Peep World

Yeah, that movie is no good. Skip it. It's just the most recent thing I've seen, except Cinderella which I watched this morning, but do we really need a recap of Cinderella? I'm dealing with a lot of things. I guess so is everyone. For some reason I had a harder time with Klebold and Harris than I am now. Maybe because with them it was plotted and they took their time. Or maybe it was because I was their age, still in high school, and it felt close. But one could argue that now I'm a parent, and my kid is in elementary school and isn't that even closer? Maybe it was because part of me could empathize with K&H and no part of me can even begin to understand this man who killed basically babies. And I'm still kind of reeling from that baby dying at the zoo. I read a letter written by a Rabbi about the zoo incident and he said that when things like this happen we often don't understand how God could allow it and he said that God has no part in it. In a way that's a little bit of a cop out, but for someone like me who genuinely feels God has no part in most things if not everything I guess it makes sense. We want someone or something to blame for the bad in the world, but what if the bad and the good weren't really as black and white as we think? What if it isn't bad to follow through on the insanity in your brain like the man who went into the building where I used to work and shot up the lobby, killing the one surviving child of a couple who live half a mile from me. Maybe it's just a random act, and random can't be evil can it? And if good deeds are plotted and shared and bragged about doesn't that make them just a little bit bad? I'm anti killing anything. I could bring myself to understand a mercy killing, like when animals are suffering and it just makes sense to help them go faster, but I could never do it myself. I have had to say it was okay to kill dying hamsters before and it still haunts me. I held a guinea pig as it took it's last breath, but people, I can't imagine. And I'm very anti-gun. Once my father-in-law took out his gun to, I don't even remember why, show me? And I had to leave the room, I felt physically ill. I wanted to leave the house but I figured I couldn't explain myself if I had. I had a panic attack just being near one. Those things that can't be unseen or unremembered. I live in constant fear of my children dying. I have night terrors and that's just me on a normal-things-are-safe day. But when I heard about what had happened on Friday it didn't phase me. I wasn't the least bit afraid that my daughters were at school. And I guess that in itself scares me. That when I actually, maybe had a reason to be freaked out I wasn't. And oddly enough I just want it to go away. I don't want to hear about it anymore. I don't want to read about the teachers or the kids or the man or any of it. I want the news to move on in the way it often does. Maybe I want to pretend it never happened. When the zoo incident happened I read everything I could find and watched the news over and over and thought, man that could have been me. I had nightmares where it was me. But this, I'm just so completely detached. Is it shock? Is it some kind of self-preservation mechanism? It doesn't feel like it. I made cookies today, I watched Cinderella with my daughter, I went grocery shopping and wrapped Christmas presents. My life was so utterly normal and these parents, so very many of them, are just destroyed forever and I feel...nothing.

12 Angry Men

I have now had six (6!!!) students drop my class in the first week. What could I possibly be doing that is so wrong? People tell me things like well maybe a class they were waiting for opened up. Not for six people, there's no way. We've had one assignment. And yes most of them did crappy but it was a tiny-counts-almost-for-nothing assignment. And the one drop got the highest score in the class so what of that? I dread going into class for fear of losing even more of them. Perhaps if I just didn't have class at all next week I could keep the rest of them from leaving. Do they think I am an idiot? That I have absolutely nothing to teach them? I seriously just want to burst into tears every second that I am in the room with them. How can I do 15 more weeks of this? How? Should I ask that someone else take over the class? Should I quit?

Moneyball

If you haven't seen Moneyball you should. I am totally in love with Aaron Sorkin right now, especially "Newsroom" but I did enjoy the baseball movie in spite of Brad Pitt. I watch it whenever it is on. I'm excited to get back to school in 25 days mostly because I miss having conversations with adults. I love my kids but they don't make witty jokes or understand sarcasm and those are two essentials in my life. I will miss being home with the little one, she is a total joy in my life. She's always happy to see me, huge smiles, and cuddles up and falls asleep in my arms in seconds. I mean who doesn't want to be loved like that on a regular basis? Instead I have to subject her to daycare and the strange women there; nine hours away from me a day. I worry more for her than for me, but I worry for me as well. It is hard to be a working mom and not just because society hates you either way but because you hate yourself as well. If I stay home with them I am doing myself a disservice, messing with my emotional stability, waning in my intelligence, and in day care they can socialize and learn basic things from people trained to teach them. But I will still cry at work because part of me thinks I should be with my babies and I miss them terribly and instead have to deal with rotten bratty teenagers who just want an A for doing nothing. I know I am lucky to have had the time I did. Seven months with one and eight with the other, no one in the US gets that. In England and Canada sure but not here. So it's time to return to the workforce, fatter than ever with no clothes that fit, not even my shoes, more gray hair than people twice my age and zero self-confidence.

