All About Cosette

I went to see the much hyped and hotly anticipated movie adaptation of the musical Les Miserables last weekend.

I really didn't know what to expect.  Forget the critics.  My Facebook Friends (many of whom are absolute aficionados of the stage musical)  were wildly divided in their reviews.  It seemed that they either really loved it or really loathed it, and Russell Crowe had more than his fair share of haters, who hated his portrayal and his singing in the role of Javert.

I'm funny when it comes to beloved stage musicals adapted for the big screen.  I think the actors who are cast should be not just be passable singers; they should be exceptional legitimate singers.  I know, I know, I want the moon.  When I heard that the director had made the choice to have the actors sing live during the shoot, I must say I was very, very skeptical.

Well, I loved everything about it and everyone in it, with the sole exception of Sasha Baron Cohen, who played the shady innkeeper Thenardier.  I thought his interpretation of the character was all wrong, and he was not even passable as a singer.  I was actually very impressed with Russell Crowe's singing and I'm pretty picky when it comes to vocalists.

But let's talk about the story for a minute shall we?  If perchance you have never read the book, seen the musical on stage, or caught the movie, what are you waiting for?  Get yourself to the local cineplex right now - the movie really is pretty fabulous.  However, don't read the rest of this blog if you don't want to know the story.

After watching the movie, it suddenly dawned on me that the story is really all about saving and protecting Cosette.

It all starts with her mother Fantine, whose natural maternal instinct compelled her to sacrifice her job, her hair, her teeth, her body and ultimately her life for her daughter.  Fantine won't  die until Jean Valjean (our protagonist) promises her that he will take care of Cosette.

Valjean is a former convict who was imprisoned for 19 years for first stealing a loaf of bread then for trying to escape.  In order to provide for Cosette as he promised he breaks parole and assumes a new identity.  Despite being pursued by Javert, every decision for the rest of his life is informed and directed by what Cosette needs and deserves.

Marius, a young student and soldier, sees Cosette in the garden one day and falls immediately in love with her. Back on the streets, he  enlists the aid of Eponine the girl who is desperately in love with him (which he doesn't seem to notice) to get a message to Cosette.  Eponine then joins him in battle where she is shot and killed.

Valjean now is an old man.  He is able to die and rest in peace when Marius assures him that he will take care of his precious Cosette.

So, you see, Les Mis is really all about Cosette.  The French Revolution is just a side note.  Cosette lives in the lap of luxury with Marius in the castle that might as well be in the cloud she sang about as a neglected little child, singing pretty songs while everyone else is off living and dying for her.

fiftysomething

After a grueling three-day work week, I was happy to get back to my thirtysomething marathon that I started during my Christmas break. 

Happily, I received thirtysomething - the Complete Third Season as a Christmas gift in my family's grab bag, and it has joined the first and second seasons (previous Christmas gifts) in my very small DVD library.

thirtysomething originally hit the airwaves when I was - you guessed it - in my 30's. I loved it.  An intelligent show about people like me, who were all busy trying to figure out their careers and their relationships and raising young children.  The characters were just like real people in my life- I liked some of them and didn't like others.  I cheered them on in their triumphs, and suffered through their disappointments and hard times, laughed with them and cried with them.  It is my favorite television show of all time.

So, now, 20-some years later, it is always nice to visit my old friends, Nancy and Elliott, Michael and Hope, Gary, Melissa, and even that queen of bad choices, Ellen.  I was afraid when I first revisited the old gang that the show would seem dated, but the dialogue and the experiences really still seem pretty true to life - the universal human experience,

Of course, the fashions have changed since the late 80's, and I wondered if our clothes were really that oversized.  I do remember rocking some serious shoulder pads back then.

Other than that, the biggest change is the technology.  Hope gets her first computer in the first season.  Ellen's married boyfriend doesn't make it to dinner because his wife shows up unexpectedly and he can't call (no cell phones or text messages then).  They call each other on dial phones and pay phones, and try out new fangled cordless phones but don't like them.  Nancy researches her ovarian cancer at the library using microfiche.  Oh, I remember microfiche.  What a pain in the ass that was!

As I watch the show from "the future", I still relate to the characters, so much so that my husband, a thirtysomething newcomer, sometimes feels compelled to remind me that they are fictional.  

