My children just wrapped on a production of Narnia: The Musical. And I know I'm biased and what not, you know, not exactly the most objective of reporters, but they were awesome.
Aidan played the role of the White Witch and Cole played the role of Mr. Beaver. This is the first show in which they both played leading roles, and man did they play them to the hilt.
I realize some of you who read this blog might think, "Sure, why wouldn't kids of yours be in theater?" but the thing is, I would never have dreamed of doing something like that when I was growing up. I'm far too much of an introvert to put it all out there the way they do. I think this is why I'm always in awe when I see them on stage.
Because I can't imagine doing it myself.
And then I remember: oh yeah, this has nothing to do with me.
I love the opportunity these two give to both me and Dan to experience something new and fresh and so full of life.
Thanks, Aidan and Cole. You two are truly amazing.
Most people have favorite things they like to quote. Maybe it's from a movie. Or a television show. Or a book.
Are you like most people? Because in this respect, I am.
I've had pretty steady access to media throughout my life. TV, music, movies—stuff that makes up pop culture, essentially. And there have been so many memorable scenes, or lines, or catch phrases that have stuck with me, filling my brain so that when and where they are needed, they can quickly be retrieved and applied correctly to any given situation.
Take for example the clip above, from one of my favorite old movies, Airplane.
Yesterday, Dan had a long, busy day at work planned, so I decided to send him a text early in the day that said this:
He knew it was Leslie Nielson, but he kept guessing, "Police Squad?" Throughout the rest of the day, whenever he would text me, I'd simply reply with: "Good luck. We're all counting on you."
SIDE NOTE: Yesterday around mid morning, I looked out into the backyard to see two St. Paul police officers, weapons drawn and police dog at the ready, on my deck and in my garage. Turns out they were looking for 'a guy.' This was how it went down via text to Dan, keeping my quote theme in mind:
Of course this got me thinking of my favorite things to quote. Two nights ago, we were flipping channels and landed on Pulp Fiction. Now this is a movie you either loved or hated or didn't see, but we're huge fans, so we started watching. I can't quote a lot of it here on this PG-rated blog, but we decided last night we'd try to work more of Pulp Fiction into our Dan–Cathy quote habits. You okay? Nah, man… I'm pretty f-in far from okay.
One movie I will quote here is probably my most oft quoted movie of all time, Silence of the Lambs.
I know what you're thinking: Cathy, you're sick. But seriously, aside from the fact that I believe this movie to be a veritable master class for writing, directing and acting, it is also one of the richest founts of quotable material in the celluloid realm.
But not just for the great (albeit disturbing) scenes like this (which you will have to watch on YouTube, as embedding has been disabled):
I can do this scene from memory. Macabre? Perhaps. But you know what is totally awesome? When you can drop parts of this into casual conversation. Or when you can recite it via the Talking Tom Cat.
In this house, we go well beyond the 'fava beans and a nice chianti.' You get what I'm saying?
My friend and frequent contributor to The Pioneer Woman's Entertainment blog, Mark Spearman, shares my love of this movie and it's exceptionally high quotable quotient. But not just SOTL, we also love to quote Contact, Aliens, and only recently have begun to mine the sorely overlooked material from Poltergeist.
Our Facebook exchanges often will take whatever is going on in the world or our lives and will be made over to fit into borrowed dialogue from any of these movies.
Take the following scene from Silence of the Lambs—and I will not share a clip because it's a bit racy—but there's a scene when Lecter says to Clarice, "Apparently Jack Crawford likes you, and you like him too…true, he is much older than you…" and then he proceeds to get completely inappropriate. Does this ring a bell?
Mark will lift such dialog directly, clean it up and drop it right onto my Facebook page, like this:
And that just makes my day.
Go ahead, make my day!
What about you? What do you and your family quote? Have you ever thought about documenting those phrases and words you pull from the mass media that surrounds you?
Surely that's a very do-able idea.
Yes, Cathy. It is. And please, stop calling me Shirley.
I like to give a lot of razzing to my good friend Tara, who gets a real thrill in life when on the hunt for all things old and smelly, or what some people like to refer to as vintage.
Okay, maybe it's not all smelly stuff and maybe she's consciously seeking items coated with the ancient epithelial cells of people from the 1900s for reasons other than health code violations. Suffice to say I don't share her love of vintage.
You can't write a book touting clean and simple scrapbook page design and then brag to people about the 600-year-old tea cozy you scored at the Goodwill over the weekend. No one's buying that story in a billion years.
And yet I could have not been more shocked to learn that it turns out I actually am into vintage. And smelly vintage at that. Or at least part of it was smelly.
Meet my Mom's bowling ball.
Shirley MacDonald bowled in a womens' league when I was growing up. She says she wasn't anything to write home about, but hey, she had her own ball and her own bag and her own shoes. In my book, that makes anyone plausibly legit.
