The Space In Between...

Oh my goodness. All the things, right?

2020 has, thus far, been full of a lot of feelings. Now, I do tend to care about people that I have never actually met to an absurd degree (and, importantly, I never hope to meet them in real life-that episode of Growing Pains where Ben is horribly disappointed by the rock star that he has idolized convinced me long ago that I don’t really want to meet anyone famous, but I do care deeply and to my core about a lot of people that I do not actually know).

2020 feels a little like the world has cracked open to me.

Things I’m Loving Lately:

Why Megxit Matters
This episode of the Daily is a wonderful blend of the royal family’s recent drama, the British public’s reaction to it, and why any of it matters.

When I was in high school, I was lucky enough to go to Europe and the tour guide that we had for the trip was British. I always sat at the front of the tour bus (I’m a geek like that) and she would talk to those of us toward the front, and one day we asked her about the opinions of the British people toward Diana. This would have been 1996, so Diana was alive but divorced from Charles. She told us that the British people were more in favor of Charles and found Diana to be somewhat lacking in decorum. As someone who was a huge fan of Diana, I realized right then that Americans were profoundly different than the British in how we view celebrity and royalty and such.

I still think all of that is true.

For me, though, I used to pray hard for William and Harry every night. I cried when Matt Lauer talked about how lucky they were to have each other as they walked into William’s wedding. I adore Queen Elizabeth and have read far too many books about her. I have far too many feelings about Harry and Megan, but I know that my American prism of looking at this is totally different from the British outlook, and that Brexit is days away, and the world is upside down for lots of reasons.

You Must Remember This: Six Degrees of Song of the South

I have never seen Song of the South, though I do have a cassette tape and a book, one of those read-along books from when I was a kid in the 1980s, that is about a piece of the Brer Rabbit story. This is a behind the scenes look at Song of the South and it is engrossing-it walks through all of the bits from the minstrel elements of the story, the career of Hattie McDaniel, and the creation of Splash Mountain. I binged most of this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and it was a most illuminating way to spend that holiday.

Before Sunrise: The Making of an Indie Classic

This oral history of the making of Before Sunrise is fascinating. Before Sunrise is one of my most favorite movies ever and I’ve watched it so many times I can recite a lot of the dialogue. Before Sunset and Before Midnight I’ve only seen one time each-I did not care for Before Sunset but loved Before Midnight and that was likely due to circumstances in my own life at the time, so they would need a rewatch to make a definitive statement. But I loved this look at the way that this film came into being, and how they had to film things that, of course, seem natural and brilliant and exactly what my seventeen-year-old self thought that traveling in Europe would be like.


The girls and I have spent a large part of January talking about Australia and watching My So-Called Life and learning about impeachment and the democratic process (they super love that). We have been blessed with a lot of time together and a last minute cousin weekend and all the fun things. It's been blissful (being with the girls, I mean, not the wildfires).

And yes, I'm a bit obsessed with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt and the grasping of the hand. And yes, I know that it may be publicity and that it says something about this man who rather callously left his wife and who seems to be, while a fine actor, a bit of a mess of a person. But of all the people that I looked to when I lived though my divorce, through the hardest days of not being able to function, the person that I looked to was Jennifer Aniston, as crazy as I know that sounds. Her words at the time, "I love Brad; I really love him. I will love him for the rest of my life. I don't regret any of it, and I'm not going to beat myself up about it." Those words hid themselves inside of my heart, and even though I knew that maybe she didn't even mean it anymore, she said it out loud once, and so it was okay-it was okay to be divorcing someone and still love them and feel confused and crazy.

And I have moved far away from that person that I was then, and I know that she has too. But I'm happy for her if there remains something of that love, even if it's only a moment at an awards show that the world got to glimpse.

"Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?"
-Celine, Before Sunrise

The Memories Were Lost Long Ago...

Epiphany is always one of my favorite days of the year.

We always celebrate our Wise Men finally making their way to the manger scene with an epiphany cake and blessing the house. All of life feels shiny and new. It’s most wonderful.

The past few weeks of turning 41, entering a new decade-all of it has felt quite blissful. The past two decades of my life have been marked by such amazing highs and such lowest of lows-I’m excited that the past year was such an even keel in my life, and I’m hoping for that to continue in this new decade.

This past year has forced me to make some peace with a few things-the fact that no matter how outgoing I manage to make myself become, I am still an introvert at heart, and I still need down time to process the world around me; the fact that being “in my 40s” does indeed feel different than my 30s, in ways both welcome and not especially; and that, while I wholly admit that I have a problem with caffeine, I am also never really going to do anything about it.


