Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Living on the Edge

      So hero hottie, being rather bored at work and I think being just a touch ornery, was kicking his loose shoelace around while he walked rather than taking the time to bend down and tie it. One of his co-workers, had to stop him and state the obvious.
      "Man, your shoelace is untied."
      Hero hottie gave a devilish grinned, "I know. I just like living on the edge."
     

     Of course, he was just giving the guy a little bit of heck. Boredom at work often times leads to orneriness and kicking around loose shoelaces for hero hottie. But his tale, although it made me laugh because life as parents our ideas of living on the edge of life is vastly different than before kids, reminded me of a very traumatic childhood incident of mine. One I remember nearly every time I tie my shoes. How sad is that? Silly childhood hang-ups. 
     I was in fourth grade and quite grown up. (Fourth grade is almost the top of the food chain in elementary school, plus we got to do special events.) My school was built on a slight hill, half the grades were on the top of the hill and not connected to the actually school building instead all the classes opened into a outdoor courtyard. A long set of concrete stairs lead down to the younger grades. (Of course, they were luckier in the fact that they were right next to the playground and we lost precious time having to make the long trek across the entire school to reach the swings.) The main part of the school was enclosed in a large building, with the office and library on the top level and the cafeteria down a flight of stairs that was divided into three different sections. Go down five steps, turn, go down another five steps, turn and then walk down the last five steps. There was just enough room in the stairwell for single lines of students to pass each other. 
      One day as we were walking towards the narrow stairwell I noticed that my annoying shoelace was untied again. They were round laces and had a nasty habit of coming untied. But we were walking in our single file line and heading for lunch. I was not stopping the entire class to tie my shoe. I was a fourth grader! I was too cool to make the class wait for lunch while I tied my shoe. The shoelace flopped around as I walked, dangerously I'm guessing because suddenly at the top of the stairwell, the teacher stopped the impatient class and stared straight at me. 
      I swallowed nervously, shrinking under the accusing eyes of all my classmates. 
     "Christy, your shoe is untied." The teacher said, not meanly but seriously. I couldn't believe it though, she had stopped the entire class to tell everyone my shoe was untied like I was some little first grader. 
     "I know." I whispered, a slight squeak in my voice, "I was going to tie it when I got to lunch." 
     She shakes her head. "No. You need to tie it now. You might trip. You can't walk down those stairs with an untied shoe. Do you know how hurt you could get? Tie your shoe, we can't go until you do." 
      I felt the impatient stares of my classmates, kids that had never stopped the entire class on the way to lunch so they could tie their shoelace. With my face burning, I bent down and hurriedly tied that stupid round shoelace. Oh, why did she have to say that in front of the entire class? I felt so stupid.
     And that's why now when I have an untied shoe I hear my fourth grade teacher's voice. "Tie your shoe. You might trip."
     Hopefully, as I blog about my shoelace trauma I will relish the untied shoelace. I will live on the edge. I will let that annoying round shoelace flop around my shoe as I walk. And I won't hear my fourth grade teacher lecturing me in front of the entire class. 
     And then again, I would probably trip, land flat on my face and break my nose.
     Or maybe I'll just start wearing sandals...grin.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Lil' Sisters are So Easy to Shock (grin)

