Documentries are movies too

They are making a movie of your life. Tell us all about it! Is it a drama? Action flick? Rom-com? Which star will play you?



Participating in this BlogHop thing could be good for me. I've been lagging a bit, not feeling up to really being part of a group writing thing because everyone is so much better at it and have so much shinier blogs and lives and stuff.

Still I actually think about this question from time to time. What would my life look like if it could be made into a movie. First off, it would be a documentary in the style of those 'intervention' shows. Not that I have any addictions, but honestly I envy some of those people on shows like that. They somehow get a whole bunch of people to be super interested in someones life enough to pay for a therapy vacation because all is not well!! Or like one of those "Who Do You Think You Are?" shows. A cross between those too film styles.

I won't have an actress play me, even though people say I look like Zooey Deschanel or Reese Witherspoon. I don't see it and I doubt that they would be interested in playing boring old me.

My life story in film form would have show that I was more social than I feel I am, what with being a part of the choir(singing solos) and the writing club and even starting a club of my own with my high school boyfriend(for Christians... it didn't work out). Even having a high school boyfriend and remaining a virgin would probably seem unbelievable to most seeing that I am a birth mom now.

I've documented much of my life in journals and they would be able to provide some drama in the form of misunderstandings with coworkers and witnessed domestic violence as well as struggles with depression and times of fervent faith that likely offended many.

Not the type of stuff movies are usually made about, but a long, over wrought story of my life told by family friends and myself is the only type of movie that I could imagine. I don't have a great imagination honestly.
Only when I read books. I can't come up with anything unique on my own.  

What I've learned from my favorite TV shows

I like many shows, but I do have certain favorites. Grimm, Amazing Race, Modern Family, Suburbia and Two Broke Girls to name a few and to say the least, the lives on the shows are not reality. Because reality would be really boring, or mostly boring.

What I learned from Grimm
-If you are in pain, break stuff. That wooden chair just behind you will break with just a squeeze of your hand. Just knock all those expensive vases down. All the glass will disappear in a jump cut 20 seconds or less later and only one guy will vaguely mention there being a 'mess'
- It's totally OK to make a mess because your mad or upset
- the best conversations happen while you are punching someone in the gut or otherwise kicking their asses. That's when you get to know all the important details.
- Don't worry about your injuries, even if you almost die you will pretty much all better by the next morning, if not the next jump cut. Maybe you'll have a few scratches and groan while holding your side and planning your next moves to take down the bad guys.
- Almost everyone is secretly a monster, even children and child monsters have no qualms about killing people if their feelings are hurt by some slight rejection.(I can't have the candy?! YOU WILL DIE NOW!!)
- Monsters only show their monster faces when they are really emotional, otherwise they look like humans and believe and act and live like your average next door neighbor.
- Everything you need to know is written by hand or in some thousand year old book. Although sometimes you can use the internet to find out what the bad guys look like in human form.
- Magic potions contain really gross stuff that changes color so you know there's magic in it.
- Night time is when most of the action happens, day time is for taking naps.
- You will always find the exact solution to your problem in about 3 days or less
- The bad guys are always planning to kill you, even if you think you've got them, more are always coming.

Now what I learned from Amazing Race

-People get tunnel vision and can't see the most obvious clues when they are hyped up on adrenaline
-The married couples never win because they can't stop fighting about every little stupid detail
-Brother and sister teams always win because they understand how to work together and usually sisters know that giving your brother the power to make most of the decisions usually makes him let you decide things.
-Twins are annoying and never win because they probably have depended on their charm to get them through life and the game is all about thinking for yourself, not charming the world.
-Road markers should be the hardest things to find and be the smallest signs possible so that all the people in the show waste time and energy running around looking for them while the jump cut make scary music to show that once again, the road marker was not seen and now the people are hopelessly lost
- Participants are so used to doing ridiculous things they will accidentally take food from a random resident of a foreign country and play with it while the man tries to tell them he doesn't know what the heck they are doing in his backyard
-Swearing is not allowed but barely bleeped and silly sayings and behavior will get you cut into the opening credits and previews.
-Some people give up before even trying and other people don't know when they should give up and still other people keep going even when they are horribly injured
-Phil will always be waiting for you. He's everywhere, like God. And I don't know how he gets to that mat and looks so calm, as though he's not really human
- The companion Phil has by his side at the mat will always be the most extreme representation of culture possible
- Phil is magic and always says the right thing to everyone and everyone always loves him when he raises an eyebrow.

That's all for now, I'll add more later.

   

Can you out grow open adoption?

This is a thought that came to me the other night.

In my life I feel there are many situations and relationships that I have 'out grown' or at least, the other parties did, or things changed and made it unreasonable to expect a continued relationship.

For example, I decided to leave my mothers church(when I was 16), the church I grew up in, because the doctrine was not what I needed it to be, as well there was no real productive use for me within the community.
Now, there was things I could participate in, but I could not in good conscious because of the errors I saw in the basics of the church's practices and doctrine. I felt I had learned new things in different ways that made the things I had accepted before unacceptable. So I moved on, to churches that were much more attune to the details I craved to know and understand and was also able to be an important part of the activities in good conscious knowing that I could support them without compromising my convictions.
Would it be fair to say that I 'out grew' my mothers church. At this time, I know that they are starting to make important changes, but far to slowly for me. I feel like another species of Christian when I have tried to visit the church of my childhood. It is a place that is foreign to me now.

As we physically grow, we naturally out grow many things, both socially and emotionally too.
The things I loved as a child are not all the same things I love now, although a few things remain constant.

