This is along the lines of “not figuring things out”, something I have yet to perfect. I’ve noticed that when something that throws me for a loop happens, my first impulse is still to grab the problem solving hat and find that perfect solution.

But there have been some areas in my life where I’ve been slowly leaving behind this habit of thought for good. Work and finances both spring to mind.

So today I got a request from a client for a very big job. And as luck would have it, two other assignments got shifted to the following month. Perfect. In Field Center terms, I’m amazed but not surprised.

Plus, I really love when this kind of thing happens.

Sometimes you have one of those moments that give you such joy. Tonight was one of them. A while back when I was on my book buying binge, I ended up placing holds on several books at the library, mainly for books that I wanted to read to Dylan.

We read a few books every night, and lately he’s been coming out of his “Brand Name” phase (ie “I want the Backyardigans book” or “I want the Dora book”) so I’ve been taking full advantage.

The book I picked up today is called My Many Colored Days, by Dr. Seuss.

It’s a beautiful book, about colors and feelings. I ended up reading it to Dylan three times. He didn’t want any other book.

So now I’m having one of those “when you pick just the right book for your child” moments.

The other night I wasn’t feeling well - dizziness brought on, I’m sure, by the hours I spent playing soduko on my son’s Nintendo DS. You can’t blame me. I’d never played it before; had a block in my mind about it, actually. You know. When you think, “if everyone’s playing it, I’m not going to touch it with a ten foot pole.”

So much for principles. I’d picked up my son’s DS, decided to give the Brain Age game I’d given him a try, and after finally whittling down my brain age to a half-way decent 39, clicked on the Soduko section.

Well, no one had ever told me that Soduko is just really a logic problem. For some reason (all those numbers did it, I think), I thought it involved MATH. I have nothing against math. I was actually quite good at math when I was in school. But doing math for fun isn’t something I think about too frequently.

Anyway, I’ve always loved doing those logic problems in the Dell crossword magazines, so I was hooked for the afternoon. Which leads me to the dizziness, which I am sure resulted from hours staring cross-eyed at that tiny Nintendo DS screen madly jotting down numbers.

And the dizziness lead to a Belle’s Movie Night. A Belle’s Movie Night has a different flavor than, say, a Family Movie Night, or a Couples Movie Night. On a Belle’s Movie Night, which, coincidentally, tends to happen only when I’m feeling kind of dizzy or otherwise under the weather and the thought of reading a book actually turns my stomach even more (which is serious stuff, since reading is my top favorite activity in the world. Yes, it ranks up there, even above sex and food).

It’s then that I claim the dvd player for my own, and pop in those movies that I love. So the other night, for the first time in a long while, I watched one of my absolute favorites, Shirley Valentine.

Shirley Valentine is definitely a woman’s movie. Even Ward, who actually likes watching most chick flicks, when he’s not watching some Stephen Segal or Jet Li movie, doesn’t like it all that much (mind you, he always says he does, plopping down on the sofa next to me, but eventually his eyes glaze over and I have to keep jostling him to wake him up).

Shirley Bradshaw is a housewife in her 40s who’s been wondering what happened to Shirley Valentine, the girl she was. Where did that girl go? And how did she end up stuck in a boring life, children grown and moved out, husband who lives by routine, far removed from the fun and loving person he once was.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Shirley, who accepts a friend’s offer of a ticket to Greece, finds herself fulfilling a dream of sitting at the water’s edge, drinking wine and watching the sunset. And she asks herself, why are we given all of this life, when we don’t use it? All of this unused life, gone to waste.

It’s mainly a movie about a woman who learns to fall in love with herself all over again, to live life the way she once dreamed. I simply love this movie.

By the movie’s end, which Ward has valiantly struggled to stay awake through, I’m raring for more and Ward’s raring for bed. Off he went to bed, while I fished around for another favorite: Sleepless in Seattle. Don’t give the New Yorker review that’s up on Amazon another thought. This movie is magical.

Both my teenagers joined me for this one, mainly because the three of us have a little bit of history around this. One fall when they were 7 and 9, respectively, I came down with the flu. It was the worse bout of flu I ever had, lasting 11 long days. I lost ten pounds as a result. Since I was sick, I couldn’t really do much except lay in bed. And for some reason, the only movie I wanted to watch, over and over again, was Sleepless in Seattle. So every night they’d come into my room and we’d sit and watch this movie.

I think that’s why whenever any of the three of us think of Sleepless in Seattle, we have these beautiful feelings of togetherness. At least, that’s what usually comes to my mind. And the other night, it was interesting to see that now that they’re older (14 and 17), they understood far more of the movie than before. When they were little, they saw it from Jonah’s perspective. The other night, they figured out the love story part of it. (My son did want to know what tiramasu was. Interestingly enough, the next day, for my birthday, Ward brought out a tiramasu cake.)