But they remind me of who I was, not who I am today.  I'm a lot happier and more content than I was in my 30's.  In place of the angst, I just have my aches, and in place of microfiche, I can hold the Internet in the palm of my hand.  While I much prefer reading the newspaper online than actually handling the newspaper, I especially like reading it in PDF format so that it looks exactly like the actual newspaper on my computer.

I guess that's what you might call the best of both worlds.

Looking on the White Side

I really do love my little corner of the universe.  My lovely house, Franklin Park, the North Hills, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County.  I have landed in a pot of jam. I honestly would not want to live anywhere else.

I even enjoy the change of seasons, within reason. In the past few years, I have become more adept at tolerating temperature changes, since they now take place within my very own body several times daily.  The key to dealing with this is dressing in layers.  It works for soldiers in battle, and it works for women in menopause (which is its own kind of battle).

Therefore, you will rarely hear me complain about the weather, including rain, wind or intense heat.  My long-time weather philosophy is "At least it isn't snowing." Unless, of course, it is snowing.  Then I complain.  In fact, I take complaining to a new level when it comes to snow.  I am a world-class champion snow complainer.  It is almost a new art form in my hands.  In my defense, I have suffered more than my share of snow-related misadventures and enjoy nothing less than driving in the stuff.

So it was with a heavy heart that I realized that there was a massive snowstorm forecast for the day after Christmas.  My only obligation outside the house that day was a chiropractor appointment which I promptly cancelled (along with 32 other people, my chiropractor told me the next day). 

It came down hard and fast and by the afternoon there was about a half a foot of snow outside.  I wanted to check for the mail which meant making my way down the driveway to the street.  I realized that that would be a lot easier to do if I at least shoveled a pathway to get there.  Then once I started I figured I might as well finish the job since my husband and I both had to leave the house in the morning.  When my husband looked out to see why it was taking me so long to get the mail, he joined me, and together we finished shoveling the driveway.

Now I was none too happy about any of this, because I like shoveling snow only slightly more than I like driving in it.  When I came back the next day from the chiropractor and a wildly successful après-Christmas shopping trip there was another inch on the driveway and so I shoveled it again.

Afterward, as I was warming up with some Zen tea, I got to thinking.  I'm generally a pretty optimistic person, and have even been accused of being too optimistic by some, who also seem pretty annoyed by my natural tendency to "look on the bright side."

Shoveling the driveway was probably the equivalent of 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine at the Y in terms of a workout.  Working together on the task equipped with tools especially designed for the Arthritic Shoveler (e.g. our glorified electric shovel "snow blower") my husband and I can get the job done with minimal damage to limbs and joints.

So I set forth with new resolve to be positive about snow and all that comes with it.  Of course, I have had to shovel the driveway again since then, a total of three times in four days and it's still December.

But I'm not complaining - yet.

The Day Between Christmas

Twas the day between Christmas and all through the house,

Not a laptop was open and nor was a mouse.
The stockings were taken from the chimney and shared,
And the Tablets were worth all that we beared.

My Italian family traditionally  celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve with fish and pasta and presents and lots of laughter and love. This year we celebrated on December 23rd just because it worked out better logistically for most of us.

We had all the same ingredients for a happy holiday even though we held it a day early.  In another twist on tradition, I actually assisted in preparing the meal.  Yes, I made TWO different kinds of lasagna, which is one of just a handful of dishes in my limited culinary repertoire.  I just wanted to put that out there because no one seemed to believe it last night.  Of course my husband made everything else.

Now we plan to have Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Day which IS our tradition, but this has left us with a curious situation of having a day between our two holidays this year. 

In a bold move, we opened our stockings today instead of waiting until Christmas Morning.  But mostly today became Tablet Day in our household, a brand new holiday where my husband and I spend most of the day discovering and exploring our new Samsung Galaxy 2 (his) and I -Pad Mini (mine), the tablets we have worked so hard to choose over the past few months as Christmas presents.  Let me tell you it was SUCH a surprise when we opened the packages we had lovingly wrapped a day or so earlier. 

It has provided hours of fun so far.  I was determined to produce this blog using my new toy- er, I mean, I-Pad Mini and so I have, albeit a little late. 

Here it is with my sincerest wishes for a Happy Christmas to all of you who celebrate.  Now I think it's time to get back to that long  winter's nap that is so overdue.

