Fly-san.org

I get both Netflix and Blockbuster rentals by mail. I only signed up for Blockbuster in hopes that it would be somehow faster shipping than Netflix or just fill the gap whenever I was waiting for discs to watch– and also because I read that they have certain rentals sooner. I am also currently paying for a subscription to Hulu Plus. I rationalize these three subscriptions by reminding myself that I can’t go to movie theatres because of popcorn and we don’t pay for satellite or cable t.v. subscriptions. Here are some films that either really affected me deeply this year, or made me laugh a lot.

Never Let me Go; this book was also a stunner and I am sucker for anything with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in it; if it has both, wow. Prepare to be blown away.

One Day- Wow. So funny, sweet,  and so incredibly sad all at once. I can’t wait to read the book– this is probably the one time in my life that I didn’t see the movie after reading the book. I loved Anne Hathaway and her love interest, the the British dude I had never heard of –and the fact that Patricia Clarkson played his mom. She is great!

Win Win with Paul Giamatti– this was so inspiring and I never expected to write or think that about a movie about wrestling. It was also about so much else, from his internal struggles as a teacher, father and coach. His performance felt very real to me in a way I haven’t felt since Sideways.

Friends with Benefits. This was hilarious. I don’t really like Mila Kunis but have been forced to re-think Timberlake as an actor lately– something I did not think was possible after suffering through far too many listens of his solo and N Sync-era albums with stupid college roommates. Patricia Clarkson appeared again as a mom in this one with some choice one liners.

Crazy Stupid Love– I haven’t loved Steve Carell in anything this much since he did Little Miss Sunshine. I really  loved this one.

New York I Love You;  I have not been able to stop thinking about this one since I saw it. Natalie Portman was amazing and so were all the entwined stories.

Happy Accidents with Marisa Tomei was also another instant queue surprise. Has anyone else noticed that most of the time, the Netflix instant queue is like browsing Blockbuster late on a Friday night after everyone else has rented the good stuff? Occasionally it coughs up something great.

For pure comedic stupidity’s sake, Hot Tub Time Machine wins a spot on this for just making me laugh uncontrollably several times. I mean wow, the setting and soundtrack are completely 80s fantastic. And I adore John Cusack. Also- Rob Corddry is unbelievable as a nut in this and Chevy Chase is in it. Come on! Clark Griswold!

These are the best things I’ve read this year. Stay tuned for my next few lists, which may include Worst things I read this year and best/worst movies.

Entertaining Disasters by Nancy Spiller- a great novel, with recipes. The way she talked about cooking felt familiar to me.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides– I finished this last night, wept, and am feeling utterly bereft at the thought of returning it to the library today. I loved everything about the main character because she was a literature major but I also liked so many of the other elements like theology, too. Just as a warning: there is a LOT of sex in this book; none of the reviews I read warned me at all.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett– this was so immersive and wonderful;  I’m glad they made a movie out of it if it means more people will read this. It reminded me so much of To Kill a Mockingbird- that never happens.

Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst- this woman single handedly wins a gold medal for teaching me by writing this that abusive alcoholic asshole parents are really kind of hilarious, too.

Never Let me Go byKazuo Ishiguro- this was haunting and affected me very deeply. I was glad I read this before seeing the film, which was equally chilling.

After I saw Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds in Vegas last December, I resolved to write about what it all means to me, since that show was the pinnacle of my emotional experiences for the year 2010. But it’s hard to describe. When anticipating the Vegas show, it occurred to me that I had waited 11 years, since the Luther College acoustic album came out, to see these two live. I sat on the deck at my parents house and played and played and played it, with my feet propped on the railing, coke in my hand, and knew I would get out of there, move forward out of that life and that “family”, because I had this music behind me.

When I ran away abruptly and furiously from Nebraska at 19 and came back to Los Angeles, I had a backpack with Kmart underwear, a toothbrush, and two copies of Dave albums (Busted Stuff and disc one of Dave and Tim at Luther) that Nik burned for me in his college dorm room. I had no Discman to play them on, but they were there, in my backpack, comforting me. When Erik met me at LAX, his copy of Busted Stuff was already in the cd player.

One college weekend we spent tooling around Palos Verdes and South Bay, Erik cringed by Sunday and asked if we could hear something else. Dave had been playing solidly for three days and I didn’t notice; “Of course we can! Put on Dreamtheatre or Dire Straits for Christ’s sake, I’m sorry I’m so ridiculous!” I was embarrassed but not surprised, really; I still have to remind myself that this music is not everyone else’s complete lifeblood. The most amazing part of my relationship to music in general is that my love for Dave does not completely eclipse or obliterate my ability to appreciate so much else. Ha.

The acoustic experience is a lot different from the full band, huge giant amphitheater blowout that is the normal DMB tour experience. The acoustic shows are intimate, with a real warmth to both the sound and the feeling of the whole venue and moment, and they have opened up hundreds of facets to his material that I probably would have kept skipping over otherwise. I also think the experience stood out because only TRUE Daveheads would see Dave and Tim solo. And, consequently, they shut the hell up during the show. Wow! That never happens for me at the DMB blowouts.

