Confessions

I have a confession to make.

Chocolate is okay. Don't get me wrong, there are certain times of the month when I absolutely have to have some chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup and chocolate chips or I will die. In our house that would be referred to as The Deanna Troi. On a day to day basis, however, I don't even give chocolate a thought.

I happily refer to myself as a "chick," and not a woman. This used to bug the daylights out of an ex-boyfriend who thought he was being progressive when he told me that it's a degrading term. I, for one, think chick sums it all up perfectly. I don't really understand modern womanhood. Or even womanhood of the past. To put it bluntly, I don't enjoy being a "girl." I don't think I ever really did.

Granted, it's better than the alternative to me. I certainly don't want to be a dude. First of all there's that whole business of having your personal parts hanging loose and being all vulnerable. Does anyone understand WHY a boy's bicycle has a cross bar and a girl's doesn't? That doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me. The other reason being a dude would suck is because of the expectations. Oh hell no. There's just too much they're expected to do and be, by simple dint of having a Y chromosome.

Every year I get closer to simply handing in my Girl Card and calling it a day. I realized this when we were packing up our closet, and I noticed that Rich's clothing occupied 3/4 of the damn thing. The other day when I finally busted through 3 weeks worth of laundry, when I got it all folded and placed on the bed I had a small pile consisting of two sweat suits, a thermal shirt, and one pair of jeans. Oh, I also had 6 pair of underpants. Everything else belonged to Rich and the kids. I own, basically, two pair of shoes that I actually wear. My Doc Martens and my flip flops. I do own a couple pair of dress shoes and heels, but I couldn't even tell you the last time they were applied to my feet.

I really, often feel like a fish out of water. The thing is, the older I get, the less I care.

Confession #2- My mother's wedding gown wouldn't button closed because my torso is larger than hers was. I was secretly delighted, even though it's a beautiful dress.

I have a friend, Nina, who occasionally manages to guilt me into proper skin care. We were conversing one day, and when she discovered I was using Dove bath soap on my face I heard the shriek all the way from Manhattan. She told me she could hear my face cracking all the way from Raleigh. So based on her recommendations I got on eBay and purchased some items to more properly take care of my skin. I used them. For a few weeks. Then I discovered that Livvie's Burts Bees baby shampoo makes a delightful face wash in the shower. I was packing the bathroom closet to move, and I discovered bottles and tubes and small tubs of things I didn't even remember I had. There was stuff to help clarify. There were exfoliants. There was cream to provide light moisture.

I chucked most of it into a trash bag and reapplied Neosporin to my split bottom lip (baby skulls can do some serious damage).

I wear makeup only when I am going to be seen in public with Coyote. When we go out together she always looks nice. It's embarrassing. The problem is, when I wear makeup I feel like I'm in drag. I always feel like I'm drawing way too much attention to myself. And forget lipstick. I own some. It doesn't get worn. I usually slap on some lip balm and call it good.

Confession #3- I watch Legally Blonde every time they show it on TV simply so I can feel inadequate. Every time I watch it I am overcome with the desire to purchase anything I can in pink, up to and including kitchen utensils. I never do though.

Ok, that's not true. When Rich bought my iPod Shuffle for Mother's Day a few years back I asked for the hot pink one.

I know nothing from handbags. My friend Jennyquarx rattles off brand names in conversation and my eyes glaze over. I have no idea what she's talking about. The only reason I know as much as I do about shoes is because it took me months to find the pair I wore on my wedding day. I like jewelry okay if it's simple and unobtrusive. I haven't painted my fingernails in years. Lingerie? Nope. Try sweats in the summer and fleece footie pajamas in the winter. I have known women who lived on ramen so they could afford the $100+ to get their hair cut and colored every 6 weeks. I color my own hair for the simple reason that when it's too dark people ask me if I'm not feeling well. I think I manage to get it cut 4 times a year.

