LOST

I love TV way too much! It may be because for so long I was so exhausted at the end of the day that all I did was plop down on the couch and become addicted to too many shows. (My other theory is that my parents limited my TV too much as a kid, and I rebelled by swinging the other way. This could probably be a completely different post on one of the major dilemmas of parenting, but I'll save that for another day).

Anyway, back to my TV addiction. I love reality shows, especially the competition ones, like The Amazing Race. (I've even been known to watch "Road Rules/Real World Challenge", fast forwarding through all the debauchery and making out to watch the actual challenges). But my very favorite show is LOST. I've been posting a "recap" almost every week on my Facebook page. Now I'll start posting here as well. If you have not interest in LOST, you can stop reading now, because it's rather lengthy.

LOST

I didn’t think I would write a note this week because of the re-run status. I didn’t even watch, but then someone told that it was enhanced. So I watched, and the following note includes things I noticed this time that I haven’t noticed before, and also questions or thoughts about things we learned from the pop-ups.

• First of all, maybe I’m the only one, but I never made the connection between the black and white stones that seem to be so important to the Jacob/MIB story and the ship that brought Richard, called the Black Rock. Have you noticed that before, and if so, what are your thoughts? (Even if you haven't, what are your thoughts?)

• There is some confusion about the dates. According to Lostpedia, the Black Rock sailed from Portsmouth, England in 1845, but was considered to be lost at sea. In this episode, we see that Richard and his wife live on the Canary Islands in 1867. Richard kills the doctor, is imprisoned, sold, and joins the group on the Black Rock that then crashes on the island.

In this episode, during the storm sea, when the ship is about to crash on the island, the pop ups tell us that the Black Rock sailed from Portsmouth, England in 1845, but was lost at sea. They seem to be giving us the impression that the scene we’re seeing is part of that voyage. Later, the pop ups tell us, when we’re seeing the discussion between Jacob and MIB near the end, that the year is 1867. I think they are making a big deal about the differences in dates, but I’m not sure why.

I read this theory recently in an email I received: “Maybe what we see in The Incident in the calm and sunny weather (also we know it was the morning b/c of the conversation btwn Jacob and MIB) was the Black Rock arriving to the island in 1845. Perhaps that is where it was when it was thought to be lost at sea. Then maybe it left years later to bring others , such as Richard, back to the island.”

This was my response: “I really like that theory! It would explain why Jacob and MIB look so different in this episode vs. The Incident when we first see them. I don’t think their change in appearance can be a coincidence. The ship's captain in 1867 was Magnus Hanso, and he was the great grandfather of Alvar Hanso who funded the DHARMA initiative on the island in the 1970's. According to Lostpedia, the Sri Lanka video in the Lost Experience, explains that "the DHARMA Initiative was part of a project begun in response to the Valenzetti Equation commissioned by the UN in 1967, a mathematical formula that reportedly predicts the amount of time until the extinction of mankind." The lottery-winning numbers have something to do with the Valenzetti Equation, but one thing that stuck out to me from the quote was the date 1967 -- 100 years after 1867. We have no idea what the age of Magnus Hanso was. He could've come to the island on the ship in 1845 and left again on the ship in order to take it to the Canary Islands in 1867. Or he could've been on the island already and took the ship to the Canary Islands in 1867. We know (don't we?) that Magnus Hanso died in the ship wreck in 1867? (I've had another theory that Smokey was using Hanso's body to be the man we see on the beach -- MIB, but I don't know. That wouldn't work if the first scene we saw with Jacob and MIB happened in 1845, because Hanso wasn't dead then). Maybe Hanso was planning to return to the island all along? Maybe the Hansos have known about the island for a really long time...”

