Wednesday, August 14, 2013

What I'll be sad to leave behind...

If we do end up moving in the near future (I am so very superstitious and paranoid about the universe, I'm afraid to assume that we will, in fact, be moving until we do, in fact, move. So please excuse me, but I'll be speaking in nothing but hypotheticals for the foreseeable future...), there are a few things about the house that I'll miss. I mean, it's hard NOT to miss the place where you brought your babies home for the first time. Especially when you put so much planning and effort into that place...


This nursery is by far, my favorite room in the house. We did the shelf around the room on our own, pulled from a site that Steve found online, using basically these exact colors of light blue and green. Even though we knew Brigid was going to be a girl when we were planning this room, I was in the denial stage of 'I don't want my baby wearing nothing but pink. I want greens and yellows and I WILL NOT GIVE IN TO GENDER STEREOTYPES!!!' And I didn't. Until my daughter learned to speak for herself, and then, well...

Might I introduce you to the room she helped us design, once we decided that letting her pick out her own 'big girl bedroom' might be a good way to help her come to terms with the new baby?





There is pink in this room. Lots and lots and LOTS of pink. And a princess chandelier, just for good measure. I don't mind, though...I actually kind of love this room more than I expected to. I think it's the blue, particularly the Tiffany blue of the accent wall. I don't know many people who hate the sight of Tiffany blue, you know?

Ideally, I'd like to just pick up the 2nd floor of my house and move it to a new location, which is not at all unreasonable, I don't think. Now, I just need to figure out who I talk to about making that happen...

(Caitlin's furniture, which was Brigid's furniture before her, came from a baby boutique north of Atlanta, whose name I don't remember, except for the glider. The glider came from Babies R' Us. Brigid's furniture all came from IKEA, including the chandelier and the little pink chair, although it was a 'natural' color until we spray painted it pink. The comforter and curtains, we picked up from the Pottery Barn outlet.)

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Moving

I know this is my fault, because I am the driving force behind wanting to move someplace new, but I am SO TIRED of spending time working on a house that I don't want to live in anymore. The painting and planting and floor redoing and packing and decluttering and OMG MAKE IT STOP. Please. Just make it stop.

I have a room full of boxes and furniture that need to be taken for storage, because it's not stuff that we're getting rid of, it's just decorative stuff that's making the house look too full, and the house can't look too full when you're showing it to prospective buyers. I have a deck that needs to be painted if it will ever, for the love of all that is good, stop raining for more than six hours at a time. I have a yard that needs pavers laid, pine straw spread, and bushes trimmed, if it wasn't a thousand degrees out, in those six hours when it wasn't raining. I have a basement to organize, a master bedroom to clean out, an almost 4-year old's room to declutter, if I could just stop doing laundry and dishes and watching my kids for a good 48-hour period so I could make some actual progress. I have a garage to clean out. And carpets and windows that need to be cleaned. And doors and windowsills that need to be painted. And maybe a bathroom tile that needs to be fixed.

And that's all before we go through the process of listing and showing the house, and then hopefully selling and packing up the house.

And all of a sudden, I'm starting to remember why I said I never wanted to move again when we were moving into the house we currently live in. I'm going to record one of those video diaries of these next few weeks, to keep in a safety deposit box, so in the event that I start to get the itch to move again after this whole ordeal is over, Steve can force me to watch it on repeat until it kills that itch dead.

It's the least I can do after putting him through all of this, right?

Thursday, August 8, 2013

TV Time

Well, last week I had so much fun participating in Ginger's favorite movie link-up that you'd better believe I wanted to participate in this week's favorite television show version.

10) Alias - I've always said that I want to be Sydney Bristow when I grow up, because seriously...she kicks so much ass. Steve and I started watching the show randomly one summer in the middle of its run, because I think maybe he found a deal for season 1 on DVD? And he's never been one to pass up a good deal? Even if that deal is on a show that neither of us had shown any inclination to watch prior to that moment? Whatever. That DVD was my first taste at binge watching an entire season of one show, and well, I was hooked after that. I have, however, never quite forgiven Jennifer Garner for breaking up with Michael Vartan in the middle of the show, to go marry Ben Affleck, even if the Garner-Affleck kids are some of the cutest kids on the planet. I'M STILL NOT OVER IT, OK? This has not stopped me, however, from adding it to my Amazon Prime watchlist, because I intend to watch it from beginning to end, all over again, sometime in the near future.

