Ice Age and the next level

I firmly believe that if you want kids to do something, you have to make it part of who they are.  If you want them to eat in restaurants, you have to take them to restaurants. If you want them to read, read to them.  If you want them to behave in a theater, keep taking them to movie theaters.  This is not rocket science.

We can safely say that we have mastered the social setting of the cinema.  We have executive functioning and behavioral task analysis down when it comes to Hollywood and Independent art houses.  I don't have to take the earmuffs anymore.  We know the social story by heart and flow through the steps like any kids with a competent mom on a summer afternoon at a theater.

In even BIGGER news-we have mastered the sharing of a popcorn bucket.  One child sits on my lap with the bucket while the other two are on either side of me and the whole thing is gone half way through the film. We don't add butter, not because I am uber super healthy mommy, but because Kenneth freaks if anything touches anything he eats-no butter, no ketchup, zilch.  Four people sharing a bucket.  That's two dollars a person. Proud of my math or what?


We decided on Ice Age: Continental Drift.  This would be the fourth installment and they aren't direct to video yet.  I am not big on these movies, but...Ok, Ok...let's do it.  I'll pretend every time I hear Dennis Leary's voice I'm watching Rescue Me.

Previews are spotty-Lowell hides under the chair for most of them.  We want to see the Hobbit but Mama is going solo to Frankenweenie.

Lovely, bravo...we did it...mother of three can leave the house every now and then without making a scene!!!

What do we do when skills are mastered?  We take it to the next level and re-write the family goals.

Now that I can leave the house and watch a movie, we are going to discuss the movie afterwards.

Rule number one I want them to always remember: movies are meant for the big screen-not the little one.  The point of a movie is to go BIG!  You are doing a disservice to the writer/director/actors if you wait for DVD.   I think they got it.


I made them answer these questions if they wanted ice cream for desert:

What happened?  Give me the plot of the whole thing.

Who were the characters? (It helps to have a poster or a picture or a McDonald's Happy Meal if you swing that way...)

What did we learn about friendship and family?

What were the funny parts?  The comic relief?

What was scary?

We went over all of this and I think they got it. I'm not putting down their answers because I really don't want to spoil the surprise of the film...ha.

I made the mistake of asking, "Did anyone else notice anything we didn't talk about?"

Why did I do that?

Kenneth had to pipe up.  I knew he would.  I asked the question and he isn't going to let anything go.  Maybe I should have just let them go run around the backyard and swat bugs with ice cream bars in their free hands.

"Actually mom, now that you bring it up, I don't think the science was accurate."

"No, probably not."

"I mean, I know that all seven continents were once one, but I don't think it happened that quickly and all the animals..."

"Want to ride your bicycle without training wheels some more?"

"SURE!!!"

Yes, I distracted him, I taught high school Spanish, not Earth Science.


The best part for my children to see was the end when they coupled the actors recording their voices next to pictures of their cartoon counterparts.  I didn't realize that Game of Thrones super star Peter Dinklage was Captain Gutt or I would have agreed to go much sooner.   If my children ever hope to get a puppy out of me one day, all they have to do is promise to name him Tyrion. :0)

New rule-we watch a movie as a team, we discuss it as a team.

Their mother is a freak that way.

P.S.- Up at Five am for a six mile run, although I forgot to hit the app on my phone to record it until half way into it, so my phone says I only ran three miles. They didn't have such things in the Ice Age anyway.

A Run through Rome....

Is it seven am already?

Coffee…..check…I’m not running this morning so the babysitter can sleep in. Kids are still asleep...hallelujah..I can say this as it is not Lent.

Coffee pod…push button…..this is so much freaking easier than an espresso machine.

Milk..milk…found the milk.. Caffeine going through the veins….bliss….I’ll just open the back door to get a cross breeze going…and....and...

and there is a pool in my backyard.

I’m just going to do that thing they used to do in the old school cartoons, where I get a knife or a safety pin and stab myself in the arm until I wake up.  Ouch…ok that hurt…one more time…oh crap that pool is still there.

THERE IS AN ABOVE GROUND POOL IN MY BACKYARD!!!!!

You know, I’m too nice. I’ll take the Phish music and I’ll take the unemployed men getting mad because they can’t throw a boomerang and catch it like my intelligent six year old, but a pool?  NO!!!!

