Category: Television & Film

Around the House, Books, Family Time, health, My Own Personal Weirdness, Television & Film

The Overachiever of Illness

“The Overachiever of Illness.” That’s what the ER doctor called me two weeks ago when I went in, unable to breathe. Turns out that not only did I have Covid, but also bronchitis and Flu B. I’ve been mostly in bed ever since.

Am I really sick?! Yeah. I’m sick.

Fortunately, I have long been a person who forgets to pack pajamas on trips, so I have a full drawer of them. I have a solid week’s worth at this point, from lightweight beach themed summer wear to heavy duty pink snowflakes, and everything in between. I can change into new pajamas every day! It’s been great. (A kids friend said she aspires to that lifestyle and I laughed too hard.)

Boring!

I’m not going regale you with all my temps and oxygen levels and liquid intake and literally nineteen new medicines (the real literal, not the fake one) and all that because it is so very boring, even to me. Just know that I’ve been checking levels every hour or so for two and a half weeks now.

So to keep myself entertained in between taking down data for nurses, I’ve been in bed reading and watching movies and catching up on Netflix series. Here’s what I’ve been up to….

View from my window. Sitting up helps me breathe, but all I want to do is lie down.

Books:

First I finished “Project Management for Parents: Engage the Family, Build Teamwork, Succeed Together,” which I really need to post a review of. It was a good book for the left brained parent, or maybe for the right brained parent who wishes they were more left brained? That might be a better descriptor. In any case, a good book if you like parenting books.

I finished all the Practical Magic books, which were lovely, as expected. A bit more repetitive than I’d hoped, but that’s what I get for reading them back to back to back. It was good to see the whole story from beginning to end like that and really take in the whole of the way the curse changed the family as time went on and how each generation dealt with it in unexpected ways.

Then I read a new book by Freya Marske called “A Marvellous Light” that I loved so much that I immediately tried to buy the sequel to, only to be told that it was pre-order only until November and I’m dying over it. I really need the next one because this gentle Victorianish man romance/mystery/magical thing is my jam, apparently. Who knew? Steph. She always knows what I need to read.

So now what I’m reading is “Dear Writer, You Need to Quit,” a title which cracks me up. One of my writing groups suggested it as something I needed because I’m always needing to quit things and sometimes I don’t choose the best things to quit.

Sometimes I put the kindle down and stare at the fake fireplace. Greg can hear it through the wall and yells at me to keep it down. Hahaha.

Movies:

“Unicorn Store” was the first one I started. It took me forever because I couldn’t watch more than 10 minutes before I was overwrought. I don’t know why. It was just too cute and embarrassing, but I couldn’t not watch it, either, so I watched it in 10 minute spurts.

One day the kids were horrified to realize that I had never watched “Ponyo” all the way through, not even once, given that they had each watched it approximately 95,000 throughout their childhoods. So we watched that. It was really good and now I know what Ree’s t-shirt means. Ponyo Loves Ham!

Like everyone else on the planet, I couldn’t get “We Don’t Talk About Bruno, No, No” out of my head, so I watched “Encanto” multiple times until I could sing all the songs. When I feel better I will learn the dances and then my children will be really embarrassed. It will be great!

I thought I’d seen “Cloud Atlas” before, but apparently only the same few sections a couple times, so I watched it all the way through and it was more violent than I’d expected, but I liked it and I’m still thinking about it in that way that you do with weird movies like this.

Netflix Series:

I’d started watching “Locke & Key” with Greg when Season One came along and we both loved it. By the time we got to Season Two, Greg thought it had gone off kilter and “too relationshippy” and he didn’t want to watch any more, so I finished this off while he was at school.

Greg and I also would watch “Good Witch” together, which we’ve been watching since practically before he was born at this point (TV movies first, of course, then the show). He stopped watching at the beginning of this season because he hated the new intro and wanted Grace and Nick back in the story. So I’ve watched this last season alone and I don’t know if it’s the missing Grace and Nick, the missing Greg, or the missing soul of the show, but this season was just not what I wanted. Taking the emphasis off of helping others and putting it all into minding their own magic threw me off and I was just glad that it ended, I guess, because it was breaking my heart going on the way it was going.

Here’s something more cheerful. The Other Lisa H brought me tiny art and potions for healing and eggs from her own chicken ladies.

