For What It's Worth

 

It’s that time of year, when the world falls in love…

 

How is 2021 nearly over? It surely just began last week.

 

My word for 2021 was quiet, and it may have been my favorite word I’ve ever chosen. Quiet suited everything that I held dear to me in the past year- quiet was just the year that I needed.

 

I have a thing about 7^th years of life- historically speaking, for me, every seven years my life shifts. 42 was a seventh year, and life simply shifted in my embrace of who I am without all of the apologies. My writing shifted. I moved away from who I was at 35, which I didn’t even realize I was clinging to.

 

And now the page has turned to 43 and all of life seems to be right where I want it. For an anxiety prone person, that is a frightening statement. Truly, though, I couldn’t be happier or more content- I know all too well that life will shift again in one short year and my Betsy will spread her wings and find her way without me. It’s more than I can bear to think about, and so I push it far to the back of my mind and focus on the here and now.

 

Being a parent to teenagers is such an incredibly fun ride, even though it is tangled and prickly sometimes, and figuring out one girl responds to me in a completely different way than the other one does, and it’s a constant dance that the three of us are finding our way through. I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams with my girls.

 

Entering this 2022, and this year that will fly by much too quickly, as we try so hard to soak in every minute, the word that I have chosen is joy.

There were times when I forget the lows
And think the highs were all that we'd ever known

These words have become my mantra. Along, of course, with a million other words. But those in particular hit a chord. My head is full of all the highs, and it's not that I forget the lows so much as I have found a home for them to exist. Memories of who I used to be then. 

Joy is where I'm fairly certain I am, joy is where I want to remain. 

Here's to 2022. All the best is yet to come. 

Somebody That I Used To Know

 

“You’re getting along better than anyone I’ve ever seen in my office.”

 

That was what the lawyer told us when we were filing our dissolution paperwork. It remains something that I hold close to my heart, even if I do wish I would have said in that moment, “That is what the marriage counselor told us too.”

 

(That’s a true statement and not just a joke.)

 

My friendship with Nick remains the thing that I am most proud of, even if it’s hard won and sometimes awkward.

I wish you wouldn't wait for me, but you always do

Accepting this friendship as it is, as it has become, has been at once the easiest and also the hardest thing that I have ever done.

But it's important- the boundaries erected have been needed and necessary, and sometimes it has hurt putting them up, and sometimes I have wondered what it would have felt like to burn it all to the ground.

I accept whole heartedly that the path that I have taken hasn't always been the one that was the most advisable, but it was the only one that I could find that didn't end with a whole lot of anger. 

Today that is all that I have to offer this space.

 

Walking on Sunshine

 

I am taking my word for the year, which is quiet, quite seriously on the blog. I'm feeling a little like I did when I stopped writing fan fiction and it pressed heavy on my heart and at the same time it was the right thing to do. 

Not that I intend to stop blogging entirely or anything, but life this year has indeed been somewhat quiet and also immensely happy. We are at a juncture of life that is amazingly full of so much fun- Betsy is a junior and can drive, which has changed life in so many ways, and Felicity is thirteen and full of sass and love and it's a trip but luckily for me, it's a trip I've been on before, and so I hold fast to the bits that are precious and sigh sometimes and am grateful that we are halfway through this phase. 

The girls and I are watching Roswell, which is of course the show that changed my whole life 20 years ago, introducing me to fan fiction and to the idea that people would actually read words that I would write. It's bananas, watching this show that hardly anyone watched with these two girls- it's this huge piece of my heart that is strange and hard to put to words. Those stories that I wrote once upon a time were a window into my soul, and reliving it is both such fun and also hard in ways that I didn't anticipate. 

We are also watching all the Marvel movies in order on Friday nights (I still have a hard time keeping things straight though) and this summer we watched tons of old 1980s movies that were such fun to introduce them to. Betsy worked at the pool and we took such an amazing trip with my whole family (I say this every year, but nothing is more fun that taking a trip with the people you love most in the world in a 15 passenger van- I will miss so much this phase of life when it passes).

What I'm Loving Right Now:

Stephen King

Laura Tremaine is one of my favorite people on the internet and she created a Stephen King book club for the summer. Laura loves Stephen King and her dream is to introduce him to people who would not normally pick up one of his books. I had read The Shining at my friend Joe's insistence once, and while I did like it, I didn't feel compelled to read any more. Since Laura started off with Carrie, which is a movie adaptation that I adore (Sissy Spacek is one of my most favorite actresses ever), I thought I would give it a try. We read Carrie, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and Misery. 

I am beyond happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed all three, with Carrie being my favorite. I'm looking forward to continuing next summer.  

The Plot Thickens and You Must Remember This

Turner Classic Movies is my favorite channel ever of all time. I was delighted when they announced that they were creating a podcast. The first season of The Plot Thickens is about Peter Bogdanovich- who I knew as the director of The Last Picture Show and from Cybill Shepard's autobiography. I instantly became entranced with his first wife, Polly Platt, and as luck would have it, Karina Longworth created a nine episode arc on You Must Remember This all about Polly. Highly recommended.

The second season of The Plot Thickens, about the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities, is also wonderful.

