This Saturday morning I was on the phone with and looking casually out my back window when I actually saw a deer in our backyard. A deer! It turned out there were two of them, casually roaming around and eating the flowers out of our neighbour’s flower bed. There’s something you don’t see every day.
Sir Monkeypants was smart enough to run and get the camera. It’s amazing how a little wildlife can still dazzle us.
I try hard not to gush too much about Captain Jelly Belly in this journal. I never wanted to be one of those people who has a kid, then tries to tell everyone else how awesome it is and how they just have to have one too, because I wasn’t sure myself for years that I wanted kids, and I totally understand people who decide that it’s not for them, and that’s a-okay with me. But the truth is, having the Captain around really is awesome. He’s changed our lives in dozens of ways and so far, it’s all been for the better. Sure, we can’t see movies in the theatre any more and there’s a constant haze of worry going on all the time. But the life changes were worth it for us.
This weekend I went to get my haircut, and just as my hairdresser was starting his cell phone rang and he answered it because it was his 7-year-old son. His son was calling because his dad had removed a necklace from around his neck in the night, and the son was totally amazed that he didn’t feel a thing, and also wanted to tell his dad that he rocked because he wouldn’t have wanted the necklace to be broken. I could hear the boy exclaiming over the phone and it was so adorable, and I thought how nice it was that he wanted to call his dad in the first place, and how nice that his dad took his call and listened patiently. And then I was amazed to think that just a few years ago, I would have been thinking something more along the lines of, “Hey, dude, put down the phone and do your job, I’m not paying you to take calls from some kid.” Now, I think things more like, “I can’t wait until the Captain is old enough to call at work and tell him about the cool rock he found on the playground.”
Now that we only have three weeks to go until George Foreman Jatania II is born, I’m feeling a little less scared about how it’s all going to work, and a little more excited to think that we’ll actually get to have another one of these cool things they call babies at our place. It’s going to be great.
Last night on CBC’s Olympic coverage, Brian Williams was complaining about the lack of audience in the stands at the women’s gymnastics, traditionally a big draw sport. He said that some people think that the problem with attendence at these games is the fact that Greece is a small country, but he feels that the problem is that the Summer Olympics are bloated — they have way too many sports and need to be pruned. I must admit that after a few days of watching stuff like synchronized diving and archery, it seems like there are quite a few obscure sports that no one really cares about. On the other hand, some kids out there might really adore archery, and there’s no other time in any other year when stuff like that gets TV coverage. I think the publicity for the lesser sports during the Olympics is invaluable for keeping those sports alive.
Although, I guess you could argue that if they got dropped from the Olympics, they could just die out and no one would care, anyway.
I think if they want to do some pruning, maybe they could elminate some swimming events. If one guy (that American swimmer) can swim in 8 freakin’ events, then I say, the physical talents required to excel in those 8 different events aren’t different enough to require a whole separate event. Every time they cut to the pool there’s some other slightly different variation on length, stroke, or relay — it’s endless.
What do you think — too many sports at the Olympics?
I read an interesting article in the paper this weekend about re-reading books. It said that re-reading a favourite is worth it, because you’re a different person now than when you first read it (due to being older and having more experience), and so you’re likely to see new things in it. I heartily agree with this position and I’ve re-read many of my books. Each time I’m surprised at how differently I react to the material. Sometimes it’s for the worse — I re-read Catcher In The Rye a couple of years ago, and while I thought it was pure genius in high school, this time around I found it pompous and annoying. A result of no longer being a teenager, I think.
Anyway, my point here is that I don’t have the same reaction to music. When I listen to music I’ve heard many times before, it takes me back to that era. I remember when I first heard it, what I was doing, what age I was. Rather than re-interpreting the songs, I find I re-live the same reaction again. That’s good too, but I find it interesting that my reactions to music are totally different than to books.
With movies, it’s about 50-50. Some films (like Star Wars) I like to watch for the nostalgia factor — they remind me of a specific time and place. Other films, like Casablanca, I’ve seen many times and each time I think something different or new about it.
What do you get out of re-watching/re-reading/re-listening?
Lately when not listening to the CBC I’ve started listening to a couple of local radio stations that play a lot of 80s hit music. This is my prime era — the late 80s were my high school years — so I should be all nostalgic about this music, I think. But I’m amazed to find, instead, that a heck of a lot of 80s music is really crappy. It’s so formulaic — every song sounds the same, with a synthesized beat, doctored vocals, standard verse-bridge-chorus structure. There’s band after band that had just one or two hits and seem to have no talent, other than looking good in cool outfits in videos. Was no one doing anything interesting, unique, or new in the 80s?
I hear a lot of complaints about the 70s but really, I think there was still lots of interesting new music and experimentation going on then. 80s music is just one generic song after another. Other than bands considered “alternative” at the time (I still like The Smiths, The Cure, New Order, and the like), I can barely stand to even listen to the crap that passed for actual hits at the time.
It makes me wonder about today’s radio — 20 years from now, will we hear “Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears and be embarrassed that it was a major hit? Maybe pop music really is dead.
So and Captain Jelly Belly left early this morning for their camping trip — they decided not to go last night as it was raining at the park, which was a good call because rain sucks, and also because now I only have one night to fret about them instead of two.
This morning I went to The Spa for a pedicure and manicure. I feel so pretty! I haven’t had a pedicure in ages and I adore them — so calming, so nice, and plus, it’s really hard with the 8-month belly to get down there for proper foot care. This was my first ever manicure, and all I can say about that is that I’m sorry I’ve been missing out for the past 32 years. Several years ago when my friend Sarah got married, all my friends went to a spa for a girlie day and I decided to bail because I didn’t know what the heck I’d do with a manicure, because I take terrible care of my nails — I keep them uber-short and I always have a million hangnails and chips and other embarrassing things wrong with my hands. But even so, the manicure was so worth it! Now my hands are all soft and clean. Plus I have lovely dark pinky-purple toenails and girlie lilac-coloured fingernails.
It makes me hope that George Foreman Jatania II is a girl so I can take her for pedicures with me when she turns 12 or so. Ah, the dreams of a mother :).
Now I’m off for a nap. I miss my guys but the napping, girl-based activities, and unlimited Olympics watching sure does have its benefits — oh, not to mention the ability to actually read the paper uninterupted. Whee!
I’m quite bitter at the moment over the price of DVD players. I bought mine about four years ago when they were just starting to go mainstream, and I paid upwards of $600 for it. It’s a Sony, and we fell in love instantally. I’ve loved having a DVD player all this time even though, as and can attest, it’s quite a crappy one — if you leave it on too long (as in, while watching a movie that is over 2 hours) the sound gets out of sync with the picture, and on content-packed DVDs (like my Buffy DVDs) it has a tendancy to “skip,” repeating the same scene over and over.
So it is time for a new DVD player, and I just got the Canadian Tire flyer, and now you can buy one for $55. $55!!! At Canadian Tire! I had to go to a high-end electronics store for mine! Now I can pick one up at Canadian Tire for $55! And it’s probably better quality, too!
I don’t suppose anyone on eBay would give me $600 for my old one. Sigh.
Why is it that ducks in children’s books and toys are always yellow with orange or red beaks? I’ve never seen a duck like that in real life.
I bring it up because “duck” was one of the Captain’s first words, and as a result he is adept at identifying iconic yellow ducks on his cups, clothes, toys, and in his favourite videos. He points and says, “Duck,” in an extremely cute manner.
But a few weeks ago I took him to the petting zoo, and they had ducks there, but of course they weren’t yellow. Most of them were brown and grey, and they had a couple that were white. I pointed and told the Captain that they were ducks, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Eventually I got him to identify the birds as ducks, but I could tell he was just humouring me. Inside he was thinking, “Hello, Mommy, ducks are yellow.”
As if the real world isn’t going to be shocking enough for the poor guy, now I have to deal with a duck crisis.
TurtleHead 