I love the passing of time

Shelby’s joining in on the adsense blogging craze He’s got one at funbrowsergames.blogspot.com

So, if you’re looking to waste some time playing some browser games, go see what he recommends & read his tips & advice!

He’s really excited about the whole thing & I think it will help him learn a lot about blogging, websites, writing, economics, etc.

Just a fun blog that I’m working on this holiday season at: http://itsawonderfulmoviedescription.blogspot.com/

In years past, we’ve enjoyed the one or two sentence synopsis that Dish Network has on their program guide for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and general Winter Holiday movies and TV specials. They can be goofy, funny, thoughtful, completely off-base or so very succinct in the way they summarize a classic in a whole new way.

So, this year, I’m blogging as many of them as I can. And, I’m tagging/labelling them to try to keep track of trends in themes and casting.

Take a look, when you get a minute (and click an ad, while you’re at it!)

I know that, all along, I’ve told myself not to worry - that when puberty & peer pressure kick in, they’re going to start choosing to sleep on their own.

And, more and more often, now, they are.

Two nights ago, Shelby was sleeping in his own bed (it was dad’s night off, though, so we had asked him to start there anyway). He woke with bad wheezing at 1:30am or so, while dad & I were still awake in the living room. He sat with us for a while there. We gave him benadryl & let him breathe cold outside night air. And, after he relaxed & started breathing easier, although still rattly, I slept with him sitting up beside me on the couch, until I finally brought us both to ‘the big bed’ at about 3:30am.

Last night, he chose to sleep in his own bed. And, I said, without thinking first “Oh, now I’m going to be worried about your breathing all night” He looked worried, then… I tried to cover up with “Oh, you’ll be fine. You’ve been fine all day. And, even when it started being rattly last night, you woke up & got us. I’m sure you’ll do the same tonight, if you need me.”

Then, he went to bed. And, later, I went to bed, after checking to make sure he was breathing OK.

And, I, eventually, fell asleep - but still worried a bit, first. And, he did wake & come to my bed sometime before morning.

But, he’s doing it. He’s choosing to sleep in his own bed more often. He’s waking up in his own bed more often, too. And, I’m sure that as the weeks & months pass, he’ll eventually be sleeping on his own all night every night.

And, so will Annie.

And, then, I’ll miss them, but they’ll be teenagers and, even if they did sleep by me, it would be a little weird & uncomfortable, probably. They wouldn’t be little any more.

I’ll miss that.

Aargh… I hate starting off my day and hers (in this case) with unresolved tears, fears, anger, emotion, drama - as she gathers up her backpack & gets out of the car to head into the school & then I drive off to work.

There’s always the nagging feeling that, if something bad happens to her or I before we can see each other again, the last memory will be a bad one.

And, even if nothing bad does happen before we can see each other again, the last memory all day, until then, is a lingering bad feeling about unresolved issues.

I wish I was better at all of this & knew how to smooth things over, fix them right away, with just the right word, action or expression….

We saw Where the Wild Things Are on Fri night. It was not too scary at all, at least, not for my kids. It was scary at times, but in an ‘exciting movie’ kind of way. And, it was achingly emotional at times, for both the kids and for me, but the emotions were all part of the plot of the movie & it flowed into them and out of them.

I’d like to see it again, without my high expectations for an emotional epic. I think that it would have been better going into it expecting what I had been expecting, before the week of reading reviews & being told that crybaby kids & parents might not be able to deal with the movie. Before that, I was expecting a sweet, exciting journey into the imagination of a very real child. And, I think that’s what the movie brought - quite nicely, actually.

We’re going to see it tonight - at the IMAX. Tix already pre-ordered. I’m really looking forward to it.

But, I just read this article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/12/where-the-wild-things-are_0_n_317908.html

“The idea that I came up with is if the wild things are wild emotions. As a kid, one of the things that can feel scary or out of control is wild emotions, out-of-control emotions, either in yourself or the people around you,” Jonze said. “Having a tantrum, that’s scary as a kid, because you just see red. … Trying to make a movie that feels like what it feels to be 9 years old at times, that was the idea.”

And the idea that it’s making you think about what it feels like to be 9 years old - is what sounds scary *to me*.

As a parent, I want to think that I can make it easy for the kids - that everything’s fine. It’s frightening to look directly at reality (or potential reality) sometimes.

I’m worried that “Where The Wild Things Are” might be too scary to see. Not for the kids, really, but for me.

It started when I read this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=49362&tsp=1 , in which Maurice Sendak tells parents to ‘go to hell’ when they question the appropriateness of the movie for their children. Note that, in my interpretation, these parents are not telling him that the movie must be made to be appropriate for their children, they just want a little bit of information to help them figure out whether taking their kids to this movie would be a good idea or not (without having to first sit through the movie on their own, thus paying for it twice -and- missing the bonding moment of watching it for the first time together).

His implied ‘fuck you’, later comments about ‘wetting your pants’ and the pages of reader comments afterwards worried me as a parent. Not because I thought the movie had to be made to my specifications, but because they all left me with the impression that this might, potentially, be viscerally frightening for my children and, well, where’s the entertainment in that?

So, I went off googling some more & found this article, (spoiler alert - pretty much divulges the whole plot, but that’s pretty evident if you’ve read the book already, anyway) http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=11434 , in which I believe I discovered the point of the movie and in which I thought the reviewer completely missed that same point.

As far as I can tell, from this review, others I’ve read and trailers & clips that I’ve seen - and in a clearly simplified manner - this movie is about learning to face and deal with the uncontrolled emotions and urges inside of us all - not only as a child/individual, but as a parent helping a child to navigate it all.

The reviewer at “The Trades” seems to be of the impression that those uncontrolled emotions are best dealt with by denying that they exist - both as a child/individual and as a parent. He might want to talk some of that over with a therapist at some point in his life. Kids rage & go wild, parents cope, we’re all human, we all make mistakes, life is a learning process.

As a parent, myself, though - a parent to a 9yo boy much like the 9yo Max in the book & movie - the basic premise of this movie frightens me. It frightens me for my son - for what he’s got inside of him & how he’s going to feel as he confronts it and how he’s going to decide to deal with it. He’s got scary times ahead. We all did and still do, but I think it’s harder when you first feel it’s power - the power of the wild thing inside your head, heart, body & realize that you might not be in control of it all of the time.

And, it frightens me for *me*, who loves that boy so much & doesn’t want him to have to face this struggle, on his own or at all.

Is he going to understand the metaphors when he sees the movie? He’s pretty smart & he heard me talking to dad, yesterday, as we watched the trailer on the internet, about the loss of innocence & confidence that I saw in the plot at that time (as he realized his shortcomings at being ‘king’). And, even if he doesn’t understand the metaphors, will he feel them just the same, as they resonate through his own real life right now? And, unlike the monsters in a horror movie, will the ideas in this movie frighten him?

As a parent, too, will I feel my own shortcomings, see them played out in the mother in the movie, the one who struggles to figure out how to parent the wild thing and who knows she falls short, and hopes he forgives her because she loves him so.

Then, of course, there are the girls who I love - one who’s denied her wild thing already, one who’s just starting to have her own wild rumpuses as she looks to me, to dad for reaction.

I don’t expect to leave the theater with dry eyes.

I hope the kids will find their way, without denying too much of who they are and what they feel. And I hope that they will forgive us for not always knowing which way to tell them to turn.

At work, we send out daily reports to some of our clients. The reports are sent ‘from’ a ‘reports@ourcompany.com’ email address. One of my jobs is to monitor the inbox for that email address.

Whenever I get ‘Out of Office’ replies from someone - you know “I will be out of the office until . If this is an emergency, please contact ” - Whenever I get those, I think nice “Hope you’re having a great vacation!” thoughts for the person who’s getting away for a while.

:-)

This morning, Annie said “I wish I didn’t have to go to school today so that I could stay home and finish reading my book”. It’s a Junie B Jones from the library, but, still - she’s enjoying reading a chapter book by herself & that’s awesome. She started it last night, while Shelby & I finally found time to sit down & watch some more of Sunday night’s National Park documentary. We’ve still got an hour of that one to go, then there’s the one that recorded last night.

Days like this, I wish we were home schooling or unschooling. But, I also know that there are things that they get from the schools that they would never get if they were home with us all day.

Well, kind of - she was on the radio last summer, too when she was at radio camp…

And, she’s going to have a mentor with her today, too.

But, starting tonight at 5:55pm CT, she’s taking a few shifts a week at http://www.wonc.org/ (streams live online + 89.1 FM in the Chicago suburbs)

I’m so excited for her