Not sure when my next Belle’s Movie Night will be, but I’ve been wanting to watch Eat, Drink, Man, Woman for quite a while now; only problem is, I think it’s in Chinese with subtitles, which means I have to read it, which means I won’t be able to watch it when I’m not feeling well …

Ward and I just spent the night uploading his cooking photos to Flickr and naming them ALL (thank goodness he’s organized and keeps track of what he cooks each day). I know it’s Friday night and all, but when you have kids, you can find those moments of togetherness just about anywhere, doing anything.

Just some random thoughts and bits and pieces that have been floating around in my head this Friday evening:

• It’s interesting how difficult it is to pick a book to read when you have stacks and stacks of unread, to-be-read books all around you.
• Same goes for magazines.
• After five years of an incomplete house, I am finally settling into the version of me that’s unwilling to settle for less than a completed house.
• Field Center rocks. AND the course is now available as an MP3 download.
• Choosing to be the authentic me, I’m seeing all these judgments pop up. Test? I think so.
• It’s time to move the living room furniture around again.
• Lately I’ve been really loving the sound of my husband’s voice - there’s a special something to it that I’ve really been noticing.
• I love my life.
• I am truly blessed when it comes to friends. Also, my online friends now outnumber my within-physical-reach friends.
• Still waiting to hear from high school friends I found via Facebook. It’s very exciting, and brings back a ton of memories.
• I live a vacation life. Took me a while to see this, a while more to fully accept it. It’s nice.

And some links:

• Bethie posted the most beautiful description of Dreamwalking.
• I haven’t seen the Dark Knight yet, but I liked this post about the Dark Knight plot failure.

I am scary when I go on a book-buying binge. It’s something that affects me seasonally; looking back on the past three or four years, it’s something that I tend to do twice a year: first, shortly into the new year, and then in the summer, around my birthday.

My explanation for the New Year buying binge is that there’s usually one book I have on my "gifts you should buy me" list that I don’t get. How this turns into a binge is easy enough. Amazon has really tuned into the psyche of the bookworm so all the book-related buttons I sport have been easily and effortlessly targeted on its site.

In other words, I’m a sucker for books, and I’m always ready and willing to place yet another order. (My credit card would beg to defer.)

My explanation for the annual summer book-buying spree is a little different, though. I embark on this one intentionally. Work-wise, summer is my slowest time. By the end of July I have usually finished reading the books I’ve bought in the two previous sprees (the ones I can manage to find around the house, anyway), so I’m ready for more.

By then, I’ve gone to the library and paid up my fines, so the library’s resources are fully available to me, too. (Ward insists that I am a great civic citizen because I keep the library going financially, but that’s another post.) Usually, after one or two trips to the library, I’ve more or less exhausted the "on the shelves" books that catch my eye.

Here’s where I get scary. When I start my book-buying spree, I will generally open up four tabs in Firefox: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Chapters and my local library’s website. In front of me is my writer’s notebook, throughout whose pages I have scores of book titles jotted down.

I approach it all very methodically. The entire process can take me a couple of days.

I cruise to Amazon.com and check out each book in my notebook. I then run the title through my library’s online catalogue. If a book’s available, great; I either request it, or place a hold on it if it’s at another branch. If nothing comes up, I check Amazon.ca and Chapters. I will then place the book in the shopping cart of site that offers the best price AND has the title in-stock. And if the title isn’t available at either Chapters or Amazon.ca, and I really really want the book (the "really really want the book" part happens a frightening 99% of the time) I will add the book to my cart at Amazon.com.

That’s not the scary part, though. As I check out each title from my notebook, I will also check out interesting looking books that I find in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section, opening each one in a separate tab. When I have two levels of tabs running in Firefox, I stop opening more tabs and start checking out the tabs I’ve opened up.

At the end of the day, I will open up each shopping cart, wince, go through each list to see if I really really want each book in the cart (see note re: a frightening 99% of the time), reluctantly move a very small proportion of the books to my wish list or save for later list, then, taking a deep breath and apologizing to my credit card and bank account, I submit my orders.

About two to three days later, the boxes start arriving. I am plagued with a curious mixture of extreme guilt and giddy anticipation.

Usually during my summer book-buying binge, by the time I get all the new books stacked onto the dining room table, I will be edging back into my busy season work-wise. As a result, many of those books stay unread for way too long, although eventually they all do get read.

This long explanation is merely an introduction to a new category here, "To Be Read". I figured, it’s about time.

Changes! They’re what make life so interesting, and with that in mind - and because I feel like I’ve moved into a new phase in my life - I have decided to restart BelleEnchanted, from scratch. I’ve ditched all my old entries, for a fresh and wonderful new start (an easy thing to do, considering how few old entries there were).

I won’t say I’m committing to blogging here regularly - I’ve learnt that whenever I say something like that, I almost always end up NOT blogging at all. But my intention is to begin a new journey with this personal blog.

I’m looking forward to capturing my thoughts, memories and experiences here at BelleEnchanted!