"With your ear to a seashell/ You can hear the waves in underwater caves/ As if you actually were inside a saltwater room"

In t-minus two hours the whole family (all sixteen of us- including seven girls under the age of seven) are departing for our annual family vacation in Destin, Florida. So in honor of family, I want to jot down a quote from my oldest niece, SD, the seven year old from earlier this week:

Background information: The room that the girls play in is upstairs in my mom's house. The adults spend the majority of their time downstairs. The girls always need stuff and going up and down the stairs got really old, really fast. It started off basically as a joke but then the nieces became obsessed with it, so tied to a banister post on the second floor balcony overlooking the downstairs living room is a bucket that the girls hoist up and down to get whatever the adult places in the bucket? Lazy? Sure. But the nieces are obsessed. Like they will run upstairs to get something only to bring it back downstairs but they will still lower it down in the bucket.

Unfortunately, the bucket's path is over half of one of the couches in the living room if you don't control the bucket and purposely swing it over to the side (oh yes, there is an art to the bucket). One time my niece ME threw the bucket over and it hit me on the head while I was sitting blissfully unaware on the couch. It hurt to say the least. So that bring us to the story.

Niece SD wanted a flashlight to look at books before she went to bed last Saturday night when she was staying over. I was sitting on the couch and asked her to be careful when she lowered the bucket because ME hit me in the head on accident one time and it really hurt. And little precious SD (she is only seven mind you) said, "Aunt Annie! I would never do that. I love you too much to hurt you." Let's all say it together: Awwwwwwww. Warmed my little cold heart.

Here to wishing for good weather, sunny skies, buckets used for their actual purpose of transporting water and building sandcastles and lots of fun on the beach trip!!!!

"It's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep/ Cause everything is never as it seems"

Remember that Bernstein Bears book “The Bad Dream”? The one where Sister Bear has nightmares and Mama explains to her that at night, your brain is trying to piece together everything that happened during the day but the puzzle gets distorted and she has nightmares as a result of the puzzle being messed up? I’m one of those people where I can usually piece together dreams because of stuff that has happened over the past few days, just a bit more topsy turvy. It's pretty well known in my family that I have pretty insane (some say terrifying) dreams. And while I do not want to scare anyone with some of my more.... uh.... disturbing dreams... I will share the three types that I frequently have:

1. This one thankfully has lessened in frequency but I for many years I always use to dream that my teeth were falling out. My brother-in-law is a dentist so I would always be frantically trying to call him or get to his office so he could fix my broken mouth (formerly mentioned brother-in-law also informed me that dreams like this usually mean that you grind your teeth in your sleep). I would dream either that my teeth were just falling out on their own, one by one, or that they were extremely loose and lightly pushing on them would cause them to come out into my hand (where I would desperately be trying to hold onto them for the rest of the dream). It was always terrifying! But like I said, I don't have these as often anymore (so maybe that means I stopped grinding my teeth in my sleep).

2. This is one that has occurred more often in recent years: I dream that I am about to go somewhere on a trip and I realize at the last minute (such as the plane is boarding or the car is about to pull out of the driveway) that I haven't packed my bag at all or am still scrambling to pack. Or I have a bunch of stuff that I am trying to fit into a box to take with me, but I keep getting interrupted and the box never fills up. It is one of the simplest yet most frustrating dreams ever. All I want is to finish packing and yet I can’t. Another variation of the dream: I have the worst vision of anyone I know (go ahead, try and challenge me. I guarantee my vision is worse. This is one contest I have never lost) so sometimes I dream that my contacts aren’t in and I am struggling to see whatever I am trying to pack which is only two inches in front of my face. Bottom line: This dream is frustrating and I am sick of having them yet I had one just last night so they clearly aren’t leaving anywhere anytime soon.

3. This one is actually the worst of the three and ever since graduating from college I have had some form of it at least three times a week. In the dream I am back in high school and I guess I am visiting or something. but then I run into an administrator who informs me that “Oh no Annie, you never really got credit for your Economics class in high school so I guess your college degree is now null and void. Gotta start all over! See you next semester!” I had a different version after graduating from high school where it was a new law that you had to go back and redo middle and high school and try to improve your grades the second time around. So maybe this new post-college one is sort of along those lines. But my goodness, I wake up thinking that I have to go back to high school (horrible thought all by itself) and do it all over again and go back to college and retake 150+ hours of classes (maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. Being broke blows).

Point being, considering sleep is suppose to be a time of rest and rejuvenation all of these dreams aren’t really aiding in that. No wonder I’m always so exhausted.

"I just want you to know/ That I've been fighting to let you go"

Alright, so. For the past couple of weeks I have been working on my book. I know, I know. Who am I to write a book? Good question. I really don't know. But I'll never know if I don't find out. No one else is going to write my idea down for me. So might as well give it shot.

