sometimes you have to read between the lines

Childcare worker: "Um, do you have socks for your little boy?" (Translation: 'Poor child, doesn't even have proper footwear!?') Me: "No, he'll slip on the wood floors with socks on..." (Translation: 'No, he'll slip on the wood floors with socks on.') Childcare worker: "Are you sure his feet won't get cold?" (Translation: 'Simply tragic, the level of care this child is receiving.') Me: "No, he's barefoot all the time at home. He'll be fine." (Translation: 'Seriously lady? It's not even cold in here.') Childcare worker: "Ok, well, do you have a bottle or special snack for him?" (Translation: 'I bet he hasn't had breakfast yet') Me: "No, he should be good, he just had breakfast." (Translation: 'Back off, lady') Childcare worker: "Are you SUUUUUuuurrrreee? An hour is a long time for a little guy!" (Translation: 'Social Services, here I come!') Me: "I'm suuuuurrreeee." (Translation: 'Lady, although I would like nothing better than to punch your face, I want to take advantage of the free childcare you are providing, so I'm gonna let the attitude slide. For now.") Me: "Have fun, buddy!" (Translation: 'Pull the crazy lady's hair!') Childcare worker: "Oh, we certainly will!" (Translation: 'I think there's an extra pair of socks around here somewhere...')

The Netflix Tales or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Baby

I was a total zombie. I was brain dead, bone tired, confused, frustrated, and hungry.

The first several postpartum weeks with a colicky baby were killer. then...we signed up for Netflix streaming. we started watching 'Friday Night Lights' episodes each night during Gibson's 5pm-10pm screaming bouts.

Did it make me less tired? not really. Did the stellar writing and acting teach me valuable parenting lessons? not so much. but it DID give me something to look forward to each evening - the outside drama (albeit fictional) broke me out of my bubble and reminded me to look up, out, and forward.

Belated thanks, Netflix! I owe you one! (well, actually, I think it's $8.99...)

mommy misconceptions

I always swore I would not turn into the person who only posts about their new baby. But here's the thing: I have nothing else to post about. My life has dwindled to a baby-sized bubble. He gets more interesting, and I get even LESS interesting (if that's possible!) Besides cramming my formerly full-time job into part-time hours, I don't have time for anything else.

Here's some other misconceptions I had about new motherhood:

#1 - I will work out, eat super healthy, and lose the baby weight ASAP!
TRUTH - I only have about 20 minutes in the evening when I can work out, and not even every day. I am a stress eater + Mommyhood is wicked stressful. I have therefore gained 5 pounds despite breastfeeding. (Thank goodness I came home from the hospital at pretty much the same weight I was before I was pregnant...)

#2 - I will not be that new mom who doesn't get to shower. I will just bring him in the bathroom with me!
TRUTH - Yeah right. He freaks out whenever he is set down for more than 2 minutes. I shower at night after he goes to bed (gross, I know. it's what I gotta do, though.)


#3 - I will not tiptoe around the baby quietly during naps and such, so he gets used to noises around the house.
TRUTH - I yelled at Mitch for opening his soda too loudly the other night. Noise is the enemy; sleep is too precious and hard-won to take lightly.

.

#4 - I am only going to breastfeed for a couple of months and switch to a bottle before going back to work, so that I can focus on work when I am there.

TRUTH - He won't take a bottle. won't. take. a. bottle. Who knew a baby could so vehemently refuse to eat? *sigh*. so I rush back home every 2.5 hours or so to feed him on the days I work. so much for 'focusing'...

.

#5 - I won't let him watch TV for at least a year

TRUTH - direct quote from a recent fussy evening: "Don't cry. It's okay. Don't cry...here, look at the pretty lady on TV? Isn't she pretty? Yes, look at that! Uh huh, we like the TV, don't we?"

field trip

took my first solo (+ tiny wingman, Gibson) trip to town in 7 weeks...

we went to Rite Aid.

why Rite Aid? (undoubtedly al ame destination...) well, Rite Aid has about 7 customers total, so should Gib decide to have a tiny-baby freakout in the middle of the store, it would only bother the handful of employees...

thankfully, he slept in his carrier the whole time, so i got to peruse the shampoo and lip gloss options uninterrupted. oh yeah, and we hit up the diaper aisle and junk food sections too.

yay for cheap thrills!

@ 5 weeks

panic face! camera flashes are scary!!

overall, he's pretty nice.

• ~ he kindly sleeps for a 4 or 5 hr stretch every night, which we all appreciate.
• ~ he is just starting to smile, which is fun.
• ~he is losing most of the hair up front, except for about 4 really long strands. combover!!
• ~ he DOES get super cranky at about 6 each night (at which point I get super cranky and enlist Mitch the baby-whisperer to make him happy(er).)

