So I’m rereading Northanger Abbey when this quote hits me:
“Her[Catherine’s] father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard-“
Ouch!
Oooooooh! That is a major burn. Obviously there was a Richard in her life who really upset her so much that she included this in her novel.
I have to say that I have wanted to write a novel for a while, whether or not I will is yet to be determined, but if I do and I have an annoying character that I want everyone to hate and I am going to name it after my annoying and rude coworker from my previous job, Wanda. You can read more about that relationship in my post, Five to Nine.
So what Richard ticked her off so bad that he had his name thrown in the mud? Some people think she is talking about Richard III. But I don’t know-for her to have such a dislike I’m thinking it refers to someone who is more personally connected.
Well whoever he is-Jane got the last word. As they say:
So today’s Christmas Carol is one I am sure you have never heard of. In fact I can’t recall where I first was introduced to it, but I love this carol.
Today’s is I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In). This song was printed sometime in the 17th century, the most known version being printed in 1833. Many question the three ships, as how would three ships come to Jesus in Bethlehem.
I think it was a way to blend modern times with the biblical three wise men.
Now to end on a happier note, today’s carol is A Holly Jolly Christmas. This song was written by Johnny Marks in the early 1960s, and was sung by Burl Ives in the Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
This is one of the top 25 holiday songs written by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers).
It was #30 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in 1998, and #5 on the holiday chart in 2011.
I just love how sweet the song is as we are wished a holly, jolly, and wonderful Christmas.
This was one of Lifetimes “real life” intense dramas. It is cheesy, silly, but still creepy and enjoyable.
*Spoiler Alert*
This is the story is of young, beautiful, Gillian Casey. She was adopted as a child into the Casey family, and seems agreeable and sweet, that is until something doesn’t go her way. Then the dark side comes out.
She is able to attract good-looking, rich men; BUT manages to scare them away when she starts acting crazy.
We start the movie where her current boyfriend dumps her. She becomes incensed!
Grab your torches and sharpen your pitchforks!
And takes off to his apartment destroying everything of worth in the building. Scratching and marking up art, ripping things apart, spray paint, etc.
She then goes back to working on finding a guy on the internet.
Besides her ex-boyfriend, Gillian is also “dating” her boss. She works for a married doctor, and was able to get the position by seducing him. She hasn’t slept with him yet, but most of the other staff assume she is. She’s been able to ward the doctor off by always saying something has come up: mom, sister, etc. In return she has a great job, a car, extra money, etc. But the doctor is getting a bit fed up with waiting.
Meanwhile, Andy Collins has had a string of bad luck with girls.
He has yet to find “the one”, so he goes to the computer to find the girl of his dreams. Instead he finds Gillian.
AAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The two start dating, and Andy falls head over heels for her. She falls for his bank account.
Now Gillian is extremely embarrassed by her mom and home. Her mom recently hurt herself, and is recovering. Instead of helping her, all Gillian does is complain. In fact, instead of just complaining she is incredibly rude and horrible to her mother. Always yelling and screaming at her.
She wants to separate herself from her “poor, disgusting” mother, that she asks her sister if she can stay the night, and has Andy pick her up from there.
Gillian is supposed to meet Andy’s mom and has nothing she feels is acceptable. She goes to a fancy boutique, and tries on tons of clothes.
She loves how she looks, but can’t afford the price. Instead she shoplifts it and takes off.
That next date, she meets Andy’s mom and sister, who both like her but feel something is off. Also who happens to be there, but the boutique owner. She threatens to reveal all unless Gillian pays for the dress. Gillian returns it damaged with some money.
You shouldn’t have messed with me
Meanwhile, Gillian’s ex has discovered her parting gift. He gets extremely angry and heads over to speak to Gillian. He asks her why she destroyed everything, including his favorite picture. She tells him she was upset.
Well he is extremely angry and tells her that he is thinking about pressing charges. Of which will make things horrible for her as he knows all about her past issues with men and the destruction she has spread.
Gillian manages to persuade him not to press charges if she pays him. She gives him her car, and promises more money later.
She weasels more money out of the doctor, but that’s not enough. She has to finally give it up, that weekend or else. Gillian doesn’t want to, but she feels she has no other choice. Andy will be out this weekend, in Boston with friends.
