Archive for April, 2010

Today marks the 30th week of my pregnancy, three fourths of the way there, and just a mere ten weeks (70 days!) to go.  All in all, despite the symptoms I have experienced and continue to experience, the discomfort and the restless nights, the heartburn and the ever exciting changes in my body… I have really enjoyed being pregnant.  I have found joy and happiness in this connection of love I have to our baby, in the small kicks and movements, in the occasional fit of hiccups, and in daydreaming about what lies ahead.  Don’t get me wrong, I cannot wait to meet Little Doodle, but I have enjoyed having this little baby all to myself for so long.

And yet it doesn’t seem long at all, it is almost as if the pregnancy has gone by in the blink of an eye.  It seems as though it was just yesterday that two blue lines showed up on a test, on the morning of Mark’s 31st birthday.  It’s almost as though the nausea was just last week, or the first flutterings of what could be a tiny baby moving inside me.  And I’m guessing it doesn’t slow down either.  Before I know it, I will be at their graduation haha.

In another four weeks I will have my 34 week scan, and I am looking forward to seeing our near-term baby on screen.  Perhaps we will get to finally figure out what gender Little Doodle is, but I have grown to realize that it doesn’t matter:  boy or girl, so long as he/she is healthy, will suit me just fine. I’ve had my shot for being rhesus negative and another one left to go, been poked, prodded, and fondled and now I’ll see my midwife every other week from here on out.   My bump is measured with each visit, and we also get to listen to Little Doodle’s strong heart beating away. I’ve started having Braxton Hicks contractions, no pain contractions the body uses to prepare for labor (and my uterus becomes rock solid… it’s impressive!).  I have hip pain and soreness due to both having to sleep on my side and also the widening of my hips in preparation.

I received my booking for the labor and breastfeeding class today as well. Speaking of which, the instructions prompt moms-to-be to bring a doll or stuffed animal for the breastfeeding portion.  I told Mark about this and it dawned on me I didn’t have any stuffed animals that were baby sized.  Marky said he would take me to Build-A-Bear and we would make a bear just for Little Doodle, and borrow it for the class… I burst into tears.  It was so touching, and I’ve been so soppy lately it’s ridiculous. I love that man so much.

With the property having been accepted and, with the gracious help of Mark’s father, we should be able to starting moving in mid June.  Things will be coming down to the wire, as we will be trying to prepare our new place for when the baby arrives, moving, and finishing the year at school all within the same few short weeks… all just in time for Little Doodle.  We’ve held off buying things due to the fact there is simply no place to keep anything at our current flat, so alot of shopping will need to be done at the last moments as well.  Sometimes the thoughts of trying to get everything done on such a short timescale makes me anxious… but it will all work out.  I know it will.

Little Doodle,

Here we are, 29 weeks, rounding 3rd and heading for home base.  For the longest time it has felt like being pregnant was to be a new permanent state of being, a new me, a new body.  I’ve gotten used to your odd demands for various foods, the need to use the bathroom every 40 minutes on average, and of course those little feet you use to constantly remind me of your presence.  It’s very odd to think that as far as we have come on this journey together, these past 29 weeks, that we only have a little longer to go… a short 10.5 weeks until you are with us.

This week you let your father in on the secret you and I have shared for nearly 12 weeks between just the two of us: you kicked his hand with those little happy feet, late at night as we lay together in the silent dark, talking about you.  And now before we know it you will be here with us and I will have to share you with the rest of the world, as selfish as that sounds.   I’ve fallen in love with those little feet: little feet that only I have known for this long, little feet that sometimes jiggle my whole bump, little feet which feel like you’re dancing, little perfect feet which, I’m sure, are sporting little perfect toes.  The little feet only I know.

Others will undoubtedly touch and kiss your perfectly soft baby feet, but they will always be MY little baby feet… the little feet you used to talk to me before you were born.

Love,

Mom.

Alternative title: Why am I the only person who realizes this?

May contain spoilers.

I wasn’t aware until we were walking out of the theater that Kick-Ass was the latest in a long and iffy line of comic book adapted movies.  Out of the four of us who went to see it, I was the only one bitching in the end.  And now, as the reviews are in and more of my peers have seen the movie, it continues to be labeled as “awesome” and “must see.”  Sorry, but I feel as though I was unjustly charged actual money to see this garbage, and I will tell you why.

Part of my problem with the movie is, admittingly, not knowing the source material.  I had no clue this was based on a comic book series by the same name, and therefore cannot judge the movie based on how well I feel they captured the essence of the characters.  But I did go into the movie with expectations, and those expectations were handed to me by the trailer for the film.  The trailer is cut in such a way that someone who is not familiar with the comics may think that the movie is a light-hearted comedy about a boy trying to become a real life superhero… and those are the expectations I took into the cinema with me.  Instead, Kick-Ass is a very violent movie. It contains a mass murdering father- 12 year old daughter duo who are also dressed as superheroes, and a cliche, tiring plot about one simple boy getting wrapped up in something much bigger than himself.

Let’s start with the violence.  I am perfectly okay with violence in films if it is done well, I am a huge fan of Tarantino’s work.   Kick-Ass does not have original style when it comes to the violence or action sequences.  Instead, it feels like a Tarantino rip off.  The scenes of graphic violence strike you as something you’ve seen before, perhaps in Kill Bill.  It tried too hard to go for the shock value but failed miserably. Instead of watching something that actually horrified me in it’s gruesomeness, it felt like  cheesy, B horror film violence and gore, fake red corn syrup and all.

Nick Cage and some unknown 12 year old girl play the parts of Big Daddy and Hit Girl, a father daughter team who have been in the game long before Kick-Ass (in case you didn’t know, that’s the young teen Dave’s super hero alter-ego) enters the scene.  If there was anything endearing about this special father-daughter relationship, it was completely overshadowed by the psychopathic need of Nick Cage’s character to train his 12 year old daughter to be a killer and Cage’s terrible, terrible acting. Each time Cage’s character said “child,” as in reference to his daughter, I got a creepy pedophilic vibe from him.

Nick Cage playing his favorite character: Nick Cage.

Speaking of Hit Girl, here is where the majority of the film’s comedic fodder comes in: a 12 year old saying “cunt.”  Sure, we can also count the masturbation scene and the awkwardness of McLovin’s Red Mist character as some of the comedy, but the vast majority of the humor in the movie relies on this one little girl spewing a myriad of cliche one-liners and cuss words that would make a sailor blush.  Again, I have no problem with cussing or the like in movies, but it really got old when the film was using it as a crutch to get a couple of laughs. We get it, it’s fucking ironic a 12 year old pretty little girl would call someone a “cunt” before running across the room to kill him, but we didn’t need to see it done over and over again.  It wasn’t funny after the first dozen times.

She said “cunt.”  I’m literally rolling on the floor laughing, it’s so hilarious.

Then there is the plot.  Is there any plot in the history of movies that is more worn out than ordinary-guy-gets-involved-in-something-way-over-his-head-and-viewers-need-a-flow-chart-just-to-follow-it?  Here is my problem: Take a  movie like Pineapple Express or The Big Lebowski (stoner movies are really guilty of this).  Now, your target audience just wants to watch a movie about other people getting high. You have a likable main character one can relate to and put him in a situation we can all relate to as well. Hilarity ensues and things are going good.  Then take all of that and throw it out the window and replace it instead with a plot involving various levels of an organized crime ring/ govt agency /any type of group so long as it has too many characters to keep track of, and make the plot so ornate that not only is it not believable, but you’d have a hard time following it even sober.

That’s what Kick-Ass is like.

The movie starts with the light-hearted idea of a boy who could try to become a real, crime fighting superhero and ends with him having become resistant to pain due to a Wolverine-like experience, involved with an organized crime operation disguised as a lumber wholesaler, two psychopathic masked vigilantes who have apparently been in the game for a long time but no one has ever heard of them, a plot to trick Kick-Ass into the arms of said crime organization so they could torture and then kill him live on webcam for the whole world to see based on the misguided fact that they believe Kick-Ass killed their drug dealers, said plot involves the crime King Pin’s own son to dress as a similarly lame superhero to gain Kick-Ass’s trust, and a hilarious scene with Nick Cage’s Big Daddy character burning to death all the while shouting in that ridiculous fake voice he put on for the character.

Too.  Much. Lame. Plot. Sometimes, less  really IS more.

All in all, if you are one of the people who claim this movie has become one of your top favorite films of all time, you need to watch more films.  Kick-Ass sucked ass and if I had the choice to do it again, I wouldn’t have even wasted the few seconds it would take to download a pirated version let alone pay money to see it.

Sunny day in Brighton

Flea Market hunting.

North Laines.  Sun, milkshakes, and more markets.

Bought a hanging set of three photo frames made of rustic-looking wood and rope.

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