(This whole line of thought is choppy, but I don't have time to really make it flow better. If you have thoughts about it, please comment. We can sort this out together!! :)

• When Richard went to kill Jacob, Jacob found him first. Before Richard even knew what hit him (literally), Jacob was attacking him. The question that begs is this: Why didn’t Jacob fight when Ben came to kill him? Why would Jacob hit Richard before he even really knew what he wanted, but not fight at all when Flocke and Ben come into the Statue? Had he resigned himself to what was going to happen? Maybe he didn’t know he was about to die, but he had to know that the conversation with Ben wasn’t going that well. Was he ok with dying, because he knew that the 6 candidates were back on the island and that Ilana was there to protect them? What do you think? I also noticed that when the pop ups described Jacob, they said that he, “claims to be the protector of the island.” What do they mean, “claims”? I remember that before we knew whether Jin had survived the freighter crash, Carlton Cuse said something in a “recap” episode about the fact that Sun “assumed” that Jin was dead. This seems familiar to me. Why would they say that Jacob “claims” to be the protector?

• When Jacob talked to Ilana in the hospital, he told her that the list of names he gave her represented the “six remaining candidates”. That word, “remaining” seems definitive to me, and the pop ups told us that Locke was still alive at the time. So now I’m pretty sure, that we’ll never meet Hansen (wheel #56) or Kysea (wheel #60). I guess noticing the fact that these two names weren’t crossed off was just a red herring.

• I thought it was interesting that Isabella told Hurley to tell Richard (yeesh!) that if he (Richard) didn’t stop the MIB that they would all go to hell. Other people (including Widmore) have talked about what would happen if Flocke left the island. Widmore told Des that “everyone we know and love would simply cease to be.” Noone else has mentioned hell as a consequence. I wondered if Isabella said that because she knew that it would have an impact on Richard. He is very afraid of going to hell.

Also, when Isabella appeared to a chained Richard on the crashed ship the pop ups said, “This is not Isabella.” It didn’t say that later, when she spoke with Richard through Hurley, the interpreter. Do we assume that the Isabella at the ship was Smokey? Do you think we can assume that the people who appear to Hurley are indeed who they seem to be and not apparitions sent by the smoke monster?


• I’m going to mention again my theory that maybe Smokey took on the body of someone from the ship, namely Hanso. Maybe he somehow lost Hanso’s body, next claiming Christian Shephard’s body and then Locke’s. Could Smokey, in Hanso’s body, have somehow convinced his relatives to continue to come back to the island, ending in the DHARMA Initiative taking up residence on the island? Would this be contrary, or not, to the theories above about the Black Rock being on the island while it was “lost” and then leaving in 1867 to retrieve others, like Richard? Is Eloise Hawking involved in this?

• I didn’t notice before that when Richard told Jacob that he never wanted to die, Jacob, very demonstratively, touched Richard and told him that he could do that. Jacob’s touch! Does that mean that the candidates we saw Jacob touch will never die? Or does Jacob’s touch have a different effect on each person? I realize now that Jacob touched Locke and he died, so I’m not sure. What do you think?

That's it for now. Discuss!

Housework

Don't you think that a well-educated, competent woman who is home all day would be able to keep the house clean and organized? There are times when I get to the end of the day and I wonder where all the time went. I don't watch soap operas while eating bon bons. I don't even watch talk shows during the day. Sometimes I watch things I've taped the night before, but I never even do that without a stack of laundry. Where does the time go?

Gregory leaves for school at 7:20, and Gary usually takes Ruthie to school around 8. When everyone (but Mary) is gone, I usually clean up the kitchen from the frantic morning of making breakfast and lunch all at once (which can honestly take awhile -- the cleaning up, I mean). Most mornings we have somewhere to go, so I quickly shower and dress during Sesame Street, make sure the diaper bag is packed with all the necessities, and head out the door. Before we leave, though, I generally have to retrieve Mary's clean socks from the pile of dirty laundry in the basement, because she has inevitably taken them off sometime post-dressing and put them down the laundry shoot. (I could do an entire post about things I find in the pile of dirty clothes from Mary's fixation with the laundry shoot!).

