Title: Ghostbusters

Debut: 1984

Rating: PG

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver

Directed by: Ivan Reitman

Summary: Three unemployed parapsychology professors set up shop as a unique ghost removal service.

What we fondly remember: If you can believe it, I’d never seen this movie before this week. I was extremely sensitive about movies as a kid, so I definitely gave it a pass when it originally debuted, and after that, the opportunity never arose.

What was refreshing: I thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s clever, funny, endearing…but all of you who have seen it 3-4 times know that already. There’s very little language, and only one (weird) bedroom scene when Sigourney is possessed. Pretty easy to skip through or explain away.

Kids’ Review: They thought it was great (Toby passed…he’s sensitive like me), though later, even Calvin had bad dreams about it. I guess we’re all wimps in this house! The ghosts (even the creepy ones) aren’t too scary, due to the dated special effects. It took the kids a little while to get into this one–it’s a bit slow at the start–but once the ghostbuster business was formed, they were fully invested.

Want more after the credits roll? Catch up on past reviews here!

Oh yeah. Tell him your plans.

This weekend, Nate, Calvin, my dad, and I drove north to trek into the Mt. Hood wilderness and sleep out in this Cascade Hut cabin by the White River ridge.

It involved a grueling six mile snow-covered hike on cross-country skis each way:

and we decided to leave Toby at home with Grandma and Charlie, worried it’d be too strenuous for him. Perhaps even dangerous.

We emerged from the wilderness on Monday afternoon to phone messages and a bazillion texts and Facebook pings: Toby had fallen out of a tree while on a local hike with my mom and been impaled by a branch on the way down, rewarding him with a gash in his leg to the bone. I’ll spare you the photos (sorry, Facebook, it’s too late for you), but trust me, it’s gag-worthy.

My mom carried him out (or tried to, anyway…he’s getting big!) and flagged down a man at the nearest house, who called Charlie, who drove them to the hospital. By this time, apparently, Toby was in shock: blue lips, shivering, glassy stare, the whole nine yards. 17 stitches later, he’s ok.

The thing is, we take risks with our kids. Sometimes, we’re criticized for it. We go on crazy adventures like the one above. We say ‘yes’ when maybe we should say ‘no’ when they want to push their physical boundaries. We let them climb, perhaps, too high.

But thank goodness we had the judgment not to take Toby to Mt. Hood. After all, he could have gotten hurt. (Thanks, Irony, for reminding me that life happens whenever, wherever. To whomever. We’ll keep our adventures, thank you, and add Toby to the mix.)

I honestly don’t feel ‘mommy guilt’.
Not in the way you’re thinking.
(I don’t know what’s wrong with me.)

I can get on a plane,
get caught up in my work,
spend the day on just me.
(And believe that I deserve it.)

I get worried; but that’s different.
I care, but caring isn’t culpability.
I help, but I don’t solve.
(Because they don’t need me to.)

Instead, I love until it hurts,
and hope their knowledge of this
is enough to prove my innocence.

Written for Six Word Fridays, topic: ‘guilt’. Photo credit: Sunlitdays.

Except, I can’t write about it, because it’s not my tale to tell.

It’s easy to write publicly about the diaper days, the preschool years, even the elementary antics, isn’t it? We have such jusistidiction over our children’s lives then: within the cycle of dressing them, feeding them, bathing them, and holding them, we lay claim. There’s not an inch of them we don’t touch. Every hair on their heads is ours.

As are their words. Their stories. Their experiences. It’s not that we’re stealing them: it’s just that they pass hands so easily. We take them because they’re pressed upon us in open, sticky-palmed offering. With bright smiles. With tears. With earnestness.

Look at me! Decipher me. Define me.

Nate still offers his stories as well, but they take some unwrapping. And careful handling. Some are made of sturdy stuff, sure, but most are fragile, and fewer and fewer of them are meant for public consumption.

And that’s ok, because he’ll need his own stockpile of stories to tell someday.

Title: Crocodile Dundee

Debut: 1986

Rating: PG-13

Starring: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski

Directed by: Peter Faiman

Summary: An American reporter goes to the Australian outback to meet an eccentric crocodile poacher and invites him to New York City.

What we fondly remember: I remember loving this one: you’ve got action, romance, humor…what’s not like? (Well, I found out what’s not.)

What was refreshing: First the good news: the classic scenes of this movie are as timeless as they are funny. (How about, “That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife!”) And if for nothing but the trip down memory lane, I was glad we watched. That said, there was way more drinking and drug use in this movie than I’d remembered. In New York, they go from party to party, meet up with hookers, interact with a guy doing coke, and encounter transvestites. I didn’t appeciate having to explain all that to the kids, especially since about half of it seemed unnecessary to the plot.

