Six Word Saturday (11/23/13)

Wasting Time in The Digital Age

I'll make that the headline because it's true.  I finished reading "Prayer in the Digital Age" by Matt Swaim this week and it was extremely good.  It was convicting and interesting.  How much of what we're doing online is glorifying God anyway?  I've only been blogging about things in my life so I'd have some record of them to remember by.  But I could just as well note them in an old-fashioned book style journal.

My therapist told me that your body starts giving off negative energy when you feel upset, even before you get upset.  He said that's what scares people about me.  So basically I'm screwed because I'm pretty aware that I'm upset most of the time even if I don't say a word to anyone.

I'm terrified about applying for jobs.  I don't think anyone would want to hire me, and it would be extremely stressful having to work outside the home because my kids and husband don't help around here.  But it would be nice to give money to a charity or pay down some debt or save money so I could take a trip.  Right now every cent I make goes to my therapist.  God, please help me know what to do.

Rundown of movies I watched this week:

The Christmas Lodge:  Predictable holiday movie about a lady who ends up falling for a widower who owns an old mountain lodge that the lady spent her childhood holidays at.  It did have a Christian theme and dialogue even though the movie itself was a little dull.

Happy Accidents:  Marisa Tomei starred in this movie (from 1998 I think) who falls for a man who insists he's from 300 years in the future.  This would have been a GREAT movie except the group of women friends got together and bashed their ex-boyfriends and men in general.  Also, since Marisa's character dated someone she found out later was religious (oh the horror), she dragged this time travel guy in front of a church to test him and kept asking "Are you sure you don't want to go in?"  That made me mad.  Then at another point in the movie, the time travel guy tells Marisa's character that they don't have religion in the future ever since 2033 when scientists eliminated the gene that produces fear.  (Rolling my eyes!)

Dear Santa:  I loved this one!  A young girl wrote a letter to Santa asking for a new wife for her dad since her mother died.  A spoiled lady with rich parents (who are threatening to cut her off) finds the letter and in desperation she finds out where the girl and her father live and tries to make the girl's wish come true.

Crazy for Christmas:  Movie about a grumpy single mother who drives a limo and one of her Christmas clients is a very wealthy man who was giving his money away and buying things for people all day while she drove him around.  There was an unexpected (to me) twist toward the end.  The best part of this movie was that Howard Hesseman (who played Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati) played the wealthy man.

Executioner's Song:  1982 movie about the true story of murderer Gary Gilmore.  I used to watch this movie incessantly on HBO/Cinemax when I was in college.  It used to haunt me really bad at the end of the movie (his execution) because I'd worry if he was scared or if it hurt or if he's in heaven, etc.  I watched it on Netflix this time mainly just to see if the movie still used "Una Paloma Blanca" as the song on the radio that he heard when he was being transported to the execution site.  (It was a Waylon Jennings song this time, but in college it was Una Paloma Blanca.)  I sometimes get paranoid about the songs I listened to because I obsess about knowing which one is the last song I hear before I died myself.

Six Word Saturday (11/16/13)

Broken Washer and Watching Turning Point

Sunday my husband loaded his clothes in the washer, started it, and then headed out to do errands with my daughter.  I went to heat up my coffee in the microwave, and on my way back to my office room, I noticed the carpet in the hall was wet.  I opened the door to the laundry room and there was water everywhere.  I stepped inside and water completely covered my shoes.  This is the second time this has happened.  I didn't want my husband to have to come home from his errands so I tried to handle it myself.  I spent over an hour sweeping water into the garage and soaking up the excess with clothes and towels.  I started to really worry that my husband was going to be mad when he got home that everything was wet and the washer broken, so my youngest son suggested I call and warn him.  Boy, was that the wrong thing to do!  He yelled there was nothing he could do about it where he was, and I said I was just warning him, that's all.  But since he's so much more important than me, he has to win all the time.  

When he got home, I put away all the groceries so he could work on the washer.  No matter what I did, it was the wrong thing.  I was so sick of being yelled at.  I still thank God it was my husband's clothes that were in the washer so at least he couldn't blame me for that.  And then his little threat at the end of the day, "One of these days you're going to find yourself sitting on the curb alone with nothing and wonder what the hell happened."  Isn't he so loving.  Things are better between us now, but it's events like this which either turn me off completely or make me extremely desperate to get a full time job so I can leave.

