Leaving your baby alone outside

I always found this odd, that some parents will leave their baby in the stroller outside while they're in a restaurant or in their apartment. It would only take 10 seconds for somebody to walk by and grab the baby.
A Swedish woman is being charged with bad parenting after she left her baby in its stroller outside a restaurant while she went inside to order food. She claims that it's normal in Sweden to do this, and that she had her eye on the stroller the whole time. I don't know, is this normal in Sweden? I do know that I have lived both in North America and Sweden and while I have never seen a lone stroller with a baby in it anywhere in Canada, I have seen it many times in Sweden.
I wouldn't do it myself. It would be nice to trust my fellow human beings, but the fact is I don't and I would certainly not be willing to test out this life affirming attitude on my baby. Call me a cynic if you must. If I lived in a village where everybody knew each other I might consider it, if I was close to the stroller, but even then it seems like an odd thing to do.
If I had a crucial need to buy some tacos, I would just simply have to forgo that particular pleasure. If I wanted my baby to sleep outside for a while and get some fresh air, I would just have to bring out a chair and sit next to the stroller.
Like I said, it only takes 10 seconds or less.

A baby

I haven't been blogging much lately. The reason for that is that the inspiration hasn't really been there. There is also another big reason for my recent laziness.
In the beginning of May we found out that we're going to have a baby. I'm going to be a mommy. I entered my second trimester recently and we just found out the other day that it's a boy. So, naturally there have been a lot of thoughts flying around in my head. Am I going to make a good mother? Is he going to look like me or like Nick? Are we going to always be able to provide for him? Should we move to a bigger place? Things like that. The practical details don't seem to matter as much as the emotional ones. The biggest concern for me is, am I going to be able to provide him with an emotionally stable life? I never even wanted children until just a couple of years ago, when the idea started to fester inside my brain. Then when a girlfriend, who had told me that she was never planning on having kids, suddenly told me she was pregnant a couple of years ago it got me to thinking. I asked her why she had had a change of heart regarding children, and she said that she didn't want to grow old alone. This made perfect sense to me, since there are certain holes a life partner just can't fill. I suddenly saw before me what it would be like to never have kids and to watch your friends and relatives have their own families while your life always remains the same, quiet, low-key affair. And I realized that it's time I create my own family. I also think that at some point, most of us realize that we want someone to pass on our own legacy, or something to that effect. A part of ourselves. This and the fact that I started constantly seeing babies and kids everywhere, noticing them in a different way, and thinking of how my baby would look and turn out, made me finally take that plunge. We wanted to wait until we're back in Vancouver, but I'm not exactly 23 anymore and how long can we afford to wait? We were surprised at how quickly I became pregnant. In fact, due to my overly realistic assumption about how long it would take to conceive, our baby is due to arrive around New Year's Eve. Had I been able to choose, I would have wanted him to been born any other time but around the holidays. Imagine having your birthday on New Year's Eve, or worse, on Christmas Eve. Oh well, it is what it is now and what really matters is that he's born healthy and that the rest of the pregnancy is as relatively smooth as it has been so far.
Apart from fatigue, I have had surprisingly few pregnancy symptoms. Although this second trimester seems to so far be filled with emotional ups and downs. I feel like a walking bottle of nitroglycerin, waiting to explode at any second. I am feeling extremely irritable, but it's hard to tell with me if that's due to the pregnancy or not since I'm usually a rather temperamental person. I'm guessing it's a combination of hormones and my normal crabby self.
I'm also experiencing a fierce protectiveness of my unborn baby, and I get angry with anything and anyone that I feel is a threat to us. I think I'm paranoid when I think that any stress, emotional or physical, is a direct threat to the baby. I cringe at raised voices because I know the baby can hear everything that's going on, and I don't want him alarmed in any way. I guess I want to give him the stability and happiness that I didn't always have when I was growing up. That's why I worry about not being a good enough mom to give him that. I'm afraid that we're powerless against genetics and upbringing, and that we're doomed to repeat our parent's mistakes. I suppose it's normal to think that way. I'm just glad I can recognize my shortcomings and do my best not to let them overpower me. I know I'm far from perfect.
If I am to be honest, I had visions of this little girl with long, dark brown hair and my eyes. So yes, I suppose a part of me dreamed of having a girl. Probably because passing on a part of myself becomes all the more tangible that way. Now it'll be a little Nick instead, which is just fine.
But really, 15 years ago I would never in a million years have thought that I could be a mom. I didn't even think I had it in me. I didn't use to have a maternal bone in my body. I worry that I'm just enchanted with all the perks about having a baby, like be able to buy tiny baby clothes and dress him up like a little doll, and cuddles in bed and seeing him smile for the first time. In reality there are a lot of tough times ahead with lots of sleepless nights. And nothing will ever be the same again. Someone else always has to come first now. I realize all this. I wonder if everyone who decides to have a baby does.
Well, whether or not I will suck at it or be good at it will be apparent in about 4 and a half months.

