Easily Enchanted

So I've been having a hard time for the past week. I'll sleep for hours, and still feel exhausted. Everything is a struggle. Cutting up Girl's chicken cutlet has felt like the hardest task in the world. Line-editing a manuscript should not take me an entire week. And crossing the street while horns blare and headlights blind should be commonplace, not shocking.

I miss Hawaii. I miss the warmth and the sunshine and the ocean. I miss my parents. I even miss their smelly-ass dog. In Hawaii, I got to sit and read. A book, not a manuscript about addiction-recovery or menstruation or religion. I was so relaxed, I even stopped knitting in Hawaii.

Everything here is hard, and demands so much of me. And it's a life I chose, and would still choose over again (since sitting at my parents house, no matter what my mother says, is not a life), but that doesn't mean it isn't kinda tough sometimes. Especially when we have the kids almost every day while I'm still adjusting.

So, given all that, we needed to find something to do to entertain them on freezing cold Saturday. So, even though they'd already seen Enchanted, we took them again. Guy sat me down on his right, and put the kids on his left, and set about doling out popcorn and candy and whatall.

And I spent two hours in a state of utter delight.

Enchanted starts off as a very silly movie. Disney snarking at itself is all well and good and pretty funny, but that's about as far as it goes. Shrug.

But then something happened...some unnoticeable moment where it became something more, where Disney said yes, we know, we know, but look--this is what we do. And it was suddenly the sweetest and happiest movie I'd seen in a very long time.


Not that it wasn't still funny--oh, it was. That bouncy-ball of a prince, the eye-rolls of Patrick Dempsey, the spot-on delivery and physical comedy of Amy Adams--all hilarious. But I kind of expected that.

I didn't expect it to be sexy.

And oh, it was. Not lewd, just some damn fine chemistry--another thing I haven't seen in a very long time (Pride and Prejudice? Was that the last time? Crikey).

And romantic. And there was singing and dancing. And pretty dresses.

What does it mean that I am now in such a fabulous mood (and might I mention, even as I type this, flying through my line-edit)? Part of me thinks it shouldn't be that easy--that my problems are actual problems, and can't be solved with a trip to the movies.

But then, they seem to be. Maybe I'm just that shallow. Or just that mercurial.

If I knew how to turn a cartwheel, I'd be flip-flopping my way past the cubicles. As it is, I skip. I'm waving and smiling at everybody. I might go have Pinkberry for lunch. We have the kids tonight--and I'm looking forward to it. Maybe we'll invent some more Pictionary phrases--impossible to draw Pictionary phrases, like Cliff Clavin, Captain Underpants, or Cheerio Baby. Maybe we'll bake. Maybe we'll dance.

It may not be warm here, but I have lots of things that make me happy. I have a fun boss, and Anthropologie, and a dried rose on my desk, and Christmas coming, and friends, and two demanding but everlastingly loving stepchildren.

And I've also got a guy who took me to see Enchanted again on Sunday.

What more could anyone ask?