You is kind, you is smart and you is important

In the movie, The Help, that I finally got to see this afternoon, this "you is kind..." line was the most precious exchange between Aibileen, a black maid, and Mae Mobley, the little white baby girl she took care of as part of her job as maid to the Leefolt family.  Not only did these women cook and clean and do laundry for these white families, they also raised their children, loved their children, taught their children.  Mae Mobley is completely ignored by her mother and is kept quiet with cake so she's a little butterball.  Aibileen makes it her mission to make sure Mae Mobley knows that she is loved and that she is special.  I was just SO TOUCHED by this one little part!!  

The movie is awesome.  Amazing.  Funny.  Sad.  Sissy Spacek is hilarious as bad girl Hilly's mama.  I loved the scene of her eating chicken salad and watching her story, a very old Guiding Light! 

The movie is about three women, Skeeter, a white girl who was raised by a black maid (the amazing Cicely Tyson!), and Aibileen and Minny, two black maids.  Skeeter, who aspires to be a writer, comes up with this idea to write a book of stories told by the maids, their own thoughts and feelings about being maids for white families, about taking care of white babies while their own babies are at home being raised by someone else.  The maids don't want any part of it at first because we ARE talking about 1960's Mississippi, at the very cusp of the Civil Rights Movement.  They could lose their jobs or have their homes burned to the ground or worse, they could be killed for even talking about it.  Skeeter convinces them that it'll all be anonymous and they start telling their stories.  Those stories become a published book that rocks the city of Jackson to its core.

I absolutely LOVED it!!  I laughed out loud so many times and I cried twice.  I thought Hilly (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) was just too twisted for color TV and I was tickled to death at her comeuppance.  Did Minny really DO THAT or did she just say she did??  Hmmmm. 

I was happy to see Lafayette from True Blood playing sweet, good guy, Henry the waiter, too.

I loved the beginning, I loved the end and I loved all the in between.  

I expect lots of Oscars to come out of this one.  'Cause they is kind, they is smart and they is important.

There are 10 types of people...

...those who understand binary and those who don't. 

This is what I'm learning in school. How to read binary, hexadecimal and octal numbers and convert them into each other.  I think I'm getting it!!  My instructor told us that once we get this down, Digital will be the easiest class we've had yet. I remember analyzing series/parallel circuits (HARD!!) and solving linear and quadratic equations (RIDICULOUS!!) so I'm really looking forward to an easy class!! 

This look easy to you? 

Binary

Hexadecimal

Octal

Yeah.  I'mma have to study.  :)

Fill in the blank Friday!

One of life's most simple pleasures is sleeping in on a rainy day.

People who call me JUST to sell me something make me want to punch someone.

I like patchouli because it's sweet, warm and earthy.

Brouhaha is a funny word.

If I had to choose one beauty product to use every day for the rest of eternity, it would be a really good volumizing shampoo.  I cannot stand for my hair to go flat!!

I'm happy that it's Friday!!  I'm doing a whole lot of nothin' this weekend and like it.

I would never drink a beer.  Yuck.

What I'm loving Wednesday!

I'm loving that God once again guided the hands of these good people to bring my mama through another successful heart procedure on Monday!

And I'm still loving this picture of a beautiful hibiscus that I found growing outside the hospital!  :)

I'm loving these two pictures Ami took of me last Saturday!

 I hadn't seen a maypop bloom since I was a little girl!

I was so tickled to find this one just growing wild beside that old dirt road.

I'm loving that I'm back in school now!

My first class was last night.  I'm in my last semester of the diploma part but I found out last night that they ARE going to offer the specialty classes at night starting in January so I'll be able to pick a specialty and get my degree after all, without having to transfer to another school!  Yay!!  I had to buy this lab from RadioShack for my class.  Didn't know that till last night either and the store here only had ONE!  Guess who got it today??  I'm taking Digital and Microprocessors this semester and when I look back to when I started in Direct Current sixteen months ago, I remember thinking, "I'll NEVER get to Digital!!"  But now I'm there!!  Yay!!!

