Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

Inspirations: Stranger Than Fiction

 

I like quirky little movies. I find them refreshing, particularly when I have had all I can take of things blowing up.

(Don't get me wrong, I love action movies like The Bourne Trilogy, The Die Hard series, Iron Man and James Bond, but I can only take so much of them. And you'll notice that all the movies on that list have a sense of humor. I need humor and a good musical soundtrack. An action movie that doesn't have humor or good music just hurts my head. And my ears.)

But I am a sucker for a good romantic comedy and those seem to be in short supply thesse days. My husband and I tried to find a nice little romantic movie to go to the weekend before Valentine's Day (and the weekend after, as well) and there was not a single one showing in theaters.

So we did what we always do when that happens and we rented something instead.

We first checked out "Stranger Than Fiction" a couple of years ago on a recommendation from our son and we liked it so much that we decided to get it again for Valentine's.

Which is already high praise - we really have to like a movie to watch it more than once.

It is surprising to me that this film is not better known. (None of my friends have even heard of it). It has an all star cast - Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah, and Linda Hunt - and is directed by award winner Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace, The Kite Runner)

I can't give you a description of the plot because the best way to watch the film is to simply let it unfold and take you to unexpected places. 

I will mention that I go hot and cold on Will Ferrell as a movie actor - I find him most appealing in roles like this one and Elf, where he is genuinely acting rather than just over the top screwing around. There are a number of comedians whose film performances fall into the category I like to call "The Saturday Night Live Sketch that should only have been 3 minutes long."

"Stranger Than Fiction" won Will Ferrell a Golden Globe nomination for best actor and probably should have earned him an Oscar nomination as well. (But then we know what the Oscars think of romantic comedies.)

So, if, like me, you cannot find a good movie to watch at the theater go out and rent this gem.

How To Judge A Man....

 

My husband sent me this yesterday. I thought it was particularly relevant in an election year.

A Vacation From Google

 

I was raised on the writings of George Orwell.

Most particularly, Animal Farm and 1984.

So any time an entity, be it a government or a private company, starts setting off my "Orwell Alarm", I try to give it a wide berth. Which is the chief reason I am still not on facebook.

And why I have decided to see if I can go an entire week without using google. Their recent changes to their privacy policy are just a little to Orwellian for me.

I will still be surfing the web. I will just be using Yahoo instead.

I also won't be signing in to my google account to check my email or use my google+ account.

We'll see how it goes...

The Unraveling - The Tooth Fairy Is The Catalyst.....

 

The following is a piece I wrote for a book called "Pandora's Box", a collaborative project by artists and writers in Southeast Wisconsin, published by Southport Press. My Husband John did two wonderful illustrations for it that can only be seen if you buy the book.

The Unraveling

We begin when our children are small.

 
 (Too small to have any idea what we're talking about, really. How absurd to say to a six month old infant "Look what Santa Claus brought you!".)

 
And, though we know there can only be one ending to this little house of cards we are building, one of disappointment and disillusionment, we proceed with abandon. 

 
I’m not sure who it started with - I think it must have been Santa Claus because all our children were born after Easter. We stuck pretty much with the big three: Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and handled it in the usual way, with  lots of subterfuge to maintain the illusion. 

We’d send the kids out to wait in  the car as we headed to Grandma's. Then there would be a few trips back into the house "for things we forgot", so that we could add the presents that “Santa” would bring.

There were the years of trying desperately to stay awake on  Christmas Eve until the children were safely asleep so that stockings could be filled. And hours spent removing price tags from the presents from “The North Pole” because Elves don’t use pricing guns. Not to mention the cookie and milk consuming martyrdom that led to our thickening waistlines.

And we did it well.

Until it all began to unravel.

And who unraveled it?

The Tooth Fairy.

Yes, the Tooth Fairy.

She was our undoing. And I suspect she is the undoing of parents everywhere because she is the weak link in the chain. 

First of all, there are the inconsistencies of pay scale. It is all very well and good to put a dollar under your child's pillow if he or she has no friends with which to compare notes. But, add even one other child into the mix, and a discussion of the pay rates will begin. 

Worse yet, is the tooth that is lost in the midst of a sleepover. Now you are smack up against it. Do you suddenly put two dollars under the pillow because the visiting child always gets two dollars?

