Some Journey

Alias Review

I enjoyed this week’s ep of Alias much more than the rest of the season so far (And, NO, it was not because of the Syd/Vaughn shower scene!). I enjoyed it because I thought they brought back several consistencies from prior seasons, and revealed the possibilities for developments which will provide more consistency for this season as well. Stuff I liked:
1) Santa Barbara. Was anyone else yelling “They were supposed to go to Santa Barbara! He was going to propose!” at the screen while Vaughn was telling the story of “Dave and Karen’s” engagement? Just me? I was afraid of that.
2) The books. I was happy to see Irina’s books brought back on stage. Tying in details all the way from season 1 when Francie spilled the lemonade on them.
3) Elayna Derevko. I’m still mourning Irina. I’m glad they’re developing another Derevko story line. My theory: Sentinel/Elayna will tie in to the picture of Irina holding her “niece” that Nadia was trying to find out about. Jack and Sloane both reacted suspiciously, and both obviously knew exactly who that baby was and didn’t want to tell Nadia. Jack took a little time to think out his answer before telling Nadia that Irina told him it was “her niece”. Will it turn out to be Nadia? Is she really Syd’s cousin? My hope is that they will once and for all wrap up “the Prophecy” and Syd’s harvested eggs. Perhaps Project Christmas, too. Those were just too big a deal to forget about, and if the writers want to walk away from those story lines, they need to give me some closure first. They only write for me, right?
4) Weiss and Nadia. But it doesn’t make up for bringing Weiss into the APO. It was wrong. So very wrong.
5) 47. I've missed the references to the number 47 that were present in every ep of season 1 and 2. Could be they just hid it more s3, but this week's was a shout out to us "old school" Alias fans with Sloane pointing out that the couple Syd and Vaughn would be impersonating were responsible for a bombing that killed 47 people.

Questions I still want answers for:
1)Sloane’s endgame. Remember the paper he was shown by Director Lindsey in the parking garage. It was whatever was on that paper that made him (at least pretend to) agree to assassinate Syd. We never found out what was on the paper cause Lindsey got shot. It was never really addressed.
2)Project S.A.B. 47. We’ve been told that the papers Syd found in the bank dep box revealed that Jack killed Irina. But the page that we saw in the season finale read “Project S.A.B. 47” (SAB being Syd’s initials), and listed Syd’s birthdate as the date the project began. What project? Project Christmas? There has to be more to those papers than Irina’s murder.

Okay. That's wraps up my Alias ramblings for this week.

Passion thoughts

I finally watched The Passion of the Christ the other night. I’ll probably blog more on it later, but right now it has me thinking about a poem I wrote years ago when I was a student at Chatt. State and often enjoyed afternoons sitting under a wonderful dogwood on campus, and I thought I might post it. I haven’t posted any poetry, yet, and am honestly very nervous about it, since it’s like posting my diary only more personal. But since Cindy Tucker’s starting to blog and she’s asked me several times about my poems, thought I’d do it for her.

The Great Commission

Like glass tears
Balanced delicately in my
Soil-stained palm
The last two petals of the dogwood tree
Fall gently into my hand

My hand stretched out
My palm faced heaven
I balanced your life
On my fingertips

Like the lost pieces
Of a beautiful painting
They transform my handprint
Into a work of art

Blood dripped like
The last drops of water
In a dying man’s canteen
And then the real pain came
As the sky grew dark
And the veil was torn

Like two halves of a
Broken heart
Trying to fit together again
The petals begin to curl
And my palm begins to burn

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?

Do you truly love me?
Then feed my lambs.

