As an INTJ female (for those into Myers-Briggs and the like), I am a hard person to know, and an even harder person to love. I wonder if someday my children will want to know what really went on in my brain. I shall leave them this gift. Well, maybe not so much a "gift" as an extremely uncomfortable last will and testament.
I was going through old pictures, and found this one hidden in a file folder somewhere...This is the picture that Eric had posted on matchmaker.com, where we "met" (maybe that story will come later). How cute was he??!?!
Every single episode is exactly the same. They each follow the same plot progression. The animals might be a little different, the "trouble" situation might be a little different, the method in which "we have to help them" might be a little different, but the plot/storyline is EXACTLY THE SAME. The celery that they eat at the end might be a little different, but T H E S A M E....
The quintessential romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally, was the only one that ever needed to be made. It was the original and, in my opinion, the ONLY romantic comedy. None that have come since have needed to be made. It's been done, it was great, NOW STOP!
Studio heads sit around and say "Okay, let's do another one. Who should we plug in as Ming-Ming? Kate Hudson? Jennifer Lopez? Katherine Heigel? Okay! Next...who's Tuck? Patrick Dempsey? Matthew McConaughy? Hugh Grant? Okay!
What's the animal in trouble this time? The Best Man is in love with the bride? The guy is a big jerk and offends everyone? They live on opposite sides of the planet and meet as pen pals while children but then lose touch? Okay!
What is going to be the "we have to help them"? The Best Man kisses the bride minutes before she walks down the aisle and she realizes he's the one? The girl leaves the jerky guy in the middle of the night, and he realizes how much he loves her and changes his entire personality to win her back? The guy and girl accidentally bump into each other in Central Park as adults, and spend a year at each other's throats before they realize it's their long lost love? Okay!
The celery for this one? The bride kicks the original groom out, and replaces him with Best Man and they get married? The I-Used-To-Be-An-Ass guy searches high and low and finds the girl who left and begs her to forgive him and they live happily ever after? The long lost pen pals realize that they still love each other after all these years, and move to France to open an art gallery together? Okay!
We have a movie!
Every so often you'll find one that has ONE funny line...like "What is driftwood? It's wood....that drifts..." But that's just coincidence, and one moderately funny line doesn't a great movie make.
Anyone who says to me "Oh, I love 27 Dresses!", or "I love Maid in Manhattan!", just know that in my head the phone, the phone is ringing, and I'm itching to ask to see your driver's license, because I won't be able to believe that you are over the age of 6.
Welcome to Being Suzanne Mosley
*Thinking about it more, they're also like MadLibs. Remember those?
Girl and guy (insert verb). They encounter (insert conflict). Girl decides to (insert adverb)(insert verb) guy. Guy stops (insert annoying habit). Girl forgives him and they (insert romantic cliche).
I am a huge reader. I read all the time, and have since I was 4 or 5 years old. My favorite category of literature has always been children's books. I have decided to share my reviews of the books that had profound effects on my soul.
I will begin with Anne of Green Gables.
Looking back, Anne was probably my first encounter with an abstract child in a book. Laura Ingalls wasn't, she was my first heroine love. But from the first moment Anne was asked to come inside to wait, and she said that there was more "scope for the imagination outside", I knew that I had found someone I wanted to know. And then when, shortly thereafter, she says to Matthew: "I'm very glad to see you. I was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming for me and I was imagining all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind that if you didn't come for me to-night I'd go down the track to that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn't be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don't you think? You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn't you? And I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn't to-night.", I knew that I was in love.
Anne Shirley remains one of my favorite characters of all time. She was so full of everything that I love in a person. She had a flair for the dramatic, a never-ending enthusiasm for life, a creative imagination that was always working overtime, and a belief that the world and everything in it was basically good.
