Uncle Steve and Damian
Surfside Beach, Texas
04 November 2007

It is in our very nature to take on guilt.  Through empathy, we feel the pain we have caused others and the guilt becomes our life companion.

And from guilt, we inflict self-punishment.  The problem is, when you are your own judge — the warden to your own self-imposed prison — the punishment never ends.  We rarely show mercy to ourselves.

When I am punishing Lily for hitting her little brother, I send her to her room, and when she comes out, I remind her that we don’t hit people, and the incident is over.  I take pity on her.  We take pity on most people who are careless or selfish or cruel, especially once they have realized the pain they have inflicted on others through their actions.

But we can’t seem to do that for ourselves.  How do you forgive yourself?  When does the punishment end?  When does the pain of empathy stop?

How do you change the past?  And if you could, would you?

I added live plants and took out some of the gargoyles.
I also added a tiny filter. It was weird having a tank with no filter.
21 October 2007

Well, it turns out male bettas are aggressive towards female bettas unless they are mating. Learn something new every day.  :)  So Fan will not be having a friend join him. He gets the Macquarium all to himself.

While surfing Macquariums, I stumbled upon the G4 CubeQuarium.  Very cool.  My desire is fierce.  The bizarre thing is that I am not a Mac person.  I am, however, an aquarist and a nerd (I have the Academic Decathlon letter jacket to prove it).  Maybe that is where this Macquarium obsession originates.

I don’t really want an iMacquarium because, though very beautiful with its neon colors, the illusion is not complete.  You cannot fill the tank all the way to the top with water.  But maybe I will feel the need to complete my collection after I make a G4 CubeQuarium.  We’ll see.

Anyways, I’ve been surfing eBay for G4 Cube cases.  We haven’t the money right now, but I see a G4 CubeQuarium in the near future.  And having a small, and very fun, aquarium has made me really miss my 50-gallon tank.  Once again, we haven’t the money or the time, but I think I will have my 50-gallon fishtank up sometime within the next year.  It will be so nice to have a large planted community tank again.  I’m really looking forward to it.

The Macquarium (or, as Lily knows it, “Fan’s House”)
You can see Fan, a betta, in the lower right hand corner of the Macquarium.
15 October 2007

I’ve been jonesing for my 50-gallon fishtank.  It is tucked away in the garage, unused these past three years.  I mentioned it to Matt, but he quickly and decidedly said, “No.”  I was pretty sure that would be his opinion.  Our house is a mess as we redo the living room, and a 50-gallon tank is a major project.  It requires a lot of upkeep as well, and we don’t have a lot of extra time between maintaining a house, two kids, and ourselves.

But, just the same, I’ve been missing a tank.  So, while we were at PetSmart yesterday buying dog food, Lily and I wandered over to the fish area to look at the fish.  She, of course, immediately wanted one.  I told her she could have one and took her over to the bettas.  I figured we could clean up the Macquarium and keep a betta.  (Macquariums hold only two gallons, and very few fish can live in such a small amount of water.  Bettas are quite happy in two gallons.)  You should have seen Matt’s face though.  It was a picture.  He was not a happy Daddy.

She picked out her betta.  Kids love fish.  She wanted to constantly hold her new fish and feed him.  When we got home, I pulled out the Macquarium from the garage and spent maybe an hour cleaning it.  It was pretty dirty.  Then we put Fan, as Lily has named him, in his new home.

I asked Matt why he was so upset.  He said, “It was another project.”  Our house really is in a state.  I can see why he was upset.  But he didn’t stay upset.  It only took an hour, and the Macquarium looked horrible before.  Now it’s all pretty and working again.

I want to get a female betta and name her Fin.  Then Fan will have a little friend.  🙂

Little D helps Daddy get the TV ready to mount on the wall.
09 October 2007

Please forgive my WordPress theme ADD I seem to have at the moment.  For some reason, I just can’t seem to settle on a theme.  I really like the chocolate stripes theme, but I want a new one for a little while… and that’s where the ADD starts.  This is the Halloween theme I developed last year.  Let’s see if it will satisfy me for more than two days.

The kiddos playing in water again.
This picture was taken in September,
and Matt said, “Well, they wouldn’t be doing this in England.
It’s already too cold.”
15 September 2007

I thought of more movies to add to the list:

• The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Really, does this one need an introduction? It has such a large following that I don’t think it can even be classified as “cult” anymore.
• L.A. Story
  • Who would have pegged Steve Martin for such a romantic? Matt hasn’t seen this one yet. I think I’ll rent it and we can have a romantic couple night with candles, ice cream, L.A. Story, and two hyper preschool children… yeah, that’ll work. 😉
• The Birdcage
  • I know what you’re thinking:  “The Birdcage?! That’s not a romance.”  Au contraire mon frere (heh heh, a little homage to the original La Cage aux Folles which I didn’t like as much).  One of the best, heart-warming romance scenes of cinema is in this movie:  When Armand and Albert are sitting on the bus stop bench together and what Armand says to Albert… ah, magic.  Pure romantic magic.  And the movie is really funny to boot (as is L.A. Story — you get great comedy and a romance!).  Agador Sparticus steals every scene he is in.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel
  • According to my mom, the book is actually not very good at all.
• And, in honor of my romantic sister, the live action version of Cinderella with Whitney Houston and Brandy
  • Carla has watched this so many times, she has the songs memorized.  It is very good.  I like it as well… but maybe not quite as much. 😉

I was thinking of adding Ella Enchanted because technically it is a romance, but it is not the romance story that appeals to me in this movie.  The central theme is that Ella must change herself – not look to someone else to change her into the person she wants to be – and that is why I like the movie.  The romance is just a side dish, and just an okay one at that.  The central theme, however, is quite delicious (as is the singing and dancing… quite fun and silly).

