May!

Well, nearly a month since I blogged.  hahaha

We started the month in New Mexico via Oklahoma for a couple of days.  Then up to Santa Fe and down through ABQ, Truth or Consequences, White Sands, Carlsbad and back home via Abilene and a quick stop at the zoo there.  Chandler really likes zoos.  I would move to Albuquerque in a heartbeat.

Back home, we did the laundry-mow-clean up fest and then rested a bit.  Matt and I took off over the previous weekend to backpack while Ben and Chandler stayed with friends.

And now we are on the eve of the Panther Run, Jake is going to sign for a car loan today, Matt is awaiting the news of the salary bump following his new promotion.  It's been a busy several days, today being some kind of apex day in which many things happen at once.  Fingers crossed for $20k more a year!  It won't be nearly that much, but why not have high hopes.  hahaha!

Finished the Hannibal series yesterday. WOW.  That last line was so perfect, wow.

Watched The 5th Wave a couple of days ago.  AVOID AVOID.  It has seriously the worst chemistry between characters who should not even be thinking about love.  Spoiler alert:  A Boy Saves The Day.  After the female lead goes through all kinds of stuff but mainly just has really really good timing for walking in and out of places.  Also, Liev is in it which is why I did not turn it off halfway through.

Tonight, I am going to eat dinner and see a movie with my bestie from elementary school.  She has started dating after 7 years and I could do a blog just for her hairbrained adventures.  OMG, I am SO SO SO glad to just be a housewife and not have to wade those waters.  I have been on a couple dates with her as a third wheel and it's all I can do not to bolt for the exit.  Between worrying about what to say and what to wear and having to maintain hair and nails and makeup and then there's wondering if the guy is psycho.  Not many people are single at 45 without some baggage of some sort.

I just want to add that hot shells and cheese is the best thing ever, I don't even care that it has zero nutrients.

And, here are a couple pics from the backpacking trip!  (NM trip at eopapaver)

We are SO CUTE

I hate hills.  THIS hill made my knee start hurting!  

Ranger Falls, the last 'named' feature in South Cumberland that I had not seen!!

We all have matching packs, Karen and I have the girl pack and Matt and M have the boy pack
Karen packed 5 POUNDS of clothes, so her pack is stuffed.  hahaha

Matt and I are hanging side by side and it was COLD overnight.  eep

The ears.  *squee*

Suter Falls

I wanted to go to Horsepound so Matt could see that falls, too, but my knee was KILLING me.
That's a new ailment and one I intend to nip in the bud, I can't have that!

Next week is another busy busy one.  Major field trip Monday, camping until Thursday, 4 day weekend in which we will hike in the rain on purpose!  If it rains.

I have been fighting off something horrible that wants to live in my sinuses and behind my ears.  I can't get that ear pressure to let up with the OTC meds I have, I have been thinking about...going to the doctor.  UGH  Even typing it makes me want to just take to my bed. My latest efforts have included so much hydration that I can only make it 15 minutes between bathroom runs.  I will be loads of fun at the movie tonight.

AH well, all caught up-the highlights anyhow.

Scary Movies

I watch about 60 movies a year and run through 70 or so dvds, usually with Matt, watching TV shows and such. That's 2 or 3 a week, or our 2 dvd Netflix membership supplemented with the occasional local rental, maybe 3 a month. Not a whole lot considering the average kid in school watches 5 hours a tv a day.

My whole point in this was to highlight the absurdly high ratio of scary movies I still manage to mow through. I don't like what I think of as torture porn. Man terrorizes anyone (usually a woman) via bondage, fear, and/or mutilation or slasher movies where the body count ends up being everyone but the virgin. Especially when the victim in any situation is able to knock over the bad guy...and then they run. No. If their head is within reach and you have a weapon, you keep hitting until there are visible brains. Preferably breaking some other bones along the way, but mainly avoiding recapture. There are many delicate things located in the delicate head area. Eyeballs, nose, ears, throat.  HIT THEM HARD.

Many scary movies rely heavily on gimmick and gore and that can be fun at times-I fully enjoyed Sharknado, a movie with a body count in the double digits and not even the barest nod toward science. But in general, it's just more of the same and sooooo overdone. The scariest thing about some of those movies may be how banal seeing a person's life being taken from them can become. That's not entertainment, it's...torture porn. I am still working out the difference, like Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite movies and people die left and right in it. Maybe it's the survivors surviving vs slashers slashing?

Anyway. Here are my picks for the year, some are not from this year, but I can't help when I see them. Since it's nearly Halloween, I will pair them with a snack suggestion.

Netflix Instant:

Oculus.
I wrote about this one when I saw it, but it's a good layered story even with the plot holes.
Pair with a chocolate bar, the siblings had a childhood gone wrong. What better way to soothe the inner child?

