Oh ya’ll. If you have looked at the Life List lately, you might have noticed that my movie watching has picked up a bit. That’s because I recently switched from Blockbuster to Netflix. Netflix allows me to stream movies as part of my monthly rate plan, as opposed to Blockbuster, which charges extra for that privilege. That means that when I discover time to watch a movie, the movie is ready to go. I’m loving it.

The only downside to streaming is that sometimes the movie pauses to buffer. For some reason that I do not comprehend, I have traced the problem to my Linksys router. If I remember to push the reset button before I start the movie, it runs right along smooth as silk.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to start my homework. I’m trying to squeeze in The Taking of Pelham 123 today!

Dear Patrick Swayze,

I know you are dead and all, but here is the fan letter I would have written if I thought you actually read them yourself. You are so amazing. I loved every one of your movies. Yes, I’ve seen them all. From the way you held Baby in Dirty Dancing to the way you exacted justice in Next of Kin to the very obvious love you had for your wife in Last Dance, you are the bomb.

Also, unbearably HAWT. Just sayin’ From my teens to my late thirties, you rocked my socks. You taught me that nobody puts Baby in a corner and that pain don’t hurt. Also how to rob banks and do a disappearing wipe-out.

I still sigh every time I see your picture, and I still smile every time I watch you move with that cat-like grace. If I had the money, I’d put multiple big screens on assorted tv stands and watch you in stereo.

Love,
Cass

June 10 Four feet of counter Yep, I found it. And then I lost it again, at least once per day. But I keep refinding it, so that’s progress of sorts, right?

June 11 Freedom Party On this day, I had a little party. My divorce had become final the week before this, and I wanted to have a party to celebrate, but I thought it would probably be wrong to do that while the children were home, so I waited. And also, there were bff birthdays in March that I never did anything about because I was waiting for the divorce to throw the party, and in the meantime, sections of my unfamily divested themselves of me in a very public way, and so, I truly was finally free.

Is it awful that my major emotional response was relief? I clearly wasn’t imagining things all my life, my feelings were validated and those involved can finally all quit pretending to be something we aren’t. Let me be perfectly clear here: I am only speaking of those who were specifically involved. Does anyone need a dictionary to understand that? And the weirdest part was that they were so concerned that I had talked about them in the first place, when I really only talked about me, and no one even knew we were related until they outed themselves all over my facebook page.

So, this picture is of my lop-sided but delicious Strawberry Tall Cake, which you should really go read about. But come right back, cause I’m not done!

We did indeed have a party. I almost said “bangin’ time”, but that would be too easily misconstrued. Here’s the deal: That One, Guitar Guy and I all share very similar senses of humor. We are all quick-witted, punny and ready to see the hilarity in any given situation. We have a great deal of fun just sitting around stone-cold sober, which is how you will usually find us when we are all together. On this particular night, That One stopped by the ABC store and bought so much liquor that he had to have a permit to bring it to the house, and oh my word!! He went home with most of it, but in the meantime, we found out that he is a *very* capable bar tender, and that when he drinks a bit, he’s even funnier than usual. Madea was in da house, and if you’ve never heard a big white man impersonate a big crazy black woman, you should come to my next party. And it went on for hours, people! Hours! We kicked off about 6pm, and I think I crashed around 4am.

On a more serious note, it was a very fitting closure for me to celebrate my personal freedom with those who have held my hand while I fought so hard for it. There was a great deal more to it than a facebook fight and a piece of paper. This little mouse of a girl has officially graduated to gerbil. I may not be standing very tall at 5 feet even, but damnitall, I’m standing! And, Ang., I really wish you could have been here with me, too. I missed you, even though I know you were here in spirit.

June 12 I want it! That One has a new hat, and I want it. He let me wear it while he was here, but alas, he left with it on his own head. Unfortunately, he found it in an ittybitty store in some town in PA. I’m hopeful that he will find another one, but not counting on it. Oh! Remember I said he was funny? So, we were talking about the hat and he looked at me and said, “yeah they had one in pink, too”. And then I said “Really!!” And he said “no”, and we both dissolved in giggles. Well, he didn’t giggle, he laughed, because boys don’t giggle.

June 13 Matches the Other Half of my Wardrobe See?

