The Verdict is In

I saw the movie Twilight before I read the book. I thought the acting was horrid. The characters were so flat and one-dimensional. I couldn't relate or anything to the movie. So, I decided that the book HAD to be better than the movie (not that it was much of a challenge). I wanted to see what all the hype was about and really give it a chance to be worth my time. Plus, I wanted to get back into reading. When our emergency trip to Pittsburgh came up, I figured I could finish reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( I had been reading it off and on for a few months) and start/finish Twilight. It was a looong flight, so I had time and then some. I went ahead and read the book and I wasn't able to really give you all a proper review because I had so much to catch up on at work. Sorry! In a nutshell, PASS. As for New Moon...

Within the first 20 pages I was already over Bella. How can someone be sooooo miserable. All. The. Time. All she does is whine and complain and find more ways to be more miserable. Even when she's "happy". It gets worse when Edward leaves her and she is depressed for MONTHS. Each page that she narrates feels like a month's worth of reading. It was excruciating!

Enters Jacob. Jacob's character may have saved the book in my honest opinion. He's such an unpretentious and real character, up until the whole werewolf bit. It's just very easy to like him. The whole Bella-Jacob love thing was also much more believable than the Bella-Edward story. The author actually took the time to develop their attraction and you almost fall in love with them as their relationship develops. It wasn't carnal like Bella and Edward whereby Edward was attracted to Bella like a fat kid to chocolate cake and Bella was attracted to Edward like the fly that is attracted to the pretty blue light of a bug zapper. When Bella is with Jacob, she is ALMOST likable. It's as if she's a different person. She laughs, she jokes, she's NORMAL.

Unfortunately, Edward makes a re-appearance after a very coincidental series of events. This causes a rift in her relationship with Jacob. Bella is sad, again. Then the book ends. Yes, it ends just like that.

I blame a lot of the faults in the series on the author, Stephenie Meyer. It's as if she was a desperate housewife and in between breastfeeding her kid, decided that she would write a book about a girl who falls in love with a vampire and lives vicariously through her characters. Clearly, she never bothered to research the subject of vampires because apparently, vampires have all sorts of special powers except shoot fireworks out of their asses. She went against such widelly accepted vampire traits that it was just a slap in the face! Just when things were starting to get "good" she would underdevelop the scene and leave you high and dry. What would have been a good sequence of events would be done in two pages. I don't know if she had the intention to target teenagers with her book, but you can definitely tell that it is written at their level. If you wanted to improve your reading speed...highly recommended. In the time it takes you to pinch a loaf, you'll have read 25 pages. MINIMUM! Vocabulary, not so much. There were a few instances where you know that she busted out her Thesaurus and found some "big" words to replace her overly simplistic prose with; words like hyperbole and chastise as opposed to exaggerate and punish.

All in all, I don't see the allure the series has on adults. I can see where teenagers that still have the romanticized and idyllic notions of love would love to place themselves in Bella's shoes. But I just don't know how adults do it. It's a teenage Harlequin series!!! Not even a sex scene to hold you over! Don't get me wrong, I'm still a romantic and love all that finding true love garbage. Even among humans, aliens, vampires and seals, but this was pretty close to unbearable.



Highlights: Jacob Black, New Moon movie (the trailer looked pretty good--it seems they were able to do what Stephenie Meyer couldn't do)
Not so much: Bella, Edward, Stephenie Meyer's writing abilities

Feel free to hurl the tomatoes now!

Dear Mr. West

On behalf of the entire world, I would like to ask you to please STFU!

Love always,

Amy

So, I've been thinking...

...I want customized Ashley Brooke stationary! Wouldn't notecards with TomTom, Jake, Sophia and I be the cutest touch ever? Head on over to her site for some serious cuteness overload. My fave designs:

and this one

and this one

Credit

See?!?!?!?!

Breathe

Disclaimer: The following post may have a little TMI. Consider yourself warned.

So, the last two weeks have been psychological torture for me. I was two weeks late. Not late for work, not late for lunch... LATE LATE! I had changed BC methods last month and I knew that could have something to do with it, but I hadn't been good at taking my pill. I would take it every other day, if that. I knew it was a definite possibility. So for two weeks, whenever I would sit down to pee, I would immediately look for Aunt Flow. Over and over again, it was torturous.

So finally, I told TomTom that I would wait until Tuesday before I took a test (you know, to not ruin the weekend). Yesterday, with my heart in my throat, I went over to the base clinic to DEMAND a blood test. I couldn't bear the thought of a false positive with a home pregnancy test or a urine test, I needed a blood test. The triage nurse was very nice and set me up right away. She said the results would take two hours or so, but that she would call me first thing in the morning as it was already the afternoon. The questions circling my mind for the last few weeks were now playing on repeat as I walked to the lab. Would i be able to devote myself completely to another human being? Would I be able to go to law school? What would a baby do to our relationship? How would b=my body change? Would I be able to handle the labor and delivery? The questions were endless! So I had blood drawn and went back to work; immersing myself in work--anything to get my mind off the results. At 4:45 the same day, the triage nurse called me with the results.




NEGATIVE!!! *sigh* I have never felt such relief in my life.

I understand children are bundles of love and little miracles and that there are people all over the world hoping to one day be parents yada yada yada. I'm just not ready to make such a large sacrifice at this point in my life. Children aren't a new handbag that you wear until you grow tired of it and then buy a new one, they're F.O.R.E.V.E.R. I like to curse, I like to sleep, I like to spend money on me and TomTom, I like to travel and dote on Jake and Pia. For all these reasons, waiting for Baby Mulhall is a good thing!

For now, I hope to work on changing my selfish tendencies in hopes that I will one day be ready for two ankle biters, 2 years apart!