Author: simchajfisher

Old Year Resolutions

Back around New Year’s Day, when people were making resolutions, many of the good ladies of the internet were sharing their plans for self-improvement.   They all had long and laudable lists to accomplish, but they wanted to avoid that all-too-common problem with good intentions:   losing focus, petering out, or just plain forgetting.

To avoid this pitfall, they planned to distill their finest aspirations into a single, pregnant word.  They would post this word in a prominent place where they would see it often, and they would be encouraged and redirected throughout the day.

To this idea, Jen from Conversion Diary responded in a way that I could have done myself:

“Here’s the problem,” I told a friend.  Ann Voskamp’s word is YES, Rachel Balducci andArwen Mosher are both doing JOY…I feel like holy people like that can do this sort of thing, but I’m too much of an overly analytical grouch for it.” I thought that if, say, I were going to try to be more joyful, I would need specific, measurable goals in that department, lest I end up just rolling my eyes at the “JOY!” sign posted on my refrigerator as I shuffle around joylessly.

She’s a better woman than I am.  I’m pretty sure that the first time I glanced at “JOY!” on the refrigerator while crawling around with a wad of rags, trying to sop up the rapidly-congealing jello soup that someone forgot to tell me they spilled all over the floor, where they were, incidentally, storing their math books and their collection of unwashable fairy costumes, I wouldn’t be rolling my eyes — I’d be gnashing my teeth, and possibly actually biting someone.  Yeah, I got yer JOY right here.

So, no, this plan wasn’t for me.  (Jen, however, ultimately decided to go with “Fortitude,” which is a good, versatile word, and realistic.)

But why am I bringing this story up now?  Because I recently sorted through a bunch of old papers, and in among the long division worksheets and Cub Scout permission slips, I found a homemade valentine.

It was from my eight-year-old daughter to my seven-year-old son, and in a very few words, it illustrated such love, such consideration, and such a profound understanding of her brother’s character and basic constitution, that I decided to make it my mid-year Word.

I hung it in a prominent place, and every time I pass by it, it gives my heart a lift.  Even on the darkest day, I smile, and I remember anew what true love is all about.

7 Quick Takes: Toy With Me edition

Today for 7 Quick Takes, hosted by Jen Fulwiler at Conversion Diary, I’m sharing what we’ve learned from years of research in the field of toy-buying.  If you want to do your own seven quick takes, add your link to the list at Jen’s website, and don’t forget to link back to Jen on your blog.

7 Quick Takes:  Toy With Me edition

From the beginning of April to the middle of July, five of our eight kids have birthdays.   I think we spend more money on spring and summer birthdays  than we do on groceries for the whole year.  Any rational person with eight children would try and scale down birthday expectations, right?  And I know many of you will say, “Oh, we’re trying our best to raise our little Wyatt in a non-materialistic way, so for his birthday, we just put a soy candle in his organic kefir, and let him use the pillow that night.   If he remembers to say ‘thank you’ for the kefir.”

I don’t know what to say.  For some reason, it’s turned out that we’re trying to raise materialistic kids who expect to be treated like supreme galactic emperors on their birthdays (or, if their birthday falls on a day which is not convenient for a party, they expect that treatment on their actual birthday and on their party day).

Besides the cake, the candy, the party favors, the balloons and streamers, the games, the snacks, the craft, and the birthday throne, there are, of course, the presents.  So I thought I would share with you seven presents that we really like (and which the kids seem to like, too!).  Because I’m lazy,  most of the links are to  Amazon, but you can often find a better price if you hunt around a bit.

1.  The glitter ball.  It’s a bouncy ball filled with water and glitter.  Everyone loves it.  It’s beautiful,  it’s low-tech and non-batterified, it’s satisfyingly heavy, and it bounces well.  Use it as a prop in a play (the Princess and the Frog), use it as a way to soothe and mesmerize an overheated toddler, or just use it as, you know, a ball.  It comes in different sizes, but I recommend the jumbo one.  For all ages.  About $11

2.  Tribot.  This one is the opposite of the glitter ball:  it’s expensive and complicated and slightly obnoxious — but it’s also cute and appealing, and was pronounced the Christmas present that induced the most sibling jealousy, 2009.  It’s a red, remote-controlled, interactive robot that has motion sensors, so it skirts around obstacles on the floor; and if it falls over, it yells, “Master!  Master!  Suddenly my floor has turned into a WALL!”  It also has a funny alarm system, it lights up, it wiggles its eyebrows, it makes jokes — I don’t know, it’s just an appealing toy.  Absolutely perfect for a seven-year-old boy, but the rest of the family likes it, too.  Oh, and it has a fascinating wheels-within-wheels system of transport, so it is extremely maneuverable.  About $40

