This is not going to be a long, rambling blog post--well, not too long, anyway. I just wanted to commemorate a very big event...
...we have become homeowners for the first time!! We signed the closing papers on Tuesday, February 8, 2011. Yes, I realize we're a little behind the curve, but better late than never...especially when "late" gets you a house like this:
Beautiful, don't you think? Well, I think so!! 2,600 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a roomy kitchen & pantry, and a large loft; it's got everything we need and then some. We had always expected our first home purchase to be a smaller "starter home"--which this most definitely is not. This is a house I could picture living in for many years, with plenty of room to raise our children & watch them grow up. It's a lovely home, and I'm so humbled & grateful we happened upon it.
We first set eyes on it back in November, when it was a bank-owned property about to go on auction. I liked the house almost immediately, and so did Nathan, but we eventually decided against using an auction to purchase our first home. Oh well, there will be others, we thought, and moved on to search elsewhere.
Just imagine our surprise when, a few weeks later, we got a call from Nate's mother & father, excitedly telling us, "We got the house!!" Apparently, they'd decided to go on and bid on that house anyway; they hadn't expected theirs to be the winning bid--or for Fannie Mae to accept the bid a short time later.
In a nutshell, Grandma & Grandpa Barrett aren't "gifting" us the house--although it still feels that way to me!! They're fixing it up a little (not that it needed much; it's a fairly clean, problem-free home for a foreclosure), then re-selling it to us with a slight mark-up for their troubles. So, while we could have gotten another perfectly nice home on our own, we likely wouldn't have gotten this house (our favorite of all the houses we looked at) without the help of Nathan's parents. We are very blessed & thankful for their assistance--they have been great at helping us through the whole buying process, and have been a wonderful resource for us to use throughout the last several months. We're fortunate to have them so close by!
I know a new home will present lots of challenges--it will strain our delicate budget; it will require lots more cleaning; it will demand a lot from us (time to improve my "handyman" skill set). Plus there's always the chance there are hidden defects deep within this home, waiting to be discovered (doesn't every home have at least a few?). But all those things feel like challenges we're ready and willing to face. Owning a home has been a long time coming, but this feels like the right time to move forward! I'm a little overwhelmed, but also excited to see what our future holds. We'll start finding out on February 26th, our moving day (wow, just over two weeks away!!).
(thanks to Nathan's friend Maggie Alvarez for this lovely photo from nearby Sells, AZ)
It's been cold in Tucson the last few days. I mean REALLY cold. Here's how my Thursday & Friday went down:
I woke up early Thursday morning, and I could tell by the heater going full blast that it was extra cold outside. I know, I'll make some nice warm yummy oatmeal for everyone was my first thought. So I put a pot underneath the faucet & turned it on. About a cup of water came out, then...nothing. I jiggled the faucet, turned on both hot & cold water, the works. Nada. I started roaming through the house, trying every faucet I came across...nothing. Our pipes had frozen.
Slight panic set in...this kind of thing is not supposed to happen in southern AZ, even in February. So, I called my in-laws, who live in nearby Green Valley, to ask their advice. As luck would have it, they were over at our new house, making sure the pipes hadn't frozen there (they hadn't. How weird is that--the much larger, empty house with no heat still had water, but our cozy little home froze up while our heat was going full blast all night?). They told us to aim a hair dryer at the water main to thaw the ice, and they'd be right over.
Great. Except I don't own a hair dryer. Wait! I thought. Our portable space heater should do the trick. Except Nathan had already moved the space heater over to the new house, where it was sitting uselessly in the garage. Oops. Time to wake up Nate & send him running while I tried to wake up the girls, comb their hair (with a dry hairbrush, thus resulting in crazy frizzy hair), order them to use the potty but not to flush the potty, thus undoing months of training, and get Lorelai ready for her ride to school.
