpose. On the way home, I asked her if she liked to swim fast or swim slow, and she said slow. I tried to get sense of whether she understood that what she was in training for was to race, and she didn't really seem to get it. So all I know at this point is that she lives for 2 pm every week day and that my worries that she wouldn't be able to do this were all for naught. She can certainly continue swimming as long as she wants as far as I'm concerned, whether she ever wants to try to swim faster or not.
Yesterday I finally finished online traffic school, and passed the final test with 96%. What I hadn't realized was that once I finished it, I then had to wait for them to mail me my certificate, which I am then supposed to mail to the Yolo Courts. And being that the due date for that is today, I think I'm going to be missing the deadline. To recap: after receiving kind of a bogus ticket for failure to yield, I paid the fine (somewhere around $150) plus the extra $39.00 to be allowed the privelege of attending traffic school, then paid the $20 to the online traffic school but procrastinated on finishing the course long enough to make it so that all my efforts and the $60 I paid were completely wasted. I'm going to play dumb and go ahead and send in the certificate in when it arrives, but I'm not really expecting any leniency. At least I'm done reading the damn vehicle code.
The great contact lens experiment continues to go well, in that I am actually able to get the things in and out of my eyes each day. It goes poorly, however, in that they are not actually helping me see particularly well. I went in for a little check-up the other day and my optometrist said he would order some other ones for me, which I hope will work better than the ones currenting adhered to my eyeballs (and I hope will actually arrive in their office soon, since I'm using a pair that I was supposed to throw away a few days ago and they're starting to fall apart). I like not wearing glasses but there is something about being able to see properly that I miss...
Looking ahead to this weekend: Ryan and Will head off to Calaveras Big Trees for a camping trip with Will's Campfire troop tomorrow. This will be Ryan's very first camping experience, and let me tell you, he is oh so looking forward to it. While he's out, I will going out for a girls' night with some friends to celebrate my birthday, which is Sunday. 35 years old -- how did that happen? This is the first number that has bothered me, and I'm kind of over that, really, since I've already passed the part of the year where I start thinking I'm the age I'm about to turn. That happens around the beginning of March pretty much every year...
I think we have about reached total Beatles saturation in this house. I've pretty much gotten to the point where I want to listen to anything but the Beatles in the car, and we've now rented "Yellow Submarine," "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night" twice each. Am thinking it's time to try turning Miss Rachel on to some new music before I start to go a little buggy.
Weirdly cool weather this week -- even some rain yesterday. It didn't bother us -- all Rachel cared about was that her swim practice didn't get cancelled. People are complaining that it should be warmer right now, but as far as I'm concerned, any summer day where the temperature is under 90 degrees is okay by me.
Today marks full week of summer vacation, and thus far we are surviving. This week has mainly consisted of driving back and forth to the gym and driving Rachel back and forth to swim practice, with assorted errands thrown in. I have two more items to add to my "Things to Accept about Summer" list. One is that despite the fact that swim practice is great for Rachel, it is going to guarantee that her hair looks like crap for most of the summer, and it is also going wear her out and make her crabby in the late afternoons and evenings, at least for the first few weeks while she's getting used to it. Also, she already has a better tan than I'm going to get all summer long. One thing that remains to be seen is whether she actually learns to swim any faster. We went to watch her practice on Wednesday and it was kind of funny because, while it was obvious that she was enjoying it all immensely, she was also consistently a half a lap behind the rest of the girls in her group. Now don't get me wrong -- I don't really care if she ever starts winning races, and I'm not arguing that she could swim faster and beat everyone if she really wanted to. I bring it up because I find it amusing. They do this thing called "over and under" where they swim across the lane lines, and I couldn't help noticing that when Rachel was going over, she would slide quite gracefully over the line into the water. Gracefully and languidly, as a matter of fact, as though she was enjoying herself so much that she was actually taking her time with on purpose. On the way home, I asked her if she liked to swim fast or swim slow, and she said slow. I tried to get sense of whether she understood that what she was in training for was to race, and she didn't really seem to get it. So all I know at this point is that she lives for 2 pm every week day and that my worries that she wouldn't be able to do this were all for naught. She can certainly continue swimming as long as she wants as far as I'm concerned, whether she ever wants to try to swim faster or not.