When I was going to school at the University of Texas–Arlington in 1986, one of my required courses was Physical Education. Yes, college-level P.E. credits were needed to graduate, and four semesters of them. So I signed up for the activity requiring the least amount of physical exertion on my part—bowling. Afterall, I needed to save my energy for smoking and drinking coffee and writing really awful poetry in the student union.
Her league days long since behind her, my Mom gave me her old brown Brunswick ball and I took it into a pro shop and had the holes redrilled to fit my hand.
Turns out, I was a damned fine bowler. My all time high score? 234. I'm not making that up people. I also aced all of my written finals. You see, I studied not just the game of bowling; no, I also studied the college-level manual. I became a scholar of bowling.
The years came and went without much bowling in my life here in Minnesota. Oh sure, Dan and I would hit the alley from time to time back in the early 90s, back when you could smoke and drink yourself silly all while attending to the tedious task of keeping score by hand. My God, how did we manage?
The years have been peppered with trips to the alley, but to be honest, I sort of forgot about the shiny brown ball in the basement.
A year ago, Dan's brothers and sisters planned a sibling night out. All the sibs and their spouses or significant others would gather in winter for some fellowship and merriment. Our choice? Bowling. It was so much fun that we decided to do a repeat for this winter's family outing.
But this year, I remembered that ball in the basement.
Now I'm not saying I smoked anyone. But the first frame I bowled? A spare. The second? A spare. Compared to last year, where my highest score came out at around 56, I was on a roll. So to speak.
I swear to you, it was the ball.
I bowled a 132 and a 124 respectively. To be sure, nowhere near the glory days of my college years, but part of me said, "Oh baby, you still got it in there somewhere."
It's funny that me, a person who is more or less averse to all things vintage is finding such a happy kinship with this newly rediscovered ball.
But the bag? Holy hell. This thing smells like it belonged to the president of the Crypt Keeper Bowler's League.
I know. It's the coolest looking thing since rub-on alphas, but trust me: it smells like the Civil War.
I'll be ordering a nice modern replacement bag soon. The zipper requires WD-40 just to get the thing open and closed, and the ball base is no longer attached to the bottom of the bag, serving zero purpose as the ball just rolls around in there. And then there's the smell.
But at least I've found a connection to something that's kind of vintage. Maybe Tara's not so nutty afterall.
I mean this old thing has been passed down not from some ancient stranger whose story I'll never know or whose dead skin cells I will need to fear breathing in, but from someone I know and love, my Mom.
Call me modest. Call me raised in a time when only the girls of questionable character bore their bare midriffs. Call me no fun. Call me a prude. I'm sorry, but I just can't walk around the womens' locker room naked.
I would first like to say to those of you who can and do, more power to you. Seriously. If you have no issue walking naked as the day you were born to and from your locker, then back to the mirror, then back to your locker only to sit your unclothed tush right next to my gym bag on the bench, then namasté my exposed gym friend!
But I can't bring myself to just let it all hang out. I think this has less to do with body image (okay, maybe I don't know if my 45-year-old, I've breast fed two babies, lost and gained weight numerous times boobies need to be flapping around in plain view), and more to do with modesty and personal comfort.
For the past four months, I've been trying to figure out an easier way to get ready in the gym post swim. It's always the same. I'm standing at the mirror, putting on some lotion or drying my hair and kablaam! My towel comes unwrapped and there I am, white, damp and naked as a Botticelli. It never fails. Lift your arm too high with the blow dryer, and fugeddaboutit. You. Are. Now. Naked.
I know I really shouldn't have these issues, but I know I'm not alone. Yes, I appreciate the comfort level some women have with their naked bodies. No, I do not feel compelled to join in. Let's just say there are places other than the gym where I am perfectly at home being naked. (Yes, Dan, I'm referring to our kitchen.)
That said, I found the greatest solution to my issue and all for the low, low price of $14.99.
Oh, you wonderous velcro-sealed garment you! Not only can I easily manuever my way through the locker room without the fear of towel droppage, but I can do so with swagger and confidence. Yes! I can squat down to unlock my locker and remain perfectly G-rated from the back!
It even has a pocket to carry an extra items I might need in my post-workout freshening up.
I know what you're thinking. You could scrapbook in this sucker with a tool pocket like that!
I realize this post has little bearing on the lives of many, but you see I don't usually find cool stuff on the Internet to share with my readers. But this and the fact that it will permanently conceal my Casper-white tushka from the LA Fitness locker room ladies?
I spent the weekend taking a trip down memory lane on my blog. I compiled a handful of my favorite posts from the past year. I want to thank you for coming here and reading and commenting and simply being a part of my online world.
Last week, my friend Amy posted the video clip below on her Facebook page and it was one of those songs that after it was done, I knew: I have a new favorite song and possibly album for the season. Gotye (pronounced Go-tee-ay), you complete me.
