I am an unapologetic lover of pop culture and so this isn’t an anti-TV tirade. I stumbled on this only because we couldn’t afford multiple TVs with cable when our kids were little.
Life is weird.
Via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of smays
When I grow old, I want to be as kick ass as the characters in the Red movies.
Over the holidays, the family and I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and all agreed (even the teenager who isn’t a Lord of the Rings fan) it was an excellent movie.
I went to see Dark Shadows this weekend. With one reservation (I’ll get to that later), I enjoyed it. If you appreciate a twisty sense of humor, have a healthy ability to suspend disbelief, love Tim Burton or Johnny Depp, you will probably like this movie.
Over the past month, I rewatched the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which motivated me to reread the books (it’s been several years). Half way through The Fellowship of the Ring novel, I realized that despite the differences between the two forms, I truly love each as a separate experience.
This isn’t usually the case with me.
My youngest was home today with a stomach bug. After spending the day dashing up and down stairs, cleaning and re-cleaning, and answering The Summons too many times to remember, by late afternoon my mind was fried.
Deep-fried.
So, for the first time in days, I flitted about on the web, finding all kinds of mind-numbing stuff:
Tantalizing clues to the season-ending episodes of my favorite tv shows like Castle. But they didn’t have anything on the series-ending episode of Stargate Universe! They’re really workin’ it too – I cried during this weeks’ episode. The End is coming…sniff.
The powers that be are going ahead with Three and a Half Men without Charlie Sheen. (Please, somebody, make him just go away!)
Then, I ran across a quiz.
No, not “Who’s your favorite ‘Jersey Shore’ personality?” or “Would you rather be a: Vampire, Half-Vampire, Werewolf, or Human?” or “Do you think Lady Gaga is a man or a woman?” (There are people out there with WAY too much time on their hands.)
It was a “Which Austen heroine are you?” quiz.
I love Jane Austen’s novels. Love the snarkiness underneath the proper British manners. Love her ridiculous comic characters.
I’ve also seen so many of the movie versions, I have favorites: Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth (my all-time favorite), Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, and Emma with Kate Beckinsale. Hmm. I might have to dig out the DVDs.
Anyway. I HAD to take the survey.
Periodically, I find myself giving in to one of those crazy human peculiarities to complain. About my hair. About my kids. About my weight. About the fact that the world seems to be going to Hell in a handbasket. You know, that sort of thing.
It used to be I really didn’t notice when I was getting on one of these kicks. My husband was the one who finally woke me up to the fact that I was pretty miserable to those around me during one of my “moods.” Guess what? Now I have a teenage daughter and the tables have turned. (Mom, if you read this, let me just tell you now: I’m incredibly, deeply sorry.)
It may seem simplistic and trite, but I have a couple things I’ve started doing to jolly myself out of “the mean reds.” I either think about folks who have it way worse than me (such as children with life-threatening diseases or the poor people in the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico) or think about or do something I love. Today, I prefer to dwell on the latter.
Now if only I could get my teenager to understand this….
E. K. Carmel 
