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. 

Right Where You Left Me

 

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”  -Antonio Gramsci

 

Never have I stumbled upon a quote that speaks more to my heart in this darkest time of the darkest year of life.

 

This time of year is always one of introspection for me, this last bit of the year that holds my turning a new age just as the world turns a page onto a new time, a new perspective- I have realized in the past few years how very lucky I am to be born on Christmas day, which just naturally is a time of year lent to figuring out how much you’ve grown in the past year and to look forward to the new year with all of its empty planner pages ready for new hopes and dreams.

 

But of course, this year everything has a completely different shine to it. Life at the end of 2020 is not about looking back over my favorite things that I’ve stored up to recommend, not about looking back to where I have traveled and how I have grown as a person- life at the end of 2020 is about survival, and joy found in pockets of the tiniest glimmers of hope, and grief unlike I’ve ever known on such a wide scale.

 

My own personal grief story, cataloged so thoroughly in this blog, feels to me like it has been lived out in front of my eyes by nearly everyone I know as they grapple with this year. The world turning upside down through no fault of your own isn’t much comfort when you still have to deal with the consequences of decisions taken from your hands. Life keeps plodding along even as all of the tentpole moments have been stripped so bare it is hard to recognize them.

 

I keep being reminded of the first year that the girls and I decorated for Christmas as just the three of us- I kept saying, “Just think, next year this won’t seem so strange because we will have lived through it before.” And now, every single year as we get the decorations out, I say it and we laugh over how silly with grief those three girls were, so sad to be dragging heavy boxes out and trying to figure out what decorations could be safely put out without dredging up too many memories of their father. If it helps at all to know, this year we put all of the old decorations out, even those “Johnson Family” decorations that we so carefully stowed away that first year, because it doesn’t make us sad to remember anymore.

 

Which leads me to what this year that I chose the word “release” means to me now. 2020 has been a year of release unlike anything that I have ever known. Some of it (most of it) has been the same for me as for everyone- an understanding of how many seemingly small joys I take for granted in life, of coming to grips with how frightening it is to understand truly what tender hooks my life is balanced on.

 

But it has also been a year of me releasing, finally, the idea that I am going to just control life from here on out. I could have told you, 5 years ago, that I knew that my obsession with my hair and my weight and my routine was a symptom of my feeling at loose ends, staring at the end of my marriage. I understood it in my head. But I honestly didn’t care. If straightening my hair gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning and not see that girl whose husband had abandoned her, then straighten my hair I would.

 

I’ve released bits and pieces of all of that leading up to this year. But this year was the year that I finally got it through my head that it doesn’t matter exactly how my marriage ended. The story that I began living at 21 years of age had this painful ending, yes, but that was all a part of the making of me.

 

I envy people that I know whose love stories have continued on, true, but I also have a deep desire to own this story that I am living. I lived out a story that had an ending. I’m never sure what exactly I’m brushing up against when I bristle against that- if it’s that good Christian girls don’t get divorced, or if it’s that Type A girls don’t give up on anything- but this year of release has been about me accepting that as a fact and letting it live. I’m not trying to tie it up in a bow and make it all neat and tidy. That grief hurt. But it’s gone now.

 

The word that is pressing on my heart for 2021 is “quiet.” That’s a scary word for me to embrace. I’ve spent such years working my way out of my shell, getting to a point where I talk (much too much) instead of being overcome with fright. But quiet is what I’m feeling entering 2021. I want to wrap my arms around my girls and enjoy these last few years of Betsy being at home, I want to wrap myself inside of my books and music and movies and just marinate in the enjoyment that life brings. I want my words to be uplifting and hopeful, words untangling themselves from fear and worry.

 

I want to be the girl who lived.

Freaks and Geeks

 

It’s the spooky season in the Watson Johnson house, and we are eating up all of our favorites, which include (but are not limited to) Hocus Pocus, Ghostbusters, Halloweentown, E.T., Hotel Transylvania, The Munsters, The Addams Family, and (finally, for the first time) Scream.