Thursday night my friend from my first Rachel's Vineyard retreat and I went to San Albino (Catholic church) to watch the last movie of this Year of Faith monthly series.  It was called "Turning Back: The Father Donald Calloway Story."  It was basically just him sharing his testimony.  First of all, why are some Catholic priests so cute??  Oh, he sure was.  Anyway, he was born when his mother was 17 and she married three times.  They weren't religious and he never had any rules so he got in trouble a lot and hung around with the wrong crowd (sex, drugs, stealing, etc.).  His stepfather got transferred to Japan and at first he resisted going and then he decided he would be even MORE rebellious there.  He was in the beginning stages of joining the Japanese Mafia and the authorities finally caught him.  They made him and his mother leave the country.  (His passport has a stamp in in that says "Don't ever come back.")  

They lived in Pennsylvania but he ran away and got in more trouble so he had to come back home.  He got put in rehab a couple times and his mother became a Catholic while he was gone.  When he came back home, he saw a book in his room (about the mother of Jesus) that he decided to read since he was bored and didn't want to do drugs right then.  Something in his heart changed.  He didn't understand very much what he was reading but he "fell in love" with her.  He slept like a baby because he finally felt loved.  The next morning he threw away all his drug stuff, rock music, and freaky clothes because he just didn't want them anymore.  He went to see a chaplain on the military base and talked his ear off, telling him everything he had done wrong.  Eventually, he was baptized Catholic.  Anyway, to make a long story short, by the grace of God he was able to go through college and seminary(?) to become a Catholic priest.  Me and my friend talked on the way home that if there was hope for someone as bad as him, there should be hope for us.

Movies I watched this week

Sympathy For Delicious:  I watched this the afternoon of the washer incident and it felt like a punishment because my husband was barely speaking to me (when he wasn't yelling at me, that is).  There was a LOT of swearing which I didn't like, and the story was kind of slow but a good plot.  The movie stars a real-life paraplegic who is a club DJ and lives in his car.  He attends a "healing" service by a phony televangelist.  There was another guy in a wheelchair who went to every healing service and still wasn't healed but he always acted happy (so the DJ doesn't like him).  The DJ doesn't get healed but he finds out he himself can truly heal people (but he can't heal himself even though he tried, and he yelled the F-word out of frustration).  A priest who helps the homeless notices the DJ's new "gift" after a man with Alzheimers starts walking around talking coherently.  The priest finds out that this wealthy gentleman will give his Catholic charity $250,000 if the DJ would heal his daughter.  The DJ gets really mad because he feels used by the priest, so he joins a band and their gimmick is him healing people.  There are a couple of twists to the plot that I didn't see coming but I don't want to spoil it.

Fatal Attraction:  I hadn't seen this movie for a good 25 years but I remembered watching it in the movie theater when it came out.  I think everyone's seen it or at least heard about it by now.  Back then I thought Michael Douglas looked pretty old and I thought Glenn Close was pretty, but not this time.  Also just watching them flirting and being adulterous made me feel really uncomfortable, let alone the suspenseful parts when he finds out she's a fruitcake.  I didn't watch it with my full attention because I couldn't stand it, and I wonder what kind of person I was back then that this movie appealed to me.

Windtalkers:  This was supposed to be a movie about the Navajo Indians who helped the military in WWII develop an unbreakable secret code, so I watched it.  Starred Nicolas Cage.  I thought it was going to be the strategy/non-combat side of the war - NOPE!  Oh my gosh, the battle scenes were gory and disgusting, and I ended up not finishing the movie.

I started reading Prayer in the Digital Age by Matt Swaim yesterday and so far it's very convicting but I love it.

Six Word Saturday (11/9/13)

I Don't Know Why I Bother

My sister had let me watch "The General's Daughter" on her streaming account a couple months ago (I think I might have blogged about it) and a scene in it really upset me, where the daughter got raped and was in the hospital and her father leaned over her and whispered, "It never happened," because he didn't want the controversy to ruin his career.  Anyway, it triggered me so badly because my parents and sister act like nothing ever happened to me either, so I emailed my sister and went off on her about it, like how unfair it was that my sister (who hated me at the time) was asked her opinion on what I should do about the baby and how she said I should get rid of it because "she can't take care of herself let alone a baby."  (I am so sick of remembering that line!!)  She wrote me back but I printed it off without reading it because I wanted to read it with my therapist, and two months have gone by and we always think of other things to talk about so I hadn't read it all this time.  Finally, last week we read it.  She claims she never knew I was pregnant and that she only found out about it five years later.  And I think by way of an excuse, she went on to tell me that she and her friends drank a lot in high school.  Like maybe she did say those things to me back then when she was drunk but had forgotten completely about it till someone told her about it again.  Well, so much for getting any closure from her.  I just thought she has ignored my pain about it all these years like everyone in my family does, i.e., if you don't talk about it, it didn't happen.  So I wish I never wrote her.

