A Likely Story

So I don’t know about you, but I am an admitted Craigslist junkie. Since Jonah was a wee thing, Craigslist has helped me clothe him, furnish our home and even helped me get a job!  So, even when I have nothing to buy or sell, I do cruise the site sometimes, you know, for fun. Yikes.

My favorite category to visit is the baby & kids section. I’ve gotten into a bad habit of getting sucked into the craigslist drama.  “Drama?” you ask.  Oh yeah – craigslist style. First there are the women (for the majority of posters/browsers in the kids&baby section are women) who love to find ads to correct and/or make fun of. Sure, many, many people who post are sorely lacking in grammar and spelling skills, but really?  Who died and made you chief of Craigslist proofreading?  I mean, if you’re going to proofread, at least get paid for it!

Then there are people who ask for free items/donations and the skeptics who publicly accuse them of asking for free items and then turning a profit on said items.  These are VERY dramatic and usually have tons of responses both for and against the accused.  The accused almost never responds but goes on their merry way, probably oblivious, to the drama they leave in their wake.

Oh, some people just like to make fun of others’ posts. Like a lady who posted several items separately and made sure to emphasize that the price was FIRM on each item.  She then posted her frustration with no one responding to her ads to which a mischievous person publicly responded by telling the woman what a doofus she was – oh and her “location” was LMAO.  Which really kid of had me LMBO (Yes, I kiss my mama with this mouth, thank you!)

The last catergory of craigslist drama are posts declaring the horrors of lead in toys, new laws concerning consignment items, formula ingrediants, etc. While I am sure these people mean well, they are usually always criticized, critiqued or corrected.

It’s probably the proofreading lady.

My caffiene deprived brain hurts, so here are some smatterings of what’s roaming around in there – enjoy!

*I am strangely fascinated with the Bing commercials I’ve been seeing lately, you know, the ones where people go off on random tangents/descriptions in the middle of conversations. So, I thought I’d try it.  It is prettier than Google and does seem to generate more relevant results.  I think I’ve been successfully marketed to.

*We watched Madea Goes to Jail the other night.  I am a Tyler Perry fan. I loved Diary of a Mad, Black Woman. Madea did not dissappoint this time either.  Perry has a gift for mixing comedy with drama. Also, Madea arguing with Dr. Phil about her anger issues was hil-a-rious.

*Our weather has been unseasonably awesome.  We are usually all withering by now, the grass a lovely shade of yellow, the people all noticably tired.  Not so these past couple of weeks.  It’s been quite lovely only inching into the low 90s. I’m teetering between the hope of a summer than meerly eeks its way out into a nice, cool fall and fear of a searing August. 

*Lyla is now not only chubby, she’s balding. Her beautiful black hair is falling out.  I keep trying to brush it into a backwards combover, but it’s not working. I got all paranoid and went to WebMd and the Dr. Sears website to make sure she didn’t have a balding disease. Nope. Here’s to hoping she’ll be sprouting some lovely locks soon.  Oh, and I am positive she’s teething.  The drool. Is gross. Really, really gross. I think I need to wear a bib too.  She tries to chew on everything in sight, including my face!

*Okay so after my little Harry Potter rant, I did a Bing search on movies based on books and found a couple of awesome websites with comprehensive lists of books who have movies based on them. See here and here.  In the process, I realized that I have a whole new reading list!  Yay! Here’s what I plan to tackle:

*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – F. Scott Fitzgerald

*Beaches – Iris Rainer Dart

*Big Fish: A Novel of Mystic Proportions - Daniel Wallace

*The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyce

*The Father of the Bride – Edward Streeter

*Funny Farm – Jay Cronley

*Pay It Forward – Catherine Ryan Hyde

*The Princess Bride – William Goldman

Watch out library, here I come!

I’m a little bummed today. But let me begin at the beginning . . . last night I finally used some well-hoarded birthday money to treat Jason and I to a movie date to see the highly-anticipated Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I am in no way ashamed to say that I am a fan of the books, I own the other movies.  I think Rowling is an excellent story teller and writer.

So, I get really jazzed each time another movie comes out, and I was especially excited to see this one which is a little odd because this was not my favorite book. It is very long and very detailed, even a bit confusing at times, but nonetheless still great.  It does an excellent job of preparing the reader for the end of the series in that many things that didn’t necessarily make sense in the HBP make sense in Deathly Hallows.

