Freaky Friday
No, I won't be talking about the original novel, the Disney film, or its two remakes (yes, there were two...IMDB it if you don't believe me) I'm just using the title for dramatic effect. I'm not even using it to make a comment about this particular Friday being a whirlwind or roller coaster ride of a day. I guess one could say that that is somewhat of a cheat as far as titles go...rather like someone's ignorance to the title Naked Lunch, which features no nude brown bagged meals of any kind to my knowledge. And now, I feel guilty about my title and may change it before I finish this blog.
Can we talk? Well, everyone can talk to me now, thank goodness. What I mean is that I finally received my replacement phone yesterday and it was like receiving a jug of water after a 3 day trek through the desert. I still have to re-save all the numbers into it, but that is a minor annoyance compared to not being able to make or take calls or be able to check my messages. I suppose it ended up not being a problem in the long run...I had only missed two messages (one from my mother) and one text message from my dentist reminding me of my appointment on Wednesday...which I did attend despite not getting the message. To paraphrase Tom Petty, the waiting was the hardest part. Want to know how many calls I actually made last night? Zero. Sure I had a few people call me and yes I did call my mother back after school...but during night/weekend minute time when I could have called all the people I had wanted to call over the weekend and could not, I didn't dial once. Shows how much I really needed that phone, eh? That waiting, however did make for an unnecessarily frustrating week and didn't allow me much de-stress time before the hellish weekend to come. I have double and triple booked myself you could say.
I'm the kind of person who prefers to do one or two things on a day off, separated by a few hours. I do not like to squeeze as much as possible into the 48 hours that makes up the weekend so that, by the time I get back to work on Monday...I feel as though I have received no break at all. This weekend has the earmarks of doing just that though. Take tonight for instance. I have a last minute Thespian Club meeting, I'm baking a cake from scratch (just cause I can), and then heading to the Children's Play to support my kids who are in it as well as the parents who are taking their valuable time to sell items during the play to raise money for the Thespians. Tomorrow I'm getting my hair looked at again by Vegas, my gay stylist, and then my friend Jacques Pablo (this is a humerus reference to the fact that he teaches French and Spanish, we'll abbreviate it as J.P.) is coming to visit after that. I also need to wrap presents for Thankschristmas (as I have thus named next weekend's holiday collision) and then go to the Children's Play again. Sunday is all about doing laundry early, seeing JP out, and then driving to Huntington, WV to have lunch with Mr. and Miss J and Mom. I believe I will return home at 3 on Sunday with enough time to finagle lesson plans and crash....I might have Bond over, I haven't decided yet.
Are you exhausted after reading all that? Me too. Oh well, its all for the good of myself and others I suppose. At least I'm not a hermit like Grumpy is...Grumpy, for those of you who don't know, is my librarian friend. I'm very excited about Thankschristmas though and I can't wait till school lets out on Tuesday so I can begin my holiday travels. Its just a drive to Athens, but it feels special. Dad's doing the bulk of the driving...6 whole hours up to PA. A lot of travel for only a few days, but its worth it to be with the family. I think that even if I lived across the country....or the world, I'd still try to make it back here to be with my family at the holidays.
Speaking of holiday travel, I'm going to give a shout out to one of the best Thanksgiving traveling movies ever made (though I don't know if the accolade means much since there aren't that many to begin with...everyone makes Christmas movies but hardly anyone makes Thanksgiving movies...and the fake trailer for Eli Roth's Thanksgiving does not count)...Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Its probably cliche to mention this movie at this day and age because of the reputation of the film, its stars..John Candy and Steve Martin, and it's writer/director John Hughes...but I didn't discover it until a few years ago...so there (thumbs nose at cynic). Its a very simple movie about two men, one a selfish businessman and one a cheerful shower curtain ring salesman, who happen to meet on their respective journeys home for Thanksgiving and how they form a bond in order to reach their ultimate goal of getting to their families. In a way, this 'quest home' story would form the basis for Catherine O'Hara's journey home to her son in Home Alone with the added tension of knowing that the child was there by himself. Here, the men are just trying to get through the horrid miasma of holiday travel with different motives. Steve Martin feels he 'has to be there' while John Candy simply wants to be there. In the end, the object of the story is for Martin to learn to be a better person from Candy and to make us go 'awwww' in the audience...something Hughes had perfected. Its almost criminal that he didn't direct more films before his untimely death this year. I think everyone should sit down to this film on Thanksgiving (or in our case, Thankschristmas) and remember the man's great work.