I’m done…I’m over all of this crap. I need an outlet…I’m going to see a movie this afternoon.

Which one?  That’s a no brainer….To Rome with Love  it is…

I gave myself a little liturgical challenge last spring. I told forty stories about forty times I went to theaters and what happened when I got there. I did it-but one of my favorite directors was missing.

I didn't tell a Woody Allen story-and not for lack of them.


I have many a Woody Allen story. A lot of them include the nerds I went to high school with and a couple involve college beach trips, but maybe the neurotic Jew just didn't have space in a blog collection leading up to the death and resurrection of Christ. I'm sure he'd thank me if he cared.


We can all find a little Woody Allen in us. It's easy really. You just look around you and make observations and connections to other things in your life and past about everything you see. OUT LOUD..don't sugar coat it. Don't filter it for your grandmother. Just say it. And you can't be embarrassed or worried about what someone else is going to think. Just put it out there-and you have a Woody Allen film. He won't do bonus commentaries for his DVDs. He says the movie is all you need to know about the movie. He has a point.


The critics-the people who are paid to go see movies and tell other people what they think about them-are 50/50 this time with Mr. Allen. To Rome with Love is four stories in Rome going on at once-they never connect in anyway other than you can tell Woody wrote them.



I’ll spell them out:


1) One average working man gets a taste of the celebrity life style.

2) A small town couple finds out how much fun extra curricular trysts can be

3) A retired music producer discovers a mortician that can sing in the shower

4) An American arquitect wants to visit the country he studied in during his twenties


I don't have all day, so I'll just focus on my favorite vignette. Alec Baldwin is the architect stumbling around his old neighborhood looking for what was once his old apartment. He meets a twenty year old kid who happens to be in school for architecture and knows exactly where the apartment is and takes him there for coffee. OK, I was slow on the uptake during the Sixth Sense, but I figured this one out pretty quickly.  Duh...


I was loving the film and picking apart the dialogue and comparing Ellen Page in this to the time I saw her in Juno when we were both pregnant. Listening to her character name drop to the young architect cracked me up. She liked Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia? Always let the conversation go on a little bit longer to make sure they can keep up and aren't just telling you what they want to hear. Did she like Park Guell too? How about the Casa Batllo?  Everybody and their brother knows Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia.

She didn't even try to be adorable about her ignorance- I would have said:

 I only know Gaudi, Frank Loyd Wright, IM Pei, and Maya Lin. Four famous architects for a trivia game but I can't help my son put a Lego set together past the age of seven.

 As I was over analyzing the phone rang silently. Yes, I was that movie patron. My phone was making noise during a fine arts cinema production.

 The old me would have gotten irritated with this. But the new me has three kids at home and left the theater to answer it.



It was the property manager of my house.


PAGE! HOW DARE YOU PUT A POOL IN THE BACKYARD FOR YOUR CHILDREN! IT NEEDS TO COME DOWN!


I didn't put a pool in the backyard. The girls upstairs did. I am sitting in the hoity toity town of Madison, CT watching a Woody Allen film with possibly ten other people all way older than I am while everyone else is in Branford watching Ted or Magic Mike. This is my life. I can't go to a theater without something happening.

I tried to be polite and handle this quickly because with every second I spent on mundane stupidity I was missing brilliant self-depricating witty dialogue we only get once a year and Woody is pushing 80 so how many more of these movies do I have??? (sob)

I cleared my throat and channneled him, to my property manager.  I tried to think of what Woody would say if he were the 37 year old mother of three in a new life setting she didn't really plan.

UM, seriously, it wasn't me that did it. Yes, I have three children that would be more than happy in a germ filled pool without having to go anywhere strapped in a carseat.  Sadly for them, I enjoy taking them around other people to swim so that they acquire social skills they wouldn't get sitting in an above ground pool in my backyard swatting mosquitos.  God knows I have broken rules before and will more than likely break them again.  When I was eleven I got in trouble over Judy Blume books, just last year a principal accused me of sharing a porn DVD with another mother via our children's backpacks, and that one boyfriend in highschool almost had to go back to drug rehab over me,  but putting up a pool in a backyard that doesn't belong to me isn't on that list. OK I don't have time for this I need to analyze a film- Bye.