Shut up and eat your broccoli

So for dinner I made chicken and broccoli casserole in the crock pot. One of my favorites, cause it's so darn simple. I throw in some chicken breasts, a little broth, pour in a bag of frozen broccoli and let it slow cook all day. About an hour before serving I add a can of cream of chicken soup and cooked rice. Now, I usually get the cheapest broccoli I can find. Generally Thrifty Maid, I think. I've been getting it for years and the kids always like it and I've never had a problem. For some reason (I don't remember why right now), last time I was at the store I decided to splurge and buy Green Giant broccoli.
So while I was working on my second plate, Sam sat back down after having dished up a 2nd or 3rd plate for himself and surprised me by saying, "Hey mom, what's this green thing?" I was like, "Duh, broccoli." He says, "It doesn't look like broccoli to me." So of course I responded with the kind of understanding that comes from listening to five kids and their various complaints at the dinner table on a nightly basis, "What else could it be, Sam? Just eat it and go on with your life."
"Um, no, really, Mom. This doesn't look like broccoli."
It was at this point that he removed the questionable object from his plate and set it down on the table next to me. He was right. It did not even moderately resemble broccoli. What it did very much resemble was a stink bug. It was the same fake looking green as the broccoli, so we assume that it was mixed in before Green Giant did their broccoli dyeing at the factory. It was also legless, which left us to wonder if the legs had been lost prior to getting mixed into the broccoli, or had they simply vanished into the crock pot. So the question then arose as to who might have eaten the legs. . .
Needless to say, as much as I usually look forward to having good leftovers for lunch all week, this will not be one of those weeks. And next time, I'm buying Thrify Maid.

Growing up. Or Old. Whatever.

I finally feel my age. I know that sounds really silly. I really did not even think of myself as an adult for a long time, even after I was married. You’d think after 11 years of marriage and five kids, I would feel like an adult, but I didn’t. And I turned 30, and was totally okay with that. And then I turned 31. And over the past several months it has just crept over me like a fog. It’s not really that 31 is old. It’s just that I think for a long time I sort of felt in the back of my mind like I was just taking time out to raise five kids, and then once the kids are grown, I’ll just step right back into my twenty-something life where I left off. People often talk about “putting their life on hold” to raise a family. But the realization that has been becoming more and more real to me lately is that I did not put my life on hold to have children, having children radically changed my life. The discouraging thing is that it has finally dawned on me that when the kids are grown and Stephen and I are on our own again, I will not be the twenty-something I was when we started this journey, I will be old, and wrinkled, and saggy. Well, parts of me are already saggy. But by then it will be worse. I have two reactions to this realization: 1) Depression. 2) I am encouraged to remember that my life is not on hold while I raise my kids. Raising my kids is my life. I need to make the most of it right here, right now. There’s no such thing as waiting around for the right circumstances to do things right. Now is the time to do the best I possibly can because of the strength that comes from my relationship with Jesus, and trust that the Lord will accomplish His will through me in spite of the failures I know will be an inevitable part of my trek. But I would still really like to be a skinny, sexy Grandma. Hm. Maybe not.

What ever happened to Steve?

If you are a parent of young kids, you know Blues Clues. And if you are a parent of a kid older than 2, you remember Steve. Many of us who got on the Blues Clues bandwagon early were just as fascinated with the show’s host, Steve, as we were the show itself. And few of us in that category feel that the new host, Joe, can hold a candle to Steve. If you know the show, then you know what I mean. If you don’t, I can’t explain. Anyway, as Blues Clues aired on CBS this morning in its third format now where Blue talks in the form of a big puppet, I was lamenting about the good ole days of Blues Clues in its prime, and got to wondering what became of Steve. So I did what I always do when I wonder about stuff like that, I plugged Steve’s name into Google and found his website. I was so glad I did. I find Steve Burns’ real life character to be just as delightful as on Blues Clues, and his website kept me in stitches. I particularly enjoyed the “spoof” science report on whether or not Steve’s new rock/grunge album is appropriate for kids. It is well worth the read.

Christmas band

This was Christmas morning. Noah, Joseph and Sydney make quite a band. They kept us entertained all morning singing Wiggles tunes.

