Funny Saturday

Once again, Rowan Atkinson:

 

Babies

One of my friends and co-workers had her baby today.

I have nothing else to post about except that, because, well, it takes up a lot of time staring at newborn baby pictures, oooh-ing and ahhh-ing, smiling at everyone at work, trading stories of when we had our babies, and just basically being happy for her and her husband.

Congratulations Alisha and Greg and new baby Aiden!!

Head case/head cold

What is it about getting a head cold that makes you feel so foggy and horrible??

Sheesh.  I haven’t been sick in so long (knock on wood) so I forget how grouchy, bitchy, whiny I am when I do get sick.

I have a head cold right now.  With a bit of a cough.  It’s knocking me flat on my ass in a way that I can’t remember with previous colds.  My head hurts and feels compressed, I can’t concentrate, I’m talking WAY too fast, my eyes keep watering up and I go back and forth between being too cold and sweating.

I stayed home yesterday and spent a much needed day in bed trying to let my body recover, and because every single thing I did, even walking up or down my stairs, completely winded me and made me super tired.  I didn’t want to miss anymore work though, so today I loaded myself up on the buckley’s cold medication and came in.

I’m not sneezing, or coughing (at least not nearly as much) or sniffling, but I can feel it there, lurking behind my nose and eyes, ready to lay me out again the second these pill wear off.

Damn you, spring time cold, robbing me of enjoying the immensely beautiful weather we finally have.

Bugger.

“That’s my childhood in that box!”

It happened this weekend.

I’ve been slowly doing a purge of the house.  You know, going into boxes, drawers, closets, on the backs of shelves that I haven’t touched in so long I’d forgotten what they contained and getting rid of anything and everything that is no longer needed or used.

It’s interesting, I had no idea what a pack-rat I am.  But, one room at a time, my place is starting to look quite lovely.  Dare I say even organised.

This weekend it was the dining room, which, up until this weekend, had been the ‘little living room’.  We have two rooms that are side by side that we keep switching up as living area/dining area and this room was about to make the switch again. So, up until this weekend it contained an old couch and chair that were constantly covered with laundry, coats, a basket of never sorted socks, and miscellaneous stuff from the house.  It also had two book shelves piled full of books.

I knew that in order to move big things like furniture around, I’d have to get rid of the smaller pieces of furniture first, which meant the book shelves would have to come out.  Which meant, they’d have to be emptied.

Now, I will preface the rest of this story by telling you a few things:

1. When I was a newly wed, before I moved out the first time (and slightly subsequently through the next five years) I ransacked my parent’s bookshelves at home for all the books I had loved as a kid and packed them with my stuff to move out with me.

2. There are about 10 book shelves in my house and each and every one of them is not only full, but bursting with books.  That’s not really related to the story, per se, it’s just a really cool fun fact.

3. Some of those books are now falling apart and now that my kids are all teenagers except for the youngest (who is 11) no one really ever reads those old books anymore.  They’ve probably forgotten we even had them.

Anyway, there I was, sitting on the floor of the little living room – soon to be new dining room, pulling books off the shelves and making piles.  One for keep, one for donate, and one to give to my sister for her little daughter, nearly a year old already.

Now, my kids are greatly skilled at avoiding me when I’m doing anything that looks like work.  Oh sure, they would talk to me every so often, enough so that I wouldn’t start to seek them out I’m sure, but they were not interested in getting involved in a job that looked tedious, dirty and time consuming.

Until.

I pulled one of the books off the shelve and made a sound.  Apparently it was kind of like a sad, exclamatory type of “oh”.  This got their attention.  I came into the main living room where they were very seriously busy at playing on the wii (apparently, they were bonding and this is important because I always lecture them on getting along) and showed them the book in my hands.

Yummy, yummy, GULP.

It’s a pop-up book about animals eating one another, which sounds actually kind of morbid when I type it out, but it’s sort of an homage to ‘the old lady who swallowed a fly’ and they had loved it as kids.

Game controllers flung aside, they realized what I was doing and all of a sudden, I was the most interesting person in the room.