The Descendants

I loved this book. Apparently it was originally a short story that the author changed into a book, her very first book, and it was made into a movie. Talk about beginners luck. In the book, Scottie, the younger daughter, shows up wearing a "Mrs. Clooney" t-shirt and I wondered how in the world they would work that in the movie starring Mr. Clooney without breaking the fourth wall but they just didn't include it. I wish they would have included Scottie's last scene with her mother when she finally tells her goodbye. A whole hell of a lot of the movie was narrated. That surprised me. It stayed true to the format of the book but I thought the idea of bringing it to film was to do something different, show flashback scenes, show him fighting with his wife or his wife cheating on him or jeez, something. But that script stayed first person from start to finish. Why did the screenwriters win an oscar for this if they didn't really re-write anything? They just pulled paragraphs from the book and had George Clooney do some jogging. Was it a good movie? Sure, but it was a damn good story to begin with and if you don't change anything that's kind of hard to mess up.

House of Sand and Fog

I'm not going to write about this movie. It's fairly old and I read the book and after that feast of depression I wasn't going to put myself through the film. It was just on television today and reminded me of how terrible life can be and that I shouldn't complain about anything in my own life. The cool thing about the book is that both characters (the colonel and Kathy) have their flaws and both are really just doing their best, so you don't like them but you don't hate them either and you certainly can't pick sides. I wanted to stay on Kathy's side since it was her house and she really just was in a bad situation from the get go, but she didn't really do much to fix herself or her situation. But what is personal accountability worth these days? The world is instant gratification and selfishness. I am entering my fifth month of no work and all mommy-time. I'm doing better than I did after my first, mentally, much worse physically. I still don't fit in my regular clothing. My body just doesn't want to return to it's upright position. My back is killing me from carrying around all the extra weight and I can't even so much as go for a walk with my baby because she just screams her head off. If I lived on an empty street, fine, I can deal with her crying, but the looks I get from the neighbors (a lot of stay-at-home moms on the street) it a bit much. I could carry her but the wind on the hill where I live takes her breath away and gets into her ears and honestly hurts my back a lot more than pushing a stroller. So I try to do inside stuff, walk in circles, dance, clean, but it's not really helping. I hope I can get her to like walks over the summer, maybe she's just too cold. I really miss work. It was by far my favorite thing and that it's not even an option anymore depresses me. I keep hoping something will change on its own, I guess I'm a bit like Kathy that way, but I have to realize it won't. Still, it's hard to motivate myself to get out there and really sell myself to other schools when part of me doesn't want to leave my kid, I can't fit into anything that looks even remotely presentable, and I have zero time in which to job hunt. I wanted to paint the bathroom this week and honestly you'd think I was building a rocket ship with how difficult it has been. Try to paint a room five minutes at a time, see how far you get, how frustrated you get. I spend more time cleaning out brushes then I do painting. And I have to keep the door shut to keep the fumes from getting to the girls so I get massive headaches in a matter of minutes. It's no good. My old boss used to tell me I had a volcanic personality. He said he could tell when I was getting close to erupting and the days that followed an eruption. I can't say he's wrong. I do start to feel upset, shaky almost, when I've been letting things slide for too long, not standing up for myself, trying not to think about something that bothers me. And when I do let go it comes out all at once and my poor husband is usually the only one in the room (victim). I just wish there was a way for me to deal with things as they happened rather than let it all build up. Anyway I said all that to say this: I am feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, unhappy, and stressed even though very little in my life is bad in anyway. It makes me think I will always be this way, thinking it could be better, thinking I have it bad, instead of seeing the bright side of anything.

Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon.

First off, I've seen professional dancers and if you are even remotely trying to tell me that Emily Blunt is going to be the greatest ballet dancer in the country than I have to call bullshit. The only time we see her "dance" she's just being passed from one male dancer to another in various versions of the fetal position. And as much as I hate to harp on a woman's weight because Emily is thin enough she isn't dancer thin. Dancer thin is ribs exposed, living on one coffee and a pack of smokes a day thin. Even Natalie Portman was pushing it in Black Swan and she was way smaller than Emily Blunt was.

Second, the way Matt and Emily kissed was weird. There was no chemistry between them. They came across as best buds forever than lovers or a couple that had been married for 50 years. Maybe they just didn't like each other for reals, or one of them had bad breath.

