The kick is goooooooooooooddddddddd……

The kick is away, and the kick is….. goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddddd

Yes, had to quote the great Merrill Reese, long-time broadcaster for the Philadelphia Eagles for this one.

After my father and Sally left the house yesterday, I look over to Suze, and I ask her. “Do you want to take the test tonight?” She said yes. She goes upstairs to get the test.

Of course, while going to get the test, either due to nervousness or what have you but her bowels decided that they needed to release all of their contents. In the toilet, but still, it was one of those, ‘get to the toilet now’ moments.

So, we sit around and wait.

I told her that she should be happy with either result. Positive means that she’s pregnant. Negative means that she gets to drink coffee and alcohol for another month. Always got to play up both sides of the argument.

She finally goes into the bathroom. Pees on the strip. She comes out and says to me, “I guess I should call you the one-hit wonder from now on. The strip said, in a very simple soothing font, I might add, Pregnant.

So, lots of hugging and crying (on her part) and emotions. I was happy, but I’m more happy for her. And I’m sure she’s more happy for me. Who knows. Anyway, so we have 8 months or 32-36 weeks or some such nonsense. But right now, my wife is pregnant.

I’m holding off any joy or elation til we talk to the doctor. And probably won’t even experience joy and elation til the event is much closer and all of that.

But to go from, I’m worried about being able to conceive a child, to the fears of ‘jeez maybe all of my sperm is really like dead inside or something’, to even, ‘Who knows what methods we’ll have to go through just to conceive a child, money, time, effort all of that.’… to Suzanne is pregnant.

As I said to Suzanne, there are certainly bad possibilities, but nothing takes away from the fact that she is pregnant at this moment here and now.

And there we are.

Suze, not surprisingly, wants me to go with her to the doctor. She’s going to call to make an appointment. And I will talk to someone about taking off that time. And go from there.

Now, Suze wants to wait til May to tell everyone that she’s pregnant. I don’t think that she will be able to wait to tell her mother. And I don’t want there to be a tremendous amount of time between telling her mother and telling my mother. But, so be it. It’s her decision on this one. And I understand the need to not tempt fate and to be cautious.

But there we are….

Suzanne is pregnant. Assuming all goes well, we will have a baby in the fall.

An amazing turn of events.

I am happy of course. Worried about the future. Scared about my ability to provide (financially) a home for a family. And concerned about all of the possibilities out there.

Are we ready…. No…. and I don’t think we (or at least I) ever will be. But it’s here, and I’m very pleased… And when I’m not worried, I’m kindof excited about it.

Anyway, it’s a small little organism right now that has the potential to become a human being. We’ve got 4 weeks down. Admittedly, they’re the easy 4 weeks, but still 4 weeks down.

And that’s pretty much all you can say.

Robert

V for Vendetta (deeper review)

Yes, I broke down and saw V for Vendetta this past weekend. Was going to go opening weekend, but had too much stuff going on . So, things got delayed.

So, in general, the movie was pretty good. I might have liked it more if I hadn’t read the original work, most definitely. However, it was pretty good. Everything was well acted, well shot, and decently written. Probably the only real problem is that I think the original work is just so brilliant that it is tough for me to believe that anyone should mess with it, even to make it a work that is more suitable for a typical Hollywood release.

In terms of how well it was adapted, the stuff they got right, they got perfect. The transformation of Evey Hammond, the most important part of the story for me, was spot on perfect. Could not have been better. In fact, as I couldn’t stand Evey prior to her transformation, I think Natalie Portman portrays it better than it was written or drawn in the book. The gasp throughout the theatre was decent for the revelation of where she actually was. The shadow gallery was about as perfect as you could want, including the movie posters, jukebox, etc. I mean, they didn’t take set deisgn from David Lloyd’s sketches, but they certainly didn’t ignore the artifacts within. The scene where V lays out the dominos, was just tremendous.

The Vendetta against the first three ‘victims’, Prothero, the Vicar, and the coroner lady, were rushed. They got most if not all of the details right, but it was very rushed. Chalk it up to having to cram this much material into a 2 hour movie. It’s Hollywood. They did a decent job here, and no real complaints.

The casting was very VERY good. I know who the actors are, and they really captured me to the point where I wasn’t seeing them. And really at no point do you listen to Hugo Weaving as V, and realize it’s him. In other words there’s really no point in which you want to call out, “You know what I really hate about Fascists? The Smell!”

Most of the deviations from the original plot are fine, save for one or two. They had to modernize it. Alan Moore wrote a great graphic novel about motivations and political power and how fascism can take over a country, but the why was complete bullshit (e.g., a nuclear holicaust where England survives), and can only be forgiven because the rest is so good.