So then I got on the bandwagon and started watching “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” because a) Kristen Bell and b) the title is hilarious. But the show? Not so hilarious. Slow. Suddenly sexy. Slow. Slow. Huh? Slow. Slow. Oh wait, what??? Slow. Suddenly sexy. Confusing. Suddenly violent. Is it over yet? Maybe? I hope so. But wait, maybe not. I don’t know, y’all. I watched it all day long and now that it’s over, I just wish I’d used my time better that day.

After that we had snow days and the kids and spouse were home to entertain me, so I stopped doing anything that wasn’t staring at their faces, unless it was staring at the Olympics. Figure Skating is my favorite. I could watch that for hours.

In any case, I hope you never, ever become the “Overachiever of Illness” because it’s terrible. But I hope if you do, you have friends to help you along and access to all the books, movies, and series your heart desires. 🙂

Some more goodies from friends. They really helped when both my spouse and I were sick at the same time. (Nick naturally got better in two days. I’m still sick. *sigh*)

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Exercise, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting, Television & Film, What I Love, Writing

This week isn’t going how I thought it would

Tuesday, I got up and was so hopeful. Sure, I had my Spiritual Practices class that evening, but I had all day to write, so it was going to be great!

Nope. Due to some not-quite-disclosable things that are in the works, I got caught up in not one, but two different side projects. One is writing adjacent and in the end won’t require as much of my time as some of the things I’m doing now, but there was a wrapping up of one set of things in order to hand them off to someone else so I’d be ready for the next thing. I know how vague that sounds, but that’s the way life is sometimes, right?

The other thing is not writing adjacent, except in that I am writing up minutes for a group that I had thought I wasn’t taking part in any more. So there was catching up for that group’s information and making sure I still had access to all the notebooks and cloud storage that I need to do that work.

By the time I completed both things, it was time to hit the gym. On Friday, I rejoined the one that is walking distance from my house, instead of the one that I only go near on the way back from taking kids to school in the morning (which isn’t a good time for me to write, due to my ADHD meds timing). I went and learned where all the new stuff was, which machines I could still comfortably use, and which ones are still out of my happiness zone. It was a good workout, and I felt better for having done it.

The rest of the night zoomed by (literally haha!). Wednesday I had two meetings scheduled, so I knew I’d have to make the most of my in-between times for writing. Unfortunately, by the time I’d gotten home from the first one and eaten lunch, a problem had sprung up.

My kids school had a potential shooting threat. They informed parents right at the same time the 504 coordinator called to ask me if we could postpone our meeting for that afternoon. Because of the way our high school sends out alerts (first in the form of a phone call from the school’s main phone line wherein a computer voice reads the entire body of the message, including the URL’s – letter by letter; then almost immediately as an identical text message, an identical email, and then as a link to an identical letter in our district app), and the fact that 90% of the more than five a week they send are either about buying football tickets or that the PTA is selling Chik-fil-a at lunch on Friday, I have stopped answering calls from the school. So I missed that phone call and drove directly to the school. It was a madhouse. Literally hundreds of parents had driven there to take their kids out of school. Since there’s only one way in and out not on lockdown, they were all in the same foyer I needed to check into in order to get to my appointment on time. I was speaking to the woman guarding the door about my having an appointment “Honey, everyone is saying that,” when the 504 coordinator called me again. Since I was already there and the coordinator was meeting me at the inner door, I was ushered right inside. I heard the scoop on everything potentially threatening that was going on, had my kids 504 meeting, and offered to take the kids home anyways, even though it sounded like there was nothing actually going on other than the parental mayhem out front. Both my kids declined. One didn’t want an unexcused absence and the other wanted to go to Writing Club (oh my heart!).

They both wanted me to keep close “on standby,” so I ended up hitting the nearby stores and doing some early Christmas shopping to keep busy, since I had no computers or iPad on me to write with in the parking lot (the notebook I’d brought for the meeting literally had two pages left and I used them during the meeting). Scooped up the first kid out, then sat in the car waiting for the second kid for almost an hour.

I was exhausted, physically and mentally, by the time I got home. I ate dinner and was just heading to bed, when a kid -the one that has never in his life sat still for a movie – begged me to watch a silly Disney movie (Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge) with them. Of course I had to.

Today was an early-to-school day for the kiddos, but I had all the chores I hadn’t gotten done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to get to work on, plus grocery shopping, so I did those things first. Then I had critiques to do for the Pineywoods Critique Group (which has a new website with a forum and blog here), along with hitting the gym again so I don’t turn into a stiff blob like I was all last year). I also needed to finish one last bit of an old transcribing project that I had promised someone ages and ages ago.