      Once upon a time I was the big sister who never did anything wrong, always had straight A's on my report cards, and never shocked my siblings. With anything. And it wasn't like I was hiding things from them, I simply was the well behaved older sister. First of all it started when I was a toddler, I didn't like getting in trouble and the thought of not being able to watch Popeye was all the incentive I needed to clean up my toys. (Too bad my children aren't so easily persuaded.) 
      Second, as a teenager, if I behaved, I had the freedom to hang out with my friends all the time. So I never did anything shocking. As an adult, before I had time to find trouble, I fell in love with hero hottie, we got married, picked out a Buddy dog one Saturday afternoon and then had kids.              
     Nothing wild or crazy until now. (Well, nothing shocking or tabloid-ish.Definitely crazy though.)
     My lil' sis, Stacey has been editing my stories for me. I have written two historical middle grade novels, and my fantasy novel, Keraynn. Obviously, the first two books are for children and the fantasy book is mild in the sexual tension department. 
      But those aren't the stories that shocked her. I wrote two historical short stories that are highly sensual and when I say sensual, I mean contains hot sex scenes. Shocking, I know. As far as my siblings view me, completely so. My brother didn't even realized I knew what sort of items were sold at adult toy websites. Really? I'm guess I'm the older but apparently not the worldly sister. 
     My lil' sis edited my short stories, (which I hope to publish with Harlequin) and was so surprised by how well I could write such shocking scenes, that she had to write a blog entry about it on her blog titled, 'Where Did My Sister Learn Those Words??'
     She writes. 'Imagine my surprise when I open the file and…. whoa. I didn’t know she knew this kind of stuff (never mind she has children, regardless, she’s my big sister! That’s like assuming your parents ever had sex. A ridiculous notion indeed.)'
    I laughed. Loudly. 
    It only took a few decades but I finally shocked my siblings. I'm sure they will recover. (grin)...Eventually. 
    Although, if my first published writing ends up being in the romance genre we'll see if they're able to tell people without blushing about it.


My lil' sis' blog can be found at   http://staceykatheryn.wordpress.com

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

All Nuclear Reactors Come with a One Year Parts and Labor Warranty

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
attributed to Albert Einstein.


     This weekend my dryer decided that it should quit working, which was thoughtful since I hate doing laundry. But it decides to quit by trying to set itself on fire. Luckily, the problem was noticed before the machine caught on fire because apparently the fail safes weren't on duty or had already gone on strike too. But fortunately for me I have a one year warranty for parts and labor. Hero hottie called on Monday, customer service was great and today a service man came out at 7:30 in the morning and fixed it by replacing three different parts.
      I have to say I was immensely grateful to have the dryer working as people in my household were starting to complain of needing clean clothes. But of course, a load into drying I'm already having to worry about the dryer, because apparently not everything is fixed and the darn thing is still trying to set itself on fire.
      Now, before anyone can accuse me of being insensitive, I should explain what nuclear reactors and dryers have in common. They are both designed by engineers that may or may not know what they are doing, they are put together by people who have bad days, and they can fail.
      Fortunately, when my dryer failed, it didn't take out my house. But when a nuclear reactor, (or four, five, six) fails then all hell breaks loose. As countries over the last forty years built more and more nuclear power plants to supply our heavy demand of energy, we were reassured that a nuclear disaster would be a rare event. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were flukes. Somehow if you have two accidents with nuclear devices you can't have more than that. So we kept building more and more, even right on the edge of the ocean and in the path of tsunamis. We built in place where the next door neighbors were major fault lines, and no I'm not picking on Japan, the US has power plants in some unsafe places. Think California.
      I was a child of the eighties. Nuclear war, nuclear winter, nuclear disaster, and radiation were all early childhood vocabulary words.  When the Chernobyl disaster occurred my parents made me drink powdered milk for months because of the fear of radiated milk.
      But Chernobyl was faulty designs and poor engineering and shortcuts taken and that's why it happened or so we're told. Those things don't happen anymore, especially in the US, our reactors are better. Nothing here is poorly designed or designed by engineers that cut their classes to party. I attended an engineering school, and some of my classmates were amazing in their abilities to perform complex equations but there were also the students that cut every class they could. I don't know which ones went on to design high quality, functioning designs and which ones designed things like my dryer or nuclear reactors. And no projects are influenced by the need to make money and lots of it even if shortcuts have to be taken.
       Now, we're being told by the Japanese government, by our government, by experts in the nuclear field, that explosions and exposed fuel rods and low levels of radiation aren't all that bad. They'll tell us when to worry, when to be concerned and that even a full meltdown won't effect the entire world. Are these the same groups that told our parents to drop and cover if they were hit by a atomic bomb? Because I'm sure if cowering under a desk was all the protection someone needed from a nuclear bomb then people wouldn't be panicking right now about radiation fallout.
     In Tokyo people are fleeing even though radiation levels aren't supposed to be at dangerous levels, yet. Other countries are telling their citizens to leave the area around the reactors and to leave Japan if they don't have to be there. Fear is growing, in Japan, here, around the entire world.
    In the States people are starting to wonder if spring is going to come in a radioactive cloud and then there's experts predicting a huge, mega earthquake for the United States. Soon. Maybe even another huge one for Japan.
     I can't even imagine the pain and suffering going on in Japan right now. And to watch them deal with it without raping, looting and killing each other is amazing. The rest of the world should take notes from the humanity and dignity they have displayed.
     I feel watchful, waiting, holding my breath...hoping. Praying that we slide into spring without anymore disasters, crises, mass destruction. I know it's dark right now, like the harrowing point in the story where we don't know if the hero (or heroine) is going to make it out alive but I have to believe that the end of the story is good.
    We can't let fear and anger eclipse love and hope even as we learn that entire villages were wiped off the face of the planet. Sometimes we have to work for the ending we want, and we certainty don't want one of death and destruction handed to us. It just feels despairing as we watch over the last few months;  the Australian flood, one of New Zealand's biggest cities nearly destroyed, riots in other countries, Japan broken and shattered, and now a possible world crisis of nuclear meltdown.
    I have to believe though. Believe, faith, hope. Strong words for dark days but lesser words wouldn't do right now.  Sustain.   
    Prayers and love. (And give extra hugs to your loved ones.)
    

