It's Just a Bit More Complicated Now, Love - In Defense of When Harry Met Sally

As a rule, I do not necessarily enjoy, for lack of a better term, chick flicks. Never saw The Notebook. I kind of hate movies with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.  My friends dragged me to Serendipity and just UGH! I was massively uncomfortable and the whole thing was so predictable. But, there is Harold and Maude, the Before trilogy, and of course, When Harry Met Sally. Offbeat romances? 

What I like about Harry and Sally is the realness of it. Love is complicated. You don't write your phone number on a dollar bill and then send it into circulation. What you do do (ha!, I said doodoo) is keep running into that guy that you were forced to interact with and that you cannot stand. Relatable. And because you don't see eye-to-eye with this dude, you feel okay being authentic. They put on a front when they are set up with each other's best friends, and true love is hiding in plain sight as a

buddy that they are just bouncing ideas off of and getting the opposite sex's perspective. Yeah, it's a great movie because they are both clueless that they're in love. Like Moonstruck, love doesn't solve your problems: it just creates a mess. Embrace it.

We get a glimpse, just one moment, where we get the happily ever after! This movie is genius!!!! His love of her OCD when it comes to food is everything! And that, my friends, is love. Love is being annoyed to the point of insanity and still being attracted to this soul. Not the blue eyeshadow and not her alphabetized VHS tapes (yes, this is somewhat of a delayed review. I'd also like to congratulate Brian Boitano on that phenomenal free skate = just great!) but how she spends hours on her hair and too much money on shoes and other nonsense that makes her Sally. Harry, where are you? You're late...

These two went to the same Midwestern college and moved to NYC. They disliked each other immediately, and were authentic in an age where it is much easier to be annoyed than find the good in someone. But love will find a way. Sex is easy; it's intimacy that's hard. They are equals until...

I love New York. It really doesn't deserve me and I am too good for the Big Apple, but there's just something about it. Love it or hate it, you probably have an opinion. Like me. Take it or leave it, but I am what I am and I love it, so, Harry, I'm ready, and it helps if you don't bring that coffee table. That stupid, Roy Roger's, wagon wheel coffee table! 

Modern Life Indignities

A list of modern day pet peeves. Know what I hate? Scanning barcodes instead of being handed a menu. Know why? Because you only need to update one record to change the prices instead of reprinting a full set of menus. I detest filling out customer service forms online and getting a form email with a logo where a person's name should be. When did it become acceptable to tell a customer, nope, can't help you. No suggestions are given as to what to do, not even a pat courtesy word like "sorry" or "hello". Self-checkout? Don't blame me when I scan a smart TV accidentally as a bag of spinach. It is grim.

What do we do with this feeling of being a stone let for blood? We have short-cutted and streamlined our way into this mess and it shows no sign of stopping. It is impossible to save the planet when I cannot even talk to a human about issues I am experiencing. We are all in crisis. Racing to the bottom isn't working any longer.

Please stop taking this out on Jane and John Q. Public. We are weary and suspicious and we're tired of our only choices being stepping on or being trod upon. Civility. It is time.

We cannot wait for someone else to do it. Society is too cut-throat as it is. Don't add fuel to the fire - the world is already burning.

Carry on! Help out and carry on.

Generational Trauma and White Men

Men and PTSD. They have it, too. Do they cause most problems? Yes. Are they entitled? Uh-huh. They're also hurting, and it is nearly impossible to empathize, but I am trying.

We send them into war. Be successful but don't flaunt it. They aren't allowed to cry. I think I'd be pissed, too. I have been courting a man, and it is hard! Until this, I'd be the first to judge a man for not having his lines rehearsed or poorly navigating my weird sense of humor - but be careful! One wrong word and you will not hear the end of it!