Confession #4- I do not usually use shopping as therapy. Not in the way most women do. I have bought things as therapy. I cannot, however, abide shopping for hours at a time in stores or malls the way some people do.

My "retail therapy" has involved only single, big ticket purchases. While down in the dumps I have bought: a trip to Mexico, a trip to Ireland, a Sony Vaio laptop, a surround sound system, a DVD player, an Xbox, and a Nissan Frontier pickup truck. As a teen in NJ we did the requisite hanging out in the mall thing, but more often than not I'd park myself in B. Dalton or Waldenbooks while the other folks I was with roamed the rest of the mall. I know it drove them crazy. It even drives my mom crazy. She can wander outlet malls for hours. Every Saturday morning she feels the need to read the sale circulars to me. I make appropriate "mmhmm" and "oh cool" noises, but I barely listen.

Confession #5- Anniversary gifts and birthday gifts mean nothing to me. Having enough money to pay the cable bill does.

I have known many, many women who compare the sheer spectacularity of gifts received from their men as if it's some type of contest. I've known women who only consider men who make X amount of dollars a year, and I even know women who use blow jobs on their husbands in order to get permission to spend money. Then again, I seem to have met a lot of women who don't actually enjoy sex in the first place. At all. Not only with a particular partner.

Weirdos.

And forget about bringing me flowers for any other reason than you simply saw them in the yard or in the woods and thought of me. Coyote has a fabulous post about apology flowers. I can't even count how many women I've known who believe them to be their right and downright expect them after a perceived affront.

One would think that it might bother me that Livvie is completely into the idea of princesses, to the point where for about a week recently we were directed to address her as Princess Livvie. It doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, it makes me happy that what I have is apparently not contagious. Knocking around on this planet at this time uncomfortable in my own skin is for the birds. Not that I want to do a complete 180 and turn into a superficial twat, but at least caring about my appearance might be nice. Occasionally buying myself new clothing that actually fits me would be a good idea. Spending money on myself before putting money into something the kids don't actually need would be nice every now and then.

I could start small. Move from only owning one pair of jeans that is a size too big into owning two pair of jeans that fit. Wear actual shoes every so often. Wash my face twice a day instead of only when I shower.

Baby steps, man. All suggestions are welcome.

Show, Don't Tell...

Being the post in which I brag. Some.

If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, then I can identify at least 15 people over the past year who are riding that hand basket.

I mentioned last year that Livvie didn't really start speaking until she was 27 months old. Given that her grandfather didn't speak at all until age 3, I wasn't especially worried... at first. I figured it would come in time. Once she got frustrated enough about her lack of ability to communicate her needs she'd give in and speak. However, once enough people, with "your best interests at heart," begin pestering you about anything, a person will start to worry. So I took the advice of everyone and their pet duck, and I called the state in for an evaluation. I was concerned with nothing but her speech at that point, because she was quite good at many things. My kid is an absolute genius in some areas and not all that bright in others. It's called being human.

When the state came out to see her she wasn't willing to perform like a ball balancing sea lion, so they scored her low, VERY low, in several areas. According to the woman who became her developmental therapist, they essentially indicated that she was autistic. I had had a gut feeling that this would happen. I really despise labeling, and I abhor trying to pigeonhole children into little boxes based on brief interactions. The state began to push me, and push me, to get her services to deal with her perceived needs. They flat out told me that she had Sensory Processing Disorder, even though they were not qualified to make such a diagnosis. The reason they gave me was that back then she preferred to eat Cool Ranch Doritos and garlic dill pickles, and she wasn't a cry baby when she hurt herself (oh for those days). Also, she liked to rough-house. So for a brief period of time I considered their point of view, and then after doing heavy reading on my own determined that their heads were up their asses and she was again, simply human. I am not a person who will live in denial when it comes to her kids. Livvie was, and is, behind in many areas. Here's where the title of this entry comes in.

Kids aren't going to learn anything they aren't taught.