June 14 Really? I’d like to meet the person responsible for this piece of marketing “genius”, just so I could point and laugh!

So, did I tell you that I went to the movies the other day? Oh yes, I did. I saw Quantum of Solace 3 and a half times! It was good the first 2.5 times, and then I just sat watching Daniel Craig prancing around in those tailored clothes. Lord have mercy.

Anyway, I was there doing a blind check of the patrons, and I was thinking how much better one those tally counters would be, as opposed to the little tick-marks I was making on paper. That wasn’t very, umm, subtle, was it? I was surprised to see these today when I searched for industrial knobs at Reid Supply. They don’t look very knob-like, do they?

Back to the movie: Craig makes a very convincing Bond. He’s not as slick as Pierce Brosnan and not as sold as cold as Connery. The ladies are plentiful and lovely, and the movie is edge of the seat after the first idyllic 15 seconds. I’m wishing after reading the review I linked above that I had seen Casino Royale.

I’m hoping to get a few more of these count-people-at-the-movies assignments. Days spent in the quiet dark, just knitting and watching are mighty appealing just now.

We just watched Edward Scissorhands. You know, the one with Johnny Depp, from the early 80s? Yes, that one. Best love story, ev-ar. Except that Johnny Depp is so painfully thin, that it looks like he spent 6 months taking diet pills just to get ready to make the film. It’s funny to think that he is my age, and I have watched him mature on screen, yk? And isn’t it amazing how much men change in the years between 18 and 25 after they have “stopped growing”.

The movie starts with a young girl asking her grandmother to tell her a story, and the story starts with the Avon lady finding Edward abandoned in a castle at the top of the hill. She brings him down to suburbia, and he carves (haha) out a niche for himself and tries to fit in. It works for awhile, but eventually things disintegrate and Edward retreats back to his castle, and the story doesn’t end. There’s more, but I am not telling. Just remember that Tim Burton directed and so even though the story unfolds at a good clip all through, it is the last five minutes that contain the essence. This movie should be watched once a decade, and you should make sure you forget as much about it as possible in the interim. You will never look at snow the same way again.

I should totally make a button for this series. I am just liking the buttons lately. A lot. First what we aren’t going to discuss: Matrimony. I had hoped to finish it, but NO! Instead I have spent my time knitting and ripping, knitting and ripping. So, only one magazine got finished to report on this week, but I hope to tell you about the book next week.

Do many of you watch Dexter? My friend Colleen told a group of us about it, and I blew it off since I don’t sub to Showtime. Due to the writer’s strike, though, it’s airing on network tv, and I am enjoying it. It’s the story of a serial killer who is also a police officer. Dexter’s running dialogue with himself is … eerily similar to my own. Well, minus the murder parts, but I do talk in my own head a lot.

There is one thing that I have been chewing on for a bit now: in the second episode, Dexter’s dad explains that when you kill a person you aren’t just killing them, but you are killing everything they would have done or achieved in their lifetime. The context was that Dexter should think carefully about what he was doing, and not just be killing people willy-nilly. I’ve been chewing this, and trying to take the long view of my actions. It’s not just murder, not just bad things, that have a lasting effect. When you build someone up, it also effects them–and the people they will affect throughout their lifetime.

I picked up the latest Woman’s Day at the store this weekend. Nothing jumped out at me as far as this issue went. There was a little blurb on how vitamin D helps prevent heart issues and such, but I knew that already, and there were some tips on how to save time cleaning, but I didn’t find them very practical. Since this was why I purchased the mag, I was a little disappointed. You might like them, though, so…

And this week, I have listened to a SLEW of podcasts. I am subbed to several knitting and history podcasts, and I am enjoying the freedom of listening away from the computer. I’m looking to add a cooking show, and maybe some free audiobooks.

OH! One more thing! Carla had recommended A Thousand Splendid Suns to me and I am pleased to say it came yesterday. It’s next on the TBR pile. Perhaps I will sit on my patio furniture to read it. If you can call a lawn chair on the back stoop “patio furniture”.

First let me say, I enjoy Johnny Depp. I have enjoyed him since he made Edward Scissorhands, and even though I don’t usually get into pirates, excepting Pete, we are all about the POTC around here. The kids like Will, and I’m all over the Cap’n and there we are. Did I date myself when I mentioned Edward Scissorhands? Well, my tagline does say 40 something, LOL. And did you know…it’s true. I am indeed forty, and I was a fairly young adult in 1990 when Depp starred in Edward Scissorhands.