Three things they missed big time. First off the message of anarchism as being the next evolutionary step in gonvernmental rule was completely abandoned. Not a trace of it. The message is overthrow the government, but no suggestion at all as to what to put in its place. Just, what we have is bad, let’s remove it. Forgiveable. I mean there is a slight commentary against the current government and the tools they use to run things, but to have a movie that embraces complete anarchy, well, I can understand why they’d think twice on that one.

Second, an over emphasis on what Guy Fawkes tried to do. I mean there is a message about Guy Fawkes, but no one in the book or in history tends to believe that his cause was right and just. I mean, if the gunpowder treason wasn’t on the 5th of November, I’m not sure V would have been running around in a Guy Fawkes mask in the first place. But if I’m wrong about my facts here, please forgive. Been a while since my British history years.

Finally, the relationship between V and Evey is wrong, but actually wrong from V’s side and not Evey’s. Throughout the novel, Evey doesn’t know how to react to V. Is he a father, mentor, lover, leader, maestro, or simply a player playing his part. And that kindof holds true, if not exactly. In the movie, V is truly taken by Evey, almost doesn’t do what he has to do because of his love for her. It really feels like V wants to stay with Evey, but the mission is what matters. This felt wrong to me throughout. Just didn’t ring true. V’s emotions and sexuality were burned away in the fire. He has affection for Evey, but not as a lover, as a friend and mentor.

So anyway, a good enough movie. On the adapted works scale, where Sin City gets a 10 and The Scarlet Letter gets a 0, I’d give it a solid 6.5

Unless you’re in love with the work, or want to give an extra shilling to David Lloyd, no need to see it in the theater.. But definitely rent it when you have a chance.

Post weekend wrapup

Post weekend wrap-up….

Weekend was pretty low-key. Friday night we went to go see V for Vendetta. We went to the Neshamnity Mall to go see the movie. Let’s start with the mall. First off, it’s nothing but high school students in the mall on Friday night. Apparently all of the chunky high school girls go to the Neshamnity Mall, and all of the thin, hot girls got to the Oxford Valley Mall. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t ugly girls. Just girls who were average or a little more chunky. I mentioned to Suze and even she mentioned or affirmed it for me.

The second thing is that apparently hair has gone back to the 80s. I saw one guy who had a traditional 1980’s Mohawk. I was staring, not because he was such a freak, but more that I haven’t seen it in 15 years. Then another girl had a full gelled up, spiked hair. I mean total locks of hair that stick straight up in the air, in a antler like pattern. Once again, I’m cool with kids acting punk, but to see that old style hair come back into style was a bit of a wake up call. Yes, there’s a bit of a ‘yer all a bunch of poseurs’, but we all were a bunch of ‘poseurs’ at that age, so is fine.

V for Vendetta was pretty decent. It’s tough for me to be objective, because half of me is a purist, who thinks that the heart of the story didn’t need to be changed. But, the other part of me is a realist when it comes to these things, and you have to be able to convert an original source to a “Hollywood” style screenplay. So… it was what it was:

What the movie got right, it got really REALLY right. The transformation of Evey Hammond was spot on! You totally believed that she changed into this new person. The reading of Valerie’s note, was excellent. A great adaptation, and great acting by Natalie Portman. The domino scene was great. The quirkiness of V was handled well enough.

The main problem was that they humanized V. And that was the whole missed point. Whatever hormonal or chemical experimentation was done to the residents of Larkhill, changed the man from room five. Made him into not just a super-human, it gave him powers of precognition and perception. It gave him tremendous self-awareness. It did not make him a fighter of the people. He needed to complete his vendetta, and he had a good idea what that Vendetta would entail, and what would happen. They played V as if he was a man on a personal crusade, where he would become the martyr of the people. No No No. V did what he had to do. This V was too active. More of a protagonist, rather than a catalyst.

But, that is a matter of opinion. I didn’t like the aspect of making him ‘fall in love’ with Evey. He was everything to her. He was her father, her uncle, her teacher, her mentor, her tormentor, and her lover. There was a cheesiness to the ‘love’ he had for her, which was outside the scope of what was originally written.

Finally, to not have Evey become V kindof rings wrong to me. In the movie, he more inspired the population, in fact invited them to join him. As I said, too active.

The rest is pretty much window dressing and hollywooding. It wasn’t awful in what they did with the rest, it just was what it was. Regardless, a very satisfying movie experience. Suze liked it well enough which is good.

The Elephant in the Room

So, Suze and I talked more about the fact that she has not had her period yet. She’s not freaking. And I told her that it’s cool, because it’s just a thing that happened, and that would be cool. She’s taking it in stride. We talked about what we had before about miscarriages, about mothers being too motherly, about what she will do what she won’t do, how’s she’s going to hate stopping coffee, how we’re going to deal with it, whether we’re ready for a kid or not (which we aren’t, but we both don’t think we can wait, lol).