That night, Gillian and Doctor Harris are at the hotel and who happens to see them? Andy’s sister Heather.
Gillian and Dr. Harris go upstairs. While she is “getting ready”, Gillian spikes Dr. Harris’ drink. She then goes down to see Andy’s sister and try to explain that she’s not really dating the doctor. Andy’s sister won’t hear any of it, she in fact yells at Gillian that she is going to tell Andy. Gillian gets so angry that she pushes Andy’s sister, and knocks her down the stairs. Killing her.
She immediately runs back to her room, and discovers that Dr. Harris is missing.
The next day, Dr. Harris is angry with her. He knew that something felt off after her drank the drink Gillian poured for him. He woke up alone with no memory and immediately went to his clinic to check himself for having been drugged. He fires Gillian and sends her on her way.
Meanwhile, Andy has returned home and heard about his sister. While grieving, he checks his phone which he had accidentally left behind while in Boston. As he looks at it, he sees that his sister left a voicemail. He checks it and hears that Gillian was seen at the hotel with somebody.
He goes to Gillian’s house to see her (really Gillian’s sister’s house). There he finds no Gillian, but gets the real address. When he gets to Gillian’s mother’s house, she reveals that a lot of what he knew about Gillian is all a lie, a huge lie.
He leaves to process this.
When Gillian gets home she finds out that her mom spilled the beans. Gillian becomes so angry that her mother ruined everything she starts strangling her.
This isn’t the first time she done such behavior to her mother. When she was suffering from a heart attack, Gillian took a long time to actually call for help.
Before Gillian can finish her mother off, Andy and the cop investigating Heather’s death come and save the day.
Gillian goes off to jail, and the film ends with Andy visiting his sister’s grave, Lifetime once again warning you to stop looking for love on the internet as it only ends in death.
And any film review of Horrorfest is incomplete without the facebook cover/poster I make. 🙂
So I don’t know about you all but my family actually cuts down our Christmas Tree. We always go the day after Thanksgiving to the black friday sales, and then a few hours to the forest to cut down our tree.
Now some of you may wonder why we would go through so much trouble? Why not buy a fake one? Well I’ll tell you why:
1) The permit to cut down a tree only costs $10. That means you can get as big a tree you want for only ten bucks! For instance we got a 12 foot tree for 5% of the cost of buying one from a lot.
2) Cutting down your Christmas tree is very good for the environment.
I know many of you have just read that and are probably saying to yourselves this girl is stupid, but just hear me out. You see trees grow in clumps and while that is a great thing as they share resources, protect each other, pollinate each other, etc. However, at times this can be bad. Sometimes trees grow too close together that they are unable to get their share. Often times one, or all, the trees will die as there isn’t enough to go around. Cutting down your own Christmas tree from one of the clumps means that one side might be a little thinner (you just aim that side in the corner) and it helps the other trees grow big and strong. Also periodically clearing out sections of trees protects them in the summer when there are threats of forest fires. And of course, this cutting isn’t a free for all. You can only cut from certain sections, therefore protecting a wider majority of trees. You also have restrictions on the tree size. Your trunk can only have a diameter of 6 inches and there is a restriction of high the stump can be. These regulations keep older trees protected, along with making sure people are not cutting off the tops and leaving the rest of the tree.
That’s a lot!
3) Cutting your own tree means that it will last longer. You see one of the biggest problems with tree lots is that these trees are cut at the end of November, shipped over to the city they will be sold, and hanging around on pavement until they are sold. They are not getting the same TLC or water and a lot of them die really early, shedding tons of pine needles along the way. Now when you cut your own tree, it is nice and fresh and lasts much, much longer. As I said we always get our tree at the end of November and take it down at the end of January. We could keep it up longer, but usually by February we are packing up our Christmas stuff. Besides longevity, it also smells absolutely wonderful.
And with cutting down your tree there are always adventures. Three years ago I went with my parents and we brought my two nieces, my nephew, and our dog. We hiked all over the area in the snow looking for the perfect tree.
We finally found it and my dad cut it down using a manpowered saw rather than a chainsaw. I tried to help him but it was hard work and both of us were pooped. He was really tired so I had him rest and had to carry that tree on my own. Let me say, I’m never doing that again. It was sooo heavy! I don’t know how I was able to carry it even for a minute.
