1.  Order warm, sunny, glorious spring weather.  Check.

View from my bedroom window.  Love.

2.  Spend Friday morning at the computer finishing your warm, sunny, glorious ebook.  Check.  (More on that later.  Excited!)

3.  Spend Friday afternoon getting mani-pedi at Walmart while waiting for your oil to be change.  Wait–did I just admit to getting a mani-pedi at Walmart?  Yes I did.  I had an hour to kill and no shopping to do, and my digits were in need of some pre-summer love.  And wouldn’t you know it–the Mart has a nail salon sandwiched between their credit union and kiddie arcade (both of which reside just south of their hair salon, optometrist, tax service booth, and Blimpie. If you’re scared that Walmart’s going to take over the world, don’t worry—it already has.)  I ran into an old friend there and we chatted happily while a mysterious tattooed man with a shaven head gave me the foot massage of my life.  Just as he was brushing the final gloss on my freshly-pinked up toenails, I heard my name over the loudspeaker, announcing that my vehicle was ready for pick up.  With my oil changed, my fabric softener purchased, and my hands and feet gorgeous, I was ready to roll into the weeknd.  Three cheers for Walmart!  (Whenever you’re done booing it.  No pressure, really.)

4.  Spend remainder of Friday afternoon at the mall with your youngest daughter then meeting up with your brothers family for dinner at local Mexican restaurant.  Your jovial brother’s company makes up for the misery of trying to find clothes that your seventh grader will actually wear.  Pat yourself on the back for ordering a salad instead of the arroz con pollo you really wanted.  Tell yourself said salad cancels out your pre-dinner inhalation of massive quantities of chips and salsa.

5.  Spend Friday evening reading, for two hours alone, while your younger kids are at grandma’s and your teenager is out to dinner with dad.  Almost finish The Lowland.  (More on that later.  Excited!)  Finish out evening by watching latest Parenthood with the Hub.  (More on that later.  Disgusted!)

6.  Spend early Saturday morning driving said teenager to take the ACT test.  (She is only a freshman, but will take it every year through high school then keep her highest score.  Now why didn’t I ever think of that when I was her age?  Things could have turned out quite differently for me, I’m sure.  The least of which being that Walmart would not have played such a prominent role in my adulthood.)  Recognize what a warm, sunny, glorious daughter I have.  Tell her so.  Again.

7.  Spend remainder of Saturday morning cleaning out fridge and freezer.  The immense satisfaction earned upon completing this nasty chore makes up for its unpleasantness.  And my kitchen doesn’t reek anymore, which is a bonus.

8.  Spend a warm, sunny, glorious half hour afterward walking the neighborhood with a bestie who stopped by.  Recognize that spontaneous bits of time with a friend should never be foregone, regardless of the cleaning frenzy you may be in.  You will return to the task at hand happier and healthier, and hyper-er.  You feel thankful for good friends.

9.  Spend Saturday afternoon cleaning out your closet (it was bad), the downstairs hall closet, and storage space under the stairs.  See #6 for satisfaction-to-unpleasantness ratio.  It was awesome.

10.  Spend remainder of Saturday afternoon cruising Costco, running into every person you’ve known since childhood and picking up a hot new Calvin Klein hoodie while you’re at it.  (I’ve notice Costco carries a lot of Calvin Klein.  Is it really Calvin Klein, or is is Calvin Klein-for-Costco?  And is Calvin Klein still cool?)  (Was it ever that cool?)

11.  Spend Saturday evening supervising said teenager’s movie night she was hosting in your bonus room.  Just as you’re pulling out the ironing board downstairs (you had to keep yourself awake somehow–it was past ten o’clock), a mom of one of the guests, who happens to be another bestie, stops by.  She says she wants to keep you company while you stay up with the kids, since both the Hubs were in bed already.  After kissing her repeatedly, you talk for hours while catching up on a month’s (not kidding) worth of ironing.  Recognize, for the second time that day, that time with a friend is better than therapy.  Cliched, but true.  Fall asleep feeling like you had a rockin’ girls night out.

12.  Spend Sunday morning at killer church meetings.  Recognize that killer church meetings are better than therapy.  (No cliche there, unfortunately, because few people are saying that these days.)  But true.

13.  Spend Sunday afternoon napping with the kids then making a killer dinner of pork tenderloin, baby potatoes, asparagus, and and artichokes.  Whipped up some biscuits to boot.  Strawberry shortcake for dessert.  Ah…spring.

14.  Spend Sunday evening bumming with family and getting organized for week.  Made plans for Easter week; excited to try some new ideas.

