Monday, October 30, 2006
Hallo weeny!
It's a beautiful sunny day, our house is all dressed up for Halloween (despite yesterday's howling gales), and we're all getting pretty excited about tomorrow's trick-or-treating! I'm finally starting to wake up to this, much later than I normally do. I haven't felt like expending the energy to celebrate Halloween this year, even though it's my favourite holiday. A really fun yoga/dance class yesterday, featuring haloweeny music and games, seems to have snapped me out of the doldrums. The sun helps too. I'm gonna go for a long walk. See y'all.
It's a beautiful sunny day, our house is all dressed up for Halloween (despite yesterday's howling gales), and we're all getting pretty excited about tomorrow's trick-or-treating! I'm finally starting to wake up to this, much later than I normally do. I haven't felt like expending the energy to celebrate Halloween this year, even though it's my favourite holiday. A really fun yoga/dance class yesterday, featuring haloweeny music and games, seems to have snapped me out of the doldrums. The sun helps too. I'm gonna go for a long walk. See y'all.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
wah
I feel like there are thousands of tiny creatures crawling around inside my face. I know that this is in fact true, if you think of bacteria as creatures. I just feel it more today than most of the time.
I feel like there are thousands of tiny creatures crawling around inside my face. I know that this is in fact true, if you think of bacteria as creatures. I just feel it more today than most of the time.
Monday, October 23, 2006
The reason for my inertia has made itself known: I'm sick. Blaaanh.
Sog
I'm disappointed today because I can't go out tonight to a movie screening that I really, really wanted to attend. It's for a flic called American Hardcore, about the hardcore music scene in the 80s, basically saying that it was a leftist movement during the Reagan era. This is pretty much the exact same idea that I had for a radio documentary that I wanted to pitch to Ideas on CBC last year. It would have been great if the two could have come out at the same time. I chickened out of the pitch to Ideas (well, got real, perhaps; my life at the moment would not really be amenable to the creation of a radio doc). In any case, the film is of great interest to me, obviously. I was also excited about going because I suspect that the screening might bring out some of the old hardcore MTL folks whom I haven't seen in many a long year.
The problem is that D. works the evenings now, and finding a sitter on a Monday evening is tough. My friend just volunteered, but for various reasons I declined (with gratitude!) to do it on such short notice. Supper, bedtimes, lunches and tidying make for very busy evenings around here, and I don't know if I want to inflict that on her, so I would probably go mad trying to get loads done before she arrived and I don't feel up to it. It's also raining and cold and I have no money for cabs and public transit.
So circumstances and my own inertia conspire to keep me from doing something I really wanted to do. Phooey!
I'm disappointed today because I can't go out tonight to a movie screening that I really, really wanted to attend. It's for a flic called American Hardcore, about the hardcore music scene in the 80s, basically saying that it was a leftist movement during the Reagan era. This is pretty much the exact same idea that I had for a radio documentary that I wanted to pitch to Ideas on CBC last year. It would have been great if the two could have come out at the same time. I chickened out of the pitch to Ideas (well, got real, perhaps; my life at the moment would not really be amenable to the creation of a radio doc). In any case, the film is of great interest to me, obviously. I was also excited about going because I suspect that the screening might bring out some of the old hardcore MTL folks whom I haven't seen in many a long year.
The problem is that D. works the evenings now, and finding a sitter on a Monday evening is tough. My friend just volunteered, but for various reasons I declined (with gratitude!) to do it on such short notice. Supper, bedtimes, lunches and tidying make for very busy evenings around here, and I don't know if I want to inflict that on her, so I would probably go mad trying to get loads done before she arrived and I don't feel up to it. It's also raining and cold and I have no money for cabs and public transit.
So circumstances and my own inertia conspire to keep me from doing something I really wanted to do. Phooey!
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Message in a bottle
Okay, guys who write my new favourite show Heroes: With an ending like the one you wrote for the latest episode, I can almost forgive you the unbelievable sexism that has one of the 2 female characters stripping down to her underwear in every episode (and not just because she's a stripper) and the other already a victim of rape and murder. Please respect your female characters and give them something resembling interesting personalities. Even if the stripper does have a totally rockin' ass, I don't need to see it all the time. But that ending? You blew my freakin' mind, boys. Keep that shit up.
Okay, guys who write my new favourite show Heroes: With an ending like the one you wrote for the latest episode, I can almost forgive you the unbelievable sexism that has one of the 2 female characters stripping down to her underwear in every episode (and not just because she's a stripper) and the other already a victim of rape and murder. Please respect your female characters and give them something resembling interesting personalities. Even if the stripper does have a totally rockin' ass, I don't need to see it all the time. But that ending? You blew my freakin' mind, boys. Keep that shit up.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Two tangentially-related thoughts on life as a mother
1.
It seems like a lot of the "mommy" blogs I read are from women with one child. I can't help feeling like they have no idea. Isn't that terrible? I've always hated that Mommy Superior thing, where the more kids you have the more valid you feel. I certainly felt like a real, full-fledged mother when I only had one child. I guess we fall victim to our own weaknesses. Good on ya', mothers of one! But here's to mothers with 2 or more!
2.
On those rare occasions when I'm home alone, I tidy up and make everything just so, then sit and look at things, like the living room and the wood floors and the birds and I spend many minutes looking out the big front window. I enjoy these quiet moments; they're rare. But every time, I think about how it would be if they weren't rare, if I lived alone or my children were all grown and D. and I were alone together again. It seems like I can't remember the time before we had children, and now I have a hard time imagining a time when they're not underfoot most of every waking moment. I love quiet. I love tidiness. I love thinking and reading. I love solitude. But I love crazy, noisy, messy, scattered, frazzled life better. It's exhausting good fun. Thank goodness I have a good husband who loves being a father.