Third, I wanted them both to jump off the building at the end and they didn't so I was a little bummed.

Country Strong

God this movie feels like it's three hours long. Apparently it's actually the young male country singer Beau's story and not crazy lady Gweneth's. The previews made it seem like it was her redemption that she was "strong" but it turns out she was just annoying and not a very good singer. If you are having trouble sleeping put this one on, there's lots of music and very little acting.

A Birth Story

I am a stay-at-home-mom-in-training and apparently one very important part of said job is writing up a blog post of what your birth experience was like. Not because it's at all unusual or interesting but because you, as a mother, tell yourself that it is. You also tell yourself people care enough about your "interesting" and "unique" birth story that they will actually read said blog post. If you turn on TLC at any point in the day you can witness how people actually make television shows out of these "birth stories." It's a real phenomenon.

Baby Mila was due on January 3rd. And as anyone will tell you due dates are arbitrary but my ultrasound tech was insistent that that date was as accurate as humanly possible. I thought I was due earlier and based on my daughter's skin when she was born I think the last week of December was closer to her actual time-stamp but nevertheless she arrived on January 7th. While waiting for her arrival I spoke to (complained to) my mother numerous times asking when her children came. My sister was two weeks late, my brother a day early and I was due September 3rd and arrived on September 7th. As soon as she told me that I knew Mila was coming on the 7th just like her mommy.

The entire week prior to her arrival I started having big contractions during the evening. I'd go to bed at nine hoping to sleep between them and wake up around one in the morning and the contractions would have stopped. On January 6th I drove to pick up my older daughter from day care and as I made the turn into her lot a huge contraction made my legs numb and I quickly parked to avoid an accident. My husband drove us all home and I continued to have contractions for the rest of the night.

At one in the morning or so I got up because there was no way I could sleep through them and I wanted my husband to rest. I had started bleeding so I knew it was real labor and it was only a matter of time until the contractions got close together. At 4 am they became so painful that I had to wake my husband. I was in so much pain and the contractions were still only 11 minutes apart but I couldn't do it on my own any longer. I asked him to call the midwives to see if that much pain was normal but they suggested I wait until the contractions were closer but also call my in-laws to come and take care of my other daughter in the meantime.

My in-laws, joys that they are, asked if they had time for breakfast first and arrived a very casual 1.5 hours later to me having contractions 6 minutes apart and ready to rip their heads off. So we promptly left for the hospital with my husband calling on the way to let them know we were coming. When I arrived I was eight centimeters dilated and admitted immediately. From the time we arrived, a little after seven, until 10:30 I was good. The contractions hurt but I was doing my best to get through them. My nurse and midwife were in and out, waiting for me to get to 10cm so I could push. At 10:30 I decided to stand up to help the baby along. Bad, bad decision on my part.

My contractions immediately started to come one on top of the other and the pain was so intense I called the nurse and said I had to push because I didn't know what else to say... I was dying? She called the midwife who helped me back onto the bed and said I was only 9cm but that she could break my water and that would drop the baby enough to get to 10 very quickly. She broke my water and then left the room.

I'd rather forget the next 20 minutes. I was screaming in pain, sweating uncontrollably, my husband was so overwhelmed by my pain that he had to go sit down. My blood pressure got so high that they were worried I would have a heart attack but I was only worried I would faint. I thought if ever there was a time to pass out from pain this was it. I kept thinking this is why epidurals were invented you stupid stupid woman. What are you trying to prove?

And then I could feel the baby coming out, almost like she was stuck and the midwife slipping her fingers around the baby's head and I thought "Jesus Christ! No room at the Inn!" And then the head was out, and then I felt the shoulders which hurt equally as bad and there was the baby.

I needed less stitches this time although I had a lot more bleeding. The hospital's solution to this is to press hard on your uterus to make you gush. When you gush less they let you go to postpartum. After a couple of hours and several painful pushes on my gut I was allowed to leave. And over the next 36 hours everyone kept pushing on me trying to make me bleed. Since then I have bled like crazy even having to go to ER at one point, vomited, had the chills, and all the while tried to care for my toddler and newborn.

Yay for babies.

So there's my birth story. Beautiful isn't it? After my first baby I watched women on television and thought, you wuss, the pain isn't that bad. I sailed through that labor with a couple of swear words. But after this one, oh boy, women are amazing creatures to have been doing this for centuries. And the pain is the worst thing I could ever wish upon anyone. I think I'd rather be burned alive then go through it again. Here's hoping.