Roger and me...

I am sad today, listening to memorials to Roger Ebert and remembering how wonderful he was as a movie reviewer.

I think that what facinates me most about Roger Ebert is the fact that my memories of him (like, I think, a lot of people's memories of him) are divided into before and after. And while that is probably true of most everyone's memories eventually, his is such a stark line. Before, of course, he was this bombastic movie reviewer, always the more sarcastic, always the one completely sure of his opinions and always sure that he was the smartest man in the room. After is who he became in the last few years of his life, robbed of his voice, and yet still able to be such a presence.

I find that amazing.

He really truly embraced media and continued to put his thoughts out there, and on rather a range of topics. He was still the smartest guy in the room. And yet...

It is sad today as I listen to so many of his reviews, and interviews, and his voice, and realize how scary the thought of losing his voice indeed must have been. To lose one of the more important ways that you communicate and make a living, to lose the ability to be so sarcastic (which rarely comes across in print as well as when spoken). I admire him.

I have always had crushes on both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. No doubt born of my love of movies, and also the fact that I only had 5 channels to watch growing up, so I tended to watch "At The Movies" pretty much every weekend. I agreed more often with Siskel and so therefore considered him the better reviewer when I was younger. I probably still do, at least a bit.

But as a teenager I began reading Ebert's reviews in the paper, and I found that he was an insightful man-more than I realized watching him bicker with Siskel. Reading his reviews allowed me to understand that one can watch a movie in the same way that one reads a book, and dig through even the silliest of movies for a deeper meaning. One in particular that I remember was his review of Candyman II, which needless to say he didn't like, but still he found mounds of images to ponder over, to take the script to task but at the same time hold up it's deeper revelations-I was just in awe.

I highly recommend two of his books that I have poured over more than once-The Great Movies and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, which are a nice ying and yang to each other. In the first, obviously, he is gushing over his favorites (most of which I am still yet to see) and in the second, he is taking many movies to task (I've seen a lot more from that book).

All in all, he loved movies and through writing he made me love them more too. He will be missed.

Here comes Peter Cottontail...

Ah, Easter. What a lovely holiday. For my family, it's a religious holiday and we mostly spend the day in church. But we also hunt Easter eggs and have a visit from the Easter Bunny. He mostly brings my kids candy, and then a present a piece. I was asked about this today-I guess that in some homes he brings bicycles and such. Not here, but then I try my best not to make holidays about gifts. Holidays, for those of you who know me, are about books and things leading up to the holiday a lot more than the holiday itself.

We have several Easter books, mostly of the Clifford/Winnie-the-Pooh/Biscuit variety. One very cute one is Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells. I always love Max and Ruby and it is a particularly funny one. Betsy's favorite is The Golden Egg by Margaret Wise Brown, also a very cute book about a bunny who happens upon an egg.

But my absolute favorite is The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward. In it, a country bunny has a dream to grow up to be the Easter bunny. But she gets married, and being a rabbit, proceeds to have 21 children. She thinks that her dreams have gone, but she is in for a surprise, because she is indeed wise, and spry, and clever. And yes, I say this as someone who, at the ripe old age of 34 often feels as though my life is all planned out from here until enternity. I love my life, I love my kids, but somewhere in the back of my head there is this girl that I buried some time ago who likes to come out and play sometimes.

When I was in college, my writing was the most important thing in my life. Sometimes I happen upon things that I wrote back then, and I am stunned. I can't imagine being able to write like that again. When I met Nick, I truly felt that God took his hand off of my writing-I went from being praised for my writing to having people say, this isn't working. You are forcing it. It was a hard transition, but I finally felt that God was saying, not now. Writing isn't what I have in mind for you at this time.

And so I married Nick, and had my babies, and now I am trying to think about what I want to do with my life again. And I want to write-can I ever write that well again? I don't know. I don't even know if I should try. But I am going to spend time writing every day, beginning this fall. Like it or not-ever get paid for it or not-it is my passion and it deserves to be fed.

Anyway, I have gotten far from my topic. I am the Sunday School teacher at my church, and I did the children's sermon today, and I used the Resurrection Eggs for it. I highly recommend them-they make such an impact on the kids, helping them to learn the lesson of Christ's resurrection. You can make them yourself, mine came from Hobby Lobby and cost about $10.

Other than that, we don't do too much. We dye eggs and we have an egg hunt with the girls and my nieces. We wear our Easter bonnets to church and sing "Easter Parade" on the way to church and pretend that we are in the Easter parade.

