A Good Man is Hard to Find*

Trent said I was a little harsh in the construction party post regarding bringing his work home.  Maybe that’s true, but I do know what RFI stands for, and is that really necessary?  Either way, I do think he is a fabulous person and he does some very creative things.  Therefore, consider this post the first in a three part series entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

So after 3 1/2 years of ignoring our front yard, we finally tackled it this year. 

First, the Befores:

That’s September 2011, but really it could be any day.  Until last weekend, the front yard always looked like that.

I just found that picture from Halloween when I was looking for old pics of the front of our house.  It barely shows anything of the house, but Tate’s expression is priceless.  What, does he not like wearing a kangaroo suit in 80 degree weather?

And the Afters:

We spent a long time wondering what to do, when my mom says, “Why don’t you make the flower bed smaller?”  Of course!  So we do need to take the final step of getting sod for the expanse of dirt formerly known as an empty flower bed. 

Our favorite part is the little path, finally solving the problem of getting from the car to the front door.  Previously you had to walk on the grass, which of course meant no grass would grow there.  Trent made the path and I’m impressed.  I’m also amazed that he just figured out how to do it, bought the supplies, and made a great addition.  Plus, he did most of the work in the dark, in the evenings after work.  Well done, Trent.

Now it’s time to see how many of the plants we can keep alive.

 

*Trent and I like to good-naturedly annoy each other by using the phrase “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in reference to the Flannery O’Connor short story of the same title.  Anyone else read that in high school?  Everyone gets murdered at the end?  A good man is apparently very hard to find. 

Trent just corrected me – the Flannery O’Connor short story he really likes to reference to annoy me is “Good Country People.”  He’ll usually refer to someone as “good people” and then I ask if the so-called “good-people” have stolen any prosthetic legs lately. 

The question right now is why is Trent still awake?  It’s after 10.

One day he’s going to take time from his busy schedule of landscaping and talking about work to read those short stories.

You look away for one second-

Rush-struction Party

Trent is a great man and a wonderful husband, but no one could ever accuse him of leaving work at work.  He’s the master of bringing work home.  Every six months or so I’ll hear a really interesting work story, like a co-worker opening the door to his motel room and finding a dead body and a police investigation (true), but the other 363 days of the year our dinner conversation steers onto which subcontractors are falling behind and who hasn’t approved the most recent batch of change orders and what other companies are bidding the newest hospital.  I know more about construction than I ever wanted to know.  Rush loves construction too, so it was only natural to throw a construction party for his 3rd birthday.

There are some really cute ideas online for construction themed birthday parties. A lot of mothers do really adorable things with dump trucks and chocolate covered raisin rocks. I had to stop looking at other people’s beautifully blogged construction parties because I was feeling too smug.  Finally, a chance to use my construction knowledge, and there’s nothing cute about it.  It’s not cute to be forced into a discussion how many RFI’s the steel subcontractor submitted while we’re driving to the beach.  Now, finally, finally!, I had a way for construction to be fun! (Oh, and the paycheck and health insurance that the construction industry has provided our family for years has been nice as well.)

This was the easiest party ever, first of all because we have such helpful extended family who happily made guacamole and beans and queso and a birthday cake and helped with the kids and shopped for party supplies, and on and on with helpfulness.  And everything else was easy too.  We needed sand to fill in some swampy parts in our yard anyway.  Trent borrowed some cones from work, we bought a roll of caution tape (which I’m sure will come in handy in the future), and dug through our garage. Hmm, cute container filled with lemonade or Igloo jug filled with water? Igloo jug, let’s keep it real. We could put cokes in the cooler, or wait, here’s our wheelbarrow.  Let’s fill it with ice and stick the drinks there.

I’ve never seen such a serious bunch of 3 year olds. Some of them showed up with their own dump trucks, went straight to the sand pile, and didn’t take a break for the entire party. I think a lot of them even skipped the cake. Dirt work is important business for some kids.

The party was not without its cuteness though.  Trent’s sister Kim volunteered to make the cake and made the very coolest cake ever to grace a 3rd birthday party.  It’s the cake that keeps on giving too, with all that new equipment to play with.

I tried to use the equipment from the cake to teach my sister the difference between a bulldozer, a front-end loader, a backhoe, etc…I didn’t want her to teach her daughter that everything is a tractor (wrong) like my friend and  mother of two girls - you know who you are Elizabeth!

I’ve seen offices filled with blueprints when I’ve visited Trent at work and I know from his excessive work stories that blueprints are constantly being revised and recycled.  So I asked him to please bring a few home to use as tablecloths. 

Blueprints, where have you been all my life?!  As soon as I saw that big stack of paper enter our front door, my head started spinning.  Oh, the endless possibilities!  We rolled some up with crayons for party favors.  But how did I never think about getting blueprints from Trent before?  I have a giant to-do list in the kitchen right now on the back of a blueprint.  We have giant coloring sheet.  I know I’m going to be wrapping presents in the outdated plans for Carnegie High School. The “Welcome Home from Your First Semester of College Rush!” banner will probably be painted on the back of blueprints.

We still have a big pile of dirt in the yard covered in dump trucks.  We were outside this morning and we’ll be outside again this afternoon.  The construction party is never really over at our house.

Just Saw Heat

I watched my new favorite movie last night:  Bridesmaids.  I put off watching it because everything I heard about it praised it for being the first movie full of women, written by a woman, also full of raunchy male humor.  That to me isn’t a step forward, because any alert person knows the world is full of hilarious women who can make you laugh out loud without just making fart jokes.  Women making the equivalent of The Hangover sounded like a step back to me. 

But then I watched the movie last night, and I wish all the reviews hadn’t said exactly the same thing because if I had seen it earlier it would have been at the top of my Christmas list.  It was hilarious, and while it did have a few off-beat scenes, there weren’t as many as I expected.  Or maybe I’m just too desensitized by watching shows on FX.  But it wasn’t the girl version of The Hangover or Old School, thankfully.  It was just a great movie. 

And for some reason, about halfway through, I crossed that point where you realize that it’s just a thin veil between laughing really hard and sobbing.  Something about that movie, either the complicated nature of female friendships or that cute policeman, made me start crying.  Not tearing up, like in the scene in Ratatouille when Ego flashes back to his childhood, but The Notebook crying.  I really tried to hold it in and not freak out Trent, because it was a comedy.  But I really loved that movie.  It’s made it’s way onto my short list of movies that I’ll watch at any time:  About a Boy, Mean Girls, Joe Vs. the Volcano, Newsies, and The Goodbye Girl.

(Please note – Don’t assume I’m secretly pregnant because I cried during Bridesmaids.  I’m not a big crier when I’m pregnant.  My hormones are too busy making sure I hit at least double the doctor recommended weight gain.)

Bridesmaids was just another recent example of why I’m getting increasingly irritated at movie reviews.  With all the critics, why is there always one dominating opinion about a movie?  People have different opinions of things, that’s life.  Take The Muppets, great reviews across the board, yet in my opinion, and I LOVE the Muppets, TERRIBLE movie.  Trent actually fell asleep in the theater.  If that movie were loyal to the actual Muppets, it would be impossible for anyone to fall asleep in the theater, including babies. 

And what about Cars 2?  How dare the Academy snub Cars 2 for an Oscar nomination?  The reviews consistently blasted Pixar for actually making a kids movie.  But have you seen Cars 2?  It’s a James Bond movie, and excellent.  I think everyone was just disappointed that they left a Pixar film without crying.  In my opinion, it was way better than Toy Story 3, which, let’s all admit it, at it’s emotional core was just another Toy Story 2.

My other recent movie going experience was seeing John Carter last week.  Again, it was a good movie with crappy reviews.  I never would have seen it had my mom not praised the movie so highly and offered to baby-sit so Trent and I could go see it big screen.  She’s a huge fan of the Edward Rice Burroughs books that the movie is based on, so we took her word over the reviews and went.  It’s a really enjoyable sci-fi action movie.  I’ll be honest:  if given the choice today of re-watching one of the new Star Wars movies, Avatar, or John Carter, I’m picking John Carter.  But is it bombing in theaters because all it’s reviews gave it only two stars?  Yes.  I’m glad I ignored those reviews.

I recently read an article about the new Newsies musical that referred to the 1992 movie as –this close to the quote, if not exactly it- a terrible flop with a cult following.  I guarantee that the cult following consists entirely of women who were between third and eight grade in 1992.  Have you seen Newsies?  Young Christian Bale?  It could be –and is- one of the greatest movies ever, but there’s not a grown man in the world who would write a good review of Newsies.  It’s a musical full of teenage boys. 

Not everything has to be a timeless masterpiece that appeals to all ages and all generations.  It’s okay that I only read the first Twilight book and then no further, not only because everyone is entitled to make their own opinions about things, but also because I’m not a 15 year-old.  I loved the Babysitter’s Club series with a passion when I was in elementary school, but I wouldn’t read one today and that’s okay too.  Not everything has to stand the test of time.  Have you watched Empire Records since the 90’s?  It’s so awkward, I can’t even watch more than a few minutes.  But in high school, I loved that movie.  The fact that I can’t watch it now doesn’t make it a bad movie.  For KHS Class of ‘99, that was a five star film.

Even for highly praised films, people in the same demographic can make their own opinions.  Why, when we love so many of the same things, did I enjoy The Social Network but fall asleep during Winter’s Bone, while my friend had the opposite reaction to those movies?  We’re different people.  While there may be elements that truly make one movie excellent and another horrible, it’s not always the black and white of awards shows and Rotten Tomatoes. 

I’m not going to stop reading movie reviews, that’s half the fun of the Thursday paper.  And some movies are across the board terrible and get the reviews that they deserve.   But, just like reading a book or a magazine, I’m going to read critically. 

Or I’m just going to stop reading the paper and spend my time on the couch, alternating between laughing and weeping to Bridesmaids.

Clara Belle

Last weekend the Clara Belle had her first taste of the gulf.

Trent had the winning name, after our beloved Clara Street – and for no particular reason, because it has that Mississippi riverboat sound.

I expected a little more pomp and circumstance.  When I imagined christening the boat with champagne (a small bottle of champagne, for a small boat) I didn’t picture myself in the clothes I slept in.  Trent however, was beyond antsy and excited about getting the boat in the water and set sail during what started as an early morning walk on the beach.

Trent’s lifelong dream was finally realized and he spent the day exhilarated and slightly tired. 

I should probably add that I didn’t even get on the boat last weekend.  Spring Break is traditionally a tease, because the reality is always a constant cold breeze and I didn’t want to be soaking wet (the boat capsized on every run) and cold.  Plus, it was a great time to indulge in my beach drug of choice, finding sharks’ teeth.  Trent should be writing this post so everyone could get a taste of his excitement.

And thus begins the newest adventure of the Williams family.