Archives for June 2010

The pool!

We’ve had nothing but drama with our pool.  Again.  Finally last week the guy said, ok, we have to Floc it.  That’s short for flocculation.  I know.  Just doesn’t sound right, does it?  But basically it’s the white flaky chemical you put in the pool, turn off your pump for 2 days and it sinks everything down to the bottom and then you vacuum it all up.  Well.  Smarty pants me forgot to turn the pump off for 12 hours instead of 2 after putting in the pool Saturday.  We thought it might still work but by Wednesday we had given up.  I took a sample of the water to the pool store and we had to start all. over. again.  Which included buying 4 bottles of floc again. Whee!  The super duper good news is when I woke up this morning I saw the bottom of our pool for the first time this year!  And the really strange part is it’s not very dirty!  I’m still not understanding why our pool would never clear up if it was nearly spotless on the bottom!  Anyway, hopefully by this weekend we will have a crystal clear pool on our hands finally.

Medicine!

So a few months ago I talked about starting thyroid medicine and I don’t think I mentioned it but I started birth control for my skin.  The past two months have been a bear.  The birth control pills made me CRANKY.  I felt like I had PMS 24-7 and the actual week of PMS was horrendous.  I haven’t felt that hormonal since I was pregnant.  Thankfully, my doctor knew right away what it was and we switched my prescription.  This week has been the first week on that and I can already see a huge difference.

As for my thyroid, I finally heard back yesterday and the dosage they have me on is too much so they knocked me down to 88mcg (for those that are familiar with Synthroid, mainly my mother).  I really thought they would up me because I just haven’t seen any difference from it so I think I was a little bummed they lowered it.

Dexter!

I swore I was not going to watch TV for the summer but then I got the bright idea to give Netflix a try.  Well, it has unlimited streaming of a lot of their DVDs and every night since getting it I’ve been watching Dexter.  Now, I was very hesitant in watching this show.  It’s on Showtime if that tells you anything.  But everyone raves over it and I see a lot of articles on it in the media.  So I gave it a try.  It’s very gory and it has awful language and on the surface, I would stay away from a show like this but it is seriously some of the best writing and acting out there and like a train wreck, I can’t stop watching.  So, that’s where I’ve been every evening for the past week which probably explains my lack of posting here.

Overall we’re enjoying our summer.  Lots of TV time, computer time, pool time and general let’s see how messy we can make the house time!

I laughed when I took a good look at this plant in our kitchen the other day. Emma got it from her teacher at the end of school and I just hadn’t paid attention to the fact that it was growing. It doesn’t happen much at our house. So when I saw it pressed up against the window I thought, “Geez, I know plants grow towards the light but that looks a little desperate.”

But then I realized I’ve looked a lot like this plant lately. Head leaned on the window, searching for the Light, the Source. Desperate to grow.

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Excuse me while I fangirl over Wicked.  I know I’m not the first or the last but last night was my moment to figure out what all the hype was about and I must gush.  Because it is very gushable.

Where to start?  Oh my.

I suppose I should say explain that I knew nothing about this play.  The only thing I knew is that it was about the witches of Wizard of Oz.  And I had my doubts.  Witches and spells and all that aren’t my thing.  I don’t like to see it encouraged and glorified.  I mean, the name of it is Wicked.  Could I really like this?  I know those of you that have seen it must be shaking your head.  No!  It’s not like that!  And indeed, it’s not.  In fact, it’s about a lot of other things that wickedness and witches.

It’s about beauty of character.  Friendships.  Love.  Misconceptions.  Judgments.  Selfishness and selflessness.  Being yourself.  It truly was a beautiful story.  Yes, there’s witches and spells but at the end of the day the point of it was becoming a better person.  When you walk away from a musical and you want to be a better person, it is indeed a beautiful story.

I love what Scott said to the girls this morning when the girls talked about the eviilll green witch,  “She just wanted her sister’s shoes backkk!!!”  It’s just amazing how they pulled the Wizard of Oz into the story. I adored the line. “There’s no place like home”.  And I loved how the Tin Man came about.

I loved the comedy.  Elphaba’s parody of Glinda was hilarious.  Glinda well, Glinda was just hilarious with all her kicking and what not.

I loved that they threw in a love triangle.  I love that they went with the expected but unwanted pairing and that he gave it all up for Elphaba.  I especially love that they got their happy ending.

I think most of all, I loved the character development in this story.  Because it’s not your typical character development.  Part of what’s so interesting is it’s almost working backwards.  We knew how the story, and specifically, the characters ended.  We knew who they were supposed to be.  So the whole first act is almost an undoing of their characters.  Who these people really were versus what we knew.  But then the second act is understanding how they go from those characters to the ones we knew they were.  And the whole time they’re really neither who we thought or who we were introduced to but a wonderful blend of the two.

The talent was out of this world.  Their voices and music were perfection.  At times, it filled the auditorium (and my heart) to the brim where I thought it might explode.

I can’t do a review and not talk about the set and even the logistics of the play.  I loved the sets and how (seemingly) simple they transitioned from one to another.  There was never an awkward pause or a mistake or a stagehand you had to block out in order to continue enjoying it.   Even the mechanics of the show were outstanding.

And lastly, I have to confess that I had NO CLUE that the original Elphaba and Glinda were Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth who have guest starred on Glee.   I have to admit that I did not appreciate their appearances nearly as much as I should have and I’m going to have to go back and rewatch their performances.  I only wish I could have seen the original cast perform Wicked.

I’m sure I haven’t even begun to properly review Wicked but it’s a start.  Bottom line is this is by far my favorite Broadway show and it’s a must see.