Bye bye vibration

I finally realized that you can turn off the vibration option on your cell phone. I have tolerated it for a long time now, but with the new model I'm currently using, a Sony Ericsson F100i, I have found that the vibration is strong enough to wake the dead.
Why have a mute option if the vibration is going to be as loud as the ringer itself? There have been times when I have muted the phone so as not to be disturbed, and even placed it between two thick pillows to avoid hearing it vibrate. With this phone, even that doesn't work. You can be in a deep sleep, and still wake up from that bloody phone. The only way to avoid being bothered by it is either turning it off or throwing it off a cliff. The second option has become more and more appealing lately.
What's even worse is when I'm teaching a class, or worse, in the middle of an interpretation, and the thing starts ringing. Everyone can hear the vibration, and all over the room you see people looking around, peering anxiously at their bags going "Is it mine??" "No I think it's mine". And then I have to confess, "No, I think it's mine". Or if it's someone elses I do what everybody else does and check my phone too, just in case it's mine, even though it's totally inconsequential since I'm not going to answer while I'm working anyway, but I habitually check it anyway, as most of us do. They invented the mute button so we could avoid this, but I'll be damned if it doesn't happen anyway.
Is the vibration function supposed to serve as a sex toy as well? Because given its strength, I can certainly see how that would be possible. Is this what they had in mind when they designed the Sony Ericsson F100i especially for women? It's small and dainty and the buttons are tiny, but what it lacks in size it definitely makes up for with its vibration function.
Anyway, now I can blissfully say that this no longer is a problem for me. Praise the option to turn off the vibration! No more "BZZZZ...BZZZZZ...BZZZZ!!!! A sound I have slowly grown to despise, as much as fingers on a chalkboard or gum being chewed.
Yay!!!

I hate animal movies

Not because I don't like animals, but because I love them and it seems to be a must in any Hollywood moving featuring an animal that the animal must in some way get hurt or die. I just can't bare to watch this. Why would I want to see that? I don't care if it's a supposedly happy ending where the animal is at peace because it sacrificed its own life to save a human being. To me this is a terrible ending. The animal dies while the human lives! I mean, no offense to humans, but I'll take animal over a person any day.
Yesterday I caught the ending of this horse movie called "Amanda", and was appalled when they used the horse to drag a flipped-over jeep upright so that the people inside it could get out. It was apparently some kind of emergency. The horse died a painful death in the process, blood seeping out from the wounds it got from pulling on the reigns. My god!!! Why do I need to see that?? And it didn't help that seconds after the horse had gotten the truck to an upright position, we hear rescue sirens approaching. If they had waited 2 more minutes the people in the car would have been saved and the horse wouldn't have had to die to save them! This made me so mad. It was supposed to be one of those sappy Hollywood moments where we cry tears of happiness over the fact that the horse gave its life for its owners. Well all I could do was curse their stupidity and lament the fact that this beautiful animal had to die such a sad death. I couldn't stand the little boy, played by Kieran Culkin, who was the main character, and who came up with this brilliant idea in the first place. It was like nails on a chalkboard watching that whole agonizing scene and I wish I had changed the channel instantly instead of putting myself through that horse crap (pun intended).
It doesn't matter how happy the ending is, I refuse to watch a movie where an animal dies. I cried my eyes out watching "Eight Below". Yes, the dogs were eventually rescued, but what about the ones that died? I just can't cope with it. I should be able to, since they're only movies, but when it comes to animals it's like my common sense and rationality fly out the window.
Then I remind myself that horrible things actually do happen to animals on a daily basis. Like that awful case of a beautiful German Shepherd who had to spend 10 years tied up in a backyard in her own filth with no toys, no comforts and being abused by her owners. If I got my hands on her owners, I don't think I would ever stop hitting. I'd subject them to the very same treatment that they inflicted on their poor dog. I.e I would pee on them, tie them up and let them soil themselves and allow them to live in their own feces etc. See how they like it.

I'm slightly hormonal today, and rather cranky, and am realizing that this post turned into somewhat of an angry rant. Oh well. When it comes to animal abuse, I'm slightly psychotic. I'd like to form a vigilante and go after all those morons who get their jollies out of torturing animals. A mere fine just isn't enough of a punishment.

