how do you do, crawley family? days #26-30+...what i am doing on my summer vacation

the english family i never had.

hubby and i are 2 episodes shy of completing season 3, upon which we plan to pore over every piece of pop culture literature out there referencing the best drama ever made. well, hubby is sufficiently disciplined to avoid any article discussing spoilers for season 4. i, on the other hand, being female, human, and interacting in society at a very basic level, already know a few key plot lines that i could not avoid otherwise.

sometimes, i have to remind myself that downton abbey is FICTION. the reason i've avoided korean dramas since 2001 (one of my silly regrets is that i didn't watch more korean tv w/my awesome roommate e), why i avoid games like "candy crush," why i have never purchased a subscription to "us weekly," is bc i have a highly HIGHLY addictive personality.   and the fluffier the content, the more it'll swirl around in my head, pushing out productive thoughts, righteous thoughts, morally sound thoughts, and supplant them with something base.  fun, yes, but base all the same.

reasons i love downton abbey:
1) it is a soap opera disguised as "masterpiece theatre." so i don't feel gross for watching it.  and yet, the sheer number of characters and plot lines feeds into my short attention span, much the same way an old school episode of beverly hills 90210 might.

2) certain themes are comfortingly familiar, and actually, quite korean. the heaven-forbid-crossovers between class, attempts at holding onto tradition at any cost, dramatic childbirth scenes, the restrained attempts at affection, all of this is something over which first and second generation korean-americans could easily identify. but it's all so civilized.  and the costumes so majestic. and the men look so dashing.  no fainting spells by overly dramatic mothers. no grandmothers threatening to die should the youngest run off with the chauffeur. no random plots involving amnesia. and even when father figures get upset, it's never under a red-faced drunken spell resulting in a bunch of soju glasses being knocked off a table.

3) the show is making history real to me without my realizing it.  history was always a subject in school that i was ambivalent about. i didn't struggle with it, nor did i excel at it.  it was just something that i forced myself to learn, much in the same way i considered spelling or grammar rules an academic necessity.  but loved ones of mine, including hubby, bff, father, and college roommate, are all history buffs, and i often wondered what i was missing.  i am embarrassed, but shameless enough to admit that this tv show, and its corresponding literature, have made world war 1, the industrial revolution, and even the sinking of the titanic a lot more relevant to me.  and i realize that it's the retelling of history as a real STORY, not as facts to memorize, that is the key.

4) the sweeping music.  i have always loved a good musical score.  and i love how the show uses music to clue us into something ominous, humorous, grandiose, and/or all of the above.

5) i love the audacity of the show -- it makes no bones about being completely romantic, tragic, violent, ostentatious.  it is all or nothing.  but always, always tasteful.  how do they do this?   i guess that's the difference between the english and the american.  if an american show tried to sway 100% in any of these directions, it would feel gratuitous, for shock value, for publicity.  but the english have demonstrated in this show that you can be completely genuine, without sacrificing one's dignity.  in fact, to be genuine is to preserve one's dignity.  is there a single scene where the dowager countess is not truly honest?  but her loyalty to family is perhaps one of the most dignified characteristics ever portrayed in film.  and the proposal scene, oh be still my yet pitter-pattering heart.  the gently falling snow, the stunning costumes, the script...perhaps one of my favorite romantic scenes of all time.

caffeine is wearing off...kids are getting antsy...will sign off now.

deep thought #1

what's the difference between an "incentive-based reward system" and bribery? lately, to lure o into practicing piano, or to "encourage" k to do, well, almost anything, i've been saying, "first you do this, THEN you can do this." but is that bribery? or am i teaching them how to prioritize?

i have no idea anymore.

i hate "honest kids" juice pouches. i know so many lovely, virtuous moms who, if they are not pumping calorie-free, preservative-free, everything-free ice cold water (in a bpa-free thermos that their kids never lose unlike my son who averages a new water bottle every 3 mths) into their children, or organic milk (not even chocolate milk), this is as low as they will stoop in the sugar water category. i admire them. and i appreciate them for not judging me when i whip out the cheap tasty capri-suns with nary a nano-second of hesitation.  they could resent me for exposing their kids to the evils of capri-suns, but they don't.

i tried the "honest kids" juice pouch route for a while.  and in fact, i have a bulk pack sitting in my laundry room right now, much in vain.  i am trying.  but the impossibility of poking the straw through the hole is what gets me every time.  i have a 40% accuracy of getting the straw in the first time.  and if it doesn't puncture the pouch the first time, the straw is bent, damaged beyond repair, and then it's poke. poke. POKE. start looking for sharp objects to puncture the blasted pouch (and myself at this point bc i'm so pissed off).   i'm still not sure if it's worth it.  i don't know why the "honest drink" company could not invest a bit more research into their packaging, given their 30% markup in price compared to other drinks.

day #23...what i am doing on my summer vacation

hubby will be the first to note that i lay ridiculous claim to many things, like, i "discovered" johnny depp when he was a z-lister starting out on "21 jump street." back in 1987,  i saw the pilot episode, and quickly concluded in my 13-yr-old mind that he was going to go far. and i knew that, say, dustin nguyen would not.  i lost interest in depp's career at, oh, i dunno, the 5th sequel to the pirates franchise, but up to that point, i considered myself a fan, and felt responsibility for calculating the trajectory of his career much like any hollywood scout would. (note: if i wasn't a Christian, and if i believed in re-incarnation, i'd like to imagine myself coming back in another life form as a hollywood agent.)

