The Two Karate Kids

     The difference in the remake of movies is an obvious thing. You can see the difference in the actors, the writing and especially the special effects. They quite often are so different that it is not necessary to remark how different they are. Take fir instance The Karate Kid, in its day it was a really good movie and the remake today is a most enjoyable movie experience. What is not the same however are the moviegoers themselves. Those old enough to remember the first movie were not the same people when the remake hit the theaters this past year; age, experience and physical locations all changed for most people in the twenty six years between the two movies and me especially.  

      The first glaring difference to me with these movies is the fact that a few months before the first movie I was pregnant with my first son. I have to say that pregnancy agreed with me totally and carried through the first few months after having my oldest son. My skin was clear, my hair was shiny, and I “glowed”. I really did. I had many compliments to that effect. I walked around feeling spiritually at one with the world around me, The Great Earth Mother.  With the remake of The Karate Kid, I am going through menopause and it does not agree with me at all. The son that I gave birth to, is now a grown man, married and in the service himself. The hot flashes are making me miserable; the night sweats are intolerable, leading to exhaustion and irritability. Instead of being told how wonderful I look, positively glowing blah, blah, blah, people are asking me if I just got over the flu and do I need to go home and lie down.  My children now actually ask me how I am feeling before the y talk to me. If I don’t answer them they leave… quickly.  Instead of The Great Earth Mother, I am now known as Grandma St. Helen, (watch out for those eruptions).

     The first movie actually was released the day before I married my first husband, the father by blood of my three children. I remember how excited I was to be starting my life as a new bride. I dreamed of happily ever after and that love could conquer all. I was naïve enough to think that marriage was forever and nothing bad was ever really going to happen to me. My husband was going to take care of me and I did not need to worry about taking care of myself ever again. As I watched the remake of the Karate Kid I thought how far I had come in learning to take care of myself. I can drive an eighteen wheeler if I have to, it took me three tries but I have my class “A” license. I can fix a stopped up sink, a screen door and bleed my own furnace, change a tire, and I actually understand what a mechanic is talking about when he is trying to tell me what is wrong with my car. I know how to get something out of a drain, a nose, and a kid who suddenly has amnesia. I have survived homelessness, divorce and the life of a wife with a husband in prison.  

     The final difference in the two movies for me is that when the first movie came out I was living there in Southern California where the movie was made. Southern California was nice and I think there were a few of those beaches in that movie that I actually sun burnt myself on. In the movie you can’t see how very dry the air is, or how the dust coats everything outside and that you can’t touch anything without getting it on yourself. The flowers are bright and colorful and in the morning there is a heavy tropical scent wherever a handful of them grew. I never knew what they all were but boy did they smell nice. In the remake of the movie I was not in Beijing but I was here in Maine in the fall. I will take fall in Maine any day over any day in sunny southern California. California never changes, always dry greens and dusty browns with various colored tropical flowers. But in Maine on any given fall day you have the vivid hues of red, orange and yellow set against a backdrop of the deep greens of the Maine forests and the startling blue of her skies. There is no scenery on the beaches that can compare with a cloudless autumn day in Maine.  At the top of every large hill in Maine you can see what the colors on God’s palette truly are.

     There are differences in the two movies; the actors, the writing, the budget, and like the two movies you can see the differences in their fans. We are all older and wiser and in different places than we all thought we would be, but just like in these movies we all had to face our bullies and come out stronger for having stood our ground and fought the battle no matter what.  

     

Easy Meals for a Busy Life

 For the millions of people headed back to school this year, one thing is going to be on their minds at the end of their busy days and that thing is going to be,” what to do for dinner”. From the harried mother to the new college student to the new couple down the street, everyone has one thing on their mind come 6:00 PM. And that would be,” I am starving, what is for dinner”?  Years gone by Mom would have a hot meal ready and waiting about the time your brain received the signals from your stomach that it was time to it. Nowadays with everyone’s busy lifestyles, more and more people just do not have the time for the kind of work required for that kind of meal. That leaves everyone with basically three tried and true methods of slapping a meal into themselves and/or their families. If they have a really good job they can eat at a sit down restaurant, if they are really stressed for time they can hit their local fast food store, or if they are feeling the need to get de-stressed then they can order something for takeout/ delivery and relax in the comfort of their own home or the home next door whatever is on their agenda.   

      For the ultimate eating experience, a sit down dinner at the hometown favorite restaurant is the way to go. You know the one, it is right there on the corner of Main Street. It has been there since God was a baby and the cook could have been God’s auntie. He liked her so well that he gifted her with the knowledge of how to cook a homestyle meal, make it look and smell like heaven, and be able to do it in under ten minutes for a better than reasonable price. The restaurant doesn’t look like much but it is where all the locals go when the tourists are in town. The coffee is always fresh and hot and the desserts are what you take to your mother-in-law’s house if she lives in another state (she will never know unless your husband has a death wish).

      A less satisfying alternative is the fast food restaurant. They all have a generic menu; something that started out life breathing, has been turned into paste of some sort, and has the flavor fried out of it. Although not as good as a restaurant it is convenient if you are busy and you only have to throw the trash away to clean up after yourself. It is great if you have a bunch of screaming kids as some of the restaurants have a playland to let them loose in so you can finish a thought while you eat. However you only have to read the magazines at the checkout stand or listen to the news to find out exactly how unhealthy this type of food is, so you really don’t want to indulge in this type of food on any kind of regular basis. 

      A third and final option to getting a dinner without the bother of cooking it yourself is to have your food delivered from the various assorted restaurants that will deliver in your area or order something to take home yourself. Chinese food and pizza are two of the first options that come to mind although larger cities will have other options as well. This method is great if you have guests coming over and no time to cook or you feel like eating your dinner in your pajamas in front of the TV. Order a pizza or a Pu Pu Platter and you are all set. A major drawback is that quite often the food comes to you less than hot and sometimes missing items. It never fails that pizza delivery will be missing the soda that was supposed to come with it and by the time you get your soda the pizza is cold.

      Whatever method gets chosen is largely going to depend on time money and convenience, what your mood is, who you have to feed, and how far you want to go to get fed. If you get desperate enough and all else fails there is only one thing left that you can do to get a hot meal for a reasonable price. Just don’t forget to thank your Mom; she worked hard getting that meal together.   

meta-graf on cause and effect essay

     I chose as my decision to go back to school for the cause and effect essay because it was the first thing that came to my mind that really had three separate and distinct areas that led to that decision. I did not have to work for the decision because it and the reasons were right there. I was lucky in that regard. The subject itself was and still is something that excites me.  I am good and sick of my hand to mouth existence, so therefore I am very passionate about changing it. I find that a lot of my assignments I can correlate to that decision and to the fact of what I want to become. Maybe it is because I am the type of person who lives in the now, with her eye on the future. Crying over spilled milk has never had an appeal for me, so therefore I do not cry and whine that I did not go to school when I was younger , I only choose to try and get through it now and in the process use what little spare energy I have to excel in who I am