1.
It seems like a lot of the "mommy" blogs I read are from women with one child. I can't help feeling like they have no idea. Isn't that terrible? I've always hated that Mommy Superior thing, where the more kids you have the more valid you feel. I certainly felt like a real, full-fledged mother when I only had one child. I guess we fall victim to our own weaknesses. Good on ya', mothers of one! But here's to mothers with 2 or more!
2.
On those rare occasions when I'm home alone, I tidy up and make everything just so, then sit and look at things, like the living room and the wood floors and the birds and I spend many minutes looking out the big front window. I enjoy these quiet moments; they're rare. But every time, I think about how it would be if they weren't rare, if I lived alone or my children were all grown and D. and I were alone together again. It seems like I can't remember the time before we had children, and now I have a hard time imagining a time when they're not underfoot most of every waking moment. I love quiet. I love tidiness. I love thinking and reading. I love solitude. But I love crazy, noisy, messy, scattered, frazzled life better. It's exhausting good fun. Thank goodness I have a good husband who loves being a father.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Oh, The Drama!
I'm enjoying the fall TV season so far. I've tried out some new shows and returned to some old faves. Out of the new shows, I think I'll jettison one for sure: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The premise of this show was irresistible to me: A behind-the-scenes drama about a Saturday Night Live-type show? How could it miss? Well, it could be created by Aaron Sorkin and employ some of the hammiest actors the US has to offer in the main parts. At least The West Wing was bearable because the high-quality actors managed to tone down the overwrought writing and contrived scenarios. The cast of Studio 60 seems to be competing for the Least Believable Character award on every episode so far. And the woman who plays Harriet, Matt's love interest and a supposedly super-talented comic actor, is so disappointing she makes you want to turn off the TV whenever she has a scene, as if that would save her the embarrassment of failing to measure up to what the character is touted to be. She's not funny, not smart, not attractive or charismatic in the least.
One show that grabbed me from the beginning and keeps me in its grip is Heroes. This show lives up to its big ideas and fascinates and excites in a way that very few TV shows ever have, IMHO. The story lines are almost all well-written and conceived (I say "almost" because of the stripper-single-mom story line. Sick of that character before I ever laid eyes on her.) It might manage to expand its focus beyond the American characters, with prominent roles for a Japanese and an Indian character. The only gripe I have with this show is its shocking tendency to indulge in unmitigated, unnecessary gore. I'm completely turned off of the CSI-based trend towards disrespecting and dehumanizing the human body by showing it in ever-more disturbing states of deconstruction and dismemberment. Heroes doesn't need it and, comic-book chic aside, the show runs the risk of becoming a joke if it continues to obsess about the myriad ways you can destroy a human body.
It totally rocks in every other respect, though. You should watch it. Just keep the remote handy for switching channels away from the cheerleader with the torn-open chest looking around for her vital organs during her own autopsy. Seriously.
I'm enjoying the fall TV season so far. I've tried out some new shows and returned to some old faves. Out of the new shows, I think I'll jettison one for sure: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The premise of this show was irresistible to me: A behind-the-scenes drama about a Saturday Night Live-type show? How could it miss? Well, it could be created by Aaron Sorkin and employ some of the hammiest actors the US has to offer in the main parts. At least The West Wing was bearable because the high-quality actors managed to tone down the overwrought writing and contrived scenarios. The cast of Studio 60 seems to be competing for the Least Believable Character award on every episode so far. And the woman who plays Harriet, Matt's love interest and a supposedly super-talented comic actor, is so disappointing she makes you want to turn off the TV whenever she has a scene, as if that would save her the embarrassment of failing to measure up to what the character is touted to be. She's not funny, not smart, not attractive or charismatic in the least.
One show that grabbed me from the beginning and keeps me in its grip is Heroes. This show lives up to its big ideas and fascinates and excites in a way that very few TV shows ever have, IMHO. The story lines are almost all well-written and conceived (I say "almost" because of the stripper-single-mom story line. Sick of that character before I ever laid eyes on her.) It might manage to expand its focus beyond the American characters, with prominent roles for a Japanese and an Indian character. The only gripe I have with this show is its shocking tendency to indulge in unmitigated, unnecessary gore. I'm completely turned off of the CSI-based trend towards disrespecting and dehumanizing the human body by showing it in ever-more disturbing states of deconstruction and dismemberment. Heroes doesn't need it and, comic-book chic aside, the show runs the risk of becoming a joke if it continues to obsess about the myriad ways you can destroy a human body.
It totally rocks in every other respect, though. You should watch it. Just keep the remote handy for switching channels away from the cheerleader with the torn-open chest looking around for her vital organs during her own autopsy. Seriously.
Friday, October 06, 2006
As I've said before on this blog, I like to walk -- to go for long walks around NDG and Montreal West. I have a few set walks that I've timed so that I can get back home in about an hour, and there are about 4 or 5 of them, for variety. Lately I've added a new feature to the end of some of my walks, so that I take a detour through Concordia University's Loyola campus before coming home. I do this because I like the campus and love the feeling I get from being there again (I attended Concordia for my undergrad). The other reason is The Emergence of the Chief, a beautiful, powerful piece of bronze sculpture in the courtyard outside the new science building. The new, the old and the ancient come together in this place, and the size and importance of this sculpture in this context are reassuring and right, it seems to me. It makes me happy to see it as I pass. My kids love it too. D. takes them there to climb and run around a bit on the weekends sometimes. It's good to live near the campus; green spaces, public art, free football... It's a bonus feature of this already-great neighbourhood. D. and I were married in the Loyola Chapel, and I like to think that my kids might go to school there someday. D. will be attending classes there again in January, so I guess we feel like we're a part of it. If you'd like to read a bit more about The Emergence of the Chief, here's a link.