Soooo . . . we got there after dropping the kiddos off with a friend just in the nick of time.  We had to sit up front – it was packed.  On a Sunday afternoon! From the opening scene I was already confused.  Sure it had been a few years since I read the book, but surely I would remember it.  What I was seeing was not in the book, I was sure of it. From there I sat in an awkward balance of intrigue, delight, confusion and disappointment. I must give them props for giving their audience a wild ride!

The movie was exciting and the cinematography well done, but the entire time I had a nagging feeling that big, important things were missing. So much so that I will be re-reading the book. To my annoyance, the romantic antics of the now mature characters overshadowed the heart of the novel and the gist of the plot. I guess I am not much for romantic sub-plots.

The thing is, I liked the movie, but I didn’t love it like I wanted to. It brought back memories of Hollywood’s other most recent novel-maiming Prince Caspian from the Chronicles of Narnia. Prince Caspian was, in my humble opinion, shredded to somewhat recognizable bits and pieced back together around a romantic sub-plot that didn’t exist.  Oh and then there’s Les Miserables (starring Claire Danes, Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman) which is, to me, a big pile of poo as they totally missed the point of an amazing novel by completely cutting one of the main characters.

A friend wisely said today that I have to accept the movies apart from the books, and I know she’s right.  It just bugs me.

So to end on a positive note, here are a few movies which managed to stay true to the books they came from:

The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

Because of Winn Dixie (Katie DiCamillo)

Chocolat (Joanne Harris)

Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

Fried Green Tomatoes (Fannie Flagg)

The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)

Matilda (Roald Dahl)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

AND one that surprised me the most many years ago . . . Ten Things I Hate About You based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

I think I might have mentioned in some other posts that I like . . . er, love garage sales.  Yes, I admit it, I do.  Part of it really is a way to satisfy my nosiness.  So when Jonah goes nosing through my things for no apparent reason or he gets the “Curious George” award at school, I don’t have to ask – I know good and well that he inherited this from his mother.  Sorry, buddy.

So we’re having our own sale this Saturday. As usual, it’s a lot more work than I bargained for.  It has meant many nights of dragging heavy boxes from the stifling heat of the garage (Hello 106!) to the living room, going through impossibly large bags of clothing and basically ransacking my home for anything we no longer need. In the midst of all this, Jason and I have had some fun.  In our almost 8 years of married life we’ve had a few garage sales, and we inevitably always come across some funny/neat things as we sift through the junk.

For example, I found a stack of the cards we got at our wedding (yes, I keep greeting cards!).  I sat there on the dining room floor and smiled as I read our friends’ and family’s well-wishes.  I also found a Manila folder full of letters I received while on a 10 week missions trip to New England in 1999.  I found the first anniversary card I gave to Jason, notes from one of my composition theory classes at USAO and my journal from Educational Psychology. 

While I am happy to be rid of the cruddy old fry-daddy my mom made us take home on our last visit, I cannot part with these written portions of our history.  I am excited that someday Lyla and Jonah can look through our old notes and journals to get a glimpse of us in our younger years, to see our hopes and ideals jotted down in composition notebooks and our love expressed in witty Hallmark cards.

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

It’s hard to believe that the summer is nearly half over.  I remember when they seemed to stretch on into eternity with the new school year just peeking over a distant horizon. Now, it’s just months of heat, vacations and swimming pools, oh and enormous electric bills, but thank ya Jesus for the A/C!

It seems crazy to me that just 2 weeks ago we were taking Lyla to the hospital, that my heart seemed about to break and then God just scooped us right up and carried us through it.  I have to tell you the change in our little girl is almost staggering. It brings me joy and brings on an inevitable wave of guilt every time she flashes her toothless grin.  I just wonder how long she was hungry for?  If I could have realized sooner than I did that she wasn’t getting what she needed.  And I still feel sad that for some odd reason, what I had just wasn’t enough. But there she goes smiling like crazy again and all that guilt gets washed away.

I told a friend tonight that it is absolutely wonderful to hear other people comment on what a happy baby Lyla is. The girl smiles at anyone and everyone, especially other kids.  I suspect she thinks that other children are here solely for her entertainment since Jonah is a constant sideshow.

I walked into their bedroom tonight and just watched them sleep.  Watching a young child sleep is just about the sweetest thing in the world.  They sleep so peacefully without worries, without anxiety, just pure rest. I just look at the two of them and I am filled to the brim with joy.

 I never really had aspirations to be a mom when I was little.  When I got to be a teenager and then in college, I wanted to get married but kids never really crossed my mind. People always ask if my kids were planned or not.  Sure, they were planned . . .  just not by me!