An American Ghost Story.
6 actors, no high tech effects. Just a ghost story that has such good boo moments that I squealed. One particular effect where the main character (who wrote the movie!) falls through a doorway is delicious. I laughed so hard, talk about an oh shit moment.
The main character is alone 90% of the movie, but is likeable and is friendly, gentle, and calm. It somehow makes him feel more vulnerable without making him wimpy. Like he's open to what's going on, but no fool. It's a good movie, I hope he does more.
Pair with MnMs. You'll need something to occupy the moments between scares.

The Awakening.
Creepy and scary, set in a boys boarding school in an isolated area during an earlier era. The protagonist is a female supernatural debunker, hired to calm the boys and parents after a boy dies and rumors fly about him haunting the school. Battling inner demons of her own, she sets out to find answers. With science!
Pair with tea and scones. It's British.

Don't Blink.
I don't usually like movies where there's something wrong from the start and the people involved barrel ahead anyway. Especially if the main barrel aheader is a dumbass bully. But the effects in this are so well done, when it ends you just wonder what happened. Here's a hint: people disappear.
Pair with gummy worms. No reason, I just like them.

The Babadook.
This needs to be watched twice because the first time you cover your eyes too much. Also, the mother/child combo the movie focuses on is so disfunctional you want to line them up and slap them both. It's almost distracting as you think maybe it would be okay for them to be eaten by a character from the scariest children's book ever. Then you start getting into the story and realize the shreds of sanity that poor mother has left are wafting in the breeze and unless she can get her act together, they really might get devoured. By a book? By their grief? By their sheer disfunction? What's the turning point, and how close is it to the breaking point?
Pair with pretzels. You can scare the bejeebers out of your viewing friends with a well placed crunch.

The House at the End of Time.
From Venezuela, this movie has a female main character who has been released after a 30 year sentence for killing her whole family. Still under house arrest in the very house the murders took place, the local priest gets enlisted to help find out exactly what did happen that night.
Pair with nacho chips and cheese dip. Because they are yummy and also vaguely Hispanic. To Americans anyway.

Stonhearst Asylum
Based on a Poe story, it's got it all. Creepy location, period drama feel, a love story, a mystery needing answers. Arriving as a young and very new doctor, our main character quickly discovers they keep the most insane tenants in the basement. He pops down for a visit and finds them appearing quite sane and claiming to be the actual staff of Stonehearst. Pair this one with Twizzlers, you'll appreciate the twists.

Killer Legends
This is actually a documentary focused on discovering the origins of 4 popular uraban legends. I enjoyed it, it's a good chance to learn more about the genre and get a new perspective.
This film needs Nutty Buddies so you can peel off layers while the team unravels some history.

On dvd:

The Orphanage
A good haunted house horror film, it's about a woman who has convinced her husband to buy and reopen the orphanage she spent a happy childhood in, this time for ill children. Odd, I know. After moving in, her own unwell adopted son disappears and the ghosts in the house may or may not actually be helping her find him.
Pair with Milk Duds. Seriously.

Predestination
A time travel movie with a plot so easy to follow yet so difficult to absorb that you will lie awake and think about it.
Pair with those 2 colored cheese sticks. Or some Mike and Ikes.

13
This movie is more tense than scary and I admit I only added it because Jason Statham is in it and I somehow missed it when it came out.
A boy in need of money badly stumbles upon a way to make some fast. The only catch is, he has no idea what it entails. He assumes the identity of a dead man to get in the door and discovers he's now a player in a game with some very high stakes.
Pair with almonds, you don't need any more sugar if you've made it this far.


At the theater:

Crimson Peak
Period drama, ghost story, love story, creepy on many levels and the ghosts are black and rattle and moan and are scary. Once the movie moves to the house above the mines, the creepy factor jacks up as the blood red clay the family fortune was built on becomes another character, oozing up, sliding down, bubbling over and slicking the walls, coloring everything it comes in contact with. I thought Alabama was bad, but our red clay has nothing on this place. The movie goes some surprising directions, there are leaves in the house-but no trees nearby, the women are strong characters and despite being certain there are nefarious plots in motion, you end up being caught up in the love story aspect as well. Tom Huddleston does some amazing acting with just those blue eyes of his. It's a very enjoyable movie to sit back and watch.
Seeing Bobby from Supernatural was a nice surprise, too.
Pair with theater popcorn, but skip the giant soda. There's not a good spot to run pee and it's a solid 2 hours long.  

Mid-Month update

Wow, it seems like time is going even faster these days.

