In Other News
Please check out my upcoming creative writing classes in the left-hand sidebar. "Telling Your Story" will be a class focused on essay and memoir as well as general good-writing practices at Canterbury United Methodist Church. "Fundamentals of Creative Writing" is a broader course covering the basics of creative writing as well as both fiction and non-fiction genres offered through Samford University's After Sundown Continuing Education program.
My friend and former colleague Michelle Hazelwood-Hyde and I have also recently published a children's book for the Birmingham area entitled Night Night Birmingham. I invite you to check it out and also join us at our launch party at Oak Hill Bar & Grill on Thursday, September 15 from 5-8 p.m.
Thanks so much!
Big Kahunas
Last week, I went to the beach. I love the beach, and I also happen to have a certain fondness for water parks.
Now, some people seem to find this strange. I’ve heard a lot of “you went to a water park without kids?” and “why?” since the end of the trip.
I think the first thing I need to explain is that I will do just about anything for a lazy river. I have looked into joining a gym that will cost me $45/month not because I would ever touch an elliptical or a treadmill, but because the facility houses an indoor lazy river.
Yes, I am considering paying an annual fee of $540 just for the privilege of year-round lazy river access.
When I visited a friend in Indianapolis last summer, I insisted that despite our limited time together, we go to the lazy river at the JCC near her house. I’m sure she mentioned her lazy river in passing having no idea that I would not be able to let it go.
Way too many of our conversations went like this:
My Friend: “Is anyone hungry?”
“Should we go to the museum?”
“Who wants to try [insert the blank]?”
Me: “What about the lazy river you told me about?”
I’m sure it was not at all annoying.
I also happen to love water slides, and after years of water park experience, I have learned one very important lesson: there is no bathing suit that will not lead to some kind of flashing incident at a water park.
There’s something about that rushing water at the end of a slide that seems capable of dislodging the delicate areas of even the most demure one-piece. So, when I visit the water park, I’m also the super cool person with a t-shirt over her swimsuit.
Well, at the water park in Destin, Florida, it seems that the t-shirt is against the rules on certain slides. Why, I don’t know, and I have to imagine that any lifeguards at the end of the ride would prefer to be flashed by co-eds rather than 30-somethings.
When the only lifeguard who wasn’t from the Ukraine told me I’d have to take off my shirt, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. She didn’t blow her whistle, but her “that’s not allowed” was very firm.
(I’d also like to know why most water park employees seem to be from obscure European countries. If you visit Alabama Adventure, every name tag tends to bear some derivation of “Hi, My Name is X. My Hometown is Reykjavik.” Is there some sort of exchange program I don’t know about? Are there a bunch of kids from Bessemer working amusement parks in Iceland? I’ve always wondered.)
After riding the one slide sans t-shirt and receiving a terrible wedgie, I retrieved my shirt and headed for another slide.
As the SO and I were climbing the stairs, I saw yet another sign that read, “No t-shirts allowed.”
I was on the verge of reluctantly removing my boob-protection when a different lifeguard said, “Don’t worry about it.”
That’s when I realized one of the few plus sides to aging – anyone who’s probably going to call you “ma’am” probably isn’t going to make you obey all of the rules (especially in environments where cardboard totem poles tell you how tall you must be to ride).
In a land of skimpy bikinis and tramp stamps*, I was a ma’am, and ma’ams got to keep their t-shirts. (Probably more so for the sake of the lifeguards than myself, but I’m OK with that.)
I’ve never been so happy to be a ma’am in all my life.
*On a somewhat related note, in all seriousness my sister spotted two guys on the beach, one with “Dude” tattooed on his neck, and the other with “Sweet” tattooed on his. Almost more so than what’s happening in the market, the fact that people permanently ink their bodies with slogans from “Dude, Where’s My Car?” terrifies me about the fate of this nation.
Gone Fishin'
Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've gone fishin' -- in the figurative and not literal sense, and without the hat pictured below. I'll be back and (fingers crossed) ready to write next week. I'll also have the raccoon tan/burn affect that comes with wearing big sunglasses while you spend time in the sun. Please try to laugh only once I've left the room.
In the meantime, I wrote a little about BBQ awhile ago, but I'm afraid of the door I might open considering how many BBQ experts there are in Alabama. (And I wouldn't count myself among them. I just like to eat.) Read more here.
How To Make A Man Feel Special
The SO and I had our first date on August 2. We went to a Def Leppard concert, which is really another story for another day, but I will say that it was memorable. Believe it or not, when you don’t know someone very well, it’s uncomfortable to sit through “Pour Some Sugar on Me” sober.
“It’s kind of awkward that this song is so dirty, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yeah.”
I’m also not sure whether or not this means our song has to be “Rock of Ages,” but I try not to worry about it too much.
Later, when I realized that we might make it past the first three weeks of hanging out, I thought I would do him a huge favor and move our anniversary to August 1. Men are infamously bad at remembering dates, right? So, if I turned our anniversary into the first of the month, how much easier would that be on him? Plus, I kind of passed my romantic phase at the age of 23, so the 24 hours didn’t really bother me.
(Maybe it’s not that my romantic phase went out the window, I just decided that remembering umbrellas, putting dishes in the dishwasher and letting me watch chick flicks on occasion was more important than flowers, chocolates or limos. My love languages are quality time and acts of service. It turns out that gifts are way down the list. I also have no problem using gift cards and coupons on dates. I consider that smart, not cheap.)
Fast-forward a few months. When I happened to mention that I was looking forward to our August 1 anniversary, the SO looked at me funny.
“Our first date was on August 2nd. What’s with this August 1 stuff?”
“I didn’t really expect you to remember the day,” I said and then explained my reasoning behind the little shift.
“Are you saying we have a real anniversary and an observed anniversary?” he said. “Is this like what happens when the 4th of July falls in the middle of the week but your boss wants to make sure you have a long weekend?”
At first, I think the SO thought it was a way for me to get more gifts – that he might have to honor the two anniversary nights instead of the one. Or, maybe, he’s just a good guy.
Either way, every year I hear about whether I’d like to celebrate our real anniversary or our observed anniversary. I usually go for real – unless it’s easier to get reservations on the observed one or something like that.
I’m totally normal.
Giraffes, Grocery Packaging And Guest Posts
I'm guest posting today, so if you'd like to read about some of the wacky stuff that popped into my head over the weekend, please head over to highly-entertaining Jamie's Rabbits written by the very talented Jamie Golden.
My Hands Are Just Too Small
According to family folklore, when my grandmother didn’t want to do things, she always said, “but my hands are too small.”