You Say "Chanukah," I Say "Hanukkah"

“What a happy Hanukkah and Birthday Family Night,” I posted on my Facebook wall as I was contentedly basking in the afterglow of celebrating the holiday and my husband’s birthday with my son and his girlfriend.

I thought that this was an entirely innocuous post, not like the one I posted a few days later in horrified exasperation demanding that we all band together to finally do something about enacting some sensible gun control laws in this country.  I really didn’t expect any controversy. 

Nonetheless, one Friend took me to task on my use of “Hanukkah,” saying “Now, your husband says ‘Chanukah.’”

I pointed out that either is correct, to which she responded that she knew that but that my husband carries more weight, "figuratively."

Really, I thought?  Why is that?  Because he is a good speller?  You know, while I might not be able to type to save my life, I am also an excellent speller.  If you don’t believe me ask my two former classmates who used to correct my spelling papers in junior high. No, seriously, we had dinner with one of them a few weeks ago and we were reminiscing about that.

Oh, and not that it matters, but I would like to point out that my husband literally carries more weight than me too.  For heaven’s sake, he’s got 7 or 8 inches on me, I should hope he would weigh a few more pounds than I do.

Oh…wait a minute…maybe she thought he would know how to spell Hanukkah/Chanukah because he’s Jewish, and it is a Jewish holiday.  Well, transliterating Hebrew into English can be quite a challenge, one that can result in a number of debates over spelling.

The best explanation I could find is from the Lindenhurst Patch, which tells us that a quick Google search turns up 15 different spellings, and that Americans have come up with several variations to transliterate the Hebrew word to English, mostly depending on whether a person chooses to start with an “H” or “Ch” and the number of times “N” or “K” appears.  It goes on to say that many American Jews have grown up spelling it with the “Ch” form because it represents the phoneme that begins the word that does not exist in American English, while the Library of Congress and the Associated Press spell it “Hanukkah.”  (for more on this and other fun facts about the holiday, check out http://lindenhurst.patch.com/articles/is-it-chanukah-or-is-it-hanukkah).

As he is very much an American Jew with a knack for pronouncing that old-world guttural “ch” sound, my husband prefers “Chanukah.”  As for me, if “Hanukkah” is good enough for the Library of Congress, it’s good enough for me.  Besides it just seems the more natural spelling to represent the way I pronounce it, with that all-American “H” sound.

So here we have one of those most happy situations where we are both right, even though we disagree.  Of course, we absolutely agree that Hanukkah, or Chanukah (if you prefer) is a perfectly wonderful holiday with special meaning to us that we love celebrating together.

He says "Chanukah" and I say "Hanukkah" but we're keeping the whole thing on.   

You Can't Always Get You Want, or Need

Tab·let [tab-lit] noun….
6.  Also called tablet computer, tablet PC. a small, thin, portable computer having an LCD screen onto which data can be input with a stylus or the fingertips.
                                                                                                         -dictionary.com

So my husband and I decided that we wanted Tablets – with a capital “T”- for Christmas.  

I am not exactly a technological expert, but I felt cautiously optimistic that we might be able to make informed decisions and smart purchases with proper research.  After all we are bright people, and we knew what we wanted our Tablets to do once we owned them. 

We read everything we could find on the various Tablets, all written in that computer geek language that I don’t quite comprehend.  We spoke with friends who owned them and professionals who sold them.  We thought we knew what we wanted, so we headed off to the electronics retail giant where we typically buy our electronics, in mid-November to avoid the Christmas rush on these devices.  We’ll call the company “Top Purchase” for the purposes of this blog (the name has been changed to protect the innocent – that would be me).

We were assisted at Top Purchase that day by Donis and Dave, two exceptionally knowledgeable, helpful and pleasant young sales associates whose combined ages would probably still make them young enough to be my son.  We were ready to buy our devices when Dave started speaking in tongues of internet access issues.  Then Donis pointed out to me that my needs might be better served by an entirely different device than the one I was about to buy.  We left the store that day empty-handed.

Now after all of that, what I absolutely needed in a Tablet boiled down to two things.  I wanted an external keypad and internal access to the Internet – that is, a 3G device.  Conveniently, Top Purchase sent me an e-mail advertisement for an online sale for an I-Pad, 32 gb, 3G, which is exactly what I wanted. 