You see, if we really want to make this work, we as parents should be a lot more organized. We should unionize the Tooth Fairy and firmly establish the rates. Is a molar worth more than a bicuspid? Is a broken tooth worth less than a whole one?

But I suspect the biggest downfall for parents is the sheer randomness of the losing of teeth. We all know when Santa and the Easter Bunny come. We are prepared. We have a plan. But the Tooth Fairy has to be there, at the ready, at all sorts of unexpected times. 

And, because we have not planned for this, we are not capable of holding on to the knowledge that we need to stay up late tonight and take care of it. This was our undoing with all three of our children. By the time we were ready for bed we had completely forgotten that we had a job to do.

So we went to sleep. And, in the morning, we remembered...

And we tried to, very carefully and quietly, slip the money under the pillow without wakening the child. 

Oops.

Or, we waited until the child got up and went to the bathroom. At which time we flew into their bedroom like lightening to do the deed.

Only to find out later that said child had checked under the pillow before leaving the room.

 
Before the bathroom - tooth, no money. 

After the bathroom - money, no tooth.

It doesn't take a future rocket scientist to figure that one out.

So then the suspicion begins to grow. And, with raised eyebrow and a manner the chief of police would admire, they grill us about all the other little fantasies we may have spun for them over the years.

And soon it is all over. And we have little grown ups living in our house where once there were innocent children.

And we plead with them not to give away the secret to their younger sister.

!@#% Tooth Fairy.

 

Inspirations - Bill Moyers

 

It is not my intention to be writing a political blog but this week I encountered another program I consider to be required watching for any registered voter. Please go watch this week's Bill Moyers as he unravels the steps taken by Wall Street that led us to where we are today. It is quite a history lesson and an important tool for any voter attempting to sift through the current political rhetoric.

And, as a little bonus, here is today's Edison strip which, it turns out, addresses this very topic. I love Synchronicity.

 

A Life Changing Program

 

Every once in a while you have an experience that profoundly changes something about how you view the world. The sort of thing that, once experienced, cannot be "un-experienced". 

I had such an experience in 1982 when I spent a summer studying in Europe. Once I viewed my home country from a distance, through the eyes of others, I could never quite look at the U.S.A. in exactly the same way I had before. 

I'm not saying I wanted to move to Europe or anything, I'm just saying I now saw some things very differently because I had new information.

I had another such experience on January 6th of this year.

While driving cross country I fired up my favorite new app (tune in radio) that lets me listen to my favorite programs from my favorite radio stations no matter where I am. As I frequently drive through patches of what I consider to be "quality radio wasteland" I am LOVING this app. (I have an older minivan so I have to patch my ipad through to my radio using a wireless transmitter device that somes with some static but you can't have everything.)

Which is how I came across the January 6th broadcast of "This American Life" episode 454 "Mr. Daisey And The Apple Factory".

Mike Daisey is a storyteller and this particular story is a doozy. 

And hearing his story changed my life.

I can't exactly tell you how yet because I am still processing the information from Mr. Daisey's story. I have a lot of conflicting emotions about it.

But now that I know these things I can never go back to "un-knowing" them. 

So I warn you, if you don't want your life changed, don't go listen to this program. 

Because you can never "un-listen" to it. And I promise you it will change you on some level - even if you don't want it to.

It's that powerful.

 

A note: you may have to buy the program in itunes for .99 if you are not listening on your desktop but, rather, on a mobile device. I promise you it's worth it.

Pic of the Week - The Last Bouquet

The snow finally arrived yesterday (and boy, did it arrive - over 8 inches). This was the last bouquet of flowers gathered from my garden at the unseasonably late date of December 5.

Tribute: Robert Bahr

So far 2012 is off to a pretty crappy start. We awoke to the news that John's stepfather, Robert Bahr,  had died New Year's Day.

Where do I begin.

Bob has been a fixture in our lives for over 30 years. When my husband bought me my engagement ring, I think the first thing we did was tell my parents and the second was to head on over to the Elks where Bob and my mother in law were out dancing and ringing in the New Year . (There's New Year's again...)

(Bob and Sue tearing up the dance floor at our nephew's wedding rehearsal dinner)

Professionally, Bob was a doctor - which was darned useful as we began having children, I probably called him at least once a month to ask him again what were the signs of a concussion.