The friends I had in school are likely very nice people, but I am no longer friends with most of them just because life goes on. People get jobs, or move or find other groups or places to belong and then it just awkward to try and keep that connection with a former classmate/teammate/coworker/etc.
It makes more sense to me to wish them well and not expect another response or contact, but if one were to happen, it would be welcomed, of course! It's just that I don't think it's emotionally healthy to try and stay friends with all the people you've been friends with. Sometimes it's better to just let them go without any hard feelings, just knowing that they've developed a life that doesn't need you. While that can be a tough reality, it is reality.

I know family is supposed to be this one constant thing, but I think families change constantly as well.
Children grow, parents find new social groups at work or church, etc and the connections to family can seem like an extra job that's not entirely needed.
There are likely millions of people who need to be reminded to contact their parents once in a while because in our grown up lives, talking to our parents might be the last thing we think of doing. Same goes for other family, cousins and aunts and uncles, etc that we have grown up with and had wonderful times with are no longer a part of our adult lives, not because we don't care about them, but because our lives have 'moved on' from the carefree times of childhood.

Part of me, even being a birth(first)mom actually likes it when an adoptive parent says they 'forget' that they didn't give birth to their adopted child. It's not that I want them to forget me. I want them to see their adopted child as if they always belonged with them. I want this because it seems to have an attitude of more permanence. Like the feeling that most people have about people in their lives they can't imagine life without.
That feeling that the people they care about were always a part of their lives, whether or not such a feeling is logical, that doesn't matter to me. I just want adopted children to be as taken for granted as natural family usually is. I am not sure that adopted people want to be reminded that they are adopted, they probably don't need that, they need unconditional acceptance and not to be expected to be thankful for their inclusion into their family.

I just feel there comes a point in time when a relationship takes more effort than reward or necessity.
I know that Parker needs to know who I am, and he does. Why do I need to keep bugging him with visits and semi-annual reminders that he came from me and not his adoptive mom. Maybe he should be allowed to forget that he is adopted too. That's another thing, I find it amusing when adopted people activity compare themselves to their adopted family just as many other average people do. I like it when people find the ways they are the same and not the ways that they are different.

For life to be lived well, change is vital. Change means growth, personal or otherwise. If a change that benefits an adoptive family is subsiding from being in contact with a birth(first)family, maybe that would be a good idea. If a birth(first)mom like myself who loves her birth son, but needs to focus on her future needs to take time away from contact, etc maybe that would be a positive change as well. I don't want to be constantly waiting for a picture, a visit, etc. Even when those things happen, I want it to be more natural, not forced. If it happens, it happens, if not, that's OK, it's not the end of my world. I don't want to focus on bringing to life a relationship that is futile at best because my son's adoptive family have a rich social, emotional, and spiritual life and my involvement is not at all necessary to create a well-balanced young man out of my son. Of that I am sure. He is now old enough for me to see the kind of person he can be for his whole life. He knows everything he needs to know, and can ask if he wanted to know anything else, but I highly doubt that will happen.

I've seen many people I care about change and grow, or better and for worse and many times staying in relationship with them does little to no good for either myself or the others.

   

Reasons I think smoking is gross

This is probably going to be a very offensive post for some readers. If any read my blog at all(sometimes a handful probably come here my mistake) but it's been in my mind for a while and I want to unleash the thoughts I have about this.

Recently I decided not to continue to pursue a candidate on a dating website because he is a smoker.
Even though everything else was perfect, finding this out about this person makes him someone I do not want to know. I know enough smokers, and while I respect that they have this horrible habit. I didn't know that when I befriended them.

That's reason number one.

1) Smokers have this secret life that non-smokers rarely witness. It always feels like rejection when a person chooses something over me. Not that I need all the attention or anything. It just seems unfair that a costly addiction should be more important than the person that is me. Also it seems unfair that friendships are made with the experience of this addiction. Often it was peer pressure that lead smokers to light up and now they all have this universal club that I can't be a part of because I don't want to participate in the costly addiction.
So when a smoker says to me(as a person who will never smoke) that they won't smoke in front of me because they know it bothers me, it just means that I'm excluded from what seems like a very important part of their life.
2)It costs too much, both in money paid for the actual product and health costs in the future. I know many smokers rationalize the cost in comparing it to other costs that people have, but none of the other things they mention have ever been proven to cause Cancer. Also, the actions of others should never be used to justify your own. Even if you can afford to buy a Cancer-causing product, there are many more useful things that could be done with that money.
3)It's messy. No matter how much a smoker cleans up. Or thinks they don't smell bad, they do, and they always will. It is a habit that leaves mess no matter how 'clean' you try to be. I will never understand why smokers think it is OK to toss something on fire, that has been in their mouth, on the ground. It's just as bad as spitting on the ground, which makes me want to puke every time. The fact is that cans and jars of cigarette butts are one of the most disgusting things to see. As a child though, I once tried to eat them apparently. I don't remember doing this, but my mom does, and it must have been a rude awakening for me. Smokers who breathe out their last puff while entering a bus or building are actively polluting those places(a bus is a place, to me). I would rather smell 3 day old sweat on a homeless man than breathe the air that has that yucky stale smoke smell.
4)I have witnessed more than a few close friends and family, who were against developing any addiction, become addicted as a result of long time familiarity with anyone with an addiction, smoking or otherwise.
I know that I limit my time around people who have addictions because I know I am not that strong, I can't resist forever the urge to 'belong' by joining in, no matter how bad the consequences of the activity. Which is why I walk away before I face too much temptations. I know my conscious will make me feel terrible for destroying myself and I want to be true to myself. Smoking seems to destroy people, not just physically, but socially and emotionally and spiritually. As with any addiction, it takes over, like the Cancer it causes, till there is no person there at all, just an addiction.

I know this is all very harsh, and I know many good people are also smokers, but I can't help but feel that what they are doing is very illogical and I like to be as logical as possible.