Melissesages

I had a rotten night’s sleep, so despite not getting out of bed until 1 I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. To help with this, I’m posting a few thoughts on the movie I saw last night, “The Curious Case of Brad Pitt’s Old Age Makeup.” Whoops, I mean Benjamin Button.

You’ve probably heard about this movie, which was released wide on Christmas Day. Brad Pitt plays a man who ages backwards, born an old man and dying a little baby. The movie unfolds without a villain or main conflict: it’s just kind of a biography of this unusual man. As I was watching, I kept thinking how familiar it all seemed…until I got the similarities between Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump,

I know, one is mentally handicapped and one is…chronologically handicapped, but these two movies have a lot in common. Both are biographies of a man overcoming his unusual circumstances. Both men have this one be-all, end-all a love interest that they need years to properly woo over. Both films intersect with actual historical events, particularly wars. Both are framed with a modern device - Forrest Gump is telling his story at a bus stop, Benjamin Button’s story is read from a journal in the hospital room where his lady love is dying.

When it came out, Forrest Gump was immediately beloved and successful because of its likable, winsome main character and because of its Messages about the power of love and family and running really really fast. Benjamin Button is quickly finding success because of its likable, gentle main character and its Messages about the power of love and family and timelessness.

Is Benjamin Button worth seeing? Sure, if you’re into that kind of thing, or if you’re just in love with that F. Scott Fitzgerald atmosphere of Southern gentility and drinking and ladies in pretty dresses named Daisy (personally? Never really a fan). Or if you want to see some truly amazing special effects - we all complain about how CGI is taking over action and fantasy films and sucking the life out of them, but the truth is that Benjamin Button, the movie, looks fantastic, and would not have been possible fifteen years ago, without today’s modern technology.

But if the new movie feels overly familiar, it’s because it is. And as I was thinking about Forrest and Benjamin, I realized that this isn’t the only recycled movie that’s come out this season. On the same day Benjamin Button was released, we also got Jim Carrey’s Yes Man. Granted, these two genres are about as different as can be, but from the very first preview “Yes Man” felt familiar to me, and I realized why: it’s basically Liar Liar. One is a film that asks the question, “what if you couldn’t lie to anyone?” and the other asks “What if you couldn’t say no to anyone?” Each movie’s structure involves taking that basic premise and applying it to a funny situation: Jim Carrey can’t lie and tells his boss she’s not that great in bed! Jim Carrey can’t say no and has to sleep with an old lady! Ha! Both are star vehicles, both are designed to exhibit Carrey’s strange, rubber band face expressions and quirky sense of verbal timing, both are about his rather lame character discovering What’s Really Important in Life (family/living), and so on.

Soo…it seems that for Christmas we all got cinematic flashbacks to the 1990’s. What’s up with that? Are the studios just kind of desperate right now, and checking to see, with this small control sample, if revisiting a more successful decade in the history of film will get butts back into the seats? Or is it about trying to woo us with our favorite star actors, presented as they were when we first fell in love with them? Brad Pitt, towards the end of Benjamin Button, is the perfect, unlined Brad we all remember from “Thelma and Louise” and “A River Runs Through It.” You seriously cannot look at this guy in those scenes without swooning. And Jim Carrey, well, he may look older, but “Yes Man” doesn’t - it’s Jim Carrey doing what he does best, or at least what he thinks we think he does best.

Hmm. It’s kind of an interesting question: in these hard times, both for the economy and for entertainment, would we prefer to push forward and discover new film territory, or be revisited by the kind of entertainment we loved when things were better?

Okay, a little more information on Restless Leg Syndrome… apparently, it bothers millions of people each year, and not just pregnant women. There are lots of websites devoted to it - rls.com is probably the biggest - and everyone has theories about what causes it/makes it worse. There’s some pretty interesting stuff here: people who claim all kinds of home remedies, stories about little kids with RLS who twitch in their sleep, theories about a connection to milk, dehydration, etc. What I found funny is that in the comments section of these sites, many people say the same thing: “I thought it was fake until I got it myself.”

RLS IS real, people: trust me on this one. It’s a disorder of the central nervous system, and though it sounds silly (one article referred to it as “runny legs,” because it makes your legs want to run while you’re still), it actually sucks a ton. I mentioned it to my mother on the phone tonight, and she said “oh yeah, I’ve had that and your grandma gets it a lot, too.” How did I not know about this thing?