On her drive home with Matthew, her adoptive father, she says: ""Why, a bride, of course--a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil. I've never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I don't ever expect to be a bride myself. I'm so homely nobody will ever want to marry me-- unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign missionary mightn't be very particular. But I do hope that some day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I just love pretty clothes. And I've never had a pretty dress in my life that I can remember--but of course it's all the more to look forward to, isn't it? And then I can imagine that I'm dressed gorgeously. This morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn't sell it, but I'd rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart, wouldn't you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress--because when you ARE imagining you might as well imagine something worth while--and a big hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my might. I wasn't a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Mrs. Spencer although she generally is. She said she hadn't time to get sick, watching to see that I didn't fall overboard. She said she never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from being seasick it's a mercy I did prowl, isn't it? And I wanted to see everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn't know whether I'd ever have another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just love it already, and I'm so glad I'm going to live here. I've always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I would. It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it? But those red roads are so funny. When we got into the train at Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I asked Mrs. Spencer what made them red and she said she didn't know and for pity's sake not to ask her any more questions. She said I must have asked her a thousand already. I suppose I had, too, but how you going to find out about things if you don't ask questions? And what DOES make the roads red?"
Can't you just hear her freshly scrubbed eyes??
Anne called Diana Barry, her best friend, a kindred spirit. It always made me sad, because for some reason I always felt like Diana was NOT a kindred spirit for Anne. Diana was a sweet girl, but so simple. Everytime she shook her head desparingly and said "Oh Anne....", I knew that she was wrong for Anne. I knew that I was the kindred spirit that Anne was looking for. I knew that I understood and loved Anne much more than Diana ever could.
But Anne didn't mind being misunderstood. She spent the entire series of books being misunderstood. I remember reading the books over and over, hoping that Anne could somehow feel my understanding of her through the pages...
Imagine my joy when as a young adult I found out that there actually was a Prince Edward Island, and a Green Gables! It was only a little more exciting than when the television movie version came out (Things That Make Me Cry, Part 2). My own kindred spirit , who shares my love of Anne Shirley, and I have vowed to take our daughters to Prince Edward Island together one day. Tissues aplenty will be used on that trip.
I would have loved to have Anne Shirley as a friend. But I never met an Anne Shirley...
Until I met Eric Mosley (Eric with a "c"), and as it turned out, I married Anne of Green Gables, and then shortly thereafter gave birth to another Anne. My life is now full of Anne.
So take that, Diana Barry. I've got two Anne's, and I even get to sleep with one of them....
Last year my husband tried to talk me into the Roomba. (For those of you Flintstones out there, the Roomba is a vacuum cleaning robot.)
For the first few years of our marriage, frequency of house cleaning was a cause of much marital conflict. Eric and I have different lengths of time that we can go before cleaning. I actually like to wait until things look pretty dirty, because then when I clean, I get a real sense of satisfaction. Eric would prefer that things were cleaned preventatively. We've pretty much come to a good compromise over the years as it relates to frequency of cleaning, but Eric had a "great idea" last year.
In Eric's dream world, we'd have "people" for everything. People to clean, people to cook, people to do repairs and general yard work, etc. He would love to have people....People.....people who need people.................
But in lieu of being able to afford people, he decided that the Roomba was our answer. The Roomba can be programmed to vacuum your house whenever you want it to. You can program it to come out when you go to bed, and you will wake up to clean floors. There is also a hard floor option, the Scooba, which works the same way.
Eric explained the wonders of the Roomba to me. You put the Roomba's base under a couch or something, and you can program it to wake up whenever you want it to, when you're asleep, when you're out of the house, on vacation. The Roomba navigates a room on it's own, avoiding the furniture. It knows when it's about to fall down the stairs, and stops. It knows when it's battery is about to die, and it returns to it's base on it's own.
As I was listening to Eric describe the Roomba, my mind started taking me on a strange journey...I was envisioning going to bed at night, and this little robot coming out from under the couch and moving slowly around the floors of my house. A robot that "knows" things....I started thinking "what if it can also LEARN things"...if it knows that it's about to fall DOWN the stairs, how long would it take for it to figure out how to CLIMB stairs and figure out where I'm sleeping? I wondered if I'd even be able to sleep at night, knowing this little robot that "knows" things was roaming my house. Wondering if the Roomba was trying to get into the kids' rooms..
Then my mind moved to a Gremlin theory, wondering if the little Roomba accidentally knocked over a glass of water on itself, would it morph into TWO Roombas?? Would I wake up one morning to thousands of Roombas rolling around my bedroom floor, just waiting for me to stick my little toe out of bed so they could vacuum it up?!??!??! DON'T BUY THE ROOMBA!!!!
Even though I am an intelligent 34 year old woman, this is where my mind went. Though I knew they were ridiculous, I had a hard time stopping my brain from thinking these thoughts. Imagination can be paralyzing...