Yesterday I finally finished online traffic school, and passed the final test with 96%. What I hadn't realized was that once I finished it, I then had to wait for them to mail me my certificate, which I am then supposed to mail to the Yolo Courts. And being that the due date for that is today, I think I'm going to be missing the deadline. To recap: after receiving kind of a bogus ticket for failure to yield, I paid the fine (somewhere around $150) plus the extra $39.00 to be allowed the privelege of attending traffic school, then paid the $20 to the online traffic school but procrastinated on finishing the course long enough to make it so that all my efforts and the $60 I paid were completely wasted. I'm going to play dumb and go ahead and send in the certificate in when it arrives, but I'm not really expecting any leniency. At least I'm done reading the damn vehicle code.
The great contact lens experiment continues to go well, in that I am actually able to get the things in and out of my eyes each day. It goes poorly, however, in that they are not actually helping me see particularly well. I went in for a little check-up the other day and my optometrist said he would order some other ones for me, which I hope will work better than the ones currenting adhered to my eyeballs (and I hope will actually arrive in their office soon, since I'm using a pair that I was supposed to throw away a few days ago and they're starting to fall apart). I like not wearing glasses but there is something about being able to see properly that I miss...
Looking ahead to this weekend: Ryan and Will head off to Calaveras Big Trees for a camping trip with Will's Campfire troop tomorrow. This will be Ryan's very first camping experience, and let me tell you, he is oh so looking forward to it. While he's out, I will going out for a girls' night with some friends to celebrate my birthday, which is Sunday. 35 years old -- how did that happen? This is the first number that has bothered me, and I'm kind of over that, really, since I've already passed the part of the year where I start thinking I'm the age I'm about to turn. That happens around the beginning of March pretty much every year...
I think we have about reached total Beatles saturation in this house. I've pretty much gotten to the point where I want to listen to anything but the Beatles in the car, and we've now rented "Yellow Submarine," "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night" twice each. Am thinking it's time to try turning Miss Rachel on to some new music before I start to go a little buggy.
Weirdly cool weather this week -- even some rain yesterday. It didn't bother us -- all Rachel cared about was that her swim practice didn't get cancelled. People are complaining that it should be warmer right now, but as far as I'm concerned, any summer day where the temperature is under 90 degrees is okay by me.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Memo to Self, re: Surviving Summer
Things to accept:
1. That it's going to get damn hot, and there's nothing I can do about it. That I can plan our days around staying cool as much as possible, but that I'm still going to have to go out and end up hot and sticky and uncomfortable some of the time. That Rachel and I are going to hate it, and that even Will is going to be a pill about it some of the time.
2. That the kids are probably going to watch more TV and spend more time on the computer than is ideal. That even though I laid down stringent rules about when and where and under what circumstances they will be allowed to play with the Gameboy I bought yesterday, they will still use it more than makes me happy. And that the proceeding facts do not automatically disqualify me from making the Good Mom list.
3. That even on days when I try to be creative and make things more fun for them -- like today, when instead of sticking them in childcare at the gym, I decided we would ride our bikes to Davis Commons, have Jamba Juice and linger at Borders for quite a while -- even on those days they are going to fight with each other and complain about being hot, tired, hungry, thirsty, deprived because I won't buy something for them, or otherwise put upon.
4. That sometimes I'm going to be lazy. That somedays I'm going to sit here on the computer and procrastinate on going to the gym, cleaning the house, taking a shower or doing the laundry. That some days I'm going to skip the gym and let the kids watch TV and play video games and eat junk food all day long. That sometimes, after doing all of that nothing all day long, we're going to go out to eat, even if we just went out the night before. And that none of those things makes me a bad person.
