Serenity

Catalog Season

It has begun. The first toy catalog arrived two days ago, and already is more dogeared than a phone book in a Chinese restaurant.

The second arrived yesterday.

The third will arrive later today, I am sure, and will go directly to the trash, do not pass the children's toy-hungry little eyes, do not collect a hundred wish-list check marks.

Only 137 shopping days till Christmas....

Why I stopped blogging and probably will stop again

See that last post?? It sounds so ... snarky. Ugh. I didn't mean it to sound that way, but, looking at it now, with all the pixels in black and white, it sounds awful.

And this is why I abandoned this blog awhile ago. I look back at my posts and can't stand them.

And there's another thing, too. I had no problem blogging when I posted in blissful anonymity, when I started. But once there were real people reading my stuff, people who know me in real life, that gave me pause. Actually it gave me complete and total blogger's block.

It almost creeped me out, to think of my real life friends and acquaintances (especially those who don't know me all that well) reading what I've written and perhaps revising their opinions of me because of it. (But of course, I wouldn't know if this was happening, or even if they were actually reading the blog. Which is pretty unlikely, considering that most of the "readers" of this blog are accidental tourists in the blogophere.)

It wasn't just that they might "revise their opinions downward", but that they just might be surprised, or see a side of me they'd never seen before.

I also had trouble figuring out where I fit in, in the blogosphere. Sort of the high-school clique problem. Was I a political blogger? A mom blogger? A Catholic homeschool blogger? A staid, thoughtful, wise Catholic homeschool mom blogger? Or a sassy, not-afraid-to-drink-or-use-an-occasional-bad-word Catholic homeschool mom blogger?

Or just a run of the mill boring blogger, with nothing to actually say about anything? (I'm thinking yeah, that's the one...)

Harry Potter silliness

We've succumbed to the Harry Hype from last month and finally gave in to reading the books and letting the teens (17 and 15) see the movies. I'm still not convinced these books are great literature, or even worth the time to read them (though JKR can surely spin a story), and I'm far from convinced they are the great Christian apologetics that some claim them to be.

At the same time, I'm pretty sure they're not evil. I'm not picking up any creepy vibes, at least (and my antennae are probably better than average at that).

But I'm only 3/4 through Book 2, so I have a lot to wade through before I can make any complete judgements.

In the meantime, I'm getting a laugh out of this:

I don't recommend all the other Potter Puppet Pal videos, however.

Dinner conversation tonight

Husband and I got into a discussion of the phrase "The best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry"... which he knew was actually:

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

From there I googled the entire poem, "To a Mouse, On Turning Up Her Nest with the Plough". We amused ourselves by practicing reciting the poem with a thick Scottish brogue.

Great fun was had by all.

"You've Got Mail"

What a delightful movie this is! So cute, how they have the old dial-up noises during the opening credits. I get nostalgic for that ... do you? Do you remember the early, exciting days of the internet, and email, and IM... does Prodigy ring a bell, anyone?

Back to the movie. With few exceptions (none that I can think of right now), I love almost anything Tom Hanks has done. "Cast Away" is right up there among my all time favorites, mostly because of it's beautifully life-affirming, you-never-know-what-great-thing-may-happen message.

So, back to the movie again. It's just so sweet... I've caught bits and pieces of it lately (saw the end last week, and right now I'm watching the beginning, even though I'm supposed to be loading stuff to the homeschool group website)... and this movie is just ... sweet.

OK, I've said enough dumb stuff for one day. That's really why I stopped blogging, you know. I had nothing but dumb things to say, and I said enough of them out here in the wide-open blogosphere to embarrass myself sufficiently for the rest of my life.

Oh, I just remembered a Tom Hanks project that disappointed me: Da Vinci Code. Didn't see it, but given the anti-Catholic nonsense of the book, I was sorry he wanted to be involved with the movie.

But Toy Story 2 ? Another of my all-time favorites. Yep. In fact, I may have to sit down with the kids and watch it again soon.