New to me

Y'all know I've been wanting to get another TV for my guest room/office but I just didn't want to buy one new.  I wanted to get one secondhand (or even thirdhand!) for frugality reasons and to make a better choice environmentally.  I was talking about it at work to Michelle, our nurse who cooks and bakes the most fabulous things and knits and roasts her own coffee beans and has a hippie heart like mine that longs for San Francisco, and she said she had one just stored in a closet in her apartment and after she talked with her hubby, told me I could have it! 

So I went after work today to pick it up.

Y'all.  That thing is 80 pounds (I googled it!) of awkward, bulky tank.  It's a 25-inch Sansui and it's in excellent condition.  I was worried that it wouldn't be by the time I got it home!!  We had to carry it down the stairs of her apartment, rolling it end over end, robot-walking it side to side, anything we could think of to get it to my car.  It was so hot, our hands were sweaty and it kept slipping.  I thought I was going to DIE right there.

It wouldn't go in my trunk but it went into the back seat, along with Michelle underneath it.  She slipped out the other door, we said our goodbyes and I left, not knowing how in THE hell I was going to get it out of my car and into my house without busting it wide open.

I thought about it all the way home and when I got home, I pushed my office chair out to the car, pulled and tugged, prayed, tugged and pulled, pushed my hair out of my eyes, prayed, tugged some more, got half of it into the chair, huffed and puffed, pulled some more until it was all in the chair, the chair's hydraulics collapsed under its weight and the TV almost fell out onto the driveway screen first, ohmygod, I grabbed it just in time, threw my weight onto it to hold it in place and started slowly moving toward the front door.  I got it in the house, as far as just inside the front door.  But it was IN!!!  And it was COOOOOOOOOL in here.  Then I collapsed!!  For just a minute.  I pulled and dragged and rolled it until I got it into the room it was going in and had it hooked up to my Directv cables in less than five minutes.

And now I'm watching Caddyshack!  :)

Thanks, Michelle!!  I'm sure we'll never forget this afternoon!  Ha!!

Fill in the blank Friday!

My idea of pure perfection would be if everybody was open-minded and accepting of other people's ideas and beliefs, whether they be religious or political.  Oh, and a little bungalow on the beach would be schweet, too.

Oil makes the world go 'round.  And that makes me sad.

If it weren't for that blankety-blank candy drawer at work, I would have lost weight this summer! :)

Bloggers are going to rule the world!

If I had my husband at home, I would be very happy.  So happy that I might even become a 50's housewife like the girl in this picture.  NOT!!  I'd never be able to keep my mouth shut.  And cooking supper from scratch every night??  Puhleeeze.

I'm glad it's Friday because this has been another long, exhausting week!  Between that leaking pipe in the yard, broken toilets and a phone that rings off the hook at work, I'm ready for a quiet, restful weekend.

Something I'm excited about is going back to school on Tuesday!  I'm ready to learn how digital electronics work!

What I'm loving Wednesday!

I'm loving that I got my yearly mammogram today!

You may not think that's something to love but I love my girls and I do all I can to make sure they stay healthy.  I think mammograms have gotten an erroneous bad reputation.  They do not hurt.  So if you're out there reading this and you've been putting off getting your first mammogram because you think they hurt or are uncomfortable, girl, make an appointment!  If you're 35, you should have already had your baseline mammogram, one they can compare your yearly ones to once you hit the big FOUR OH.  Technology is a beautiful thing and the equipment they use now is so much better than that of even two or three years ago.  The shelves are padded and soft and rounded and YOU control the pressure.  It's a little pinchy but that is IT.  There's no pain whatsoever.  Mammograms can't catch 100% of cancers, no equipment can, but with regular mammograms, the chances of catching something small and in its early stages are so much higher.  

Get your mammograms and protect second base!  :)

I'm also loving that I'm not losing 100 gallons of water out in the yard today!  Yay!!!