3.  Skwish.  So many baby toys are exciting and attractive, but they are hard for the baby to grasp, or they roll or tumble away too easily.  This one is super-easy to grasp, and it doesn’t get very far if the baby drops it.  Just a nice, bright, pleasant toy with lots of possibilities.  About $12

4. B. Toys FunKeys.  Babies love car keys, but I guess they have lead or something in them?  So you give them toy keys, instead,  but babies can tell they’re just plastic.  Plastic keys clatter, rather than jingle, and aren’t heavy and cold like real keys.  So these particular toys keys are actually made of steel, without being sharp or dangerous, and our baby is crazy about them.  They come attached to a holder with buttons for making car-related noises (mercifully muted in volume), plus a little light.  They come in a slightly irritating  “behold what a fabulously unique company we are” package, but that’s not so bad.  About $10

5.  Krazy Kar.  We haven’t actually bought one of these for our kids — it’s $75!  I had one when I was little, though, and I think I spent three entire summers inside this thing.    You crank the wheels with hand pegs, and make it go wherever you want, including in circles (the wheels move independently, like oars on a rowboat).  It’s hard to describe why it was so much fun — much more fun than a pedal car or a Big Wheel.  I just remember feeling secret and powerful as I sat in the little seat between those two big, yellow wheels, and smelling that smell of plastic that’s been sitting in the sun, and feeling the static electricity crackle in my hair.  It made a wonderful rumbling noise as it barreled across the grass.

6.  Snorta! A non-board game with funny little animal figurines.  Okay, so we lost the pieces and can’t play anymore, but it was fun while it lasted.  You turn over cards, and have to rush to be the first one to make the animal noise of the other person’s animal.   It’s a reasonably simple, entertaining game that isn’t too excruciating for adults (and it’s fairly easy to let younger kids be your “partner,” if they’re too little to hold their own, or if they’re the type who have slow reflexes and burst into tears when everyone else is faster.  If.)  About $18

7.  Care Bears Magical Care-a-Lot Castle.  This well-crafted, educational little wonderland

Ha ha, just kidding!  Only one of our kids really got interested in the Care Bears, and I think the Halloween costume I made, at her insistence,

cured her of that infatuation.  The rest of our kids had no trouble discerning that the whole Care Bear franchise is one of the most stunningly crappy aspects of modern day America, and should be taken out and shot.

And now I have to go and plan one more birthday, and then we will be off the hook until the end of September!  My daughter, who will be turning three, has requested a “wonky tonky.”  We think this means “walkie-talkie,” but we are not sure–she might actually want a wonky tonky.  I hope I can find one on sale.

See you on Monday!

“Most Disappointing Lesbian of the Year”

Just a quick note:  I just posted on The Inside Blog, if you’d care to take a look.  Eventually, I will grow enough brain cells to have a sidebar for this kind of thing (and a blogroll, and a reader . . . ) on my own blog.

But don’t forget to read today’s other post, below, which is much more fun!

The Difference Between Men and Women, Vol. 1

(picture source)

(and may I add that the difference between this guy and most other guys is that his tush is in front)

BEHOLD THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN:

(A true story — not about me, though.)

Woman:  Hey, our 20th anniversary is coming up, and we have a little extra money.  I was thinking it would be really practical, and kind of romantic at the same time, if we went out together and got replacements for all our old-worn out wedding gifts!  You know, all the pots and pans and towels and sheets and everything that people gave us?  We could really use new ones, and wouldn’t that be kind of romantic?

Man:  Or we could get a motorcycle.

If the movie offend thee

You all surprise me.  You really do.  As I write, there are seven comments on The Jerk’s first movie review, and not a single one expressing moderate to quivering righteous indignation at the implicit endorsement of a trashy piece of work likeRoadhouse.   I was expecting a nice loud chorus of, “AND YOU CALL THIS A CATHOLIC BLOG?”   Boy, if this were Inside Catholic, I’d have been excommunicated at least twice by now (although the second time wouldn’t count, because Pope Michael of Kansas has had his excommunication privileges temporarily taken away by his parents, who do, after all, own the garage apartment he lives in).

My flexible friend.

I guess I’ll just chalk your laxity up to the heat, and go ahead and write what I was planning to write anyway, because I think it’s an interesting topic.