As soon as I found this out, I adopted the phrase as my very own and blamed it on genetics. Learn to use the lawnmower? My hands are too small. Time to help move the refrigerator across the room? My hands are too small. Get a ladder and reach the highest shelf? My hands are too small.
(By now, you’ve probably noticed a theme here, and that theme is manual labor.)
I’ve gotten over my issues with lawnmowers and ladders, but I still find plenty of sweat-inducing tasks to duck out of with my grandmother’s infamous phrase.
There’s no time my aversion to “work” rears its ugly head as much as it does when I’m moving.
I don’t like the packing process. I either find ways to reminisce about every single thing I’m putting in boxes – “Oh my gosh, do you remember when we took this picture outside of Graceland” – grossly slowing down the process, or, when I’m tired of looking at boxes, I go to another default mode – “Can’t we just throw it away?”
I have thrown away more pots, plant stands and random papers than any one human being should have a right to. When I left Chicago, I threw away a pot that still had food in it because I didn’t want to clean it or pack it. (Lazy, thy name is Laurel.)
Yes, I realize environmentalists all over the world are shuddering right now in disgust.
If it’s not the packing, it’s the lifting. (I gave up on driving the van 10 years ago after having to take a U-Haul truck through Washington, D.C. during rush hour.)
Those boxes are so heavy, and there are always more of them. Six years ago I started hiring people just to carry my boxes to whatever vehicle I’d decided on for transport (which I usually made my dad drive). Unfortunately, that also brought out a side of myself that I didn’t like.
“A water break already?”
“Is that all you can carry?”
“Is there a reason you’re just leaning against the wall right now?”
Paying by the hour did not make me a nice person.
In the moving world, there’s only one option for me, and that’s professional movers. I let them do it all – the packing, the driving, the unloading. It’s like a dream. And I can honestly say it’s one of the few checks I never mind writing.
Thanks to my movers, I hope that next weekend (when I move out of my house and officially become a landlord – eek!) will be as stress-free as moving can possibly be.
Of course, I’d like to help out the movers as much as I can, but there’s just this one little problem with my hands being so small and all.
In Which We Learn Why Laurel Fears School Yards
I can’t remember having a lot of dreams about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Before the age of 10, I accepted many Oscars in the privacy of my bedroom, considered life as a high-powered lawyer and said I wanted to be a nurse just because the girl sitting next to me in kindergarten wanted to be one, too, but clearly none of that stuck.
It was around third or fourth grade that the notion of “writer” started to percolate in my brain, but it really was more of a slow burn than an overwhelming “aha!” The "aha" came later.
As I grew up, so much of my attention was focused on getting in to college that I don’t think I did a very good job of thinking about what was going to happen after that. Once I finally did consider that I would have to do something after the age of 22, a master’s degree and Ph.D. sounded nice. For awhile, I thought I could live a life devoted to scholarship.
The closest proximity of what I wanted my life to be was something like that of the mom in The Family Stone (spoiler alert: only hopefully without the cancer and dying part). I could see myself in a small college town with an old house full of books and kids. I, of course, would be one of the most popular professors, and I would always dress impeccably despite the rigors of academia (that’s probably the part I messed up on most, see freelance pants). There was me in straight skirts, sweater sets and heels, arms full of papers to grade, running across campus while my adoring students waved and wanted to stop for engaging and thoughtful discussions about writings, theories and treatises.
Then, I became a substitute teacher at 22. I had left my job at the Justice Department in D.C., moved home and needed some cash flow while I figured out my next step. (I didn’t get in to graduate school on my first go-round of applications, so I was right back in that “what to do now that college is over” place.)
Now, I realize substitute teaching isn’t quite the same as full-time teaching. As one HR rep said to me during a job interview, “I mean that’s really more glorified babysitting than teaching. I don’t even know why it’s on your resume.”
He was a charmer.
It didn’t matter though. I couldn’t stand a single moment of it. While I like children, I really do, I prefer them in groups no greater than five. (I kind of like all people that way, really.) I often found the children disobedient, loud and at least in my case, deaf to the sound of my voice.
“I will send you to the principal’s office!” and “You’re giving me a headache” came out of my mouth more often than anything else. Only, I never sent anyone to the principal’s office. (The headaches were real.) I watched the clock and prayed for 3:00.
Even when I transferred to the elementary school from the junior high – as we all know adolescence is such a dark time – it didn’t improve.
And then there were the mornings. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7:45 a.m. just isn’t for me.
I decided I’d be so much better when I was teaching college students. After all, they were at least 18. Surely, they were mature, eager-to-learn and respectful.
During my second year of graduate school, I began my teaching practicum. I couldn’t wait to share my love of writing with my class. This is when my dream would begin to materialize, I thought.
While my first semester wasn’t so bad, the winter was a dark, dark time. Another teacher visited my class once and said it was one of the worst classes she’d ever seen. I’m pretty sure she compared them to “a wolf pack.” (There were a few lovely students, but overall, it was not good.)
In addition to the not listening, I now had outright defiance and even a student who called me a bitch after seeing his grade. Every day felt like it was Lord of the Rings, and I was Piggy.
I chose silent grammar exercises for them and more clock staring for myself.
In my last semester, which happened to be the summer, I was thrilled about the shorter term. I was not as thrilled when one of my students approached me after the first class and said, “Just so you know, if I don’t pass your class, I’m going to file a complaint with the English department and the dean. Your attendance policy doesn’t work for me.”
(I always thought I wouldn’t care if my students cut class or not. They were going to love learning so much; I’d never have to worry about it. They were adults. Then I learned that it really pissed me off to spend hours preparing a lesson and only have half the class show up. Hence, the attendance policy.)
At 26, I was officially done with teaching and the cute little dream that involved a quaint college town and a wrap-around porch.
Two years later, I went back to teaching, but this time it was in a continuing education program. (There was a lot of arm-twisting.) Once my students realized I was the teacher and not another student, the discussions seemed to go pretty smoothly. To my complete surprise, I found that I loved teaching. These students did want to be there. I didn’t care when anyone skipped, and there were genuine moments when I knew I had actually imparted some knowledge.
And as cheesy (and selfish) as it sounds, I learned as much from my students as they hopefully learned from me. I remembered what I loved about writing. I remembered why I did it. I was inspired to go home and tell my own stories.
It seems the median age for all of my students should be 40.
(I’m going to take a brief moment here to challenge that whole “people who can’t do, teach” sentiment. Teaching is really hard. Taking something that is instinctual and habit to you and breaking it down to its basic elements for others is damn hard. When you throw in that not every student learns the same way, so you often have to break a concept down anywhere from one to fifteen different ways, it is even harder. Teachers most definitely deserve our respect, and I give a special shout-out to the ones in junior highs across the country.)
This last week, I was thrown back into a room with over 20 nine and ten-year-olds. I tried, but it was rough, and sometimes it’s rougher when I know how much better other people are at it. (Even though we can’t all be good at everything, I’d prefer it if I was.)
Once my 45-minute class was over (I can spend two and a half hours with adults, and I needed 10 minutes of filler with the kids) and my voice was hoarse and my pride hurt, I pulled one of the counselors who had been at the back of the class aside.
“Can you tell that I don’t normally work with children?”
At least she laughed.
My Cans
Here's a little story that I told back in April of 2008.
I am a diet soda addict.
Rare is the day that I have less than two diet drinks (Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper are my two favorites, but I'm also likely to enjoy a Diet Pepsi from time to time), and sometimes, when it's dark (in that emotional "how will I get through the day" kind of way) and I haven't gotten enough sleep, I'll drink up to three. After 4:00, when I don't allow myself caffeine anymore, I might even try a Fanta Orange Zero, Sprite Zero or Diet Sierra Mist because I just like the way fizzy drinks taste.
It used to be that, when the diet soda cans built up on my desk, it didn't bother me to stick them in the trash when no one was looking. Of course, that was before we went and did a green issue of Lipstick. After reading about the ozone and lessening my carbon footprint and energy-efficiency and local eating for four weeks, I can't even think about throwing away those cans without finding myself awash with guilt (and shame from the judging stares of Tina and Nadria).
Unfortunately, between my addiction and my busy work schedule, I had ended up with about 25 empty aluminum cans on my desk. (It was starting to look like I time-shared my desk with a frat boy, only being that Diet Coke was taking over and not Miller Lite, I guess he would have been the most boring brother in the chapter — you know the one, you'd probably ask him to do your homework before you asked him to join you at Innisfree on a Friday night.)
When one of my co-workers from HR walked in, peeked at my desk and said, "Have you heard of water, Laurel?" I decided it was time to take action. On my lunch break, I went over to the recycling center on 25th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue North. And, what a lovely time I had — seriously. It was so easy to sort my cans and plastic bottles, and once I was done discarding the evidence of the carbonated monkey on my back, I took apart the cardboard box I had transported the cans in and recycled it, too.
In five minutes at the recycling center I accomplished far more than any other lunch break I've had. (Unless, of course, you count the time I was challenged to a corn stick eating contest over at John's ...)
Is There Any Chance This One Is Multiple Choice?
We all get asked a lot of hard questions in life:
“Was someone roller skating in the house?”
“Are there going to be parents there?”
“What do you want to major in?”
“What is 17 squared?”
Most of us figure out the answers -- or pretend we do. (Except for that 17 thing – that’s what calculators are for.) Even when we’re plagued with doubt, there’s usually an answer somewhere, or an answer we lean towards.
Last week, while I was visiting my doctor (aka therapist), she asked me a question that absolutely left me floundering: Where does your self-worth come from?
(I like to think of mental health professionals and animals as the animate team that keeps me sane. The inanimate team includes Diet Coke, red wine, Spanx and my newly-acquired Bissell Spot Bot – because there’s nothing like a vacuum that cleans pet stains itself to give a girl a break when she needs it.)
I feel like this question should have been easy – family, friends, education, job, relationship. Anything really, from my knitting prowess to my hair (which when I try, is pretty awesome) would have been an OK start. Instead, I just stared straight ahead for about 20-30 seconds.
(For those of you who haven’t been in therapy, that’s like eons in mental health time. After all, there’s just you and one other person in the office, and the other person is constantly evaluating whether or not you might be about to lose it.)
I don’t bring up this subject because I need lots of comments about what my self-worth should be or how nice/awful I am, I mention it because I don’t think it’s a question I’ve ever really considered, and I was shocked that when it was put to me point blank, I didn’t have anything to say. Eventually, I could provide some answers, but its still been rattling around up there.
“Where does your self-worth come from?”
If it came from a job, 2009 sure put a big dent there. Relationships? For me, that’s a constant learning process and it gives too much power over to others. Family, friends, home improvement projects – none of that is ever going to be perfect, and you can’t control anyone else. So, in theory, self-worth should always come from within, but how does anyone really do that? Maybe I’m not well-adjusted enough, but it’s hard for me to imagine a sense of self-worth that couldn’t be shaken by a bad hair day, a fight with my sister or screwing up a task at work.
I suppose the point is to not only trust yourself, but to like yourself, and when self-doubt creeps in, to cut yourself a break and do the best you can to bounce back. Maybe there is no such thing as rock-solid self-esteem. Maybe if I had it, I wouldn’t be a writer. Who knows? I think I’ll be working on the answer to this one for a bit longer.
Two hundred eighty-nine seems so much easier in comparison.
Laurel's Unplanned Cat Rescue Service
A few weeks ago, I found a cat behind the SO’s house. This is not really an unusual occurrence. In general, the area behind the SO’s house is kind of like feral cat central (lots of woods), and none of the cats let me get near them. This is why I occasionally feel like I’m feeding a marauding band of homeless cats Meow Mix if Kitty Cat Jones dines al fresco.
(In my mind, they’re a gang kind of like The Outsiders, and they talk to each other in lots of, “What were you thinking man?” and “Ain’t nobody going to care about a bunch of greasers.” Yes, I know I’m nuts.)
This cat was different though. Scraggly, covered in fleas and crying, she didn’t seem like she was built for life on the outside. When she let me pick her up, I knew she was different. (And as soon as I realized she was de-clawed, I knew she was most certainly not running with the other gang.)
I treated the cat for fleas, and because of the intense crying, took her pretty quickly to my vet.
(As a not-really cat person, I still have no idea how I end up with so many cats.)
“Now what is your goal here?” the vet asked. (The vet my friends call SuperVet based solely on the way I talk about him. Really, I love this man.)
Knowing that two dogs and one cat was more than enough, and a second cat was probably a deal-breaker in my relationship, I explained that I wanted to get her better so that I could either find her owner or find her a new home.
“The let’s get started,” he said, and we agreed on a plan of action that involved a feline leukemia/HIV screening, steroids and cortisone.
Since the rescue kitty tested negative for all major diseases, she came back to my house later that day, and we started the work of putting some fat and some hair on her. So far, it’s going pretty well. Or, at least, I thought it was going pretty well.
The SO says, “I think this is one of those cats that will just never be pretty.”
(For awhile, in the early days, holding her was kind of like being in the Family Guy episode where Peter is surrounded by sickly cats and holds one at arm’s length saying, “No, no, you’re cute,” while wincing.)
My friend’s husband says, “She’s going to be one of those she’s so ugly she’s cute cats.”
Either way, she’s got a great little personality.
Of course though, in keeping with the tradition of ever changing cat names at our house, she’s already on name number three.
I started with Katniss because I was reading The Hunger Games and wanted to give her some appeal in the teen market/demographic.
A few days later, I went to Amy Whinehouse because she looks a little like Amy Whinehouse during the rough days, and she is kind of in rehab at my house.
Now, as of Saturday, she’s Buscemi (in honor of Steve Buscemi) because the SO says her looks would destine her for life as a character actor no matter how much talent she had.
So, Katniss Amy Buscemi continues to fatten up at my house. I don’t know if she’ll ever respond to a name, but at least no one is holding her at arm’s length anymore.
Kids These Days And Some Women's History
In my 9th grade history class, I ended up on a group project with some other girls that was to be a mural entitled “A Century of Women: 1890-1990,” or something like that.
Now, since we weren’t actually painting on a wall – the whole thing was down on a long roll of butcher block paper – and I can’t draw to save my life, I’m not sure why this was our chosen medium of expression (or why we called it a “mural” instead of a “painting”), but there you have it. I can be pretty sure that the women’s history part was my idea since studying is something I was good at.
I had the early years, 1890-1920, and what stuck with me the most after all of that research is how the invention of the washing machine, and later the vacuum, blender, and every other appliance a man should never buy a woman on a romantic holiday, affected women’s lives. While everyone claimed that these products would make women's lives easier, it was the exact opposite that occurred. Instead of being free from the kitchen and laundry for other pursuits, women were just expected to get more done in a day.
Even then, it seemed like a raw deal.
Twenty years later or so, I feel the same way about technology. Only, whereas my industrious forebearers kept house and tended to families, I use the Internet and Netflix to watch every episode of every random television series I’ve ever liked and play way too much spider solitaire. I haven’t created more free time, but I have created more wasted time.
And even though it might seem frivolous, I do think children of this generation are completely missing out on the struggle it used to take to watch your favorite show. Without DVR or TV on DVD or the beloved live-streaming Netflix, you actually had to be home when your show was on. And, if heaven forbid you weren’t home, you had to trust a crazy contraption called the VCR to record if for you. That was a 50/50 shot at best. How many times did you rush home only to find that you had snow on tape instead of The Cosby Show?
I’m going to guess it happened more than once.
To this day, the only episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer I haven’t seen has to do with a drive from D.C. to Birmingham and an ill-timed VCR. (I plan to correct this shortly thanks to Netflix, but it was still rough. It was the one where Buffy and Spike finally did it for God’s sake. It left my friend Margaret and I with nothing to discuss for most of that Thanksgiving break.)
Perhaps sadder yet (on many levels, this is a dork story if there ever was one), around the time I was 14, I decided to make it my mission to watch every episode of Quantum Leap. (Again, I know I was weird.) Quantum Leap played in reruns twice a day between 10:00 and 12:00 p.m. So, not only did I have to record the shows, but I had to find the time to watch them somewhere between soccer practice, homework and dinner with the fam.
The episodes were also played in order, so if you missed one, you had to wait for the next go-round for a chance to see it again.
Oh, the struggles of my youth.
I remember when I was only one episode away from completing my goal, when I learned that that one episode was actually called “Trilogy,” so what I thought was one episode was really three.
(I know, it’s hard to believe one adolescent could endure so much.)
"Trilogy" played the week I had soccer camp, so being summer, I could watch it when it was on. I had gotten through the first two episodes just fine. I was finally down to the third episode, and last episode of my saga, which also happened to be a murder trial when, I kid you not, this happened:
Scott Bakula was standing in the courtroom, “I’ll tell you who the murderer is here!”
And my power went out -- one minute from knowing the outcome of a salacious plot line and five minutes from achieving a dream.
The next day at soccer camp was a long one.
Of course, I eventually saw all the episodes of Quantum Leap (and learned that sometimes the worst thing is for a wish to come true – oh, life without new episodes of the greatest time-traveling show the world has ever known can be rough), but it took time and patience.
These days, I don’t need either of those. Can’t recall where you’ve seen an actor before? Imdb.com. Forgot it was Modern Family night? DVR. Don’t like to talk to pizza delivery guys? Order online.
Not only are kids not learning about the potential disappointment of missing a favorite show, they live in a world where everything rests at your fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Yes, it’s my love/hate relationship with the Internet on display for the world yet again. But, it really does make me wonder where we’ll go from here, and whether or not, like the generations before us, we’re still trading “convenience” for stress, worry and longer and longer work days.
Some Small Site Changes
In the last few weeks, I've been working on some changes with the blog. While they might not seem obvious at first, I'm switching ad networks, which means I had to move a few things around. Any post that was previously sponsored in any way, shape or form (via free travel, free product, etc.) has now been moved to my alternate, ad-free site It Isn't Much.
So, in case you're really missing some of my college nostalgia and Volvo stuff, you'll need to head over there.
As always, thanks for reading, and you should have opinions about any of these changes, please feel free to leave your comments below.
Not Where You Want Your Hand To Go
As I’ve mentioned before, my stress level really tends to show itself at the gas station. Apart from typos I normally wouldn’t miss, an occasional tendency to flip out over what the dogs should or shouldn’t be doing (God help my children if I ever have any) and a mild conviction online shopping can fix my problems, it really takes the service station to bring out my state of mind.
One of my latest trips to fill-up was no exception. Despite my successful efforts to pay at the pump, start the gas flow and even clean out my car, when it was time to leave, I found myself without car keys.
As a pro at losing my car keys, even I was flabbergasted as to how I could have lost what some of my friends refer to as a “janitor key ring” in such a small space and window of time.
After going through the entire car and walking the convenience store, it began to dawn on me that there might only be one place to look. And that one place was also the last place anyone would want to look – the trash can at the pump.
More scared than I’ve been since the last freakish horror movie the SO asked me to watch, I approached the plastic waste bin. Peering over the edge, all I saw at first was the lack of a trash bag and the dark, dirty sides of the trashcan. Within a few seconds, empty Mountain Dew cans and gum came into focus. Then, without fail, I saw the edges of what looked like both my keychain library card and my CVS rewards nob.
There was no denying that if I ever wanted to leave the BP station, I was going to have to go in – barehanded.
As someone with more disinfectant in my purse than cash, it was not a proud moment. Next to dumpster diving and the bins of disposed needles in the doctor’s office, I can imagine few garbage receptacles less appealing than the one at the gas station where they sell porn.
There was lots and lots of hand-washing – surgery-prep style – as soon as I got home.
What might be even worse is that this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I had to rescue my keys from the trashcan at Goo Goo car wash a few months ago.
So, I leave you with this:
1. Keys are special. Don’t only learn to appreciate them once you’ve had to dig past the accumulated waste of all your fellow road companions.
2. The woman shoulder-deep in the gas station trash bin isn’t always crazy. Sometimes, she’s just really, really tired and should have had caffeine before pumping gas rather than waiting to buy her Diet Coke at the station.
It Feels Like Burning
In evolutionary terms, I’m not sure I was really meant for life in the South. By the standards of nurture, thanks to manners classes, ballroom dancing and some great stationary, I’ve done just fine here. However, if we have to look at nature, I’m not sure this pale, WASP-y body was meant for Alabama.
It’s not just the heat. You see, what comes with or causes the heat is the sun (I told you I never really paid attention in science class), and this fair skin and the sun don’t mix well.
(I’d like to thank my Scottish ancestors for the dark body hair and bushy eyebrows that come with my porcelain complexion. I’m sure if my forefathers had settled in Minnesota, I’d be more than prepared for the winters. Instead, I swelter and invest a lot of money in good tweezers. I guess the Scots never figured that they’d put all the distilleries in the South. (This really is the best reason I can figure for previous generations of my family to pick this region of the U.S.) In my family, you don’t follow the money; you follow the line to the bar.)
Luckily, I’ve had 30+ years to adapt, and I spend good money keeping the sunscreen companies in business, too. Still, every so often, I fail.
A few weeks ago, I didn’t just fail to protect my skin. I think I almost melted it.
I fell asleep reading on the beach, and when I woke up, I felt like I could be a little pink, but I wasn’t too worried.
“Why don’t you toss me some more of that Banana Boat, and I’ll reapply?”
Later that afternoon, I figured out that I was more than a little pink. While my shoulders and thighs could be described as pink/red, my stomach looked like the color of a tomato set on fire and felt about the same.
I dosed myself with Advil, slathered on the aloe and went to bed with a cold Miller Lite – not for drinking, but so I could hold it against my stomach in the night. Even the sheets were unbearable to touch.
For the next five days, I climbed out of chairs like I was eight months pregnant so as not to in any way agitate the skin on my torso and slept clutching either bags of frozen vegetables or frozen bottles of water for some sense of relief.
By day six, I thought I might need to turn to more than Internet forums for help.
In case you’re wondering, this is the advice I shouldn’t have taken:
1. The Vinegar Soak: Despite what the masterminds of the World Wide Web might say, vinegar does not “pull out the burn.” All that really happens is that you have to hope your friends always secretly wanted to know what it was like to spend time with a giant pickle.
2. A Baking Soda Bath: It’s not as stinky, but it’s equally as un-helpful.
3. No store-bought aloe is really better than any other aloe. Just make sure you buy the one with some kind of painkiller in it. I think the effect can be at least mildly psychosomatic.
I headed to my local pharmacy.
“What do y’all have for sunburn?” I said.
“Have you got aloe?” the clerk said.
“We’re a little bit past that,” I said.
“Let’s wait for the pharmacist to get off the phone then.”
While we waited on the pharmacist, the clerk and I discussed a number of different options for my sunburn, and she told me about some of her bad burns. (If nothing else, in a land where tanning beds are still prevalent, I didn’t feel judged for the potentially-hazardous-to-my-future-health slip-up.)
When the pharmacist did come over, I explained the problem.
“We have x, y, z and even a to treat sunburns,” she said. It was a litany of products with names I don’t remember. “How long have you had the sunburn?”
It was then that I decided the only good explanation would be to flash the pharmacist, so in front of her and the clerk, I pulled up my shirt to show them what we were dealing with.
“Foille,” she said. “It has to be Foille.”
It’s amazing how a little visual can take your list of potential saviors from 10 to 1 in a split second.
She was absolutely right about the Foille. If you’re ever in any kind of burn trouble, I highly recommend it. (Plus, it only costs about $4/tube.)
I know that normally one should only flash one’s doctor with skin abnormalities followed by awkward questions, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nearly a week of burning tomato-colored flesh was my desperate time.
I’m a little embarrassed to go into the pharmacy again this month, considering how I’ve exposed myself to the staff and all, but a girl’s neighborhood pharmacy is a girl’s neighborhood pharmacy.
I’d like to pretend that they’ve forgotten about me, but I have a sinking feeling that the girl without shame and siren red stomach might have made more of an impression than I’d like.
Hot Times In The City
I have a knack for getting myself in trouble in the heat.
When I was 16, I had a mild heat stroke at my parents’ country club on July 4th weekend. I had gone with them to work out when I got slightly overheated. (It’s possible that my failure to exert myself physically in the previous two months might have had something to do with it, too.)
After sitting in front of a fan for 15 minutes or so, I decided to go to the snack bar for something to drink. That’s when I proceeded to faint and start vomiting -- in front of about 30 kids and their parents enjoying the pool over their holiday weekend. Oddly enough, if you know me, throwing up doesn’t bother me, but throwing up in public upsets me immensely. My legs were wobbly, and I was covered in some throw-up and shame. It was every teenager’s dream.
My father found me, scooped me up like a child and carried me to the car, so we could go home.
At 18, as a freshman in college, some friends and I were on our way to the first football game of the season when someone started complaining about the heat.
“You can’t think this is bad,” I said. “You should try living in Alabama.”
Well, I might as well have shot myself in the foot because it wasn’t even 30 minutes later that I had an EMT student checking my vitals and recommending that I get back to my dorm before I had a real heat stroke.
Here comes the weird part of this story: A friend of mine decided to help me back to the dorm, and to do so, she had her arm under me for support. We were ambling along when a frat boy on his way into the stadium yelled, “Lesbians!”
It’s not that I was offended; I just think it’s really strange. It was almost like he thought he was on a road trip and should point out interesting specimens on route to his friends. “Oh my gosh, did you see that deer by the side of the road?” Only this time, his fascinating find was lesbians?