The first week of the month was the usual-our FINAL, final ortho appointment.  Every month for 7 years!
Jake had a filling, I bought some sandals (my last pair I bought before the 2006 Disney trip) and we bottled the latest batch of kombucha.  I have 3 gallons going at time right now, that's probably my limit.

Matt and I went backpacking last weekend, doing around 30 miles at Savage Gulf.  I loved it, though the gnats were crazy making.  There was some cussing on my part for sure.  It was DRY, it had rained the previous 2-3 days, which saved us, but the creeks were DRY.  We refilled at 2 springs, 2 TINY springs. One was filled with leaf debris and the other was filled with frogs.  eeeee.

Yes, I have purple hair.
No, I did not bleach it first, it will fade.

Why I actually love my tall hiking pole.  I can prop and reflect. 

1.5 miles from the car, we stopped and hopped in Savage Falls to cool off and marvel at ALL THE WATER.

Spring number two
We use UV to zap the water, even from springs.

The tall bridge over the total empty Savage Creek bed.  It drops into a sink before it reaches here.  I imagine it flows after the winter rains as there IS a creek bed there.

The FREAKISHLY uphill 'drop' to the gulf floor.  I honestly did not think we were ever going to reach the bottom!  Then I got rattled by a rattlesnake, my foot was 6 inches from the tail.  The head was at least 3 feet away.  I backed up PDQ and we went around it.  It was totally relaxed the whole time, did not seem to mind us hiking-just didn't want me to step on it!  We thought it was being really polite.

Spring number one.  The pics are not in order!

Hobbs Cabin, the only cabin in the TN state park system.
We had it to ourselves that night, so I set up my freestanding tent inside-there are camel crickets and spiders and mice in there.  hahaha  Our only casualty to the mice was they got in Matt's pack and shredded about half of his toilet paper.  We bear bagged everything else, which was a bit exciting.

This week, we went to see Pixels with some friends and had a bonfire afterward.  I did not take a single photo!  The movie was better than I imagined, I usually avoid Adam Sandler.  Okay, I do have one complaint.  There were 5 women in the whole movie.  None spoke to the other, of course.  And they were all slim, 2 to the point of their thighs not touching.  Every, EVERY man in the movie, was fat.  BIG bellies, double chins, sagging jowls, fat fingers, wide rear ends and in general unattractive (and mouth breathers!). And they all looked their age and then some.  Like they came in hung over, while the women had flawless hair and makeup, heels and tight skirts.

Today was supposed to be a pool party, but the manager at the pool decided to close for the season yesterday.  Then said I was lying about talking to him twice in the past 2 weeks about setting up the event today.  So there's that.  And 30 people to contact by 11 this morning.  I heard back from all but one.

Tomorrow is a reunion!  I am going for a long walk with Karen, who I have not seen in...2 years?  I am so excited, I even turned down a campout at a fire tower tonight to watch the meteor shower to go!

Friday night, Chan is running in the Color Run.  That's it for big plans for the week.  I am hoping my camping buddy will decide Thursday night will work for her and I can still get to see the shower. I'd appeal to her here, but she doesn't read my blog. hahahaha!

The kids are 'back' to doing school stuff.  Even though he graduated a year ago, Jake still watches his history stuff every single day and he's WAY into the upcoming election.  He wants to check his voter registration card to be double sure he can vote.

I say 'back' because they don't really slack off for summer or holidays.  They have their routine and I don't interfere other than to suggest more math and writing practice when I get the chance.  When we are home, they do work.  When we are not, no one sweats it.  It's a beautiful system!  They are brilliant children!  I am very blessed with them and I don't take it for granted, ever.

More backpacking trips in the works for me, Matt and me and the kids and me!  I am hoping for a rainy late summer!  Except for when I am actually outside.  hahaha.  I can hope!

Jurassic World

I wanted to go to the drive in as our first 'summer movie' and see Jurassic World, but they paired it with what appears to be a movie about a masturbating teddy bear.

So, we went to a matinee instead and here are some things we fixated on.

Claire, the female protagonist, wears HEELS the WHOLE MOVIE even when running from dinosaurs and walking through the jungle and they are not sensible kitten heels, they are teetery spiked tall things.  Ben is worried the actress will have ongoing pain for the rest of her life.  He also was annoyed that the dinos had tracking devices, but no one knew where they were at any given time unless they were told to find them.

Megatron I mean Indominous rex is cobbled together from T-rex DNA and using the tried and true methods of the first movie (and the book!) they fill gaps with 'other' DNA.  Okay, I get that and I get that they souped her up to be bigger, badder and cooler because normal dinos are boring 20 years into the theme park experience.  What I don't get is why they used tree frog DNA to 'make it acclimate to a tropical environment'.  Um, didn't ALL dinos live in what was essentially the tropics?   Or is that my second grade education kicking in, where all dinos were grey and lived in the swamp?  So then do ALL the other dinos in the park have tree frog DNA?

