Month: January 2010

Middle of the night story

Sometimes when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night I tell myself stories. I sort of liked how this one started, but will never actually finish it, so if you would like to make a story out of it, you may.

There once was an Amazon warrior. The woman in question didn’t realize she was an Amazon, there not being a huge demand for warriors, much less female warriors in modern American life, but she had in inkling. Though she was short (those old myths always exaggerate everything) she was strong and fierce and while not stunningly beautiful she had a nice smile and breasts small enough that they wouldn’t get in the way of a bowstring….

5 years of standard diary

In late 2004, I had lost interest in daily writing of my journal, which I had done pretty regularly since seventh grade. I didn’t miss daily journaling–my life seemed to have calmed down enough that I didn’t have to process so many things–but I did find myself thinking, “How did I spend last Memorial Day?” and “Did I make rolls last year for Thanksgiving?” I also needed a place to keep track of books read and movies watched.

I needed something to record daily life on a regular basis, but not in an excessive manner. I thought instantly of “My Dairy.” My Dairy was a small, red-bound book with a lock and a key and when you opened it, had a page for each day of the year. Each page was further divided into five sections of about four lines each, so that you could note things daily for five years. Small, compact, perfect. Exactly what I needed.

Could I find such thing? Nope. I found a few five-year diaries. But they weren’t quite right in some way or other. I didn’t really need a lock and key, or the years were already entered into the dairy pages, so that I would have to start a dairy part-way through its existence. None of them quite worked for me.

So, like any woman raised on a steady diet of books set on the frontier filled with spunky, make-do, clever women, I made my own five year dairy. I started by purchasing this standard dairy from an office supply store.
Before I bought it, I counted all the lines for each day to make sure that there were enough for five lines per day per year. There were. Then I simply wrote in the year, an initial for the day and drew a line under that. Voila! Five year diary.


After I finished the triathlon, I kept my race bib as a marker. It turns out race bibs make great markers. Bright, made of some plastic paper that doesn’t tear, just the right size.

The standard diary had extra pages which gave me ample room to keep track of books and movies. Most of the pre-made 5-year diaries didn’t have any extra pages.
I didn’t write in it every day, but most days. Friday and Saturday are notorious for not having anything written. Sometimes, if I miss a few days, I’ll jot a sentence or two as to what was going on. The fun really starts after the first year, when you can compare and contrast what was going on one (or two, three or four) year(s) previous. It’s also fun because you can email your friends with things like: Did you know that two years and three days ago we were celebrating your un-bachlorette party? Your friends will be astonished and amazed at your powers of memory.

I’m so happy with how this turned out, I’ve gotten myself another standard diary for 2010 and will begin the process over again. Look for another post at the beginning of 2015.

I’m too lazy to make my own “top movies of the decade”

So I’m just going to talk about Shawn Levy’s list.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/madaboutmovies/2010/01/the_best_of_the_naughts_top_fi.html

First off, Shawn Levy has seen 2463 movies in the past decade! Yikes! I like movies, but I don’t think I could hack being a movie critic.

Okay, he starts with Lord of the Rings, which I liked, okay, especially for someone who has never been able to read the books, but that third movie was so darn long that it sort of dragged down the whole trilogy. But then, his next pick is Far from Heaven, which was a movie I loved, not just for the costumes, which were fabulous–so many fantastic coats alone–but for the excellent acting brought by all parts. This movie is totally overlooked, and I’m guessing many men didn’t see it, but I loved it and I love him for putting it second in the decade.

Other things I love in his top ten:

The Lives of Others. Because then you get to discuss the directing and say the director’s name, Floren Henckel von Donnersmark, which is totally fun to say. Plus: most of the movie is a guy listening through headphones. Could have been incredibly boring, but instead wonderfully gripping.

Memento. Yes! It gave me a headache I was concentrating so hard!

Angels in America. Mormons! Angels! Al Pacino portraying an evil man! Emma Thompson! Meryl Streep in the dowdiest haircut ever! Heartbreaking and fantastic all at once.

Disagreement: Waking Life. Interesting in concept, but I was bored.

Still to see: The Best of Youth, The Motorcycle Diaries.

Movies 11-20:
We are in agreement: An Education. Perfect, just as he says. Once and Before Sunset. Both movies that say so much in a limited amount of time. Before Sunset has the distinction of being one of the happiest surprises in my adult life. Really! The Incredibles. An incredibly funny film that also is animated.

