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!

40: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Rialto at midnight

July, 1995

Every girl needs a really good DUMPED story.  A time she was left flat on her little tail.

Here is mine:

 The boy in question and I were trying to decide what to do on a Saturday night with my roommate and her boyfriend:

So, what’s the movie about?

It’s about a couple and their car breaks down on their way to visit an old professor, and they end up in a mansion full of freaks.  It’s pretty funny.

Oh, I like comedies.

You will love this-and it’s a musical. Like Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music.

Sounds good.

OK, OK, I know it.  That was false advertising. I left out a lot of pivotal information when I explained the plot to that poor guy.  But anything offensive went right over my head-I really thought about it the way I described it.

The line to get in wasn’t quite the movie goer crowd you would see going to see, say….anything with Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan in it.  There was a lot of leather out at 11:30 at night in a North Carolina July heat wave.

We sat down and the slideshow started-all the different literary allusions to the movie and license plates went by one by one.  This was before Harry Potter had entered my life, I had no idea fans could get so crazed about anything.   

He started to squirm a little bit every time someone yelled a swear word at the screen.  Again, it was all bouncing right off me. I believe I was thinking about what a cute Brad and Janet we would make for Halloween.

The MC asked if there were any virgins in the audience.

I tried to raise his hand and he jerked down and I tried to get him to raise it again but he just wasn’t having it. 

It means you have never seen the show before-this is your first time here.

Well, it really isn’t necessary to let everyone know.

The movie started…and I really believe he found the first thirty minutes entertaining.  We got soaked in the rain when everyone launched squirt guns. 

He was very confused when the MC said, Everyone please stand for the Time Warp.

At this point, he was still enjoying the weirdness of it.  This was interactive theater and all in good fun.  It could happen once, no big deal.

But then....Dr. Frank-N-Furter made his appearance.

Um, Page, That's a man...  Why oh why didn’t I just say, “Oh my God! You are right, let’s get out of here and go shoot pool?”

Instead this came out of my mouth:

Shh…this is my favorite part. And I started to sing along with the sensuous Tim Curry.

Oops.

After that we see Rocky along with half the audience in the theater, strip to their underwear and run around and around in circles.  He looked at me horrified that at any moment my 90’s peasant dress would fall to the ground and I would join in.  I didn’t, but only because I didn’t feel like it -I don’t think my bra and panties matched that night.  

Let’s not discuss the rest of the show-but those that love it know that everyone sleeps with everyone else and has “Meatloaf” for dinner.  Then they get beamed back to their Transexual planet.  

 Ha ha ha ha…

The next Monday night he called me and told me it was over.  We just didn’t have anything in common and he wasn’t as politically correct as I was.

ouch...sob...whatever...find another...

That should always be your mantra ladies: ouch, sob, whatever, find another...

I'll bet he never told a soul about that night.  I don't blame him.  I have a hard time admitting I paid full price for Notting Hill. Sometimes different is just different and novelty wears off.  Pay a mechanic to change your oil or learn how to do it yourself.  Queue 70s shock-value films on Netflix for the memory of it.  There have to people out there that like what you like: ouch, sob, whatever, find another...

Rocky Horror is part of our culture and it is going to live on. Glee did their version on a Halloween episode and Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf took time to cameo.   Tim Curry reads children’s books, The Series of Unfortunate Events, on audio with gusto and cracks me up every time.  I watch Phineas and Ferb with my three beautiful children and I hear Richard O’Brien’s voice and remember his Riff opening the door on Brad and Janet so many years ago to say Hello. 

 Do you think any of them care that they helped me, and probably millions of others, grow up and realize who we are and what we really want out of our lives?

Maybe on my 40^th birthday I’ll do the underwear run with Rocky-whether my bra and panties match or not.

39: Young Adult

 

December  29, 2011

Arlington, Virginia

with: Julie Anne

Well, yeah...last year was one of THOSE years. We have them.  We've had them before and we'll have them again.  No one is immune to one of those years.  So, how to end the year of all years?

I did the Junior year abroad thing.  Academic year 1995-1996 was spent in a beautiful haze of bliss with my American and Spanish friends.

About five months before departure we had to fill out rooming assignment personality forms.  I wasn’t the witty goddess then that I am now, but I remember filling out the form and happily mailing it back to an office at Chapel-Hill.  Carolina-a school I was too afraid to apply to, but was good enough to study abroad with.  

I remember filling it out like this:

I am a studious person.  I need my quiet time and I need to hit the books when it is time to hit the books. However, I love to party when it is time to party but I don’t like living with a drunk that is going to throw up all the time. I also don’t have a lot of tolerance for ditsy girls-give me someone a little more intelligent.

Whoever got that form must have decided the rooming situation was a no brainer. I was giving to Julie Anne.

Julie already had a degree in Politics and came back to school for Spanish.  She was old, I mean really OLD!!!  She was 25-born in 1970!  Even her brother was old-23!  Ironically, her parents were younger than mine.  Is this what happens when you say you don’t want to room with a drunk ditz?  They give you the old lady?

That old lady turned out to be one of the best friends I have ever had in my life! I remember one night we were on our beds studying and I said, “You know, one day, four years age difference isn’t going to matter-like when we are thirty six and forty-who is going to care?”  We had a good laugh that night…

Until last year, when we indeed were thirty-six and forty. 

Over Christmas I was thinking about it-I owed her a visit for her 40th birthday, even though it was a year late.

It all happened over two texts.

Can I come up?

Yes-meet me and my parents at the hockey arena around 10:15.

So I found her amidst the Caps jerseys and we took the metro back to her house.

She is one of those friends that time stands still for.  I walked into the guest bedroom in her house and put my stuff down like I had just gone to the Costa del Sol for the weekend and was coming back to hear about her ski trip in Granada.

Tomorrow? Her sentences can be short.

Doesn't matter-can we bake cookies and watch movies on Netflix?  Maybe that was a bit of a red flag to her. 

Sushi and a movie in a theater. Movies are for the big screen.

She is right-she knows it, I know it, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, and James Cameron know it.  I needed a big screen.

She took me to a place where you pick sushi dishes off a conveyer belt as they go round and round.  That is what I did for about five minutes.  Watched the sushi go by....

We decided on Young Adult.  

I had already seen Charlize Theron go crazy once before in The Devil's Advocate, but this was a completely different crazy.  This was what I'll call possible crazy and not entertaining Devil crazy...The fact that it could actually happen to you or one of your girlfriends makes it worse to watch.

Charlize is playing a divorced young adult novelist named Mavis who gets a photo in an  email of an ex's new baby. The ex boyfriend's wife sent the email.  This triggers a decision to go home and try to get her high school life back.

Anyone anywhere will watch this and say, "Nah...I'll skip the reunion this year...who cares about those people...I'm normal."

It really was like watching a train wreck. Now I get that expression. The crazier she acted the more nauseated I got sitting in the theater watching it happen. I wanted to pull out a notebook and take notes on how not to behave.   

When we get to the root of what really upsets her, I don't know what that other woman was thinking sending the picture.  Then again, we all have good intentions and make horrible mistakes and we can't be held too responsible for the choice someone else makes.

Diablo Cody wrote a brilliant screenplay and nobody does crazy like Charlize. It was sad and it is on my list of movies that certain friends are not allowed to see.  What really resonated with me was that the main character did change a little, but not dramatically.  It doesn't happen within one trip home.

I left the theater feeling very normal.

The next day I ran about twelve miles through the Washington Monuments with Julie's mom and felt even better.

So when you fill out the roommate forms...factor in who will still be around for your seventeen years later- in an adult way, not a young adult one...