What other DNA is in that thing?  It had thumbs and a long memory and was devious and enjoyed killing for the sake of watching prey fall.  I call human.  Owen even says, "That thing out there? That's no dinosaur." I also think the next movie will have some kind of hybrids, like Dwayne Johnson size and up dudes with scales and spikes.  Because-what good is a scientific application if it can't make you rich?  Since the theme park experience was becoming dull and since many tourists were made into snacks, I foresee no more entertainment value in the science.  Nothing generates revenue quite like war and religion and the age of dinos fossils fly in the face of Biblical teachings, so military it is!  (Just take a peek at a church with two 'campuses' within a half hour of me and probably you, Daystar.)

Plus, in the lab at the end-spines in sci-fi blue glowing tanks.  Human...ish spines.  I bet that's the weak point, our puny spines can't hold up a skull covered in spikes and filled with jaggedy teeth. Women routinely get backaches from hauling around boobs all day.

Back to the plot:

I don't think pterosaurs would eat humans.  I think they ate fish and besides, chubby white tourists would be way too heavy, even for a 12 foot wingspanned critter to lift.  Take into consideration that they probably also had hollow bones (like birds!) and they would weigh about as much as a dog.  But, I do think they could peck a hole right in your face and probably kill you after they landed on you since their faces were basically 1/2 dagger.  The question is-would they see humans as edible?  (I am seeing where some had wing spans of 30 feet and weighed 550 pounds.  Shit!  That's HUGE.  Spoiler Alert: none are that size in the movie.)

I had no problems at all with Star Lord Owen the Zookeeper's approach to raptor training.  I can't get a 20 pound dog with a brain the size of a 2 ping pong balls to learn to shake, so I can't gripe on reptile training techniques other than to say Reptiles Magazine says your lizard simply won't understand the use of a clicker.  I know dinosaurs are their own special branch and not REALLY reptiles, but that's what I have to work with.  It was a little odd that he had zero idea there was a new Rex in town.  And speaking of the I rex, why was it miles away from the other attractions?  They were not planning to move her because they were obsessing over the enclosure and the exhibit was to open in 3 weeks time.  They had to copter in to see her!  Were they planning on buy more copters or just installing a new monorail track.  In under a month.

The raptors and I rex have a chat, which first was just confusing as the I rex was raised in isolation, but then it came out that she had raptor DNA as well in that mix, so...just like all humans can speak to all other humans via genes, so can raptors.  Or, maybe I am being too high thinking.  I imagine my father's dog, Butterbean, could 'chat' with other dogs even though he's being raised in doggie isolation.  The raptors and I rex are the only females in the movie to speak face to face, but as they are obviously discussing Star Lord, I mean Owen, it does not pass the Bechdel test.  Plus, technically, only the raptors have names.

I did like that they explained the dinosaurs appearance being not at all like dinos actually looked as human interference-they were patched together using what would look good and fill in the gaps.  That explains why none of them have feathers when it's been decided that practically all of them did, even T rex.  I won't go into the science of how just some cuttlefish genes in the soup could not attribute to the skin of the resulting animal changing colors like a cuttlefish.  But I am totally behind the whole 'regular dinos are dull, let's make something cooler!" mentality and also riding baby triceratopses around the petting zoo.  I am all over that!  I hope while they were ramping up dino coolness, they also did something about those boring giraffes and monkeys at the poor folks zoos for those of us who can't zip off to Costa Rica.

I loved that the hero was the T rex from the original park.  What is a T rex's life span?  (I looked, 30 years!)  Also, liked the plug for Ian Malcolm's book all in the movie, the many nods to the original JP and that the boss fight included a raptor riding a T rex into battle with the I Rex, who changed scale at whim and was ultimately eaten ON THE PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY by a (freakishly oversized) masosaur.  Which means it could have hopped out and snacked on people at any point and didn't making it the single best-behaved meat eater in the entire four movie franchise AND the book.  Good on you, masosaur!  I am just assuming the cuttlefish DNA did not kick in and the I rex and masosaur did not chat a bit and swim off together.  And make babies.

In all, despite our massive misgivings into the actual science of the movie (which is why I have tried and failed several times to write about... UGH...Interstellar) it IS a good monster movie and granted, I have never listed all the reasons my favorite X-Men could not do this or that with their humany bodies, including have boobs that size with such tiny waists, not to mention have the ability to phase through solid objects, make playing cards into tiny bombs, pop out some claws or, you know, FLY. Plus, in Sharknado 2, Wil Wheaton (and his wife) gets eaten by a shark on an airplane that is actively flying in the sky.

