The Reality I've Missed

Also, friends don't let friends miss Jersey Shore.

Why haven't you told me about this pile of poo that the rest of the world has been watching?! It's gold!



This misrepresents who my people are. Really, just take it from my Uncle Petey... he's been in waste management for like 'evah and shit, and he's all, "we gots class, we gots class. Now let's go eat at Olive Garden." What!? I had no idea people like this really really existed.

Oh, and then there's this, shown to me yesterday, which made it all better:



Life is too short to not watch as much bad reality tv as you can, I always say.*




*In case there is any doubt at all, I am totally without a doubt joking about watching reality tv.  I have not and will never endorse guidos dancing, guidas getting punched in the face, or the like.  

How To Make A Baby

Facebook friend, Stacy Mosbey, shared this with me (and her other FB friends) the other day. I love it. (Check her out. She's super cute.)

Because Alan Thicke Was Tonight's Gateway Drug

Terry is playing a Super Mario Brothers game on Wii while I'm on the computer reading your blog. The repetitive game music has begun to brand itself onto the left lobe of my brain, as I've been listening to him play for almost 45 minutes.

I say, "Doesn't this sound like the theme song to Perfect Strangers?"


And he's all, "Standing tall, on the wings of our dreams... Rise and fall...", followed up with his worst Balkie imitation, "oh, don't be ridiculous."

I'm impressed.

So, that's when I say (thinking I'm the only person on the planet who's made observation about ugly 80's pop culture), "Isn't it funny how every theme song from the sitcoms of our childhood sound like they were written by the same person?"

And he, "Uh, Alan Thicke?"
And me, "I knew he wrote the opening to Growing Pains, but all of those sitcoms?"

To which he replies, "I think so. I think he was the dude in the day. Family Ties, Diff'rent Strokes (wrote and sang actually), Wheel of Fortune. I dunno, IMDB him." (Another website that has ranked verb status in our home.)

So I do... while simultaneously singing my favorite theme song of all time:

Me and my dad used to sing the melody and harmony parts to this song when it would come on our fuzzy, cable-deprived set at 8:30 in 1988. So sad, so nerdy, and so wonderful a memory.

Terry pokes his head out of the laundry room just as I hit the high "Ooooh ooh, what will we do, baby... without loooove... sha-la-la-la." And it's at that point that I realize that had he heard me do that 7 years ago he may not have married me.

To my disappointment, Family Ties was actually not in Thicke's repitoire. (Trust that if you were here with me tonight, I'd be saying Alan Thicke over and over again, as it has to be one of my favorite names in history.) But, I still say the man should be knighted for his contribution. He hosted Wayne Gretzky's wedding, he's hosted pageants, he used to DJ in college, he was ranked #37 in TV Guide's List of the "50 Greatest Fictional Dads", and he wrote this classic:
Just IMDB him. Or better yet, just YouTube (another website verb) your favorite theme songs from your favorite childhood tv shows. It will make your night.

Punky Brewster
Silver Spoons
Mr.Belvedere
Webster
(are you ready for this?) Small Wonder
Out of This World (holy cow!)
Benson
My Two Dads
Just the Ten of Us
Head of the Class
227 (snap)
The Facts of Life

and when my mother wasn't watching:

I wanted to be Shera.

(None of the above had anything to do with the Thickster, by the way.)

I must say, my fingers were crossed that his birthday would happen to be today, in the hopes that this post would be a more meaningful tribute. But it's not. Hey, you know you're a great guy when you get a blog tribute outside of your birthday and death day.

Christian the Lion

You all may be familiar with this youtube phenomenon, but I saw it for the first time tonight and cried. I was not expecting that at all. It was so moving, I even cried watching the Whitney Houston's Body Guard version. Had I not found the Sigur Ros version, I doubt Christian the Lion clip would have made the blog cut. Luckily, there are some schmaltzy types with good taste in music who are uploading videos out there.

While I've been buying chickens and dreaming of goats, Terry has been campaigning for a tiger or lion cub for years now. Why can't our dreams align every now and then?