All of this is a long way of saying: it’s late Thursday and I’m still at 684 words for NaNoWriMo. *sigh*

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Exercise, Family Time, Friend Time, health, Lifelong learning, Music, My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing, Parenting, Television & Film

Huge List of Activities to do with Kids during Covid-19

I started this document ages ago and have shared it with many friends, family members, and FB forums already. It’s compiled from many, many different places: lists on facebook, travel websites, space websites, family websites, school websites. It’s broken down into categories for ease of use: The Arts, Books, Celebrities, Coding, Crafts, Disney, Exercise, Food, Movies/TV/ Mental Health, Museums, Music, School Related, Travel, and Non-Internet Things to Do.

Hope you enjoy it. Here’s the link.

My Own Personal Weirdness, Television & Film, What I Love

British Houses

Does anyone else watch perhaps too many British shows and movies and then, seeing houses you recognize from other things, feel at once comforted by them, but then a little later disconcerted because they didn’t actually use that particular houses inside for the inside scenes? Is it just me?

health, Television & Film

Driving=Hands on Fire

I am feeling awful today. All the driving caught up with me. My hands are on fire, I’m super accident prone, and it’s had to be a rest day. Fortunately I have a comfy blanket and a Greg to watch Netflix with. We are starting to watch Glee. I had intended to watch this with Ree, but he wasn’t interested. Greg was, so we’re fast-forwarding through the boring/sexy stuff, but watching all the singing and dancing parts. 🙂

Television & Film, What I Love

Downton Abbey Movie!!

Nick and I had a rare afternoon movie date this afternoon. We grabbed a super quick lunch at Torchy’s Tacos, wherein I discovered the joy that is the happy corn side dish (unfortunately it was Nick’s- sorry babe!). Then we headed down to Time Square Cinema for the Downton Abbey movie. We’d bought tickets way ahead of time on Fandango, so of course it all had to go wrong. Apparently the movie theatre didn’t think anyone was going to want to see the movie, so they’d only scheduled one theater and the people all revolted and demanded more screenings, so ours got scrapped and moved, so our tickets were hiding in a pile behind the old ticket counter (which is now just the concession stand). We had to wait in the concession line for our tickets, our seats we had picked out online had been given to other people in the meantime, so we ended up sitting in the very front section. The whole thing was chaos because all the seats were messed up, so people had all gone to the places they thought they had tickets, sat in the them, and then had to be moved because when the theater redid the seats, they didn’t do it right at all and just stuck people in willy-nilly, so everyone was having to re-jigger themselves and try to trade seats to sit with the people they came with. This chaos went on all the way through the previews and until the actual movie went on, when everyone finally just shut up and sat where they were.

In any case, The Downton Abbey movie was most excellent. Many super improbable things happened and Maggie Smith was once again deliciously quick witted. We loved every bit of it, although we did yell at a certain character in our heads quite a lot that he was being dim witted. Ah well, at least it ended well. Really, we have watched this show so long that it felt like we went home, some how, like we had gone to see friends that we missed. It was delightful.

Television & Film, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love

15 movies that have stayed with me…

When I first started this list (three or four days ago), I panicked and couldn’t think of any movies I’d seen, ever. Now I’m wishing I could do way more than 15!  So, here are a few lists:

Childhood

  1. Watcher in the Woods – Bette Davis, spooky house & trees, child possession & kidnapping, aliens, what’s not to love?
  2. The Dark Crystal – Jim Henson + Brian Froud = LOVE
  3. Back to the Future – Time travel, great music, Christopher Lloyd as a mad scientist…whee!!!
  4. Labyrinth – see number 2
  5. Time Bandits – weird, dark, British
  6. ET – alien comes and befriends a child (I am seeing a theme here, are you?)
  7. Wuthering Heights (with Laurence Olivier) – I was seriously too young for this, but hey, a ghost, a forbidden & lost & returned love, a child saved off the streets, an undying romance…
  8. Star Wars – seriously, if you don’t know Star Wars, I can’t be your friend anymore.
  9. The Goonies – pirates, bad guys, kids saving the world, underground paths to hidden treasure
  10. 2001: A Space Odyssey – aliens, sentient computers, need I say more?
  11. Oliver – MUSICAL! I have the easy piano book and I played the songs over and over and over
  12. It’s a Wonderful Life – I love and hate this movie every year.
  13. Amadeus – Oh my goodness: fantastic geniuses are real people, too!
  14. Spaceballs – I love me a good parody and this one is GOOD
  15. Drop Dead Fred – silliness. lots and lots.
  16. Bedknobs & Broomsticks – magic, music, and mischief