So I really can enjoy a movie for the sake of the movie and suspend my beliefs for a while.  The main gripes in this movie are not the sci-fi bits, but what didn't have to happen that made me go HUH.  The heels, the 20 year old engine with 20 year old gas and spark plugs and oil and coolant cranking and then rolling away on tires that had not gone flat or dry rotted and the belts did not snap, the high-traction plexiglass (that's sarcasm there) gyrosphere not leaving any sort of mark or getting any sort of mark from rolling around on the poop, grass and rock covered plains filled with dinos and you can't tell me some little shit hasn't tried playing bumper cars with the dinosaurs.   No WAY that thing would not be on a track.  And the fact that the boys had VIP access wrist bands, but were waiting in lines.  And right now at Disney World you can track your party via their wrist bands on your phone. How were the boys lost for half the movie?  Did no one at the park have the park app?

It's a fun movie and the layout of the theme park is awesome, it's totally believable as a space and you can go look at the park cams.  It did miss that initial OOMPH of the first movie, coming up over the rise with Alan and Ellie and there were motherfucking DINOSAURS just WALKING AROUND. That was my Star Wars moment, the moment when you totally totally believe, "This is really happening!"  Gray opening the window to his balcony, much like this movie, just didn't pack the same punch, though it was pretty to see.

Many Movies!

Teen Scene met up at Dy's house to marathon the Hunger Games movies before the new one came out last week.

I read the first book, then listened to it about a year later with the kids and then we pulled the last audiobook cd out of the player and put in the first movie.  HUGE MISTAKE!

The first movie, compared to the book, was AWFUL, so we did not continue the series.

Jake, last year, finished the series of books, but none of us were interested in seeing the rest of the movies.

Enter, friends and hanging out.  Suddenly-more interested!

We finished the first 2 on Wendesday and met up Friday to see the 3rd movie at the theater.

I am pretending it's snow.

Out my bedroom window!

Kai eating Nia's ears.  Nia is SO patient with this horrible puppy.

I am calling her Gator, she is all teeth and mean!

She will 'sit' then LEAP UP AND DEVOUR YOUR ENTIRE HAND!

I am typing this left handed and with a pencil in my teeth.

There were about twice this many kids at the movie, but cold yogurt for dinner only appealed to this crew.

The movies were good, having not read the books!  

We are headed out today for the first in a hiking series for our cover school.  I am hoping that will go well!

Gator is going to the vet in the morning for her check-up.  : )  I hope they find my hand...

Feed a Cold

Careful what you wish for, the next best thing to sleeping in a hotel is sleeping in my own bed, which I am getting to do this weekend while Matt takes Jake and Chan off camping with Ben's best friends.

Our Benny is well and truly sick, proven with an even deeper voice and the fever he spiked this afternoon.

Somehow, I still managed to end up having to plan and pack everything anyway.  hrm.

I have a couple movies to watch and some hot oil treatment packs for our hair.  He drew the line at facials, but the weekend is BARELY started.  He'll cave.

I made coconut curry soup with rice noodles Thursday night and a pot of potato soup Friday afternoon.  He wants mac and cheese next.  We ate a whole pack of cookies and the rest of the jerky and he ate an entire can of coconut crunchy things that I thought were chips.  I have to quit snacking, I have that insurance physical Tuesday!

We watched the new Transformers 2 hour and 44 minute movie.  Holey Moley!  Yet ANOTHER movie in which the girl is there to look good in shorts, need to be rescued a few times and scream from the backseat. At least this time she's not covered in Vaseline.  She introduces her boyfriend, "His name is Shane and he drives."  WOW. That's quality writing right there. And, astonishingly, it was exactly enough back story on him-never mind he has an Australian accent, yet has lived in Texas long enough for him to be 20 and the Romeo and Juliet law to be in effect (pre-established teen relationship makes an adult-teen relationship legal).  I did not look that up to see if it was true, the probably made it up like every bit of the science they used, including ACTUAL science.  Like 'carbon dating' a silicone-based being from another planet.

We also watched The Signal, which I liked despite Netflix telling me I would not.  It was about...well, it's sci-fi.  Watch it and see.  If I say too much, it will give away the plot.  It has Tim from Oculus in it, that actor is SO cute.  I am ever-slightly bummed that I don't have a kid to watch movies and oogle the actors with me. Chan could care less about boys and Jake will occasionally geek with me, he has no head for faces-if we saw 10 movies in a row with the same 10 actors in all of them, he would not know who they were from one movie to the next.  He can pick out Nathan Fillion and Robert Downey Jr and sometimes Benedict Cumberbatch. That's it, everyone else is a new experience every time.  So yelling out, "It's so and so!" means nothing to him.  Ben refuses to enjoy looking at other people, much less discuss anything about them.