At any rate, for me the Restless Leg Syndrome is getting worse on a daily basis, causing me to stay up later and later at night and now even starting to affect me during the day. I’m doing what I can think of for right now, but I moved up my next doctor’s appointment to Monday morning, so I can talk to my doc about any other treatment options. I think options will be pretty limited, though, because most of the medications prescribed for this are harmful to the baby. I’m kind of fascinated by this, but at the same time, it’s HORRIBLE. There’s nothing meaner, to a pregnant woman, than taking away more of her sleep. Thank God I’m not working right now, and can afford to sleep until noon if I can’t get to bed before four.

I’m also fascinated by how this whole side effects thing works, with pregnancy. There are all these things that can happen to you - some of them really weird - and somehow, each woman gets some things out of the mixed bag. For example, I never really had to deal with swollen ankles or hands, constipation, hemorrhoids, milk clots, varicose veins (I think - I haven’t been able to see my entire legs in awhile), or weird pigmentation on my face or belly. On the other hand, I got smacked pretty damned hard with the Morning Sickness stick, my stretch marks are terrible (screw you, body butter), I’ve got heartburn, I’ve gained way more weight than I should have, I’m rocking the RLS thing, and my hair has gotten coarser from the prenatal vitamins. Oh, and I have another, lesser-known symptom: a semi-permanent bad taste in my mouth (it’s a real thing, people, look it up). My question is: why did I get some of these symptoms and not others? Why is it that some women get ALL the bad side effects, and some women get none of them? How is this business decided? If I ever have another baby (more on that another day), would I get the same side effects I’ve gotten now, or a completely different cocktail?

These are interesting questions, and from what I’ve read, no one can really explain why certain women get certain symptoms; though I’m sure it’s tied somewhat to body chemistry and heredity. Whatever the reasons, I’m just glad my time is almost up. With just over four weeks to go, I’m not exactly counting down the minutes yet, but at least I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone tells me that having a baby is going to be so difficult, so time-consuming, and deprive me of all my sleep, but you gotta say this: at least then my body will be returned to me. I won’t keep getting surpised by strange, alien symptoms that crop up out of nowhere (a bad taste in my mouth? Seriously?!). Bring on the birth.

I’m still pregnant, but my sister is not. A little after nine this evening, she gave birth to my brand-new nephew, Jonathan David. I’m kind of bummed out that I’m not there - it’s the first time I’ve missed seeing a niece or nephew right away in the hospital - but it sounds like the experience wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Jonathan weighed in at 10 pounds, 4 ounces. That’s a big baby.

I’m still pretty anxious about this large fetus thing. If you do the math, based on her ultrasound weight and the average gain in the third trimester, Mattie is set to weigh about 9 1/2 pounds on her due date. If she’s not born right away and the doctors make me wait until 42 weeks to be induced (standard practice), she’ll weigh 10 1/2 pounds, at which point she could probably kick her new cousin’s ass. For me, though, this is incredibly scary: I don’t WANT to give birth to a giant child. Babies should NOT arrive looking like they’re ready for kindergarten, it’s just not natural. At 35 weeks and change, I have a little bit of time before she gets that big, but if I can’t figure out a safe and healthy way to go into labor in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to have to give birth to Giganta-baby.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some secondary medical conditions going on right now, too. I’ve always been pretty wary of the people who try to diagnose their medical problems online. Sure, it seems awfully convenient, but it’s also a great way to increase paranoia and panic. I think it’s sort of natural for people to immediately jump to the worst conclusion (bruises? Feeling weak? I must have cancer!), which is a really unsettling way to go through life. And nobody, especially doctors, likes a hypochondriac.

So, I stay away from websites like WebMD as much as possible…but I have to admit, there are times when they can be extremely helpful. For a long time now, I’ve had these spells where I can’t get to sleep because of my legs. The skin on them seems to crawl (a horrible feeling), and causes occasional little spasms. It only happens when I lay down and try to rest, in order to sleep. As my pregnancy has progressed, these spells have increased, until it’s pretty much every night now. I used to be able to solve the problem with aloe gel (probably more of a psychological solution than a biological one), but now not even that works. I figured the whole thing was a weird head problem, like the physical manifestation of me worrying about the baby or something, but tonight I actually caved in and looked it up online. Sure enough, there’s an actual name for this problem: Restless Leg Syndrome.

Now, I gotta say, that sounds like the kind of “illness” you make fun of, when it’s not actually happening to you. The whole idea reminds me of these videos we watched in high school Psych class about “the Alien Hand.” (Basically, a disorder, that may or may not be faked, in which your OWN HAND tries to murder you in your sleep). I mean, ‘restless leg syndrome?’ Couldn’t they even come up with a cooler name for it, something with lots and lots of consonants? But in reality, restless leg syndrome is pretty horrible. Just as I lay down to finally relax and sleep, it suddenly feels like bugs are crawling under my skin. The more I try not to think about this, the worse it gets, until my legs are twitching around under the covers like stowaway jumping spiders. And I just want to be sleeping.