On the other hand, I have learned that I can prioritize laying in bed all day when I want to, that any bad mood can be helped by a snack and a nap, and that I truly am just a complicated house plant that needs more water than I ever think I need.

As usual, my weekend was filled with movies and books (all rereads because that comfort is what my heart is yearning for at the moment). I introduced the girls to Forrest Gump just in time for them to see Tom Hanks receive his Cecil B. DeMille award (I told them that to truly appreciate Tom Hanks, we need to watch Bosom Buddies). But for now, I am on the precipice of introducing them to my 90s dramas-first up, My So-Called Life, and then Freaks and Geeks and Dawson's Creek (they love The Mighty Ducks so I kind of can't wait to see their reaction to Mr. Pacey Witter).

In the meantime, though, all the movies. Betsy saw The Rise of Skywalker of course with her father, and Felicity saw Jumanji 2 with her stopmom. Therefore, we saw Little Women and Cats (at Betsy's insistence).

Little Women

I spent my New Year's Eve rereading Little Women, as the clearly super cool party girl that I am. This movie captured the book in ways that I simply did not think was possible. By beginning the story at the end, Greta Gerwig finally solves the never ending problem of Jo marrying anyone at all, and especially the problem of that person not being Laurie. Amy has a storyline of an adult woman making somewhat sensible choices, colored by her childhood of being the put upon youngest sister. Concentrating Meg's storyline on her vanity gives her more to do than just mother hen. And my dear Beth is Beth.

"Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, and they've got ambition and talent as well as just beauty. And I'm sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it! But-I'm so lonely!"

All of that. I didn't know how much I needed Jo to say all of that.

Cats


Cats. What can I say? It's not as terrible as all that, if you go in knowing that it is a musical about cats. It's weird because that's a weird thing. The music, though, is mostly lovely-I especially like the new Taylor Swift/Andrew Lloyd Webber penned "Beautiful Ghosts." I love James Corden, even if that is a dorky thing to admit, and I think he's funny here. There were several young children at the show the girls and I went to and let me be firm, this is not a movie for little kids. It is a confusing plot for a grownup. They will be bored. (My biggest pet peeve in the movie theater is whiny children.)

So, Christmastide has come and gone and into the routine we go. I'm so jazzed for 2020. It just may be the best year yet.


"And so maybe my home isn't what I had known
What I thought it would be
But I feel so alive with these phantoms of night
And I know that this life isn't safe but it's wild and it's free"
-Beautiful Ghosts

Fall Into This Circumstance...

How excited am I for 2020 to finally get here? I feel like I haven’t been this excited for a new year since 1999, just because I liked saying that we were going to party like it’s 1999.

Twenty years on, life seems to have taken all of these turns and shifts and bends in the road to deposit me precisely back at who I was at 21. Insatiably curious, desperate to do all the things, and feeling like all of life had finally turned out like I wanted it to. College was a long, hard road of lonely for me-in all of my years at Muskingum, I had exactly one good friend, and mostly got along much better with my professors than my classmates-but by 1999, I didn’t care. I was “becoming who I was to be” (a quote that I stole from my favorite teacher of all time, Mr. Frank) and all I did was read and write and watch a lot of movies.

The past four years have circled me back to that same girl.

4 years ago, staring down the very last few weeks of my marriage before my divorce was final, I had a definite idea of what I wanted to happen- I wanted to let go of the past, to move forward in some healthy way, and to eventually meet the actual , true love of my life that surely God intended me to meet. To my mind, the only way that any of the pain of my marriage ending would be worth it in the end would be for me to realize that Nick had somehow been all wrong for me all along. The truth, I told myself, would feel so much more amazing for having lived so long with what turned out to be a lie.

Of course, that hasn’t been how any of this has worked out.

The only person that I’ve gotten to know better in the past 4 years is that girl that I left behind at 21. When Nick came along, I (quite naturally, I think) sort of shoved that girl aside. My life became about creating this family that I had always, always wanted. My life from 21 to 36 was consumed by Nick and the girls and being the mother and wife that I felt that they needed. When people talk about music or movies or anything from 2000 until 2015, I have little recollection of it. My life was made up of tummy time and Sesame Street, breastfeeding and precious little sleep.

I’m grateful every single day that I met Nick Johnson and I mean that with every beat of my heart.