When the state evaluated Livvie they seemed to place great stock in the fact that she couldn't kick a ball. Well, it hadn't occurred to us to even show her how to do that yet. She wouldn't stick coins in a bank. Again, it never dawned on us that this was something she needed to know how to do right then. Anything that I told them she could do, like the fact that I had caught her under the kitchen table unscrewing all of the legs, was taken with a grain of salt. According to them, she had the fine motor skills of someone about a year old. After they left I showed her how to kick a ball. I only had to show her twice.

Maybe I'm wrong, I've certainly been wrong before in my actions, but I follow her lead and her interests. Last winter she discovered the alphabet and colors and shapes thanks to a website that has games for toddlers. She became an addict. She's very much like me in that if she develops an interest in something she will consume as much of it as possible. So last winter I spent about 3 months writing the alphabet for her. Over. And over. I wanted to jump off a bridge. She watched carefully. Again and again she directed me as to which letter I should write next, which color marker to use, how many to do.

This meant that by the age of 33 months she began spelling a few words on her own, could identify some words spelled to her aloud, and by 36 months started writing her name. Roughly, but it was her name.

I have had so many people, attempting to be "helpful," try to gently nudge me into getting her even more services than we ended up using. I'm sorry, but I was looking over age based developmental milestones today, and she's meeting or exceeding most of those for her age. The milestones she has not met are things she has not been taught and some speech issues. How is that a problem?

Why is there a race here?

And it is a race. Don't ever let anyone tell you differently. When I was a child parents let babies be babies, and they let us develop naturally and simply taught us things as they came along. Now, suddenly, being a strong, healthy baby isn't good enough. Now everyone is required to be exceptional. My mother had never even heard of many of the milestones that doctors are now expecting their patients to meet on time or early. She laughed out loud at many of them. She said, "Gosh, babies were boring back in the day. It was kind of nice." In looking over the list today I found milestones Livvie has been doing for ages that I didn't even KNOW were milestones. Shit is getting out of hand. Totally.

I recently left a forum for mommies that I had been on for years due not only to some drama that pushed me over the edge, but also to the fact that everything had become either a brag or a panic. Sitting up at night wondering why Livvie isn't doing such and such when so and so already has does NO ONE any favors. Explaining to someone that she is doing certain things when their kid is not simply because she was taught repeatedly, and it was something she took an interest in, no your kid is not mentally retarded, oh hey, I'm talking to a wall here... that shit gets old.

We learn what we are taught. We learn what we are given the opportunity to practice. We learn what we enjoy.

As parents we do best to step back and see how our child learns best. We've discovered that since Livvie is still obsessed with the alphabet her pronunciation improves dramatically if we say, for instance, "No, use your B. Use your P," when she mispronounces something. More often than not she immediately gets it right on her second try.

I see a whole lot of laziness going on around me. I see a lot of expectations that haven't been met with no effort made to see that they are. I also see children, even babies, pushed ridiculously hard by their parents to become tiny Einsteins instead of letting them really enjoy each day of babyhood.

They seem to forget that Einstein didn't speak until he was four, and his father referred to him as, "the retard."

So tomorrow Livvie and I will once again work on developing her hand strength by squeezing tubes of glitter glue so that the next time we try scissors she won't get upset because she didn't do it perfectly on the first try.

Because it's not that big of a deal. I'm fairly certain she'll be able to use scissors by the time she gets to college.

To Each Their Own

I might offend here. It is not my intention.

I do not understand theme Christmas trees. I know people, people I love, who change their tree every year.

I don't get it.

I see trees like this in the stores and they just flabbergast me. Seriously folks, what. The fuck.

First of all, looking at this particular one, I can't even detect the presence of a tree. There might be one lone needle showing. There. To the right. See it?

Me neither.

The first thing I'm going to mention is that having been a buried pagan my entire life, and a not so buried one now, the tree is important. It's life. In your house. Even a plastic one is a perfectly acceptable representation of the green goodness that the planet provides for us.