Joseph

Joseph is my fourth child. One of the things that amazes me about having five kids is that there are no repeats. I used to kind of think of the world in two categories, type A and type B. I figured that out of five kids you'd get two A's, two B's and one mixture A/B. Not so. Five distinctive personalities. They definitely have things in common, and there are pair ups which share more commonalities than others. Joseph is terrified of dogs and cats. But reptiles. . .loves them. He loves to be read to, but rarely looks at books himself. He doesn't like to color. Not a huge fan of ball games. But his favorite thing in the world to play with is a worm. He loves worms. He will spend hours digging in the dirt looking for them, then carries them around all day playing with them. He builds houses out of blocks for them, tries to feed them all sort of things, puts them in toy cars. This one he gave a bath. View image
Then he usually smashes them. Or chops them in half. It is almost less an affection for worms that he has, more of a fascination. He is, however, our most affectionate kid. He loves to be held and hugged and kissed and tickled. And it's pretty hard to resist hugging and kissing him a lot. He's a very sweet and lovable kid, until he doesn't get his way. I'm sure no one else has a kid like that. Anyway, the biggest downside to Joseph is the eardrum bursting, high pitch scream that he emits when he cries. And here lately that seems to be rather often. He's decided he doesn't want to be four. He wants to be a baby again. Fortunately, I've already had three four year olds and I know this is normal. But I'm ready to get it over with and move on to that fun time of age 4 1/2- 5 where they discover how fun it is to be a big kid and they seem to become sponges of higher levels of thinking over night. On the other hand, I'm not rushing Joseph to grow up. He made a really adorable preschooler, and now that those are becoming more and more scarce around here, I don't mind putting up with the discipline challenges that go with it. In the meantime, we'll learn to live with lots of worms.

Alias Premiere

Finally getting around to updating the ole blog. The weather has been so great that we've been outside a lot, and I've spent a lot less time at the computer. We did very much enjoy the Alias premiere, though. We had the pleasure of watching it at Bubba and K's house along with the Gilchrists and Kennedys. And yes, I dyed my hair bright red for the occasion.View image
The box said it would wash out in 8-10 washes, and I assumed that meant that my hair would gradually have less and less red in it. What actually happened is that the color gradually became less red, so by Saturday night it was a really weird shade of pink. Ethan and I made a quick run to Walgreen's and bought a pkg of brown hair dye, so on Sunday morning it was a much less offensive auburn/reddish brown.
I enjoyed the premiere. It wasn't the best (or I should say two best) episodes ever, but I appreciated what the writers did and where I could see that they were going with the new season. While some of the jumps we were asked to make were a bit big even for Alias (no one was suspicious of Syd, Vaughn, Dixon, Jack, Marshall and Sloane all leaving the CIA simultaneously??), Alias is all about willing suspension of disbelief, and I felt that it was a "tidy" way to ditch the bad and run with the good from season 3, and I love where we are in season 4. While not entirely seamless, it was a plausible way to pull us back into the original premise of Alias. At first I was disappointed that Weiss wouldn't be a part of the new organization, but then I realized the genius of what they did by leaving him out. They have given us back the magic that was missing regarding Syd's double life and the "real life" side of her that we used to see in her interactions with Will and Francie. When SD-6 was destroyed and then Francie and Will were taken out of the loop, Syd really no longer led a double life. All we saw was her CIA life. Part of the original appeal of Alias was watching her try to juggle the two. The irony of the juxtaposition of Syd's cell phone conversations with Francie about her boyfriend while being chased by foreign assassins was always fun. One of my favorite scenes from season 1 was when Syd was running from the FBI (who thought she was the destructive force prophesied by Rimbaldi) and Will and Francie are watching the car chase on tv, having no idea it is Syd driving it. I feel like the opportunities for that kind of scene will be available via Weiss' lack of involvement in APO. I am also relieved that while they restored the dysfunctional father-daughter relationship tension, they still kept the "essence of Jack" which I think is best summarized by his statement to Sloane in Season3, "Every morally questionable thing I've ever done was to protect Sydney."
My personal guess on how they will restore tension to the Syd Vaughn relationship (because tv rules say you can't just have a happy couple whose relationship runs smoothly for an entire season. . .something has to keep the tittilation alive) is that we will find out that Vaughn was more involved in the Irina murder than we now know. There were hints during his conversations with Jack that he at least knew about it, and there was way too much time spent on the scene where Tomazaki recognized him for that to be superfluous, IMO. Alas, enough about the premiere. I'm glad Alias is back. Still loving Lost, as well, but that's a topic for a whole other post. . .