I have to say, though, despite my distrust of online diagnosing, it is a huge relief for me to discover that this thing that’s bothering me has an actual name, that it happens to other people…and that it’s extremely common during pregnancy. Tomorrow morning I’ll call my doctor and see what she recommends, treatment-wise (I’m hoping for like a topical creme). I just have to figure out how to get to tomorrow morning…

I am, for obvious purposes, not a big reader of Sports Illustrated. But yesterday at the hair salon I picked up a copy that had an adorable, curious-looking young pit bull on the cover.

The cover story was about Michael Vick’s dogs, and where they are now (Click here to read). In case you haven’t heard about it, Michael Vick was a professional football player who, just for fun, got a bunch of pit bulls together and decided to start an illegal dogfighting kennel on the side (apparently, he wasn’t earning enough money…?). Dogfighting is one of the most atrocious crimes you can commit against an animal - the article goes into some detail, which I won’t repeat here, but basically the animals were tortured.

The thing is, people are already terrified by pit bulls. These dogs are strong, they can bite, and over the years many bad people have purposefully bred them for aggression. Every once in awhile you hear a terrible story on the news about a toddler being attacked by a pit bull, and the incident is always horrendous. So for Michael Vick, or other dogfighters, to train them to kill each other is just adding gas to a fire that started awhile back.

Never mind that pit bulls have been known for hundreds of years as the best possible family dog. Never mind that they tend to love kids (Petey from the Little Rascals was a pit bull, as was the underwear-eating dog in Cheaper by the Dozen) and be incredibly loyal to their owners. Or that the largest percentages of dog bites in America comes from mixed breeds, German Shepherds, and Chow chows, in that order. Because of their strength and size, when a pit bull does bite, it’s much more likely than other breeds to lead to a fatality. That’s how the breed originally got their image problem.

Anyway, the Sports Illustrated article covers all that ground much better than I can here, but the really interesting thing is what happened to Michael Vick’s dogs. After they were confiscated, a number of groups immediately called for the dogs to be euthanized. These groups included the Humane Society, and PETA, the crazy-obsessive organization that throws a national media fit if you so much as look at a cow funny. As an animal, you know you’re in trouble if PETA wants you dead. The theory was that Michael Vick and his accomplices had “ruined” these dogs forever, that as pit bulls they could never be trained to be regular dogs again, and should be destroyed. They were, according to these groups, weapons.

Fortunately, a couple of smaller animal-rights groups didn’t agree, and decided to see if the dogs could be rehabilitated instead, hoping that maybe a few of these dogs could be saved. And this is my favorite part: Of the 51 pit bulls that were taken away from Michael Vick’s dogfighting ring, you know how many had to be put down for violent tendencies? One. That’s right, one of the fighter dogs was just beyond repair, mentally. Two of them died in shelters, and all the rest are in the process of adoption and rehabilitation.

This story makes me incredibly, incredibly happy, and not just because it’s a great feel-good story about animals (though, you know, those do get me). We don’t get much of these kind of stories in the news - the account of something really, really terrible that was turned into something really good (a few of Vick’s dogs have even been trained into service, greeting sick patients at hospitals and being reading partners for kids with difficulties), so that’s precious in itself. But no, what makes me happy is that these pit bulls that everyone (including frickin’ PETA) had written off came around and showed everyone what pit bulls are really like.

See, I have a pit bull mix, Max the Amazing. And I’m used to walking down the street with him and having people shy away, even crossing the road to avoid us. I’ve been glared at by moms with strollers and dismissed by families walking their “good” dogs. (Usually labs. I hate labs.) Now, I have nothing against people who are afraid of dogs - they usually have a very good reason and it’s none of my business - but some of these are the same people who will bend down and give Tucker a big old hug and a rubdown without even checking with me first (not that Tucker’s exactly vicious, having the approximate disposition of a cow, but that’s just bad policy). When I first brought Max to Wisconsin, none of the adults in my family wanted any of their children near him.

This prejudice against my goofy, emotionally needy, ridiculously fun dog really upsets me. Max is far from perfect, of course - I can’t get him to stop jumping up on people, and he has way too much energy, and wants the ball thrown hours after people get tired of throwing it for him. But he doesn’t have a vicious bone in his body. He’s gotten into scuffle-fights at dog parks on occasion - he does consider himself an Alpha, and will defend that title - but he’s never, ever hurt another dog (though other dogs have drawn blood on him before). And if you’ve ever seen five minutes of Max with a kid…well, the biggest worry is that he would lick the kid’s face until she cried, or possibly, POSSIBLY accidentally knock an unsteady two-year-old over with his back half while turning to be petted. He’s big and has no sense of personal space, but mean, bloodthirsty, or homicidal he is not. In fact, as I type this, he is curled into an impossibly small Max-ball in a nest of blankets beside me on the couch, and he looks about as dangerous as the blanket he’s lying on. He loves me so much, he can’t stand to be too far from me while I’m in the house, and when Tyler comes home, well, that’s Max’s special happy time.

