A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.
1. Is it a cold or is it Covid? I honestly don’t know if the illness we have passed around this past week has been just a regular ole every day cold or if it’s the virus that’s all the rage right now–COVID-19. To be honest, if I had never heard of Covid before–I would assume what we have had was a cold. There was a little coughing, a mild low-grade fever, a stuffy head and a lot of feeling tired. We all got it to some degree or another–Grayson was the lucky one and hardly had any symptoms at all. We didn’t get tested, because I just didn’t see the point. The boys are doing online school, Super Rockstar is working from home and I didn’t really need to go anywhere this week. I’m going to just assume that we would have tested positive. The biggest thing I have noticed is that I have had some loss of taste, an excruciating sinus headache that lasted 3 days and the tired, low energy feeling just seems to keep lingering. Fine by me–that just means I have a good excuse to sit around, read, nap and watch movies.
2. What we watched this week. With not feeling so great–movies, movies and more movies were our survival method. We started off with watching Santa Claus is Coming to Town as a family. I love all of the old Christmas specials that I used to watch as a kid. This one is–by far–one of my favorites.
For family movies we watched Mulan–it’s finally free on Disney Plus. I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend it. It’s a great live adaptation of the original cartoon version and the imagery and cinematography are just beautiful. There were a couple of cringe y moments when Mulan is pretending to be a boy and has to be in an all boys military regime (how can she shower, etc???). My boys were shrieking with embarrassment, but I thought it was just funny. Also, there is a “witch” type character who is pretty mean. Really young viewers might be scared of her and some of the intensity of the action, but I think it’s definitely appropriate for older elementary age on up.
We also watched Uncle Buck. This is a really fun movie from the 80’s starring John Candy. He is kind of a loser type guy whose brother needs him to babysit his 3 kids for several days. It’s rated PG, but I think that it’s more of a PG-13. There is a lot of foul language–especially during an opening scene with the kids (I absolutely HATE hearing kids say curse words–especially taking the Lord’s name in vain) and a couple of adult situation scenes with the teenage daughter and her boyfriend. There’s some smooching and making out, but nothing too explicit. The boys loved all of the comedy and it’s a really fun, lighthearted, feel good story.
Super Rockstar and I enjoyed several movies. The first was The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. I just LOVE this movie so much. “And I ay I ay I will always love you”. Whitney–what a VOICE! It’s rated R and has a lot of adult situations so I don’t recommend it for kids. We also watched Battleship. It’s got action, aliens and Liam Neeson–it doesn’t get much better. It’s rated PG-13. I think my boys would have enjoyed it. The action is a bit intense in some places, there’s some bad language, and the aliens are a little weird looking, but otherwise I think it’s probably fine for tween/teenagers. Next up was Stuber. This is such a funny movie about an Uber driver who has to give a cop a ride to catch the bad guys. There are so many funny moments as well as some great action. It’s rated R–so be aware there are some very adult moments in the movie–this is definitely not one for kids. And lastly, we watched The Taking of Pelham 123. This is a really good action flick with John Travolta and Denzel Washington. Travolta plays a bad guy stealing a subway train and creating a hostage situation and Denzel is the subway operator that ends up being the negotiator. It’s rated R and is not one for kids, but we loved it.
3. What I read last month. I read some really good books in the month of November. For my inspirational/self help selection I chose Impactivity. It’s written by Tracy Higley and is all about doing more with your life than just setting goals and crossing things off a list. It’s about finding your God given purpose and living it to the best of your ability. It has some really good advise in it and I enjoyed it a lot. My only criticism is that the author felt the need to add a “fictional” telling of how she came to these truths. It comes across as a little cheesy to me, but some may find it helpful in bringing a “how to” book to life.
For my learning book I read Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. A couple of things: I have never read a Stephen King book. I’ve seen a few of the movies based on his books, but I’m not really into his particular brand of fiction. That being said–this was a fantastic book on writing. He tells of his own past and beginnings as a young writer (I think he was around 10 when he wrote his first story), his influences, his experiences, and so much about the actual process of just being a writer. I absolutely loved it and I learned A LOT.
For my fiction, I read two more Agatha Christi books: The ABC Murders (featuring Hercule Poirot) and A Murder is Announced (a Ms. Marple mystery). I can’t ever seem to figure out ‘who dun it’ and sometimes the language from yesteryear doesn’t quite translate to today, but both of them were very good and highly entertaining. The ABC Murders has been made into a 3 part TV series on Amazon Prime with John Malkovich playing Hercule Poirot. It’s VERY good.
4. My favorite memes of the week.
As always, I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a great week!
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