Surely a college male has seen women and women that are close to one another before in his life. Also, everyone else was already in the stadium. There was one, count it, one, person, to hear him, and if he really wanted to be offensive, I’m sure you can imagine the terms we would have expected to hear.
My friend thought his behavior was very rude and would have liked to tell him so, but since I was having a little health issue, we tried to turn it around. We agreed that we would make an incredibly attractive lesbian couple, took it as a compliment and moved on.
However, the hottest I can ever remember being is in the summer of 2003. My friend Annie and I had purchased around the world plane tickets and were on the last leg of our global tour in Italy. There was an infamous heat wave in Europe during the summer of 2003 – to the point that the train was often delayed by melted sections of track.
We were in Venice, and we checked ourselves into the hotel we’d found in our guidebook. Being 23, we thought we’d save money by staying in a hotel without central air.
This was not a good idea.
As Annie later said, “The next time we see a woman lose consciousness in the lobby of a hotel as we check in, it’s probably a sign that we shouldn’t stay there.”
After dinner and some drinks, I feel fairly confident in saying that I then spent the most uncomfortable night of my life trying to fall asleep in that sauna they called a hotel. At one point, I even got up in the middle of the night convinced that a cold shower might save my sanity.
I stepped into the icy cold water only to have it switch to burning hot water within three minutes. I stepped back out of the shower and waited. A few minutes later, there was more cold water, and I climbed back in. Then the hot water came back.
I couldn’t even find cold sink water to save myself. By the time the morning came, I was an angry and nearly insane person.
“We said we’d stay here for two nights,” Annie said.
“I don’t care,” I said, when I decided to speak. I was so angry with Mother Nature or the world or our guidebook – you can pick one --- I didn’t even want to talk. “I don’t care what we have to pay. I can’t spend another night in this misery.”
“But they have our passports.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Believe it or not, I am normally a nice, non-confrontational person. Most of my bad thoughts are just that, thoughts, and when I recount long strings of crazy, confrontational statements, it’s what I wish I’d said, not what I actually did.
This was a different day.
After we had packed, I walked into the hotelier’s office. I had money to pay her for one night in cash and was hell bent on a passport for cash trade. “We’ll be leaving now,” I said. “I’d like our passports back, please.”
“You made reservations for two nights,” she said.
“We changed our mind.”
“But you said you would stay for two nights.”
“Your shower runs boiling hot on the coldest setting.”
“That happens sometimes.”
“That happens sometimes?” My voice was rising at this point, and I thought I might lose it. I wanted to ask where this happens. I thought most of the Western world had conquered plumbing and faucet settings, but we were in a very delicate place in our negotiations. I’d also seen her turn towards the cabinet where our travel documents were, and I wanted to keep what little of my wits I had left since I was pretty sure I was going to get what I wanted.
“In the summer. It is hot here in the summer.”
The idea of a physical attack briefly crossed my mind. As if I didn’t know that summer was the hottest month of the year? Instead, I nodded.
She brought the passports over; I basically snatched them out of her hand, gave her cash with my other hand and was at the door before she could say anything else.
Annie said a little “Thank you,” while I told her to book it out the door before the conversation could go any further.
Still angry – heat makes you crazy, there’s a reason the South has so many more crimes of passion than other areas of the country – we went to find lunch, and half a pizza and some white wine later, I finally felt human again.
Annie found us a great hotel for that night. It was more expensive, but you have no idea what I would have paid for a bucket of ice, let alone an air-conditioned room at that point. When we opened the door to our new room, and I saw a thermostat I could control on the wall, I think I cried tears of joy.
My advice to fellow travelers is to pay attention to those hotel ratings in travel books. Two stars are not enough, three is cutting it close and you will pay in so many non-financial ways if you’re not careful.
Also, if you ever really need an enforcer, deprive me of some AC for a few hours, and it’s like having a hive of angry hornets at your disposal.
Throwback Thursday: The Old Guard
Last night's Lifetime DVD selection starred the lovely Richard Crenna.
You see, I actually started out the evening watching "Evidence of Love" with Barbara Hershey, but Barbara's frightening fashion choices in the film, from her crude, nearly shaved pube-like hairdo to the large overly round, bug-eye glasses, were so overwhelming and lasting that I didn't want to go to sleep with that being the last image in my brain.
There are 2 reasons for this:
1. I didn't want the nightmares.
2. As Lifetime has strategically led me to believe, someone could break into my home and strangle me at any moment. And, I might not be able to count on a psychic waitress to warn me of said serial killer's attention. Therefore, I didn't want Barbara Hershey's 80s-era Midwest androgeny to be the last thing I saw of this world.
Also, in case you were wondering, "Evidence of Love" revolves around a gruesome murder committed with an axe. And, yes, Barbara's hair scared me more than the hideously painful death by axe thing. So, I popped in Richard Crenna as a hardened cop who, through struggle and hardship, learns a lot about himself so that we, as his audience, can learn a little about ourselves.
For those of you who don't recognize the name, you might remember Richard Crenna from his stint on "Judging Amy" or for "Rambo: First Blood" or even "Hot Shots: Part Deux." My personal favorite is "And the Sea Will Tell." (I don't want to spoil anything, but let me say this - boy, does that sea have a lot to offer about love, deception, and the price of trust ...)
Seriously, I love Richard Crenna, even though I do find it unforunate that he made movies with titles like "First, You Cry," "The Rape of Richard Beck" and "A Pyromaniac's Love Story."
Richard Crenna is a member of what many of us know to be the "Old Guard" of Lifetime. He's no flash in the pan. He won't do 1 "based on a true story" deal for the money or a desperate need to be in the limelight. He's in it. For the long haul. You'll see him again and again. He's with Meredith Baxter-Birney, Brian Denehy, Kate Jackson, Lindsay Wagner ... You know their faces even if it takes a second on their names.
They're always there. They've been wronged, but they keep on ticking. Meredith Baxter-Birney has been left by more men than I can count, and she's even killed a couple of them, but she'll still turn up on the tube sometimes, and she'll still have hair that yellowy blond color you've come to know and expect like the turning of the seasons or the fertility of K Fed.
Brian Denehy is kind of like your really creepy uncle. Sometimes he's defending the wronged. Sometimes he's attacking women in his dental office. He's not always a good guy and not always a bad guy ... It's a little like life, isn't it kids?
Joanna Kerns, God love her, she pretended to find Alan Thicke attractive for years and still had to make the movie "See Jane Run" (which is, of course, about an amnesiac who must not only overcome her own physical and psychological handicaps, but also save her daughter from her husband's abuse).