~ oh yeah, and he screams when you put him down (even in a swing or bouncer) for more than 1 minute...*sigh* good workout for the arms/back, right? I thank GOD multiple times daily for my front pack carrier!

the dude abides

Gibson is just over 1 week old now!

we are all spending some time at home figuring one another out.

mostly we sleep and eat and cry...today we might change things up and go for a short walk (woohoo! we so crazy!)

it's kind of fun, kind of tiring, kind of nerve-wracking...

behind the times

so lame.

the last movie I saw in a theatre was Sherlock Holmes, and the last rentals I watched were Zombieland and Inglorious Basterds. (both of which were AWEsome. two thumbs up).

But now I'm so far behind I don't even know what to rent! We are watching Avatar tonight, and I'm thinking I should definitely update my Netflix cue and maybe hit up Blockbuster before we go to the hospital next Monday, May 3rd for the induction....(I know, can you believe it?!? so scary...)

so: does anyone have any new (or, you know, since January) movies to recommend? (not looking for super-intense, just good entertainment that doesn't require 100% focus)

starting to look ridiculous...

at 31 weeks.

hee. I win.

pics as requested by Jenna...

at 21 weeks

...and today at almost 27 weeks.

what's with today today?

this is the messy desk

this is the 600-card project that just got added to the messy desk

guess who gets to do it?

oh yeah.

movies, movies

I just took a few days off of work, and with that time off what did I accomplish? Not a dang lot, but I did watch an impressive stack of movies. None of them were life-changingly awesome, but here's the rundown:

Confessions of a Shopaholic - dumb. not even really cutesy chick-movie dumb.

The Soloist - TERRIBLE. seriously, don't rent this. I turned it off 45 minutes in, and I never turn movies off. completely, overtly, anvil-t0-the-head manipulative.

Henry Poole is Here - I love Luke Wilson, but I knew this was probably going to be terrible, so I have been trying to avoid renting it, but since I had the time I just decided to get it over with. I wanted this to be a nice little film on faith, but it was just kind of vague and trite and cheesy.

The Reader - This was a difficult film to watch due to its morally complex storyline, and is even more difficult to recommend, due mostly to the explicit sexual content. However, Kate Winslet turned in a powerful performance, and the movie was provoking, and possibly heartbreaking.

A Thin Red Line - I own this one, and decided to watch it again just to kind of cleanse the palate of some of the bad movies. This is a great movie, and if you haven't watched it, you should. Terrence Mallick does a great job of involving nature as a main character in his movies, and his tone-poem style doesn't work for everyone, but it's interesting and I think everyone should check out one of his movies just for the experience.

The Fall - I own this one too, and hadn't watched it since I purchased it. It's got some powerful imagery in it, and although the bouncing back and forth telling-a-story-to-a-child-while-paralleling-adult-issues could be offputting, I find it to be charming and powerful.

Eastern Promises - Viggo Mortensen is totally bad-ass and terrifying in this one.

All the Days Before Tomorrow - a vague story about two not-quite-romantic friends that bounces back and forth between significant moments in their relationship. pretty cinematography, 'meh' writing.

Knowing - I am still trying to decide what I think about this one. It's sci-fi/allegory ending kind of left me feeling uneasy, because while it offers a general redemption ending for mankind, characters in specific that we are asked to identify throughout end up s.o.l.

Wristcutters: A Love Story - I think I liked this one best out of all the rentals. Quirky dark comedy that just completely worked for me, despite the suicide scene at the beginning that made my joints all go 'rubbery'. Patrick Fugit is always great, in my opinion, and even the appearance of Shannon Sossamon (generally a movie-killer for me) didn't ruin it for me.

surprise!

yesterday, I was having a bad day, and then Mitch texted me that he had bought me a "present". which made my day slightly better! I was hoping for a movie... :)

so what is it? why, an OSU t-shirt to wear on game day, of course...

just plane selfish

Flying home from Texas on a 4+ hour flight, I specifically requested an aisle seat. I love aisle seats. When the lady walks up to me and asks me to switch seats with her so that she can sit next to her 16-year-old daughter, I mentally grapple with the situation. Yes, I want to be giving and selfless and kind. I also really don't want to switch seats with her. She has a middle seat - the bane of my existence. Then her husband (through gritted teeth) irritatedly tells her that she is holding up the line, and that it is rude of her to ask me to give up my aisle seat for a middle seat, and apologizes to me for her.