Whenever I buy a new Dave album or dvd, I am scared to remove the plastic wrapper for fear the magic will leak out; This music is me at my best. If I take the wrapper off, that  brave, strong 18 year old self will disappear entirely and everyone will wonder where she went. While transfixed at the Hollywood Bowl show a few years ago and trying to ignore the illuminated cross on a nearby hillside, I thought about how some songs are such a part of me that I feel the phrasing must be swimming in my bloodstream somewhere, or the chords make up my vertebrae. The songs are so much a part of who I used to be and what I wanted to be growing up that I know I wouldn’t be me without them.

My mind was reeling after four solid hours of Dave and Tim, a show where they had played absolutely everything I ever wanted to hear,  and I remember lying in my bed at Treasure Island, looking out at the neon madness of the Vegas strip, and  thinking, “Now what?” Now that I had crossed this experience off the list it was a huge letdown. I know I can go again; but I fear it won’t carry the same emotional resonance as the first acoustic show. As I was being wheeled to my seat among 7,000 at Planet Hollywood, I thought, “Maybe God doesn’t hate me; these seats are so incredible that I feel maybe I have truly earned the majesty of this experience.”

Their music was like a warm blanket wrapped around me. At about the three hour mark I asked my husband why I was so sleepy; he said, “Because this is what you listen to when you can’t sleep.” Oh.

Dave’s music is what helps me push through. When I need to get work done, I put it on. When I need to go to sleep, or wind down, or calm down, or be lifted up, I put it on. When  I hurt, it’s there. When I’m happy, sad, mad, or glad, it’s there. I know all of the music; each chord and lyric, so well they’re indistinguishable from my own thoughts.

It has always been that way, from being 11 in a hospital bed with headphones and hearing Dave sing “Why are you different? Why are you that way?” over the whine of a cast saw or being 27 in searing pain from serial casting and blasting Shake Me Like a Monkey to drown out the throbs, to the five seconds of intro that played as the beginning of my college voicemail outgoing message– this music lives in me.

I know I don’t hate my life anymore, not anywhere close to how badly I hated it when I lived everywhere else but here. When I was still working in May, my  fatigue level was approaching where it was when I toiled full time all day in food service, always having to check things on foot, pounding my joints into the pavement. I don’t have an alarm clock dread feeling anymore;  I no longer have no choice but to slog on through…. Didn’t I swear I would never approach life this way? A bitter zombie desperate for the next check to prove why it’s all worth it? But now I don’t have the check and I miss its validation and I miss interacting with clients even though most of my co-workers I could take or leave. The funny thing is, whenever I leave my insurance brokerage job for a few months, they seem to magically weed out all the people I couldn’t stand. I am still considering law school or medical coding training. It’s nice to have a choice.

Do you want to feel old? Really old? While words like sexting and jeggings have found their way into the collective consciousness, one term has been exorcised forever from the official record of English language—“cassette tape.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “cassette tape” will no longer appear in future editions of the publication, having been replaced by tons of text speak, such as LOL, OMG, and <3. Yes, the text sign for “love” is the OED, but cassette tape is not. And this, my friends, is just WRONG.

I loved tapes. I miss them. In 8th grade, I wrote an essay about why CDs would never be the same as cassettes. I was an outcast for such views even then.

Cassette is one of the first words I learned in German because it’s the same, albeit the accent is on a different sylable. I made the best mix tapes ever and even after I graduated to mp3 cd mixes it never seemed quite the same without a side b.

For years now I have written countless essays about watching Lori’s husband plant hostas for her. They all suck and I have decided it’s just best to say it already because it is so simple and true.

The hostas in question were important: they needed to go in the ground that day, and she was too sore to do so. It says it all! Love is…planting hundreds of hostas for your wife with back pain. I learned this very important concept, as a newlywed on a sweaty back deck watching the sun set over a lake.

It was a privilege learning by watching our favorite married couple. First of all, I had no idea there were so many varieties of hostas. That was important because it taught me that even when you think you might know or be familiar with something, there is always more: you are probably barely scratching the surface. This is important for reading, writing and living life in general. Since this experience I have been obsessed with finding even more exotically named ones. I heard such interesting names being yelled as they were planted on the lawn below. I have since found ‘Royal Standard’,  ‘August Moon’, ‘ and ‘Empress Woo; ‘Earth Angel’? ‘Blue Hawaii’, ‘Sum and Substance’? They’re like titles for old movies Jimmy Stewart should have made.

I  sometimes wonder how it is  possible we are still here after seven solid years of stress and strife. I think it’s because we learned from the hosta situation–so much about marriage is letting someone else do the heavy lifting; either physically or emotionally and it seems like a constant cycle.  Pour someone a glass of iced tea or whatever;  and most importantly, then let them rest, either mentally or otherwise, and take over that which needs to be done. What else is marriage, when you really boil it down?