I better end this post now and take a few deep breaths, and try to get that lame horse movie out of my head.

Elvis is my king

Never in my life have I been so affected by a singer as when I discovered Elvis, at the age of 18. It was like being hit by a bolt of lightning, as corny and cliché as that might sound. There's just no other way to describe it.
I was working in a photo frame store in a mall at the time. I was bored with the job, as I always am with repetitive things, and it was hard to get the days to pass without letting out a scream of frustration. It was a slow day, and as always I let my mind wander. Suddenly Elvis crossed my mind, and I swear it was like this jolt inside my stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you see someone and realize you're in love with that person. All of a sudden I was hooked, and on my lunch break that day I ran up to the library and started digging out any information I could find on him.
An obsession was born. As always, whenever I really like something I go overboard. My whole world became Elvis for years. I bought his music, his movies, his biographies, framed huge posters of him and hung them on the walls of my girlhood room. I dyed my hair jet black to look like him and even tried to dress like him. Bright pink and purple shirts and black suits. On the anniversary of his death I lit candles and placed a red rose in the memorial garden in the local cemetery.
The obsession eventually wore off when I went out there and got myself a life of my own, but the love for Elvis and his music is still there. There has never been anyone like him in my opinion. I find it amazing that he can have such an impact on someone like me, who was barely out of diapers when Elvis died and who was never exposed to him or his music growing up. Yet for some reason he grabbed me, the same way that he continues to spellbind people, young and old. Isn't that pretty amazing, considering he died in 1977 and his music style is so far from what's popular today. It may not be cool to like Elvis, but the fact is millions of people still do. And I don't really care if it's cool or not. I still love his music from the 50's, when he just had his breakthrough. I don't count his movie music from the 60's when I say I like Elvis's music, however when he made his come-back in 68 his voice had deepened and although I by far liked his 50's stuff so much better than what he did in the late 60's and 70's, I really like his voice here. You can hear the depth of it in the remix of A Little Less Conversation, which by the way rocks.
The only other person who comes close to having that special quality that his voice contained is K.d Lang. As far as charisma goes, I don't think there is one singer out there who even comes to close to Elvis.
He's magical. He's my hero. And yes, I am aware that he died fat and strung out on prescription drugs in his bathroom. So what? That doesn't change who he was in the 50's.

Mayhem at Ikea

I haven't written anything in a while. That has its reasons, which will probably be the topic of a later post, if anyone cares.

Going to Ikea on a Saturday is never a good idea but it is an especially bad idea to go right after payday. This means that it will be even more crowded than it usually is.
As always, the place is laced with a slight feeling of general mass-hysteria.
It started in the restaurant, where we came to have lunch after our 2 and a half hour car ride just to get this mekka. Rows and rows of people lined up like cows on their way to the slaughter. It was as if we were all animals being fed. Pigs at a trough. Although the lines were long everything was surprisingly efficient and a mere 15-20 minutes later we had our food. Salmon and steak. My dad and I had salmon, my friend Nina had steak. It was actually not bad.

Then the actual walk through that maze of furniture began. Since I was with my father, who could possibly win a gold medal in department store sprint, if there was such a sport, there wasn't much time to look at anything. Besides, it was too crowded and too noisy for me to be able to find the peace of mind to really take anything in. If I'm in a store and it's crowded and people are all around me grabbing on to things and everybody is tripping over each other, I can't manage to buy anything. I get stressed out by the frenzy you see in some people's eyes. Shopping is bloody serious business, so you better not get in their way.
So we run a marathon through the store, and both have to use the washroom, one after the other, since we both have this inclination to do number 2 every time we're in a store. My mom says it's psychological. Apparently I inherited this particular trait from my dad, because we both have to do it every time we set foot in a department store. It's odd. Anyway, it always boggles the mind how serious people seem to take Ikea. It's like they're on a mission. It's serious business.
I suppose I must do it myself, without knowing it. Let's face it, all those things, all those lamps, carpets, pictures, bed linens, it's mesmerizing. Although I'm never willing to put myself through long lineups and insanely crowded stores, even for a bargain sale. When it comes right down to it, it's just things and I don't need it that badly. However, I love coming out of a store with a bag full of goodies. I love piling things into the shopping cart. I feel like such a moron if I walk around with an empty basket. Like a pauper who can't or isn't allowed to join the party. An outcast. Like there's a group that I'm not a part of and I shouldn't even be there.
This time my shopping bag was meager, since I only emerged from the store with a measly 4 drinking glasses and two sets of bed linens. Oh but I musn't forget the big bag of toffees. That was the first thing I added to my shopping bag.

