Of Relative Experiences and Old Movies by Konnie Enos

Yesterday I was talking to my son about some movies. He has been finding and downloading movies so that we could watch them at home, and he asked me to suggest some of them. I was obviously suggesting movies I’m familiar with and wouldn’t mind seeing again.

He has a problem with the quality of those movies. One, for all of these older movies he mentioned that they did not have captioning capabilities. The other had something to do with the picture quality. I believe pixels were mentioned and the older films have fewer pixels than the newer ones he is more familiar with.

Anyway, while we were discussing these movies, he said that the year 2000 was twenty years ago.

I told him he was born after that year, and he is over 20 years old. Obviously. I didn’t understand his point.

He pointed out that all the movies I’d recommended were, well, ancient, and apparently that means the quality was lower. He went on to comment that one of those movies was so old that he really had to search for a digital copy and it wasn’t for sale anywhere on the internet.

In fact, most of the movies I suggested required quite an internet search simply because they are old. Folks, get this, most of the movies he was complaining about came out in the 1980s. The 80s! I was an adult when they came out.

Though I have to admit, one of them was even older than that.

In our discussion about movies that I’d like to watch again, I mentioned one that I know has a much more recent remake. One that came out in the late 90s. One I don’t happen to like. One of the things I don’t like about remakes, is they change some of the details, which the remake clearly did.

(This is also why I won’t watch Steve Martin’s versions of Cheaper by the Dozen or Father of the Bride. Particularly Cheaper by the Dozen. For that one he changed the entire story, including the number and gender of the kids. Making what was a true story, very fictional, which I really do not like.)

Anyway, I told my son I wasn’t going to watch the remake of The Parent Trap, so he had to really search for a digital version of it.

Now this is a movie I’ve known since I was a kid. I honestly don’t know the first time I watched it, but I was clearly in school, somewhere between 3^rd and 7^th grade. I’m choosing those years simply because of where I was living and the fact youth of that era had a great deal of freedom. That and I’m pretty sure the first time I saw it was in a theater.

Back then a local theater would offer a series of child friendly movies over the summer as matinees for an extremely reduced price. Some years you could get tickets for the entire season through your school, sometimes for free.

Our mother always took advantage of programs that would entertain us over the summer months that were either free, or very inexpensive. Like buying a family pass to the local swimming pool every single summer. She rarely went, but we would be at the pool most days.

So anyway, thanks to these free/reduced priced tickets, we were able to see a lot of movies in the theater growing up. And the kid friendly movies they were showing weren’t brand new. I’d say they were all around 10 to 20 years old.

So yeah, in the early 70s, The Parent Trap was around 10 years old. It is actually older than we are, well except our older sister affectionally known as Dictionary. She was several months old when it came out.

So, this whole discussion about the 2000 being over 20 years ago, was about these movies being made before the technology to put in captioning or use more pixel quality was available. And apparently anything, especially technology, over 20 years old is ancient.

I’d hate to point it out to my son again, but he’s over 20 years old and still born in this century.

I even watched Battle Beyond the Stars last night instead of working on this post. My son came in while I was watching it and asked me about the video quality.

Yes, it’s just as good as it ever was. His expectations are based on his experiences from this century. My expectations are based on my experiences from the 70s, roughly 30 years before he was born.

Anyway, I might watch The Parent Trap today, simply because I can.

Also, happy birthday to my youngest grandchild and her mother, my oldest child.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Nothing New by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

The hardest part about writing this post, or any post here, is that very little ever happens around here.

Konnie has a houseful of people, and honestly, something is happening at her place every day. Around here, nothing really happens most days.

Case in point, the most exciting thing that happened around here this last week was the semi-annual conference of our Church. No special travel arrangements, nothing to do except remember to open up my laptop at the right times to watch each session.

The only other thing I’ve done this week was spend several hours on Monday cutting and dicing a bunch of vegetables and making a big pot of vegetable soup.

Epic for me, ordinary for Konnie’s household. Though I admit, Konnie would be part of the team putting such a meal together. She would, in fact, be the one doing the chopping and dicing while her daughter actually does the cooking.

Here I had help with the major chore only as long as my aide was on the clock.

I had to finish the soup by myself. And as Konnie can attest, I found that extremely tiring.

What happened Tuesday?

Not much, still recovering from Monday.

Which would be another thing.

At Konnie’s house cooking happens several times a week, if not a day. At my house, the microwave gets more work than the stove does, and when I do cook something, most of the time it’s something for which I’ll have leftovers, so I can just microwave it the next time I eat it.