Ok, now that that's out of the way, bless all yer hearts, but what on earth compels people to change their tree every year? Aside from the expense, where does it leave your heritage?

I was standing in front of the tree today, and as I looked at the ornaments I could remember the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of each one. Nothing really matches. It's a giant hodge-podge (this is the first time I've ever typed that phrase. Basking in it) of my last 38 years here.

If some moron assigned a theme to it they would probably call it, "eclectic," or some other such nonsense. I hang candy canes every year, because really, the idea of plucking candy randomly from a giant tree in my home makes me happy. To be honest, this is the first year in about forever that the tree has been taller than myself. I do have enough ornaments for the frigging thing if I were to pull out the fragile ones packed away in plastic bins, but they aren't toddler friendly. I have not used really fragile ones in years. Clancy used to climb the tree too. Brought it down more than once.

So the front and sides are adorned, and the back against the wall is not. This year the tree is so tall that our colored lights, while they did manage to stretch from the top to the bottom, were skimpy looking when I plugged them in. So I wrapped our white lights in between the colored. Good to go. Because Livvie begged for every pink foil and silver foil tree she saw, I bought silver garland at Family Dollar and wound that around the tree as well. We used silver garland instead of tinsel every year when I was a kid, and each year it would be carefully packed away for reuse the next year. When I removed the garland from the packages this year I saved the cardboard flats they were wrapped around. Mom taught me right.

My grandmother had three of these sheet music ornaments on her tree. This is the last surviving one. It has tiny seed beads glued to it that keep falling off over the years. If they ever all come off I'll redo the whole thing. I think this ornament is about 50-60 years old. I place it up high on the tree despite its size in order to keep it safe. This particular one is Silent Night, and I'll tell you what... when we were only having one kid the idea of passing it on was a lot easier to imagine. Now I'll have to figure out where it goes.

I was up in NJ visiting with my mom one year and we happened to go into Strawbridge's. You know, back when it existed. They had several of these little brass ornaments, and my mother bought me The Philadelphia Museum of Art (pictured), Independence Hall, and Barnegat Light House.

One year I couldn't find Independence Hall, and I nearly lost it. Each of them gets packed carefully each year now so I don't come unglued again.

Each of those three places is incredibly special in my life, and seeing them every winter makes me all kinds of warm and fuzzy.

"Cross stitch" on plastic canvas was The Thing for crafty people back in the mid-80s, and one year my mom went berserk and made about a billion ornaments. When I moved out I snagged the Hickory Dickory Dock clock. Check it, she glued a tiny plastic mouse to it. When Livvie saw it the other day she went wild, so it too is up near the top of the tree. No way, kid. This one is mine. I also managed to grab some smaller plastic canvas ornaments she made to hang at the very top of the tree. And seeing this is inspiring me to grab a can of gold spray paint and a bunch of sweet gum balls. Don't ask.

Santa here on the ladder placing the star hung on my grandmom's tree forever. As a kid I always placed him on the tree near the top so that he actually was placing the star on the tree. He's made of wood, and somehow he's managed to make it through several moves without a bit of damage.

To his right is a tiny bell and glass police officer my mom bought me a couple of years back. She meant it, she said, as an homage to my dad. Sometimes it mocks me because I'm not allowed into the force, being all crazy and whatnot.

The glass heart was etched in 2004 in the mall when my very romantical husband took his butt there and had them make this for me. "Our First Christmas 2004." The gold bow came untied the other day, and I nearly had a coronary. I managed to tie it again with no ill effects. It's up near the top of the tree too.

You know, there hasn't been much in the way of romantical lately. Unless you count him asking the folks at McDonald's to make my Quarter Pounder with Cheese onion-free with no prompting from me. Seriously, those onion chunks are vile.

Emma had a small stocking that hung on the tree that had her name on it, and when Ginny came along, naturally, there were no tiny stockings with her name on them.

So I bought her this.

It doesn't look a thing like her.

She's way cuter.

But it stays.