The Secret Garden

I'd say most of my mom friends are up for the adventure of traveling with children and without spouses. It seems a normal enough thing to do, being that someone has to stay home and win the bread. But I'm a nervous nilly. A stress ball. A worrier. An old fashion house wife who needs her big strong man to take the reigns at the end of the day. So, for me to travel for more than a night, with both kids, and without child-leashes, is a huge feat in my book. And that's where my story begins. I'm wrapping up my week in Jacksonville, FL. Tomorrow we will hop our flight back home, where we will boast the many happenings that happened without Daddy. {pride}

Aside from the obligitory trips to the beach and dips in the neighborhood pool, me, Neve, Fiona, and grandma (i.e. the White girls) baked and cooked, watched movies, fed the new ducklings in grandma's creek, and visited friends. We've had a marvelous girlie trip.

Last night, after finishing up an already late dinner, after an already late trip to the beach, mom and I put on a movie. It was nearing 10:00, but as goes with vacations, I had not kept track of the hour. Or the absense of naps. Or the overdose of surf and sun. These kids should have been slumbering for hours at this point, but the vacation got the best of me.

The movie du jour was The Secret Garden. The Secret Garden was a very special movie from my childhood. I remember the night that it first came on as a Hallmark Holiday movie. I thought it was going to be a boring grown-up movie, but in fact turned out to be a Dera-classic. It was the first time I'd ever dreamt of cultivating "a bit of earth". It was the first time I'd ever longed for a secret hiding place, so special and so lovely that I would keep the secret from my own parents. It was the first time I'd ever really wanted a boyfriend to wisk me away on horseback and teach me how to speak "woodland animal". (I'm afraid Terry has not wisked me away on the backs of any horses, nor has he learned to speak "woodland animal". sigh.)

My "secret garden" as a child became a little corner of the woods on the 24 acres next to our home. A 20 minute walk back into the woods, through overgrown brush and over a simple fallen log bridge (nothing we had made) that crossed a small creek, took you right into my paradise. It was a clearing that opened up into full sunlight, with a small lake plopped right in front of you with no warning. While it may not have been nearly as beautiful and romantic as I remember it, it was my special secret garden. Minus the garden. That never happened. But it was secret.

I had plans to plant a stunning flower garden, repair the old row boat that was filled with holes which had probably been weathering there for 30 years, and become the wild-animal whisperer of the 24 acre woods. And then, one day, when I get super old (like 18 or somethin'), I'd reveal my well-kept secret to my family and friends, with my hippie boyfriend who'd been co-existing in the garden all along with me.

That was my dream, at least. And the charm of that secret place was lost the day my parents called the police in a panic that their daughter went missing. I remember them calling my name through the woods, feeling my heart sink (as I knew I was not supposed to wander off that far), and watching all three authorities enter my paradise. I remember my father saying something along the lines of, "I hope you've had fun out here, because you won't be doing anything fun for a long time, my dear." So much for my dreams of an awesome unveiling.

Wow, how I digress...

Fiona, for as tired as she was, discovered the same magic of this movie last night. She didn't glance away for one second, except to ask a question about the plot here and there.

At the very end of the movie, the father of the sick boy who had been away for years, returns to see his son playing with the children in the garden. He is not sick afterall, he can now walk, and he sees his son's happiness in the familiar garden. The movie ends with such a tidy, sweet, and somewhat sappy ending, Fiona can't hold back the tears any longer. "I'm not sad, I'm just so happy." Actually, the floodgates open and she continues to cry until she eventually cries herself to sleep. This movie triggered her missing her Daddy, she said. She insisted I call him, despite the hour, so that she could tell him, through her sobs, how much she loved and missed him.

That was a spin on the movie I was not expecting. She was too young for it, I suppose. While The Secret Garden inspired me to get as far away from my parents as I could, it inspired Fiona to bring her Mommy and Daddy together again. Sweet.

And I'm ready to reunite with her Daddy too. My "secret garden" these days is a locked bathroom with magazines and a cigarette, whilst Terry entertains wild children. (Neve's terrible-twoness reached an all time high while here. But that's another post.)