Yes, sometimes I do get on a kick where I have eggs for breakfast several days in a row, and I don’t fix enough for leftovers then, but any other time I’m cooking, I’m cooking for leftovers.

At Konnie’s house, they always cook from scratch, at my house I have a lot of freezer to microwave prepared foods and fresh fruits and vegetables, that way meals are quick and simple most days.

It’s just me, and I don’t have as many allergies as some members of Konnie’s family have. (They cook from scratch because it’s the only way to avoid some of my niece’s allergens, which are used way too much in commercial products. Bread is a big issue due to this.)

I have food allergies, but they are easy to avoid. Soy, and dairy are very hard to avoid unless you cook from scratch.

Which would be another reason way more cooking gets done at Konnie’s house than at mine.

Yeah, I’ve gotten lazy, but cooking for one is dang hard. Very few recipes are geared toward cooking for one. I have found a few “mug” recipes, but that’s about all. I have found a few more recipes geared toward cooking for two than any “mug” recipes, and frankly a lot of the mug recipes I’ve found call for foods I’m not supposed to have, by doctor’s orders.

Yeah, I have quite a few of those doctor’s orders that have nothing to do with allergies and everything to do with my health. Like, I can’t have soda, and I have to limit lemonade and juice of any kind (too much sugar). I also can’t have caffeine. So, I’m limited to water, milk, and herbal tea. And I have to limit the milk some (it is still carbohydrates), just not as much as juice and lemonade.

Things I can’t have include chocolate. No caffeine, and chocolate does have some caffeine. Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for everybody, but it still has caffeine in it.

That’s the problem with high blood pressure and congestive heart failure (CHF). Unfortunately, I also have diabetes, so I have to avoid sugar, except my body can’t tolerate (process) artificial sweeteners, so I can’t have the sugar-free treats intended for diabetics. I have a sweet treat, and it has to count toward my carb count for the day.

And frankly, fruits and some vegetables are carbs.

Oh, the joys of growing old.

By the way, Konnie is also counting carbs now, but she doesn’t have CHF, so she doesn’t have to cut chocolate out of her diet, and she likes dark chocolate. I’m not sure where she stands on soda, because that’s still a lot of sugar, but I do know her diet isn’t as limited as mine.

Of course, mine isn’t as limited as her daughter's, who lives at home.

We all have our own cross to bear.

And on top of that, my carpal tunnel is acting up. I’m guessing it has something to do with nearly three hours of chopping and dicing.

So, I’m cutting this short before my hands go completely numb, since I can’t type with my braces on.

Happy writing, everyone!

Of Overreactions and Simple Things by Konnie Enos

 

My husband is the sort of person who overreacts. If something stops working it is always the worst case scenario. Generally, whatever is going to cost us the most money or completely inconvenience us. Most often both.

The second any appliance stops working, my husband figures we’ll have to replace it because whatever it is, we won’t be able to repair it. This is his reaction even when we’ve manage to repair every single appliance that broke this year except the stove.

I’m talking dish washer, fridge, clothes washer and the dryer.

When we had the floods (two of them in less than a year) in the garage, he was positive it would cost us money we didn’t have and require us to focus all of our time and energy on the clean up and repair. We honestly didn’t have to do much at all because insurance covered most of the damage.

And when I had multiple doctors order tests or do biopsies on me to check for cancer, he assumed we would be dealing with cancer treatments. (Okay, to be fair, valid assumption because I have a lot of family members who’ve had several kinds of cancer. My dad and his mother had multiple kinds of cancer before bone cancer took both of them.)

Don’t worry, every last one of those tests came back clear. I do have health issues, but so far cancer isn’t one of them.

But the big one with my husband is our cars. Whenever something goes wrong with one of them it is always the most expensive repair and/or a harbinger of more catastrophic issues that would be expensive and eventually having to replace the car. None of which we can afford to do.

But I think the worst is when he invents issues that aren’t even there.

Case in point, our current car.

Almost from the time we got it he was finding reasons to take the car into the shop because something wasn’t working right.

He insisted the transmission was slipping and needed expensive repairs all while none of the rest of us had ever noticed the issue he described. He also insisted it’d be thousands of dollars to repair. The same goes for the car radio, which he is still complaining about and my daughter, who drives the car almost as much as he does, cannot replicate. And in both cases it was covered by the warranty.

Now yesterday, he insisted the car had a leak, like a major one, leaving a streak of oil from our driveway and up the road which he found because he turned around to get something he’d forgotten. Apparently, he’d checked where it was coming from and even the fluid levels under the hood and decided we had a break in our brake line and the car was completely out of brake fluid.