So I am off to bed now to get a little rest before baby girl wakes up for her midnight meal. As groggy as I am sure to be, I want to cherish these moments because I look at Jonah who is almost 5 now and I know all too well how quickly time goes by.

I’m not an avid Oprah watcher. I’ve got my reasons – she’s just not my cup of tea anymore, yet here I am on a Monday afternoon fixated while I feed Lyla her umpteenth bottle for the day. (One a side note, my girl has a serious appetite, and I’m lovin’ it.)

Oprah’s sitting, talking to the camera alone. She says, “I cannot believe I am here still talking about my weight. I cannot believe it.” Yeah, I get that. I feel that way too. She talks about her anger with herself, her embarrassment, her excuses . . . I sigh. Yeah, I feel her there too. She talks about abusing food, something I am ALL too familiar with and about overeating often meaning that you are hungry for something else. She says she’s hungry for balance. It got me thinking. What am I hungry for?

For one, I am hungry for more balance too. My life feels so fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants lately. Yeah, yeah I just had a baby . . . no, I had a baby 3 months ago. Yes, we’ve had some issues with her eating which was quite stressful, but. . . BUT – it’s an excuse. I just don’t want to excuse my lack of motivation to exercise my tired, out of shape self. I know what to do; I just don’t seem to have the energy to do it.

I’m going to be in my baby sister’s wedding in January. She emailed me a picture of the dress, and I wanted to crawl under a rock. It’s not fat girl friendly. All the other bridesmaids including my other younger sister are thin. They’ll look great, and then there will be me. I just don’t know that I’ll be there by January. Lord, help me!

Which brings me to what I think . . . no, what I know I’m hungry for if I’m being real. I’m hungry for a more satisfying relationship with God, the sustainer, the all sufficient One. It’s not His fault things are the way they are between us. I know it’s mine. I want more than just Sunday mornings where my heart seems to want to jump out of my chest when I hear God’ word. Thanks to ladies like Kay Arthur and Beth Moore, I got hooked on the mystery and majesty of His Word some time ago. That’s not something you can just let go and forget about. I got spoiled. It’s like when you taste real macaroni and cheese (I know, I know – a food analogy, bear with me!) and then the box stuff. The box stuff is just plain gross compared to the real thing. It’s like that for me when I try to fill my God-shaped hole with other stuff – namely food. It’s just gross.

So here I am, Oprah, still talking about my weight too. I’ve got a long way to go still – balance to find, roads to run and grace to fall back on. Steady on.

 I’ve been a fan of Michael Jackson’s music as long as I can remember. His songs were a large part of the soundtrack of my childhood.  I enjoyed having pretty young parents who listened to popular music all the time.  Whether in the car or in the house, a radio was always on.  My mom loves to tell stories of me, at age 4, standing on the seat of an old organ we had singing “Walking on Sunshine” while it played on MTV or me singing “Super Fweak” in the car (yeah, nice choice on that one! lol) Inevitably, at the ripe old age of 5, my favorites were Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper. I still have my Thriller t-shirt!

So, I was really saddened to hear of his passing last week. It was very surreal.  I admit, I haven’t paid much attention to MJ these past few years.  We got his last album (Invincible) and it was okay. But I was and always will be a fan of his earlier music.  He really was a genius and a pioneer with an incredible gift. And of course he was also a wounded soul whose pain was lived out in front of the entire world.  I imagine that had to have contributed to his untimely passing.

I got to thinking of my favorite Michael Jackson memory, and I immediately thought of my 11th birthday. My sister, Heather and I both have June birthdays, only 3 days apart.  We usually always shared birthday parties, and the year I turned 11 and she turned 8, mom and dad were crazy enough to allos us to have a joint slumber party.

I sort of cringe imagining the slumber parties in my future as they always seems to go down the same path.  Sure it always starts out fun, but inevitably ends in someone crying, someone begging to go home, someone tattling, or an angry, tired parent bellowing at the gaggle of giggling girls to be quiet! Yeah, that’s pretty much how it went that night too.  But it was still the coolest slumber party because mom got the new Moonwalker video for us to watch.  For those who don’t remember, Moonwalker was as Michael Jackson film with concert footage and a series of mini-movies, including a kids version of Bad. And to us, it was Bad!  We loved it!  I wonder how dorky I would think it was if I watched it now. Still, it made my 11th one of the best birthdays ever.

So, goodbye Mr. Jackson.  I truly hope you do rest in peace. After all of the hullabaloo dies down, I hope you’ll be remembered and celebrated not for your eccentricities, spending habits or legal drama but for your music and charity work.