Today I read this article by Christine Miserandino about life with lupus. I feel like I could just change the word lupus to cerebral palsy and this would describe my life.

She says, “Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions. So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point. I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away, since most people who get sick feel a “loss” of a life they once knew. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have someone or something else, in this case Lupus, being in control.”In my life  cerebral palsy (is it ironic that it physically hurts my hands to type the phrase? and I hate the abbreviation c.p. even if it is faster) is in control, but so is corn. I got sick walking to the mailbox today because someone was using Downy fabric softener.

Where are all my damn spoons?! I would really like to know. I walked out into my dining room this morning, took in the massive pile of bills I need to pay, the mountain of newspapers from last week that I never even read, and saw the ten pound bag of onions that I know I need to prep and freeze soon so that all my meals for the next month can be easy and not have a prep step, and went straight back to bed. I know I can break all of this down in to baby steps: open and deal with one bill at a time, or just prep three or four at a time, and be comfortable at my new chopping station in the dining room, where I can operate my food processor sitting down, but it is just too overwhelming even with shortcuts and a barstool to lean on.

I think about normal women who just keep perfect houses and make beautiful meals totally by hand every single day and I drive myself crazy with the comparisons and the guilt. Why can’t I have that? Why do I want that? Why do I have to constantly make choices about whether to relax and have fun or live in filth?

This spoon theory concept really hits me hard because finally someone said it, what I have not been able to articulate, about my constant frustration with feeling like I can never get anything finished because the energy just runs out. Most often I wake up with nothing in the bank in the first place. How could that not lead to constant feelings of failure and frustration, feeling like the deck is constantly stacked against me.

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

In my case, it’s the Item Not Purchased.

I can remember with astonishing clarity the items I left on the rack “for later” and then later never materialized. The orange taffeta strapless ballgown (I know) that I would have done housework in for lack of an occasion to wear it, the camisole that was the perfect shade of holiday red that I long for every Christmas, the exact copy of my wedding dress marked down months later to $17.  It’s hard to know which was more jaw-dropping; the marked-down amazing Michael Kors motorcycle jacket or the buttery Cole Haan lambskin blazer that I had no money for at the time. These items haunt me and these are the items I think of whenever I find anything new.

Clothes are a whole universe for me. I look at a new outfit or dress and think, “who will I be in that?”They represent a place I can go where I will look so  stunning that no one will see the brace or the scars or the pain.  A few years ago I decided to drop the attitude I’ve had since the relentless teasing and bullying in middle school that led me to always wear pants to hide the scars and braces and ugly shoes, and really, to hide who I really was and didn’t want to be. Dropped, like the bad habit it truly was!  I have wasted too many years not wearing sexy skirts or fun dresses or cool patterned tights in the winter. Now I rock ‘em all with pride. Why did I think only normal women were allowed to feel pretty? I am entitled, worthy, and beautiful.

I try to only choose colors that will make me look the best version of myself. Yesterday I got a fabulous blue dress that I know will make my eyes pop, and a purple skirt simply because I didn’t have that color yet. Who will I be in these new outfits? I think I’ll be better than ever.

And nope, it sure as hell isn’t mine. That thing is a steaming pile of words that should never see the light of publication. I don’t even like the title right now.

The novel I am re-reading on the other hand, has already been quoted once on this blog, and now, it shall be quoted again.

“If you’ve had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins out.”

–from The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett.

So yes, it’s hot. I am sweating and so is the glass that contains my g&t, pungent with fresh lime. The people I love aren’t here at this exact moment, but they’re on their way.

Today I have received twelve hours of sleep, a hefty dose of sunshine, a glass of red wine and a new Dave Matthews Album. I don’t know how my day could improve from here. My husband has a new lucrative position in one of the most gorgeous cities in California. One of his former co-workers told him that he should buy me jewelry with his first paycheck. I am not that big on jewelry in the first place– wearing a rent check on my finger makes me a little nervous. But, in my browsing and research, I have come across a term called a “push present”. Apparently, this is the bejeweled reward some women collect after giving birth. Apparently carats are the answer when you’ve just pushed the human equivalent of a bowling ball through your cervix.

Lately I have been realizing that I’ve pushed a hell of a lot in the last two to three years. I have attempted to push myself to cook perfect meals and keep a clean house (fail) but this was impossible while working. Lentil soup and hard boiled eggs were all I managed, and I would often go to sleep at 4 in the afternoon due to sheer exhaustion. I pushed myself to work. I struggled with even maintaining part time hours and the past six weeks off, doctor ordered, has been really good for me and also very eye opening. I didn’t realize how much of a failure I felt I was, every single day on the job, because I could never meet my own expectations or achieve my longed-for goal of just feeling GOOD at work. I never did. I was always tired, always bitter about it somewhere beneath the smiles, and always, always, always in pain. Maybe now it doesn’t have to be that way.

In the immortal words of David J. Matthews, I fully intend to “eat, drink, and be merry”.