The rest of 11-20 I’ve not seen.

21-25: No Country for Old Men. Mesmerizing. So good I had a random conversation with a stranger at a bus stop.

The rest of the 25:
Amelie. Yep. Delightful.
Billy Elliot. Also set in Europe and delightful.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? Incredibly fun to watch. Sort of a cackling-with-delight movie. This was also the movie where I realized George Clooney isn’t afraid to make himself funny looking.
The Queen. Tension filled, in an extremely low-key way.
The Royal Tennenbaums. I hate to think this might be Wes Anderson at his greatest, but it might be.
Shaun of the Dead. Funny, scary and gives hope to all the sad-sacks.

Three sentence movie reviews–The French Lieutenant’s Woman


And why should this movie be any different than those watched over Winter Break? It was fine, a bit engrossing in parts, and ultimately I’m most interested to see if the book cuts back and forth between the present and the movie just like this movie did. Not the worst way to spend two hours and four minutes, but I’ve had better.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1981/french_lieutenants_woman.html

Three sentence movie reviews–The Namesake.


Another not-so-captivating movie watched over Winter Break. Everything was fine in this movie: the story, the characters, the color scheme. I think scenes from this movie will stick with me for years, but overall, it was not a super memorable movie.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2006/namesake.html

Three sentence movie reviews–Some Kind of Wonderful

I hadn’t seen this since I was 13 or so, and watching it at 35, I think I got a lot more out of it from my adult perspective than my early adolescent one. Classic lines abound in this film (Well, I like art, I work in a gas station, my best friend is a tomboy. These things don’t fly too well in the American high school…) and it is always interesting to see the lack of adults in a John Hughes world. Sometimes what you think you want isn’t what you actually want.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1987/some_kind_of_wonderful.html

Resolution 2010.

I’ve read, and observed in my own life, that the interest in sewing skips a generation. My grandmother was an excellent seamstress. My mother tried, but I can still picture her exhaling sharply as she set out to rip another mis-sewn seam. She once made me a pair of pants for Christmas. Suspecting that something wasn’t right, we agreed that I would wear a blindfold and try them on. She laughed when they didn’t fit, and I took off my blindfold and laughed too.

My sewing talents don’t approach my grandmothers, and I’m in a “not sewing” holding pattern, but my homemaking gene is strong.

Similarly, my resolutions seem to go in an every-other-year success rate. In 2008, I resolved to write a letter per day and before burning out completely in late November, pretty much kept to that. Last year, I pledged to stop eating while standing. On the surface, a much easier task to fulfill, but I failed miserably at it.

With the every other year success rate, this year looks good for resolutions. At the New Year’s Eve party I attended last night my resolution was greeted with raspberries, general jeers and calls of “boring!” But I’m pretty excited about it.

Resolved: in 2010, I will spend 15 minutes per day working at my desk. In priority order my tasks will be: checkbooks, in box, blogs.

All three of those things are not really in my control. My checkbooks/money management system is admittedly a labyrinth process that could perhaps be streamlined. But I like the way I have set up its many processes, and checks and balances. When it is caught up, it gives me a sense of security.

It is rarely caught up. When I attack the to-do list monthly, it takes two or three hours and causes much shallow breathing and sighing. I also have a vague sense of unease throughout the month that I could bounce a check at any time. When I neglect the money management for more than a couple months, it takes the better part of a day to dig myself out. After the move, I didn’t catch things up for about six months and spent eight hours setting things right. A bit of daily attention would prevent this, and the resolution is designed to do just that.

My inbox is a sorry mess. I caught a reference to it in a previous blog post mentioning something about it’s geologic layers. I think I had it down to one object a few Christmases ago, but that was it. I would love to clear out that sucker, and now that my checkbooks are caught up, and presumably easy to maintain, I aim to do just that.
And oh, the blogs. In my mind, I work on them all the time. One of my friends lists my blog on her site. The listing also notes the last posting. I remember the first time I saw that my last posting on the list was three or four months old. I was surprised, then realized that just because I think about the blog daily, doesn’t mean that things are published. The thing I didn’t realize is that there are so many steps. Taking pictures, prepping pictures, making the blog post, writing it, letting it rest, editing it, editing it again, actually posting it. And I have so many damn interests. All those steps just don’t get done very often. It’s disheartening.

I don’t expect the blogs to get much better any time soon, for right now the money and the inbox promise to eat up that fifteen minutes. But perhaps the blog will move along a bit.