But, beyond the obvious family stuff, I knew him mostly as a wood turner and golfer. Especially after he retired from medicine, he was either down in his shop working on a piece of wood or else out on the golf course. (Poor Bob, he played golf most days of his adult life and spent almost every one of them swearing, either at the ball, the clubs, or the scorecard - or me as I "13 putted")

As a wood worker he became legendary. While he personally would never admit that he was a true artist (to his dying day he said he didn't know what he was doing) he studied with and befriended almost every major woodturner in the world. If you meet a famous woodworker, ask them if they stayed at Bob Bahr's house and the answer will probably be yes.

Here are some photos of his wood:

Occasionally Bob would add paint and dye to his wood - this piece is maple burl under all that wild color.

He did a series of these carvings.

One of my favorites and a good representation of his sense of humor.

This I dubbed the "cy-clock" He made hundreds of clocks.

This piece is both painted and textured with a wood burner.

This piece is a replica of an earlier piece Bob had the poor judgement to sell - it was one of Sue's favorites and he had to make another.....

A wonderful Grandfather Clock from his earlier days.

A piece in progress.....

The finished piece.

Another smaller piece of the same type. In the last couple of years he made a series of these aiming to get ever smaller and more delicate.

One of the tiniest woodturnings I have ever seen.

Bob and his son - also a wood turner - had a competition to see who could make the smallest of these. I'm not sure whose are whose.

A fraction of work from a career of over 40 years.

I would like to include here a few words from my portion of the eulogy from his funeral.

"Bob was one of the most generous men I ever met. My friends and family have him to thank for nice toilet seats to sit on. During one of his visits to our home he took one look at the state of our toilet seats (which had come with the house), turned on his heel and went out to the store and bought me all new ones.

Another time, when I was in the hospital following the birth of our first child, Bob decided to vacuum my house for me. He turned on our sweeper, declared it a "piece of crap" and headed out and bought us a new one. (Upon later inspection, we found the bag on the old sweeper was just full.)

He always could make us laugh but his sense of humor was not for everyone. Once, during a visit to our apartment in Chicago, we went downtown to see an Andrew Wyeth exhibit. It was one of those ticketed events that had a certain start time. With some time to kill, we strolled up and down Michigan Avenue and checked out places like Tiffany and Gucci. While in the luggage section of Gucci, a woman approached the salesman and inquired wether or not there were any suitcases "without all these little G's all over them." Bob looked at me and said "Why doesn't the stupid woman go to Sears? Who buys a Gucci suitcase if they don't want everyone to know it's Gucci?!!" While I was embarrassed - I was pretty sure the woman heard him - I could not help laughing out loud.

He introduced my children to cake and donuts for breakfast, Powers Hamburgers and Foul Language (I'd still like to take that one up with him) He often teased them pretty badly but all my kids developed a thick skin and a razor wit to keep up with him and give back as good as they got. A skill that has served them well in the big, bad world.

I only remember Bob getting really mad at me one time. He was a rapid fan of Indiana University basketball (he was an IU alum) and, while he was visiting us and we all had to go out during the game, I promised I would use the VCR and tape it for him. I swore I did everything right. And I almost did. But when we returned, there was no recording of the game. Unbeknownst to me our VCR clock was incorrectly set to am instead of pm."

Bob was a big and bold person and he brought me out of my shell and taught me to "go for it" no matter what "it" was. When I started this blog, he was my biggest fan and the first person to put something in my "tip" jar. Imagine my delight when I got the paypal notice that I had a little extra money waiting for me.

For over 28 years he was a bedrock in all our lives - as long as he was around we knew we had someone in our corner who could help make everything turn out all right. He gave us a sense of security and brought us so much joy and our lives are truly richer for having known him.

Every Christmas Eve Bob had a big party and gave away the things he had made to his friends and family. You had to play the "dirty Santa" game where you steal things from other people to get them but everyone had a great time and there were almost never any sore losers.

You can see the joy of his guests (but I'm pretty sure my niece did not wind up with that clock by the end of the night)

So many breafasts and lunches with him at this counter.

With our daughter 

Pretty sure some teasing and bickering going on here.....

Bob and my daughter had a running thing with cheating each other out of the good recliner - Unfortunately, it is all hers now.

Good bye Bob - we will miss you more than you can know.

 

Am I Manic Depressive?

 

I know we don't call it manic depressive anymore - the correct term is now "bipolar". 

When does one cross the line from "crazy creative person" to "manic depressive" person?