Kids’ Review: They liked it…until they didn’t. The Australian Outback scenes were great, but once Dundee was in New York City, it moved too slowly (and with too much romance) for our boys. The ending, especially, infuriated them: an ‘I love you’ across a crowded Subway platform?! Really?! That’s all?! For the record, I loved that part, but the boys seemed to have been holding out hope for a final showdown between Mick (and his huge knife) and the boyfriend, or Mick and a crocodile, or really, Mick and anyone at all. They were disappointed.

Want more after the credits roll? Catch up on past reviews here!

The other day, I was looking through photo albums with my grandmother during our lunchtime visit. We started with the ’80s–smiling at my sister and my childhood, my cousins’, shots of relatives no longer with us–and worked our way slowly toward the present. As we approached somewhere around 2002-03, I noticed an abrupt absence of our most badly crafted (signature) photos: the mouthful-of-food shots, the backs of heads, the wide angles inevitably including messy kitchens, open closets, or cluttered living rooms…all gone.

We hadn’t become better photographers and housekeepers overnight: we’d gone digital. We’d erased all the cropped-off heads and red-eye and awkward poses where you can’t quite tell if that’s Aunt May’s arm or cousin Ted’s knee sticking out behind Santa Claus’ beard, and you really don’t want to know.

And something was lost.

Just a minute before, I’d laughed over a particularly terrible Christmas Day 2001 shot in which my mom had thoughtfully captured my jean-clad legs on the couch, covered in a brown stain. I’d forgotten all about how, in a moment of Christmas morning frenzy, two-year-old Nate had spilled hot chocolate all over my lap. Did I really need to remember that forever? Yes, actually. Because along with the memory of the scalding liquid came the memory of Nate’s first (conscious) Christmas, complete with the bleary-eyed fatigue, the unsuccessful ice skating session (the bruise is visible on Nate’s face), and the matching reindeer jammies I had been so excited to order for him and baby brother Calvin from L.L. Bean.

That photo captured a harried, unglorified, not-particularly appealing moment from my life. Which I didn’t appreciate then. (The moment, for a certainty, and perhaps even the life.) And now, years later, it’s done what it was meant to do: punctuate. Serve as the exclamation point (or question mark) where my mental memories had long since left off. The most honest photos, the ones with ugly expressions and fat thighs, don’t tell, but prompt. Their subjects rocking polyester and ancient hair styles and their settings sporting embarrassing carpet colors and Formica counter tops fill in the blanks of those everyday days that never make the headlines. And they do it best after enough months and years have smoothed the sharper edges. How can they do that, if we delete them?

So I’ve been snapping a few more imperfect ones. Phone apps are good for this, they’re always handy and their filters have a way of making even the mundane look appealing without altering the shot. I’ve taken pictures of the kids in the car and the dogs tracking mud and I’ve tried not to care that I’ve caught the smudged window glass in the background. Perhaps, this one is my favorite.

I took it on a warm night last August, on impulse, as I trailed behind the boys following soccer practice. It was my night for pick-up, and the lights on the field had just clicked on, and it was still summer and we were staying up late, and I’d had to drag Toby along for the ride, but he’d cheered up when I’d permitted him to take off his shirt.

It was the everyday. It was our routine. It was how we spent cumulative hours of our lives that summer. And now I’ve added the exclamation point.

Title: Shanghai Knights

Debut: 2003

Rating: PG-13

Starring: Owen Wilson, Jackie Chan

Directed by: David Dobkin

Summary: When a Chinese rebel murders Chon’s estranged father and escapes to England, Chon and Roy make their way to London with revenge on their minds.

What we fondly remember: I’m going to come clean here and now: I’ve got a thing for Owen Wilson. The man can do no wrong, as far as I can see. I even saw him once (please standby for my celeb sighting story): My sister and I were in Rome, and I saw this guy whiz by us on a bicycle near the Spanish Steps. I just knew it was him. I am sorry to have to tell you all that my sister didn’t believe me…until the next issue of US Weekly confirmed his whereabouts on that precise day. Ha!

What was refreshing: But about the movie. This one’s a sequel to Shanghai Noon, but we couldn’t get that on Netflix streaming, and it’s not crucial you see them in order anyway. Let’s be frank: this series isn’t exactly Oscar-worthy. Both movies are funny, full of action, and and clever. (I’m overly fond of Jackie Chan, too). The only problem: get ready to man the remote. There’s quite a few sexual jokes and a couple silly (but fairly graphic) bedroom scenes. The language is what you’d expect of PG-13.