High School

  1. Untamed Heart – who doesn’t love this movie? (teenaged boys, probably)
  2. The Piano – a mail order bride who speaks only through her piano gets her piano taken away from her by her uncaring new spouse  runs off with the man who offers it back to her
  3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail – probably my most often quoted movie. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.
  4. Rocky Horror Picture Show – I first saw it when I was 14 and there’s no turning back after that.
  5. Benny & Joon – crazy girl falls in love with crazy boy? oh yes.
  6. Fried Green Tomatoes – crazy girl falls in love with other crazy girl and runs a cafe?  I never could decide if I liked the book or the movie better. Both had scenes that the other one didn’t have that I ADORED.
  7. The City of Lost Children – French, weird, dark. Loved it!
  8. A League of Their Own – I have been known to watch this more than once back-to-back. I don’t even like sports, but I love this movie.
  9. Lady Jane – I love a movie that can make me interested in real, actual history. This one was beautiful.
  10. Total Recall – Once I found out that there were BOOKS and STORIES like this, I went on a three month Philip K. Dick reading binge. It was awesome! I can’t believe they’re remaking it.
  11. The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen – Weird, Dark, British. Check!
  12. Dead Poets Society – I remember that we could get Mrs. Sanders off topic for an entire day in school if we mentioned this movie. It was that awesome and controversial. I just loved the idea of young men running around spouting poetry. I wanted to find me some of those.  Where were they? (Hiding from me!)
  13. Pretty Woman – Ah, who can forget the story of the prostitute in love? I have no idea what our parents were thinking letting us watch this movie, but we loved it so much!
  14. Four Weddings and A Funeral – I still love this movie. I can’t help it. British, silly, love, yup!
  15. When Harry Met Sally – I love movies that feature finding each other over and over again throughout the years. I don’t know why. I just do. This is my favorite of this kind.

College/Post College

  1. Sliding Doors – Alternate futures played out back and forth across timelines, possibly my favorite movie of all time
  2. The English Patient – again with two timelines being told at the same time, undying romance, war that is mostly off-screen
  3. Clerks – this one just says “college” to me
  4. Rebecca – Nick brought this to my attention and I love, love, love the creepiness and story.
  5. Pride and Prejudice, the six hour version – Colin Firth. Enough said.
  6. Bladerunner – I saw this when I was a child and loved it, but we watched it and read it and talked about it enough in college that that’s where my brain puts it when I’m thinking of movies.
  7. The Nightmare Before Christmas – Was this college? Or high school? No idea. Just a favorite. I sing the songs in my head a lot.
  8. You’ve Got Mail – our first internet/love movie. Whee! Love everything about it.
  9. The Long Kiss Goodnight – Love how she transforms from this perfect vision of wife/mother to this scary ninja spy lady. Love Samuel L. Jackson, too. I will watch it any time it is on.
  10. Men in Black – He’s wearing Edgar like a suit!! Ok, so that was really gross, but the rest of the movie: silliness, aliens! EEE!
  11. Dark City – Dark & weird. Really weird and really dark. Sometimes I have nightmares. I won’t say I love it. I just can’t stop thinking about it.
  12. French Kiss – French. French. French.
  13. A Room With a View – I want to crawl inside this movie and live there.
  14. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Creepy…and awesome…and creepy…and I just think about it and shiver.
  15. High Fidelity – I don’t know why I love it, but I do. I am not even a big fan of the music.

Post-Children

  1. Chocolat – French…chocolate…nostalgia for the past…mmm
  2. A.I. – Robots, kids, the future, the sadness of it all.
  3. Amelie – French (for real!), weirdness of the happiest kind
  4. Gosford Park – British, nostalgia for the past when people who had people that did things so they didn’t have to?, manners
  5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – British, I cried when it started, I don’t know why I was so excited
  6. Love, Actually – British, lots of stories to follow, LOVE
  7. Possession – British, what-if storyline, two stories to follow
  8. Wall-E – future, robots, LOVE
  9. Kate and Leopold – time travel! LOVE…the whole thing….
  10. The Lake House – time travel! LOVE…the house, the quietness, the waiting….it was just exquisite
  11. I, Robot – Robots, humans, what’s the difference?
  12. Sense and Sensibility – British, LOVE, manners, and Alan Rickman. Lots of Alan Rickman.
  13. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – weirdness, lots and lots of weirdness
  14. Til There Was You – LOVE, what-if storyline, awkward, awkward love stories
  15. My Best Friends Wedding – LOVE, silliness, lots of silliness.