I tried to get him interested in doing something most of the afternoon, but he napped and then sat around blowing his nose and staring at me with bloodshot eyes.  He looks like he's into some serious drugs, poor kid.  I gave him Vitamin C gummies and lots of hot tea and Sierra Mist.  I don't have any serious drugs.

I hope Matt and the other two are not freezing, I am off to lay on my heating pad and read until I pass out. My left shoulder feels like there's gravel in the joint.

I just finished Tana French's newest book, The Secret Place.  BAM, it was about Stephen, which I totally called over 2 years ago.  I don't know who the next book will feature, her MO is to take a detective from the Dublin Murder Squad and write the book about that person.  The first 4 flowed from one into the next without much spacing and the next character was some part of the previous story line.  This one was a little later on and there were no back-up detectives, even in passing, other than Mackey-who has already had his own book.  Rob and Cassie never even got mentioned.  :(  The detective from Broken Harbor  was mentioned, but that was it.  I wonder if she will go into Conway's story next.  She partnered with Stephen for this one, but featured as much as he did...I don't know.  Hard to call.  Anyway, I am in that floudering mode where I don't have the next book in mind and I have dipped into a few I downloaded and ended up deleting all of them.  Nothing else is as good.

3 week update and a scary movie

So other than tearing and stretching the peroneal retinaculum in my ankle and foot, I also stripped the nerve endings out along the sural nerve, specifically the lateral dorsal cutaneous nerve, like pulling a worm out of a hole, except across the entire top of my foot.  This is what has been causing the itching and burning while it's healing.  They don't thread themselves back in there, you have to grow new ones!  I feel VERY icky about the whole thing, seriously, I get queasy thinking about it.

I have been taking B complex, D and Omega 3 and 6, which are all supposed to help with nerve growth.  To help my brain cope by thinking I am growing them back even FASTER, I have opted to only eat things with ingredients I can actively see.  Rice, granola, seeds, veggies.  Nothing mixed up or mashed up or added gunk that I can't pronounce.  I am convinced this will speed it up, because until it stops burning, I can only think of a dolls scalp plucked clean. And shriveled brown worms frying in the sun on the sidewalk.  

I know all I can talk about these days is my ankle and Disney and what I am reading or watching.  But my life is really small at the moment!  I went grocery shopping yesterday-that's it for getting out of the house since my birthday the week before.  I have a new bed topper from Serta.  It's the first bed topper that A) has not been stolen my one of my children and B) actually goes from corner to corner on our California king bed.

So, on to movies!  Oculus came out on dvd this weekend and it's good!  I liked the whole plot and I am pretty sure the sequels could reach a dozen or more. It was not terribly believable, but scary stories aren't supposed to be things you think would actually happen.  More like an urban legend-yeah, a guy with a hook for a hand COULD be on the loose, but I am not going to install high powered magnets in the ceiling so he can't take a swing at me with it while I sleep.  An evil mirror is not even a new plot to tackle.  But still, I liked the story and the characters and I liked how they worked in the backstory of the mirror and I liked the way I could very easily tell when it was past and present in the story by the way the main characters were played by different people entirely.  See, I don't ALWAYS need wavy lines.  hahahaha! 

It was a good nearly non-gory movie with 3 stories going on that were juggled well, I thought.  Well enough for Saturday night at home with some popcorn and the honey anyway!  There was what happened to the now-adult siblings when they were kids involving the mirror, there was what was happening in the movie present day with the mirror and there was what the mirror wanted them to think was happening by making them see things not there.  The sister character, I'll call her not-Tim because his name is the only one I can remember due to the Kagomesque way his sister screamed it 900 times.

Not-Tim had done a ton of research and had set up 3 fail-safe mechanisms for keeping them safe/sane while...with the mirror.  I am still not clear WHAT they wanted to do, as breaking it was impossible and they did not have ghost-killing powers and gizmos.  I think they were just going to hang out and become crazy while trying to capture proof of the mirror making them crazy. My complaint here is that she says, "It has been responsible for at least 45 deaths" and "we don't know the origin of the mirror" then goes on to detail the origin (at least of the name, 'Lasser Glass') of the mirror and a dozen deaths that were pretty well along the timeline since the origin.  Before that, no history of the mirror.  After that...not 45 deaths.  12.  Maybe 13.  If there's no record of who owned it or where it was for a stretch, you can't just assign a number of deaths to have occurred in that time!

Best part-glowy eyes instead of black eyes.  They were supposed to be the mirror using the bodies to look through or something along those lines.  But they were scary, so I did not think about WHY they were shiny too hard.  

eeeeeee!  Katee Sackhoff, go away!