As good as Max is, though, I do get tired of defending him all the time, and tired of glares on the street. Pit bulls have had a really unfair image problem for awhile now, and that’s why it makes me so happy that Michael Vick’s dogs have inadvertently become national spokes…dogs for their breed. When Max and Tucker eventually pass away (God forbid), Tyler and I will be rescuing a pit bull next. Unless, by then, someone has learned to clone family pets, like in The Sixth Day. If that happens, I would be more than delighted to have my own pit bull forever.

(PS: In an interesting, and awesome, postscript to the Michael Vick story, the Human Society in Atlanta has been receiving donations of the pro football player’s jerseys to be used to clean kennels. Suck it, Vick.)

One nice thing about pregnancy-induced insomnia: it gives you a chance to catch up on some things. I’ve done a little rearranging over on the pictures portion of my website, and added a new album for this winter. It isn’t a ton of changes, but head on over if you’ve found yourself thinking “I wonder what Melissa looks like pregnant” or “Just how long has Tyler’s hair gotten, anyway?” Then seek help, because you clearly have more boredom issues than I do.

In writing news, I’ve hit a small roadblock on the book - we’ve had to take a time-out for some research. As you may or may not know already, the book is about a private investigator, who used to be a police officer. I’ve also set it in Chicago. Now, because I started, I read “The Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigation” (not kidding), which helped a lot, but in filling in some details - and moving forward with my case - I’ve been hurting for some of the other details. So I’m doing some research on Chicago and some research on being a police officer. Right now I’m reading Armed and Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman, by Gina Gallo. It’s incredibly helpful because it’s from a woman’s perspective, but also because Gallo was a police officer herself - not just a biographer. Obviously I won’t be taking anything from Gallo’s story - I have my own plot and character, and there are a lot of laws in place to protect authors’ works - but I’m only twenty pages in and I’ve already found some helpful tidbits on vocabulary, etc: for example, according to Gallo, the Chicago PD doesn’t use number codes for the radio, they just give the name of the crime (which makes a lot of sense to me). The cops don’t have “badges” or “shields,” but stars, and so on. When I’m done with this I’ll probably look at some Chicago stuff - books and maps - to get a better feel for my setting. Then I’ll hopefully get back to the writing. Ideally, of course, I’d like to actually GO to Chicago on a research trip, and map out and describe some favorite haunts and street routes and stuff for my characters, but that’s not looking real feasible right now. On top of being, you know, crazy pregnant, I just don’t have the money for a research trip right now.

Speaking of babies and money, today Tyler and I stopped at this toy store in Middleton, Oompa, which I heard about at the Women’s Expo I attended last month. Oompa is the kind of place the Hemp Mommies frequent: it’s all about organic toys with no commercial tie-in to theme parks or cartoons or so on. No flashing lights, no batteries required. Basically, exactly the kind of toys I would love to fill our house with (see previous blogs on my feelings about flashing lights and overstimulation). Here’s the unfair part: These toys are ridiculously, ridiculously expansive. Cute stuffed hedgehog a little bigger than a Furby? $40. Painted wooden dinosaur toy the size of my hand (part of a set): $12. I completely fell in love with a number of things at Oompa - a beautiful wooden mobile with soft butterflies that can be detached and played with, an adorable stuffed dog that’s actually a baby-friendly cloth book, a soft flower-shaped rattle, the aforementioned hedgehog, and so on. And these toys, by all accounts, are great for Mattie. They’re educational, durable, not overstimulating, and handcrafted. I’m completely sold on them…except I can’t afford any of them. It’s kind of like when you’re on a diet but rushed for time - you can spend $5 at McDonald’s for a big meal, or the same amount at Panera for…a cup of soup. What are you going to do? I’m trying to be good, but dammit, Target rattles are like three for a dollar. I bought absolutely nothing today (though I really, really wanted that mobile), but came home and immediately spent two hours making up a wishlist on the Oompa website. That way, if Tyler and I win the lottery (an unlikely occurence, since we don’t actually play the lottery), I’ll know exactly what I want to get. It does make me mad, though, that once again in life the things that are good for you are so much more difficult to obtain than the things that are bad. Good one, God.