Something Borrowed

Last night I went on a date with my friend Karen. We ate mexican food and saw a movie. Really, what better way is there to spend a night than eating mexican food and watching movies?

I've really been wanting to see Bridesmaids but I had just leant Karen the book Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, so I felt it was appropriate that we see that instead. I never reviewed that book on my book blog because I read it before I started the book blog - but the short and sweet of it is that it's a great vacation/beach read. Not going to change your life but you will finish it very quickly, it's quite interesting.

I had heard the movie was terrible so I didn't have high hopes. I needed to see something mindless. I'm not sure if it was my low expectations that made the movie good, but it was good. So if you're looking for something to see and you have already seen Bridesmaids (I would have chosen that first if not for my friend having just finished the book), give Something Borrowed a chance.

Also, make sure you look out for the Emily Giffin cameo in the movie - she's sitting next to Marcus and Rachel in Central Park reading the sequel to Something Borrowed, called Something Blue (also worth reading). Thought that was a cute nod. Quite a quick shot though so don't blink or you'll miss her!

Are you there, Wufus? It's me, Bridget.

I love me some Rufus Wainwright, and I think you should too. Applicable lyrics today:

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

"cigarettes and chocolate milk
these are just a couple of my cravings
everything it seems i like's a little bit stronger
a little bit thicker
a little bit harmful for me

if i should buy jellybeans
have to eat them all in just one sitting
everything it seems i like's a little bit sweeter
a little bit fatter
a little bit harmful for me

and then there's those other things
which for several reasons we won't mention
everything about them is a little bit stranger
a little bit harder
a little bit deadly

it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted

sitting here remembering me
always been a shoe made for the city
go ahead, accuse me of just singing about places
with scrappy boys faces
have general run of the town
playing with prodigal songs
takes a lot of sentimental valiums
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty
you little old doll with a frown

you got to keep in the game
maintaining mystique while facing forward
i suggest a reading of 'a lesson in tightropes'
or 'surfing your high hopes' or 'adios kansas'

it isn't very smart
tends to make one part so broken-hearted

still there's not a show on my back
holes or a friendly intervention
i'm just a little bit heiress, a little bit irish
a little bit tower of pisa whenever i see you
so please be kind if i'm a mess
cigarettes and chocolate milk"

And yes I'm using my blog as my new emo away message vehicle. YOU LIKE IT.

Another reason Grey's Anatomy is THE BEST.

"There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone, and then I fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love? And then you don't have it? What if you like it? And lean on it? What if you shape your life around it? And then...it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is, death ends. This? It could go on forever," Meredith Grey

Ladies and Gentlemen

Do you guys remember this? It's worth revisiting.

Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen) by Baz Lurhmann:

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99,
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proven by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering
experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your

choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…"

to my friends - thank you for working hard with me to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle. you're the best. remember that, because it's a compliment.

deep thoughts.com/young musings.

When I was in elementary school, I thought that when I was in high school I'd be driving a BMW convertible (I was an asshole in elementary school...just ask Lizzy).

When I was in high school, I thought that when I was in college I'd meet my future husband and I'd figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

When I was in college, I thought that after I graduated I'd love my first job, but I'd only be there for about two years before I'd move on. Where would I move on to? I figured by that point I'd DEFINITELY have met my future husband and we'd decide together where we'd go.

I was wrong.

About everything.

Well, except the BMW convertible, but it was about 10 years later than I thought it would be ;-)

Never have I felt like I've been headed down the wrong path in my life in general. In my professional life? Yes, for sure. I still think I'm on the right path, but maybe the space between milestones is just longer than I originally thought. Maybe the milestones are in a different order. You know what they say - and by they I mean John Lennon - "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

I'm not sure where I'm going with this - and by this I mean both this blog post and life in general. Is planning futile? Is it true that if you want to make God laugh you should tell him about your plans? Is it better to just let go and let life happen to you? How do you strike the right balance? To make sure that you're headed in the right direction but you're not marching forward so rigidly that you totally lose it if you get blown off path? That you're not focusing so intently on the goal that you don't see what you pass along the way?

