My Netflixes of the Month
I’ve been all over the Netflix this past month. I mean, ALL OVER. No genre has been safe. Documentary? I’m coming for you. Lifetime movie from 2011? Lock your doors. Teeny-bopper spookfest? Ding dong! I don’t know what July was all about for me. Schizophrenia, maybe. Or inability to make decisions. Or super-ability to make many decisions. Whatever the reason, much Netflixes (Netflixi?) were had by my eyeballs. Here’s what I watched: 1) An Honest Liar Does anyone remember James Randi? A former magician, he used to debunk paranormal phenomena, so-called miracle workers, and psychics profiting off others’ naiveté. I used to watch him on “Johnny Carson”, and “That’s Incredible.” (Why don’t I just call myself San Diego Grandma?). At any rate, I loved to hear how Randi exposed those guys who claimed to heal the sick, or read people’s minds, or bend spoons. Full of…
PROMPTuesday #238: I Survived…
Upon looking back on one’s life, one might marvel at how he (or she) survived certain events. For instance, one’s 46-year-old self may wonder why his (or her) 18-year-old version got into a Tijuana stranger’s car at 2AM in a drunken bid to get back to the U.S. before curfew. Or a person may rethink walking down a dead-end alley near Chicago’s Cabrini Green in 1996’s pitch black, heading straight toward the voices of ne’er-do-well youth wielding baseball bats. That same person could possibly NOW be baffled at his (or her) extreme willingness to stay platonically in a Baja California hotel room with a shifty someone he (or she) just met because his (or her) best friend asked him (or her) to occupy him (or her) self for a few hours while his (or her) best friend entertained a certain young man (non-platonically). Could be one, now a capable…
How to Get Your Child Interested in Netflix, I Mean History
Booger composes her outfits like a symphony. Each element fuses to the whole and results in a perfectly constructed blend of beauty. Somehow, in her hands, stripes go with plaid, and scarves go with summer. Her masterpieces take time and plenty of brainstorming, but she approaches each wardrobe arrangement with a positive attitude and heaping doses of imagination. The same cannot be said of her homework. Instead, she rushes through math, mopes into social studies, and postpones reading. No amount of coaxing or threatening motivates her. She’d just as soon eat 20 worms with a spider-leg chaser than practice multiplication. For a parent such as myself who approaches Tiger Mom status with schoolwork prioritization, this lack of interest in anything studious on Booger’s part is disconcerting and aggravating. Until something amazing happened. A few weeks ago, one book captured her attention – the Ripley’s “Believe it…
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PROMPTuesday #237: Regretful
In 2008 I “launched” PROMPTuesday, a series of weekly creative writing prompts designed to stoke the writing fire. The whole idea was to get me – and whoever read my blog – writing without the mind weight of perfection, judgment, or inner criticism. As I wrote back then, my intention was to encourage all current writers, wannabe writers, and writers-for-the-day to respond to the prompt by “free-writing” for 10 minutes, and posting their submission in the below comments section for self-expression, encouragement, or just because why not. And many of us did write, and shared their words here. Some of my favorite prompts remain the ones that got us to dig deep, or just throw a little dirt at the evil internal editor: Like this one. and This one. After several years of continuing to post PROMPTuesdays, I abandoned the prospect a few…
My Korean Day Spa Experience
It was time for a girl date. After very minimal back and forth, my friend and I decided a lounge-around-the-pool day was the perfect thing. So we began our Saturday at the Rancho Bernardo Inn with high hopes and prodigious amounts of Us Weeklys. Soon enough, we learned our day passes wouldn’t grant us access to the sauna and relaxation room, so the more proactive among us (not I) demanded refunds and suggested we go to a Korean day spa instead. I’d heard of the day spa before, in epic retellings that involved tales of nudity and pressure-point probing that rivaled the most handsy deep-tissue massagers, but until girl-date-day, I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I’m pretty conservative (Midwest upbringing) and fairly prone to embarrassed giggling when I see friends naked, but in keeping with my “SEIZE THE DAY!” mentality generated by an ongoing midlife crisis,…
Sick with Netflix
(Apparently I’ve branded my blog with Netflix. That’s because they give me something to write about, which is more than I can say about my brain.) Before the last seven days happened, I can’t remember the last time I watched back-to-back movies, much less thirty-minute shows. My crazed lifestyle of working, parenting, and escorting kids to everything, everywhere (oh, your next softballl practice is on the moon? And we need 20 lightyears travel time to get there by 4? Get in the Honda Odyssey!) usually means there’s little to no time for frivolous activities like sitting still for five seconds or talking to my husband ever. Watching TV falls into that no-time category and even when I’m sick and bedridden, my mind races with the things I’m supposed to be doing instead of battling infectious disease and internal gastrointestinal strife. There comes a time though, when the Netflix “Gotta…