Our first Christmas together Rich and I were poor. Even more poor than now, which is crazy considering we now have two kids. He owned the bait shop, and one day I went in on my day off from work and bought some bobbers from him, actually paid for them, and took them home and threaded them onto paper clips. It didn't occur to me to go to the mall and have something made. I hung them on our first tree. They have been on every tree for the past 5 years. If anything ever happens to those bobbers I'll be crushed. I could buy a pack of ornament hooks, but I really don't want to. The paperclips will remain forever.

A very good friend of mine, knowing my absolute lust for popcorn and beer, sent me a set of 3 ornaments several years back. A box of popcorn, a bottle of beer, and a TV set.

Perfect.

Livvie is also in lust with popcorn, and informed me the other day that the popcorn ornament belongs to her.

That's fine. I'm keeping the beer and the TV.

This is a hedgehog. I bought him one day on a whim because he was cute. Then I noticed he had a small loop attached to the top of him. Voila. Instant ornament.

The cats used to snag him every year and bat him around the house. Every January I would have to search under appliances and furniture to find him again.

I miss that.

In the meantime, his name is Gerald. Livvie hasn't spotted him yet.

Livvie has been begging for "rainbow stars" for over a month. She saw Mickey Mouse and friends walk a path of rainbow stars and demanded that I provide some. I had to tell her they were pretend. We went 'round and 'round.

The other day at Family Dollar she gasped and said, "Rainbow stars!!!" I looked to my right and saw a pack of 4 ornaments for $1.50. They're plastic. They were probably made in China. I forgot to look. All I know is that for $1.50 I could finally give my kid rainbow stars. They will be carefully put away each year. She has about a billion and one ornaments already, but these were the first she chose herself.

My life is on this tree. My life is on every tree. My aunt and uncle have 2 trees each year since their home is large enough to do so. One tree holds their lives. The other tree is beach themed since they have a home down the shore.

That idea might be doable someday.

I will always, though, decorate with the full chaos of my past.

I just don't see the fun in any other way.

Can You Dig It?

The people who lived here before us apparently used the yard as a dump. For a loooong time. When we walk the perimeter of the yard, and even some of the interior, we find all kinds of interesting and potentially dangerous items.

Dirt has covered a great deal of things out there, allowing grass to grow on top of the detritus. When you walk around you never know what kind of sound will come from under your feet. The crinkle of leaves? Or the hollow sound of a vinyl rain gutter?

We are going to need to do some major excavating to make the yard safe for kid and dog. Right now I am entirely uncomfortable with the idea of Ginny running the yard loose in the dark. I'm not even comfortable out there when I can't see where my feet are stepping.

This morning I performed a small photographic archaeological survey of the yard while I smoked.

There are bags of topsoil buried everywhere, but many of them appear to be at the base of small, ornamental trees. Whether they were tossed there out of laziness or to weigh down the roots, we have no idea. 

This is a fiberglass bathtub that is now, either intentionally or not, a planter.

I have no idea what the hell this rusted out hulk is.

If you look in the center of the leaf fall you'll notice some metal pipes and whatnot.

Many, many plastic bags everywhere.

Again, what this is? Dunno. Big and metal.

That would be the vinyl rain gutter.

Apparently a dog was chained here at some point. Really can't figure out why there are scraps of the flag scattered there, though.

Plastic chicken wire.

Rusted old paint can. There are several.

Apparently the dog tethered here didn't require an actual chain, so they wove fabric scraps into a rope. More flag scraps.

Random piece of PVC. You'll find all of your plumbing needs in this yard.

Metal straps from a pallet or appliance carton. Those are always nice.

A faucet. Looks like it's for a garden hose. Or a washing machine.

All of this was found this morning during a 3 minute walk of the yard. I imagine we'll have to pick a nice weekend and walk the yard and toss everything onto a pile, and then we'll have to call someone to come get it all.

In the meantime, we're simply being careful.

Green Acres, We Are There...