Setting yourself up for rejection is a hard lifestyle, but trying to impress is all-consuming. If I keep this up, will I eventually become a Proud Boy? It seems like my string of success with men will never end, despite the grey hairs - not just the ones you can see! - and non-symmetrical lines that cannot be classified other than "fold wrinkles". That, or I am telegraphing somehow that I am easy. I am not, but I must be broadcasting otherwise. I could not be trickier.

In any case, I need to come to the conclusion that these men are people. I know this intellectually, but the anecdotal evidence leads me to different ideas. Those loud pompous facades just mask their own insecurity, no matter how repulsive. It is well and good for me to think I'd do it better, and I'm sure I would, but so many men are getting it so wrong, I cannot help but wonder why. I can weave in and out of my imagined position of power, so is it the non-stop incessant nature of it that is making them nuts?

I was mocked for missing the kickball. That's fair, and I was a scrawny girl. And, it had to be comedy gold to witness, very Charlie Brown! But, imagine if I was a boy! The outfield moved up and everyone, including me, expected I'd miff. When I was bullied, it was just fulfilling the prophecy. There was a boy that was the male counterpart of me that had to do an insane amount of pullups to get credibility. I was allowed to remain a weakling. Boys are forced to toughen up. Pressure.

I can flounder, as I am currently, and society doesn't have a problem with me asking for help. Men cannot do this. They have to act. Too much pressure and doing it yourself are a recipe for disaster. I do feel bad for them. Almost. As I write this, my white trash male neighbors are throttling their ATVs around and around my block. In Queens, NYC. The cars that use my 2-block street as a drag strip come about once or twice an hour. I nearly felt compassion and they make a huge spectacle with so much noise and exhaust, windows rattling in the car and in our homes, but who cares? They're enjoying themselves!

Guys want women to come out and say things, and women want men to read their minds and stop acting like fools. Neither is going to happen until we get some perspective. Enjoy the communication gap in the meantime, because sometimes the assholes can be entertaining. But, be careful! Because, they can also be killers.

Marimekko Rug - Status and Lessons Learned

My wacky arm is rising up in protest

My math is off! I finished less than a quarter of the marigold flowers and I have, of course, used half the yarn. How? I want to blame poor quality control for my miscalculations! So, here's what I learned so far:

• It is tedious! I need traction and I'm not even 1/5 done. Past Linda didn't consider Future Linda and wanted to get the 5' wide canvas in the 8' length (bought by the yard). I'd need to apprentice the next few generations if I had done this. Carpal tunnel is looking likely.

• 

  Inch by inch
  

  I was worried about the white flowers, and I never thought about kelly green not really being a big floral color outside of leaves. The colors looked juicy until I added the black center in the kelly flower and that cut the Zebra Stripe gum vibe somewhat. And the marigold could more accurately be called mac 'n cheese...
• Fuzz: we all know that new rugs shed. I can confirm. AND, the yarn isn't in its final, cut state. Oh, well, that's why I have the German vacuum cleaner.
• Right to left and bottom to top is the way to latch hook if you're a righty like me. In other words, exactly the opposite of my instinct and most likely how I did my Lucy rug. But then, I ride snowboard goofy, so find what works for you.
• Soothing. Maybe because I did it during the good old days of my childhood, maybe it's my female ancestors echoing in the wool that they spun and crocheted to make spending money, but it feels comforting to do this. It calls to me to do one more row.
• Yarn quality is mixed. I bought a Cascade 220 white to test and mixed it in with the Hobbii white and I cannot tell the difference. The thickness does seem to vary more with the Hobbii brand, but it holds its ply better than the Cascade, so I think it is better for latch hooking, IMO. When all the threads are shmushed together vertically, you cannot see that some strands are fraying, again, IMHO.

I will let you know how ordering more yarn from other color lots goes. Let me finish the two cheesy flowers I started and I will address this problem later. Maybe Jesus will perform a miracle and fish occurrence and it will all go to plan, tee hee hee!

Will I persevere and finish or will this languish in a closet while my arm recuperates? Stay tuned!