Most mornings we're gone (ladies' Bible study, Friday morning coffee group, Mary spends a one morning with a sitter, a trip to the zoo, etc.). When we get home, I usually feed her a little something for lunch. I say "little something" because she's a very picky eater, especially when she's tired and would rather be napping. Ahhh, Mary's naps! They are long! Mary is a lot of things -- mostly beautiful and sometimes ugly -- and a good sleeper is on that beautiful list!! She will often sleep for 3-4 hours. BUT by the time I find her paci and snuggly, read to her, give her water and cover her with BOTH her blankets in just the right way, she may be ready to sleep soundly, but I usually only have about two hours before Gregory gets home from school. Remember that 7:20am departure time? Early, right? Well, along with that, comes an early dismissal. Gregory comes home at 2:45.

Two afternoon hours might seem like a lot, but believe me, they fly by. I usually fix and eat lunch (which takes more or less time, depending on how diligently I'm counting WW points that day). Then I check and answer email and/or Facebook, and pay any bills that need my attention (sometimes while I'm eating lunch), and then before I know it, I have one hour before Gregory's return. What can a person get done in one hour? Especially when there's so much to do? I spend some time dealing with laundry and cleaning up from lunch, but I can't clean both bathrooms in an hour. I can't vacuum and mop the floors in an hour (which also doesn't happen, because I can't vacuum while Mary's sleeping. That girl can sleep through police and ambulance sirens, the lawn mower and weed trimmer, and even thunderstorms, but I'm not kidding you, if I sneeze too loudly she wakes up. There's no way I can risk it by vacuuming! Are you kidding me?) It's even hard to fold and put away laundry, because I can't get anywhere near Mary's room.

So, there you have it. No way to get the housework done. I'm home "all day" and can't seem to keep the house clean. Does anyone out there feel my pain? Sometimes I think that if I had a job outside my house, it would be a real disaster, and then I look around me and wonder how it could be any worse!

I should mention now that I have SO MUCH respect for all you working moms out there! Whether you work full or part time, in addition to your mom job, it's amazing what you do!! I know that all of us are just doing our best to keep all the balls we have up high in the air! I should also mention that I know that there many stay at home moms who do a very good job of keeping their homes clean and organized. I just don't happen to be one of them, and now you know why! :)

Mommy with a Masters

There's a certain amount of angst that goes along with being a master's degree holding stay at home mom! I realize that in writing this blog from that perspective, I am narrowing my audience, but it somehow feels like the thing I need to do. Maybe it's my need to stretch my brain in trying to creatively convey my thoughts. Maybe it's my need to express these thoughts to a group of (what I assume to be) adult readers. Maybe it's just because I need to do something that doesn't have to do with housework or baby care or Zooreka or homework or meal-making. (Ok, I DO see the irony! Of course, when I write a blog called Mommy with a Masters, the posts will mostly be about housework and baby care and playing games and creative cooking. Somehow writing about these things seems creative and mind-stretching! I guess we'll see.)

There are days when I want nothing more than to get a "real" job! Sometimes it's because I feel neither appreciated nor respected by my three young employers. Other days I feel the pull toward outside employment when I can't do the math problems on my 3rd grader's homework. Those are the days when I wonder if my brain has turned to mush slowly over the last 9 years, or if it happened all at once and I just didn't notice. There are the days when I just really want to put my social work skills to work to help people. I know that pouring my time and energy into raising loving, caring, good citizens is important, but there are many times when it feels like I'm doing nothing to contribute to the well-being of society. And, lastly, there are times when I just LONG for lunch in the teacher's lounge (I was a school social worker) with my colleagues. Really. I never really realized how precious those 20 minutes of sitting around, chewing every bite, and having uninterrupted conversations really was!! Sometimes that's the only reason I want to work outside my house!

This is the beginning of my journey of blogging through the angst I feel in these days and nights of loving and appreciating the fact that I am a stay at home mom, while also struggling with the lack of mental stimulation and adult interaction.