He refused to even drive it to the shop and instead opted to pay nearly $100 to have it towed in. He was also sure there was no warranty and it would cost us thousands of dollars. He was also absolutely positive we would be needing to do these costly repairs monthly now because the car is pushing a whopping 7 years old.

Do you know what the skilled and trained mechanics found?

Nothing!

They not only couldn’t find any sort of leak, but the brake fluid levels were also good. There was seriously nothing wrong with the car.

So, my dear husband skipped work and spent money we couldn’t really afford because he overreacted and invented issues that weren’t even there. Not only that but we spent an entire day without a car and wondering if we’d have it back in time for appointments and such we have Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Not to mention next week.

In comparison, I have found that it is rarely the worst case scenario when things go wrong. There is usually a quick, easy, and far less expensive fix.

If the car is sputtering to a dead stop the engine is not failing, it’s simply a clogged filter that needs replaced. (I’ve seen this one multiple times.) And just because doctors order tests to check for cancer does not mean it will be found. Something breaking isn’t the end of the world because a solution can be found without breaking the bank.

I’ve even told him it is not always the worst possible outcome, but he will inevitably forget this wisdom in the moment.

Then, of course, my brush goes missing and it’s the end of world. I just under react for the big things. I think that might be an autism trait.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Procrastination and Time Blindness by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This has been quite a week, starting with Konnie’s youngest son calling me around 9 PM last Tuesday night to inform me their house was experiencing internet issues which had yet to be resolved. That is basically all he said. I groaned but let him know I got the message and I would see what I could do.

I was tired, I wanted to get some sleep. I did actually try to get some sleep at first, then I finally gave up and opened my laptop, still thinking about Royce’s call.

His rapid fire statement still ricocheting in my head. Why me?

The answer was of course, our blog is just the two of us, it is after all about life as mirror twins, which we are. But dang, last-minute warnings are no fun.

Honestly I figured I deserved that for spacing what day of the week it was the week before. I told myself at least I got a warning, unlike Konnie the week before, and tried to get my mind to concentrate on something to write.

It was getting late, and I didn’t have enough, but it was better than nothing when last Wednesday morning less than a half hour before the post was supposed to go up Konnie called.

I answered telling her I was still working on it.

She called to inform me her internet was back up, and she had managed to get to a post up.

All that panic for nothing!

Konnie told me to look on the bright side, at least I had a post started and I had a whole week to finish it.

I think she’s forgotten that I am diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism. In other words, I tend to be time blind. Everything is either now or not now. I have a hard time seeing things any other way.

One week to tweak and edit a post? Plenty of time.

Five days to work on my post? Other things need done first.

Two days away? I’ve still got plenty of time.

You get the picture.

I’m now sitting here in the middle of the night typing away because I didn’t bother working on it during the day. After all, noon on Tuesday is a long way before 9 AM on Wednesday.

It’s Wednesday, and I should be asleep.

Yes, I’m a bit of nigh owl. Not this bad though. At least not every day. And I am trying to get to bed earlier. The problem would be that I didn’t sleep much on Monday night, so I slept off and on Tuesday instead.

I’m awake right now. This is going to throw my sleep schedule so out of wack it may be weeks before I am back on the schedule I was trying to establish.

Then again, I was only trying to establish a better routine. Habits take four weeks to become routine. I may never reach that mark.

This is the problem with being both ADHD and Autistic. In the ADHD mind routine is bad and to be avoided, in the Autistic mind routine is necessary. The battle is to establish routine that works without annoying the ADHD side of me.

Anyone who is both knows how hard this is.

I also suffer from executive function paralysis. Meaning, I know what I need to do, but I can’t seem to get my body to start on it.

Let’s face it, I finally got my shopping done this month because my neighbor needed to go shopping too, and her car isn’t working. I literally finally made it to the store because my friend needed to go too. I’d been telling myself to get up and go to the store for three weeks at that point.

I mean I’d been out of bread for two weeks by that time, and I still hadn’t made it to the store, even though I could have, if I’d gotten off my duff and left my house.

This is the problem with having my issues, and I’m not alone with this. Anyone with my diagnosed sensory issues will have the same kind of issues.

Okay, Konnie’s oldest admits to having these kinds of issues, and she’s got two little girls depending on her!

I honestly thought getting a diagnosis would make life easier for me, but all it has done is give me insight into why I do (or don’t do) the things I do.

The biggest one is it explained why I like my collections.

I’ve had people see me bring more books, or Nativities into the house, and ask, “Don’t you have enough already?”

Uh, maybe? I’m working on it. I have actually stopped buying more Nativities, but am still acquiring more books, and Barbies.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!