Damian loves water.
He has loved water from the first moment we put him in his first bathie.
03 September 2007

I am very picky about my romance stories.  That’s why, a looooong time ago when I was only a teenager, I decided to write romance stories; I could never find a decent romance because I don’t like the Harlequin-style romances nor the bodice rippers (apparently, that term is offensive in the romance market now, but the official term is “historical single-title”; boy, is that a mouthful).

Anyways, so I decided to write my own romances with characters I like and stories that I find interesting.  That proved to be much harder than I anticipated, but it has been an interesting and fun journey just the same.

Recently, I watched Howl’s Moving Castle by the legendary and inimitable Hayao Miyazaki.  It was a great romance story.  So I’ve decided to make a recommend list of romance movies in case someone out there is in the mood for a good romance but can only find the formulaic, insipid romantic comedy shite that is churned out year after year by Hollywood.

Some good romantic movies:

• Howl’s Moving Castle
  • Watch it in English.  It’s a very unusual story which makes it very difficult to follow while reading subtitles.
• You’ve Got Mail
  • And, to answer the question that always comes up, No, I don’t like Sleepless in Seattle nearly as much.
• The Secretary
  • Big Warning: This is a movie about a submissive and a dominant who find love even though they are considered deviant by accepted societal standards.  There are explicit sex scenes, so if you don’t like movies that involve fringe sexual subculture or that have explicit sex scenes, do not watch this one.
• The BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries
  • No romance list would be complete without this one.  And though I also love Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, that is more a story of love between two sisters.  The men really are only supporting characters in that one.
• The first four episodes of His and Her Circumstances
  • The rest of the series is not nearly as heart-throbbing as the first four episodes, and the ending has no resolution — it is Hideaki Anno after all — so just stop after the first four episodes.
• The Wedding Singer
  • I know many don’t think much of this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
• And, in honor of my romantic husband, The Cutting Edge
  • I saw this once a long time ago with Matt.  Matt loves this movie and regularly re-watches it.  He has, apparently, loved this movie since he was a teenager, and his family tease him over it. 🙂

Well, that’s all I can think of now, but that’s a good list to start with. 🙂

Lily
Lincoln, England
17 July 2007

Today was hard… very hard.  Today was hard because of children.  I’ve had Cody for the past week, so I’ve had three children for a week, but you must combine the three children with a week’s worth of junk food and video games.  Today I hit my breaking point.  Today was… well, not a happy day.

My mom will keep no living thing, not even a plant.  She wants nothing to be dependent on her.  Now that I have two children, I completely understand this.  No more pets after our current three.  I have reached the limit of how many things I can care for and still be able to care for myself.

And I’m not fond of video games, or junk food for that matter.  Both of these things, used habitually, make you ill.

Today was hard.

Cody and Damian on the swing
01 August 2007

So G. and D. (to use their nomenclature) made a wager — they both must write a blog entry so many times each week for one year or lose some nominal amount of money.  I like the wager because I get a tiny update on their life almost every day — a little note (sometimes just a small paragraph, sometimes an essay) tacked on the web bulletin board saying “hey, this is what happened today” or “this is what I was thinking today.”

And of course the wager — the idea of posting almost daily by requirement — made me start thinking about posting daily and not just when the muse comes calling.  Sometimes my posts are very mundane (“Matt and I went to HEB today.  We ran into Sarah Q.”) and sometimes I try to write something a little more poetic or meaningful — something that creates feelings or ideas.

What if I was required to post daily?  What if I had to force creativity?  Thousands of writers do that daily as their career.  But could I?  Would it be enjoyable to read or would the posts soon become dull and banal?

And, finally, is this the worry of every writer and would-be writer?  If I’m forced to create, will it be dishwater?

Matt and the kids with Matt’s two brothers, Ben and Sam
Lincoln, England
20 July 2007

We’re having a large family lunch here today — 14 people. This is mom’s last day in Texas; she flies home to Kentucky tomorrow. She’s been here for a month, and I’ve only seen her one day. We picked her up from the airport the day before we left for England. And the day we came home from England, she had just left for Fredricksburg to help my grandmother move. So she’ll be here sometime this morning, and I’ll see her today and some of tomorrow, and then I drop her off at the airport tomorrow evening. I’m really sad I didn’t get to see her, but that’s how it works out sometimes. Our schedules were just too conflicting during this visit.

The whole house is clean for the lunch party except for my computer room. My desk is currently not visible. I keep putting this chore off, but now it’s time. It’ll be nice to have my desk back even though I’m not looking forward to the chore itself.

Damian (6-months-old) with Auntie Lily (90-years-old)
(Auntie Lily is Lily and Damian’s great-great-aunt,
and Lily is her namesake.)
18 July 2007

The sun is up, and I’m in a much better mood. So I decided to add a post that is a bit more upbeat.

Random happy things:

• Lily’s curls.

• Damian will sing in tiny, soft baby coos as you dance with him.

• Matt is conscientious, kind, generous, responsible, reliable, honorable, honest, hard-working… basically the perfect father and husband, and the children and I were lucky enough to be the ones given him.

• Lily and Damian make us laugh… a lot.

• My mom, Deb, and Lindsey are coming for a visit, and I’m really looking forward to it.

• People send me greeting cards in the mail, sometimes with money. 🙂

• Matt really enjoys his work.

• I really enjoy Matt’s family.

• I really enjoy my family…

• … and my friends although I am not very good at keeping in touch with them. Their presence in this world makes it a better place.

• Ultimately, most people believe in good although they sometimes make bad decisions.

• The world is full of creative people.

• The sky is blue and the grass is green.

• …and I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”

Hmmm… a much better way to start the day.