After I got started, I couldn’t stop, obviously. I’m still thinking of movies that ought to be on each of those lists. Hmm…Netflix is calling my name….

Family Time, Television & Film

Doctor Who is Fantastic!

For a lovely, wonderful three-hour block today, my sister and kids and I watched Doctor Who. It was beautiful. Since she left it’s been nothing but soap operas. Apparently my mom only tolerates Doctor Who for my sister.

Television & Film, What I Love

Date Night!

We are having a fancy dinner tonight! All sushi, all the time. And cocktails. Because it’s not a date without cocktails. Well, not an evening date without cocktails in any case.1495507_10153640503780634_380142181_n

We ordered WAY too much food for ourselves for one night, but sushi does not do well sitting in the car, even in this coolness, for the length of a movie, so we had to leave it behind. Woe. But then there was The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and we were all happy again.

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Around the House, Crafts, Exercise, My Own Personal Weirdness, Television & Film

Now with Bonus Content!

I’m feeling list-y at the moment.  Some things I’ve done/am doing lately:

  • Finished the CD uploads to iTunes.  Put the CD’s in boxes.  Put the boxes in the garage. Nick is taking one to his mom and I’m taking the other to Goodwill.  Then I put all the little games into the newly emptied drawers and I’m not tripping over them any more.  Yay!
  • Finished reading the Albert Campion series and the extra short story books.  Now am looking for new things to read.  Nothing seems good enough.
  • Listening to The Dead Tossed Waves while I’m at the gym on the recumbent exercise bike.  I figured this would keep me going to the gym, but I am finding the narrator so annoying that I skipped a couple of gym days last week.  I’d borrow another audio book, but I’m awaiting email from the library telling me what’s gone wrong with my digital account that it tells me I’m no longer entitled to check-outs.  Oh well.  Back to the gym I go.  Must get in shape so I don’t die walking everywhere in Ireland in July.
  • Trying to put together my PTA board for next year.  Yes, I got talked into being President.  You may laugh now.  Only two people showed up to the meeting and one decided not to join us.  Yay.  I’m trying to be all Bright Side about it; we’ll have a kick-ass Parliamentarian. 🙂
  • Bought new pretty things for my backyard with money from sale of backyard things we no longer used: a new table umbrella, some pretty chimes, a cushion for my bench, pillows for the bench, vinyl tablecloths for the tables.  Also pretty things for the front yard: 3 spinny-flower-things and a set of tiny chimes and a new bright red watering-can.
  • Greg bought seeds, potting soil, tiny plastic pots, and some tiny fences and started planting a garden.  We need to transplant those little plants today.  Must Not Forget!!
  • We also put a bunch of those seeds in the front garden, but I can’t tell the little flowers from weeds at this point and don’t know what to pull up and what to leave.  We did a variety pack and I have no idea what those flowers look like as babies.
  • I worked at the kids old MDO last week.  Super fun!  Love being with the little kids.  Getting money is just bonus!
  • I’ve been watching the last season of Doctor Who over again as I fold laundry the last week or so.  Whee!
  • We did another Spring Recital at church. Nick MC’d, his mom and Ben and David all performed, and I made the programs and decided the playing order.  It went really well. 🙂  Ben played two beautiful piano pieces.  David played one march-type piano piece and another march-style trumpet piece.  They both did really well.
  • We also did a clothing exchange at church.  I gave away a couple of bags of our clothes and got more than a couple of bags of clothes back.  I’m passing some on to my sister-in-law who is similarly sized, but has different tastes in clothes than I do (colored pants freak me out and she seems to love them).  I also got a bunch of shoes!  Little cute flat shoes!  And one pair of platform sandals that are evenly platformed, if you know what I mean.  No slope.  I can wear them, look taller, and not fall.  Must find more of these kind of shoes.
  • Now I’m washing all these new-to-me clothes and watching videos on how to tailor some of them to fit me better.  I’ve never done that before.  Should be interesting.  If I’m not working tomorrow, it will be sewing day!  I haven’t been crafty in more than a week now, so it’s definitely time!
  • Photos will appear in the sidebar at some point today or tomorrow.  Apparently I haven’t updated them since February?!  Aie!

There we go: content unlocked.  🙂

Lisa