All in all, it was a great day. I spent the day with the people I love most, and Christ is risen, and all is right with my world.

To a town called Deep Valley...

Okay, so, it's Friday and I'm reading my People magazine (and yes, I read the whole thing, cover to cover, unlike some other people in my household, who only look at the pictures, but who get mad if they do not get to look at it first).

Anyway, I'm reading the People and I come upon Michelle Williams talking about books that she reads to Matilda. And what do you think she says? BETSY-TACY!

Now, why is this exciting? Well, two things. Number one, I kind of obsess over Michelle Williams in a somewhat similar way to how I obsess over Jennifer Garner and this is just further proof that I am a lot like this beautiful, blond movie star but who is also very smart. Number two, I have been reading the Betsy-Tacy books to Betsy for almost a year, and we just finished them up a couple of weeks ago, and I have been meaning to do a blog about them. Ergo, here we go.

Betsy LOVES the Betsy-Tacy books, and whenever she is asked what her favorite book is, that is her answer. Sadly, we have been met with a lot of blank stares and only one older lady who even knew what we were talking about. So, allow me (and my best friend Michelle Williams) tell you about these amazing books.

Betsy-Tacy is how we refer to the books, simply because that is the title of the first book in the series, in which 5 year old Betsy Ray meets 5 year old Tacy Kelly and they become best friends. At the end of that first book, they meet Tib Mueller, who quickly becomes another best friend.

Betsy, Tacy and Tib is the second book in the series and it continues their friendship. It is followed by Betsy and Tacy and the Big Hill and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown. All four of these stories are available in an anthology called The Betsy-Tacy Treasury. I so recommend it! These 4 books are so wonderful for little girls! The stories are set in the the early 1900s, but the world that they inhabit somehow still fits well with our own. Betsy, naturally I suppose, loves Betsy the best. Betsy is the ring leader, always managing to dream up something new to do. Tacy is the shy one. And dear Tib is so blunt, but she never means to be mean or hurt anyone's feelings.

Now, there is a definite break in the stories after that. Betsy and I were too intrigued to stop there, but be forwarned that the next batch of books take place when Betsy is in high school, and Betsy is boy-crazy! Tacy, however, is not in the least. Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with these books, they just take a different tone than the books when they are little. The high school books are Heaven to Betsy, Betsy In Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, and Betsy and Joe.

Then come the last two, Betsy and the Great World and Betsy's Wedding. Betsy and the Great World is my least favorite-mostly because it has very long chapters and because only Betsy is in it, without all the other characters that we have come to know and love. In it, Betsy sets sail for Europe in the months before World War I. It's a very interesting book, and it has helped Betsy to understand a bit of World War I history (which I think is always a bit trickier than WWII). But then, with Betsy's Wedding we come back full circle, with Betsy, Tacy, and Tib setting forth into new adult lives. Betsy and I were sad to see it end, but luckily the books are based on Maud Hart Lovelace's real life, so we sated ourselves with pictures of her and her daughter and their eventual life in California.

Right now we are reading Carney's House Party, which is a book in which the main character is Carney Sibley, who becomes one of Betsy's friends in high school. Then we have Winona's Pony Cart, which goes back to when they were little girls with their show-offy friend, Winona. (But we love Winona. That's the thing-even the ones that you don't like so much at first, they grow on you, just as they do on Betsy.)

Anyway, I'm hoping that because Michelle Williams has mentioned them, perhaps they will enjoy a new popularity. And, of course, I have no doubt that my own recommendation will make the books fly off the shelves with my whole, oh, 20 readers of this blog. :)

And back to Michelle Williams. I do love her. I didn't have too much of an opinion of her work until I saw the film Wendy and Lucy, and this is what I wrote in my little book that I write down every movie that I see and book that I read:

A terribly sad story about a transient young woman and her dog, who gets lost along the way. Michelle Williams gives a performance that makes you forget that she is most famous (acting-wise) for Dawson's Creek. But it is a downright depressing movie.

But the movie that I saw her in that I loved, loved, loved is Blue Valentine. That was one of those movies that got stuck in my soul and that I still dwell on from time to time. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it.

Those of you who know me know that I consider Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck to be my and Nicholas' celebrity couple (meaning that, if we were famous, we would most remind you of Jennifer and Ben). But as of today I am officially making Michelle Williams my celebrity best friend.

Let's Go To The Movies (you know, like the Rockettes in Annie)...

Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted my own film opening. You know, where there is a very appropriate to the theme of the movie song playing over a girl getting ready to go out, or something to that effect. Before I met Nick, I actually used to put on a CD playing a song that I would like to be my movie montage. Usually it was "Dangerous" by Roxette (this was humorous, even at the time-pretend that it's irony).

So, maybe I am giving away too much about my tastes in music.

"Nothing But a Good Time," Poison. "Your Song," Elton John. "Life is a Highway," Tom Cochrane. All excellent theme songs, no?

I also had an obsession with always playing "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by the Police on the jukebox every time I went to the Cinema Shop, our video rental store, in some attempt to seem cool to the senior boy who worked there.

I miss video rental stores. I read a very good, though a bit dry, book about them last year. I'm fairly sure that it was someone's thesis, but it made some excellent points. First it said how everyone of a certain age and older can remember how the video store started out as this little hole-in-the-wall shop where you had to get a membership card to rent movies. New Concord had two-Heavy's and Visions. Heavy's was across the street from Shegogg's IGA and it was where my father bought his first membership to a video store. It was an extremely small store with limited selections, so April and I tended to always rent the same movies.

I fell in love, love, love with this live action version of "The Wind In The Willows." I rented it pretty much every week. Once we moved on to bigger video stores, they did not have this obscure video. It became one of my first purchases in 1998 when the Watsons joined the rest of the world on the internet, and I discovered ebay.

So, anyway, Dad eventually must have seen the writing on the wall, and we secured a membership to Visions, the rental store on the other end of town with a bigger selection. It was overwhelming the first time we stepped in there. The shelves were filled with empty movie boxes, with styrofoam inside where the tape should be.

We went to Visions every week. April and I saw every movie that they had in the children's section with the exception of "The Cat from Outer Space." I don't know why, but for some reason or another, neither of us wanted to see it. One time, when we were apparently sick and unable to go, my dad went and got a movie for us. And, of course, that was the one he picked! We refused to watch it, and to this day I have never seen it.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, my best friend Michelle took me to the Cinema Shop, which had opened sometime after Visions. It was run by a professor who loved movies and apparently bought every one ever made. There were hundreds of movies there. Unfortuately, rather than the whole styrofoam box set-up, you had to just look at the covers (which were taped to pieces of plexiglass) and memorize the number that was written on the cover. Then, you went to the clerk and told him the number and he hustled to the back and found it. Granted, there were a lot of movies, and I'm sure this was the most convenient way to go about it, but it was always embarrassing if you wanted a movie that had any kind of insinuation in the title. Because the clerk had to read the title to you, to be sure that it was the movie that you wanted. It took Michelle and me years to work up the courage to rent Casual Sex?

We loved the Cinema Shop. Every Saturday night when we were in high school, Michelle, Tanya, and I would go to Pizza Hut and then to the Cinema Shop. They had rooms in the basement where you could sit and watch your movie, and that is what we nearly always did. Watching these dumb 80s movies (which was almost exclusively what we rented) with them were some of the absolute greatest times of my whole life. Because even if it sucked, we made fun of it to the point that it became funny to us.

Anyhow, to get back to Mr. Thesis' point, he said that after that came...dun dun dun...Blockbuster. And Blockbuster killed all independent video stores. Because Blockbuster was brightly lit, and colorful, and didn't carry porn, so no sleazy people were roaming around. And they carried tons of new movies, so you didn't have to wait a year to see them. Blockbuster came to Zanesville sometime when I was in high school, because it was one of my sister's many, many jobs. She liked working there because she got to see new movies before they were available to the public. She did not like working there because people were mean if they had late fees and were not allowed to rent movies until they were paid.

So...enter Netflix. Which was karma for Blockbuster, because then it died. Netflix had the great idea of never charging late fees. Which is good, because as I speak, I have a DVD beside me that I have had for a year and a half and have never gotten around to watching, but I refuse to send it back because I really do want to watch it, someday. Ah, Netflix. I loved you once.

But now I do not love Netflix as I once did. We have Hulu and I like it better. It has more options to watch now. And since all of this stuff comes through the TV, it is convenient. Netflix really needs to up its game, in my opinon. But, then again, maybe it's just trusting that some people are too lazy to return a film for 540 days, and therefore are paying for the opportunity to borrow a video for possibly years on end.

