The Secret Life of Bebe

Simon with Wyatt, just before he finished the last round of chemo. I miss him.

Those of you who know know me well know that I take a lot of photos. For the past 3-4 years I have photographed all of the major (and minor!) events in my life.
Most of these photos make me happy, so choosing one amongst the thousands seems like an impossible task. Luckily the fact that the next few blogs posts are photo-related makes the job a little easier.
So here is my choice:

Why does this photo make me happy? How could it not! It was taken on Christmas Day 2009, and contains most of my favourite people: Grace (and our unborn granddaughter in there somewhere), Antony, me, Stephen, Wyatt, Megan and Bronwen.

It was also a very enjoyable Christmas. This might not seem a big deal, but I am just not that into the whole Christmas thing, so it took me by surprise that I had such a lovely time. I blame the Frayles 🙂

I tried out for the local Women’s Ice Hockey League last night. It wasn’t really a ‘tryout’ so much as a drill session to make sure I could actually skate well enough to stand upright with a stick and pads. The Women’s league is really small – only four teams. What this means is that novices like me are playing alongside Canterbury and New Zealand reps. It’s a little daunting, but also a really great opportunity to learn from the best.

Hopefully by the end of the season I won’t be skating up and down the ice yelping “Holy shit!” any time the pack whizz by me.

The quote that I use in that little quote-box on my Facebook page is probably my favourite:

“Dreams are the touchstone of our character”

This reminds me that my goals and ambitions are a reflection of who I am – my core beliefs and values – and these things need to be aligned.

It’s by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), an American essayist and philosopher, and a very influential man. According to Wikipedia, he influenced the thinking of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and a laundry list of other philosophers, political thinkers and authors. But it’s his simple thoughts on life that resonate with me the most.

He also said:

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

I love this idea, it’s a motto to live by. It’s important to acknowledge the past and how it got me to here, to think about the future because it’s where I’m going next, but try to spend most of my time being in the present – really seeing and experiencing what is happening in the moment.

I think the main problem with these last few posts is the ‘favourite’ part. I have lots of movies, TV shows, books that I really really like, but by definition, I can only have one favourite. How to choose? It might be easier if I could break it down to favourite author or favourite book within a genre – fave sci-fi, fave fantasy, biography, children’s, non-fiction, romance etc etc.

So when I bring all of those favourites together, which one emerges as the supreme ultimate favourite read? The books that rise to the top as finalists would have to be:

• Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (but honestly, anything by Atwood)
• Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series (HA! see what I did there?)
• Diana Gabaldon’s Cross Stitch (the first book in the Outlander series)
• C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (another series)

The way that I know that these are the favourites is that when I got rid of everything I owned and went overseas, these are the only books I couldn’t bear to part with. I still have the Narnia set that my sister stole from the Parnell Bookshop in 1985.

So amongst these, my most dearly loved series would have to be:

They are beautifully crafted stories, and are equally readable by a 10-year-old or a 50-year-old. To me, this is the sign of a good children’s book. And Ursula Le Guin is one of my heroes. The daughter of an anthropologist and a writer, she writes insightfully about human nature, and builds characters with depth so that you feel like you really know them.

They are the kinds of books that when you finish, you wish you could erase the memory of reading them so you can have the pleasure of discovering them all over again. And then you read them again anyway because the stories are so good.

I can honestly not remember the last time I sat down and watched something on broadcast television. For the past couple of years, I have been watching various TV series on DVD or online.

So if someone asked me what my “must-see-would-be-really-bummed-if-I-missed-it” show was, I would have to say … Survivor. I have seen every episode of every season, and some more than once. It’s the only show I’ve not become bored of after a couple of seasons. It’s cheesy and I am aware that a lot of the action is a set up…I don’t think of it as ‘reality TV’, just entertainment.

Other than Survivor, I have a range of other faves that I watch or have watched in their entirety:

• Star Trek (TNG, Enterprise, Deep Space Nine)
• Firefly
• Sarah Conner Chronicles
• Sex and the City
• Entourage
• Top Chef
• Project Runway
• America’s Next Top Model (missed the whole last season on TV!

And I am hoping to start Big Bang Theory soon, thanks Mshel!

Well at least this one is easy! The Princess Bride. It has the best one liners and is quirky and fun. And I really like the song at the end.

I first watched this movie when my son was a baby and movies were one of the few entertainments I could afford. I was immediately charmed by it, and have watched it untold times since.

Like many other PB aficionados, I know most of the words in most of the scenes and can recite the lines along with the actors. I imagine this must be very annoying to PB novices.

Jeez, hard one first. Here’s the thing. I think I must be the only person of my generation who is fairly apathetic about music. I like it okay, I know the lyrics to a stupidly large amount of songs, but I don’t really ‘love’ music. I know, I’m a freak.

If I have to choose one song I like a lot right now it would be Bruises by Chairlift. It’s fun, it’s bouncy and it was the music that went with the new iPod Nano ad…