As for implementation, I have printed up calendars for the year and posted them on the door to the office. Each day I do my fifteen minutes, I will make a check mark of some kind on the day. I plan to prioritize this task and do it as soon as I come home from work, or first thing in the morning on non-work days.

Wish me luck.

Poem for December: Now Winter Nights Enlarge.

Now Winter Nights Enlarge
Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-turned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

After the glum “I hate winter” poem of November, I chose this poem because it captures what I like about winter. The lines “Let now, the chimney’s blaze/and cups o’erflow with wine” is delightful.

Like November’s poem, the old-fashioned language made this a bit tricky to memorize, but it wasn’t very difficult.

Thank you, John Hughes.

His name hasn’t come up in the “Goodbye Dead Famous People” lists of 2009–at least not the one’s I’ve seen. Checking IMDB, it’s not hard to see why. Looking over the list of movies Hughes wrote from 1991 onward, tells us that an entire generation has grown up only knowing him as the writer of (sigh with me, Gen-Xers) Dennis the Menace, Beethoven’s 4th, Baby’s Day Out and Home Alone 3. But let’s roll back a screen or two. Scrolling over the movies Hughes wrote in the 1980’s is a treasure trove of lifetime movie highlights.

Mr. Mom. (1983) I wasn’t even ten, yet my entire family watched and enjoyed this movie. Among other things, this movie opened my eyes to the idea that one shouldn’t assume that the husband is going to get a new job before the wife does, and an iron makes an excellent instrument for warming up cold grilled cheese sandwiches.

Vacation. (1983) My family didn’t watch this movie until 1988, after we spent a month driving across the country and back in a station wagon, but oh we did laugh. Classic scenes, classic lines, classic story.
Sixteen Candles. (1984) A preview of what it would be like to be a teenager, though I knew even then my teenage years would be a lot more of Joan Cusack, and a lot less of Molly Ringwald.

The Breakfast Club. (1985) Lori Tollinger’s mother came downstairs at just the wrong moment, leaving me with an awkward memory of the most dramatic scene. This movie also fed my bad boy fixation and I worried for years that my hair would unknowingly be as dandruffy as Ali Sheedy’s. Now, thanks to psoriasis, it is, though my adult self handles that better than my teenage self ever would have.

Pretty in Pink. (1986) Girls who can sew do get the guy. Also Annie Potts as the coolest small business owner ever.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (1986) Forshadowed my teenage years: upon viewing with my mother and brother I grew annoyed that my mother kept saying, “Principals aren’t really like that,” “Parents aren’t really like that,” “That isn’t even possible.” Being an adult and not a pre-adolecent like me she missed the point. This is the perfect movie about what we all wish adolescence was like. Also includes one of the most beautifully filmed visits to an art museum ever. And Charlie Sheen as a bad boy. Which it turns out he really is. Hughes could have stopped here, with this movie, he really could have. But he continues.
Some Kind of Wonderful. (1987) This movie will forever remind me of Lori Tollinger. Captures the delecate negotiation between parents and children. What happens when their dreams are different? Also a reminder that getting the girl isn’t the point, sometimes.

Uncle Buck. (1989) Aside from starring the funniest fat man ever, John Candy, it also includes the best illustration of why a toothpick is not the best prop when trying to make a good impression on a girl. I saw this the first week of school my ninth grade year, on a school night and it will always represent that freedom of adolescence, even if I can’t really recall much of the plot.

Home Alone. (1990) I saw it. You saw it. Heck, everyone saw it. The irony of John Hughes in my life was that by the time I had actually caught up to the age of his characters in his best movies, he started writing movies for children the age I was when I started watching his movies about teenagers. But Kevin McCallister’s fight against burglars will forever be remembered by millions of Americans.

And thus ends my relationship with John Hughes. He went on to write movies that I consider really awful, though I’ve not seen most of them. I went on to face my high school years without movies about teenagers. But what he did write about teenagers before I came of age, I found to be true to my experiences. When I watch John Hughes movies, I’m usually reminded of the elementary school me who saw those films and tried to figure out what being a teenager would be like. He offered a portal into a world I hadn’t experienced yet, and many of his observations turned out to be true to my experience.

I like to think that, had he not died this year, he would have turned some corner and begin writing movies that mattered again. But maybe not. Maybe his movies that mattered only came at a certain time in his life. That would have been okay too. They were enough.