A week later

Holy moly, what a week.  On Saturday, Jake was super sick.  Then Chan on Sunday, Ben on Monday, Tuesday Matt made it to the stop sign before coming home. Matt, who last threw up in the year 2000, still hurls like a Viking.  It was seriously like an overdone sound effect, if it had been in a movie, people would roll their eyes. So by that point, I was unsure if I dodged the bullet or was next.  To be safe I stopped eating at 2 and switched to water for the rest of the day.

I lost 4 pounds anyway.

So that is what we did all week, took turns being sick and then tiptoeing around while the next person was ill. Loads of quietly working on personal projects, reading and piddling online for everyone and not much else, we did not go anywhere all week. I have never, ever been THAT sick, it was like a pinecone in your gut. And that's enough of that little tale. Oh, other than to say that I had spent a few hours before getting sick looking at Eyvind Earle's artwork and in particular his dragons for Sleeping Beauty back in 1951.  Those were fun for my brain to conjure during fever dreams!

Oh but his work is GORGEOUS.
Here are just a tiny few of his thousands of pieces of work, I would love prints, but there's no way I could settle, I am posting these at random from my collection that scrolls in my screensaver because even with only a couple dozen, there's no clear favorite.  Maybe I could get a projector...

After the Sun Goes Down

Wave of Golden Fire

As Far As I Could See

Ah, so lovely!  The lone trees look like animals, I love the shapes, the mist, the play of light.  The coolness of the turquoise, green, blue and purple with those bright warm orange and reds, beautiful.  I can see how his work could have influenced the artists behind Samurai Jack:

In fact, when I first saw his work in the queue line at Soarin', I thought it might be someone from the team that does Samurai Jack.

In other news, I finished up The Killing.  I liked the ending, not just for how it ended with the viewer able to make their own 'what happened next' to everyone, but that the final scene used the shots from the opening credits (which explains how come her hair did not grow at all).  Moving to Netflix from AMC, they were able to curse freely and it took 2 of the 6 episodes to realize Holden was dropping the F bomb like a 7 year old with a box of snap-pops on July 4th.  It was a MUCH darker season.

I followed that up with Southcliffe, a 4 episode crime drama set in England.  I found it to be disjointed and hard to follow.  I could not tell the characters or time periods apart in some places, in a single episode there were jumps to the main...ish character's childhood, back and forth in the current time frame and recent past. Maybe I am too American and need wavy lines to indicate flashback sequences.  I did not dig into the deeper meaning of it all, the one that other folks are going on about, because I was busy trying to figure out what was going on.  In the 'year later' bit, he returns to the same pub for a room and the woman behind the counter is wearing the exact same shirt and blouse and her hair in unchanged from the previous scene the 'year before'.  I guess it could be a uniform, but no one else behind the counter is wearing one.  It looked a good deal like the top the returning soldier's girlfriend/wife was wearing in another scene, so maybe I am just seeing things.

I got the 5 Stages of Grief thing, the fact that it was about the people left behind, finally figured out that it's not linear, but I think I need more words than anguished expressions.  A LOT more words.

I did, however, really enjoy the closing song, which was Emily Dickinson's poem 'Love Can Do All But Raise the Dead' put to music by T.E. Morris and sung by him at the All Souls Festival at the end of episode 4.  Lovely, lovely, lovely. Here is the song, it's 2 minutes long, go listen. http://vimeo.com/62374372  I don't know why he's not on every station.  If he'd drop 90% of the strings in his tracks, I'd never listen to anyone else.  As is, they are too overpowering in several of his songs.  He's over at Soundcloud.  Here's the poem:

“Love can do all but raise the Dead
I doubt if even that
From such a giant were withheld
Were flesh equivalent

But love is tired and must sleep,
And hungry and must graze
And so abets the shining Fleet
Till it is out of gaze.”

And that's it, our week.  The kids have been double-down doing their school stuff, we are getting ready for a break coming up and no one wants to be dragging the mental stress of unfinished work around with them. Or more like totally forget about it and come home from Disney to weeks of backlog.  I can't believe that is coming up so quickly and this foot is not at all ready to travel.  I can walk, very slowly, a quarter mile at a time on the treadmill, I have maxed out at half a mile before my foot turns green and swells back up.  Sunday will be 3 weeks of this, I am ready to be mobile again and start getting my stamina back.  At this rate, Matt will be pushing me around in a rented wheelchair while I nap and they ride.  :(  What if I drool?