Promises to myself for this summer:
1. I promise to stick with Weight Watchers, even if it keeps taking forever, for the whole summer and as long after that as it takes to lose the weight I want to lose. I promise not to use the fact that it's hot or I had a bad visit to the scale or I'm stressed or whatever as an excuse to overeat and go off program. And I promise to indulge myself on special occasions, not stress about points, and not beat myself up afterwards if I go a little overboard.
2. I promise not to let my kids' occasional need for an attitude adjustment discourage me from planning fun things for us to do this summer.
3. I promise to go to the gym several times a week whether I feel like it or not, since I know I'll feel better and lose weight faster if I do.
4. I promise try my best to manage my stress and not take my frustrations out on my kids.
5. I promise to give myself a break and remember that I'm only human when things get to be a little too much.
1. That it's going to get damn hot, and there's nothing I can do about it. That I can plan our days around staying cool as much as possible, but that I'm still going to have to go out and end up hot and sticky and uncomfortable some of the time. That Rachel and I are going to hate it, and that even Will is going to be a pill about it some of the time.
2. That the kids are probably going to watch more TV and spend more time on the computer than is ideal. That even though I laid down stringent rules about when and where and under what circumstances they will be allowed to play with the Gameboy I bought yesterday, they will still use it more than makes me happy. And that the proceeding facts do not automatically disqualify me from making the Good Mom list.
3. That even on days when I try to be creative and make things more fun for them -- like today, when instead of sticking them in childcare at the gym, I decided we would ride our bikes to Davis Commons, have Jamba Juice and linger at Borders for quite a while -- even on those days they are going to fight with each other and complain about being hot, tired, hungry, thirsty, deprived because I won't buy something for them, or otherwise put upon.
4. That sometimes I'm going to be lazy. That somedays I'm going to sit here on the computer and procrastinate on going to the gym, cleaning the house, taking a shower or doing the laundry. That some days I'm going to skip the gym and let the kids watch TV and play video games and eat junk food all day long. That sometimes, after doing all of that nothing all day long, we're going to go out to eat, even if we just went out the night before. And that none of those things makes me a bad person.
Promises to myself for this summer:
1. I promise to stick with Weight Watchers, even if it keeps taking forever, for the whole summer and as long after that as it takes to lose the weight I want to lose. I promise not to use the fact that it's hot or I had a bad visit to the scale or I'm stressed or whatever as an excuse to overeat and go off program. And I promise to indulge myself on special occasions, not stress about points, and not beat myself up afterwards if I go a little overboard.
2. I promise not to let my kids' occasional need for an attitude adjustment discourage me from planning fun things for us to do this summer.
3. I promise to go to the gym several times a week whether I feel like it or not, since I know I'll feel better and lose weight faster if I do.
4. I promise try my best to manage my stress and not take my frustrations out on my kids.
5. I promise to give myself a break and remember that I'm only human when things get to be a little too much.
I can't stop reading every possible word available about Tom Cruise's whole career/image implosion. It's all just too bizarre.
I will admit -- I have not been a Tom Cruise fan for a very long time. He lost me during the whole "Top Gun" thing. I went to see that movie with my friends and was like, "huh?" Why did everyone worship that movie? They would show planes flying in the sky and expect you to know which one was which. They killed Goose! And did they even notice that the sparks flying between Tom and Val Kilmer during their homo-erotic "hostile" exchanges generated far more heat than any scene between Tom and his so-called romantic lead, Kelly McGillis? So yeah, whatever. Tom was adorable in "Risky Business," but when he became this huge movie star, that was it for him and me. When I was a senior in high school, a couple of my good friends called to invite me to see "Cocktail" and I just started laughing and told them I'd meet them to get something to eat afterward, because... no.