So that being said, writing a novel is amazingly difficult. And my number one problem is repetition. I never realized before how many times I used the word "just" when writing. And it is ironic because it is a word I was taught to never use. In my high school AP English class, Mr. B (also my favorite teacher in H.S. and one of the two most influential teachers of my life) required weekly in-class essays on whatever literary work we were reading at the time (Middlemarch, David Copperfield, Invisible Man, and lots of Shakespeare comes to mind). There were several rules that we were required to follow or points would be deducted from our grade. These are rules I still used when writing papers in college (come on sisters, let's see if these jog your memory or if you can add any):

1. Always use the author's name, the title of the work, and the genre (novel, play, etc) in the opening sentence (or at the very least, your first paragraph) of your paper

2. You never used the words really, a lot, just, there or very in your paper.

Like I said, I still used these rules when I wrote papers in college. Every single one. The first rule was easy to follow (and a good way not to stress over how to start a paper) but the second rule always tripped me up. "There" and "just" always got me. I swear, I would even reread my essay before handing it in and one of those two words was always tucked away somewhere. "Very" used to give me problems too, but I learned to replace it with "extremely". I tried to replace "just" with "simply" but sometimes I forgot. Hey, I'm not perfect.

But that was academic writing, fictional writing is totally different, right? I mean you have to use "there" and "very" when you're writing a novel. But "just" is still the word that just (see?)... bothers me. I use it entirely too much and I don't know why. I'm trying to eliminate it from whatever sentence I'm writing and see if it still makes sense. But I'm struggling. Great, now I feel like "just" is the secret word of the day and I am extremely aware of it. Pee Wee Herman is going to start jumping out and screaming whenever I type it. Sometimes simply just doesn't cut it. Okay that was sort of on purpose, but see-- eliminate "just" from that short sentence and it's not as good!

Oh and another fun story: Due to the fact I typed at least 40+ papers on this laptop throughout the course of my college career, my name is deeply entrenched in my Microsoft Word's memory. So, that being said, you know how if you start to type "Nov", Word will automatically suggest "November" or if you type "Mon" it suggests "Monday" (you know, to save you the hard task of hitting four more keys). Now whenever I start to type annoy or any of its derivatives, the suggested word is "Annie". I am beginning to think I should read more into this. Well, at the very least, it makes me sad. Like my computer is trying to tell me something. Don't hate me Mac. I've been so good to you all these years.

"Let's go to the movies/ Let's go see the stars"

One of my favorite features of the amazing creation that is YouTube is being able to watch movie trailers. Come on, aren't the previews one of the best parts about going to see a movie? You know it is. So this is an easy way to see what is headed to theaters yet it prevents me from paying $8.50 (even for a matinee). Sweet deal. These are the ones that look interesting to me and I might even cough up the money for the insanely overpriced ticket to go and see them once they come out.

6. "Legion" In theaters: 1/22/10. Plot: After God loses faith in humanity, the archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) is the only one standing between mankind and the apocalypse. This time using angels as the act of Biblical judgment, God's wrath descends on Earth to exterminate the world's population. In a desperate, last-chance gambit, Michael leads a group of strangers to a small, New Mexico diner to protect a young waitress who may be pregnant with Christ in his second coming. (source: Wikipedia)

Okay. This one, I might not actually pay to see it. The true saving grace of the film (for me) is the fact that Kevin Durand is in it, playing the angel Gabriel. You might remember him as Keamy from Season 4 of LOST. He is Attractive. That's right, with a capital A. I mean the whole "God killing humanity" thing is sort of bizarre and I think there is going to be some sort of twist (but that might be giving the movie too much credit). Also Paul Bettany is in this and he's awesome. I think he has one of the best voices ever. So yeah, this film-- it's a maybe. That's also why it's number six on this list.

5. Moon. Plot: It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earths primary source of energy. He is set to return home in three weeks when strange things start to occur. (Source: YouTube)

This movie apparently has already had a limited release (and just to build some street cred, on IMDB.com it is #233 out of the top 250. Sort of impressive for a film with a limited release) and opened yesterday in one theater in Georgia (in Dublin. Might not be making it to this one). It stars Sam Rockwell, who usually impresses me, and Kevin Spacey is the voice of the robot. I don't know why but I am strangely fascinated by Spacey. Well, no, I know why: he's a brilliant actor. And during the trailer, I thought, "Wow. The robot has such a nice, calming voice". Little did I know it was my man, Kev! So that's reason enough for me. Oh and Clint Mansell did the music. He is fantastic so chalk up another point in column for reasons to see this film.

4. Couples Retreat. Release Date: 10/9/09. Plot: A comedy centered around four couples who settle into a tropical-island resort for a vacation. While one of the couples is there to work on the marriage, the others fail to realize that participation in the resort's therapy sessions is not optional.(Source: IMDB)

Vince Vaughn. Jon Favreau. Jason Bateman. Nothing more needs to be said. Moving on...