While all this was happening, Nathan and his father arrived with the space heater and an extension cord (we don't own one of those either. Ugh...and we think we're ready to be homeowners???). This is one of those big, scary-looking 70s-era space heaters, with the heat coils exposed to air. The sucker works, though. We clumsily strung it across the front of our house, to the water main on the west side of our home. It had some token foam wrapped around it, but only a thin layer; otherwise it looked pitiful and exposed, sticking directly out the side of our house for a few feet before descending underground.
(For those of you not in the know, having aboveground water pipes is very common in Arizona homes. Normally, it's no big deal--after all, we're located in a desert in the southern United States. It's not like these pipes will be exposed to sub-freezing temperatures, like 15 degrees or anything, right? Oh, wait a minute...)
We cranked up the heat and sat there, watching, for several minutes. At one point, Nate thought he saw the foam insulation start to melt. Now, that would have been a lovely complication! At last, just before 8:00 in the morning, SUCCESS! Our indoor faucets started to sputter, then run smoothly. Yay--Nate could shower and go to work! I threw on my grubbies, left Celeste & Aurora at a friend's house, and ran over to check on the new house.
Grandma & Grandpa Barrett spent all morning at the new house, waiting for our new refrigerator & stove to arrive, as well as doing several minor repairs. They, like me, spent the whole day in coats & hats, since the house had no heat yet (it barely topped 50 degrees the whole day, inside the house!). After checking out the new appliances, I sensed an opportunity to get some moving done myself. I picked up the girls from my friend's house and brought them over to the new house for Grandma to watch, while I loaded up all our food storage into the van and moved it into the storage closet of our new home.
However, while I was still loading my many, many cans of wheat/oats/rice/pasta/etc into the back of the van (wearing gloves & a hat, cheeks red from the crazy cold wind), I got a phone call from Lorelai's charter school. They were closing for the day, effective 11:30 am! All of their pipes had frozen as well, and it was a health hazard to keep the kids there any longer. Ugh...I would have to hurry! I threw together a lunch for my kids, finished loading the food storage in the car, drove to the new house, unloaded my kids' lunch only (by now it was 11:20 am), then sped over to Lorelai's school to pick her up. Then I dropped off our carpool partner at her house, then headed back to the new house. By this time, Aurora had cried herself to sleep and Celeste was bouncing off the walls. Grandma put both kids into my arms and took off for lunch with their friends--they'd been working all morning and needed a break.
Thank goodness for portable DVD players. After a (cold) lunch, I turned on How To Train Your Dragon, and the kids sat on the couch and watched it, still in their coats & hats, and with a blanket thrown over them for good measure. I spent the next hour and a half hauling boxes in from the frigid garage into the storage closet, and arranging them more or less to my satisfaction. By the time the movie was over, I was done! Hooray. Now I was just cold and tired, not cold, tired and busy. Then I hauled the kids back home just in time to start dinner. That night, Nate & I made sure to leave a few faucets dripping--it was supposed to be almost as cold as the night before.
Just before bedtime, the school called. NO SCHOOL TOMORROW! That's right, folks, Arizona actually had a snow day--but I'm not going to show you any pictures of it. Well, except for this one...
...of me rocking my winter cap/sweater/jacket look, along with a steaming cup of hot cocoa! This is pretty much how I looked for two days--not a normal look for the Old Pueblo, I can tell you! This may sound strange, but the last few days have made me very nostalgic. I grew up a "cold-weather kid" in Colorado, and I miss having four seasons, and a styling winter wardrobe! I miss doing 360s on the ice in your parents' minivan while driving home from your friend's house in the middle of the night (sorry, Mom & Dad!!). I miss looking out the window in the morning to a new fresh covering of fallen snow. Before moving to Arizona seven-plus years ago, I loved the change of the seasons. And while I've grown to love AZ, I still really miss the invigorating cold days like the ones we've just experienced. But I digress...
I won't bother showing more pictures of the Big Pima County Freeze of 2011, and you know why? They won't convey how cold it really was. All you'd see are blue, clear skies, and lots of sunshine--just what you see on any given day in most pictures of Arizona. And yet...the high for Thursday was only 38 degrees, and the low was a frigid 15! Both temperatures are new records...it hasn't been that cold in Tucson for over a century!