I mean, we have to have some standards, yes?  You really can’t call yourself a good Catholic and then just go ahead and do whatever you want.   Seriously, no matter how many college courses we took, there must be some movies that Catholics shouldn’t watch, some music we shouldn’t listen to, some clothes we shouldn’t wear, words we shouldn’t use, quantities we shouldn’t drink, and so on.  That’s the whole catch in that “Love God, and do what you will” thing:  if you actually do love God, then you’re not going to want to move away from Him; and certain activities certainly do make that gap wider.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I am fairly susceptible to the “It’s okay because I’m edgy” trap.  It’s not conscious, but I tend to feel that I’m sooo smart and ironic and a anyway a good mother and all, so it’s probably really okay for me to do . . . well, just about anything, as long as I have lots of babies and pray most days.

In fact, it’s more than okay:  why, I’m rendering a valuable service to the reputation of the modern Church. By indulging in various seemingly unholy activities (and I’m talking about medium-bad stuff like drinking too much, showing a little too much skin, swearing, speeding, telling dirty jokes, etc.), I’m  not only not a bad Catholic, but it makes me an extra-good Catholic, because I’m not one of those fearful, novena-haunted zealots who can’t see past their own mantillas to the rich and burgeoning sensual world of culture and art.  No water in the wine!  We’re Catholics, not Puritans — we can handle it!  After all, how are we going to share the Good News if we’re too timid to step out of our crisis bunkers?  How will secular folks take us seriously if we look like weirdos?

Tell me they don’t look like weirdos.

Actually, despite the above picture which I couldn’t resist posting, the matter of how we dress is a whole other kettle of fish, which I definitely want to talk about later.  But for right now, in light of yesterday’s post, let’s just consider the movies we watch. We watch a lot of movies at our house.   Fairly often, my husband and I discuss whether or not it would be a good idea for us (just us, not the kids) to watch something–usually because it has too much graphic sexual stuff in it, but sometimes because it just has too much of a nasty feel.  We talk it over, based on what we know of the reputation of the director, the trailers we’ve seen, etc., and then decide together whether or not to see it (and if only one of us says, “Let’s not,” then we both don’t).

Sometimes it’s pretty obvious that a movie is not for us (or for anyone).  We discussed Sin City (this link is to the parents’ guide, which, in describing why the movie is inappropriate, is itself fairly inappropriate!) for about two seconds before we nixed it.   It looked like it might have some artistic merit, and yet it didn’t seem worth going to Hell for.  On the other hand, we did watch Eastern Promises, which was sexually explicit and violent and grim as all get out.  But it was a good movie, maybe great.  I cautiously recommend it.

We don’t want to miss out on good movies.  But I guess the best possible thing to do would be to err on the side of caution, and always always skip movies that we’re afraid might have a bad influence on us.

Or is that the best possible thing?  We love movies so much, and have such good conversations about them, that I have a very hard time believing that Catholics should confine themselves to G movies (do they even make those anymore?), although I do have some respect for people who have that much will power.  After all, approximately 94%* of western culture was made possible by the Church in one way or another, and not all of it is paintings of fat cherubim.

Here is what we have figured out:  it’s kind of like chastity**.  Say you’re abstaining.  So you’re not going to have sex today.  But, dammit, you are a married couple, and the chaste behavior of a married couple is different from the chaste behavior of a pair of dating teens.  So, yes, you’re allowed to do more, without doing everything.  But you have to be smart about it.  And you have to understand that your standards and limitations might change from month to month, or even day to day, depending on your mood, your attitude, your spiritual state, your current relationship with your spouse, what you did yesterday and the day before, etc.  What could be some good clean married fun one day can be a disaster the next, even if it’s objectively the exact same behavior — it all depends on the context, your motivations, and on what you know will happen to you if you do it, if you can be honest with yourself about your own weaknesses.  (And of course, there are some things which are always off-limits, no matter who you are or how you feel today.)

So, in the same way, a movie that is fine to watch one evening, and gives us food for thought, and provokes rich, marriage-building conversation and camaraderie–this same movie might be an occasion of sin, or even a sin, the next week.  It all depends.

So, what’s a movie viewer to do?  I think this is the point at which many good Catholics throw up their hands and decide to play it safe, and just stick with super-safe fare.  Which means you are going to end up seeing a lot of Doris Day

and then you will have to claw your own eyeballs out, which would be a shame.  There are other approaches, however.  Here is what we do:

  • As I mentioned, we discuss movies ahead of time, and we try and be honest about our mental, spiritual, emotional, and, ahem, physical state.
  • Then we watch the movie.  If someone starts, say, taking their clothes off, we cover our eyes.  To cut the tension, we make spitting noises at each other, or occasionally punch each other.
  • If it gets too bad, we turn it off.