loyalty runs fast and deep within me. this is kind of a requirement if you grow up as an ohioan, even more so, if you care remotely about sports. people often ask me, "weren't you lonely growing up as an only child?"  to which i respond: 1) i have absolutely nothing else to compare it to 2) the only times i really felt a "deficiency" was when playing board games (the 2 games my dad caught onto without hurling me into bottomless caverns of exasperation were "uno" and atari's "combat").  3) when i decided not to pursue medicine and felt (all self-imposed, my mom was relieved that i didn't go to med school bc she didn't want me to "goh-sseng" -- translation, "suffering" to the nth blended with heaps of korean-mom drama and sighing) a bit like a failure and wished i had another sibling to pass on this asian burden.

this is a very long intro to say simply that i'm really sad about cory monteith's passing.  i absolutely LOVED the first two seasons of "glee," and the first reason is, i loved the imperfection of his voice, the ridiculousness (and self-awareness) of his dance "moves," and the fact that he genuinely seemed like the nicest guy. i also liked the idea of pursuing the american dream, that he started out as a walmart greeter (tho no walmart greeters i've ever seen would rival his hunky looks) and then landed such a delightful and popular role.  the second reason i loved the show was emma's outfits. 

i have a very unsympathetic audience in hubby, who cares a lot more about the political upheaval in egypt (as he should, and as should i) than anything that happens in hollywood. how is this related to johnny depp? just that i love the initial starts of someone's career, someone with raw talent, and hate to see it stop short. even more so with someone who just seemed like a nice person.  

day #22...what i am doing on my summer vacation

i'm thinking uncharacteristically unhygienic thoughts today, really wondering what the point of showering is on dc's hottest day of the year. i wonder if weathermen from other regions get as psyched about the weather as those from here. the summer started out rather mild, but no matter how it starts, we always come to this 95+ oppressive combo of heat and humidity by mid july. this year, i'm thankful for a functioning ac and nhood pool membership.

well well well, my kids continue to surprise me.  in shocking contrast to yesterday's arguments over the beetle's fate, now they're singing a duet over the piano.

i like to torture myself the weeks before my kids' july bday parties by browsing pinterest daily to see all the things i'm not going to do for them. i am nothing if not well informed.

i hate going to the grocery store w/my kids.  and i hate that i feel so strongly about this.  makes me feel like a bad mom through and through.   today, i took the kids to wegmans.  i had noble plans to make it a fun outing for them which lasted the length of the parking lot. you see, i loathe the carts with the little-tikes-plastic-car attached. and you'd think that as my kids got older, that their appeal would fade. but no, they wedged themselves into the car, thus adding almost 100 lbs to the weight i had to push around. the only reason i even succumb to these beasts (the cart, not my kids) is containment. i will muster up all the will in my measly biceps to maneuver the cart if that means my kids will stay inside. but instead, they sprung from the car willy-nilly, their memories esp sharp, remembering the bakery's display of delectable goodies, and that the deli guy would give them a free slice of cheese (my kids dislike cheese in any other context).  they had several near-collisions with other customers, and i was fast approaching my dark place (opposite of happy place). i imagined the angels shouting in heaven, "intervention! intervention! mommy in aisle 3 needs intervention!" and suddenly, i bumped into one of my fav moms in nova, and my frustration dissipated.

this entry about wegmans has gone on too long. but the point is, i hate grocery shopping w/my kids. i hate that it takes at least 250% longer to shop w/them than without.

one good thing: wegmans' peach muffins are available. i will drive to sterling, fairfax, even leesburg, to acquire their peach muffins.

conversely, i almost got into an argument w/the freezer stockboy who "couldn't recall" that they ever carried wegmans'-brand dino nuggets. seeing that this is one of the primary reasons i hauled out to fairfax when it was 95-degrees out, i didn't even want to begin explaining to him why, no, tysons-brand was not a suitable substitute.

this entry will help explain why, when hubby asks at dinner, "so, how was your day?" i oft have little to offer but a blank stare.

what i am doing on my summer vacation...day #20something?

better late than never. maybe today is the first day of a series of "what i did on my summer vacation"-like journal entries.

today i chose to ignore a heated argument btw my kids about whether or not to set a beetle (that i had trapped in an empty gatorade bottle bc i was too lazy to kill it or shoo it outside) free. o wanted to keep it. k wanted to send it back to its "colony." my son knows more about habitats and the behavior of living non-humans than any adult in our family. anyway, i deliberately ignored this argument despite its escalating volume bc, to me, to acknowledge it would somehow make it more real. and the content of the argument was so stupid that the last thing i wanted to do was validate it.

deep thought: made me wonder how often God must think the same thing about us humans and what we choose to fight over. but, He loves us anyway. and He actually cares about said argument bc He cares about what we care about, whereas i chose to block it out. now if only my cares could become what He cares about, we'd be good.

moving on...

if i chose to apply my psych background, i could easily see that my kids were arguing, not bc they cared so much about hapless beetle, but bc they resented each other over the sacrifices they've had to make in the past 2 weeks.  o has had to sit in numerous dr waiting rooms bc k had eye surgery last week, and his belligerence at follow-up appts has pretty much guaranteed that we will need as many follow-up appts as insurance will allow. in turn, k has had to frequent the pool daily for o's swim practice, but he himself is forbidden from entering it until his eyes are ready to handle chlorinated water. this didn't matter so much last week when it was overcast, but during this morning's 90-degree wait, well, the kid was bitter.

enter, beetle.