Fan Vid: Fabulous Beekman Boys: Spying On Hope

So, I made this fanvid. It took around 9 months to make because I couldn’t find the source I wanted (and I never found the source I wanted), but mostly because Windows Movie Maker is the most hellish video making software ever. Let me assure you that this would be a better fan video if I didn’t have to listen to the song from the beginning every time I made a change or tweak, because otherwise the music didn’t line up. Truthfully, there are still many things I’d change about the final product, but I can’t hear the song again. Not for awhile, anyway. One day I might move on from the wretched, evil WMM and buy some proper video making software, but I’m not sure when I’ll do such a thing, since spending money on video making products isn’t really in my budget, especially when I do it so rarely and can’t ever seem to find source.

Wow. Don’t you want to watch this now? Hah. Anyway, it’s a fanvid about The Fabulous Beekman Boys.

Spying On Hope

And, no, I have no idea why it runs on for 2 minutes longer than the music. Uh, I’m pretty sure this is why I’m not a vidder. I’d be unwilling to put a story or book out in this shape, but when it comes to vids I’m all, “GOOD ENOUGH.” And done.

Planting: Seedlets

We had a successful garden a few years ago when our daughter was three, and then we kind of…let it go to hell for a few years. Life happened! Laziness might have been part of that life! Also, we were busy being less than stellar at life, and (see my header) we’re now working hard at that goal again! Anyway, the mister started our seeds for the garden early in January, and we had to re-pot some of them a few weekends ago. And while we did that, our kiddo washed her rock collection.

The pumpkins are getting out of control already. I’m not sure if that means we’ll have early pumpkins? That is how little I actually know about gardening!

What I wanted to talk about, though, is how the mister and I are often on the same wavelength without really discussing it. For example, this gardening thing. Ever since spying on hope with The Fabulous Beekman Boys, I’ve been wanting to get back to our garden, and really grow some of our own food. I even planned to talk about expanding our garden, and making a bigger go of it. (Oh, the mister didn’t spy on hope with me, by the way. He didn’t read the book, and the television show — upcoming post about that! — was something I watched by myself on the nights when he was working the closing shift, and I was alone.) But I never actually got around to tell him these thoughts.

Then, voila, I come in one day and he’s starting seeds, and he’s got plans for a bigger garden, and I said, “How did you know I wanted to do this?” And he said, “I didn’t, but I’m not surprised.”

The romance! The passion! (*snort*) The…mind reading about the garden! We are truly MFEO! Seriously, why can’t he read my mind about not leaving his socks all over the living room floor? We are otherwise so in tune!

Anyway, yes, we’re going for a bigger garden. We’ll see how that pans out. I mean, the mister is in charge of making it dog-proof, and last time he tried to make our garden dog proof, I looked out and saw our biggest and our littlest dogs had managed to move aside the fencing and climbed in to eat the tomatoes. Then, I kid you not, they moved the fencing back! Smart ass dogs, I tell ya!

Reading Memoirs: Spying on Hope

Recently, I read a couple of memoirs that I absolutely loved. The first was I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, and the second was his follow-up memoir, depicting his eventual happily-ever-after-(so-far), called The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir. I really recommend them both so that you have a greater scope of just who Josh Kilmer-Purcell was/is/wants to be/will always be, but if you only read one, I, personally, recommend the second over the first. That’s probably the first time you’ll see someone say that, but here’s why:

I Am Not Myself These Days is a beautifully written love story about how love isn’t always healthy even when it’s got good intentions, and love doesn’t always last, even when it’s something special that will never live on this earth again. It’s about how fairytales, modern varieties at least, don’t always last. The Bucolic Plague, however, is about a real relationship that weathers storms, that trembles on the edge of destruction by forces from within, and manages to right itself because, heck, it might not be the most ‘romantic’ thing in the world, but these people have built a life together, an entire world together, and it isn’t right without the other one in it. There were points in The Bucolic Plague where my chest ached with sadness and empathy for the struggles Brent and Josh were going through together (and apart). Having been with my spouse for over twenty years, I can attest to similar gut-wrenching seasons myself. And the fairytale isn’t in the dream, but in the way you pull through the nightmare, and come back to life together, loving the small things you’ve created as a team, and loving even the things you hate in the other person.

Brent and Josh’s story reminds me of a song lyric:

Watching you go is like spying on hope,
ever onward with more to burn.

- Dar Williams

Reading The Bucolic Plague was truly like spying on hope, the kind of hope we all want to have, and can have if we dig deep. It’s such a joy to read about that kind of hope, pressing onward, never running out of steam, and during the bleak time when it looked like their hope might have been at an end, they pushed onward, and found more to burn. Again, I highly recommend the book.

Does anyone in your life remind you of spying on hope? How do they inspire you?