I just watched a couple movies that I wasn't so sure about at first but ended up liking: GRAVITY and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. Warning, there will be spoilers so if you haven't seen and plan to, leave now. Otherwise, carry on. Now I love Sandra Bullock. Ever since SPEED, she's been my go-to girl for sweet drama and adorable laughs. But after hearing the premise for this movie, I was kinda like, eh, I don't know. But my husband brought it home from Redbox and we watched it together. Well, I watched it, he fell asleep halfway through. Not from boredom but that's just what happens when we watch movies together. I was pretty impressed with her performance, as usual. She's an astronaut named Ryan on her first trip into space. An accident happens and she and George Clooney's character, Matt, are stuck with little oxygen and a long way to go to get back to Earth. She's flipping out and soon reveals that she'd lost her four year old daughter. "Now, I just drive. I get in the car and drive."
Throughout the movie we watch as she struggles to survive, even as Matt is lost to her. As he drifts away from her with no way to get back, Matt says "You have to learn to let go." What? Are you kidding? I'd be freaking out too if I knew someone was going to die and could still hear their voice as they slowly become a dot in the black. And there's nothing anyone can do about it. Yes, this is the perfect time to freak out! Eventually, you have this scene that takes place after she decides to just give up.
Yep, it's time to go home, alright. Time to let go and move on. It took almost dying in space for Ryan to start living, really living, again. Best line of the movie: "No more just driving. Let's go home." WOLF OF WALL STREET was a fun movie to watch. Long, really long but still entertaining as hell. The story follows the humble beginnings of stock broker Jordan Belfort as he lies and swindles his way up the Wall Street food chain to become a millionaire. Sex and drugs and money, money, money are all he needs. And then things start to go bad. The government starts to take notice and investigate. You can smooth talk thousands of dollars out of people's wallets and into your hand but you can't make the FBI turn a blind eye. And drugs are a serious problem with this guy. This scene had me laughing for five minutes straight.
As hilarious as this is, it's also messed up because he makes the stupidest decisions and later endangers the life of his kid while high. Not cool. Of course it all comes crashing down around him and he has to do some jail time but he did come to realize what his real strengths were and eventually used them to help people other than himself. Because you can't be a selfish prick forever, right? Right?
My dislike and mistrust of people has heightened more and more these past few years. Which is probably why my paranoia about my kids has become more extreme. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not excessively extreme. I don't keep them in a bubble. But honestly, they really don't get out with other kids as much as they should.
My newest addition is a month old now and I recognize the changes in my attitude about things compared to how I was when the other three were infants. Before if someone wanted to hold my little girl, I'd pass her off and enjoy having a break for a minute. Now, I tend to hover and even if I step away, I'm back within a matter of minutes to check and make sure everything is okay. I don't think I'm going to let her stay with any grandparents alone overnight until she's at least three months old. Why? Because what if she gets hysterical with her crying and no one can calm her? What if something happens and no one can reach me for some reason? These are the fun thoughts that plague me when it comes to my littlest one. I'm more of a bitch now to my pediatricians about all of my kids when they are sick. When I see a new pediatrician, 75% of the time they are going to say something or do something that rubs me the wrong way or straight up pisses me off. Let's just be honest, I can't stand doctors anyway. I've seen many, many doctors in my life and I can count on one hand how many I actually liked. Two fingers, really. Pediatricians tend to talk down to me and not really listen to the symptoms I'm describing. Or they ignore my kid while they examine them, which is a big no-no. Kids are usually afraid of doctors and dentists to some degree so they have to be reassured while they're being checked out. And ignoring them or me and rushing through an exam will put you right at the top of my shit list. And that's a long list, people. The problem with my dislike of people in general is that it is affecting my kids. Two of my kids are not very social. In fact, one doesn't like to socialize with other kids in her class at all. She didn't speak to anyone her entire year in daycare, including the teachers to the point that for a while they thought she couldn't talk or had some kind of serious speech problem. I don't take them out on playdates. Playdates mean that I have to know other parents. And I have no idea how to make friends with some couple just because they have kids. None of my friends that live in my area have kids. And just how the hell do you find friends for kids that aren't in daycare? This is the puzzler, the conundrum that I have to figure out to assist my kids with making friends and working on their social skills. Because they really don't need to be people-haters like me. Not yet anyway. My oldest is nine and she is about to go out to her first sleepover next weekend. Not counting grandparents or anyone blood related, this is her first time going to a party and spending the night with a friend. This is pretty sad on my part because I'm sure that I was much younger when I went to my first sleepover. I'm just weird about sending my kids to the house of someone I don't know. Hell, I rarely let them call their friends because I know that when kids talk, they hatch out elaborate plans to get their parents to let them spend the night over. I know because I did it a lot myself. I'd rather them come over first so I can see how the kid acts. How a kid treats your kid when it's just them and how they talk to you as an adult tells you a lot about their parents. I have had little kids get snappy and rude with me before. Um, no, you are not hanging out with my kid. Forget it. I don't really like other people's kids. I don't really care for the parents either. I don't like other people attempting to raise my kids or telling me how to do it properly. I don't like playdates scheduled over the phone with people I don't know. So the question is, is this just me or is this a part of getting older? Am I a special kind of anti-social, other-kids-suck parent or do we get a bit crazier about our kids as we age? I love my kids but this no-one-else-can-do-it-right-but-me thing can be exhausting at times.
This has been a pretty eventful year for me. Here I sit thinking about the past year and some of the really low times and the really high times. Honestly, they pretty much equal out. Another typical Marie year! Let's recap, shall we? My family moved in with my husband's mother in February. I've been fairly miserable about this living condition ever since, especially since it was only supposed to be temporary until June. Here we are in December and the only ray of light I have isn't coming until March. Argh.
I moved my blog from Webs.com to here. I was hesitant at first but now I wish I'd made the move sooner. Blogger gets much more traffic, is much more user friendly and I love the layout options. Very happy to be here doing my random blog! I've blogged about many topics this year including movies, books, art and writing. And of course my bitchy blogs about life in general. We can't forget those little jewels.
I made some new friends this year but I also cut ties with a couple people. For good. Some relationships just aren't healthy for you. I don't need anyone in my life who weighs me down, makes me feel like I make bad decisions about my family or just straight up pisses me off daily. Once upon a time I held on to friendships just to have a friend to confide in. Someone to talk to. But now I'd rather have less friends that actually matter to me and give a crap about me personally. The friends I have now are wonderful people who don't judge me and support my decisions, even if they don't agree with them. And that's what I need in my life.
My marriage was having serious problems at the start of this year. It was really looking like splitsville but we've worked out a lot of issues and are back on track, better than we've been in years actually. And then we decided to have another kid. Because, why not? You can't wait until you can afford to have kids because then you'll never procreate at all. And we aren't getting any younger here. We were shooting for that boy but alas, girl number four is due in a couple weeks. And I am super excited!
Let's see, what else? Oh, my youngest started kindergarten this year. Another tearful day for mommy. (Yes, I cry when my babies start school but I try to leave the class so I won't embarrass them) I wrote a new erotic novel this year. It will be coming out tomorrow and I will be spamming the hell out of Facebook, Twitter, and my website about it. Dying my hair is something I've been doing since I was a teenager. I like shades of red and sometimes blonde. Last year I even had the Rogue look with brown hair and thick white highlights in the front. But this year I decided to go back natural. So I haven't colored it in quite some time. And it decided to pay me back by throwing some gray in there. Joy, joy. Oh well. I also did something I haven't done in almost ten years: cut it short. Yep, to my chin. I don't usually do short hair because my hair type is so bushy but it actually looks decent and it's less hassle so I'm happy with it.
And that is pretty much my year in a nutshell. Still writing and reading. Still doing arts and crafts weekly. Still cursing like a sailor and not caring if it offends. Still wishing I could adopt more cats though I can barely afford the ones I have. Still wanting to go back to school eventually. Still living from paycheck to paycheck and blowing most of our money on outings with our kids. Which my practical side calls stupid but my mommy side says, "They're only young once; enjoy it." Touche, mommy side. I plan on spending next year enjoying it as much as I can.
I've been told on many occasions that I am a neat freak. Even when I was a child. I do hold to the whole "a place for everything and everything in it's place idea" and I am trying to instill it in my kids. Mostly because they approach me about six times a day asking where this object is that they put down in some random spot. I also tend to "lose" things as well so I think putting things back where they go isn't so much a neat freak thing but a way to keep my sanity. You have no idea how many times a day I wander around the house trying to find my cell. I also can't stand clutter in unnecessary places like kitchen counters, tables where you eat, behind doors in bedrooms (to the point where you can't open it all the way), and in living rooms where you entertain. Now my dresser is clutter central and I have to go through once a month and clean all the crap off of it to find paperwork and whatnot but that's okay because company doesn't go in my bedroom to see it!
I can't stand if food has sat out on a counter for more than a couple hours. I don't like trash or clothes lying on the floor, jackets thrown all over furniture, or cups left in random places overnight. But to my point: Do all of these things make me a neat freak? The more I think about the way society is today as far as cleanliness and the way things were sixty years ago, no, I really don't think I am. Neat freak is a pretty extreme phrase like germaphobic and I'm not extreme. I'm just not a slob. Why does it have to be one or the other? I think of the days when a clean kept house was normal. Really, it wasn't that long ago. Scrubbing floors on your hands and knees and dusting often were just the everyday. What's happened to society that such things are not frowned upon but considered a waste of one's precious time? My theory? Laziness. Why vacuum when you have a tiny robot that will pick up your floor for you while you watch TV? People as a whole have become quite lazy. I saw on the Today show one morning the ladies showing off a machine that you slap on your window and it will clean it for you. Really people? Did you sprain your iddle widdle wrist spraying some Windex and wiping with a paper towel in a circular motion? "I just don't have the time; I work." To that, I call bullshit. I may be a stay at home mom now but I used to work, come home, cook dinner, get kids fed and showered, clean the house and still have time to watch some TV before I hit the sack. The house may have not been shiny and sparkling but it was clutter free and the floors were swept daily. No, people are just lazy and don't care. And just because I do, doesn't mean that I'm a neat freak. It means I can find things I'm looking for and my kids can play on the floor without cat hair tumbleweeds blowing through the room. If you like a gross house, fine, good for you. But don't label me just because you're lazy, folks.