I had that movie on VHS, and we just about wore it out. It was a very rough time in my life, and I so connected with the outcast Edward, and his outward ugliness and the pain he sometimes caused those he loved combined with that inner artistic beauty. How he could create both beauty and pain with those non-hands…it makes an interesting metaphor for the power of the human tongue, doesn’t it? I should get it on DVD and share it with my kids. That whole scene in the end where he’s carving and it’s snowing, it’s magical still. And I just opened several mental worm cans that I’d rather not exam tonight, so let’s move right along to my next favorite Depp movie, which is What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

It was my oldest daughter who introduced me to this Depp film. It was released in 93, but I was totally unaware of it until she asked for it while she was here. I have not talked about her much here, and I won’t do it just now, either, but…watching this movie with her was incredibly poignant, and when Johnny Depp as Gilbert Grape walked out of his mother’s house and burned it down behind him, it was all I could do to keep from sobbing like a small and wounded child, because in the end, he loved his mother enough to burn his past, just to preserve what shred of dignity she had left. It was…it felt like…a gift, to watch this with my daughter. I guess of the two this would be my favorite scene because of the emotional associations I have with it.

So, now, Depp has a new film out, and you can visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace or you can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site and catch the trailer. As I watched it tonight, I glimpsed Edward and Gilbert both in there, and of course, that led me down memory lane. There was also something else that I wasn’t quite able to pin down, so I am curious to see the movie. And also?? He sings in this movie. And he’s pretty good at it. Mmm-hmm. That’s hott, ya’ll.

You probably know from reading this blog that I am searching out ways to spend a little time on myself. One of the ways I do that is by listening to podcasts after the boy kids are in bed each night. I’ve been listening to knitting podcasts off and on for a long time, but not too long ago, I decided to search the iTunes store for “history”. In truth, I wasn’t expecting very much, but I got a pleasant surprise. I’ve added several historical podcasts to my listening line-up, including Hardcore History, Journeys into American History, and the subject of this post, My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. I thoroughly enjoyed the previous episode comparing Vietnam and Iraq, which I listened to while ripping stitches out of my quilt. ‘ve often said that you can’t truly understand current events without first getting a grip on the past, and this podcast can certainly help with that. I see that a new one came out on the 23rd. It’s about … oh, never mind, I’ll let him tell it:

There is very little celebration of the passing of a date Sept. 17, 2007: the belated Birthday of the Signing of the Constitution. And the Federal Convention that ended its business on Sept. 17, 1787.

It seems unfortunate, since we should be celebrating the people who gave us right to speech, right to assemble, right to bear arms, etc.

Except they didn’t. When the constitution was signed, these fellows voted down a Bill of Rights. It was only later, when the plan had to be sold to the state of Virginia, that a Bill of Rights was promised.

Yet, these fellows did create the Constitution, so they are Founding Fathers, correct?

That leads to a question. Who is a Founding Father? Common wisdom would say the Founding Fathers would be anyone who helped craft the Constitution. Yet famous names such as Tom Jefferson and John Adams were not there for the convention that met in 1787 in secret to craft a new government. George Washington was there, but as the chair he was silent while debate went on. Ben Franklin was there but as an aging celebrity he took a symbolic role and his ideas of having multiple Presidents or unpaid Federal officers would not be taken seriously.

Indeed the Constitution was created by little-known names like James Wilson, Charles Pickeney, Rufus King, and William Paterson.

We address the question of who is a founding father and how the Constitution was written, and where the Bill of Rights came from.

My History Can Beat Up Your Politics is a podcast that looks into the history behind the politics of today. The podcast can be found on iTunes or at (www.myhistorycanbeatupyourpolitics.com)

Bruce has a soothing voice, and a quirky outlook. He brings a passion to a subject that many mistreat. Of course, it is a passion that I share. *grin* I guess this mean that you know what I’ll be doing tonight. Bruce Carlson and Brenda Dayne, I’ll be here around 9pm. We’ll have coffee and crocheting, ok?

One last thing–is it blasphemous if I crochet while listening to Cast-On?