Then I had to quickly run back to my seat and not irritate the old ladies behind me.

ahhhhh wit again.

 I hate the word cute-so I'll say that the film is a quirky little romp through Rome that could have happened almost anywhere. Not his best, not his worst. If you love Woody Allen you will love this too. 

Other than Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, this one stirred up some emotion in me.

Alec Baldwin and Jesse Eisenberg are ingrained in my brain forever-no kidding.  Kind of a post traumatic stress disorder moment, if you will.

I'd love to wander around Sevilla, Spain and see my twenty year old self. I would run into her on the tippy top the the Giralda tower. She would have this thick head of red hair and be wearing socks that match her shirt.  I would tell her three things:  1) Start learning about autism other than Rain Man. 2) You are writing all those letters because you love to write, keep doing it, and 3) buy hair gel.


Everything else she could figure out on her own-including how to be witty and get a pool out of her backyard.

Thanks Woody-see you next year!

P.S.-I ran 12 miles today in the heat.

2: Run Lola Run...

This is a little German gem from the late 90s.  Before this I had only seen the work of Wem Wenders, I was seriously lacking in the German film department. My apologies. Scotland was getting a lot of my attention back then-Shallow Grave, Trainspotting...Berlin was off my radar. 

Until this brightly colored redhead took off on a twenty minute run to get her boyfriend 100,000 Deutschmarks before a gangster kills him.  Obviously the film was made before the Euro.  She does this run in a weird tank top thing and black boots.  Wow.

I say my life changes with each text.  Lola got a phone call.  The landline phone rings in her parent's apartment and she answers it. That was mistake number one. Don't answer the phone. Of course, there was no caller ID.  Her boyfriend tells her she has until noon to help him. She looks at the clock-it's 11:40.   This triggers the run that reminds me of a 5K sprint.

It actually becomes three twenty minute runs with three alternate courses she can take to get to that phone booth with a bag of money by noon. It's a really funky groundhog day minus Bill Murray before he hooked up with Wes Anderson.  Like I said, technology has advanced. She could have texted him, "I have it-I'm on my way.  Don't shoot anyone." But where is the fun and exercise in that?


The big question is:  if it had been Lola in the phone booth, would Manni have answered the phone or responded to the text? That's easy-no. Oh I'm sorry baby, did you text me?  It must have been off...

If you need a really good  speed workout, set an impossible task and try and beat the clock. Do it three times and see if the journey to the place is different. I have gotten cash to a book fair as my child was walking in with his class.  Does that count?


I want to sit Lola down and help her pick a better shade of red next time she decides to join the club. 

I also want to take a run through Berlin.  Tic toc...

Ordinary lesson 1: My sons have an underwear problem.....

I refuse to go see a movie unless the critics tell me it is ok to see one. I am also going through this "alone" phase, and that includes movie theaters.  I don't want to make small talk with some older guy my friends set me up with and he doesn't know jack about cinema anyway.   I don't want to talk about who the best first/third grade teachers are going to be next year.  I don't want to giggle. I just want to watch my movie, analyze the hell out of it,  and then go home.

I felt this way about The Avengers.  I rarely go see superhero movies in the movie theater. Now that I think on it, I had never been to see a superhero movie..wait-in 8th grade the batman movie with Jack Nicholson came out.  That was the last time I saw a superhero in a theater, 1989.

But this Avenger film was 93% fresh.   How could that be?  Should I give this movie two and a half hours of my undivided attention and free time?  There was something about it that was oddly familiar anyway.

Let's examen the cast..Scarlett Johannason, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson, Gwenyth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr.  Fine...I can spend an evening with these people.  Even if it isn't at the art cinema where I have spent time with all of them before (Ghost World, The Kids are All Right, Pulp Fiction, Sliding Doors, Two Girls and a Guy-if you have seen all of those you have a place in my heart).


Indeed I was entertained-I hope the comic book people appreciate my effort. 

Later, as I'm folding laundry, I realize I see these guys over and over again every day.

Little boys and their underwear

When it comes to getting dressed, little boys take pride in what goes on first.  They can't just grab underwear, they have to look to see who is on it.  I have broken up many a fight about which Superhero is the best.  I am more inclined to go with Superman-I loved Smallville.