15.  Fall asleep thankful for good weather, good friends, good family, and a freshly cleaned closet (!)  Relish an ancient, almost forgotten sense of anticipation about All Things Possible.  Recognize that small joys in a small town lead to big happiness.

16.  Wake up early Monday morning and punch out an assignment for your writing class, which is to post an unedited first draft.  We’ll call this ramble of thoughts a “first draft,” and, as you can tell, I refrained myself from going back and editing any of it.  I’m closing my eyes and clicking “publish.”  Please forgive (or ignore) it all.  And have a killer Monday!

Last week, while lounging about in at-the-coast spring break mode I decided that, upon returning home, I would write every weekday morning from five to seven a.m.  (Is it redundant to use “a.m.” and  “morning?” in the same sentence?  Sorry.)  I recently enrolled in a writing class and knew that, though my kids are in school all morning, this was the only way I would get the work done.  Laundry, errands, and all kindsa other stuff distract me during the short hours they’re gone, and by the end of it I’m frustrated that I didn’t get much writing done and, somehow, didn’t get much housework done either.  (What am I getting done?  Still don’t know.)  So early mornings it would be.  Starting Monday.  And when five o’clock on Monday morning came, it was actually pretty awesome.

We’d gotten home the night before from a long weekend at the coast and, in a crazy burst of springtime energy, I stayed up late scrubbing bathrooms, doing laundry, and getting organized for the week.  I went to bed at midnight happy to be home and excited about the week ahead, then woke before my alarm the next morning, a rarin’ to write.  I put in a productive couple of hours at the keyboard then sailed through the rest of my day, content with what I’d accomplished and glad I’d risen early to do it–especially since a few hours later the battery died in my van and I spent the afternoon sitting at Les Schwab.  (Do you see what I mean by distraction?  The Universe is out to get me.  I swear to you it is.)  I fell asleep that night looking forward to another productive burst the following day; I was actually looking forward to rising early and giving it another go.  Because Monday was awesome.  On Monday, I loved writing.

Then came Tuesday.  I woke this morning at 4:45, hit snooze once, then got up, kindasorta rarin’ to go.  Though I’d slept well, I felt groggier than I had on Monday, but I brushed my teeth, splashed cold water on my face, and headed to the computer.  I then proceeded to sit in front of said computer in a stupefied confusion for the next ninety minutes.  I could not type one word  in front of another.  After twenty minutes of foghead, I finally downshifted to tweaking some old essays that I’m hoping to repurpose someday.  At 6:30 I gave up and crawled back into bed with the Hub.  Would you believe me if I told you that, at this point,  I was almost in tears?  Not because I couldn’t write anything (I’m used to that), but because I’d just wasted so much time.  Precious, irreplaceable, five o’clock in the morning time!  I could have slept longer.  I could have ran eight miles (ish.)  I could have folded the big ‘ol pile of laundry looming on our family room couch.  I could have meditated.  (If I knew how to meditate.  Pointers?)  Anything I’d done would have been more useful than staring at the computer screen, trying to write and writing nothing at all.  Any time spent doing something else would have been better than the time I’d wasted doing nothing at all.  Right?

After my blind and balding ninety minutes, I was mad at Writing.  I was mad that it was so hard, and slow, and required such a nearly painful effort from me.  I was mad that I wasn’t better at it.  I was mad that its long hours produced so little; that they didn’t make me any money, make make me any thinner, make my house any cuter.  And  I was mad that, in spite of this futility, I was still driven to do it.  Why couldn’t I be driven to do something else?  Anything would be more fun than writing; anything would yield better results.  Yet there I was, a pig to its slop, unable to leave it alone.

Sun poured through the blinds and spilled across the bed, lighting up the room while my mood grew dark.  I rolled over and thought the same thing I think every couple of days:  “I’m giving up writing.  For good.  It’s a complete waste of my time.”  Resolved, I got up, got the kids to school, and went for a run.  And while I was running, all I could think about was how mad I was at Writing.  How much I hated it.  How it obviously hated me.  I wrestled with Writing as I pounded the pavement; I berated it and beat it up, wrung it out and hung it to dry.  I’m finished with you–forever!  (I may have yelled this out loud to passing cars.  I can’t be sure.)  The battle raged on for forty minutes, but by the time I came home, fell through the front door and kicked off my shoes, it was over.  I was tired.  And Writing had won.