We pass no less than three horse farms between our new house and the grocery store. It's basically a straight shot from our house down the road for about 15 minutes. This doesn't count the single homes with horses grazing their properties.

Today Livvie and I drove out to get a couple of things at the store and pick out a Christmas tree. She's been begging for a tree for months now, and the Friday after Thanksgiving is THE earliest I will allow a tree into my life. Needles on the floor. Watering the thing. Extra power expense from the lights. I'm always happiest in the house with a tree up though. It breaks my heart to take it down. The house looks totally barren and lonely when the tree comes down.

While we were driving to the store we passed one of the horse farms, and at least a third of the horses in the pasture were conked out on their sides (like <-- that one). The others were sort of slowly moseying around. I said, "Good God, what the hell did you all get into last night?"

I could seriously live out here forever. Maybe not in this house, but somewhere, out here, away.

The older I get the less city I am. It's almost like my cells themselves are calling a retreat. I had moved into a very country area with my ex in my late 20s, and when we divorced I was forced by finances to move back into town. I hated every second of it. I was in a unit of three apartments on the corner, and the bus stop was right on that corner. Even though I wasn't in the end unit, every single morning I heard the loud release of air as the bus pulled to a stop, and it drove me right up a wall.

I hate traffic. I hate being on top of other people. I hate being forced by geography into knowing everyone's business.

We are currently about 20 minutes or more away from the nearest Target. This bothers me not one bit. We no longer have our choice of convenience stores to dash to if we run out of smokes. We have to plan ahead or go without. Even the grocery store, at 15 minutes away or so, is far enough that I won't be running there more than once a week.

There is no "culture" out here. There are no museums. There is no hipster district.

There is air. There are trees. Huge, green pasturelands. Cows a brief walk away, if so bold as to walk it.

The people. The people are nice. When we went to the store the other day I was treated fabulously. Everyone went out of their way to be friendly. Today when Livvie and I chose our tree I told her to come on back to the car so I could get her buckled in, and I'd drive the car over to the tree to load it. When I finished fastening her seat I looked up, and an employee was crossing the parking lot to our car carrying our tree. I said, "Dude. You're on your smoke break. It's ok," and he said, "I'm still smoking it. Not a problem. Want this in the back?"

If I stay out here long enough I might have to turn in my Misanthrope Card.

That might not be a bad thing.

Welcome Home

So our new home is a flipped foreclosure, which is why we got such an awesome deal. Rich had researched the loan amount the seller had borrowed this past summer, estimated how much money was spent to flip it, and made the offer accordingly so the guy would make some profit but not take us for a ride.

I feel bad. I am loving this house, unforeseen problems and all, but for some reason the thought of benefiting from someone else's misfortune is eating at me a bit. It'll pass, and no doubt more quickly than it should. :)

We're finding some really weird things as time goes on. At the back of the property there's crap buried under the leaf fall all over the place. There's an old bathtub out there. Rusty old paint cans. I took Ginny through the yard on leash our first day here, and she stepped on a leaf pile and I heard a loud crack and her foot went through. Who knows what's under there. Thank goodness she didn't get hurt.

The previous owners had satellite and we're trying to figure this out. Did they install the dish and then plant the tree right there? Or did they install the dish right behind the tree? Did they have daily conversations about how much their reception sucked?

According to the agent the yard prior to the flip was the shrubbery and plant equivalent of the yard on Pee Wee's Playhouse. She said there wasn't a square inch of yard that wasn't choked with deliberately placed vegetation, and there was nowhere to walk. The flipper spent quite a bit of money, apparently, having most of it yanked. We're positive they couldn't get it all, especially since summer had come by that point, and we're curious to see what pops up in the spring. On Friday when I was out back with the cable guy I saw some morning glories blooming. In late November. I took Ginny out to the back of the yard later that day and found one, lone periwinkle blossom next to a tree. Since periwinkle is invasive and beautiful I told Rich to avoid it with the lawn mower if possible.