So we drove the 2 and a half hours home. Kelly got a hot dog since we forgot to bring her dinner. And those were the adventures of the day.

Contemporary horror movies...bleh

I just don't like today's movies nearly as much as I do those from earlier decades. I will gladly watch an 80's movie, provided that it's not an action movie, but when it comes to newly released movies I'm very picky. This is especially the case when it comes to thrillers or horror movies.
Atrocious is the only word that comes to mind.
It boggles the mind that movie makers of today seem to have learnt nothing from their predecessors. The only director who comes close is Wes Craven, and even he goes overboard with the gore sometimes. The body count doesn't need to be 200 for the movie to be good.
Sadly, I decided to watch Rob Zombie's version of Halloween, and I wish now that I had chosen a more fun activity, such as going to the dentist or jabbing a fork through my forehead. Anything would have been better than the utter garbage that Hallowen a'la Rob Zombie offered up. I have fervently tried to forget ever having watched that, err.."movie"... but unfortunately it still lingers in my mind, and not in a good way.
It seems that the only aim of horror movies today is to gross the audience out as much as possible, unlike the older generation of horror movies, such as Halloween, whose aim was to freak us out in a psychological way.
To me, seeing some guy saw off his own foot is gross but it doesn't scare me. All that accomplishes is making me feel slightly nauseous. What I want is the kind of drawn-out suspense that we see in Halloween, Friday the 13th and Jaws, where we don't at first see the killer, we see everything from his/her point of view. By not being so damned literal and graphic, the movies were that much more scary. Less really is more. Understated really is a thousand times more effective than over the top, something that Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and Bob Clark (director of 1974's Black Christmas)understood. Today's movies are loaded with graphic violence and gory details, almost as if the directors feel the need to shove as much as possible down the audience's gullet just to satisfy their need for gore and special effects. The reason for this is that people have become so desensitized that without a certain level of violence they won't find the movie interesting. This is a rather disturbing trend if you think about it.
Although no one can accuse the older horror movies of being intelligent, it's almost as if audiences have become dumber. They can't think for themselves anymore. They need everything served on a platter, and in large quantities.
With the older generation of movies, such as Jaws and Friday the 13th, the audience had to rely more on their own imagination to get scared. It's like children having too much entertainment at their fingertips, so they're never forced to invent their own games, and thus never really develop the creative skills that kids 50 years ago had to in order to amuse themselves. In a similar way, when we watch horror movies where we can't see the menacing creature/killer, we are forced to imagine what or who it might be and what it looks like. The unknown threat is always much scarier than what we can see.
I'm referring mostly to horror movies here but in fact I find contemporary movies in general to be lacking something. Some of them are really good and I highly enjoy watching them, but there hasn't been one single movie in the past 10 years that I have felt like "Ooh, I need to buy the DVD and keep it for my collection so I can watch as much as I want!".
The last time I felt that movie magic was with Forrest Gump. I can't remember one movie after that where I got that same feeling. I mean there are movies I really appreciate, such as Bridget Jones' Diary, About a Boy, but none that I ever feel like I must own. Maybe I'll feel differently when a sufficient enough time has passed and I can look at them through nostalgic lenses. Could that be the why I prefer older movies to newer ones?
No, certainly not in the case of horror movies. I still contend and will always contend that the art of making good horror movies is a thing of the past.
There has not been one single remake of the old horror classics that I can honestly say that I liked, with the possible exception of When a Stranger Calls. I think they did a pretty good job with that one. The Hills Have Eyes however was atrocious. I don't often turn off a movie and I've never walked out on a movie in the theatre, but with this one I turned it off 20 minutes into it. It was just so obviously violent and in bad taste and in the kind of way where they just shove in your face in an attempt to gross you out as much as possible. Yes, Friday the 13th was also violent, but it was harmless and not so...in your face. With The Hills Have Eyes, I took no joy in watching a girl get raped by some misfits while her parents got murdered and mulilated, one of which got burned at the stake. Lovely!
Hence, I turned the damned thing off.
The original one didn't have to employ such cheap tactics to get under its audience's skin, why did the remake?
And my poor Black Christmas, the classic stalker horror movie, did not deserve to have such a horrible "remake" with the same name. The two movies don't even fall within the same class, not even close.
Same goes for the remake of Friday the 13th.
Please! Directors, watch the old horror movies, pay attention, learn!