I should have taken the social cue and said "No, it's ok, no problem, polite blah blah" and traded seats. But I didn't. I took the out he gave me and kept my aisle seat...and then he sat down next to me, a physical reminder of my selfishness for the entire flight. needless to say, it was horribly awkward, and lesson learned: just switch seats. 4 hours of discomfort is preferrable to guilt for the rest of my life over the high road not taken.

lovely magic

...I couldn't stay away for long, could I? But I saw the new Harry Potter and couldn't wait to post about how I enjoyed it tremendously.

As the characters in this have evolved and matured, and new writers/directors have come on board, the result is very satisfying: Instead of twee and charming and "magical" kids movies, we now have resonant storylines, powerful moments and some really beautiful filmmaking, as we watch these characters come into their own, and "grow up, fall down and rise to meet their destinies."

vacation for my mind

I'm taking a temporary break from the blog world...

SYTYCD

I have accumulated, via my love of watching TV, a few embarrassing shows that I don't really admit to watching. 'So You Think You Can Dance' is king among them, mainly because I hate game shows and reality shows on principle (they are destroying television). however, I am hooked, because although you have to sit through foxtrots and tangos and even the hustle (ugh), you also get great interpretive jazz and contemporary broadway and hip-hop...and most of all, every once in awhile there is a piece that just knocks you on your ass, like this one:

the pandora percentile

I got an e-mail today from pandora.com -notifying the top 10% of their users about some changes taking place.

I am weirdly proud of being singled out as the top 10% of anything, despite the fact that I earned it purely by sitting at my desk and let them pour good music into my head holes.

mind bullets

I hate the movie Bruno already, and it hasn't even come out yet. If I could make someone dead with my mind, it would be Sacha Baron Cohen...

la vie boheme!

We went up to Portland last night with the Drakes to see 'Rent' - the original cast members Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp were reprising their lead roles as Roger and Mark! it was amazing. the girl who played Mimi was NOT amazing, but I quickly got over it, because it was 'Rent' with Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp! no cameras allowed though; I took surreptitious shots with my cell phone periodically, but they are blurry in the style of "look, it's sasquatch!"

during 'La Vie Boheme'

during 'Seasons of Love'

celebrity

of all the articles out there on Michael Jackson both celebrating and bemoaning his life and death, I like this excerpt from tomatonation.com best.

"...of course he must have known what we said about him, about the tawdriness that couldn't even manage a southern-gothic type of grandeur, although I suppose his collapsing nose is a sort of equivalent to the family manse taken over by mildew and vines.
Imagine existing in that funhouse body for ten minutes, living with the irreclaimable warping, knowing that you're a part of history, and doomed. I don't apologize for liking his music, or excuse anything else he did, but I have to wonder what the autopsy will say about his heart, and if it just broke, in the end."

they're robots. like, in disguise.

we saw Transformers last night. it was loud and flashy and macho and amped with testosterone. it was entertaining, but it lacked the wonder of the first one, simply because of its own nature as a sequel- we are not quite as astonished at how cool it is when the bots transform and fight, because we've seen it all before...

the producers/directors apparently decided that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, so they didn't change much - Shia does his thing, Megan is sexy, his parents are quirky, lots of metal and sound effects and irritatingly voiced bad guys, Michael Bay swirling camera shots so that you can't quite see what's going on, and it all ends with a Linkin Park song...

but mostly: Optimus Prime is awesome. again.

going UP

I took my dad to see 'UP' tonight, as a belated Father's Day present. it was funny...heartfelt... beautful...charming. I cried embarrassingly hard within the first ten minutes, and then laughed out loud during most of the rest of it, despite my resolution to hate the large bird. go see it. it's beautiful art, and it will move you from truly sad to truly joyous, which is the epitome of what we ask from films.

Murphy's law: anything that can go wrong...

all the 'bosses' at my work are out of town, as of this morning. so, of course all hell promptly broke loose (in the form of scheduling conflicts, unexpected funerals, and menopausal (therefore crazy) women).

bring it on, Murphy, I am fierce when my competence is challenged.

boring blogger

I have nothing exciting to blog. I've been busy, but in the boring way that I do busy - too much work, followed by a necessary hibernation period at home to recharge for... more work!

while I have been hibernating, I have enjoyed the following:

Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown. Not as good as American Idiot, better than Warning and Dookie.

Silversun Pickups: Swoon. They remind me of a more lushly layered, more earnest version of Smashing Pumpkins.

Dean Koontz: Odd Thomas. I have never read Koontz, lumping him in with authors like Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy, whose books I have no desire to read. Fortunately, I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised. I'm not saying his stuff will win awards and be enduring classics, but they're a good summer read...

John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the Right One In. a very well-written, interesting twist on a vampire story. a little more explicit than I normally prefer or recommend, though.