There's a very pretty white cat with gray patches that keeps crossing our yard and driving Ginny crazy. I'm wondering who she belongs to. She's sleek and is absolutely not a stray. I'm just getting a bit aggravated that I have to walk outside and scan the yard quickly prior to taking Ginny out every time. She loves "her" cats, and treats them very gently, but she does have a very high prey drive, and I fear for the cat if she's out there when Ginny gets set loose.

The thing that strikes me most strongly about this house is the peace. I sit in the chair by the living room windows to rock Jonas for his naps, and I watch the front yard through the blinds. The Bradford Pears are happy little starter trees, and I can't wait to see them bloom in the spring. I occasionally see a car doing the posted 15mph past the house, but mostly it's totally serene out there. We're two houses in from the corner, which is the highway, and if we go outside we do see crazy people taking those curves a bit too quickly. Our street, though, is simply fantastic.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US, and I'm cooking. Today I will make pie and prep everything for the Most Awesome Stuffing Ever. The house will smell amazing. When the sun finally peeks out we'll all go outside so Ginny can run for a bit and we can walk back in to the smells of nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla and cloves.

Is there anything better than walking into a house full of good smells?

Yep. I'd say it's passing more quickly than it should.

Cheese and Cheese?

For some reason Livvie refers to the yellow cheese singles as, "cheese and cheese." All other cheese is simply cheese.

I am a sucker for the cheese moments in movies. I don't necessarily mean the crappy dialogue moments that some people fall for, like, "You had me at 'hello,'" or other such nonsense. I mean those overtly manipulative moments in movies, usually "guy" movies even, where it's completely intentional on the part of the filmmaker. At least I think it's intentional. Regardless, I fall for almost all of them.

I was thinking of this in the middle of the night last night while I was lying on the sofa in the dark feeding Jonas. I had left TNT on when I fell asleep, because in the morning I can wake up for good to Angel, and that's a pretty nice way to wake up. So I was fuzzily staring at the TV screen, and they were showing The Patriot for the 5,932nd time, a movie I own by the way because I'm such a sucker for this crap, and I looked just in time to see one of the cheesiest, most manipulative moments in cinematic history. The men are retreating and the French militia guy points that out to Mel Gibson's character. Mel says, "Oh fuck that. Nuh uh," grabs the flag from some hapless dude, and charges back in the other direction to rally the men to fight again.

I fell for it again. I choked up like I was watching a Hallmark commercial from the 80s. Or that freaking Folgers Christmas commercial they still run with the little girl seeing her brother in front of the tree after he's come home as a surprise. Where was I? Oh. EVERY TIME I see one of those on my list of favorite cheese moments I come apart. Mel Gibson is a prime culprit in this, as every time I watch Braveheart I lose it completely at the end when he yells, "FREEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM!" with his last breath, and the King of England has to take that sound with him to the grave.

Every single time.

I know better. I really do. It's even sadder when I know it's coming because I've seen the film before, but I get all teary anyway. My all time worst was not, to my knowledge, crafted in any nefarious fashion. I am very sure that Tolkien was writing from his heart. The filmmakers had to keep it. They really did. If they hadn't, fanboys (and fangirls) everywhere would have lost their bleeding minds. Without fail, whenever I watch Return of the King and Sam lifts Frodo to carry him up the mountain I come apart at the seams. I can't help it. The first time I saw it, in the theater, I have to admit that I (and many other folks in the theater) softly chanted, "Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!"

Yeah, that scene from that flick gets me too.

Of course, the matter is not helped when I happen to be hormonal, as I am right now. At least dudes don't have to put up with their emotions about films being at the whim of a calendar cycle. At least I don't think they do. Since last night I've been trying to figure out if I'm a sucker for any of the gratuitous moments in chick flicks, and I can't think of a single one.

But I sob every time the dude in Volcano dies while saving the folks from the subway car.

So. What are yours? I know you have them. Dish.