 

As such, my apologies for the Christmas spreadsheet being late- my brain isn’t in Christmas mode yet. (Although, allow me to assure you that the moment we hit November 1, the Christmas playlist will be on and I will gladly consume any movie that includes “mistletoe” in the title.)

Christmas Movies 2020

 

Anyway, anyway….

I don't talk about politics on the blog even though, as my therapist says, it's my jam. As the wonky nerd that I am though I will talk until my final breath about how important it is for you to vote. Vote 411 is a great resource to learn more about your ballot choices before you vote. 

 

 

The Bible Binge: Faith Adjacent

Purity Culture

 

I adore this spinoff from my beloved Bible Binge podcast, in which Erin Moon searches for biblical “reception in unlikely places.” I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago, I have been really pondering my own experience with purity culture. This podcast spoke to so many experiences of my youth, holding them up to the light without making fun of them, just searching for truth and meaning- all of it engrossing, in my opinion.

 

 

The SSR Podcast

Episode 117: Meet Kirsten

 

SSR is one of my most favorite ever podcasts, in which Alli Hoff Kosik and a guest read young adult literature (normally from their own youth) and reexamine it in light of adult minds and perspectives. I was excited for this episode with Kate Kennedy from the Be There In Five podcast (I truly love Be There in Five but-important caveat- Kate’s episodes are so long, often two hours, I have to really prepare myself to pay attention for that long to just Kate alone talking- I’m sure that says something about my attention span).

 

I was just honestly jazzed because this was an American Girl book. My Samantha doll remains to this day my favorite gift ever, and I own all of the Kirsten books, so I was familiar with her story. Alli and Kate dig deep into American Girl and its origins and subsequent buyout by Mattel. It’s all fascinating in the best way.

 

Open Book by Jessica Simpson

 

I’m only halfway through listening to this on Audible and I’m loving it so much I have to gush about it on here. I watched Nick and Jessica’s television show and always felt such affinity for Nick-he was closer to my age, and it always seemed that he was the mature one. Listening to Jessica’s story is captivating. She doesn’t deny at all her mistakes, but it is so fascinating to understand where she was coming from, what her life was like leading up to her stardom, how much making a reality show truly changed the course of her life. I’m forever and always interested in other people’s lives (which is why memoirs are my thing), and of course throw in divorce and I will devour it.

We are heading into the darkest days, and in this crazy year everything feels anxious around the edges. I'm holding onto this time with my girls full of movies and books and nights in and trying to learn the dance to BTS' "Dynamite." Which is harder than it looks.

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

 

18 years ago today it was raining (not quite as dreary a day as today, but it was raining). My grandma told me that was good luck. (It wasn’t, obviously, but when I am a grandma, I will say the same thing.)

 

Every year, on this particular day, I write a blog post that mostly I don’t post.

 

5 years on seems like a good time to let them live.

 

From 2017:

“The thing is, as I have mentioned, I waited a really long time to meet someone and fall in love with them. I didn't wait patiently. I prayed and wished and hoped for love to hit me over the head like a sledgehammer and I exasperated everyone around me because I was forever talking about wanting to fall in love and get married and that's exhausting and boring after a while. I didn't have a plan for my life.

 

Enter Nick.

 

Enter exactly everything you ever wanted all in one fell swoop.

 

It was so very fairytaleish.

 

It makes everything much more complicated than it surely needs to be.”

 

From 2018:

 

“I had a revelation today.

 

(To begin, I talk to myself in the car in the mornings, unless I am on the phone. Most days, I actually am on the phone. But when I’m not, I yammer to myself.)

 

Anyway, a revelation.

 

I said, “I am trying to learn to love someone without losing myself in the process.”

 

And then I just sat there for a minute.

 

Because, you know, what the heck?