I will never understand why people buy into the hype that is created when a police officer is killed in the line of duty.
Why is it that police officers deserve such fanfare when they die? And why are their deaths publicized so much more than, say, the generic woman who gets shot at the gas station and dies?
Police officers are regular people. They are no better than you or me. They are no worse than your or me. When they are murdered, the event should be treated exactly the same as when the homeless guy on the corner is murdered.
Don't try to feed me crap about how they are "putting themselves in harm's way for me", either. People CHOOSE to become police officers. A lot of them choose the job because they get a kick out of the adrenalin rush. Yes, it's sad when they are murdered. It's no more sad than any other person's murder.
It drives me wild when a reporter talks about a man who shot 3 children, and then went out and SHOT A COP!!!, and somehow that criminal becomes MORE of a bad guy because he shot a cop.
Even the label "cop killer" drives me insane...you never hear about a "single white female killer" or "middle aged businessman killer". Someone who kills a cop is no different from someone who kills anyone else. And yet you know they are treated more harshly than "regular" murderers...
Why do I love NF's so? I've been thinking about this recently, and thought I'd start jotting down some of the reasons. Here is what attracts me to them initially:
It's something about the eyes...."They" say the eyes are the window to the soul. There is certainly something to that. The eyes of any N go very deep, like an ocean. But the eyes of an NF are like the clear, sparkling blue waters of the Caribbean. The water is very deep, but you can see all the way to the bottom. And the water is so warm. You just want to dive in and wallow around in the honest warmth of it.
The eyes of an NT, on the other hand, are like the waters of the Jersey shore. Very murky, with a slightly suspicious odor, freezing cold, and once you step in, you have NO idea what is lurking below.
With an NF, there are dangers in the water, but you see them coming a mile away. The sharks have nowhere to hide. NT's sharks can come from anywhere, and you never see them coming.
(On a side note, SF's have those same freshly scrubbed eyes, but when you jump in you realize you're in the kiddie pool. The waters don't run very deep, but they are of the same clarity and warmth.)
I've been very lucky to have been surrounded by NF's in my life, and every single one of them has given me the same feelings: my Dad, my middle brother, his wife, my husband, my oldest son Colson, my best friend's parents, her oldest son and her husband. All of these NF's have the power to make me care, which makes them Superheros.
I have even met a new NF, in a class I've been attending at church. She has freshly scrubbed eyes, and I just want to put her in my pocket and take her home.
NF's eyes remind me for a few moments of all that is good and hopeful and inspirational about people and life. For me, talking to NF's is like being on vacation. They're my spoonful of sugar. I could live without them, but I'd be a miserable bastard....
So thank you, all of you NF's who've been part of my life, for keeping me from becoming my worst self.
I realize that after reading through my blog, ya'll probably think you still have much work to do...
Just imagine what I would be without you...
(I realize this post will only be understood by the Myers-Briggsians and Kierseyites out there..)
I know that people think I never cry. My temperament unconsciously works very hard to make sure people never think otherwise.
But it's not true. I actually cry very often. I think people (especially my husband) would be interested to know what sorts of things make me cry.
So here is the first in the list of Suzanne's tear-jerkers: Passion combined with self-sacrifice and perseverance. If a person or story has these elements, I'm down for the count. For this reason, ever since I was a young girl, I have always loved the summer Olympics.
The stories of these athletes, especially the young kids, who have forsaken all of the trivialities of youth to train tirelessly in their chosen sport, can reduce me to a blubbering mess.
And then add in the stories of the parents who have sacrificed their lives to help their children become Faster, Higher, Stronger, and I could joyfully slit my wrists from the gut wrenching beauty of it all...
Stories of the underdogs from the never-heard-of-it countries, who came into the Olympics with no shot at all but then dug deep to find some hidden strength and won the gold medal always make me reach for the hem of my t-shirt to wipe my nose.
Watching a little gymnast execute a perfect vault with a broken ankle, watching a father run down onto the field and help his injured son make it to the finish line, even watching a girl so desperate for an Olympic medal that she would hire someone to bash her toughest competition in the kneecap with a tireiron, emotions hit me so deep in my gut that I feel like throwing up.
Even just clicking on the MP3 widget and hearing the Olympic theme song makes my throat well up....