Three Blooms Farms

For the third time, I subscribed to Three Blooms Farms flower subscription. It is so lovely to come home to fresh flowers, and she delivers to my door. 

If you are local to New Concord, I highly recommend this subscription. 

Life is quiet and blessed.

Let Me Reintroduce Myself

 

All right, stop what you’re doing because I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you’re used to…

 

Rest in peace, Shock G.

 

I’ve just always wanted to open a blog post with that. Always. (We all know that I’m not about to ruin any image you may have of me.)

 

I’m missing Television Without Pity.

 

The other day I was scouring the internet, attempting to find someone’s - anyone’s- take on the Audrey/Pacey relationship in the sixth season of Dawson’s Creek and I just wasn’t able to land on what exactly I wanted and I realized that what I was searching for was Television Without Pity.

 

For the uninitiated, Television Without Pity began as a Dawson recap site and later branched out into all sorts of shows, including most importantly to me, my beloved Roswell. I logged onto Television Without Pity basically every few days and read the snarky takes and felt justified in my obsession with teenage soap operas (even as, of course, I was a wizened twenty-one-year-old).

 

 And it is indeed that snark that I’m missing, that obsessive detail with every line of dialogue. My most favorite recaps (which were always for Roswell but I don’t remember who wrote them) included a bit called, “The Best Thing I Watched on TV This Week,” which never had anything at all to do with Roswell and instead were nearly always Lifetime movies.

 

Anyway, I’m missing those recaps, especially as the girls and I are nearly finished watching Dawson and I desperately am in need of someone with a much better gift at a hot take than me to take on the entirety of the idea of Audrey and Pacey and the way that their relationship comes to an abrupt end as Audrey calls out Pacey for always wanting to be the good guy while hiding behind the fact that he can’t commit and never, ever should have pretended that he could. (I maybe carry a lot of my own baggage into these storylines.)

 

 (I wrote this weeks ago now, and the girls and I have finished Dawson in its entirety. The final two seasons were a bit all over the place, but in the end we cried to let these characters go.)

Things I’m Loving:

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

This was a book that I picked up because so many people had told me how well written it is but I didn't particularly want to dive into this subject matter. So, now it's my turn- I truly believe this to be the most important memoir I have ever read in my lifetime. It should be required reading for everyone, no matter who they are. To sit with Chanel and hear her story is that important. 

Decoder Ring: Jane Fonda's Workout

 

I listened to this podcast over Christmas, and keep forgetting to mention it- it's actually 2 parts, one about the Jane Fonda Workout and then one about the woman who actually created the workout, Leni Cazden. I went into this thinking that I would love listening to a breakdown of why Jane Fonda chose to use her celebrity to create a workout empire. But I found the piece about Leni a much more compelling listen, a fascinating look at a regular person caught up in a moment for which she did not receive much credit or compensation.  

The Push by Ashley Audrain

All the caveats: trigger warnings for a host of things, including importantly the loss of a child. But I found it an interesting look at motherhood and mental health and healthy boundaries and insecure attachments. A book to be discussed.

The Tribe

I convinced my girls to watch The Tribe, which is a quirky soap opera from New Zealand that I fell in love with during college. A virus has wiped out the adult population and left the kids to fend for themselves (it kept surfacing in my memories the entire past year and I found it on Amazon Prime). They surprised me and dressed up like Lex and Zandra on Friday when I got home from work because they are indeed the people that I always hoped would come along and be my friends and watch all the crazy things I love with me. 

Showbiz Kids and Kid 90

Documentaries are one of my favorite things, and these two did not disappoint. Showbiz Kids is an excellent look at the price of fame for kids, and includes interviews with one of my favorite humans, Wil Wheaton, and also one of Betsy's, Cameron Boyce. I watched it by myself, unsure if it would be something that would interest the girls, but I watched it all over again with them when they got home from their dad's because it's a fascinating glimpse at a world that seems glamorous but of course, of course, is full of pitfalls. I'm carrying the interview with Evan Rachel Wood close to my heart, where she says that she was always led to believe that if she didn't want to act it would be such a waste of her talent- I've dwelled on why exactly it is that we insist the things that you have natural talent for should be monotonized. It's a complicated question to me and I'm grateful to have been shown an answer from a different side. 

Kid90 is a compilation of home movies from Soleil Moon Frye and it's as wonderful as you would imagine. As I've said many times, I was the girl who carried around my video camera for large swaths of my time in high school, in particular my entire senior year, and so I feel a complete kinship with Soleil's desire to keep a piece of her adolescence close to her heart. (I also understand why she boxed these all up and didn't watch them for years- even though there are plenty of good memories that I have of those days, I don't enjoy reliving them in quite the way I imagined I would.) 

Our school year has ended, and it has really been a wonderful year for us. Both of my girls loved remote learning (for many reasons, remote learning worked well for us, and I know that was not the experience of most people, and I remain forever grateful to East Muskingum for allowing us this option). 

Grateful always for time with my girls, even as we are silly and crazy and time is moving much too quickly. 

 

Fetch the Bolt Cutters

 

My Betsy Anne is having something of a mid-life crisis.