Kids’ Review: This was a solid hit. Any time a movie is funny AND full of action-adventure, our kids are happy movie viewers. They’re fans of Jackie Chan, so they enjoyed all his martial art choreography, and the fact that he does his own stunts. Be sure to watch the blooper reel at the end…funny stuff!

Want more after the credits roll? Catch up on past reviews here!

I read this poem by W.G. Sebald at The Chocolate Chip Waffle the other day:

It was as if
I was lying
under a low
sky breathing
through the eye
of a needle.

And I just thought: yes. My life feels defined by the concept of space these days. Physical space. Head space. The hour by hour constriction of not enough space between the obligations and deadlines and reminders scrunched on my calendar. I go outside and I run, and it’s temporary relief amid the blank-slate gray of our January mornings, and I’m reminded of the writer who built herself a cinder block hut and locked herself inside to write. Was it Louise Erdrich? Could have been, couldn’t it?

My writing takes place on the couch by the window or at the dining room table amid schoolwork and spilled milk, and always, always under the gun of a deadline. Every day’s work comes together in splintered pieces ripped from the number of hours in my day, and when the house is quiet and the dogs are sleeping and even the dryer is at rest, it’s enough. And when it isn’t, I dream of a desk in a room with a door that closes.

Photo courtesy of http://myfarmhouse.tumblr.com/ via Pinterest.

Title: Spaceballs

Debut: 1987

Rating: PG

Starring: Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis

Directed by: Mel Brooks

Summary: Planet Spaceball’s President Skroob sends Lord Dark Helmet to steal Planet Druidia’s abundant supply of air to replenish their own, and only Lone Starr can stop them. (Sound familiar?)

What we fondly remember: Ah, Spaceballs. I remember watching this in about 9th or 10th grade while hanging out at this older guy’s house. (I think he may have been a senior…gasp.) I thought he was the coolest, so I also pretended I thought Spaceballs was the funniest, though I honestly found it basically stupid. Charlie, on the other hand, loved it then (and loves it now), so maybe this is yet another ‘guy’ flick?

What was refreshing: I think the thing about Spaceballs is, you either love it or are simply blah about it. As I said, I fall in the latter category, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have redeeming qualities. It’s a great introduction to Mel Brooks’ movies, and it’s a great ‘first parody’ for kids who are familiar with the Star Wars series. It’s pretty clean, though my favorite part is also it’s most inappropriate (the lengthy a**hole discussion).

Kids’ Review: Another win in the kid column! The boys found it hi-lar-i-ous. It really helped that all of them, even Toby, ‘got’ the Star Wars parallels. Add in action, goofy characters, bad jokes, and clever dialogue, and every male in my house was a happy camper. Yours will be, too.

Want more after the credits roll? Catch up on past reviews here!

Don’t you just love reading on winter afternoons? Especially when it looks a bit like this?

Don’t hate me because I’m warm. (Or was warm, rather. It’s all a distant memory now.)

As you can see, I’m deep into A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One, by George R.R. Martin. I’m not a huge fantasy fan (though I love Harry Potter like any sane human being), but this book falls into the can’t-put-it-down category. Beware though: it’s gory and dark and will make you want to immediately watch the new HBO series.

What Nate’s reading (age 12): Nate’s reading the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. I have to admit though; he’s only liking it, not loving it. I’d really like to get him into some classics that are age-appropriate. What say you: is 7th grade too young for Of Mice and Men? Or perhaps Call of the Wild? We tried Lord of the Flies…that was still a bit intense.

What Calvin’s reading (age 10): What isn’t Calvin reading? He reads so fast, I’ve been trying to convince him to buy a Kindle with his Christmas money, just to better keep him in books. He’s sailed through the Warriors series, the The Kidnapped series, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Holes and its sequel, and is now reading something he randomly grabbed from the school library. Again, suggestions welcome.

What Toby’s reading (age 7): Toby is finally old enough to read the Magic Treehouse series and Junie B. Jones on his own, so naturally, he wants to fish in bigger waters. Therefore, I’m reading Collin’s The Underland Chronicles to him at night.

Charlie’s reading more crime mysteries; I have no idea what right now, as he reads as fast as Calvin. Also on our nightstands are Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption and A Discovery of Witches. And why yes, I am on GoodReads. Hope to see you there!

my read shelf: