October 8, 2009

Metaphor.

 

Style

I read the Sunday Styles section of the Sunday New York Times thoroughly. Every single article. It takes me most of the week because I pick it up and put it down, but I enjoy it all. I read “Modern Love” and the wedding stories and “A Night Out” with whoever is out somewhere talking to people and the etiquette and the cocktails . . .

This week, however, I was really disappointed with Michael Winerip’s “Generation B” column. He was writing about a summer with his son and how they finally got to spend an evening together right before the son returned to college. He tried to give his son some life advice. He told him to get to know a lot of women before settling down so that he didn’t feel he was missing anything, but he also acknowledged that his own casual experiences didn’t usually end up well. The first part of that bothered me at first, but then I read the piece again and in reflection I think I understand what he was getting at.

But this part was clear and it’s what really bothers me. He said, “the reason to marry is to have children.” No, it isn’t. The reason to marry is to have love and give love. The reason to marry is to form (what one hopes will be) a lifetime partnership. The reason to marry is to multiply the joys and divide the sorrows that life brings to all of us.

Not every marriage produces children. When they do, it should be seen as the blessing it is. And I do believe that marriage should come first—having that partnership makes the trials of parenthood easier, too. But having children is not “the reason to marry.”

 

Julia Child I’m Not

I’m not even Julie Powell. Tried to make the husband a little French food last night and picked up a skillet handle that had just been in a 400-degree oven. I’m now typing with only seven fingers. (The other three are still attached, just not in the mood to work.)

I did love Julie and Julia, though. Violet and I went the first week it came out. She was in the “less Julie, more Julia” camp at the end. I just enjoyed the entire experience. For me, though, what’s not to like? Cooking. Writing. Mid-life. French food. Marriage. Infertility (okay, not a joyful subject but a relatable one). Publishers. Husbands in government. More French food. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I’d even go see it again. And now I want to read Julia Child’s autobiography even though I never warmed to her on TV—the publishers should thank Meryl Streep for doing such a wonderful job.

 

July 23, 2009

Mid-summer must always scatter my brain. I was this way last year as well (or so my blog tells me).  So I’m just going to do a little brain-cleaning here.

Been a really nice summer weather-wise; July in particular has been heavenly. Going to visit my mother today, who knows she is in a decline but still manages to keep getting out of bed every morning. Grateful for all the staff at her home who take care of her. Tired of people resisting the fact that we’re in the 21st century and we should have moved on from certain mindsets by now. Even more tired of the PA state workers not getting paid. It’s only “inconvenient” for this household, but for some I know it’s devastating. Glad my friend who had cancer has it no longer. Glad my friend in the midst of a divorce seems to have found a good place to land. Sorry both my brothers are so angry. Itching to run away to the beach, but that’s not going to happen.  Happy to be seeing the rockstar this weekend; hoping I can see family as well. Loved Shane Nelson’s “Christmas in July” this morning. Sick of reading lies about my husband on blogs written by people who are just repeating lies they all heard from one source who should be ashamed of herself. Enjoying pet-sitting little B and turning him on to catnip (prrrrrr). Reading this and realizing it’s not a parallel series. Not going to correct it. Ha!

 

The Best Music of the 1970s

This just shows how subjective this can be. Right now Shane Nelson (on his Solid Gold Countdown) is playing the Top 30 songs of the last week of September 1975. These are not the “best” in music quality necessarily (see note below), but that just happens to be the week I met Joe and so there’s a certain connection . . .  He’s in the kitchen making an apple pie and we keep yelling to each other, “Remember that one?” Okay, maybe that makes us sound old, but it also makes us sound romantic! Awwww.

(AACCCKKKK!!! “Rocky I’ve never been in love before . . . ” Okay, there’s a “Worst Song” candidate!)

 

September 1, 2008

A new era. Okay, we’ve been in the new era for months and months—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took care of that. And now John McCain choosing Sarah Palin at the beginning of a long weekend, with a hurricane bearing down on Louisiana and Texas, postponing the RNC convention . . .

So I’ve been reading a lot of comments about the new vice-presidential candidate. Some are thoughtful, some are hateful, some are ridiculous, some are really intelligent. The blogosphere is debating about her qualities as a vice-presidential candidate, a governor, a mother, a woman.

The two big debates seem to be these: 1) Does she have enough smarts to make up for her lack of experience to be an international player (and I don’t care what anyone says or how old John McCain is, it’s still the second spot, no matter what, and therefore very important). This is a very serious, valid question.

And 2) is she—with a special needs baby, a pregnant teen, a son going off to Iraq, and two other children—doing the right thing by accepting this position that (and again, I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I know full well this is not a job with which you get to have dinner with your family every evening) will take her away from her family? This is a primal issue, one anyone with a mother and/or child has an opinion on.

People are pointing out that no one is questioning Barack Obama’s position as a father because Michelle is there, the mother. No one yet knows Todd Palin or how involved he is as a father so this is pure speculation. If the Republicans win, will it be enough for the Palin kids to know Dad was there, if indeed he is? I sure hope so.

After much thought about this, I have to admit I don’t understand her decision. I will also admit I haven’t walked in her shoes. But I just know it’s not what I would have done.

Update: The tempest continues, of course. Good article in the New York Times echoes some of what I’ve said above, with many mothers’ opinions.

 

Young love

I had to scan this for an article submission and now I can’t resist posting it.

 

Movie review: “Sex & the City” and “Mamma Mia!”

My friend Violet and I have seen two major chick flicks this summer—Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! I know I’m late writing on the former, but I’m glad I waited because I have things to say that pertain to both.

 

I expected to like neither movie. I wrote about why I thought they shouldn’t do a Sex movie when I first heard it was in production. And a movie based on a stage show of ABBA songs? They only haven’t made it to my “worst songs of the 1970s” section just because others take priority. (For the record, I knew no ABBA fans in the 1970s, not even closeted ones.)

 

So Sex and the City the movie did nothing socially relevant, timely, whatever. Everyone dealt with relationship issues, nothing from the outside world. Pure escapism—almost. It was a given that Carrie would marry Big. I expected that Samantha would have left Smith (for her to stick with one man for five years? please!), but that wasn’t the case. I was shocked that Charlotte’s little girl was so much more accessory than daughter (I guess that’s all part of the fantasy). But then, when Miranda and Steve split, no one says, “How will this affect Brady?” either.

 

(Aside: why did they squeal every single blessed time they got together, no matter how brief it had been? Or did it just seem that way?)

 

Back to the plot: for me, two scenes made the whole movie. The first was when Carrie goes out to Brooklyn to spend New Year’s Eve with Miranda. That’s what girlfriends do. (I only hope that my girlfriends think I’m someone who would do that for them.) A large part of the TV show’s appeal was the girlfriend-relationships and it carried through to the movie.

 

The second scene is far more dramatic. When Big stands Carrie up at the altar, she finds him on the street and whacks the hell out of him with her bridal bouquet while crying and yelling, “How could you?” She didn’t mean just that day, she meant every single disappointment he’d ever given her, and he’d given her plenty. She should have done that a long time ago. (Elizabeth Edwards, if you don’t have your bridal bouquet handy, I’ll loan ya mine. It’s pretty dried out now and probably has a few sharp points . . . I think it’ll do the job.)

 

I came out of the movie remembering my girlfriends through the years and wanting to call them all. That’s not a bad thing to take away from it.

 

Now, a few months later, Violet and I again went to the movies, this time to see Mamma Mia! I thought, “what the heck?” It’s been a Broadway play I didn’t see, so I don’t have that point of reference. I avoid reading reviews when I’m going to write one of my own, so I didn’t know what the critics thought. I went in with my mind as open as I could make it.

 

And by the end I was singing along with the audience. The choreography felt clumsy, we all laughed at the occasional Greek chorus (works better on stage), and the lyrics did not always fit the plot line, sometimes to the point of absurdity. But the songs existed before the story, so it was understandable. I’d even forgotten a few of them, but the movie brought them back really quickly.

 

I think what really made the movie succeed was that Meryl Streep looked like she was having the time of her life, even when she was rolling around on the goat-house roof. Julie Walters and Christine Baranski gave the girlfriend-connection the required credibility, far more than any of the relationships with any of the men.

 

I’ve seen Muriel’s Wedding, which I believe was the first movie advertised as using ABBA songs, but it’s much darker. Mamma Mia! does with ABBA songs what should be done with ABBA songs. I’ve now read a great review (“great” in that I agree with a lot of it) in the New York Times. Hangover, yes (how many times since then have I heard “Can you hear the drums, Fernando?” in my head), but one to laugh over.

 

Next month a remake of the original chick flick, The Women (also one of my favorite movies of all times), comes out. I saw a trailer that shows they’ve updated it, but I’ll make my own judgment on how well . . .

 

 

As a wife

I cannot adequately express my anger at John Edwards’s “confession.” (Notice I didn’t say “at what he did to lead to the confession”—that’s a different subject, one I won’t address here.) How he could think that the comments “I didn’t love her” (or was it “I wasn’t in love with her”?) as well as “Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission” make this any less ugly or make women forgive him even a little bit is far beyond me. And to deny, deny, deny instead of owning up and moving on? My only hope is that he takes that paternity test this week (because so many people think they already know the results) so it doesn’t drag out for any longer than the weekly news cycle.

Update: The new mother is refusing the paternity test so it looks like he is destined to be forever the father. I just hope the news moves on soon. We do kinda have a bunch of wars, an election that will decide where the country is headed, climate change, etc., that will actually impact our lives.

 

Hate speech

This subject comes to my mind from a variety of experiences I’ve had recently. First, that last post I wrote, re: OfficeMax and their stupid policy change (I hold to that opinion, but that’s all it is, an opinion), brought me my first nasty blog response. I guess two blogs, nearly a year, I’m doing well. It’s tough to take something like this seriously when the person doesn’t know me at all, so my only two thoughts were “hey, someone’s being stupid!” and ”why did someone waste his/her time to write this?”

The second thing to happen was my favorite radio DJ related two . . . I don’t know what to call them, he called them jokes. But they were not funny. One was anti-Obama, one was anti-Hillary. (For the record, neither of these people was my candidate in the primaries.) But I’ve written to him before about not discussing politics—he’s just promoting intolerance. I’ll be writing to him again and if he doesn’t cut it out, I’m going to have to stop listening and move on to other radio. If I wanted politics, I’d turn on politics. And I won’t participate in hate speech. It doesn’t get us anywhere.

The third thing was my sister telling me about Willow Bay’s column about snarkiness on the Internet. I don’t usually read the Huffington Post, but I’m all for an anti-snarkiness campaign, so I hope she’s right that it will lose its effectiveness. Being mean doesn’t do any good.

And finally, I was at my in-laws’ over the weekend for a family picnic. I had the pleasure of talking with my niece-in-law-to-be and I was telling her about my mother-in-law, a hard woman to live with but someone I hope felt about me the way I did about her by the end of her life. The next day my bro-in-law informed me that someone (who had been eavesdropping on my conversation with the future niece) made sure to tell him that I had said he neglected to care for his mother properly. That was not at all what I said. and I’m grateful he told me so that I could clear it up with him. I told him not to tell me who said it, I don’t want to know. But someone was trying to cause trouble. Why? I have no clue. Nothing to be gained from it at all.

Hate and anger get us nowhere. We’re not going to grow as people until we learn that.