I can hear all my friends up north (or "back East") poo-poohing our wussiness. Go ahead, snicker all you want. It's true, we're all a little thin-blooded from living in the hot desert. However, it's also true that Arizona infrastructure is not designed to handle weather like this (see: the exposed water mains on houses mentioned above). There are no gutters on streets, not much insulation in homes...I could go on. So, when Arizonans panic like this, keep in mind that it's not just the cold weather that frightens us...it's our own unpreparedness for emergencies of this nature. By contrast, how would everyone else in the country handle it if they had 100 straight days over 100 degrees? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Which brings me to Friday. Luckily (on a personal level), my Friday was less crazy than my Thursday. I did drive all over creation shopping and taking kids to playdates, but that was all part of my plan. Plus, I got a warm shower! That's more than can be said for the approximately 19,000 homes & businesses in Pima County that have been stuck without heat for the last few days. The gas lines can't handle all the extra heat being used! The water companies are no better off, taxed to their limit dealing with all the broken pipes in the area. Worst yet, two people have reportedly died from exposure to the cold. In Arizona?? It's just not supposed to happen here.
It's been a rough 2011 so far in Tucson. On January 8, (as you've probably heard) Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, along with almost 2 dozen others, was shot in a Safeway parking lot by a gun-toting terrorist nutcase. Six people died. Regardless of political affiliation, it was a horrific, shocking day, that left the whole city shaken. Then, on January 31, a Pima County Sheriff's Department helicopter crashed into a mountain in northwest Tucson, killing the pilot & injuring 3 others.
Of course, since bad things come in threes, Mother Nature decided to get into the act--and send Tucson its lowest temperature in about, oh, a CENTURY or so. And thus, the Great Freeze of 2011 completes the Trifecta of Terror. While perhaps not as tragic as the first two events, the freeze has affected far more people and is going to be talked about for years to come. And people are still without heat and/or water as I'm writing this! Wow.
So, while I myself don't mind the cold once in a while, one freeze is enough for me. Dear Mother Nature: thanks for the fun change of pace. Now can we go back to having normal weather for a while??
Last night, Nate & I just finished watching Disc 1 of the BBC's new show Sherlock. I'm in love. Unfortunately, it seems that Sherlock will be a tease of a lover, since there are only three(!) episodes total in Season 1 -- and I've already seen two of them. Not only that, but Season 2 probably won't start until at least fall of 2011, due to scheduling conflicts with the writers/actors/etc. Sigh...at least the episodes are 90 minutes each!
And to top it all off, I've been told that the final episode of Season 1 is a cliffhanger, which makes me afraid to watch it and be left unsatisfied. But I will probably still watch it as soon as I can. Because I'm totally in love with this show.
I'm not a superfan of Arthur Conan Doyle, but I have read a little Sherlock Holmes, and I know the basic outlines of his more famous mysteries, as well as the character's many quirks & attributes. So it was a pleasant surprise to see so many of those things updated almost effortlessly into a 21st-century setting. It feels remarkably faithful to the original source material, while remarkably contemporary at the same time.
Here's a few things I really like:
1. The casting. The chemistry between the two leads is very strong and it makes for an energetic, funny, and exciting dynamic--just as the partnership between Holmes and Watson should be. Of course, since this is the 21st century, "bromance" jokes abound; Holmes & Watson are often mistaken for a gay couple. Watson spends lots of time denying this while Holmes is coyly silent about the whole thing. It's pretty funny stuff.
2. Benedict Cumberbatch (Holmes). I've never seen him in anything else, but he takes an intimidating role and really makes it his own. He plays Holmes as very Aspergian--sure he's brilliant, but he's emotionally stunted, socially backward, and disliked by many. But he's so charismatic (plus kind of a cutie) that you (the viewer) love him anyway. Plus, he has the most incredibly awesomely silly British name in the history of British names. I could say it all day! Benedict Cumberbatch! Benedict Cumberbatch! Benedict Cumberbatch!