That being said, I've never actually avoided a movie just because he was in it or anything. He was good in "Born on the Fourth of July" and decent in "Rainman," and when we actually sat through that trainwreck "Eyes Wide Shut" a few years ago, I pretty much thought his performance was the only good thing about it. He's a decent actor, and I don't see many of his movies mainly because they tend to be of the ginormous, action-packed summer blockbuster variety, which doesn't appeal to me a whole lot. But that doesn't mean I dislike him as an actor.
I don't really care for him as a movie star though. I tend to develop an antipathy for anyone who generates a lot of hype, so I definitely started getting really sick of him starting in the late 80s. Then there was his marriage to Nicole Kidman and all the press and the icky "we're on our honeymoon for the rest of our lives" and bleah, spare me. I pretty much always believed the rumors that he was gay -- I mean, they're pretty persistent, you know? An uncle of mine in the entertainment industry was telling us a few years ago that Tom was in love with the mailroom boy at Paramount and had also had a thing with Nicole's brother, and you know, I could buy it. People in normal healthy relationships don't need to proclaim to the world over and over again how happy they are in their marriage, you know?
Then there was the weird break-up and "Nic knows what this is about" (I saw an interview with Nic a year or two later where she said something like "I think I know what it was about now") and immediately he starts dating Penelope Cruz, and no one says a word about how she was his co-star in a movie he made before he and Nic broke up -- what's that about? How come all this attention is focused on Angelina and Brad in the same situation but not on Tom and Penny? Yeah, I don't get it either. Then the two of them go on to have the most boring, non-newsworthy relationship in the history of celebrity journalism, then they break up and no one cares, and then...
Tom evidently makes a list of cute young actresses. Kate Bosworth and Jessica Alba are busy or not interested or something, so Katie Holmes ends up in his office, and within a couple of weeks, the two of them are making out in public, flashing their ultra-white teeth at the cameras, and declaring their adoration for each other every time anyone comes near them. Tom goes on Oprah and embarrasses himself. They're in love, people! Love!!! He thinks she's an amazing woman. Amazing!!!
Please see my comment above about people in happy relationships not needing to keep proclaiming how happy they are.
Some are hypothesizing that this is somehow a big, misguided publicity stunt directed at promoting the upcoming films "War of the Worlds" and "Batman Begins." I don't really buy that, given how badly it's all been handled. I think, quite simply, that Tom Cruise is a) pretty weird and b) not real bright about dealing with the public, and that now that he's handed the reins of his PR over to his sister and fellow Scientologist, what we're seeing is the "real" Tom. I do think the whole Katie thing is largely for show, that somewhere in his weird little mind the idea germinated that it was time for him to hook up with some adorable piece of industry fluff -- preferably one that couldn't out-act him this time -- and make a big show of how happy he is with her and marry her and maybe have some babies and therefore cement his image as the virile, masculine, wholesome family man with the pretty actress wife again.
You know what this reminds me of? Remember in "Groundhog Day," when Bill Murray first has a good date with Andie MacDowell, and they build a snowman, and then they end up in a snowball fight with some kids and they fall down in the snow together and it's a nice moment? And then he wakes up alone and starting over again the next morning, so that night he tries to do everything the same as the night before, only it's totally artificial and weird and she's freaked out when he wants to build the snowman and he pulls her down in the snow next to him. Well, Tom and Nicole is that first night where it all happens pretty naturally, but Tom and Katie is that second night, where he's trying to recreate it and he thinks he's saying and doing all the same things, but this time, the public is just kind of going "ew" and "what's wrong with them?" and stuff like that. It's pretty sad.
And the scariest thing about it is that Katie seems to be buying into it all -- at the beginning she seemed sort of embarrassed but now she's parroting all the stuff about how happy they are and she's moving in with him and becoming a Scientologist, and, you know -- what? She just met the guy a couple of months ago -- why in the world is she not, like, freaking out and filing a restraining order? Obviously I am not privy their private conversations, but I'd sure like to know what he's saying to her away from the cameras to sell her on all this shit, because wow.