Because here I sit, humbled and silenced, in front of that blank screen I’d sworn off this morning.  Here I sit, driven to communicate, driven to articulate, driven to understand–regardless of impressive results or the lack thereof.  (It is usually the lack thereof.)  (It is always the lack thereof.)  Here I sit, punching letters on a keyboard to bring life to my ideas and structure to my thoughts.  Here I sit, exploring and explaining, condemning and excusing, listening and learning.  Here I sit, surprised to discover that no time was wasted in this very chair this very morning.  Because had I not spent that ninety minutes hating Writing, I wouldn’t be spending this ninety minutes loving it.  Had I not spent that ninety minutes producing nothing, I would have had to spend this ninety minutes producing nothing.  At some point, Nothing must be produced, it’s just part of the deal.  No writer is afforded the luxury of constant flow.  The vapid time needs to be spent–demands to be spent–and I’m glad that I spent it early in the day.

This morning, that awful blank screen taught me something:  Time spent flailing and failing–with writing or anything else—is never wasted time.  It’s just the dead time between point A and point B, and it requires nothing of us but endurance.  Sometimes things need to clog up so we can savor the rush of unclogging them.  So though I was mad at Writing all morning, I was also thinking about Writing all morning.  Which tells me that, like an unrequited love that often does me wrong, I’m still not ready to let it go.

When you find yourself stuck–on writing, or drawing, or photo-shopping, or child-rearing, or painting that ridiculously high-ceilinged hallway–don’t give up.  Get mad at it, get sad about it, get in a fight with it—and then get back to it.  Put in the vapid time.  Because once the pouting and disappointment are out of the house, there’s room for the creativity to come back in.

Whoa.  This train of thought has taken a surprisingly dramatic turn.  Maybe I’ll just keep it in my journal, to save myself the embarrassment.  Or maybe I’ll post it on my blog, to relish in the embarrassment.  It really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that I sat down in front of that blank screen and I tried, again.  What matters is that I wrote it.

1.  Annie.  This is another one I won’t watch out of principle, for reasons too many to list here.  But one reason is enough:  anyone other than Carol Burnett playing Miss Hannigan is a travesty, my friends—travesty!  And anyone other than Albert Finney playing Daddy Warbucks follows suit.  Don’t mess with perfection.

2.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  See my feelings on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for this one:  sweet, whimsical story devolves to dark, crass creepfest.  The worst part is, this movie seems here to stay.  It’s got a huge following, and runs and re-runs on every tv station, at every kids’ Christmas party, in every kids’ classroom from Thanksgiving to Christmas, every single year.  I can’t tell you how many December afternoons have found me volunteering at the elementary school, quietly laminating candy cane collages, only to overhear Jim Carrey’s slobbery drawl blast into the tender young ears of our children as they haplessly eat their lunch.  This gross caricature of the cartoon classic, combined with the smell of “enchiladas” wafting from the cafeteria, is enough to make me wait and eat lunch when I get home.

I prefer this guy.

3.  Love Affair.  (Based on An Affair to Remember, 1957) The fact that you probably never saw this mushy remake of An Affair to Remember speaks well of your good taste, and points to my bad.  (Disclaimer:  my roommate rented it in college, otherwise I’d plead ignorance.)  How is it that, with our generation’s haughty pride in its intellectual progress and verbal savvy, all of our remakes are so much duller than their 1960s predecessors?  Aren’t we supposed to be the clever generation, with our deadpan humor and raw wit?  As with the remake of Parent Trap, the writers of Love Affair obviously have little faith in their audience’s intelligence; they seem afraid to create any tension between the characters, for fear that it will disrupt the romantic (in this case, sappy) flow of things.  You can’t just put two has-been hotties onscreen (Warren Beatty and Annette Benning, married in real life, gag-o-rama), cue up a drippy soundtrack, and expect viewers to swoon when there’s not a trace of harmonic discord to keep us wondering if they’ll ever get together.  Let Annette Benning roll her eyes and mock Warren Beatty a little, just like Deborah Kerr did to Cary Grant in the original.  It’s ok; we get it.  (see:  We Are Smart Enough.)  We know that lovers can tease and get irritated with one another.  Let them be sarcastic and grumpy sometimes; we can relate.  The best love stories always start with two deeply flawed characters.  Pride and Prejudice.  Wuthering Heights.  Casablanca.  Anna Karenina.  (Well, the love story between Kitty and Levin was beautiful.  That whole Vronsky/Anna/throw-momma-in-front-of-a-train thing thing was a hot mess.)

4.  Jane Eyre, 2011 version.  This was the latest remake in a string of remakes–in fact, so numerous are the versions of this film that I’m not sure any of them qualify as an actual “remake.”  But for the purposes of this post, we’ll dice up the 2011 version.

