If You Belonged Here

Polly Has Experience

I never thought experienced mattered worth a nickel until I got some. I mean, I'm smart. I know I'm smart. And I'm conscientious and hardworking.

Well, I used to be conscientious and hardworking.

Anyway.

I figured I was as capable as the next person because what I didn't know I could be taught. Quickly. So what difference did experience make, right? Not much.

I had half a point there, people. The other half I missed. But the part I had, well, I was right about the experience not mattering to my potential employer. I'd manage just fine. Better than fine. I'd be the best little worker bee in the hive.

The part I missed wasn't how experience would benefit my employer. I might have been young, arrogant, and overly confident, but that confidence wasn't misplaced. I could do whatever the job required, come hell or high water--as my Nana used to say. The part I missed was that I have no particular affinity for hell or high water.

If there's going to be hell or high water, people, I prefer to not know about it. I don't just mean watch it from a safe distance, I mean truly-ignorance-is-"let-them-eat-cake"-bliss. If my neck is going to be on the chopping block for it someday, well, fair enough. But why meet misery halfway?

In any case, experience is a handy thing for a person who hates surprises, likes to plan, and would really rather not have to wonder what is going to happen. Experience is the difference between a gasp and a sigh. If you haven't got it, you're going to spend a lot of time gasping.

Sigh.

Moving on. The thing is that now that I have experience, I can anticipate life and people and how those two things happen together with such ease that occasionally I appear clairvoyant. Only I'm not. Really. It's more like I remembered to wear my glasses to the train station and everyone else maybe forgot theirs at home. I'm just looking up at the big schedule and clock on the wall and matching the numbers to the trains, not conjuring spirits.

If only the trains never broke down. If only there were no operator errors. If only--if only a lot of things, people, because here's where experience breaks down for me: having the schedule is no guarantee. I can still end up stranded in East Nowhere, just like anybody else. In the meantime, someone who never even glanced at the schedule, just boarded a train completely at random, can find themselves transported to a free outdoor concert, hosted by their favorite performers, on a sunny summer day.

Not entirely likely, but not entirely impossible either.

And here's where experience picks up for me again, people: so long as a person has money, one can always just rent a car. One with GPS.

You know how I love GPS.

GPS is better than experience, it's guidance. Oh, now that I have experience, how I do covet me some guidance. I want to be guided, people. Lead by divine wisdom. Preferably not off the side of a mountain, but lead never-the-less.

Sheesh.

None of it is enough, people--not intelligence, not work ethic, not conscientiousness, not experience, not guidance. None of it is enough. None of it is a promise that everything happens in a way that makes sense, that everyone gets what they deserve, and all things begun are neatly and satisfyingly ended.

But it's a place to start,

Bookgirl is Begging the Question 10

Okay kids, it's January. Which means one thing: It's cold. And dark. And dreary.

Which I guess technically is three things. Whatever.

While my love affair with New York will be back in full effect in a couple of months, right now we could use a time out. And possibly couples therapy.

Why does this matter to you?

Because you like me. And I REALLY need a laugh.

Please make me laugh.

So here's the question:

What would you do for a million dollars?

Diosa has a Supernatural Crush

If you'd asked me in high school or college, I would have told you that I didn't like science fiction. Now, I grew up on Steven King, Dean Koontz and Anne Rice, but I considered that clearly horror, not science fiction. I also watched Buffy like I'd found my new religion, but vampires were not science fiction.  It was similar to the way Blackstone told me for years that he hated Mexican food.

One day I had to lay it out for him - "You eat tacos, nachos, quesilidias, burritos and enchilidas. You have to stop saying you hate Mexican." 

It wasn't until I found myself teaching a science fiction class to a bunch of high school seniors that I realized I was a science fiction fan. I finally had to admit to myself that it wasn't just horror that made my heart beat faster. It was my first exposure to Orson Scott Card and I was in love. I actually read Speaker for the Dead first, before Ender's Game. It didn't spoil any of the experience for me. Ender's Game is my favorite book of all time. And if you've seen Avatar, which of course I have, you'll see quite a few similar themes and correlations. All the way from space travel and aliens, to the mother tree and the very gray area between science and religion. Actually, Blackstone will tell you it's Dances with Wolves in space. I disagree. I hated Dances with Wolves, but I do see where he's coming from.

If you haven't seen Avatar yet, you should get on that. It definitely deserved the Golden Globe for best picture.

My love of horror and science fiction appears to be genetic. And it's not just my love either, it's Blackstone's too. We're not generally one of those couples that fight over which movie to go see. It annoys me no end when he starts reading one of my books before I'm finished, which has happened on more than one occasion. It's limited to science fiction, though, and he's not into vampires, so it's not a constant problem. We've both read the entire Ender and Bean series and all of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels. So it's not surprising it's in my kid's genes too. Well, I'm not sure if LT is coming to it quite so independently or fanatically as Trouble. He hasn't had much option in his exposure. Trouble, however, was probably one of very few two-year-olds asking to watch Frodo.

A few months ago, I started getting Supernatural from Netflix. Polly had raved about it and it seemed right up my alley. I was also hoping that since it was a prime time show that it wouldn't be too racy and violent for the kids. Honestly, it's gotten quite racy and violent as the show progressed. It's not something I would recommend watching with your five and eight-year-old. The recent episode with the AntiClaus would be more than your average kid should be exposed to. But my kids are already hooked. Blackstone turned his nose up the first time I put it on. That lasted all of about five minutes and Sam and Dean had him.  I think the cool car and the classic rock didn't hurt.  So Supernatural has been our family viewing series of choice. We unfortunately just watched the end of season four last night. It was very sad. We have been watching season five, though I think we missed some of the start of the season.

Trouble definitely has some fantasies of himself and his brother growing up to be Sam and Dean Winchester.  It's quite ironic that Trouble is the blue-eyed, fair-haired older brother and LT is the brown-eyed, dark-haired younger brother that I can totally see growing up to tower over his older brother. Trouble is still taller now, but LT eats his brother under the table and they're only a couple of sizes apart. Trouble's also a serious junk food junkie. It's really kind of eerie. Of course, I'm not dead, and none of us are demon hunters, so that's where the similarity ends.

The great thing about science fiction is that the story lines are truly limitless. You can travel through time, die and come back, visit heaven and hell, dream walk, or get trapped in a sitcom. Nothing is impossible. My favorite episode is where Sam and Dean get trapped in a series of sitcoms by the Trickster. That one is precious. Sam and Dean frolicking in the park, all smiles and sunshine and puppy dogs. I thought I was going to bust a gut. Sam forced to do one of those terrible commercials for genital herpes medication. Who hasn't dreamed on forcing that kind of misery one of their enemies? And their dad, the same actor that played Denny on Grays anatomy showing up as ghost in Dr. Sexy MD? Or when Dean caught ghost disease and was all of the sudden afraid of his own shadow and started screaming like a little girl at the slightest provocation? Hilarious. I have witnessed Polly scream like that when we went to see Candy Man. Screen cut to a toilet bowl and Polly screamed for all she was worth. It wasn't as entertaining as watching a tough guy, demon hunter scream like a girl, though.

So dish. Science Fiction. You love it or you hate it? Are you Sam girl or Dean girl? I love the episode where they realize Chuck has been writing novels about them not realizing that Sam and Dean are real, and then they find their fan groups online and discover that some girls are Sam girls, others are Dean girls and others are both.

"Don't they realize we're brothers?" Dean asked disgusted.

Uh, yeah. I'm sure they do.

But the beauty is, that in real life, they're not.