Well, that’s it.  There’s my brilliant three-point strategy for avoiding hellfire without having to watch Calamity Jane.

I once posted a silly review of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (in which I compared it to the Odyssey; yes, I did), and warned the readers that the movie contained “some tough scenes, including partial nudity and various creepy and depressing conversations.”  Well, someone who signed himself “Scandalized” responded:

I watched this movie based on the author’s recommendation. I’m sorry I did as I believe it’s offensive to God to sit through a movie like this. The nudity, the gay kissing scene, the trashy dressed room mate? What the author describes as ‘tough’ scenes to watch would be more accurately defined as occasions of sin.

[snip]

There was a time when this kind of entertainment would have been blacklisted by the Catholic Church (under pain of mortal sin we would have watched it)….but now (for the mature viewer, anyway) it’s become entertainment good enough to be praised on a Catholic blog.

So I says to him:

I’m truly sorry you were disappointed. If you never watch movies that have nudity or immorality in them, however, I’m not sure why you decided to watch this one, when I warned you that those scenes were in it! I thought the photo of the shark graffiti would serve as warning, also.

Maybe it will make you feel better if you know that my husband and I cover our eyes and make stupid noises during certain types of scenes in movies. Then we quickly peek at the screen – uh oh, they’re still naked – look away again, bah bah bah bah – and then look again to see if it’s safe yet.

You see, I agree with you that movies can be an occasion of sin. We make an effort not to watch those scenes which are bad for our souls, and we do make the decision to skip certain movies altogether, even if they seem like they would be entertaining.

The Church no longer lists forbidden movies, but she still holds us to the same standards — it’s just that we’re supposed to impose those standards on ourselves.

So, one question: did you watch the whole movie, or did you turn it off when it started offending you?

Durned if he never got back to me on that last question.  But that’s what it boils down to, it seems to me.  If the movie offend thee, then turn it off.

_______________________________________________

*Shut up, I said “approximately”

**By this hugely misunderstood word, I do not mean “celibacy.”  I mean living in such a way that your sexual behavior is appropriate to your station in life.

The Joke and The Jerk

Good morning!  Last week, I told you my favorite joke, and asked for yours.  (If you still want to send me yours for pubbloglication, don’t put it in the comments – mail it to simchafisher@gmail.com.)

So my second favorite joke was actually sent to me twice!  More coincidence:  it was sent to me by two sisters!  Furthermore, if you can believe it, they both happened to bymy sisters, which may explain why the joke hit that sweet spot for me.  Nepotism schmepotism, it made me laugh. (I also have twoadditional sisters, for a grand total of five people who liked the last joke) but one of them has six little kids and is in Arizona in July, is temporarily carless and husbandless, while she prepares to move; and the other is in her eleventieth month of pregnancy — so asking either of them to make with the ha ha seems a little rude.)

A man was searching for the meaning of life. He traveled all over the world, spending time with various spiritual masters of different religions. All of them had partial answers, but none of them was completely satisfying. But the more of these masters he spoke to, the more he kept hearing about one guru, on a mountain-top in the Himalayas, who really knew. But no one was exactly sure which mountain-top. So the man traveled on, gathering  information, tracing leads, making maps, until he had it narrowed down. It  took ten years. Then he hired a guide, and climbed the mountain. The guide died on the way. Finally, oxygen-deprived, starving and half frozen, he made it to the mountain-top and found the guru in a little cabin, sitting in front of his fire. He said,

“Oh master, I have dedicated my life to finding you! I have searched for you for ten years, and I have finally found you. Tell me: what is the meaning of life?”

The guru slowly turned towards him and gazed at him for a full minute. Then he said, “Life…is like a fountain.”

“Oh, thank you master, but please tell me: what do you mean? How is life like a fountain?”

The guru said, “You mean…life isn’t like a fountain?”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Second order of business:  starting tomorrow, this blog will become a GROUP BLOG.  A very small group.  I invited some guy I met in the woods to join me, and he will be writing movie reviews for your reading pleasure (not to be confused with reviewing movies you would watch for your viewing pleasure.  Not).  If you are going to read his work while eating hot dogs, I suggest cutting them up.  Not into disks!  What kind of a mother are you.  Cut them into spears, then dice them.