Can we talk? Well, everyone can talk to me now, thank goodness. What I mean is that I finally received my replacement phone yesterday and it was like receiving a jug of water after a 3 day trek through the desert. I still have to re-save all the numbers into it, but that is a minor annoyance compared to not being able to make or take calls or be able to check my messages. I suppose it ended up not being a problem in the long run...I had only missed two messages (one from my mother) and one text message from my dentist reminding me of my appointment on Wednesday...which I did attend despite not getting the message. To paraphrase Tom Petty, the waiting was the hardest part. Want to know how many calls I actually made last night? Zero. Sure I had a few people call me and yes I did call my mother back after school...but during night/weekend minute time when I could have called all the people I had wanted to call over the weekend and could not, I didn't dial once. Shows how much I really needed that phone, eh? That waiting, however did make for an unnecessarily frustrating week and didn't allow me much de-stress time before the hellish weekend to come. I have double and triple booked myself you could say.
I'm the kind of person who prefers to do one or two things on a day off, separated by a few hours. I do not like to squeeze as much as possible into the 48 hours that makes up the weekend so that, by the time I get back to work on Monday...I feel as though I have received no break at all. This weekend has the earmarks of doing just that though. Take tonight for instance. I have a last minute Thespian Club meeting, I'm baking a cake from scratch (just cause I can), and then heading to the Children's Play to support my kids who are in it as well as the parents who are taking their valuable time to sell items during the play to raise money for the Thespians. Tomorrow I'm getting my hair looked at again by Vegas, my gay stylist, and then my friend Jacques Pablo (this is a humerus reference to the fact that he teaches French and Spanish, we'll abbreviate it as J.P.) is coming to visit after that. I also need to wrap presents for Thankschristmas (as I have thus named next weekend's holiday collision) and then go to the Children's Play again. Sunday is all about doing laundry early, seeing JP out, and then driving to Huntington, WV to have lunch with Mr. and Miss J and Mom. I believe I will return home at 3 on Sunday with enough time to finagle lesson plans and crash....I might have Bond over, I haven't decided yet.
Are you exhausted after reading all that? Me too. Oh well, its all for the good of myself and others I suppose. At least I'm not a hermit like Grumpy is...Grumpy, for those of you who don't know, is my librarian friend. I'm very excited about Thankschristmas though and I can't wait till school lets out on Tuesday so I can begin my holiday travels. Its just a drive to Athens, but it feels special. Dad's doing the bulk of the driving...6 whole hours up to PA. A lot of travel for only a few days, but its worth it to be with the family. I think that even if I lived across the country....or the world, I'd still try to make it back here to be with my family at the holidays.
Speaking of holiday travel, I'm going to give a shout out to one of the best Thanksgiving traveling movies ever made (though I don't know if the accolade means much since there aren't that many to begin with...everyone makes Christmas movies but hardly anyone makes Thanksgiving movies...and the fake trailer for Eli Roth's Thanksgiving does not count)...Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Its probably cliche to mention this movie at this day and age because of the reputation of the film, its stars..John Candy and Steve Martin, and it's writer/director John Hughes...but I didn't discover it until a few years ago...so there (thumbs nose at cynic). Its a very simple movie about two men, one a selfish businessman and one a cheerful shower curtain ring salesman, who happen to meet on their respective journeys home for Thanksgiving and how they form a bond in order to reach their ultimate goal of getting to their families. In a way, this 'quest home' story would form the basis for Catherine O'Hara's journey home to her son in Home Alone with the added tension of knowing that the child was there by himself. Here, the men are just trying to get through the horrid miasma of holiday travel with different motives. Steve Martin feels he 'has to be there' while John Candy simply wants to be there. In the end, the object of the story is for Martin to learn to be a better person from Candy and to make us go 'awwww' in the audience...something Hughes had perfected. Its almost criminal that he didn't direct more films before his untimely death this year. I think everyone should sit down to this film on Thanksgiving (or in our case, Thankschristmas) and remember the man's great work.
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