Okay, I've gone on about all of this long enough, and I'm not even going to get started on Tom's asinine comments about Brooke Shields using medication to get over post-partum depression, because if I haven't already stated outright that I think he's a fruitcake, please consider it done. In these next few months I will be trying to rip my eyes away from this car wreck but, as a shameless watcher of celebrities, I cannot make any promises.
I will admit -- I have not been a Tom Cruise fan for a very long time. He lost me during the whole "Top Gun" thing. I went to see that movie with my friends and was like, "huh?" Why did everyone worship that movie? They would show planes flying in the sky and expect you to know which one was which. They killed Goose! And did they even notice that the sparks flying between Tom and Val Kilmer during their homo-erotic "hostile" exchanges generated far more heat than any scene between Tom and his so-called romantic lead, Kelly McGillis? So yeah, whatever. Tom was adorable in "Risky Business," but when he became this huge movie star, that was it for him and me. When I was a senior in high school, a couple of my good friends called to invite me to see "Cocktail" and I just started laughing and told them I'd meet them to get something to eat afterward, because... no.
That being said, I've never actually avoided a movie just because he was in it or anything. He was good in "Born on the Fourth of July" and decent in "Rainman," and when we actually sat through that trainwreck "Eyes Wide Shut" a few years ago, I pretty much thought his performance was the only good thing about it. He's a decent actor, and I don't see many of his movies mainly because they tend to be of the ginormous, action-packed summer blockbuster variety, which doesn't appeal to me a whole lot. But that doesn't mean I dislike him as an actor.
I don't really care for him as a movie star though. I tend to develop an antipathy for anyone who generates a lot of hype, so I definitely started getting really sick of him starting in the late 80s. Then there was his marriage to Nicole Kidman and all the press and the icky "we're on our honeymoon for the rest of our lives" and bleah, spare me. I pretty much always believed the rumors that he was gay -- I mean, they're pretty persistent, you know? An uncle of mine in the entertainment industry was telling us a few years ago that Tom was in love with the mailroom boy at Paramount and had also had a thing with Nicole's brother, and you know, I could buy it. People in normal healthy relationships don't need to proclaim to the world over and over again how happy they are in their marriage, you know?
Then there was the weird break-up and "Nic knows what this is about" (I saw an interview with Nic a year or two later where she said something like "I think I know what it was about now") and immediately he starts dating Penelope Cruz, and no one says a word about how she was his co-star in a movie he made before he and Nic broke up -- what's that about? How come all this attention is focused on Angelina and Brad in the same situation but not on Tom and Penny? Yeah, I don't get it either. Then the two of them go on to have the most boring, non-newsworthy relationship in the history of celebrity journalism, then they break up and no one cares, and then...
Tom evidently makes a list of cute young actresses. Kate Bosworth and Jessica Alba are busy or not interested or something, so Katie Holmes ends up in his office, and within a couple of weeks, the two of them are making out in public, flashing their ultra-white teeth at the cameras, and declaring their adoration for each other every time anyone comes near them. Tom goes on Oprah and embarrasses himself. They're in love, people! Love!!! He thinks she's an amazing woman. Amazing!!!
Please see my comment above about people in happy relationships not needing to keep proclaiming how happy they are.
Some are hypothesizing that this is somehow a big, misguided publicity stunt directed at promoting the upcoming films "War of the Worlds" and "Batman Begins." I don't really buy that, given how badly it's all been handled. I think, quite simply, that Tom Cruise is a) pretty weird and b) not real bright about dealing with the public, and that now that he's handed the reins of his PR over to his sister and fellow Scientologist, what we're seeing is the "real" Tom. I do think the whole Katie thing is largely for show, that somewhere in his weird little mind the idea germinated that it was time for him to hook up with some adorable piece of industry fluff -- preferably one that couldn't out-act him this time -- and make a big show of how happy he is with her and marry her and maybe have some babies and therefore cement his image as the virile, masculine, wholesome family man with the pretty actress wife again.
