RTBTCKI ( The Happy Birthday Mom edition)

Today is my mom’s birthday. A large part of who I am today is due to her. She taught by example and she was one heck of an example. She raised four children to adulthood and all four turned into decent law abiding adults.

When I have a question in my head about parenting, I stop and think what would my Mother do? And that usual gives me my answer.

I use the same No means No speech that I must have heard a millions times while growing up on Caroline. It goes something like this.

Caroline asks for something or do to something that is not going to happen

ME: No

CAROLINE: But (insert reason #157 why this policy should change)

ME: What did I say?

CAROLINE: (usually very quietly) no

ME: And when I say No?

CAROLINE: It means no not maybe.

End of discussion

I didn’t get many sick days from school because Mom was a nurse and it is hard to pull something by her. But when we were sick, she was our angel of mercy. She took really good care of us and nursed us back to health.

This morning Caroline woke up with a fever over 100, a very stuffy nose, and no voice. She can now squeak. I am keeping her home from school today. They don’t want kids with fevers in the school.

My mother got me interested in the mystery genre. She introduced me to Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes and PD James to name a few. Funniest story about that when I was at University College Oxford, I picked up a very battered copy of Gaudy Night and took it and a plowman’s lunch to read on the banks of the Thames while watching the punters go back. I got to the point where Peter and Harriet were having a picnic lunch under an old tree and realized that I was sitting right where the author was writing about.

My mother spend many years teaching students how to be nurses. Then she starting teaching others how to teach people to become nurses. I can remember clinic day. She would be in her nurse’s uniform and (when I was young) she would have her nurse’s hat very carefully pinned on top of her head. I would watch her starch, iron, and very carefully form the hat for the next time that she needed it. A lot of her co-workers want to know if I was going to follow in her footsteps. I said no, not because I didn’t highly respect what she did, but because honestly I couldn’t deal with bedpans and the smell of vomit without upchucking. (Sorry Mom)

Nursing for her was a way out of a rather small town that was coal and farm based. It was a hardscrabble life and nursing would allow her to leave and make a life for herself. It did. And because she left that town, she met my father and I came into being. She continued to educate herself. She went on to earn a PhD and other accolades in her profession. She believed in her children so we believed in ourselves and became better people for it.

So Happy Birthday Mom! I hope it is a good one for you.

Caroline wishes you a Happy Birthday in a rather squeaky voice.

I am grateful every day that My Mother is My Mother.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Or my first impressions having seen Disney Presents Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland with Caroline in 2-D less than two hours ago.

First Caroline’s review: I really liked it especially the stuff with the dog. I am glad that I saw it in 2-D first because it would have been very scary in 3-D at times. I liked the White Queen best. She was very pretty and queen-like. The Red Queen was really mean to everyone. Alice learned a lot during the film and she was very brave. I want to see it again in 3-D

My review, well it was definitely a Tim Burton film from soup to nuts. But it was the good kind of Burton film rather than the “what HAVE you been smoking” kind of Tim Burton film.

Casting was first rate as always. We had the usual suspects Johnny Depp, Helen Bohnam Carter, and Alan Rickman and some new players like Crispen Glover who really needs to do more movies. The guy is a fracking chameleon. The voices to the digital characters were first rate with my personal favorite of Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat. I loved both the Red and the White Queen’s armies. It was very cleverly done.

And that is the word that keeps coming to mind, it is a “clever” film and if you like that sort of thing, then this is your film. It was definitely mine. If clever annoys you, then this might not be your cuppa but personally I would love to join that mad tea party any day.

The person who surprised me most was Depp. I figure he can play just about anything and make you believe it but there was something here he hadn’t done before and it is very subtle acting which I know sounds strange since he is playing such an over the top character like the Mad Hatter. I honestly want to go back and see the film again to see if what I saw later in the film tracks through as well as I remembered.

It is a big screen film that needs that sort of scope for all the little touches like the dragon flies and the horse flies (look quick or you’ll miss them). I am a little unsure if it needs 3-D to be seen. Caroline and I saw it in 2-D and I don’t really feel like I missed anything by seeing it that way.

In terms of younger children, there are some scary stuff including some ‘off with his head’ stuff that gets pretty intense for a while. The armies clashing is loud but the visual is such that it’s not that graphic. I would say that 6 and over should be OK. There is no swearing other than the usual “But I swear that” kind of stuff and no sex or sexual situations so PG for cartoon violence really. I think it also got the PG rather than G due to the Caterpillar and his hookah and their crack down on smoking in any form.

Good family movie that engages the mind which is nice to see these days.