“He’s . . . so . . . funny–”

photo source

So please join us tomorrow to give a warm and hearty welcome to . . .

When he gets finished, there won’t be a dry seat in the house.

7 Quick Takes: HTH

Hope This Helps Edition

In which I solve seven common problems

 

–1–

Did you spill soy sauce all over the place?   Need a mother’s day present?  Or just a crapload of squares?  Try this amazing new product.

–2–

Are you a really, really good mother who somehow understandably forgot to brush your daughter’s hair for a week, and as a result did not catch her major head lice infestation until a well-meaning relative, who probably mostly just wanted everyone to realize that the BBQ was dragging on a little too long, saw fit to do a “Hey, everybody,guess who has HIGH ANXIETY?”

to let you (and everyone within a forty mile radius) know that your daughter has a major lice infestation?  Well, you should try this fairly new system of blow-drying Cetaphil.  It Actually Works (although our kids needed four weeks of treatment, not three), and you don’t have to wash everything you own and spend a million hours picking nits, which isn’t as much fun as it sounds like.

–3–

Are you ready to leave the beach, but are miles away from home with a miserable baby whose fat, fat leg folds are coated with gritty sand?  I am all for packing lightly for the beach (three rules:  no food unless it’s a major birthday;  if you want a toy, you have to wait till a non-resident beach goer is looking the other way; and I don’t want to hear about your towel), but one thing we always bring is baby powder.  Sprinkle it generously on the baby (or anyone else, koff koff, whose fat legs make them cranky), and the wet sand comes right off, and you won’t feel like such a monster strapping an uncomfortable little one into her car seat.

–4–

Are you craving chips and salsa, but looking for a healthier alternative?  Try pretzelsand salsa.  It’s less fatty, and tastes just as good as pretzels and salsa.

–5–

Were you absent during grades K-12?  Here is a handy reference to all you need to know:

  • The Indians helped the Colonists by showing them you can put a dead fish on corn
  • Eli Whitney
  • Suffragettes (1912-1913)
  • Typing

Bonus College Quick Reference:

  • When something drops a horrible, rotten dead fish in your yard, you should consult an oracle to see what this means for the future of the republic.  If no oracle is available, just get your husband to throw it in the bushes.

There, now you are all caught up.

–6–

Thinking of home schooling?  Here is the single greatest  piece of advice I’ve heard (and I just gave the book away, and can’t come up with the author’s name).  I was immediately drawn to this book because, unlike most home schooling books, the cover didn’t look anything like this:

source

Which is a lovely picture, but discouraging.  Look at that posture!  And the kid is wearing white, and her face, while solemn, is not tear-stained!  And the curtains don’t appear to have any poop on them!  So instead, on the cover of this book was picture of a girl wearing a bathing suit and cowboy boots, doing her math on the floor under the kitchen table.   Now, add someone smearing Spaghettios on the wall and calling it art, and another kid deliberately ripping the first kid’s math work and calling it justice, and that would be a good day in our home school.  So the piece of advice was this:  whatever kind of mother you are

source

that’s the kind of home schooler you will be.

This sounds terribly obvious, but every year I fell into the trap of hoping that home schooling would, among other things, fix my defects as a mother.  It would force me to become organized, encourage me to be patient, ensure that I would follow through on projects, motivate me to go out and meet other people, etc. etc.   Now, I did improve in all of these things.  But I did not become transformed.  I was just me, home schooling.  This should not discourage you from deciding to home school; it’s just something you ought to know.

–7–

I don’t know exactly what this is good for, but it seems like it might come in handy.

Well, I hope that answers all your questions.  See Jen at Conversion Diary to leave a link to your own Seven Quick Takes, and don’t forget to link back to Jen!  Have a lovely weekend, everyone, and remember, it’s important to throw a firecracker when you light it, but NOT AT DADDY.

 

Thursday Throwback: the one with the hamburger in the washing machine

Jane (The View From the Foothills) gave me a lift by asking,

Is there any chance you could re-publish your story on defrosting the hamburger in the washing machine.  A very good friend of mine is about to have her 4th child and I would like her to have a  fabulous laugh.  That story, which I passed along a lot when your old blog was up, has kept many friends laughing over their life with a newborn mistakes, “Well, it wasn’t quite hamburger in the washing machine but I ……”.

Well, I am happy to oblige, and even happier to post something I don’t have to write!  So here it is:

The Hamburger In the Washing Machine One

The baby, with her Svengali eyes,

hypnotized me into believing that she was sleeping through the night.