3. The Blind Side. 11/20/09. Plot: A poor, oversized and under-educated teenager is recruited by a major college football program where he is groomed into an athletically and academically successful NFL prospect. (Source: IMDB)

Sandra Bullock: Great actress. Tim McGraw: Good lookin. Adorable Boys who form an unlikely friendship: All about it. Football: Oh yeah. An uplifting tale based on a true story: YES. I think this may be the first trailer that I ever actually cried while watching. I had tears streaming down my face in the matter of 2 minutes and 32 seconds. I blame it on the use of the beautiful song "Pieces" by Red during the last half of the trailer. I will drag someone to go and see this one with me. Family members, I'm looking at you.

2. The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Coming to Theaters: 11/20/09. Plot: Bella Swan is devastated by the abrupt departure of her vampire love, Edward Cullen, but her spirit is rekindled by her growing friendship with the irresistible Jacob Black. Suddenly she finds herself drawn into the world of the werewolves, ancestral enemies of the vampires, and finds her loyalties tested. (Source: Youtube)

Yes, I am going to be a 14 year-old squealing girl about this one. They can credit the success of this franchise (apart from Stephanie Meyer creating and writing the series) solely to Robert Pattinson. I didn't even know what Twilight was until a few weeks before the last book came out about a year ago. There were all of these vampire, dazzling, Team Edward, and Team Jacob "bumper stickers" on facebook and I had no idea it was a fairly successful book series. Somehow I saw my friend NE had read it and asked to borrow it. Well, two or three chapters in and I was hooked. It's definitely gear toward a middle schooler but it's entertaining and interesting. Actually, I really can't stand the character of Bella. She is whiny and annoying. And the fact that Kristen Stewart was cast as Bella just confirms this fact. They are lucky Katherine Hardwicke didn't screw up this multimillion dollar franchise because of her poor casting choices due in large part to favoritism. Nikki Reed as the most beautiful person on the planet? I'm sorry but NO. Bella, the charmingly clumsy girl who falls for a vampire is played by Kristen Stewart? An actress who is so monotone, gloomy, and plays the same role no matter the film's content or mood? Yeah, I'm not buying it. So that's why the film studio can thank their lucky stars they got R-Patz who sent thousands of girls' hearts fluttering when they saw him as Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series. And the likely success of this upcoming film can be also attributed to Taylor Lautner. Boy put on some muscle and became even more attractive (good move on the shirtless scenes in this trailer, editor) and I think many teenage girls are now pondering their loyalty to "Team Edward". Anyway, hopefully with the increased budget and new director this film will be a bit more exciting and visually pleasing than the last one. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the last one, I certainly did. And that's why I will definitely see this one. You can bet your last dollar on it.

1. The Lovely Bones. Will be released: 12/11/09. Directed by Peter Jackson. Starring Mark Whalberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, and Saoirse Ronan. Plot: A young girl who has been murdered watches over her family--and her killer--from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. (Source: IMDB)

This has been one of my favorite books ever since I read it in high school. When I found out it was being made into a movie and Peter Jackson was at the helm, well I was nothing short of being absolutely giddy. The trailer is a cinematic masterpiece, how can the complete film be anything less? I smell (several) Academy Awards for this one. It looks visually stunning, the casting is surprisingly well-done (I hesitated about Whalberg playing the father. But after seeing The Departed, he is most certainly hardcore and up to the task), and I have already watched the trailer about ten times. I. Cannot. Wait.

Now, if you don't mind, I've got a stack of books I need to re-read before these films hit theaters in a couple of months.

"And these days/ I wish I was six again/ Make me a red cape/ I wanna be superman"

Two funny niece quotes from this week:

My sister-in-law's Facebook status about her 5 year old daughter, M.E.:

"We were talking about her day at school and M.E. asked me if there were witches in our part of the country. What? Why do you ask that? She said, "Well, you know that part in the Pledge of Allegiance where it says "...to the Republic where witches stand..." Hilarious.

Yesterday, I went to lunch with my mom, sister MR, and niece MG. Niece MG is always excited about what is going to happen next: "Can we watch a video when we get home?" "What are we doing on Saturday?" etc. So towards the end of lunch, she asked her mom/my sister if she could watch a video when they got home. My sister, being a fun and involved mother, replied, "How about a Special Moment with Mom?" causing my niece to become very excited as she exclaimed she wanted to play with play-dough upon their arrival home. I said, "Aw. It will be a special MOMent" because I'm a dork and enjoy a play on words (which some claim is the lowest form of humor. This maybe be confirmed in the following sentence). My five year old niece then cracked up saying "Hey! You took moment and put 'mom' in it because it's the same". Oh boy. While my niece is extremely smart for figuring this out since she is only in kindergarten, I'm not sure how I should feel since she is five and I am twenty-two and we came to the same conclusion. I'm chalking it up to she's brilliant and going to be quick with the wit when she's older. Like maybe next year when she's six.