Friday, March 11, 2011

'Love and Other Drugs' - the movie

       I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, which does not happen very often. From the trailer and the back of the video I mistakenly assumed it was just another raunchy comedy about casual sex and living a life without taking responsibility for our actions. And during the first twenty minutes of this movie you would think that this movie was along these same lines as we watch Jake Gyllenhall's character Jaime using his charm on women to either sell them things or get them into his bed, until he meets the seemingly free spirited Maggie (played by Anne Hathaway) and that's when this movie shows some depth and quite a bit of character development.
       I love characters and I absolutely love characters that stay with me long after 'the end.' And these characters, Jaime and Maggie, were simply wonderful because they weren't shallow, they had flaws and by the end of the movie I was caring about them, even though they were fictional. Of course, the humor, the good flow of the story and excellent use of camera angles helped tell the story but without characters to latch onto, I wouldn't be writing about it in my blog.
      I do wonder why the marketing department decided not to advertise this story as the deep, emotional drama it actually was. Were they afraid that people wouldn't watch it if they knew it was more than a 'lets get laid movie?" Have audience goers sunk so low that they only appreciate jokes on bodily functions and stories on the pursuit of getting laid without any strings attached? I would hope not.
      I will try not to spoil the story line so I'll only delve a bit into the plot line. But basically, right from the beginning that we meet Maggie, we learn that she has early onset Parkinson's disease. I personally have not had a lot of experience with this disease (others, yes.) I couldn't even imagine having a disease of this magnitude, especially as a person that uses her hands and legs to function. Oh, wait that's everyone. See, right off the bat we can see how much something like this would rob a person of their humanity and feelings of self worth. And right there we start to realize that Maggie isn't free spirited because she only wants to think of herself and what feels good. She has had her heart wounded shattered and vows never again. Once again it's back to the theme of fragile hearts and oh, how breakable they are.
      I understand this point way too well. And perhaps that's why I resonate with this movie a bit, but I know what it feels like to have your entire feeling of self worth ripped out by a broken body, leaving a heart that's held together with Scotch tape.
      But thank goodness love is the most awesome thing in the whole universe. As we watch Jaime and Maggie fall in love, we know that they're going to face some difficult decisions no matter which way they choose to go. Living with a person that suffers from a disease is not easy and even though the movie can only touch briefly on how hard things can actually be, it's enough to know that the character of Jaime has to find strength within himself to realize that loving Maggie and everything that's included in that equation is the path he needs to choose, or he will forever suffer the emptiness that has followed him around his entire life.
      The paths we travel in life can be difficult. Disease and broken bodies are not fair and never will be. But love...love is what makes it worth it. It's a glue, a bridge, a healer. It makes the world turn and gives us hope. 
      And that's probably why I liked this movie so well. It was about love. :)