Anyway, I have digressed far from my topic, but oh well. Imagine me now, nerdy looking librarian girl, typing away, while the perfect song floats around her, telling you that she is obviously much more than she seems. How about "The Girl Gets Around" by Sammy Hagar?

It's the story...

So, once upon a time, my life was kind of the TV Guide. (Speaking of which, I miss the TV Guide. I loved getting it, and devouring it, and I have every Jeff Jarvis review, I think, possibly ever.) My life, at one time, was made up of television, and movies, and music, and books. I had no idea that this would ever end.

And then I met this boy named Nicholas, and first of all, I had to start watching all of this stuff that he watches. Which I happily did for about six months. And then I got tremendously bored. He has never met a police procedural show that he didn't like.

TiVo was the best thing that ever happened to our relationship.

And then along came this tiny child we called Betsy. And she zapped all of my energy right out of me, and took my mind right along with her. I could not watch hour long shows anymore, because I just genuinely could not follow the plot anymore. It was too confusing, and so I had to just give up on almost everything that I watched except the news.

This continued all through the birth and nursing of Felicity as well. And then, when Felicity turned 3, it was kind of like I emerged from a haze and my brain at least semi-functioned again.

So this year I am again watching television. Movies are still really rare unless they are on DVD (and even then, probably have been out for at least a year). It's fun to be able to follow a plot from week to week again.

I am, however, busier than I was when I had literally no one but myself to entertain all day long. So I can't watch everything, and I have to draw a line somewhere. My line is at reality television. I will cop to watching Teen Mom, but other than that I haven't watched any reality tv since at least 2006. I wish that I could just watch the people singing on some of those shows, without the judging and all. I really do love the Lawerence Welk show, and really, they could be the same thing without the snarky judges.

As far as my television viewing for the this year, here is what I watch:

Parenthood, Smash, Once Upon a Time, Nashville, Vegas, Dallas, Bunheads, How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls, Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory, The New Girl, The Mindy Project, Glee, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, Frontline, Washington Week, Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, and Melissa and Joey. And Saturday Night Live, which I never stopped watching.

I also watch the PBS Newhour religiously, and I watch the parts of the Today show that interest me. And (yes, Joy, be honest) I watch Days of Our Lives and General Hospital every day, and the Young and the Restless and the Bold and the Beautiful a lot of days. (But I TiVo them! I don't let the girls see them!)

I also have spent my weekend trying to catch up on Downton Abbey, which I know is the hot new thing. I am really enjoying it. The production values remind me of my dear beloved Avonlea and Wind at My Back.

I wish that I had time for Elementary, which I have heard is very good. And I wish that we had HBO and Showtime, but at the moment it isn't in the budget. Of course, if we did, I might never get anything done.

An ADVENTure in time...

Well, Christmas has come and gone. Christmas is always my favorite time of year, not the least because it is also my birthday. I honestly have no other day to look really forward to, at least as far as getting attention and, to be honest, gifts. So perhaps that is why I kind of over do the advent calendars.

We have 5 advent calendars. I so highly recommend having at least some way to count down the days until Christmas with your children. One of my friends told me that she wraps up 25 books and lets her kids open one per day. Such a cool idea.

Our first advent calendar is a Winnie-the-Pooh calendar that is velcro, so you stick up the ornament/gift/Pooh character every day.

The second is a house that has doors to open. This is my favorite, because it is the most like the advent calendar that I had growing up. I got it from Chinaberry, which I recommend if you are looking for advent calendars because they have a nice selection.

The third also came from Chinaberry. It is called "The Story of Christmas," and every day you take our a small booklet and read a part of the Christmas story. Each booklet has a golden string attached, and so one year after Christmas I bought a very tiny tree that we hang the books on after we read them.

The fourth advent calendar I made at MOPs. Yes, you read that right, I made it. It is made of a cookie sheet, painted white with a grid drawn on it. Then (this was the difficult part) I made a different little magnet for each day. There are ones with buttons, with snowmen, with gifts, with ornaments. There is a picture of Betsy and of Felicity. I love it because I know how hard it was to make!

And then there is the girls favorite. It is on the computer, and a friend of ours sends it to us in an email every year. It is created by Jacquie Lawson, and I highly recommend it. The girls look so forward to seeing what will happen every day. And sometimes you get to create things (like a stocking or a snowflake) and that is their favorite part.

We also have an advent wreath. It is so easy to make your own. You simply make or buy a plain green wreath, and then place four small candle holders around the inside, and a large candle holder in the middle. For the middle use a large white candle, and then you can buy the 3 purple and 1 pink candles all together at Hobby Lobby.