The other day I had laid out their clothes like I do every day-and there was an issue with my underwear choice.

"No, mom, not Phineas and Ferb...where is Captain America?  Where is The Hulk?"

I did not have the right underwear. 

I try to smooth it over:

"Oh guys man, I'm so sorry I didn't switch the laundry over.  Tomorrow, OK?  You two love Phineas and Ferb-they are almost as creative as you."

Yes, I kissed up to my six and three year old. Do you blame me?

They looked and acted like I had just killed a puppy. I swear I ruined their lives over underwear that hopefully nobody sees outside of this house. 

There was a long pause, and in my house long pauses are bad because that means thoughts are being thought. 

Kenneth was the first to speak.

"It was the run." 

He said this in a simple matter of fact way.  Like an adult.

"Excuse me?"

"You went for a run and didn't flip the wash and now we don't have our favorite underwear."

Lowell catches on to this quickly.

"Yeah, that's what it was."

Then the two of them hatch a plan-why do I have two of them again?  Their sister doesn't care what I do.

"That's it! No more runnning for you!" 

"Yep-we are going to be so bad for the sitter you won't be able to run!"

I proceded with all the stuff moms say about how some boys just have white underwear.  Some kids are lucky they have Spiderman instead of Superman on a Monday morning. Some kids are blessed just to know the underwear is clean and hole free, but not my sons.

There is no way I am going to give up my morning runs while I have a sitter to come over because I forgot to dry the Flash.  The only person I care about going faster than a speeding bullet is me. In Hartford. In October.

I'm googling Wonder Woman underwear for the day of the race.  The boys can be whatever superhero they want-they just to need to lay it out the night before, after they put it in the dryer themselves.

Now I'm ready for Prometheus...alone again...

Ordinary Marathon Times

I started running seriously in November of 2001.  I can't believe that was almost eleven years and a completely different lifetime ago.  Most people who run love it and really can't live without it.  I still don't know how I handled anything before I discovered it.

Flashforward to three children and a new location, and the next step in my running life was the marathon-26.2 miles. I am registered and training-that is where we begin. But if I was putting energy into that, what about my blog?  I have three children and a full time job and volunteer with an autism association.  Something has to give, even if women all over the world would just freak if they didn't have my ramblings to read!  Ha ha ha so not true.  Everybody finds something else to read.

There are blogs about blogs.  There are parenting blogs, autism blogs, foodie blogs, and indeed, mommies doing marathon blogs.  My blog has morphed many a time.  Sometimes it is about my inability to keep up with my three brilliant children. In Advent, I turn into this Christmas card type letter thing that goes on for 25 days.  Over Lent I decided to expose my film watching practices. 

I wasn't going to be able to keep a blog going...unless... I blogged...about...the training...hmmm

Should I share my marathon training in a way only Page could?  I can't write about running and exercising.  That just won't work. I am not a size zero.  I don't wear a weighted vest and run in my bikini bottom while I push all three children in a specialized jogging stroller up hill after hill.  My miles are eleven minutes at their worst, nine at their best.  I still haven't decided how to cross train yet and I don't know what tempo and speedwork mean, really.

When it comes to running, I am....ORDINARY....

Now all my dear Catholic and Episcopalian friends-what falls in the Liturgical calendar right after Pentecost?

Ordinary Times...

This year, that means:

May 23- November 28th-that covers the entire time I train for the race and the recovery time afterwards.  Wow...

Don't you just love it when everything falls into place?

So this is going to be an Ordinary kind of marathon blog.  I ramble about anything having to do with the subject of running and relate it back to something happening to me. By now you guys should know I can do that.  Unlike Lent and Advent, it will NOT be every day-I have to keep it simple, but watch that change.  Simple and ordinary are relative terms.

Enjoy!

50 Shades of Raney

Holy Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. I always knew I was different.  I had a visit in the middle of the night.  It was kind of like a literary spirit guide.  I just knew I had a spirit guide and that the other side would one day get a message to me. 

But I’ll be honest with everyone who stalks my blog ;0)

I wasn’t expectin’ Raney

Everyone in North Carolina knows Raney and her talented creator Clyde Edgerton. She defined an Eastern North Carolina woman. She set up the rules for the rest of the world to see:  notice everything, voice your opinion and stick to it no matter how ridiculous it actually is.  Tell a story about anything in tiny little details no one else notices. Make it funny no matter what is going on. 

