Zen-Mother

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I recently developed a little celebrity crush…I tend to do that…always have. Although this time I am not taking it so well as ALL of my celebrity crushes since I was 5 have been older than me. Imagine how old I felt when I realized the newest actor I am craving is two weeks younger than I. I am getting old and my tastes are not…LOL.

Anyway…recently I am loving Alex O’Loughlin (pronounced O’Locklin) an Australian actor. I first saw him in the new series Moonlight so of course I had to try and get my hands on everything he ever acted in and to start off that was 3 movies I bought off Amazon. Two were wonderful and one sucked.

The first was the sucky one and as I told my husband it was just wrong…on sooo many levels…and I am fairly “open minded” The movie, Feed, was about sexual fetish. Specifically it was about feeders and gainers. This was not a new concept for me as I have heard of it before on a kinky podcast I used to listen to. Basically a feeder is just what they sound like…they feed their mate and the gainer…gains weight. Most couples consist of a fit male and a grossly obese woman and the movie was the same. My fave new actor was a young, fit, married man who had a 600 pound woman on the side. He and his gainer have a web site…where they share their gaining adventure with other feeds and gainers AND unbeknownst to the woman…people were taking bets on when she will die. An Aussie cop travels to Ohio to bring the feeder down and finds something even more horrifying…I won’t even go into all that happened but it was pretty awful. The ONLY interesting thing about the movie was that you got to see Alex’s tattoos. AND they were awesome. I was wondering continually if they were real or just for the movie but the third movie of his that I watched confirmed that they are real. I am such a sucker for tats on a man. My hubby refused to watch the movie but he did watch a bit with Alex’s tattoos and agreed that they were “way cool”.

The second movie was called The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant and it is the true story of Mary Bryant a Brit who was sentenced to 7 years in an Australian penal colony for stealing a bonnet and some food. On the journey she meets Will Bryant and they align to make conditions more bearable but they are still very bad. There is very little food for them, they almost drown when the ship is under storm as they are locked in the bowel of the ship and Mary has to give birth to her first baby during the trip….the child of one of her jailors in Britain.

When they get to Australia things look to be bit brighter initially, despite a VERY graphic mass rape scene as men and women prisoners, who were separated during the journey, are now allowed to co-mingle. Mary and Will are allowed to marry and have a ramshackle home to raise Mary’s daughter and their son that soon follows. Since Will is a fisherman he makes an arrangement with the colony admin to catch fish for the whole colony and keep 1/12 of the bounty as payment. Everything is going fairly well until this arrangement collapses as food becomes scarce for everyone and hundreds begin to starve and die or get sick and die. Mary vows to never let that happen to her children so she and Will and a handful of other prisoners plan to make a getaway. Their plan centers upon stealing supplies for the trip that are obtained when Mary takes up with an officer and moves into his quarters to steal away his key as needed. Although heart broken, Will understands that Mary will do whatever she has to do to be free and he supports her.

They pull off their escape and travel 4000 miles on a one heck of a journey to land in Dutch occupied territory.  All is well for awhile and they live very comfortably among some great new people until the officer that Mary wronged comes after her AND the man she really loves. Everything goes down hill from there and it is a very tragic story but still very touching. After all she goes through and everything and everyone she loses she is pardoned by the British government. Oh…I am getting teary thinking of it.

 Okay I am on to the third movie…which was light hearted and fun. Called The Oyster Farmer, Alex plays a man that robs a fish market and sends the stolen money to a remote osyter farming community where he is working for the summer. He starts to panic when his package gets dumped in the river when the mailman has a stroke. He then tries to figure out which of these community members has found his money and he makes great some friends along the way…until money or no…he can’t resist making a life for himself there. This movie was REALLY cute and it confirmed that those awesome tats are REAL. I  would love to show you a pic I found of them but it is a naked pic from Feed so I won’t post it. But you are missing out.

Here is a YouTube video of the Mary Bryant love story:

Technorati Tags: alex O’loughlin, Moonlight, Mary Bryant, Will Bryant, Feed, The Oyster farmer

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Thanks to Mother Talk I had the great pleasure recently of reading The Right Words at the Right Time Volume 2 : Your Turn by Marlo Thomas and friends. I have loved Marlo Thomas for years for her charitable work and her dedication to children through the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. I also love the topic of the book. Who hasn’t heard the words they needed to hear right at the specific moment when they helped us the most? Sometimes it can just bring a bit of encouragement, sometimes it can be a nudge of motivation, and other times it might be life changing. This books shares stories that illustrate all of this.

It reminded me of some of the times I heard just what I needed to. One that always comes to mind was a day sitting on a beach with my best friend watching a cute guy fish nearby. He was a bit younger and a little wild with a not so reputable past… but I liked him…ALOT. Most of friends felt that I should be setting my sites on older, more established more mature men. Like the ones reading their Bibles at the camp right that moment. I felt like I was being pressured to go in a direction not motivated by love but by security…both financial and religious. That day I let it all out to my best friend and explained how much I liked this guy and how I didn’t want what everyone else seemed to think was best for me. She just looked at me like I had grown a second head and than said “Girl (as she always called me) if you want him…go get him.” That was light bulb moment for me…realizing that duh..it was my choice! I made a decision right then and there and that guy fishing has been my best friend now for 14 years and my husband for nearly ten years. And two major contenders that everyone else thought I was better suited for both ended up in serious marital and personal trouble. I needed to follow my heart…not what other people told me I should do and want.

That is what is so special about this book. It is basically a collection of essays written by everyday men and women from farm communities to big city office cubicles and from hospital wards to prison. These people all tell how the right words at the right time affected their lives for the better or helped become something they never dreamed they could be.

The first story had me in tears as a discouraged navy officer hears the “right” words from a waitress in a fast food restaurant. Another story that had me in tears was that of a man whose fiancé died in the World Trade Center towers on 9-11. A chance encounter at the base of the destruction led him to a schoolgirl far away and the chance to see that life would go on for him.

There was an amusing story about a troubled kid that was still getting into “trouble” at 25 and when she lands herself in jail she learns and important lesson from a prostitute in the same cell. A man doing time in prison learns a little something from an inmate and decides to make the most of his time “doing time” and starts writing a prison newspaper while incarcerated and he begins to win writing awards. When he gets out he becomes a full time writer and a full time good citizen. It really is an inspirational book with many great bits of wisdom and good advice..and maybe even the words you need to hear …right now.

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Here is a video for my favorite TV show right now set to the theme song for it. I LOVE this show and I will go into a spiral of depression if it gets cancelled after this first season.

Okay…I am joking…but only a little. I have this weird habit of loving shows where the leading character is a dead ringer for my hubby…and they have some mannerisms that are the same as well…this cute eyebrow thing and a love for uh…um…showering (see video). It is is just too awesome that I can buy all the episodes from iTunes….muwhaww.

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