9) Charmed - I don't know what it is about this show, but I love it. STOP JUDGING ME! *ahem* The show runs on TNT now, and they were just starting with the pilot episode during my first week of maternity leave after having Brigid, so through the magic of the DVR, I was able to record and watch the entire thing from start to finish. The supernatural overload may have had something to do with the voices I could have sworn I was hearing in the white noise machine when getting up with Brigid during all of those sleepless nights, come to think of it...

8) Bones - I just love the relationships between all of the characters. The science stuff is interesting, I find the murder stuff a little gruesome from time to time, but the characters keep me invested in the show, no matter what.

7) Parks & Rec - It's not weird that I want to go knock off Ann Perkins and then take her place as Leslie's best friend, right?

6) New Girl - I know she's kind of a polarizing figure, but I LOVE Zooey Deschanel, and I want most of her wardrobe from the show.

5) Downton Abbey - I'm giving Downton this spot on a trial basis. It has A LOT to do before it can make up for what it did to me last season.

4) Friends - I will watch these reruns whenever they are on. Who DOESN'T watch these reruns whenever they are on?

3) Seinfeld - I've made Steve watch the reruns throughout our relationship, because I got tired of quoting the show to him, only to have him look at me like I was nuts. Not that he doesn't have a point, when I can relate most of life to Seinfeld, but still. I needed his support. Our family favorite is probably the Festivus episode, because we have a lot of fun interpreting Caitlin's baby shrieks as 'I've got a lot of problems with you people!' Well, I have a lot of fun doing that. Steve might just be humoring me at this point.

2) West Wing - This is such a great show. It is so well written, with such great characters, that I am still sad they didn't just leave it on the air. I absolutely would have watched Jimmy Smits as president for another 4 years, if it meant they weren't taking Josh Lyman away from me. This is my current Amazon Prime binge-viewing obsession.

1) Gilmore Girls - I want to live in Stars Hollow. Not in some small town somewhere in New England. Just Stars Hollow. I'd also like to be able to think as fast as Lorelai Gilmore talks, if that's not too much to ask.


Honorable Mentions:
The Office - Jim and Pam's wedding might have been one of my favorite episodes of any television series, ever.
The Bachelor/ette - Who doesn't like a nice hot mess to watch every now and then?
So You Think You Can Dance - Those kids have some serious talent.
Community - It can be up and down, quality-wise, but the up can also be really, REALLY up.
Dawson's Creek - Mostly because I have nostalgic memories of gathering in my dorm's common room to watch it with a whole group of girls in college. It's on my watchlist for future start-to-finish viewing at some point, too.
VEEP - Hilarious. The show is FREAKING HILARIOUS.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but this is what I have at the moment. What about you?

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Let's all go to the movies...

When I was younger, writing was my creative outlet. It was the one area where I had any sort of artistic talent, and I genuinely enjoyed getting lost in the words rolling around in my head, as I tried to put what I wanted to say on paper as quickly as it wanted to come out.

Then, I went off to college, where my writing-intensive Government 2nd major fell away as I became focused on the spreadsheets and formulas and calculations of my Finance 1st major. I never quite lost my love of writing, but I felt like, somewhere along the way, I'd lost the ability to write how I wanted to write. I started my family blog in 2010 as a way to bring some of that joy back into my life, while also documenting my daughter's life for my out-of-state family, who never got to see her as much as they'd like. Eventually, that became my family yearbook, printed out every year by my husband for us to remember the events of the previous year, followed religiously by my mom and grandmother for pictures of my girls, used by my mother-in-law to share our lives with her friends. And I love that they all have the opportunity to do what they want with that space, truly. But I also feel that because that is what that space is used for, it needs to be primarily a picture book, with the words providing a secondary focus for people if they can bring themselves to look away from the smiling baby that has to be included in every. single. post. to prevent my mother from asking me when I'm going to start posting more pictures of the girls for her to see.

So, you know, the words. I'm still trying to bring them back.

A couple of weeks ago, Ginger started this Bring Back the Words weekly prompt that I've wanted to participate in every time she's mentioned it, but, for various reasons, I just haven't. Well, maybe not various reasons. Maybe just one. 

It's time, ok? I just never seem to have time. I always see the weekly prompt, think to myself 'THIS IS THE WEEK I'M GOING TO PARTICIPATE!!!', and then before I know it, the week is over, the next week's prompts are up, and, I don't know. It just hasn't happened, yet. BUT!!!!

This is the week! Because this week? Well, Ginger is talking about movies. And, my friends? I have some THOUGHTS on movies.

So, let's jump in, shall we? Here are my 10 favorite movies of all time:

10) Can't Hardly Wait - This movie came out the year I graduated from high school. So of course we watched it at least once a week in college, because 'OHMYGOD, that's like, so US!' Sorry I'm not sorry.

9) Match Point - I don't know what it is about this movie. I watched it originally because Matthew Goode is on my 'list' (you know what I'm talking about), and, well, that's reason enough for me to watch something, right there. But, I really loved it. And I found myself actually rooting for the villain to win in the end, although that may have had more to do with my strong dislike of Scarlett Johansson as an actress than the movie itself, but still...I'm going to give credit to the movie. It is good. 

8) Rudy - I went to Notre Dame, so I'm a little biased, here, but this movie makes me feel ALL of the feelings. I can remember my roommates and I feeling beat down one week towards the end of a semester, and we spent a Saturday watching this movie and sobbing like fools. Because Rudy! He beat the odds! He played football at Notre Dame! The fight song! Woo! By the end of the movie, we were so full of school pride, WE probably could have made that tackle against Georgia Tech, and getting through the semester didn't seem like such an ordeal anymore. Also, my husband (also an ND grad) starts tearing up at the music from THE OPENING CREDITS, so, it's kind of a big deal in our house. Side note, the first: I've heard the real Rudy speak at a pep rally. He's terrible. Also, I think he was kind of an ass when he was actually at Holy Cross/Notre Dame. But still! Rudy!

7) Elf - This movie makes me happy. I love everything about Christmas, and I love Will Ferrell, and I refer to my daughter as an angry elf all of the time when she gets pissed off. It was on Showtime the other night, and I watched it because I was sad. It helped...

6) Love, Actually - Happy, Christmas, everything I said above, etc, although you will have to replace Will Ferrell with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. And I have no problem with that. They would be why this movie is ranked ahead of Elf, honestly.

5) Newsies - Fact: I have been in love with Christian Bale since I was 13 years old, when my high school music teacher had us watch Newsies in class one day. He remains my longest running relationship, to this day. For Brigid's first Christmas, I bought her Newsies on DVD. SHE NEEDED IT, OK?

4) Chasing Liberty - I like the idea of running off with a hot British guy in a foreign country. Or, I did, anyway, back in the day. Now the thought of sleeping outside all night on top of a building in Prague just makes my neck hurt. But still...I'll watch the movie anytime it's on.

3) Harry Potter (any and all of them) - I'm going to include this as one movie, because I will absolutely watch all eight of them anytime they are on t.v. In fact, ABC Family just did a Harry Potter marathon last weekend, and even though I came in late, I still managed to catch three of them while I was painting my staircase (don't ask...), and honestly? I'm disappointed I missed the first few they showed. I would have had it on all day, if I'd known it was available. Side note, the second: We are going to Disney in November, with a stop at Universal, first. I have informed my husband that there's a chance I will never actually make it to Disney, because I'm partially convinced that I'm meant to live my life as a character actor at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I think this would make me happy. This doesn't make me weird, right?

2) Center Stage - The first time my roommate made me watch this movie in college, she was acting all swoony over Cooper Nielson, and I thought she was crazy, because no. Not attractive in the least bit. She just smiled at me and promised to check in with me again at the end of the movie. Yeah...she was absolutely justified in being swoony. There is just something about a boy who can dance, you know? This is one of two things that stay on my iPad at all times because I never get tired of watching it, and the ballet scene at the end is surprisingly effective background noise for a workout.

1) Pride & Prejudice (the long one) - Ok, so I know this isn't technically a movie, since it was a BBC miniseries, but I don't care. It is six hours of Colin Firth being Mr. Darcy, and Jennifer Ehle as the most perfectly awesome Elizabeth Bennet, and even though I have seen it a million times already, I've never hesitated to watch it again when I have free time. It is the one thing that I will never, ever, EVER take off of my iPad OR my iPhone to free up space, and if that isn't true love, I don't know what is.

Honorable Mention: A Charlie Brown Christmas (not really a movie, I guess, but I have so many happy feelings when I watch this show, dating back to how much I loved Christmas as a child, that I couldn't leave it off of the list.), Hoosiers (I'm from Indiana. It's a requirement if I ever want to be allowed back in the state.), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (I like the Bryan Adams song, and if that's wrong, then I don't want to be right. Also, I have a weird attraction to Christian Slater in that movie. I know...I don't get it, either.).

And that is my list. Tell me...what have I missed? Where am I wrong? What are your favorite movies?