You know what this reminds me of? Remember in "Groundhog Day," when Bill Murray first has a good date with Andie MacDowell, and they build a snowman, and then they end up in a snowball fight with some kids and they fall down in the snow together and it's a nice moment? And then he wakes up alone and starting over again the next morning, so that night he tries to do everything the same as the night before, only it's totally artificial and weird and she's freaked out when he wants to build the snowman and he pulls her down in the snow next to him. Well, Tom and Nicole is that first night where it all happens pretty naturally, but Tom and Katie is that second night, where he's trying to recreate it and he thinks he's saying and doing all the same things, but this time, the public is just kind of going "ew" and "what's wrong with them?" and stuff like that. It's pretty sad.
And the scariest thing about it is that Katie seems to be buying into it all -- at the beginning she seemed sort of embarrassed but now she's parroting all the stuff about how happy they are and she's moving in with him and becoming a Scientologist, and, you know -- what? She just met the guy a couple of months ago -- why in the world is she not, like, freaking out and filing a restraining order? Obviously I am not privy their private conversations, but I'd sure like to know what he's saying to her away from the cameras to sell her on all this shit, because wow.
Okay, I've gone on about all of this long enough, and I'm not even going to get started on Tom's asinine comments about Brooke Shields using medication to get over post-partum depression, because if I haven't already stated outright that I think he's a fruitcake, please consider it done. In these next few months I will be trying to rip my eyes away from this car wreck but, as a shameless watcher of celebrities, I cannot make any promises.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
50 Book Challenge: True Crime and Mystery
A few months back, I complained that the last couple of true crime books I'd read were duds. Not so the last one I picked up, House of Secrets. It was definitely a page-turner -- each time I read it, I could hardly put it down, and I pretty much blew through it in just a few days.
When I look at true crime books and try to figure out what I want to read, I have some basic guidelines. First of all, I'm pretty sure that half the books on the shelf in the True Crime section of any bookstore at any particular time are about men who kill their wives. I've read a lot of those, and they can be facinating, but unless the description on the book alludes to some kind of strange twist or it's written by one of a handful of authors whose books I always read, I usually avoid those. It's getting to be the same with books about women who kill their husbands -- there are fewer of them, but I've read a number of them, and after a while, the whole "black widow" thing gets a little old. I am also not big on books about serial killers, or the ones about well-known cases. I might make an exception if I like the author -- I am looking forward to Ann Rule's new book on the Green River Killer -- but not always. I think Vincent Bugliosi is awesome, but I am not interested in reading anything about the O.J. Simpson case, even Bugliosi's book, Outrage.
House of Secrets falls into the "twisted family" category, and I usually relish those, though they are very disturbing. In this one, you have a family with 12 kids who kind of keep to themselves. Naturally, it turns out that dad rules the family like a cult-leader and subjects the kids to horrifying physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Mom says she is a victim too, and the kids say that he beats her up sometimes but she also seems to participate in Dad's abuse of them pretty willingly. The kids are beaten regularly, kept under lock and key, and encouraged to tattle on each other for any little infraction. Sons are sodomized, daughters are raped, and two of them even bear their father's children. Finally, one daughter steps forward and starts talking to social services, but even though the minor kids are removed from the home and Dad is arrested, things get fouled up, the parents manage to take off to another state with most of the kids, and by the time they are arrested, their baby grandson and son-in-law have been murdered. Though he didn't physically participate in either murder, Dad is convicted in the killing of the son-in-law and now sits on Death Row in Florida. But he was never charged for any of the hundreds of crimes of abuse he committed against any of his 12 children. A few of the older ones spent time in prison for crimes they committed at his behest, while the others tried to pull their lives together. The minors had their names changed and were adopted by other families. Nearly all of them suffered from debilitating emotional and mental illness after finally escaping their father's clutches.