I had a gaggle of girlfriends over for a special viewing, so excited was I to see yet another film adaption of one of the greatest novels ever.  The movie got decent reviews by the critics, but I personally found it painful.  It was beautifully filmed, richly detailed, well acted—with absolutely no chemistry between Jane and Rochester.  It’s like the movie thought of everything except the passionate love story upon which it was based.  And you don’t cast a hottie to play Rochester (Michael Fassbender, yum.)  See #3:  the leading characters can be imperfect.  We know Rochester is supposed to be unattractive; that’s a big part of the charm in his dark but passionate personality.  He and Jane’s plainness is what we love about their love story; it’s all about their their intelligence, their past tragedies, and their connection with each other.  The fact that most people wouldn’t find Rochester loveable is what makes Jane’s doing so all the better.

Versions of Jane Eyre abound, but one of my faves is Masterpiece Theater’s 2007 version (Rochester is so good in this one, I’m willing to overlook that he’s still a bit too handsome.)  Next I want to see the 1996 version with William Hurt.  I heard it was mass creepy.  Yum.

5.  Karate Kid.  I saved this one for last, because there’s a bad movie remake, and then there is blasphemy.  The remake of Karate Kid, starring whats-his-brat Smith, belongs in the latter.  (I can’t believe I missed this one in my first list; my sharp cousin was kind enough to point it out to me.)  I could wax poetic for pages about all the good things turned bad with this remake, but I know you’re reading this when you should be paying attention to your kids or loving on your Hub, so I’ll make a short list in the name of brevity.  (Which is something I seldom do.)  (Period.)

1.  Daniel Larusso was kind, honest, and respectful.

“Dre” is a total brat.

2.  Daniel adored his mother and treated her with respect.  “Dre” despised his mother.  (see #1:  “total brat.”)

3.  Daniel was thankful for everything he got.  “Dre” spat on everything he got. (His name requires quotes, every time.  Just ’cause.)

4.  Daniel was in high school, up against some serious odds and seriously beefy bullies.  “Dre” was a tween brat up against other tween brats.  We weren’t worried for him like we were for Daniel–eleven-year old bullies just aren’t scary enough.  And so we weren’t as thrilled by his triumph.  Daniel was young enough for kids to relate to and old enough for adults to recognize their awkward teen selves in.  Against the Cobra Kai, who couldn’t love Daniel?

5.  The China setting in the remake was too exotic and thus took the relatable quality out of the movie.  That Daniel was a middle-class kid trying to fit into any-high-school USA is something that most of us can relate to.  The whole China thing was too glitzy and global.  (No offense, China.)

6.  The mom in the remake was boring and weak.  Remember Mrs. Larusso?  LOVED.

7.  The “romance” in the remake was a joke–and a kind of a creepy one at that.  I didn’t need to see two eleven year olds make out.  Daniel and Ali’s romance struck the perfect chord of fresh young love; they didn’t take it too seriously, but it was all from the heart.  Loved.

8.  Daniel Larusso was cool without being “cool.”  His clothes were a little frumpy and dated, even for that time period, his glasses were too big, he rode a dorky bike.  But this was his charm.  He was the cool guy without money; cute without trying too hard.  Unlike his bullies, who had the Izods and convertibles, which made them perfectly delicious villians.  This is why we cheered Daniel on: he was the ultimate, loveable underdog.

Irresistable.   “Dre,” on the other hand, claimed supercoolness from frame one.  Bugged.

9.  In the remake, there was no “wax-on, wax-off!” “paint-the-fence up-and-down, side-to-side!”  “sand-the-floor!”  There was no crane kick practice on the beach.  There was no spaghetti-all-over-his-shirt-at-the-country-club.  There was no Mom picking him and his date up in a station wagon that breaks down.  There was no skeleton-clad bullies chasing down a running shower on Halloween night.  And there was no “You’re the best!” signature song at the All-Valley Karate Tournament.  Come on…these iconic moments are the heartbeats of the movie!  Dang it if listing them doesn’t make me want to watch it all over again.

10.  The writing in the remake was terrible.  No–”terrible” lends it too much weight.  The writing was vapid.  Unoriginal, uninspired, unfunny.  I can’t remember a single scene or phrase from this movie.  I just remember a blur of brattiness against a loud and splashy backdrop.  As opposed to the original, which I’ve been able to quote, frame by frame, since it’s release in 1984.  I was eleven years old; the perfect age to fall truly madly deeply in love with both the movie and its hero.  Thank you, Ralph Machhio, for making my middle-school existence bearable.   Love.