Taken. a good, clean action film that doesn't mess around with complicated side plots and sub plots and whatnot - it tells you what you need to know, careens you around for an effective thrill-ride, and ends the movie 10 minutes before you even think about looking at your watch.

billie joe loves Jesus too!

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lookout!

I went camping at a fire lookout with two other co-workers for the past 3 days. I am not the best camper in the world - I don't like pit toilets, bugs, and lack of showers. I do, however appreciate the opportunity to read lots of books.

this is the place where we stayed on Green Ridge above the Metolius River. from there we could see (from left to right) Black Butte, the North and South Sisters, Mt. Washington, 3-Fingered Jack, Mt. Jefferson, and Mt. Hood.

I was dragged away from my book out on a hike. the weather was nice, which was great, and there were pretty flowers, which was nice.

there were also ticks. (every time I try to take a picture of a bug, the picture goes all blurry. I think it's the combo of my crappy cell phone camera and my shaking hands.) anyways, this is one of the many I found on my person, it's in the lower left corner of the picture, on my shoelace.

You otter know

Mitch and I 'played hookey' from work on Tuesday afternoon and went to the aquarium in Newport. This little guy and I fell in love at first sight.

Come with me, if you want to live

Saw 'Terminator Salvation' last night. (I really wish they would have used a colon in the title. 'Terminator: Salvation'. )

it was a great, gritty action movie, but maybe not a great Terminator movie. the thing about the original movies, and even the horriffically-reviewed third one, was that it was always the characters and their roles in the predestination paradox that drew you in and held you there. This one missed a key few moments between some characters that I REALLY would have liked to see - realizations about fathers and sons that could have been fleshed out in dialogue, opportunities to examine at the cause-and-effect/self-fulfilling prophecy/fate vs. will storylines...

Believe me, I never, never thought I would ever say this (because I loooove Christian Bale), but instead of Bale's rendition of Connor as confident leader, I wish that we could have seen some more of Nick Stahl's John Connor opposite Anton Yelchin as Reese. not only are they more physically similar, making their connection more plausible, but I think their acting styles would also be a better match...

All in all, I liked it, but I didn't love it, which is too bad. Here's hoping that the future Terminator installments make a new fate for themselves...

TV blues

I read an article a few weeks ago about how people form emotional attachments to characters on television shows. so not healthy but so true.

oh, Peter and Olivia and Walter, Bones and Brennan and Sweets, Dr. Lightman, Echo, Claire and Peter and Horn-Rim-Glasses Guy, Chuck and Blair, how I will miss you for these next few months!

(I did set my DVR to record new shows 'So You Think You Can Dance' and 'Glee', which should be fluffy entertainment at best, and deleted before watched at worst. I also plan to watch some shows on DVD this summer - season 2 of 'Mad Men', seasons 3 & 4 of 'Battlestar Galactica', as well as the past few seasons of 'Lost'.)

the Trek

I love Star Trek. and Sci Fi in general. love it, love it, love it! In regards to the release of this new movie, two things were guaranteed to be true about it:

1. it will make Billions of dollars
2. it will polarize fans like nothing else

As a Sci Fi fan, I understand that one of the most important tenets of any good Sci Fi tale or myth is that it is deeply established in a canon of its histories and facts and backstories. This roots the story in truth (although this truth may not be relative to the truth of reality).

HOWEVER, in this new movie, they (the writers) really messed with some key canon points, not to mention alot of other small details, from set to costume to character. But I am not going to complain about any of it, because I loved every second of the movie. Every. Second.

These stories to help us plumb the depths of ourselves, and canon simply exists to give the story a parameter, so that it doesn't continually escalate to the point of ridiculousness, like a child telling a story. It's a means to an end, not the end.

So, it's my opinion that as long as they maintain the integrity of the story and characters, and maintain the truth of the world in which they exist, that the canon can be altered in such a way without ruining the purity of the story.

----

Now as for this movie, have already said that I loved it. LOVED it. I LOVE prequels. they allow us to newly discover people that we already loved, and remind us afresh why we love them so much in the first place. and YES, this is the crew we know and love, not young replacements with the same names adapting their tics.

Karl Urban is dead-on as Bones. Anton Yelchin may not look like Chekhov, but he is the cutest thing since baby seals were invented, and you forgive him because of that. I don't even know the name of the guy playing Kirk, but he managed to preserve the bravado and swagger of Shatner's portrayal, but wiped away the slimy layer of oil he always oozed in the role. and Zachary Quinto is just...perfect as Spock.

go see it. it's well-balanced writing and action... it is eye-popping effects and epic storying... it is overall exhilarating and joyful.