Desperate to stave off the deep depression that normally besets me during winter, I’ve been burying myself in movies and books and writing this past week or so.
I watched two movies and a mini-series this past week (in between waiting on children and letting a dog in and out the back door, cooking, suffering with a cold, petting the cat, and pondering our earthly existence) and continued reading The Cat Who Lived High, slowly since I couldn’t see through the watery eyes from the cold earlier this week.
With my eyes a little better I’m back to reading a little more and have added The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glen McCarthy, an independently published book for middle school-aged children, to my reading list (again). It is so creatively written and I tried reading it to my daughter since I’m much better at Southern accents than British ones, but she rejected it and asked for Paddington again for her nighttime reading. In case you are interested in finding out a little bit more about the book, here is the blurb on Amazon: For Eugene Appleton, the summer of 1876 in Rattlesnake Junction, Colorado promises to be just as sleepy as the ones before, his only excitement provided by the pulse-pounding Dead-Eye Dan adventure novels he devours. But Eugene’s life takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of Tumbleweed Thompson, a gangly, red-haired boy who spins yarns about whaling voyages in the Atlantic and hidden stashes of gunpowder. Drawn into Tumbleweed’s orbit, Eugene soon finds himself chasing smugglers, firing rifles, and competing for the attention of the lovely Charlotte Scoggins.”
I also rambled in some blog posts about a bunch of things because this blog is called Boondock Ramblings. I’ll link to those at the bottom of the page.
After seeing a preview for Wild Rose at one of the only movies I saw in the theater this year (Brittany Runs a Marathon, which was pretty good, but not my favorite.), I was interested to see it when it popped up on Amazon. The movie is about a young Scottish woman who wants to become a country singer in Nashville but lets her temper and her propensity for alcohol to get in her way. Her other issue is that she is a young, single mother with two children. The movie opens with her being released from jail and returning home where her mother has been raising her children for the last year.
Without spoiling anything, the movie does not take the darker paths I thought it would and it does not end the way I thought it would either. It was rated R and with that rating, I thought dark scenes would abound, but thankfully, they didn’t. I don’t watch too many rated R movies and in case you are curious, this one is rated R because the main character, Rose-Lynn Haran likes to use the “F” word a lot. In other words, I watched this one on my laptop with the earphones in so my children couldn’t hear it. I also watched it with close captioning because I’m not Scottish and their accents were very thick.
(Incidentally, my husband has been watching old Siskel and Ebert episodes on YouTube and because of that when I share my thoughts about a movie lately I hear Roger Ebert in my head. Is that weird? Yeah. I knew it was.)
Next up on my list Jane Eyre, for some reason, I have no idea why. I guess I was looking for something different to watch while I blew my nose all day long Tuesday and got caught up in it. Like many movies based on either Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austin books, there are about 1,000 movie versions of this story, but this series was from the BBC in 2006. It starred some British guy and some British girl I’d never heard of. (Okay, I looked it up instead of being lazy… it was Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens). I have never read the book (I know. I’m sad) but for some reason, the story was very familiar to me when I got to the end.
It’s possible I had seen a movie version of it before or heard the story somehow I suppose. As far as plot, Jane Eyre is a bit bizarre, but the actors in it won me over and I had to keep watching to see how it all turned out.
On the recommendation of my brother, I watched Stranger Than Fiction (on my phone, in case of bad language or scenes) and then made the rest of the family watch it a couple of days later. Starring Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Molly Gyllenhaal, and Emma Thompson, it came out in 2006, but I’d never heard of it, probably because in 2006 I was busy with a newborn and working full-time at the newspaper. The movie is about an IRS agent who begins to realize someone is narrating his life and he needs to find a way to stop the narrator when she announces she plans to kill him.
I could relate to the author in the movie as she struggles to complete the book she is working on, her first fiction novel in ten years. She was part of my inspiration for an upcoming blog post about the mental torture writing fiction can be.
In the midst of contracting my son’s cold (which is no surprise since he came over to talk to me one day and had an uncontrollable coughing fit . . . in my face.), winter came back with a vengeance – frigid temperatures, snow and all. So, here I sit on Saturday, writing this post while snow swirls around the house and wind slams it against our windows. I’m writing this in-between cleaning the house for yet another house showing tomorrow. This is our tenth and I’m pretty much ready to burn the house down at this point to get rid of it. Of course, I am absolutely not serious, but there are days the thought has crossed my mind.
As for blogging this week:
I shared a flash fiction entitled “Carrying Out His Wife.”;
Shared a guest blog post by Lisa at The Manitoba Mom Blog;
Shared aRound-up of Blog Posts from around the blogosphere;
Chapter 13 of A New Beginning;
Chapter 14 of A New Beginning;
Remembering Truett, in honor of TobyMac’s son, who passed away suddenly at 21 a couple of months ago.
This post is part of Readerbuzz’s Sunday Salon.
So, how about you? What have you been up to this past week? Let me know in the comments!
The documentary follows the journey of a couple who starts a diverse farm in a fairly deserted area of California. Under the guidance of a consultant, they not only plant diverse crops but also begin raising various livestock, including sheep and chickens and one fat, pregnant pig. The couple started the farm to give their rescue dog a place to roam and soon learn their family dream will cost them a lot of pain, emotionally, physically and financially. There is a lot of bad (coyotes come to visit; there are other unexpected challenges) but there is also a lot of good (a booming egg business for one).
I like the predictability of the Cat Who books. I don’t always know who committed the crime but I know what the pattern will be to solve it. Qwill’s mustache is going to quiver and hum, alerting him to something that has gone amiss, but he’s still going to walk himself right into something questionable and his cat KoKo is going to help solve the crime with his uncanny ability to feel (and signal Qwill) when something is off. Also, a few women will fall all over the retired crime reporter and he will return some of that affection but he’s going to back away from the woman, choosing instead the comfort of the reserved librarian Polly Duncan from the small town of Pickax.
Last week I watched a quirky movie called Take Me Home and then read a less quirky book named Lead Me Home. Hmmmm…they weren’t connected to each other but they were both about home, which is ironic considering we are in the midst of selling ours. Of course, we can’t really sell a home. Home is, as the saying goes, where the heart is. So we are selling our house and that process has proved to be very stressful and annoying so far. I’ll be writing more about our house selling adventure later in the week.
The neighbor is Noble, an aspiring musician who is tied down to the small town he grew up in because his abusive father left his mom, brother and now it is Nobel’s responsibility to keep the family farm running. Throughout the book, he tries to decide if he wants to pursue a career in country music or stay in the small town and, more importantly, continue to try to rekindle his friendship with Shelby, who he has known since they were children.