Transferring Large Designs Without a Projector

Almost convenient, the auto-
resizing by my video
editing software!

If you're looking for an answer, keep moving, because I haven't figured this out. First, I tried casting my screen to my television, but I cannot use my Chromecast because it's a long story. At first, as a work-around, I thought I'd load my image to YouTube and then find it on YouTubeTV. Except that putting an image into a movie means the screen puts the entire image into the frame, and I want the whole frame taken up. When I do that, it's too big and now I need to do math to figure out what percent my canvas makes up of the whole screen and reduce the size by that percent. Not tempting.

Vintage wool precut yarn in yellow 
on a 5 gauge canvas. The knots
are on top of each other and it is
nearly impossible to pull this
thickness of yarn through

Backup number two would be to transfer the design to paper using the computer, and then use the paper to copy it to the canvas. This would save my television screen from being covered in Sharpie. I do have a cable to directly connect an image to the tv screen. Should I try that? And, as a last, last resort, I guess the old grid-to-grid square copying will need to happen. I used to use this technique when teaching scale factor as an extra credit project. I made the assignment such that the students could choose the image that was used. I have never seen so many scale drawings of Mario from Donkey Kong. In any case...

After testing my yarn and lengths, I can report the following: 

• The precut yarn is too thick - if I use the bigger $8 hook, it rips the canvas, and forget about the little hooks: this yarn is just too thick.
• The Hobbii yarn is perfect for the smaller hook size and the canvas, but this leaves some canvas showing. Also, this yarn is holding its ply the best, but that may be because it came through the canvas most easily.
• The Cascade 220 yarn is not as easy as the Hobbii, but is a nice balance of slightly fuller yarn that is only slightly more difficult to pull through and coverage. 

So, in the end, I am glad I went with uncut yarn and the smaller hook for the 5 gauge canvas. It seems like precut yarn is designed for the more common 3.5 gauge, and the Susan Bates latch hook commonly found in craft stores does not work on the smaller 5 holes. It tears the 5 gauge canvas apart, her hooks do, so watch out! Not sufficient information on their packaging! Now I'm stuck with an $8 hook I can't use, and free precut yarn to go with it; a mix of yellows and materials. 

The white in this picture is the two different brands of continuous yarn that I bought, on the left in the back is the Cascade 220, and in the front, the less plush Hobbii yarn. As you can see from the picture, the Hobbii yarn is holding up the best, but compared to the Cascade product, and the two yarns being of comparable price, I'd go with Cascade completely if the colors I wanted were a better match. So, now I get to hope that the difference between the two brands I will be using for my rug are not completely different thicknesses. As if I needed any more incentive to trip!

And, as for the transfer, I ended up scaling the image and copying it to chart paper. I also decided to switch the canvas from Dimensions, which was breaking, to Color Crazy's better quality item, because I don't want to hook 54,000 bits and then find out that the base is crumbling. So my price will go up, but long term, this is worth the extra $30. Until it gets here, I get to wrap and cut, wrap and cut. Good times!

The Holdovers - The Perfect Film

Up until now, I reviewed one movie, Inside Out, which is perfect, and one most unlikely franchise, the "Before" triology. And here is another film made just for me: The Holdovers. If you don't like this film, then you should turn in your humanity card because you're a droid. It is lovely.

What can I say? Da'Vine Joy Randolf won the award, yes, and even if they rolled the credits after her introductory eyeroll, she deserved it. That eyeroll said the whole story AND I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out the story! Oh, this movie will punch you, leave you for dead, and it will make you laugh alone like a crazy person. Which is part of the story, but I don't want to give it away.

Skinny boys with hidey hair are not new.