I watched that movie "Meant To Be" again and it has really impacted me.  I've decided that if Claudia knew me and what I was like, she would like me.  She would think I am sweet and helpful and do a lot of wrong things trying to be loved.  I think she'd be happy that I think about her so much.  She would be touched that I name some of my Sims game characters after her so I could "see" what her life would be like through them.  Anyway, I wanted my therapist to watch it, and he threw a damper on everything by asking me why.  It's really making me mad why he does that.  I loan him a book; he asks what inspired me in the book.  I make him a CD; he asks what it means to me that I'm giving it to him.  I gave him my copy of the movie "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School" to watch; he takes it and after a year still hasn't watched it.  So this morning I've been thinking about my motivation.  In a way, I suppose I need someone else to agree with me that the book/movie/music is good because I believe my opinion doesn't count!  I feel like a big zero, stupid, worthless, incapable, a loser.  If someone who isn't a loser says such-and-such movie truly is good, then everyone wants to watch the movie.  But I feel like my therapist acts like there's some ulterior improper motive when I want him to read/watch/listen to something.  So I wish I could just enjoy these things on my own and not need his (or other people's) agreement that it's good.

More movies I watched from Netflix this past week:

Life is Beautiful.  This movie is in Italian with subtitles and at first it was difficult to read AND watch at the same time but I got the hang of it.  I wanted to watch it because I remember when Roberto Benigni won the Oscar and how incredibly happy he was!  (Watch his acceptance speech on YouTube; you will cry!)  The movie takes place in WWII when the Nazis put Jewish people in concentration camps, and he plays this positively happy man who twists the truth to his little boy about what's going on so that he won't be scared.  Some party-poopers comment that the movie was unrealistic because the children in the camps were actually separated from their parents but this little boy got to be hidden the whole time in the bunker his father stayed in.  Anyway, I liked this movie even though the ending is sad.

Digging to China.  This movie stars Evan Rachel Wood when she was about 10.  She plays a curious, talkative, imaginative girl whose alcoholic mother eventually dies so she's cared for by her older sister.  She befriends a mentally retarded man played by Kevin Bacon.  I very vaguely remember watching this movie 15 years ago (because I love Kevin Bacon) but most of it still surprised me.  I liked the movie and wish I had a friend like that little girl, who just wants to talk to you and be with you even if you don't say the right things (or anything!) back.

And then like I said, I watched "Meant To Be" again, with my baby Claudia in mind, and watching it has helped me immensely.

Six Word Saturday (11/2/13)

Corn Maze, New Phone and Netflix

Last week was uninteresting and I didn't write a 6WS page for it.  Saturday the 26th we went to the Mesilla Valley Corn Maze.  This was the first time I went although my husband takes the kids every year.  There were about two dozen vendors competing in their BBQ ribs contest so we sampled a few and voted.  My husband pushed me around in a wheelchair because I thought it was going to be too much walking, and I'm really impressed because he even hauled me through the maze.  It was mowed into the shape of a Campbell's vegetable soup can.

We got rid of our land line and my husband bought me a new cell phone (which uses the land line number) and has a slide out keyboard, internet, and a camera on it.  My old flip phone was a pain to text on (number pad).  I joked with my husband if the new phone came with friends to text to.  So far I guess I like it.

We also got rid of cable TV and subscribed to Netflix instead.  I have watched eight movies on it so far:

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  This stars Jim Carrey and it's not a comedy.  His character hires someone to erase his memory of his ex because he found out she erased her memory of him.  It was kind of disturbing and messed with my head a little.
  
• The River Why.  The tagline for this movie was that a man gives up his life in the city and moves to the wilderness to fly-fish and think about life.  It was filmed in Oregon and the scenery is breathtaking!  I also liked the musical score.  The story was "slow" if you're used to watching a lot of action but I found it very relaxing.  The message I got was that everyone dies, whether they're a good person or a bad person, and you should take in your world through all your senses to truly live.
  
• Meant to Be.  This is a pro-life Christian movie about a young man taking a trip to find his birth mother.  His birth mother is a social worker wrapped up in helping a pregnant teen.  The guy discovers something shocking about his life.  I can't say anything else or it would give away half the movie, but I will say I want to watch it again with Claudia in mind and maybe that would be healing for me.
  
• Biloxi Blues.  Matthew Broderick stars in this 1988 movie based on a Neil Simon play.  I saw it when it was originally released, and I have always remembered Broderick's character at basic training in Alabama marching in line and commenting to himself, "It's really hot.  This is like 'Africa' hot."  Lots of other funny lines I'd forgotten too!  And Christopher Walken played his creepy platoon leader.
  
• Born on the Fourth of July.  Tom Cruise stars in this movie of Ron Kovic's Vietnam experience, injury, and later anti-war activism.  The language was pretty awful and the violence was very graphic.  I had seen this too when it was originally released in 1989.  Granted, the director Oliver Stone is as left-leaning as they come so I'm sure he exaggerated a lot, but the conditions of the hospital when Kovic was first being treated were deplorable (nonworking equipment, filthy, rats).
  
• Noel.  I watched this movie to prepare for being bombarded by Christmas stuff after Halloween and also because Susan Sarandon is in it (yes, she's an outspoken leftwinger too, but she is beautiful and has a cool sounding voice and reminds me of my late friend Nancy).  There are several small story lines intertwined in this movie (adult daughter visiting her mother with late term Alzheimer's, a couple who break up before their wedding because of the boyfriend's abusiveness, a homeless man who mistakes the aforementioned boyfriend for his dead wife reincarnated, etc.) and I loved the ending.  Robin Williams has an uncredited serious role too.  I wish I could watch this movie again but it was only available till the 1st.
  
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  I watched this only because it was taking place in WWII (a time period I like).  A Jewish boy in a concentration camp is befriended by the young son of a high-ranking Nazi guard.  The little boy was lonely even though his family was wealthy, and I really empathized with him.  He ends up digging a hole under the concentration camp fence so he could play with his Jewish friend and also help find the Jewish boy's father lost in the camp.  I wasn't expecting the ending at all and it was very dramatic and I'm a little haunted by it still.
  
• Radio.  This stars Cuba Gooding Jr. as "Radio" (given that nickname because he carries around a transistor radio) a young retarded man who the high school football coach gives a small job with the team, even though at first everyone in town hates him because they're afraid of him (and the quarterback's father spends most of the movie trying to keep him from being in contact with the "normal" people).  Slowly during the course of the movie, people start warming up to him and realize he's very nice and supportive of everyone, so by the end everyone loves him.  This is based on a true story.

Six Word Saturday (10/19/13)

"What Am I Going To Do?"

Nothing exciting happened this week.  I haven't been walking lately.  Every month I weigh myself on the 15th and I've gained two pounds, so I should probably start walking again now that it's colder.

On Facebook I've been using Spotify to queue up and listen to all the songs from Billboard's top 100 from this week in 1984.  Well, at least the 77 songs that I liked or could find.  Listening sends me back to that time, especially "All Through the Night" from Cyndi Lauper.

I was telling my therapist about it and about how I used to have headphones plugged into my jambox back then and I'd listen to music all night, falling asleep to it.  I mentioned that hearing "All Through the Night" in particular reminded me of being pregnant back then.  Before everyone even knew I was pregnant, and once I figured out I was, all I could do is fret.  What am I going to do?  The sad part is back then I though once my parents found out I'd have to give the baby away, which really bothered me.  At the time, I never dreamed I would end up having an abortion, considering my parents knew how mentally unstable my paternal grandmother was for the rest of her life after hers.  I actually hated my grandmother after she died and I found out about it.