 

My sister, who has a doctorate in psychology, has assured me that this is all completely and totally normal.

 

Bets is staring at the idea of college and scholarships and just the entire rest of her life and wondering what to do and mostly feeling like she wants to just stay a kid forever. And so every night we talk about this, about how I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I was 16, and how I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at 36, and somehow I became a water billing clerk. And I love my job and the people that I work with and everything about working for the Village- but of course, it’s not that my calling was in understanding water meter readings. My calling rests solely inside of these two precious girls and being their mother, and my job is just a means to an end to keep us fed and clothed.

 

Does this help? I don’t know. But we talk about how those twenty years in between were filled with books and professors who changed my life and meeting a boy and becoming a mom- all of it glorious, and none of it has led me to a “career,” and while I’m fine with that reality, I also want her to swing open wide every door that she finds interesting and never to feel like she cannot accomplish something and also to never stop being my sweet, tender hearted girl.

 

And then my Felicity Kate has discovered Twilight.

 

She loves it so much that she has created a shelf in her room for all things Twilight related. (She also packed up all of her Calico Critters at the same time. It was a bit much- I wasn’t expecting that she turn into a teenager overnight.)

 

It’s been a lot to maneuver, and it’s hitting us how little time is left before life shifts again, before we have to adjust to a new normal.

 

5 years ago life slammed a door shut with such force I could never pry it open again. It forced me to find the window. And yes, climbing in and out of a window is weird but it works for me.

 

Life on this side of the after is as close to perfect as it’s ever going to get. My life revolves around these two girls. It is the best piece of being divorced- I get to spend my nights with these girls wherein we listen to incredibly loud music, all the Tik Toks, all the 1980s/1990s shows and movies that we can, painting fingernails and arguing and laughing and existing as a family in a way so different- it’s not for everyone I’m sure. But it works so well for us, even as we navigate existential crisis and the particular end of eras.

 

When I drop my girls off every other Friday night with their dad, as I drive away, I always feel a little bit sorry for him, that I am going home to be by myself and just enjoy the quiet for a weekend (just for the two days, I promise). The girls told me that recently he said to them that he thinks that I would like to be going home to someone, that I probably miss having someone to do things with while they are gone. And it struck me as so typically us, me the introvert who craves being alone like its water in a desert, and Nick the extrovert who wants the people around him all the time.

 

We are- all four of us- we are right where we were always meant to be.

 

Stuff I’m Loving:

(there's a good bit because it's been a hot minute since I wrote on the blog):

 

This Dawson's Creek Article on Vox

This article is just what I needed as we are halfway through Dawson, and this article breaks down the Joey/Pacey/Dawson triangle to what it exactly is-namely, that by rearranging the storyline to focus on Joey rather than Dawson, and then to make Pacey the hero, the writers created a formula for teenage soap operas that has continued to this day.

 

The Bible Binge: Favored or Forsaken: Kirk Cameron

I have tons of feelings about Kirk Cameron, most of them good (Kirk lived on my wall from the time I was in the third grade), and a handful of them thorny and messy. Knox, Jamie, and Erin spend this entire episode unboxing Kirk and his place in Christian culture and where he gets things right and where he becomes problematic.

 

I also loved the recent Favored or Forsaken bonus that was a snake draft of Contemporary Christian artists but that is only available on the Patreon feed. Let me say, though, it is so excellent to find people in this world who can claim P.O.D.’s “Boom” as the best sports anthem, Jars of Clay as life changing, and Point of Grace and Amy Grant as just the OG best.

Judas and the Black Messiah 

Excellent, excellent watch. My favorite thing about this social distanced world is watching new movies in the comfort of my own home and one I have no doubt will never change. The girls and I bought new reclining movie chairs for our big Christmas gifts this past year, and we love them and now have even less reason to ever leave the house. 

HBO Max was a sort of lackluster subscription for me (and I say this having subscribed to Quibi) but with the new policy of releasing the movies there the same day as in the theater- kicked it up a notch and please let it never change. The performances in this movie are all amazing. Highly recommended.

To All The Boys: Always and Forever

To be clear, the books are better (this is true 99% of the time). But the first and third adaptations of Jenny Han's delightful books are very good (the second one wobbles, but I do love the opening of it, an homage to Adventures in Baby-sitting, which is hands down the best opening of a movie ever, so I appreciate what they were doing there). I love Lara Jean with all my heart and am so glad to have met her.

R. Eric Thomas

Someone that I follow (perhaps Erin Moon? I don't remember) introduced me to R. Eric Thomas's email and it has been bringing me joy for a month now. I cry from laughing so hard, most recently at his long thread about the new 101 Dalmatians trailer- I read a lot of very serious stuff, and this is just the most perfect distraction ever. 

These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore

Such an excellent history of the United States- this doorstop of a book was a labor of love for me to get through but I'm so glad that I persevered. I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, which I never do. (On that note, I am trying to be better about updating my Goodreads page- I find Goodreads clunky to use but I'm trying.)

Disco Kylie Minogue

I've been binging this since it came out and it is just the shiny, poppy, happy music that my heart is aching for just now.

Life just now feels full of hope.