No, this movie is a discovery and I would never take that from someone. See it. Now. Paul Giamatti is a national treasure and just when you think he couldn't make you fall for him more, he goes and makes you fall for him more. Did you feel that kiss his coworker gave her boyfriend? But...I thought...wasn't she?...didn't they?... And, the eye! He is pitiful and raw and sad and full of wasted potential, his character, and if that sounds just like Miles in Sideways, it's because it's exactly like Miles in Sideways. He is such a prickly asshole, and then you find out why. It is heartbreaking. He even drinks his best bottle of booze at rock bottom, and it is again breath-takingly beautiful when he spits it out. Thank you, Paul!

Every teacher's nightmare: losing control

And, I feel like I'm giving an acceptance speech of my own, thanks to the director, Alexander Payne. I'm not an actor and I need to work with him! The boy in this film was a first-time actor, so there's hope! 

So now let me tell you about the film - not! I will tell you how applicable it is to me and my life, because, it's all about me here. So, it is set in December 1970-January 1971 in a snowy New England prep school over Christmas break. A tumultuous time, for certain, and it's the time and place where I came into awareness. I was born in, gasp!, 1968, before the moon landing which is referenced in the film. It also shows Mary, the recently widowed black mother whose son died in Vietnam, watching the average television program full of white people. The Jeffersons and Good Times are still in the future here. There is obviously still a hierarchy, and this movie explores in part the inequity of our culture. In some ways it has changed and frustratingly it has not changed in far too many others. And, yes, three oddball leftovers with fraught lives form an unlikely alliance and see each other as people, just like themselves, and that is tired territory, or is it universal? It doesn't matter, because this is art, and even if one million people sing the same tune or paint the same picture, the results will always be unique, just like us.

Looking back on my life, I feel it is these very differences and misunderstandings that keep us from knowing that underneath, all those individuals feel exactly the same as we do. As a former teacher in Queens, NY, in a time of great migration, it was pandemonium, yes. Absolute and utter chaos. So is our world. Embrace it and stop silo-ing yourself with only like-minded folk. Society is crumbling, yes, but the world's always been on fire, and I guess the good news is the poor and disenfranchised are no longer paying for the sins of the rich by getting shot in a jungle or putrid trench. There will be suffering, and perhaps if we all shouldered the burden equally it would be a bit more tolerable. We are truly in this together; why compound the problem? Life is like a henhouse ladder, afterall...

Breaking Away from Convention

I was a teacher. Once a teacher, always a teacher. It is impossible to not want to enlighten people once you've developed a taste for it. I spend a great deal of time thinking, and when I'm not thinking, I'm talking. Talking clarifies my thoughts, but so does putting emphasis on reflection.

So much wisdom to impart. So, I documented here on this blog my health scares that resulted in my attention to every moment of every day. Nothing is guaranteed, and I am now on my 3rd major health scare, and, even if it doesn't actually get easier to deal with fear and pain, it is my fear and pain and I am feeling something. That's life. It can be sublimely ecstatic or dreadfully painful, but it's an experience! Feel the wonderful life that is within you; let nothing be lost upon you - Oscar Wilde

I look to the greats for bits and pieces of my philosophy. I also look to travel to broaden my mind and see things in a way I never would have expected. I cannot plan travel for quite some time due to my health issues, but I can still read the greats, who did travel. Here's some of their unattributed wisdom:

• The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.
• And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it.
• It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
• He might be ragged and cold or even starving, but so long as he could read, think and watch for meteors, he was, as he said, free in his own mind.
• Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
• Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

This is one of my favorite books, by a famous author, but I bet you can't guess the author. No cheating.

Right now, my convalescence that was a gift from my sister and father is coming to a close. I need to get back to the grind and yesterday, sick or not. I have used this time, amongst other things, to travel back in my mind. It has been one of the best trips I have ever taken. I have an old friend to thank for that: a very, very patient friend who may not have pure intentions but neither do I. I am very lucky. Even not feeling well, I am enjoying myself. And, hey! if this great author can be cold, ragged and starving and yet broad and free, I can do it warm, ragged, and starting to finally fill up.