 

I know all of the correct things to say about this-things that I say to my girls, about being strong women, about finding their passions. I have spent this past year doing all the brave things, trying new things, falling down and getting back up and all the things.

 

But here is a brave thing: I’m going to be very honest in this space. When I met Nick, and he fell in love with me, I tangled myself all up in that feeling, that idea that someone wanted to build a life with me, wanted to have children with me-and that’s as it should be, of course. I married someone who was my very best friend at the time, who I just adored-I had never been in love before and I found it intoxicating.

 

My marriage came apart in pieces. You know that metaphor about boiling a frog? How, if you want to boil a frog, place it in the pan and let the water slowly rise and it doesn’t know to jump out? That is the best way that I know of to describe how my marriage came to be in pieces without me even completely realizing it. Because, of course, looking back everything seems obvious.

 

But somewhere recently I read something that said, if you don't feel safe enough to yell back, you're not safe enough.

 

 

It all dovetails-my personality is that I want to be the best, so naturally I wanted to be the best wife. Mix that with genuine adoration and trust and faith in happy endings, and just what I always wanted, always, for as long as I could remember, and my beautiful girls and our family, and it just”

 

(That’s where I ended it.)

 

From 2019:

“I don’t know how to teach Betsy how to navigate dating-how to flirt, or how to figure out if a boy is interested in you, or any of those things. I feel completely useless to her.

 

The lack of instincts that I have around any of that is somewhat astounding.

 

In the before, I would have simply told her that when you actually fall in love, everything just falls into place. That was my experience. Nick Johnson came along and swept me off my feet and life was never the same again. It didn’t matter about flirting or dating really or any of those things-because I met Nick and I just knew that he was who I had been missing.

 

In the after, I am left with this notion that mostly that wasn’t the best way to go about falling in love. I should have questioned more, I should have concentrated on figuring out who I was instead of just who I was as Nick’s wife.

 

Divorce is just such a tangle of emotions-it’s like living beyond the end of a fairy tale into the cold light of day, and realizing that a lot of what I believed to be the truth that I built my life on was a lie. It takes all that I have not to go into this explanation every time I tell anyone that I’m divorced-we did all the right things. We had date nights, we were best friends, we were all the things. And it still didn’t work out.

 

My marriage taught me that there is no guarantee to love. We wake up every morning and chose to love that person that we are with. Which is an amazing notion when this other person is choosing to be with you, and”

 

(That’s the end of that one. No idea at all what the rest of that sentence was.)

 

In the end, it’s just that I want to remember. I didn’t post these at the time because my feelings are always so raw around this particular memory. Even as it has changed and evolved and twisted into what exists today. I can't put to words what it is today. Maybe next year. 

Doves Cry

 

“I am well in body, although considerably rumpled in spirit”- oh, Anne girl, me too.

 

Life just now, today, feels heavy. Pressing. Dark.

 

When I lived all those years inside my own head- those years in college when I only spoke to a handful of people and then those early years of motherhood where my social circle mostly just included Nick, my sister, and my parents- sometimes I long for that girl. She was lonely, yes- especially the one in college- but she didn’t feel so much.

 

We have lived through our first breakup. And I am so very proud of Betsy and how she handled herself- she was honest and brave and tried her best to explain that she values the friendship that they created. My heart, though, my heart was not created for such things. I truly adored her boyfriend, and found him to be so polite and kind. I am proud of Betsy for understanding that she needs to be honest about her feelings- she is so much braver than I am.

 

That compounded with an unexpected death in a friend’s family, along with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg- it’s all so much. (Most people who know me well know that I love to read Supreme Court rulings and I adore, honestly, all of the justices in one way or another.)

 

The original plan for today’s post was to be this fun post about various podcasts and books I’ve been loving and then sharing my spreadsheet for the Halloween movie schedule.

 

I contemplated just not posting anything at all, but spreadsheets- they truly are my love language.

 Halloween 2020 Spreadsheet

For now, that will have to do.