Their TV movies are cautionary tales in the truest sense. They remind you of every lurking danger, every unfulfilled dream, every psycho who might have commandeered your child's robot to spy on you in the shower ... For that, Old Guard of Lifetime, I salute you.
When You're Not Out In The Club
Weekend before last, I went up North to hang out with my friend Jane* and meet her new four-month old baby. Our friend Rita joined us, and we had a great time together. On the Saturday afternoon of our weekend, we decided (or really the one of us who is actually a mom decided) to hire a babysitter so that we could go see Bridesmaids (loved it, wish I could be Kristen Wiig, must move on now).
When we got back from the movie, Rita and I decided that it was wine time. This set us off on a slew of questions:
Was the babysitter 21? The answer: yes.
Should we offer the babysitter a glass of wine? I mean, we’re Southern, so it feels rude not to ask, but she is the babysitter and has to drive. We went with “no” on that one.
Is the babysitter going to judge us for drinking at five? Does she think we’re the lush friends of our suburban mom friend? The answer to that one is probably a sad yes.
I could have sworn that yesterday I was babysitting to supplement my income (and due to the Great Recession, “yesterday” is probably closer than you’d think), and suddenly I was on the other side of the babysitter scenario. I do not know when this happened. (In my head, I’m 17. Seriously. I just wish my face would stop giving me away.)
The next day, the babysitter came back so that Jane could drive Rita and I to the train station and the airport, respectively. While I was trying to hide just how much wine S and I actually drank the night before, we struck up another conversation with the babysitter.
“So, did you go out last night?” Rita said.
“Not really,” the babysitter said, “I was pretty tired.”
I decided to ask my own questions about where she liked to go and what there was to do around town.
And then it happened. I should have seen it coming, but it was a little like a freight train – not really welcome, but unstoppable. Within five minutes of what should have been a very innocuous conversation, I started to relive my “glory days” that were, if you know me well, not really so glorious. (I thank the magazine writer who put a piece in something I read about how she spent most of her early ‘20s in a bar bathroom stall crying about some dude or other before getting her act together. It gave me far more hope than any older adult or mental health professional at the time.)
Before I knew it, Rita and I were on a little bit of a roll. These are the kinds of phrases that came out of my mouth:
“I actually had a fake id that said I was 30 for awhile. It came complete with a social security card. Can you believe that?”
“Hey Rita, remember when I used to have a beer or two while I wrote my summer school papers? Did I really think Latin American economic policy and Bud Lite were a good mix?”
“What was that guy’s name we met in Adams Morgan over Spring Break? Didn’t somebody make out with him?”
And my favorite, which I believe I threw in there as I was walking out the door (a parting gift if you will):
“Don’t worry about having a gay ex-boyfriend or two. It happens to all of us.”
?!?!?!
In a way, my hope is that the babysitter got bored and stopped listening to us pretty quickly. Otherwise, I have a sinking suspicion she went home that night hopeful not to turn into the older crazy lady that was disposing of wine bottles and reminiscing about her borderline-indecent going out wardrobe from college.
*Names have been changed.
In The Event Of The End Of The World
I realize that some people think the world might end tomorrow. I’m not actually one of those people, and honestly, I don’t even know what the theory is based on, but I do pay attention to the four stories that pop up on my Yahoo! home page, and May 21 has been getting a lot of attention lately.
I mean, if the world is going to end, it’s not like there’s a lot I can do about it. (Not that this is an excuse to stop recycling or pursuing green initiatives in case there are still any conservatives left in my blog audience.) As I was discussing with a friend over the weekend, I think most generations would almost like to think that the end of the world would come within their lifetimes. It’s a good way to put off the unnerving truth/realization that, most likely, life will go on without us, for generations and generations, and possibly even eons. An ongoing world means we’re all a little more forgettable, and no one wants to be forgettable. (Sorry to get a little dark there.)
I also know some people are freaked out by the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. Anxiety disorder and all, I think this is one of the least upsetting signs of a possible impending apocalypse. Let’s be real. For a group of people that went out around 1450, I think it’s pretty impressive they even bothered taking the calendar to 2012. How far out front are you supposed to get with those? I doubt anyone is working on day planners with New Yorker cartoons in them for 2415 right now, and I hardly take it as a sign that the world will end whenever the people down at the warehouse decide to stop making kitten calendars.
However, since we never know what can happen, I might need to get a few things off my chest before tomorrow – just in case.
1. I cheated on my menu tests at both La Paz and Calypso Joe’s. I have never cheated on any other tests in my life, but those menus presented some problems. At La Paz, I was a hostess, so I didn’t really see a need to learn the menu. They were going to make me take the test until I passed, so I used the menu as the hard surface on which to take my paper test. (I did learn a little though. That job is the only reason that I know the difference between an enchilada and a burrito is that a burrito is made with a flour tortilla while an enchilada is made with a corn one.) As for Calypso Joe’s, well, that one was just pride. The manager liked to post scores at the end of the day, and I refused to come in behind a bunch of perfect scores because I couldn’t have cared less about what dipping sauce came with the conch fritters.
2. I didn't like Titanic -- or Sex and the City.
3. From the ages of 21-25, I gave out my fake phone number to boys far too many times. It wasn’t very nice, but that’s kind of what happens when you’re a slightly cowardly people pleaser. It’s probably a little late, but I’d like to say I’m sorry anyway.
4. I don’t like the symphony, ballet or opera. I find them boring, and they always remind me of being forced to do educational stuff when I was a kid. (And this is coming from a girl who likes learning new vocabulary words.) If I nod when these topics of conversation come up, I’m only pretending to be cultured (or listening).
5. In the third grade, I stole my classmate's square dancing partner. I had a crush on the tallest boy in class, and square dancing partners were assigned by height. As the shortest girl in class, I was screwed -- and stuck with the boy who got very, very angry every time we played dodge ball in gym. When my classmate was out for a couple of days with a stomach bug, I saw my chance to move up, and we she came back to school, I pretty much implied that our teacher thought the new dance partner relationship was better. (Although, I hardly think our teacher had an opinion about the dancing partners.) Oh, the things we do for love ... And again, sorry about that one.
6. I prefer my dog to a lot of people. I can’t help it. She’s adorable, snuggly and completely non-critical. I should probably have some more love and compassion for humanity, but in general, a lot of my affection goes towards the dog. And that whole thing about there not actually being dogs in heaven if you go by strict theology? (I told you Sunday school was quite upsetting for me.) I’m not pleased.