We are all anxious to be out of the house more, so Katy to the rescue with the offer of her house and pool access for a while coming up soon.  I am hoping some time on the mountain and being able to swim each day will speed things along!  If not, I can at least take pictures of the view, which is more than I can say here!  I love this house, but in the summer, it's an ocean of green, the 'view' stops wherever we mowed the farthermost from the window!   Oh, and Katy to the rescue again, she's keeping NiaBee while we travel!  I am SO grateful, I don't think she realizes what peace of mind knowing our puppy will be so well cared for gives me.  I was really scared she'd have to go to a kennel and that she'd be scared and sad.  She LOVES Mars and Katy's kids, so that will be much easier for her little heart.

I have not heard back from Gerri yet about the big dogs and cats and checking up on the house, but that's the last box I need to check for covering the big stuff.  I have our new tent picked out, packing lists made, plans laid out, I have been researching various things about the trip.  We are getting new tires and all the van care done closer to time, but already budgeted and on the calendar.  At least with being laid up, the van is getting a good rest, too!  :)

Gratuitous amounts of television via Netflix

So during my confinement have been reading teen tragedies involving boring girl who reads and *surprise* magical boy. The latest in this I swear, never ever ending genre, was Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Also, I have been watching Netflix. Today I discovered a 40 episode season of Forensic Files. Holed up in the bed, with Matt and the kids off tubing, I started watching with episode 1, determined to solve as many cases as possible before they return and catch me rotting my brain.

I'd seen a few episodes from the series while at Katy's house but had failed to appreciate the sheer drama of the narrator. INSERT LOW WHISPERY very dramatic VOICE The two were seen drinking heavily and buying (pause, pause, pause) (low and breathy)crack cocaine! I swear the narrator holds his breath for the last paragraph before the commercial break. Watch an episode, seriously. It sounds like he's a split second from passing out, which makes the part after the break hilarious because it's just 2 seconds later and he's fine again.  Doesn't even take a breath.

Other than Forensic Files, I have been watching the series Jack Taylor set in Ireland and starring the guy who plays the Khaleesi's sidekick on Game of Thrones. In a side note I'm totally impressed that talk to text can spell Khaleesi! That's a really good series and you can't help but like Jack even though he's a raging alcoholic and has anger management issues. I sometimes wonder if this is really the case with every man in Ireland, or just every character from every book and movie set in Ireland.

Oh wait, wasn't Waking Ned Devine set in Ireland? That is a fabulous movie.  That was on instant play last time I looked, though I own it on VHS and dvd as well as the soundtrack.  I am playing The Parting Glass at my funeral.  Matt wants Rainbow Connection.  Maybe we can both do both, though Matt doesn't get a funeral, just a service.  You can join him!  We have a playlist somewhere, but have not written out what's going to be said yet. After the whole 'Jesus wanted her for an ornament on his Christmas tree' debacle, there's no WAY some idiot is getting ahold of my service.  Maybe I will make everyone sit through a photo montage.  That would be much more fitting than loads of platitudes.

Another new series to Netflix instant play is Jacob's (and mine) all time favorite, All Creatures Great and Small. You seriously should watch every single episode. With seven seasons it'll take awhile but heck, time's all we've got, right? The books are just as good, not better, because the story and casting in the series is so spot on that I can't find a single fault. The show is often the story verbatim.

I will finish with a single personal reading redemption recommendation to assist my karma, and that is Karin Slaughter's new book, Cop Town. Set in 1974 Atlanta and dealing with blacks and women joining the police force in the midst of a serial cop killer spree, it is well written (all of her books are) and currently a stand-alone book though the characters are so strong I'm sure she could make it into a series. Unless of course she kills everyone off, I haven't actually finished it yet. I got it from the library's ebook site, I was so stoked they had a copy!

Oh yeah, my own story set in Disney World that I'm writing for the kids is coming along very nicely. It's based on a series of absolutely hysterically bizarre things that happened to an older couple (so no children were in danger) while visiting the parks. I used to tell them the stories when they were younger. Chan has begged me to write them out ever since. Now I have lots of time to do just that.

Birthday!

Friday was Matt's birthday and our last day of Staycation!  We got up to watch the sunrise and it was very foggy, so we went right back to sleep.  A couple hours later, we were back up to take care of critters and decided to go swim at the pool.  Chan was our only taker, so the three of us headed out for a couple of hours.

The view from the pool is pretty okay.  The clouds could have been puffier.

I am determined to hick up as much as I can.

After the swim, we had a quick snack and showers and headed to see Captain America with Gina and her kids.  Brit headed back with us for the night and we stopped at Panda Express for early dinner and then on to the music store to get Matt a djembe, the very one he has pined over for months.

We dropped the kids off at the house and headed to pick up a cake for Matt and some candles!

It was a pretty low key and relaxed day, I am hoping to have a cookout here in a couple weeks to do a celebration of both of our birthday's with a few friends.  But this was a great way to celebrate!