As I mentioned to my therapist, what I really needed back then was somebody to talk to.  I had no one.  Even if someone did care enough to talk to me, they probably wouldn't wholly listen to me.  Their agenda would always be in the back of their mind.  I wish I could've talked it all the way through with someone.  So my therapist was telling me that I could listen to the pre-abortion 17-year-old me now and acknowledge her story, even though she can't change any of the events.  So that is what I would've said, that my grandmother was a horrible person for killing her baby so that wasn't an option and that I was scared my parents wouldn't let me keep mine even though I would've liked to.  I know for a fact that my doctor saying "she wouldn't survive a pregnancy" is baloney, but back then I wonder why my parents didn't get a second or third opinion like they did for all my other health problems?  Actually, I know the answer:  their agenda, their reputation.  It was really convenient that he scared me saying I was going to die.

I told my therapist I wish I had died during the abortion then, the very thing they were "trying to prevent" if I tried carrying to term.

Six Word Saturday (10/12/13)

Helping Rachel's Vineyard and My Antonia

On Monday I went to the house of the coordinator of the Rachel's Vineyard retreats to help put together information packets for the retreat this weekend.  She had made nachos (in the oven) and chicken a la king over rice as a small meal first.  There was one other lady and her two young adult children helping there as well.  I folded a couple dozen mass programs.  It felt really good to help out, and it always feels so comfortable being around people associated with the retreats, so I had a good time.

Since I haven't ordered Elizabeth Smart's book yet, I was looking around for something else to read.  My daughter had to read Willa Cather's novel "My Antonia" over the summer for school, so I picked it up since she's done with it.  She doesn't really like to read and thought it was a boring book, but it kind of reminds me of the Little House on the Prairie style books I used to read when I was her age (so I like it so far).

Actually, there's one more event I want to note.  My father has another pacemaker surgery coming up on Wednesday.  Last week in counseling I admitted that I feel about as concerned about his surgery as I would feel about Clint Eastwood having surgery; I'm that far removed from my family, especially him.  I know I've disappointed him and embarrassed him and he won't forgive me and acts very uncomfortable around me.  I told my therapist that the only thing that I'm worried about is if my father dies then he will get to see Claudia in heaven before I do.  I know it sounds petty.  For the past 29 years he has not said ONE WORD about my abortion, like it never even happened, and he'll get to see the baby from that event (who doesn't exist, as far as he's concerned) before I do.  It just doesn't seem right to me.

Six Word Saturday (10/5/13)

My Job and Son Are Gone

Sunday night my husband, younger two kids and I went out to a fancy steak place with my inlaws, my oldest son and his wife.  My inlaws picked them up from my daughter-in-law's parents' house and supposedly got to meet them.  I've never met them so I'm a little jealous.  We had a decent dinner and then went out for ice cream afterwards.  Then my inlaws made plans with me to go to breakfast with them and my son and his wife in the morning.  When the morning came, my younger two kids told me they felt like they didn't get to talk to my oldest son very much the night before, so I let them skip their morning classes so they could go with me.  So the next day off he went to Italy, and his wife is staying with her parents here right now till she receives her visa and then she'll be flying over with their dogs soon after that.  Me and my daughter want to take her out for breakfast sometime before she has to go, but I don't think she really likes me.  I don't know what my son has told his wife and inlaws that made them shun us so badly but I know he didn't have a very good life with us (see May 1, 2012 entry).  I feel guilty.  Again, I just want to say that my parents were glad to get rid of Claudia and now I believe my husband's glad to get rid of my oldest son.

As for my job (the one I just got three weeks ago).  It was hard and I couldn't get the names of the medicines right.  The editor told me to just put INAUDIBLE if I wasn't 100% sure what the name was, and then two assignments later she lectured me about the medicine names.  I had two questions about my invoice that I turned in last week and I skyped the guy in charge of that, and he never answered me back, so I should have known something was up.  Then the following morning he wrote me that maybe I would do better with their non-medical transcription.  I asked for the link to apply for it and he gave it to me, but I still haven't done it because I'm hurt.  Plus I'm scared the audio is going to be crappy quality like these other medical ones ALL were.  Sometimes I could barely hear them.

Oddly, I'm not that upset about going back to only having the one job with sporadic assignments now.  Having my neat freak therapist come over last week really put a shot in my arm about getting my house shipshape.  Amazingly it's not bugging me that it will be a long process, and I have been working on it all week.  I'm proud of the microscopic improvements I've made.  I'm pleased and feel like I've been accomplishing something, which I give God the credit for (credit for giving me stamina, credit for giving me approving eyes instead of critical of what I haven't done, and credit for giving me a new small feeling of NOT being worthless).