After my dad’s rest we finished moving the tree to the truck. After that I had to carry the three kids as the snow embankments had grown larger, and they wouldn’t be able to make it out. Yep, every time I feel like something is too hard, difficult, or heavy, I just remind myself that I carried a tree down a mountainside. I rule!
And this year wasn’t any duller. There was no snow as we’ve been suffering some strong dry spells, but we still had a lot of fun hiking up and down the mountainside for that perfect tree. When we found it we cut it down (using a chainsaw this time) and started to head down the mountainside. Now, we’ve been doing this since I was like 13, but this year something happened that had never happened before.
As we started down the hill trying to bring the tree to the truck, my dad yelled at us to turn the tree as he wanted the weaker side pointed to the ground as that side was to lay in the flatbed. As we turned the tree, BAM! SMACK!
The tree branches kept smacking me in the face. And when I mean kept, I meant it didn’t stop. I guess it was the section of the tree I was in, but I couldn’t see a thing, just branches and branches smacking me in the face.
I felt as if it was like in The Wizard of Oz when the trees come to life and start smacking Dorothy.
It was almost like it was mad at me for me cutting it down.
When we got home we got it out of the truck and was taking it into the house and had to turn the tree again. Now this time I had stood on the opposite side of the tree, hoping that would keep it from hitting me, but now once again tree slap.
Hair everywhere, I can’t see a thing, I’m afraid my glasses might get knocked off and go flying, and I am praying so hard that I do not fall in our pool.
Luckily we get it in the stand and straighten it out. And boy does it look lovely. It kind of makes up for the abuse it gave me.
Now my abuse from the tree branches doesn’t end there. Oh, no! You see after I graduated and interned this summer; I moved back home. I’ve been trying to find a job, but this is pretty much what it is like.
So to fill the time until I am hopefully hired, I am volunteering at quite a few places. One of which is my local museum. So last week I headed down there as it was my turn to work the desk. I brought with me some pine clippings from our tree as the museum was decorating for Christmas. Well it turned out that they didn’t have as many volunteers as they hoped, so they asked me to help with the decorating. I thought okay, it will be fun.
So I thought decorating meant we were going to hang ornaments on the tree.
We were making these giant wreaths.
So I was paired with one of the volunteers and let me just stop and share something with you. Most of the volunteers at the museum are older, like 60+. So the woman I had wasn’t the most helpful. You see you take branches of the tree and put them on a plastic doughnut, tying them down with string or wire as you go along. Adding more and more branches until it is filled. However, that’s not what happened here. My helper laid tons of branches down and then sat down as she couldn’t tie them on. I tried to tie the branches down, but the wreath slipped and they all went crashing to the floor.
Noooooooooo!!!!!!!
Yep, I had to do everything over, but this time I did it right. As I continued, more people came and helped out which was nice. It was a really hard process though as it had rained for the past three days, and all their tree clippings were soaked, making the already hard job of trying to tie them down even harder!
Replace Rothbart with wreath
Finally we had completed it and I was tired. It’s a lot of bending over and being pricked/stabbed by the wire and tree branches. I sat down for a bit but then had to move on to making garland.
OMG it was so hard. You have a piece of rope and have to twist tie the branch to the rope. Yep, those flimsy little twisty ties. IT TAKES FOREVER! You keep placing branches over and over each other to make it fuller and until you cover the rope. This is extremely hard. At times I was trying to use one of those flimsy things to tie three branches together! And because a lot of people had to leave, I had to do it all on my own. By one fourth of the way I wanted to burn the thing.
We had a time limit to this as at noon the county was sending over free labor and the right machine to hang this things high up on the walls. So when every team completed theirs and saw I wasn’t even at the halfway point they all descended on me to help out.
Now you think this would have been nice, and it would have if it was one or two, but there were like five trying to take over the tying or telling me what to do. It made me feel kind of surly:
But I just kept to myself, trying to be professional.
After that my shift was over and I headed home, bearing more battle wounds that those brought on by the slapping tree. My hands were covered in cuts and they hurt sooo bad, my back was aching from bending over, my feet were sore from standing, etc. But hey beauty is pain, and the place sure did look amazing!
janeaustenrunsmylife 