3. Martin Freeman (Watson). He plays the good doctor (yes, he's still a doctor) as a world-weary, action-hungry Afghan war vet, with just the right mix of passion and humor. Freeman plays the nebbish, hangdog type very well. Don't believe me? Go watch the UK version of The Office. Or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Or wait until next year & watch The Hobbit, when he will take his rightful place onscreen as Bilbo freakin' Baggins!
4. Production values. Often the BBC shows look a bit low-rent (the perils of not working with Hollywood money). Not so here. Nice camerawork, cinematography, direction, etc. At times, the visual style of the show strongly resembles those of American procedurals (particularly the CSI shows, with their penchant for extreme zoom shots of evidence/speed-ramping, etc). But it never sinks to the level of a procedural clone--the good writing and acting see to that. It's better because it's British! :)
5. The writing. The mysteries both pay homage to some of Conan Doyle's original mysteries (A Study in Scarlet, The Adventures of the Speckled Band, etc.), as well as update them convincingly (using GPS-enhanced smartphones to track a killer, for instance). I have to confess that the payoff is sometimes not quite as good as the setup (sometimes the killer's identity is a little too easy to deduce, or a final confrontation a little silly), but the journey makes it worth the trip. Besides, being able to see the solution at the same time as Holmes makes the audience feel smarter!
6. Moriarity!! Can't wait to see him in the final episode (yes, I know he's coming--he has to. He's the Joker to Holmes' Batman).
7. The dialogue:
"I'm not a psychopath, Anderson, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research."
Hee hee!
So, what more could you ask for in a show? (Besides more episodes, that is?) Go watch Sherlock now!
(warning: SPOILERS AHOY for both Wicked the musical AND Wicked the book.)
As you can see by the program above, I finally got to see Wicked: A New Musical last Friday, January 21st, as it finished out its Tucson run. Back in October, Nathan & I decided to treat ourselves --we bought tickets to Wicked and decreed it would be our (slightly late) ninth anniversary celebration. So, we caught dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, strolled around the University of Arizona campus for a while, then finally sat down to enjoy the show.
And we weren't disappointed! I'd heard nothing but praise for this musical ever since it first appeared on my radar, and I'm happy to say that it (mostly) met my expectations.
More on that in just a moment, though (excuse me while I put on my "critic" hat)...
I was initially perplexed by the musical's huge popularity, since I really wasn't a fan of the book upon which it was based. I got the novel Wicked: The Life & Times of the Wicked Witch of the West as a birthday present years ago, and I was very excited--I thought the "twisted fairy tale" premise had a lot of potential. After reading it, though, I was mostly confused. Did I just not "get" it? Was I missing something? So, like the glutton for punishment I am, I read the book AGAIN.
After this second read-through, I was forced to admit that really, there wasn't much to "get." Gregory Maguire came up with a wonderful premise, a compelling heroine in Elphaba, and a nicely reimagined Oz...and then squandered all those things with a meandering, preachy, hopelessly muddled plot. The second half of the book really goes off the rails; it feels like Maguire is taking every soap-box topic in his arsenal and throwing them at the wall to see what sticks. The preachiness & the randomness of the novel's second half wore on me quickly; by the end, I no longer cared about any of the characters or what happened. So, I sold the book and gave it no more thought.
So, when the musical came calling, I decided to do some "research" to see if it was really worth my valuable time & money. I listened to the soundrack (not bad, I thought), and even checked out the "book of the musical" from our local library. From what I could gather, the musical focused primarily on the friendship of Glinda & Elphaba--a good thing in my mind. So it was off to the theater!
Comparing the two stories is really fascinating. My first impression was that the musical's plot was oversimplified--but in this case, that's a good thing! For example, here are a "few" things that DON'T happen in Wicked the musical:
-Elphaba was born inside the Time Dragon Clock, and was born with teeth & multiple genatalia (!!)
-Elphaba's "father" wasn't the governor of Munchkinland; he was a missionary preaching religion to the Munchkins.
