EVEN MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) So...yeah.

Is anyone else just exhausted with the monotony of things these days?  I don't mean to complain, because I have it better than a hell of a lot of other people, but geez. I feel like I'm stuck in a time loop. Groundhog week instead of Groundhog Day.  The fact that we had a 3 day weekend seemed exciting, but it was just three days that were exactly like any other three days.

I don't know why this bothers me at all, really, because it's not bad. I'm not in distress. I have enough food (too much, if you look at me) I've got shelter, I still have a job (or three,) and I have the creature comforts that I'm used to. I think it's the lack of variety of...living. Does that sounds stupid?

SIGH. It feels stupid and supremely ungrateful. I don't know how to feel about it. I'm sure someone would think I am way too privileged and have no right to feel the way I do, because how dare me when other people have it worse, right? That's just how people are these days.

I'd almost start wishing for a little variety in life again, but the way things are going, we'd end up in the middle of an intergalactic trade war or something.

I might be willing to risk it! :)

2) Over the past two weeks we have been wading through The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition, of course.) I say wading through, because we would watch a little bit of each movie, turn it off and do something else, and then watch a little more and so on a so forth.

I'm not the biggest fan of that particular series, but it's been a pretty good diversion. I had forgotten how it was such a big, stinking deal when it came out. It has aged surprisingly well, even if some of the actors have not (HEY-O!) Heehee.

I like to read trivia and information about movies when I'm watching them at home, and one of the little bits I ran across was that the Lord of the Rings was a surprisingly accurate depiction (set in a fantasy setting, of course) of what going to and coming back from war is really like. I don't think I'd ever thought of it like that before, but it's totally true. You've got your young man being basically drafted into action due to his elders mistakes, he sets off with other young men and friends to right the wrongs, and has to fight, getting injured and losing people along the way. Watching the movies with that mind set really made me look at it differently and it actually made the whole thing much more interesting to me this time around.  The most telling part was the end, when the 4 hobbits made it back to the shire. You've got these four friends coming back from war, and they have SEEN some shit. Two of them (Merrie and Pippin) kind of go back to their lives the way they were, one (Sam) takes his experience and betters himself and his situation, and one (Frodo) is too damaged and too fragile to keep on going one the way things used to be. The article I was reading said it was a fairly good depiction of a soldier coming home with PTSD.

We finished watching the Return of the King last night, and looking at it in a new light, it was an oddly poignant movie to watch on Memorial Day. I don't like realistic war movies, because they're too scary, but watching one that uses allegory was surprisingly touching.

However, and I will die on this hill, Frodo was a bitch that needed saving every twelve feet. Sam is the real hero of that movie! TEAM GAMGEE FOR LIFE!

3) The most interesting thing that has happened to us lately is that a huge tree in our backyard fell down! When I say huge, I mean huge. It takes up 3/4 the width of the back yard. Somehow, and I think it has to be providence, it fell perfectly on our property. Some limbs hit the house, some limbs hit Steve's old beater truck he parks in the backyard, it smashed the section of chain link we had on the west side of the house, but it didn't touch anything that wasn't on or near our property! Well, it did knock down some limbs off of our neighbor's cedar tree, but they were hanging over our yard.

It was raining really hard Friday morning, and we were watching TV when we heard something go SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHTHHHHHHHHHHH. My first thought was "Oh, no, the tree fell!" It had always had a lean to it and we had worried for years it would tip over, although we didn't actually think it would. My second thought was "OH, NO IT HIT THE NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE!" because of the direction of the lean. Thankfully, though, it missed everything except our fence. We can't tell for sure, but the roof doesn't seem damaged, and Steve's truck is fine. Now we just have to figure out how to get the danged thing off of our property. My sister and brother in law have a lawn business, and they are coming to look at it and see what they can do, but the tree is so huge that they might only be able to remove some of the branches. We'll have to call an arborist to get the rest. It's going to be so expensive!!!!  Ugh. To add insult to injury, it also cracked the trunk of the tree it was next to, and now that one is only hanging in there because it's supported by another tree. If it falls, it will fall in the center of our yard.

I wish we could afford to have the wood processed so I could keep it and have something made of it, because underneath the bark is is beautiful! It's persimmon wood, so it's difficult to dry, but it's white wood with a dark heart, and I've seen cut pieces and it really is pretty when it's used to make stuff. I am going to try and keep a few chunks to carve something out of, at least. It was, after all, our favorite tree.