But I’m also grateful every single day that I have found that girl that I let go of at 21. I’m grateful to have all of this time to read and write and watch all of the movies. To be my own best company. To just be alone, and have it be enough.

My word for 2020 is release.

We’ll see how it goes.


"It's gotta be a strange twist of fate
Telling me that heaven can wait
Oh, I'm gonna get it right this time
Life doesn't mean a thing
Without the love you bring
Love is what we've found
The second time around."
-Olivia Newton-John

Top of the World...

"Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can't tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start."
-Aloe Blacc


I’m working on a better answer for people when they ask if I’m dating.

When a completely well-meaning person asks me that, my instinct is to worry that they are about to suggest a date. Or a dating app. Or what have you.

Then, of course, I usually stumble all over the actual answer, which is a simple no, and say things like, it’s not like I haven’t dated at all in the past four years (lest they think there is something wrong with me), and then stumble into how I’m really not looking to date right now.

All of that is true. But I say it all slanted and weird, and usually the person ends up assuring me that someday I will meet someone.

I then smile politely and often say something equally awkward and eventually, praise hands to God, the conversation ends.

The truth about me and dating and love and all the things is just a bit more complicated that I can go into in a simple conversation.

I’m not sure that the true answer is incredibly complicated, but my answer to this question never seems to be what people are searching for.

The hand-on-my-heart, true answer to this question is that I enjoy spending my free time with my girls. My life when the girls are home is filled with old television shows and books and Barbie dolls. It’s my preferred way to spend an evening.

The second truth to why I’m not all that interested in dating is a bit more complicated. I truly believe with all of my heart that I am going to meet this person who I will magically know is the perfect person for me. (I really do have a physical checklist for this purpose.)

Then, of course, you have to take a step back from that and say, in all seriousness, “but, Joy, you already thought that.” And you are correct. In my lifetime, I have loved one boy ever, and he checked all of those boxes, and all of life was exactly what I wanted for fifteen years, and then it was all a lie.

It’s a hard, hard reality to live with- the notion that I believe to the depth of my soul in true love and soulmates and Nora Ephron movies, and then to juxtapose my divorce and my complete and total belief that it was necessary and correct and the best thing for both of us.

The most truthful answer to this question is simply, I am waiting for the guy that checks all of the boxes for me and the girls, the guy who meets all of my romantic comedy wish list needs, and who understands that I have scars that are still healing.

I quite likely set the bar too high for anyone to reach for a reason. I’m well aware of that. But, for now and likely the near future, that is my truth. Even if it takes too many awkward words for me to say.

"So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself
And I didn't know I was lost"
-Aloe Blacc

Contradictions and Complexities...

Late fall is full of contradictions-the weather can’t quite make up its mind, the threat of icy roads is dangled as a possibility more than I would like, the trees are barren branches but it is still quite warm on my walks at night, the dark confuses all of my sense of time and I mostly want to curl up in bed with a book by 6 o’clock every night.

Late fall still brings to the surface mostly lovely memories-memories of falling in love for the first time, and memories of becoming a mother (which for me was the culmination of a million dreams come true), memories always of the lead up to Christmas, which is of course also my birthday, so it is indeed my most favorite day of the entire year.

Four years on, those memories are all mostly just truly lovely. That’s one of those truths that I wish I had understood in the beginning. That eventually you are able to remember mostly the good, mostly the magic, mostly the fun parts. It’s not that I have forgotten the painful parts. But four years ago, remembering the good just brought to the surface so much that I didn’t want to deal with-was it always a lie? Was I remembering everything wrong? When did it shift?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I likely never will. But I have learned, in my slow as a snail way, that it doesn’t truly matter.

Things I Have Loved Lately:

The Lazy Genius Podcast Episode 131: The Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey

I. CANNOT. RECOMMEND. THIS. HIGHLY. ENOUGH.

Nick’s leaving created all sorts of holes in our lives. One of those was that Nick always made the turkey for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was always a joint effort on our part, Nick and I together made most of the food that my family then shared at our Thanksgiving meal. (My mom makes the pumpkin pie, my Grandma makes Betsy’s most favorite Cherry Jello, and my sister, bless her heart, makes the crescent rolls.)

I had absolutely no idea how to make the turkey. And then I found this recipe. Kendra (aka The Lazy Genius) is indeed a genius about the things that matter, and lazy about the things that don’t. This recipe makes a delicious turkey with an absolute minimum of fuss. IT. IS. THE. BOMB.