There you go.

I love my southern writers-Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Jill McCorkle, Charles Frazier.  Contrary to popular belief and our recent voting records, we aren’t illiterate hicks.  We produce good people. Raney is a good Southern Baptist girl who marries a librarian from Atlanta. The novel takes over from there…

I moved up to Connecticut by circumstances out of my control and for now I am staying in the Connecticut and because of the North I have a very good life.  Whatever she had to say to me must have been mega important for a freewill Baptist woman to leave her Eastern NC literary world to come visit me in my woman leased apartment in the north off a town green…

Hello Miss Newsom            

Uh-oh. When you get a Miss and your Daddy’s name instead of your husband’s name, you are in some kind of trouble.

I’ll mind my manners-manners get your farther than acting ugly, trust me.

Hi Raney-want some tea? 

Yes thak you.

She waited.  I guess this means I need to get up and pour her some tea in the middle of the night. She is lucky mint is in season.I have enough sense to know she wants sweet iced tea and not ask her if she would prefer black, green, or oolong.

Sip sip

Did you use sugar?

No m’am, honey

What?

Nothing…I mean, yes, the most refined white stuff I could find in the regular grocery store. I didn’t go to the health food place for organic honey. You are on your way to diabetes. Sip up.

So...What’s this I hear about grey books?

What grey books?

Charles is retiring next year but he says that even in the library in Listre, North Carolina, they can’t keep these books on the shelves. The wait list is 75 women long. I’m not telling who is on that list either and my husband would hit the roof if he knew I looked behind his back, but  some of my friends are using fake names like we don’t know their handwriting.  I saw a copy at my sister’s house and two of my cousins and now my 83 year old aunt had to up her blood pressure medicine over this. What is going on?

I tried to let my creativity handle the situation:

It’s an art book. Fifty shades of grey-charcoal, pencil, elephant, rainy skies, generic sweatshirt….

Don’t you get smart with me little missy. And you wonder how your six year old has an answer for everything?  I know what this Fifty Shades is all about. It's about bedroom stuff.

Well, it’s just one of those things for fun.

Fun?

Yeah, you know…women laughing and acting silly and comparing notes.

She got quiet. Southern women quiet are dangerous.

Let me read a paragraph.

Excuse me?

Pick one scene for me to read.

Raney-who went to her Myrtle Beach honeymoon prepared with nothing but a talk with her mom and a Bible wants me to pick one paragraph from 50 Shades of Grey for her to read?

OK, here you go….she can compare this to the beach.

Let me get reading glasses.... Honey,  how on Earth do you read off this phone?

Well, that way no one knows what you are reading.

She asked what a couple of the words meant, I figured out how to explain. I speak good Eastern NC, my grandmother’s people were from New Bern.

Oh my…no we can't be reading this.

How about, instead of throwing a hissy fit when we don’t get our way, we just say, It is what it is and find another way to have fun?

Girl you have lived up here way too long, you need to pack and go on home. 

 See, part of living up here, means no one tells me what to do anymore.

I’m staying and I will read what I want.

Fine young lady, you read your smut. That’s between you and the Lord. I still don’t know how you have time to read if you are polishing your grandmother’s silver like you should be. Read on but don’t let me catch you in a casino.

Gulp, shudder…

Sometimes it’s ok to lie to someone who isn’t real anyway.

Yes ma’am.

Be careful around those Yankee men…I wouldn’t let a one of them in the house if I were you.

 

Only to fix the sink.

It is what it is…It is what it is…..hmm…I need to go to the mall up in Raleigh and get this book…I hope Charles is still awake when I get home.

And she left

I hope Charles sends me a bottle of wine with a thank you note if she reads all of that.

Wow…I always thought if I had a dream about a literary female, it would be Lisbeth Salander or Cathy Trask from East of Eden, or one of those over the top bad ass women in Game of Thrones.

I didn’t think it would be Raney.

Whenever I think too hard about the South, that means a trip home is in the near future.

I’ll bet those Angels I went to college with could use some grey….

Forty days straight drained me....I'll be back sometime before Pentecost.  Can't wait for ordinary times!