-Nessarose was also a bastard, and instead of crooked legs, she was born with no arms. She also never had a "thing" for Boq; she was too busy being a religious zealot just like her daddy.
-Boq did have a crush on Galinda/Glinda, but got over it fairly fast. Instead, he becomes close friends with Elphaba and eventually marries one of Glinda's college friends.
-Dr. Dillamond isn't expelled from Shiz College; he's murdered in his classroom, and no investigation of the crime ever takes place
-Oh, by the way, Dillamond's killed by a Tik-Tok, a race of mechanical servants that populate all of Oz. They don't seem to be in the musical at all.
-Boq and Fiyero visit a nightclub in Emerald City and engage in a bestial orgy, scarring them sexually for life. Um, WHAT THE HECK??!?!?!?!?
-Elphaba doesn't flee the Emerald City after confronting the Wizard; she lives there for years afterwards as a domestic terrorist. She's not a lone revolutionary, but part of a whole underground movement.
-While in the underground, she starts an affair with Fiyero, who lives in town as a diplomat. Oh, by the way, he's married with 3 kids by now! When they met in college, he was already married (he got married at like 14), and his family was living back in the castle at Kiamo Ko.
-Poor Fiyero ends up being murdered, presumably by the Wizard's secret police force. Consumed with guilt, Elphaba retreats to a monastery, where she delivers Fiyero's bastard son and lives for seven more years, before traveling to Kiamo Ko to apologize to his widow.
-Elphaba lives at Kiamo Ko with Fiyero's family for at least a year. It's during this time that she starts messing with the Grimmerie, and she voluntarily creates the winged monkeys (although her original goal was just to have them speak; the wings ended up being an extra frill).
-At one point, Fiyero's family flees the castle, forced out by Ozian soldiers. They are presumed captured, and their fate is uncertain. Does Elphaba care? Does Maguire care? Nope...we never find out what happened to them.
-Nessarose becomes a tyrant ruler of Munchkinland, and it's a random cyclone that kills her, not one conjured up by Madame Morrible.
-Speaking of Madame Morrible, Elphaba tries to murder her by bashing her skull in towards the end of the book. However, Morrible had died just a few minutes before, denying Elphaba the satisfaction.
-At one point, Elphaba becomes convinced that the Scarecrow is Fiyero come back to life/in disguise. Why does she believe this? Heck if I know. It turns out to be untrue. The Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman are never explained in the book; we never learn who or what they really are.
-Surprise! Turns out Elphaba really is allergic to water. When confronting Dorothy, she accidentally catches her broom on fire. Dorothy tries to save her by throwing water all over her, and POOF (or should I say Ding Dong?), she's dead.
Got all that? Yeah, it irritated me just typing it out. Anyway, virtually none of that stuff is in the musical (one or two of those things are cleverly twisted at the musical's conclusion, however).
You may be asking yourself, "Where's Glinda in all that mess?" The answer is: "She's not in the book all that much, particularly after the first half." It's a shame, because she's one of the few supporting characters in the book that's truly enjoyable to read. She's a dynamic character that grows and changes over time, particularly with her relationship to Elphaba. Their unlikely friendship is one of the few things that really worked in the novel. Wisely, the musical's writers took that thread & ran with it.
The result is a very simplified version of the novel, which fancied itself both a socio-political allegory and an existential rumination on good & evil. The musical's story does raise some of the same questions of the book ("what is good?" versus "what is evil?"; how our personal biases affect our views of "right" and "wrong"), but does so primarily through the friendship of two very different people. The Wizard is still a mysterious tyrant, and he & Elphaba still clash over their treatment of the Animals, but that's no longer the main focus. In the musical, it's all about Elphaba and Glinda: how they meet; their rivalry-turned-friendship; how they view the world differently and how they are both forced to revise those views; and how their actions ultimately pull them down very different paths.
And that aspect of the musical works wonderfully. Most musicals have one strong male or female lead; Wicked the musical is really a two-woman show and I love that it treats both characters sympathetically, even though they don't always do the right thing or even treat each other well. It's a simpler way of telling the audience, "See? Sometimes it's not always about 'good' or 'evil'; it's just a different way of looking at a situation." And it's much less tedious than wading through pages of Elphaba moping and wondering if she's really "wicked" or not. She gets to take that journey with a friend, and that makes it a much more compelling journey for the audience.