Because I really don't think I am suffering from the classic M/D disorder that haunted Oscar Levant. I'm more like every creative person I've ever met - we tend to have our fingers in too many pies and a list of unfinished projects. It's not that we get fed up with the project in hand as much as a situation where we get another idea or inspiration at the same time and know that if we don't get it down on paper or launched in some way, we will lose the idea forever.

 So we hop from project to project and thing to thing because we have too many ideas to stick with only one. And we tend to have phases where we are really, really creative, burning up all kinds of inspired energy, followed by the need for some truly good long naps.

I once started a crewel embroidery while engaged to one gentleman, only to set the whole thing aside - hoop and all - for 4 years. I picked it up again  and finished it when I was married to John, the previous gentleman having become an ex-fiance. I didn't stop the project for any reason more complex than the fact that I started knitting instead. (Note: when you set an embroidery project aside for 4 years and don't take it off the hoop or protect it in any way, you get a finished piece that has a giant dirty ring across the zone where the hoop was.) 

I have done this a lot over the course of my life which is why there are so many things listed under the "hats I wear" tab. Some phases have lasted longer than others - Glass Blowing was a 4 year phase,  Ballet was a 12 year pursuit, Working in Cartooning is in its 6th year, and Harp has been a lifelong career of over 35 years. Various other hobbies like knitting have popped in and out for over 25 years. When it comes to things like knitting, tatting, and painting I tend to focus on one at a time for as many months as I feel so inclined.

I have enjoyed this sort of up and down existence when it comes to my various hobbies. 

But the latest phase - the one in which I spend a bajillion hours on the internet blogging and socially networking - is different. It's a lot harder to pick up and put down. Especially the blogs that are supposed to be supporting the business parts of my life - harp and cartooning. To get anything going of enough consequence to attract regular readers and eventually advertising it feels as it one has to be online ALL THE TIME.

And it's wearing me out.

And making me feel manic depressive.

This business of being in touch with everybody all the time starts out fun - it's nice to interact with people and see and hear what they are up to - but it then devolves into something overwhelming. I feel guilty if I step away - as if I am being a bad friend to those with whom I am in regular contact. But there is simply no way to keep track of all the pithy little comments my friends are making on twitter, facebook, google+ and various websites.

It's like a cocktail party that never, ever ends.

And it leaves me doing this bipolar sort of blitz socializing followed by periods of profound silence. 

So, maybe when it comes to the internet I am a little manic depressive....

How about you? 

The Death Of The Christmas Newsletter?

 

I have an unhappy relationship with holiday greetings. I have not managed to send out a Christmas card - or holiday card of any kind, actually, since 2000.

That was the year I lost my address book.

My first reaction, upon learning I had lost all those addresses should have been one of despair, right?

It was unbridled relief.

Relief at the thought that I had a legitmate excuse for not sending out holiday cards that year.

Why? Why such distast for a time honored tradition loved by millions of people? I mean, who doesn't like to get Christmas cards? And, I must confess here that I eagerly await all the cards other people send me. (Which is, of course, completely unfair and hypocritical.)

I burned out on Chrstimas cards because of the new tradition - probably started in the 1990's - of the CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER. 

Before the Christmas newsletter became such a staple of our lives, it was easy to divide my cards up into two piles.

1) Close friends and family who I see regularly - these are folks who completely don't mind if we just sign our name to the card and

2) People we almost never see (we may not have actually seen them in years) - these folks you have to write a little note to catching them up on your life and inquiring about theirs.

And that was the extent of it. 

Pile number one always went very quickly and pile number two went a little more slowly but it wasn't that bad because the note was a politeness. A mere 5 sentence summary of the state of our lives - maybe a little more, maybe a little less. The note was NOT a blow by blow description of every illness or every acheivement.

Now that they have been around a while, Chrismas letters have evolved somewhat in that there are a few people who do them very well. They strike just the right balance of chattiness and catching you up without beating you over the head with accomplishments that make you feel like chopped liver or depressing the daylights out of you with their litany of sorrows.

But is this all, now, a moot point? 

Because now we have Facebook. And Twitter. And Google+. And Blogs. 

We are awash in each other's news. 

I can now find out the almost day to day activities of anyone I've chosen to interact with via social networking and the internet. 

Does this mean the impending death of the Christmas newsletter?

Boy, I hope so! 

I have a new address book and my two piles of cards ready to go.