No seriously, I'm asking you for answers here.

Is anything absolute? When I was younger I had all these thoughts of "I am this way, I am that way, I would do this, I would never do that." Some things hold true, others don't. If you define yourself by a list of things and one by one those things change...when do you yourself change?

I'm 27 now and maybe I don't know quite as much about who I am as I thought I did, but I guess I know more about who I'm not.

Quotes from The Magicians by Lev Grossman

This time with feeling. I reread The Magicians and thought you might like to see some of my favorite quotes so that maybe you'd want to read it too.

"He let himself unclench a little. Just slightly, he stopped bracing for the blow from above, and for the first time he seriously considered the idea that it might not come at all," p41

"His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between" p64

"It occurred to him, long after it should have, that he wasn't the only person here who had problems and felt like an outsider. Alice wasn't just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness. She was a person with her own hopes and feelings and history and nightmares. In her own way she was as lost as he was," p67

"When he saw Julia, he searched himself for the old love he used to feel for her. It wasn't gone, but it was a dull, distant ache, still there but healed over - just the shrapnel they couldn't remove," p72

"The entire time he'd been at Brakebills, through First Year, the exams, the whole disaster with Penny, right up until the night he joined the Physical Kids, Quentin had been holding his breath without knowing it. He realized only now that he'd been waiting for Brakebills to vanish around him like a daydream. Even aside from the many and varied laws of thermodynamics that were violated there on a regular basis, it was just too good to be true. It was like Fillory that way. Fillory never lasted forever. Ember and Umber promptly kicked the Chatwins out at the end of every book. Deep down Quentin felt like a tourist who at the end of the day would be herded back onto some dirty, lumbering, snorting tour bus - with ripped vinyl seats and overhead TVs and a stinking toilet - and shipped home, clutching a tacky souvenir postcard and watching as the towers and hedges and peaks and gables of Brakebills dwindled in the rearview mirror. But it hadn't happened. And now he understood. he really got, that it wasn't going to happen. He'd wasted so much time thinking, It's all a dream, and It should have been somebody else, and Nothing lasts forever. It was time he started acting like who he was: a nineteen year old student at a secret college for real, actual magic," p106

"Janet was about as annoying as a person could be and still be your friend, but Quentin was never bored around her. She was passionately loyal, and if she was obnoxious it was only because she was so deeply tender-hearted. It made her easily wounded, and when she was wounded she lashed out. She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone," p108

"You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective. Something like that. Or otherwise what was the point? He didn't know if he could explain it to Josh. But maybe he could show him," p133

"It was an amazing outpouring of collective joy. Quentin had forgotten he was capable of that emotion, the way a lost spelunker feels like there was never such a thing as sunlight, that it was just a cruel fiction," p154

"What was he going to do? What exactly? Every ambition he'd ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity," p210

"I got my heart's desire, he thought, and there my troubles began," p220

"She always kept a cool head in difficult moments, maybe because she tended to be so out of control so much of the rest of the time," p233

"'What are you, a child? You got confused? Why didn't you just end it, Quentin? You obviously lost interest a long time ago. You really are a child, aren't you? You're obviously not enough of a man to have a real relationship. You're not even enough of a man to end a real relationship. Do I have to do absolutely everything for you? Or you know what it is? You hate yourself so much, you'll hurt anybody who loves you. That's it, isn't it? Just to get even with them for loving you. I never saw that before now.'" p254

Cheers

jamming to this currently.

"Life's too short to be sitting around miserable

People gonna talk whether you doing bad or good, yeah..."

"Oh, let the Jameson* sink in

I drink to that, yeah yeah

Don't let the bastards get you down

Turn it around with another round"

*I prefer Jack myself but I'll let it go.