There's only one aspect of the musical's story that really suffered in comparison to the book: the treatment of Nessarose and Boq. Both characters in the book were fairly dynamic and even likable. In the musical, they come off as pretty one-note and shrill. Boq's hopeless infatuation for Glinda ends up defining his whole character...he literally exists for no other purpose, except to explain where the Tin Woodsman comes from (unnecessary in the book, since the Tik-Toks were present).
Also, in Act 2, when Boq tells Elphaba that Nessarose is ruling Munchkinland with an iron fist, it seems to come out of nowhere, and Nessa's motivations seem silly. So...she becomes a tyrant because Boq doesn't love her enough? Hmmm. It works much better in the novel, when Nessarose attempts to convert (and then enforce) her strong religious beliefs over all of Munchkinland. Religion seems a better motivator for tyranny than pining over some boy. This has (sadly) been proven over and over again in real life. However, while I wish Nessa's character had more substance, I think removing the religious aspects of her character was a hard but necessary omission from the musical. Adding religious overtones to an already complex universe may have made the story too volatile & less audience-friendly.
Otherwise, though, most of the changes from book to musical were definitely "for good" (see what I did there?). The Elphaba/Fiyero/Glinda love triangle adds a nice dramatic thread (and a more personal conflict between the two friends that amps up the tension on stage). The Wizard is made more buffoonish, although Madame Morrible's character becomes stronger & more sinister to compensate. Having the Grimmerie be a well-known, mysterious artifact makes Elphaba seem that much more remarkable (and dangerous) to her opponents. And the lengthier "college" scenes in Act 1 make us care much more for the characters, so we can empathize with them when things go wrong in Act 2.
Speaking of Act 2...it seems to go really fast. Maybe it's because I'm aware of how much junk was cut out of the story to make it flow faster (see my list above, most of which takes place in the "Act 2" timeline equivalent in the book). But that's a minor complaint. As for the music itself...it's pretty good but not great. A few songs sound a little too "pop" and I worry that they'll sound outdated in another decade or so. The same goes for some of the dialogue and slang used in the show. However, most of the music is in good service to the story, and there are a few real showstoppers ("For Good," "No Good Thing," and "Defying Gravity" in particular are great--"Defying Gravity" gives me goosebumps!).
I hope this doesn't sound like me being too critical; these are just some thoughts I've had stewing for the last week. I really had a great time at the musical, and think that, while it could have been a little better, was still the superior version of the story--it actually manages to improve on Maguire's original idea! I also think this is a good show for girls (not that it's overly "girly"; Nathan really enjoyed it as well). Maybe I like the idea that girls can feel empowered watching Elphaba make her own destiny, and even watching Glinda grow beyond her original narrow views to embrace the exciting differences in others. I look forward to going back to see Wicked again someday--and this time I hope to take my girls along!
What more can I say?? We woke up, we packed, we ate breakfast, we hit the road. We took lots of potty breaks, we (almost) ran out of gas at one point, we had some quick meal stops, and after driving through a lot of nothingness on I-8 (and later, on I-10), we made it home.
We don't know exactly when we'll go back to Disneyland...probably in 3 years or so (sometime after Celeste turns 5). In the meantime, though, we'll have lots of good memories to keep our hearts warm. Yes, I am aware that last sentence was a little cheesy.
The only other thing to report is our short (but very photograph-filled) trip to the beach--a place the likes of which our children have never seen (and Nate & I have rarely visited). I'm afraid the exact location of this particular beach escapes me; it was south of Laguna Beach but north of Dana Point. Regardless, it was a beautiful, secluded spot, and we were almost the only people there since it was early Saturday morning!
It was neat to show the girls what an ocean looks like, and it was calm & refreshing to get some sand between our toes before the long drive home. Here are a few pictures:
