Tire Woes (Again), a Dress, and a Review

 1.) Misadventures in Tire Changing

As happens around here way more often than it should, we woke up to a low tire yesterday morning. 

I decided to risk driving on it and get Little Boy to school, then I drove to the tire place we usually go to. We got there right at opening time, but a flock of older men in work clothes were already there outside the door waiting. By the time I got the baby into the stroller, got into the building, and got the attention of one of the salesmen, there was an hour and a half wait before they could see the van and attend to it. 

So I was stuck there with two hungry, not yet had breakfast little girls (one isn't quite potty trained yet and wasn't in a diaper) for a long period of time. 

We've been in this situation before during the day and just walked to the Chili's down the street, but they don't open until 11am and it was only 8:30. I decided to walk half a mile or so to try to get to an in-gas-station Burger King to try and head off the impending riot. 

Well, there's a huge four way intersection where a busy city road goes under the bridge for the interstate between the tire place and the gas station. It's a high traffic area, and cars and trucks were constantly whizzing by.  I walked up, hit the "press to cross" button and waited. 

And waited. And watched an entire stop light cycle pass by. And realized that little white walking guy wasn't gonna make an appearance. The button was a lie. 

I looked at the intersection, then looked at my babies, then looked at the intersection again. Then we turned around and started walking back towards the tire place. 

On the way, Bitty Baby broke the bead necklace she'd been playing with and we left a trail of brightly colored plastic bits behind us like the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel . 

We ended up stopping in a hardware store and buying a small bag of trail mix, then having kinda-sorta-brunch at a fast food place. 

There were two nails in the tire, and a slow leak. It turned out to be a good thing we went straight there from school drop off. And by the grace of God, we managed to avoid potty accidents. 

2.) I Finished the Dress

Ta da!! 

The only thing missing is a belt. The pattern says to wear it with one, and it really does need one. It's very flattering in the back, but it's got a baggy sack sort of feel going on in front. 

3.) Vintage Belt Buckles 

I mentioned that I needed to make a belt for the dress to my aunt, and she hooked me up with these really cool vintage buckles and belt kit. 

One of the buckles is still in packaging dated 1970, and I think the belt kit is from the 80s at the latest. I have no idea how old the other three are though. 

4.) Best Life of Christ Scene Ever 

Awhile back I did a post where I compare/contrasted a single episode in the gospels as it was portrayed by three different films. Some of the film makers actually tried to imagine how human beings with actual emotions would react to that particular episode, and others presented it through a lens so crusted with affected piety as to make it nearly unwatchable. 

It's time for another one. I've found another very clear example of an episode in the life of Christ presented as happening to actual people who act like people. It happens to be an episode that sounds pat and cheesy on paper, so it's amazing they were able to draw out of it what they did. 

[SPOILERS: If you haven't seen the last episode of season 3 of the Chosen but plan to, just skip to the next take] 

In episode 8 of season 3 of The Chosen, they end the episode by depicting when Christ walked on water. If you haven't seen the episode or season (you really should) there's a bit of story building up to it: Simon (Peter)'s wife had a miscarriage while the apostles were all off on mission preaching. He's been struggling with a sense of betrayal ever since he found out; he trusted his wife would be ok while he was gone, and she wasn't. He still believes Jesus is the Messiah, but his anger at him has been building and starting to come out, and then he gets in a boat and starts rowing. 

Just...watch. 

The storytellers took a big, supernatural story and gave the viewer an entry into it by making it about a single person's interior struggle. Yes, they added stuff, but they did it in such a way that it brought out the theological symbolism in the story and enhanced it rather than corrupting or taking away from it. They made it matter in a narrative sense, which made it that much more impactful. You understand the message of the scene and it sinks in. 

There's a lot of physicality with it. Everyone involved is soaking wet and moving with the motion of the waves, Jesus lunges for Simon and then has to drag/carry him back to the boat, and there's a cohesiveness to it in that this is something that every character on screen is experiencing, not just observing. Jesus is just as human as the rest of them, which makes it that much more startling when he does and says divine things. 

And the effects were amazing too. They looked on par with or even better than the effects recent Marvel movies have been turning out. 

Contrast it with this scene from when The History Channel took a whack at this...

It's hokey as heck. 

It honestly looks like Jesus isn't even really there. They're seeing a vision, not a man in the flesh doing the impossible. That physicality and sense of the human isn't there at all, which seems to be a deliberate directing call (not just the result of a lousy effects budget). As a result, he's there, but also strangely absent. He's not really moving, he's not even wet. He's not really there experiencing it with them, he's just watching them experience it. 

There's also no reason for the apostles to not want Simon/Peter to get out of the boat and to try and prevent him. In the first clip, they know he's acting out of a place of hurt and rage, and they're afraid he's about to do something stupid. In this one, they already know it's Jesus, and he's invited them to do something and has already done a bunch of impossible things...so...where's the tension? 

And why would Jesus rebuke him for having little faith? In the first clip, Simon gets out on the water, confronts Jesus, looks around, and thinks, "what if I fall and he doesn't catch me and just lets me drown? He could do that. He's the one holding me up. And I all but just cussed him out" Jesus does catch him, and then the "ye of little faith line" is referencing both what just happened and the struggle that Simon has been going through. 

 

In this one, he's giving a hard time to the only guy with the cajones to get out of the boat in the first place.

It's exciting when good storytellers are able to do their thing and draw new meaning out of something that we've heard a thousand times over, and it's doubly exciting when they manage to do it where so many others have failed.  

And I'm just going to say it, if these particular storytellers get to the Passion, it's gonna be WAY harder to watch then when Mel Gibson took a turn at it. Not because it'll be bloody, but because it'll be absolutely emotionally devastating. We're actually

 going to know and care about the people we're seeing make mistakes and the people we see suffer. 

5.) Lent is Upon us 

Brace yourselves. 

We're going to be cutting down on screentime as a family this year, or at least trying to. Little Girl and Bitty Baby are currently watching a LOT of TV in the afternoons, and I use that time to get things done (including this blog post), so I'm not sure how I'm going to pull this off for a whole 6 weeks. 

And I'm not sure what it'll mean for the blog. It takes a couple hours of staring at my phone to get posts up, and my phone counts as a screen. I think I'm still going to write, I might just limit myself to publishing on Sundays instead of Friday and Saturday, and try to have the majority of it written out by hand before I type it up. 

Or maybe I'll last a week and then belly flop spectacularly, get back online, and just try to eat less chocolate or something. 

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this developing drama.