Maybe it's his thin, pasty, sparsely furred frame, or his unusually large mouth, or even the fact that when he starts to belt it out he's vaguely reminiscent of Sting, but I cannot get this song out of my head. I wake up and it's there. Plus, guest singer Kimbra is one hotsie totsie who can sing. That, and it's visually cool clip. And if you need any other reason, he's technically Australian. Enjoy.
This marks the first year we get to see what our house looks like in a white, chilly, occasionally dreary Minnesota winter. The initial report? It totally pops!
I've actually been playing with Rad Lab a ton in the past few months. Rad Lab works with both Photoshop (CS3 or higher) and Photoshop Elements (version 7 or higher.) If you are a fan of actions or just playing with your photos, it's definitely a tool to check out. There's a ton of info at their site if you're interested in learning more. I recorded a very quick, decidedly not-too technical video to show you the Rad Lab interface in action.
Last week, I was digging through boxes of old photos and found many a gem, including the photo I'm about to share with you. I was 20-ish, perhaps. And my skin was a white as the freshly fallen snow.
Good Lord.
It took me a while to place the location and the reason for this shot.
Location? Dallas, Texas.
Reason? Documentation of a hair cut for my stylist.
Earrings? Did not belong to me.
Eyebrows? Had not yet discovered the true joy of plucking and shaping.
Neutral lip color? All the rage in 1986.
Constipated lip pout? All my idea.
Sometimes, I love the vantage point from 45. That's all I'm sayin'.
Here's to old photos and blown out skin from the pre-Photoshop years.
My creative, theater-lovin', teen-aged daughter is wrapping up a three-week run as one of the cast members of "Children of Eden" this weekend. I plan to attend two of the final three shows and I also plan to have an ample supply of Kleenex on hand.
I wasn't previously familiar with this show. I would drive Aidan to and from rehearsals, she listening to the soundtrack, and me trying to figure out what this show was really all about.
I knew that once I sat in the darkened theater, it would all come together. So I was patient.
Now as I sit and listen to the soundtrack—a daily occurrence here in my office—I can only go about every three songs without completely choking up and reaching for more tissue. And more often than not, there's a glimpse of the ugly cry.
Throughout the two-and-a-half-month rehearsal process, Aidan has come home every night bubbling over with excitement and gratitude for being part of this experience. (Read her essay on the experience by clicking here.) She has said this, of all the shows she's been in, has changed who she is as a performer and as a person. It's kind of hard as a parent to hear this and not get a little choked up.
We never pushed Aidan into anything. Sure, we encouraged her to play soccer and softball and basketball during her earlier years. She always loved being a part of any team. We let her dabble in ballet until she declared, "I just want to do MY dance and they won't let me!" (She was 5 at the time and decided ballet wasn't for her, only to take it back up at age 14 in conjunction with her love for performing in theater.) Musical instruments were part of it as well. She balked at lessons. She liked the idea of doing things her own way, figuring out guitar or piano chords as she went.
Aidan's love of shows and choral music and the entire genre of musical theater has been both a surprise and a total delight for us. Neither Dan nor I would consider ourselves theater buffs, despite the neighborhood rumors. Sure, we love hitting a play when we can, and we've enjoyed a handful of musicals over the years, Jesus Christ Superstar being one of our long-standing family favorites. But we're not versed in the genre as a whole.
Aidan has completely opened up a segment of the performing arts for us. From being in The Wiz, or Willy Wonka Jr. to the musical shows she's been part of at her school, this girl has schooled her hipster parents in another wonderful area of music.
Now I'm just rambling, but if you ever have a chance to catch this show, by all means do. You don't have to be a Bible lovin' person to enjoy it. It's really just a beautiful story about the love of parents and the universal conflicts faced by their children. Do they obey the will of their parents or do they seek their own truths? I can't help but feel when I'm sitting in the audience that it's also about parents questioning if they've really done enough to serve the needs of their children, and in the process they are seeking absolution for all of the places or times when they fell short.
Children of Eden Try not to blame us We were just human to error prone Children of Eden will you reclaim us?
Then there's simply the moment of seeing your beautiful and precious child standing on a stage beneath a spotlight, her voice soaring and her joy multiplying upon itself.
I guess you can't really quanitfy that, can you?
I wanted to share a page I did in this spirit, using some wonderful photos taken by my dear friend and photographer Margie just a few weeks back.
Here's to celebrating the passions of our offspring, or anyone who brings something new and beautiful into our lives.
JOURNALING READS: Rut roh. Here comes Sentimental Mama. It’s been hitting really hard of late as I watch you perform in Children of Eden. Seeing you sing—the completely pure joy on your face—it’s such a gift to see you living your passion. I have to agree with Father. The hardest part of love is the letting go. But letting go lets me see more of who you are. I will always associate this music with you and your joy. Thank you, sweet girl, for sharing this with me. November 2011
The Designer Digitals 4th Quarter Sale is currently in full swing. It's a great time to stock up and save 30% on everything in the store. Everything in my collection is on sale now through next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time.