7. For a few years now, my chest has actually been known as “the rapture.” It was a name that a female friend came up with for my boobs while we were drinking one night. I kind of thought it was awesome (especially since my late-blooming meant I didn't have a chest until the age of 18), and the name stuck. I hope this will not be considered blasphemous during the actual rapture, but clearly I can’t be sure. Even in the end of days, we can all appreciate a good joke, right? Maybe?
Anyway, I look forward to our continued interactions next week when I will most likely be experiencing some shame for what I hope are a few very premature confessions.
Truth And Fiction
Sorry for the short post today. Other than the big news coming about my Bissell SpotBot, it's been a less-than-creative week.
When I was working on my Master’s degree, I signed up for a fiction workshop one semester. Actually, I am no good at making things up. It’s the very reason I write creative nonfiction.
I cannot lie, I cannot cover for anyone and if you want to commit or have committed a crime, do not tell me about it.
Naturally, all of my fiction was based on my life, which is why it was so incredibly upsetting to go through a workshop and have the primary comment be, “This premise just isn’t believable. Something like this would never happen.”
(In case you’re wondering, the story in question was about a married couple with squatters in their back yard. At the time, my great aunt and uncle were trying to deal with some vagrants that had taken up behind their house – in Southside.)
So, whether or not anyone believes me when I write essay and memoir, at least I’ve gone ahead and called it truth to try and avoid that particular criticism.
For God’s sake, I have an anxiety disorder and occasionally still suffer from night terrors, and I was born on Elm Street.
The only time I almost got in a bar fight I was at a place called "The Trailer Park."
And, as I’ve said so many times before, I’ll never write a joke as good as this: My senior year of college, I took “Social Inequality” with Ivanka Trump.
She defended Reagan-omics, shock of shocks.
Sister Wives '70s Style
Today, I am grateful for two things:
1. I am not Daryl Hannah or Peter Gallagher, so I don’t have the movie Summer Lovers on my resume or imdb profile.
2. I did not come of age in the ‘70s or early ‘80s, so the subconscious soundtrack to my youth does not feature music from this time frame. (As always, Dan Folgerberg, you are excluded from any and all criticism.)
I was going to put that I was just glad that I didn’t come of age in the ‘70s until I learned that Summer Lovers was actually made in 1982. Based on the quality of the film, I did not see that one coming. (It also messed with my title, but I left it anyway.)
For those who haven’t had the opportunity to see it, and I wouldn’t recommend that, Summer Lovers is the tale of a couple abroad that learns to expand their horizons and defy convention, or some kind of early ‘80s new age crap of a similar vein. I just think of it as Sister Wives 1.0.
Why did I watch this movie? Because occasionally Netflix live-streaming and I have an unhealthy relationship, and after awhile, Summer Lovers is too much of a train wreck to look away from.
In the movie, Michael (Peter Gallagher) and Cathy (Daryl Hannah) go to Greece the summer after they graduate college, and inspired by the lack of inhibitions around them, strike out on a new path that involves living together with a French woman named Lina.
The movie thrives on two main principles:
1. Michael has to have an affair with a French woman that he meets because his “whole life has been planned out for him.” Really? We’re going to continue to trot this one out. Really? All I could hear in my head was James Van Der Beek saying “I don’t want your life” in Varsity Blues, and I actually preferred his acting to Peter Gallagher’s. (That’s right, I just made Varsity Blues a superior film.) Why can’t we just be honest and say that Michael has an affair with a French woman because he’s young, he’s a man and he can? The psychological subtext is weak, to say the least, and even though his girlfriend Cathy can’t see through it, I think the rest of us do.
2. Cathy can only enjoy self-discovery and liberation from Puritanical American values by not only accepting Michael’s love of Lina and overcoming her jealousy, but also falling in love with Lina, too. Or, as the rest of us call it, low self-esteem.
For anyone who thinks I watched this movie for the “sexy” scenes, let me assure you that there are none. (I think it’s a big mistake to make a movie with “lovers” in the title and not have good sexy scenes. I also think this movie would have really benefited from some better love scenes, and I think it’s rare to find that gem of a film that would be improved by taking more cues from porn.)
There is lots of nudity, but it’s all early-‘80s-at-the-beach nudity. It’s not pleasant. Also, having been to Greece, I can assure you that the beaches are not teeming with naked, attractive young people. Most everyone who takes advantage of the “optional” part of “clothing optional” is eligible for AARP membership or could really benefit from a few less gyros.
Now, you would think this movie might explore themes like what happens to a relationship of this sort or even what happens when summer ends. (Vicky, Christina, Barcelona is a good movie after all.) Summer Lovers doesn’t.
Spoiler Alert: Instead, you get this – once Lina the free-spirited European realizes that she might be developing feelings for Michael and Cathy, she runs away with someone who looks like he escaped from the set of Xanadu. She’s afraid of getting close to people. Saddened, Michael and Cathy decide to end their trip to Greece three weeks early. They are just about to board a plane off the island, when Lina arrives on a moped after doing some soul-searching. The very fact that she would ride a moped shows that Lina has broken through her own barriers since she swore the horrible scooters off after spraining her wrist during a particularly arduous moped outing for the threesome. (During this part of the movie, I mainly thought about how that sprained wrist must have been a real bummer for Michael.) Lina wants Michael and Cathy back, and the movie actually ends with a still shot of the three of them frolicking on the beach.
Clearly, I’m not speechless, but I’m having trouble here. Someone wrote this, someone else decided to throw money at it, and then someone convinced Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher it would be good for their careers. I find that both impressive and sad. (It’s similar to the feeling I get when I read some published authors and then count my rejection letters or watch Julia Stiles.)
My favorite scene was when Cathy’s mother paid the couple a surprise visit with her friend, only to find Lina living with Cathy and Michael. Later, the three of them then show up for dinner with Mom and gal pal.
In the end, I took two very important lessons from this film:
1. It’s hard on a couple when your girlfriend breaks up with you.
2. Your mistress should not join you for dinner with your mom. It’s just bad manners and makes everyone feel uncomfortable. Mistresses should stay home for family functions.
Also, "I’m so Excited," "Just Can’t Get Enough" and Chicago’s "Hard to Say I’m Sorry" – all featured on the soundtrack – are now ruined for me. If there was any music that I wouldn’t have minded from this era, thanks to Summer Lovers, it’s now dead to me anyway.
In the future, I think I need to take more caution with my Netflix recommendations. Clearly, the video service and I don't always see eye to eye, and considering my love of Lifetime, I could watch every bad movie in film history before this is over if I'm not careful.