Jillian Jiggs, Berenstain Bears, Robert Munsch, The Boy with the Drum, The Queen who Stole the Sky, Where the Wild Things Are, Sleeping Dragons all Around.  They came off the shelves and kids exclaimed and re-read and got excited.  It was kind of awesome to see, actually.  They argued with me that I should never get rid of them, but, I reasoned, until today, those books had barely been touched since we first moved to our house five years ago.  And, wouldn’t it be nice for them to let their cousin have some of the same literary experiences that they had and obviously remembered so fondly?

They agreed, but with slightly sad faces.  My oldest daughter, looking down at a box destined for my sister said with a frown, ‘my whole childhood is in that box’.

It wasn’t only the kids who had a moment looking at all the memories bound into colourful pages that day.  I could almost feel the weight of their very much younger selves curled up on my lap, hair smelling of shampoo, pajamas mix-matched and soft from the dryer.  I could actually picture their faces, 5, 10, even 15 years ago as they pulled their favourites down from the shelves and begged me to read it just one more time, mommy.

I don’t feel bad, giving them away though.  I’m sure my other two sisters will have a few words about why now, and why not to them…and I don’t really have an answer.  Maybe it’s just because it’s time.  Maybe it’s because the sister they are going to is the one who just had her first baby and my other two sisters have more than one child and already have their own little libraries built up.  I have no doubt some sisterly book sharing will occur.  I also have no doubt that some day when my kids are starting families of their own, they will scour book stores for the favourites they remember, search every used book sale, call their Aunt over and over requesting a return of the volumes they loved so that they can in turn, share them with their own kids.  Just as I did.

It’s hard, when you know, not just think fleetingly, that certain parts of your parenting job are over, that your kids have reached certain milestones.  I know my job is not finished, nor will it ever really be, but they don’t need me the way they once did.  It’s a little bit sad.  I guess for me, part of their childhood is in that box too.

But it’s okay.  I’m so proud of my kids.  For the tiny little mischievous imps they were, for the beautiful people they are turning out to be.  I look at them now, teenagers mostly, one of them almost 20 and ready to go out and be on his own and I think, I helped create that person.  From late night bedtime stories to late night laughs over a beer.  I’m a part of their story now just as they are part of mine.

Funny Saturday

I have to admit, back in the day I was a Blossom fan.  Don’t judge.

But, her work on The Big Bang Theory is the best and funniest shit I have seen on television in a long time.  Funny Saturday presents the best of Amy Farrah Fowler.

You’re welcome

Great big changes and huge news on the horizon.

Not going to say what yet, but I *may* have really  big news coming up soon.  It’s always scary and exciting to get on to a new venture and this promises to be  nothing less.  Maybe. 

I’m terrible at keeping big news at bay, but this one time, I’m going to wait until the details are firmed up.  I wish it was news about an agent, but hey, who knows what will happen in the future. 

Stay tuned.

So, I watched this movie last night, and then cried like a freakin’ baby.

Last night I watched Imaginaerum, a movie about a man who is trapped within his own mind and the daughter who thought that he had shut her out.

Nope, that does it absolutely NO justice.

The concept of the movie is that Tom, a musician and composer, is on his death bed.  Through a series of fantasy/sci-fi type flashbacks, he is reliving his youth, only you can see that he had some serious issues throughout his youth and well, through his whole life, really.

His daughter, an angry woman who feels like he spent his entire life pushing her away, is coming down to make the decision whether or not to sign a DNR order (this is never said in exact words, but you know that’s what she’s doing) and she has lost no love for the man in the bed whom she believes never really cared for her, only for his music.

Going back with Tom through the disjointed memories of his childhood, complete with absolutely hauntingly beautiful cinematography and incredible music, is like seeing into the mind of someone tormented by mental health issues.  The black clouds of the unknown, the distorted figures, the beauty in even the darkest memories.

As the movie plays on, we get to see more of Tom as an older man and we get to watch as his daughter slowly becomes aware of her actual place in his life and his heart.  For many long scenes of the movie, I felt like I was frozen in place, almost as Tom is laying on his death bed in the hospital, involuntarily held captive by the scenery and the music.

Without giving away the ending, I will say that I left the movie sobbing.  It’s no “Hollywood Blockbuster”, it’s simple and yet complex, daring and raw and real.

I was thrilled to find this on YouTube today, and so I leave you with the music and hope you find a way to check out this incredible movie.