June 17, 2009

Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt makes me cry. I really don't know why. I mean, his story isn't especially moving to me. Young boy makes good, finds the love of his life, has a long and relatively happy life with her. But here's the thing, the end of that story is "outlives her by four months, just enough time to record a cover of the song "Hurt" and then die." And something about that just makes me cry. Like something in him loved her too much to live after she was gone, but there was this one thing he had left to do. I don't know.

Of course, I don't actually believe that you can love someone so much that you can't live without them. If ever anyone loved someone that much my Grandfather loved my Grandmother that much, and he lived almost ten years after she died. So I don't think that you can love someone so much that you die because they're gone.

But still... Cash's cover of Hurt... makes me cry.

Every time.

You'd think I'd get over it.

I'm in a melancholy mood this evening. Dunno why... there's nothing wrong, life is just fine and dandy, but I'm feeling slightly blue anyway. Not a deep violet or anything, just a slight periwinkle, if you will.

As I was putting Elliot to sleep tonight I was talking to him, and I told him:

"I love you, Nugget. I love you more then anything, and I always, always will. Someday, not terribly far from now, you may not love me as much as you do right this minute, that's okay, though. Even then, I will love you more than anything."

I think that's what has put me in this mood. I guess I started thinking about the passage of time. You know, it's funny, I can imagine Elliot at 4, 6, even 8, but after that it gets blurry. I can't imagine him as a teenager, or, god forbid, an adult. But, looking back, everything that happened in my life before about age 10 is blurry. I mean, I remember certain key moments, but the truth is that I couldn't tell you much about my day to day life until around the time Coury was born. Then things get sharper and clearer over the course of several years, until I can remember most of the past twelve or fifteen years as well as I can remember yesterday.

I wonder, sometimes, about turning points in my life. I wonder about those alternate dimension Jessicas, whose life paths went a different way. There's the one that got into NCSA, and probably became bulimic. There's the one that died in a car crash out in Tanglewood. There's the one that went to Duke, instead of Ithaca. There's probably a few that married some guy that came before or after Waxor.

Wow, I started this email a long time ago. I probably ought to just send what's above and start a whole new email, but I'm not gonna, so, THBPT!

Yesterday Fuzzy said something to me that I think may have been the cleverest thing any non-mother has ever said to any mother in the history of the world. Seriously. Ready? We were talking about what day it was, and I go "Yeah, I forgot it was Tuesday" and he goes;
"Yeah, it must be hard keeping the days of the week straight when you work seven days a week."

Brilliant, wasn't it? I mean, he could have said "when you're at home all week" but he had WAY more brains than that.

Take note, folks.

I was online looking up the history of the "ideal female form" the other day, and I found a website with a bunch of pictures and dates, giving a rough idea of what people thought was a beautiful woman at what time period. Now, this was done by an amateur, and she more had a point to make then a desire to give lots of information, but it was still useful. It was on a site that allows commentary, and one of the commentators had said:

"you have no proof on whether the Rubens and Renoir represent “ideal” female form of the time, or if they were merely the only women they were able to get to pose nude."

And oh my GOD did that piss me off. I mean, the guy was right, the site designer didn't offer much in the way of proof of anything, she just presented images and dates and let you draw your own conclusions, but the guy isn't objecting to her lack of supporting evidence, he's objecting to the idea that these heavier women might actually have been the standard of beauty at the time. I mean sure, Rubens was a FRICKEN KNIGHT, who ran in aristocratic circles and was basically a rock star of his day, and Renoir had his work requested for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, but I'm sure the women they painted were "the only ones they could get to sit." After all, artists have always had a hard time getting beautiful women to sit for them... oh, wait,

NO THEY HAVEN'T!

What an ass.

Onward...

I love the word "defenestrate". First of all, I love that there is a word for the act of throwing someone out the window. Like, it happens so frequently there needs to be a word for it. Just like Jaywalking. :) I also love the idea that if you get really irritated with someone, or want to start the 30 years war, you can just pitch someone out the window.

I really love the idea of throwing someone out the window.

But, honestly, I would have a hard time killing someone, so for me it would have to be a ground floor window.

Anyway, back to defenestration... I just love the word. It doesn't come up often in conversation, but when it does, hooooooo-boy, you can be sure I whip that puppy out.

Today I will be buying Elliot suspenders. He is too tall to wear 12 month pants, but he is too skinny to keep 18 month pants on his butt, so... suspenders. Isn't that ridiculous? Fortunately during the summer he can wear things that are really short, so I'm just putting him in his 12 month summer clothes and calling it good. If I try to dress him in 18 month clothes he just swims in them. It's amazing, because he's 60% in height, so you'd think... but no. Because he's 2% in weight.

TWO PERCENT!

Alright, I think I'm done here, and I can tell my coffee is starting to kick in, which means I should probably get up and get something done before the surge of energy wears off.