After that doozy of a book, it was nice to read something light. I'd seen the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" book and sequels but hadn't been overly interested in reading them. I guess the work "Ladies" threw me off and I was thinking it was going to be some kind of "Ya-ya" type with about female bonding. Instead, there is only the one lady, Mma Precious Ramotswe, a cheerful roly poly woman who opens her own detective agency after her father dies. She is the only female detective in her beloved country of Botswana, and she solves mysteries great and small with cleverness and good humor. I particularly enjoyed the part where a woman comes to her wanting proof that her husband is cheating on her, and Mma Ramotswe lures the wayward husband to her home and takes of picture of him kissing her -- not exactly what the angry wife had in mind. Anyway, very cute, and I don't know how much of a discussion the book will generate, but I will definitely pick up the others in the series next time I want read something fun and familiar.
When I look at true crime books and try to figure out what I want to read, I have some basic guidelines. First of all, I'm pretty sure that half the books on the shelf in the True Crime section of any bookstore at any particular time are about men who kill their wives. I've read a lot of those, and they can be facinating, but unless the description on the book alludes to some kind of strange twist or it's written by one of a handful of authors whose books I always read, I usually avoid those. It's getting to be the same with books about women who kill their husbands -- there are fewer of them, but I've read a number of them, and after a while, the whole "black widow" thing gets a little old. I am also not big on books about serial killers, or the ones about well-known cases. I might make an exception if I like the author -- I am looking forward to Ann Rule's new book on the Green River Killer -- but not always. I think Vincent Bugliosi is awesome, but I am not interested in reading anything about the O.J. Simpson case, even Bugliosi's book, Outrage.
House of Secrets falls into the "twisted family" category, and I usually relish those, though they are very disturbing. In this one, you have a family with 12 kids who kind of keep to themselves. Naturally, it turns out that dad rules the family like a cult-leader and subjects the kids to horrifying physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Mom says she is a victim too, and the kids say that he beats her up sometimes but she also seems to participate in Dad's abuse of them pretty willingly. The kids are beaten regularly, kept under lock and key, and encouraged to tattle on each other for any little infraction. Sons are sodomized, daughters are raped, and two of them even bear their father's children. Finally, one daughter steps forward and starts talking to social services, but even though the minor kids are removed from the home and Dad is arrested, things get fouled up, the parents manage to take off to another state with most of the kids, and by the time they are arrested, their baby grandson and son-in-law have been murdered. Though he didn't physically participate in either murder, Dad is convicted in the killing of the son-in-law and now sits on Death Row in Florida. But he was never charged for any of the hundreds of crimes of abuse he committed against any of his 12 children. A few of the older ones spent time in prison for crimes they committed at his behest, while the others tried to pull their lives together. The minors had their names changed and were adopted by other families. Nearly all of them suffered from debilitating emotional and mental illness after finally escaping their father's clutches.
After that doozy of a book, it was nice to read something light. I'd seen the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" book and sequels but hadn't been overly interested in reading them. I guess the work "Ladies" threw me off and I was thinking it was going to be some kind of "Ya-ya" type with about female bonding. Instead, there is only the one lady, Mma Precious Ramotswe, a cheerful roly poly woman who opens her own detective agency after her father dies. She is the only female detective in her beloved country of Botswana, and she solves mysteries great and small with cleverness and good humor. I particularly enjoyed the part where a woman comes to her wanting proof that her husband is cheating on her, and Mma Ramotswe lures the wayward husband to her home and takes of picture of him kissing her -- not exactly what the angry wife had in mind. Anyway, very cute, and I don't know how much of a discussion the book will generate, but I will definitely pick up the others in the series next time I want read something fun and familiar.
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