Every Sunday night, we gather around the advent wreath. I have a book that I love called Just 25 Days Til Christmas by Rebecca Hayford Bauer that has the Bible readings for each candle. Then I teach the girls what each candle means (the purple represent hope, faith, and peace, the pink joy, and the white love). Then we put out the corresponding part of the manger scene (we have a manger scene that we just use for this purpose, one that isn't going to be damaged by small hands touching it). The hope candle is the first, and that is when we put out the stable. Faith is for Mary and Joseph, Peace is the angels, Joy is the shephards. When we light the Christ Candle (the white one) on Christmas Eve we put the baby Jesus in. Then, starting on December 26, the wise men begin their journey. They start at the front door and go all around the house until they get to the stable on January 6, which is Epiphany.

I know that I have already done a blog about our Epiphany celebration, so I won't go into all that again. But I wanted to share this, as I think that it is a really easy way to incorporate the story of Jesus' birth into your Christmas celebration, and in a tactile way that your kids can remember.

I recommend another advent book also, which has a lot of cool ideas of ways to teach kids by using their hands about the customs of Christmas and how they intersect with the story of Jesus' birth and that is The ADVENTure of Christmas by Lisa Whelchel.

We also have an elf on the shelf, which my children love so much that they honestly cry when he leaves on Christmas day. His name is Darren, and they look so forward to finding him every day. Our elf is not very adventerous, and so he just moves around from shelf to shelf. I have a feeling that Darren will stick around even long after the idea of Santa has passed them by, that is how much they love finding him every day.

Each day of the advent season is special in our house. There is so much to do in December! And every morning I read from the 25 Days til Chirstmas book during breakfast. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I read it as a child and I still learn from it every year. Then at night before bed I read from Advent Storybook by Antonie Schneider. (Not a great title, but it's a great book!) It tells the story of Benjamin Bear, who is on his way to Bethlehem and all of the different people and animals he meets along the way.

You can imagine (if you know me at all) we have tons of Christmas books and movies, and while I admit I do try to squeeze them all in, this year I loosened up and we actually got more watched and read than when I harp and push about it. I had a fabulous advent season this year, a wonderful Christmas and birthday, and I honestly am looking forward to the new year. I hope that you can say the same, and I wish you peace and joy next year and beyond.

No answers to why?

What do I want to say? I want to say many, many things, and say them eloquently, and make you think and reevaluate and maybe even change your mind. But I'm not going to do that.

I have purposefully avoided looking at my facebook page today. It's not that I don't care about your opinion. I value your opinion, even if it is totally different than mine. I want to know what you think and why you think that way.

But...not today. Maybe it is too raw. Too close to home. Maybe I have way too many thoughts jumbling through my head and I can't add any more. Maybe I already knew how you would feel, maybe I already knew that you would be heartbroken and sad and wanting to lash out. And that's all that it is, really. Some people want to blame guns, or gun control, or the media, or the lack of prayers in schools, or Congress, or whatever. I do some of those things (maybe all of those things) too. And I also know that it is so much more than just that-if it were one thing, this wouldn't keep happening. It is everything and nothing all at the same time, at least to me.

I read a book a couple of years ago about Columbine by Dave Cullen. It was one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Basically, for me, anyway, everything that I thought that I knew about Columbine wasn't true. And everything that was true took this man 10 years to uncover. And I often wonder what the result of all of that misinformation about Columbine has lead to? If more people knew that that was not a school shooting born of ridicule and loneliness? If more people knew that one shooter was a true psychopath and the other an easily led, depressed boy? Would it somehow change the way that some of these other people, following in their path, have viewed a challenge to...I don't know, to their feelings of ridicule and loneliness.

I don't think that any rational person ever has shot at tons of people, much less children. I don't think that people at their heart, in their right mind, mean to hurt people. I think that, in all honesty, most people, maybe even all people, just want to love their families and have a place to live and food on their table. And that everything else is gravy. I believe that to be true of all people, everywhere on earth.

Please keep in mind that I am not speaking at all about the grief and loss and horror that the parents and friends and loved ones of those killed must be going through. I can't begin to know the deepth of their loss and I realize that.

But at this time of year, when I am contemplating the birth of my Savior, I truly believe that he came to give us peace. An everlasting peace that can and will exist in us all. "In Me you may have peace. In the world you will have hard things happen to you; but be of good cheer, I have conquered the world." John 16:33