I mean, we both went over our recollections, and we both are fairly confident that she has never been this late with her period, since I’ve known her, and never in her memory (save for once). And it’s not mimicking what she wants to happen, because she said that she had it pretty much out of her mind after she took the test the first time. She’s had no cramping, no bloating, none of her usual period symptoms, so that’s why we are where we are.

It was good to clear the air and talk about things. Neither one of us are nervous, because we don’t really believe that it is true. We believe it could be true, but the circumstances are about a 5 or 6 on the everyday miracle scale. (with 1 being your favorite song coming on the radio when you’ve had a shitty day, and 10 being cancer going into remission w/o chemotherapy or radiation). We don’t believe it. However when confronted tonight, that will be the true test.

Basically, the plan is that Suze is going to take the test tonight or tomorrow morning. My Dad is coming over, and we wouldn’t want to influence the emotions of the evening by taking the test, regardless of the result. So, she’s going to try and take the test tonight, we think. And regardless, she has to make a doctor’s appointment. If the test is negative again, she needs to find out why she isn’t getting her period, whether she’s pregnant and the test is flukey, whether her body is changing in her mid 30s and skipped periods can happen, or whether there’s a real problem. And obviously, if she is pregnant, then she needs to go to the doctor for a variety of reasons.

I’m at the point where I don’t believe that she’s pregnant, but I think she is. My heart says she isn’t, but my head says she is. Talk about role reversal. I mean there are too many signs to ignore: her stomach is a bit queasy, her breasts have started to hurt. All of these things can be natural occurrences or even psycho-semantic, but combined with the big clue… it just fits.

So, we shall see tonight.

Forthysia… Forthissleia…. Those Fucking Yellow Bushes

Well, after talking about it for years, we finally bought some forsythia bushes for the backyard. I planted them on Sunday. Two at Home Depot for 15.00 a piece and a new shovel. Kindof cool. Also went to Barnes & Noble, IHOP, JoAnn Fabric, and a few other stores. That basically filled up my entire Saturday morning/afternoon.

Suze’s folks came over on Saturday to go to the Kimmel Center. I had suggested to Suzanne that we go to Liberties Restaurant. Liberties was kindof good, but I worry about her parents’ reaction to places like that. First off, it was very loud. Louder than Liberties has been in a while. It wasn’t smokey or beer stinking, but definitely a presence of a bar crowd. The waitress, who was an extreme hottie, wearing a belly shirt, showing off her tattoo on her back, just fucking awesome, was dumb as a stump. The manager/bartender/owner (who knows) named Trout (from his last name, my guess would be Troutman) was very cool, the type of person who should always b e in the food service industry. Just a jovial, nothing’s a problem, type of guy. Really cool

Of course, the food at Liberties delivered very well. I had crab cakes, only because I didn’t want pasta and I really wanted the garlic mashed potatoes. Suze had Filet au poivre, which was AWESOME. Just wonderful stuff. Nana had crab cakes like me, and Pop had Swordfish with Basil Pesto sauce. Everyone enjoyed the food. Maybe not the best place to take them, but was fine, I think.

Then we went to see Stephen, Justin, and Joel in their youth orchestra performance at the Perleman Center in the Kimmel Center. It was pretty good, I must say. The strings were very good for that age. The horns (honestly couldn’t tell about Stephen) were not as good. But, overall it was quite enjoyable. Had a rainy drive home, but other than that a decent night.

A quickie

Sunday morning, amazingly enough, we did get up and went to Meeting for Worship. That was fine as always. There’s a showing of Good Night and Good Luck at the Newtown Theater in April, so Suze and I may try to go to that. It looks like a really good movie, and is only 10 bucks for the show and a discussion. And it’s a donation, so….

We went to Moish & Itzies for breakfast. I had Nova Lox on a bagel, which was wonderful. Suze had Chipped Beef on Biscuits, which was decent. She doesn’t like the place as much as I do, but she likes it.

Then we contacted Brian & Kara to see if they wanted to come over. Suze decided to make the scallops in the burnt butter & garlic sauce with risotto and green beans. And we decided to use the placemats along with the stainless flatware and Suze’s Fiestaware. I mean, this is basically the table we set when we eat a nice dinner during the week.

They really got thrown off by the nice spread. Like well past the point. And we had toned it down. We could have done the china & crystal. But still we had a very nice dinner with them. We think Kara enjoyed the scallops, but can’t truly be sure about that.

So that was the weekend… lol

We shall see what tomorrow brings.