However, after receiving it, when I tried to add this Tablet to my Verizon plan, I couldn't because it turns out that they sent me an earlier version of the model of this device that had only WiFi access, and no 3G.

I choose to assume that this was accidental as I really would hate to think that Top Purchase purposely tried to unload an older version of the device on me hoping that I wouldn't notice and keep it anyway at the higher price I paid for the 3G version.  I called Top Purchase, talked to a machine and then to a person who accidentally disconnected me before putting me through to the person who could help me.  Of course, Freud said there are no accidents.

I called back and did get through to the right person eventually, after sitting on hold for several minutes.

“So my agent tells me that you received your order and you no longer want the item and would like to return it,” chirped the customer service representative.

“Not exactly,” I corrected her.  “I received an older version of what I ordered.  I would very much like to receive what I actually ordered.”

“No problem, ma’am,”  she chirped, “ We will send you a shipping label by e-mail and when you return the item then we will ship the other one to you, presuming that it is in stock.”

“Well, I ordered this item as a Christmas present, on November 21^st,”  I clarified, “and because of Top Purchase’s error it is now December 8^th and I will certainly not receive it in time if we do that.”

 

“Alright, ma'am,” the rep said, a little more tersely,  “we will send you the correct item immediately.”

“Well, actually, what I would like to do is return this item and pick up the correct item from one of my local stores,” I said, “ which I know must be possible since Top Purchase promotes same-day store deliveries for online purchases.”

She verified that this was possible and put me on hold. Several minutes later, she returned to the line.

“There is a problem,” she said, “that item is out of stock both here and in all your local stores.  We will have to wait until another shipment comes in.”

“Can you reserve one for me when the next shipment comes in at my local store so I can pick it up?”

Oh, that was not possible. Tablets were in high demand this close to the holiday, surely I understood that, she said.  Well yes I did understand that – that is why I ordered mine in November.

“So, let's review,” I said, “Top Purchase sent me the wrong version of an item that I ordered in November, and now can’t provide me with the correct product which is supposed to be a Christmas present, and can’t tell me when it might come in and it is already December 8^th.  What do you plan to do about this?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

“We will refund the money to your account immediately,” the rep said sullenly, “and we will send you this in an e-mail, along with the return label for the product you received.”

And they did.  At the same time, I received an e-mail from Top Purchase announcing that the very device I had tried to order was now on sale for $100 less than the price I had paid.  Of course, it wasn’t available online or at any of the stores within a 50-mile radius of my house.  Now, that's ironic. 

Ain't We Got Fun?

Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening…
In the Winter in the Summer...
Hot or cold days, any old days...
In the meantime…in between time…
Aint we got fun?
                  -Richard A. Whiting, Gus Kahn, Ray Egan

My husband and I just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary, and when it comes to our marriage every day is worthy of celebration.  He is the love of my life and my best friend.  We care for each other and support each other unconditionally.

But, just as important is the fact that we amuse each other.

For some reason, my husband decided to befriend me when I was going through three of the top five stressful life events that the Holmes and Rahe stress scale say can contribute to illness, all at the same time.  He was so great during this period that I kept expecting a halo to appear around his head while he proclaimed, "I am an angel, sent by God, to tell you that He loves you."  

But most miraculous of all, during this overwhelmingly stressful time, he could make me laugh.

We soon came to realize that we had a LOT of fun together.  All the time. Everywhere.  We can have as much fun at the grocery store as we have on vacation, and sitting around the house together is the source of much merriment to us.  We followed our bliss right into marriage.

When we were getting married, one of my friends was wishing me well, when she paused, thought for a minute, and then said, knowingly, “You will never be bored.”  It sounded a little like an ancient curse when she said it, but she was absolutely right.  We have never been bored, not for one minute.

Last week when we were celebrating our ninth anniversary with 100 or so of our best Friends (thanks to Facebook), someone said, “You too must have SO much fun together, ALL the time.”  Why yes, yes we do.  Even after nine years of marriage, we are having fun together every day.

It’s not that there haven’t been challenges - we have seen more than our fair share in these past nine years.  It’s life, you know, and things happen.  But we have a great gift of seeing the humor in life’s moments, both good and bad, and finding the joy in each other, in “us.” 

We’re laughing all the way.