The Cure - Day 3

Amazing idea! Our first assignment for the weekend is to buy flowers. Brilliant. I am heading to the nursery to buy a live flowering plant. I need some green in the house with all of the COLD weather we've been having. Then, of course, comes the mopping and vacuuming and wiping down the floorboards to the accompaniment of the metal channel. Well it shouldn't seem so bad as long as you've got the flowers to enjoy. Speaking of flowers, I have to share a really cool link to some incredible resources and people. I really wanted to plant some bulbs for the spring and put out a WANT request on Freecycle last week. A really nice lady answered up right away and said she'd split her bulbs with me as she needs to thin them out! It needs to be said that people that share have a special gift. She doesn't realize how much this means to me. So find the group nearest you and add to the kindness that goes out into the world.

http://www.freecycle.org

And yes, that is where I'll be sending my outbox items for The Cure Project on Apartment Therapy. And if I stay focused this weekend, there will be more in the Outbox and more listed on Freecycle!

The Cure - Day One over at Apartment Therapy! It has begun. My quest for organization this year and the goal of COMPLETING projects this year. This blog is one of them. I must blog at least 3 times per week with the hopes of working to 5 times by the end of the year. Another is to work on the ever growing list of projects and household cleaning that I really need to get a hold on so our life can be focused on creating new things instead of always staring at the the old things that need to be repaired. Along came the advertisement for The Cure and I was signed on and ready to go.

This is the scan of my initial list and then the highlighted sections I'll be working to complete. It really wasn't that difficult of a task!
Come join the fun.  http://www.apartmenttherapy.com

The Empty Glass

I've finally finished reading The Empty Glass by J.I. Baker....  It's taken me two weeks to wade through the writing style. I was fascinated with the central theme of Marilyn Monroe's death and the questionable rulings on it and the book didn't disappoint when bringing up some of the shadier sides of politics and Hollywood at that time in history. There was so much to work with and yet the book left you feeling like you wanted more or that there was more to the story. I guess the biggest let down in the book was the character development. Too many lose ends and no one really stood out as a real character other than Ben Fitzgerald (and really you never understood why he was really even alive). Maybe it's the dismal circumstances he's in. Maybe it's his dismal choices. Maybe it's his dismal outlook on the dismal world and it's dismal occupants. Sorry, I digress, but in reality you do feel like doing yourself in by the end of the book. Pass the Nembutals. And that might just be what the author was trying to convey.

One small bit of the book that I found very interesting was the way they used tabloid radio (the TMZ of the time) to circulate lies and half truths to the public. Brain washing ala the entertainment media at it's inception.
Film Noir - love that description. Bleakness - check. Twisting plot - check. Dismal characters with dismal lives - check. Baker really did hit on those absolutes of the genre.

This book would probably make a really good movie. Visually you could bounce around from scene to scene and hopefully not lose your viewers as the story unfolds.

I'm checking this one off of my to-do list just in time to start a new and fresh 2013 list.

Happy New Year's!
And May Your Year Be Filled with Peace!

Waking to the rain

This morning I awoke to the sound of soft raindrops hitting the tiled roof over my head. Fridays are always a mix of emotions for me. There is the excitement that the work week is ending (Yay! It's Friday! ) and the greediness of just a few minutes more sleep, of wanting to just pull the blankets back up over my head and snuggle down into the warmth of my bed.

 

Struggling into work was worth it though! I am a crazy contest enterer and sign up for anything and everything, so when I opened my email this morning there was the news that I had just won Imbibe's Holiday Giveaway of Allegro Coffee! Me winning coffee??!! There just couldn't be a better match made in heaven. Now back to work!
http://imbibemagazine.com/
Tonight, we'll be making candy cane cookies! Sweet cookies with just the right pinch of peppermint. I cannot wait to pound out the candy canes to sugar sand! All those aggressions and memories of grumpy people smashed into itsy bitsy pieces. Friday is really turning out to be a nice day.

Oranges and Sunshine (2010)

Oranges and Sunshine (2010)

While cuddling up into a blanket on the couch the other night, I did a scan of available movies and happened on “Oranges and Sunshine”.  It turned out to be a wonderful choice! Emily Watson portrayed the social worker, Margaret Humphreys, with such heartfelt-emotion; I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She told the tale of hundreds of English children being shipped off to Australia, and just left in the care of the deviant church groups or put to work at ages as young as eight. The policy of that time was so focused on removing the children from poverty stricken homes or unwed mothers that they never considered the fact they were sending them to places as bad or worse. This was a new peek into a social policy that I had never thought possible, much less even heard anything about. All of this was capped off with the government’s denial, both governments, that it had even occurred!

There are ups and downs as you go through the movie but she is a new hero in my book.  Emily Watson portrays the strength needed to doggedly complete an almost impossible task and still show a soft, caring side as she mothers her children and the adult children of the horrific incident. This is a definite must see.