We would solemnly put her into her bed promptly at 9:30, and she would sleep until 6 AM.

After several nights of this, I would actually be in tears by morning, unable to believe that it was already morning again, and sleeping time was all over, and why was I so tired, when the baby was sleeping through the night?

Sure, she would get up for a little snack when we came into bed and disturbed her; and occasionally, when she has a cold, or was fighting off a cold, or recovering from a cold, she would need to get hydrated; and all of us, including babies who can’t tell time, were a little confused by daylight savings time; and as long as the sun is almost up, or almost up, that counts as breakfast time. And of course she’s often teething. Butbasically, she was sleeping through the night, I would say.

For as much as two hours at a stretch, all through the night.

I couldn’t make toast without consulting the recipe. I would try and start the car when it was already running. I would use “thing” to substitute not only for nouns, but for any part of speech, as in: “Could you please thing this thing in the other thing over there? Yes, you. Thing with the red thing on.”

And of course I lost things — school books, hot cups of coffee, children . . . you know, things. I spent a good half hour hunting for a misplaced bag of parsley, which couldn’t have roamed very far from the soup pot of origin, could it? By sheer chance, while searching for my keys, I discovered the parsley tucked safely inside the dishwasher, where, oh yeah, I put it because, um, because of some reason, surely.

In light of this mental disintegration, my husband suggested that the baby might sleep better across the room, where she can’t easily see, hear, or smell me. She can still be nice and close in case an eagle breaks into the house and I need to be there for her, but a little distance will encourage her to quit sucking the life force out of me night after night.

Well, it worked. She now sleeps from 9:30 to 7:30 — for real, as in remaining quietly in her crib, and waking up happy and hungry. She’s been doing this for almost two weeks. I’ve been getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep, day after day . . . and I’m still stumbling through my life like a amnesiac with autism and a death wish.

Yesterday I lost three-and-a-half pounds of ground beef. Where could that meat be, where could it be? The previous day, I had forgotten to take it out in time to have hamburgers, but left it out so that, if I forgot again the next day, it would at least be partially defrosted. But then I forgot to put it away. So where was it now?

So I asked my husband, who knows me, What the hell did I do with that meat? and he had an inspiration: maybe it’s in the washing machine! In fact, it must be in the washing machine. That’s where I put it to defrost, because — I dunno, to make room in the refrigerator for some laundry?

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I know you were looking forward to reading about how I didn’t notice that the meat was in the washing machine until the horrible, gristly disaster was complete — how I let all the cycles run, including “agitate,” which is very hard on chop meat — how I didn’t even notice how oleaginous the wet clothes were, even though all the hundreds of tiny drainage holes were each stuffed with a wad of raw, soapy hamburger — and chunked the whole meaty mess into the dryer, and of course set it to “high heat,” and how now my husband will be getting sock jerky for lunch and hamburger khaki casserole for supper for the next few days, which is not covered under the warranty.

Nope. All that happened was that I located the meat while the washer was only half-full of water and soap. The situation was saved before any kind of whirring, churning, or centripetal force came into play.

The worst part was that the blood leaked all over the clothes; but if you think about it, that’s really pretty good timing in a bad situation. It’s like breaking your leg in the lobby of the hospital, or punching your brother while in the confession line.

Well, at least that hamburger got defrosted. And clean! (Yes yes, I threw it away. It sat out for 36 hours, was sopping wet, and smelled like a combination of a mountain breeze and warm, wet meat. We’re just going to have to eat socks or something tonight.)

So that’s one mystery solved: I did find the meat. But where did I put my brain? Now let me see, I was using it to correct some math the other night, and then I put it down somewhere . . .

 

Finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds

photo source

I’ll admit it, I felt great watching the first half of Inglourious Basterds.  We saw it a few weeks ago, and it was exactly the palate cleanser I thought I needed after that appalling gorgon Helen Thomas gave tongue to her revolting little swan song.  It wasn’t Thomas herself who gave me concentration camp nightmares.  What really made my flesh crawl were the throngs of little cockroach voices cheering her on in comboxes everywhere. (They feel safe to come out when it’s dark, you know).  I know that people are at their worst when anonymously reacting to a news story, but I was horrified by the sheer numbers of those who felt comfortable shrieking out in fury against the Jews.  Things have changed.  You don’t have to be paranoid to realize that antisemitism is creeping back into style.

So I enjoyed this movie, at first. Who wouldn’t want to see pure evil get some payback for a change?  The story was fascinating, and each scene was, of course, gorgeously shot.  I laughed and laughed at the funny scenes, and in the tense scenes, I nearly chewed through the arm of the couch.  Even though I covered my eyes while the avenging basterds carved up helpless Nazis by the dozen, I enjoyed it.  On the whole, it was an entertaining, wildly original movie.  But I felt sick and guilty by the end.

Not because of its incredibly brutal and graphic violence, which was, according to the Tarantino tradition, lovingly caressed by the camera so that not a single splat of brain tissue was left behind or forgotten.  I think his ultraviolent genre is tiresome, but I can work around it and enjoy a movie, as long as my husband tells me when it’s safe to look.

The movie annoyed me because I don’t know what it was for.  I guess it was, in part, supposed to be an indulgent revenge fantasy which makes reparations for the Holocaust,  using the only means a movie maker has:  by redoing it all on screen.  This is the way things should have happened, right?  It scratched that anti-evil itch.  And as I said, I enjoyed it at first.

I don’t mind a movie that isn’t for or about anything, as long as it’s entertaining . . . unless it’s this one.  Why?  Because every time the Jews won, I was reminded of how, in real life, they didn’t.  The revenge was so complete, so over-the-top, it stopped working for me.  Hitler wasn’t merely  gunned down at close range — his killer went back and sprayed more bullets, and more and more and more bullets, back and forth across his dead face.  The sheer boundless triumph of the victory was answered, in my mind, by a persistent echo which said, louder and louder as the movie went on, “The opposite happened.”  I’m sorry, I know this is terribly melodramatic, but the piles of dead children in my recent  nightmares didn’t get much satisfaction from this film.

I had other problems with it, too.  Why were there no Jews in it?  I know there were supposed to be — but why did those characters not appear Jewish in any way?  Okay, some of the actors had big brown eyes, but aside from that, there was not a speck of Jewish culture or sensibility to be found.  That would have made the revenge more satisfying, if some of the avengers had been identifiable as Jews in anything but their thirst for vengeance.

There’s another big problem:  vengeance isn’t actually an especially Jewish trait.  Oh, in personal matters, maybe (just ask my husband).  But in large matters, Jews thinktoo much to be able to carry out a plot so simple as utterly blotting out the enemy.  Jews are never single-minded, but in this movie, all they had to say was “YAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” as they gouged out larynxes with their bare hands, or whatever.  No argument, no analysis, no guilt, and no jokes?  Come on.

There was no sadness in the movie, either, only rage.  That struck me as unforgivably lacking in a movie about Jews.  Jews are always sad, even when they’re enjoying themselves.

I know you can argue that this wasn’t really a movie about the Holocaust, or about Jews, or about the war.  I get that:  it was about revenge in general.  My husband thinks that, if the movie was saying anything at all, it was saying that revenge is hollow.  It certainly felt that way by the end, with the distorted image of the giant face laughing maniacally as everything went up in flames — an image so tawdry and overblown that it had to be deliberately clichéd, right?  So it wasn’t just a regular cliché, but an ironic cliché?  Meant to show you that . . . what?

It was also clearly supposed to be a movie about movies.  Everything happens within a theater, either literally (at the end, when all the biggest Nazis die) or figuratively (when the “German Sergeant York” is rewarded for killing Allies by starring as himself in a movie about killing Allies).  References and homages to other films abound.  Okay, so it’s about movies.  But . . . what about movies?

Tarantino is so childish, but he frames scenes like a god, so it’s hard to stay away.  He keeps hinting at gargantuan talent, but he’s so darn lazy:  his movies are set up to be meaningful, but rarely deliver. Once again in this film, Tarantino is under the impression that he is actually saying something, when he merely sets the stage, and then rolls the credits.

I wouldn’t say “don’t watch this movie.”  I would just caution you that you will feel agitated and unhappy inside after you do (and not only because of the nearly illegible yellow subtitles) .  Quentin Tarantino is not going to grow up, so I just wish he would would hire a partner who could take his original ideas, his brilliant comic inspirations, his wild pairings of image and sound, and turn them into a movie that knows what it’s about.

What do you think?  Am I missing something here?  I was fully prepared to enjoy this movie, but it didn’t happen.

On with the old and off, off, off with the new

photo source

I’m 35.  Maybe it’s the humidity, or the grandmultiparidity, but boy, do I feel old.

When I was younger, I used to be able to lose weight by cutting out condiments.  No kidding:  skip butter or mayo for a week, and that was enough to dramatically improve my bathing suit shopping experience.  Now it takes the organization, effort, and emotional upheaval usually associated with a military operation in Bosnia just to achieve stasis on the scale.  How to actually lose weight (besides giving birth), I do not know.