Dolly Parton’s America

The girls and I adore Dolly so much. This podcast is a bit different, and it took me a minute to grasp the point, but ultimately I’m really enjoying it. I will admit that when the girls and I went to Dollywood a couple of years ago, the irony was not lost on me that I was spending over $200 for the three of us to enjoy a theme park that is built on the idea that Dolly grew up with a coat of rags and nearly starved to death one winter. But at the same time, I see what she has done for the area that she grew up in, how she has lifted them up- it is, of course, the dream that I hope that everyone would have, the ability to provide a life for those around them. To encourage literacy and development and all the things. I will always love Miss Dolly.


Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

This was an interesting read for a bit of a Little Women superfan, which indeed I am. This book explores not only the well known biographical trope of Louisa’s use of her own family as the model of the four girls, but also explores adaptations of Little Women and its place in the literary cannon. I could quibble with a few of her own personal opinions, but mostly it all holds together nicely. She picks apart different characterizations, spends a good deal of time on the idea that it is Katharine Hepburn’s Jo who we all remember, as opposed to some of Jo’s actual character-after all, she does ultimately marry. And so what does it say that that was the ultimate goal, even for headstrong Jo?

(My own personal favorite of the Little Women is Beth, who is contented and happy at home with her sisters.)

The girls and I are anxiously awaiting the new movie, along with a million other movies that seem to be about to drop. Betsy is in complete love with the new Disney+ streaming service. We have been watching Christmas movies and reading all the books (we have well over 100 Christmas books). Enjoying so much our evenings in.

“If it’s dark, put it in park.” That’s our motto for this late fall. So far, it’s been fairly glorious.

The Road to Xanadu...

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge


On Wednesday, Felicity came home from school sick. Thus, I became that stay-at-home mom that I used to be for a day (which I do miss from time to time, back when my babies were babies and my life was just wholly centered on them- life has moved so far from that now, and it’s as it should be, but it is nice to go back sometimes).


Felicity slept and played with Barbies, while I did laundry and read my book. And then she declared that we needed to watch something. Which was a tricky proposition, because Betsy hates to be left out, and so we had to chose something that she wouldn’t care that we watched without her.

And so we landed on my most beloved Xanadu.

Here is the thing about Xanadu: I am super well aware that it is a mucked up mess of a movie. The actual storyline is terrible and mostly boring. When we start watching I always start to question why exactly I love this movie, because it starts slow and Michael Beck is woefully miscast as the lead.

But by the end I’m always so charmed that I want to start watching it all over again (I did make poor Debbie listen to the soundtrack 3 times the next day).

There’s just something magical about what is basically a 1940s musical updated to a late 1970s roller skating, glittery disco. Gene Kelly is in roller skates! Olivia Newton-John is at her most fabulous, singing songs that would go on to become some of her biggest hits. There is a Don Bluth animated short in the middle of the movie!

It all makes up for the complete and total lack of a coherent script, and the lack of any kind of chemistry between Michael Beck and Olivia. If only John Travolta were opposite the love story would at least seem believable. I read that Olivia had tried to get Mel Gibson for the role, which would have been just amazing, but alas, this is what we have.


I'm not one hundred percent sure why Felicity always loves the movies that truly tend to make the least sense that I love (she adores Return to Oz, which is genuinely one of my most bizarre favorite films). But I'm so grateful that she enjoyed spending her afternoon with her mother watching a movie that was dated and old even when I watched it for the first time.

I'll take all of the sick day, magical disco roller skating moments that are still left with my girls.

The One With the Spreadsheet...

This weekend for me is going to be about cleaning and reading and watching the scary movies that the girls refuse to watch. (I can't convince them that Scream is a treasure and that they are missing out.)

BUT...

Someone, somewhere, decided to start the Christmas movies tonight. Even I, most avowed lover of Christmas ever, think it's a bit early.

In any case, however, I did indeed create my spreadsheet of all the Christmas movies from tonight until New Year's. And so, dear blog reader, I share because honestly spreadsheets are my love language and I would love for someone else to enjoy them as well.

(You will also notice that the Christmas Very Brady Renovation is there too. Again, we are geeks.)


Christmas Movie Spreadsheet


My own personal Christmas movies will begin on Halloween, when the girls and I indulge in all the candy and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's a most beloved tradition.


Happy Halloween and Merry Christmas and all the things from this most nerdy, Type A girl :)