When I was younger, two Tylenol and a quick stop in the confessional could easily neutralize whatever stupidity I’d indulged in the day before.*  But today, I’m finding that I pay more and more dearly even for morally neutral activities.  I get murderous sciatic pain if I commit the indiscretion of (irony alert!) crossing my legs.  Two cookies or a handful of M&M’s will give me a blinding sugar hangover in the morning.  And if I stay up too late, I will get caught up on sleep the next day, whether I’m behind the wheel or not.

On the other hand, most of getting older is a relief.  This is probably a function of how unnecessarily miserable I made myself as a child and young adult, but the fact is that life is just so much easier now.

The other night, for example,  my husband was out, so I figured I’d watch something that he would never choose on Netflix.  I went for the opposite of Bruce Willis:  some arty-looking animated short for adults.   It opened with some droning, atonal music, and then the lighting started to flicker and twitch.  A hunched woman in mismatched clothing slouched over to a toilet, where she proceeded to–well, it involved a snake, and although you couldn’t see her face, she seemed really, really sad.  So I says to myself, I says, “I don’t have time for this bullshit,” and I turned it off.

Seems obvious, right?  But fifteen years ago, I would have struggled against the good sense God gave me, and given this piece of junk the benefit of the doubt.  I would have striven to grasp what the artist was trying to convey, to rise above the conventions of my bourgeois upbringing** and pierce through to the tortured heart of this achingly arcane artistic experience.  And then I’d feel smug about it, too.  Sheesh.

More improvements that came with age:  In the last ten years or so, I’ve picked up a few social skills.  And I do mean “a few” — but even these are better than the none I used to possess.   I smile at people, for instance, rather than glowering.  They seem to like that!   When they ask how I am, I tell them (i.e., “Oh, I’m fine.”), and then–listen to this!–I ask them how they are (e.g., “How about you?”)!  Good, eh?  I also say things like, “That necklace is so pretty,” and “How is your mother?”  I have also found that that sophisticated maneuver that some people do of bringing food or wine to a party can be replicated in my own life; so, now, like, I bring food or wine to parties.

I have also gained the skill of asking stupid questions.  When I was younger, if I was uncertain about whether a steamroller were headed my way, I would sit there and be crushed to a pulp, rather than risk looking silly by asking someone.  Today, however, I am more or less impervious to feeling stupid.  I think I’ve just felt so stupid for so long that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.   If I’m not sure, I will ask the person at Home Depot, “Is this wire cutter for cutting wire?”  If I’m at the bank and have temporarily lost the ability to add two numbers together, I will just dump my papers and my little wadded up dollar bills on the counter and say, “Can you do this for me?”  And they will, because it’s their job.  I will call 911 because there is a big fat Canada goose in the road outside my house, and you know what?  I’ll tell the dispatcher my real name, because that thing was going to cause an accident.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  Who cares?

Other benefits of making it this far:

If something (say, Christmas) goes wrong one year, I have noticed that there’s always next year.

I can now stop biting my nails whenever I want.

I mostly know what to do in bed.  (This one is somewhat related to the one about not being afraid to ask stupid questions.)

On the other hand, I have learned not to ask questions if I really don’t want to know the answer.

I have learned –well, I’m still learning– that it’s okay to be misunderstood sometimes.  (Thank  you, mother internet, for teaching me this difficult lesson.)  There are times when people are going to think what they want to think, and you can kill yourself trying to show them your point of view . . . or you can just skip it.  The latter is much easier on you and on your family.  And on your nails.

These are the kinds of things that more than make up for realizing that I’m well on my way down that road to The End, and that the days when I feel droopy, achy, and encumbered are probably not going to go away.  I know, I know, I’m only 35.  You’re probably laughing at me for acting like I’m ancient.  But seriously.  I can’t even cross my legs anymore? That is old.

Still waiting for that precipitous drop-off in fertility, though.  In my family, 48 is the new 35–so maybe I still have more to learn.

But how about you?  Whatever age you’re at, what’s your favorite part about getting older?

*Dear protestants:  this is a joke.  I don’t know any Catholics who actually believe that it’s fine to sin, because you can just go to confession and X it out.  Also, if you have any questions about why we confess to a priest instead of straight to God, I can answer them, I guess; but I warn you, we Catholics read the Bible, too, and can play  Gospel Quote Gotcha® with the best of you.

**which I didn’t actually experience.