2 cents

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

The good the bad and the ~~ugly~~ why the f did I watch this and ruin my life.

We love movies in this house and watch them in abundance. I used to watch everything from thrillers, slashers, sci-fi, action to drama… and then slowly the extreme versions of certain genres (thank you P.S. I love you, I had a migraine from excessive sobbing for like a month) began to erode my brain and etch themselves so deeply into my soul that I like couldn’t bounce back. Like I still won’t go into my bathroom and look in the mirror at midnight, I don’t care if you think that is juvenile it’s my life we’re talking about here. And I don’t care who you are if you’ve watched any Final Destination movies you aren’t driving behind any trucks with lumber, metal poles of re-bar or any other building material even if it is strapped down. It’s unclear to me if this is some sort of a hormonal imbalance or just the fact I have an obsessive personality with a tendency to hold on to all things emotional way too long. Maybe it’s because I am an artist, yea lets go with that.

So I am laying in bed wondering what I should blog about since nothing particularly exciting has been happening lately and it dawned on me why I was laying in bed at 1:47 am wide awake in a certain state of paranoia anyway.

***spoiler alerts***

Backcountry – An urban couple go camping in the woods and find themselves lost in the territory of a predatory black bear.
So usually I read a synopsis of all movies C buys because he isn’t as discriminatory about watching movies that ruin your life, or ability to sleep at night. Somehow I missed the part about the black bear and just figured it was a typical escape for your life from some backcountry hillbillies, or marijuana growers, or drug dealers or any other group of bad guys that would typically hunt down a couple in the woods. It started off harmless enough with a romantic canoe down a mountain and camping in the woods, slow and awkward – then all the sudden it took a turn for the worst, showing excessively graphic mauling of human flesh, skin being torn from limbs. I mean this guy was essentially gutted having his intestines eaten while simultaneously screaming at his girlfriend to effing run for her life. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so terrified and scarred had canoeing and camping in bear country not been a favorite pastime of mine – see my earlier post on “wild camping”. I feel sick writing this and when the sprinklers came on at 10 pm and water started hitting my window I was absolutely effing certain a bear was attempting to break into my house to dine on my organs.

The Forger – A thief works with his father and son to forge a painting by Monet and steal the original. Together, they plan the heist of their lives.
YES. Thank you John Travolta for being in this movie, NOT. Who doesn’t love the other JT? Well this synopsis is a bit misleading if your like me with a tenancy to break a muther effing pipe and lose all ability to control the water works this movie is NOT for you. It was also slow, not the original action movie we thought it would be. As a matter of fact what the synopsis should read is “A thief makes a bad deal to get out of prison and spend quality time with his teen son who is dying of cancer” No I didn’t see that coming until it was too late either. You can thank me later for saving you a night of emotional turmoil.

Avengers Age of Ultron – amazing, a little bit of side story’s to go with the main plot. Light, action packed no tears no fears. C thought it was too busy. I liked it, I did weep like a baby at a certain point but someone had to die.

Terminator Genisys – very good. Might be my favorite so far. It was a little confusing, there was a lot of time hoping and parents younger than children and weird computer talk, and memories happening before they actually happened kind of stuff so it was a bit hard to exactly follow but whatever its a terminator movie, just freaking run for your life and you’ll be a’ight.

Strike Back (2010) – This is a bit of an older TV show that I saw on Amazon Prime and remembered my parents and my brothers were in to so I started watching. Wow. It’s good, I got sucked in and watched the two Prime seasons and then bought the third and watched. The cast is attractive, the plot for each episode is exciting, lots of action, (lots of hardcore nudity and awfully rowdy sexual content which I could of done without) but other than that it was soooo good. I’m even less sad that the series ended because one of the leads (Sullivan Stapleton; also seen in 300 Rise of an Empire – soooooo good) is in a new series called Blindspot which I plan to check out.

Under the Dome – ugh what happened? It was off to a good start but now I can’t even get through an episode. I guess with any series you binge watch your bound to run into the inevitable lack of plot. Especially stories like this that aren’t really going anywhere story wise anyway…

Is it better to have a series burn itself out? (Beauty & the Beast, Under the Dome) Or END (or get dropped) and leave you feeling abandoned and empty like your boyfriend just dumped you. (White Collar, The Tomorrow People) I don;t know all the answers but I hate when good things come to an end. It’s so hard to fill the void.

don't get the glue

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

I may be a bat shit crazy helicopter mom with regards to safety hazards but I will be dammed if my children’s serial lack of situation awareness doesn’t both constitute and justify my consistent and habitual behavior.

I have a new love of snow crab legs that I like to enjoy while sitting on a bean bag at the coffee table. It’s the little things people, let me eat my crab legs and drink my wine while watching a movie on a Monday night…

Anyway it was a regular evening around 8 pm of course right before bed when O decided to do a swan dive over her pottery barn anywhere chair straight into the coffee table. Right in front of my face, literally inches away! It was fast and clean and very Ninja like. She essentially did some sort of screwed up reverse back bend while simultaneously smashing her facial area into the edge of the table. With my cat like reflexes I snatched her up and ran into the kitchen, I have no idea why, suppose the kitchen seemed like an appropriate place to run to – maybe it was my fight or flight impulse to just run somewhere. Regardless I grabbed her face and inspected her mouth to see all her teeth in place and not bleeding! Thank little baby Jesus. C runs over at this point and I reassure him she is totally fine and it just sounded worse than it was. Except he disagrees and says put on a bra we’re going to the ER. Not sure why I didn’t think to look at her chin but there it was a gaping hole. My worst fear, ok well one of them, there are a lot but this is up there.

To be fair she didn’t even cry all that much. I on the other hand….

So disgusting.

Note to anyone who has a “clean” cut. They requested the use of glue which at the time I was all for because it seemed less invasive and traumatic for all of us involved but the glue didn’t seem to hold and the wound opened significantly over the next day or so. I was so disappointed I didn’t demand stitches, oh well live and learn. We got a prescription silicone scar gel to treat the scar and over the last few weeks it has helped drastically but what a nightmare.

trouble

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

Dearest Cousin (you know who you are),

I am both excited and terrified for your upcoming wedding. I know it will be the most amazing, memorable night of your life, it’s after all every girls dream to have a wedding with family and friends, a gorgeous gown, a loving night full of dreams and happy endings. However, I am genuinely scared O may not comprehend this is not her wedding, she talks nonstop about her wedding and her wedding dress and the party and flowers and how excited she is to be having her wedding.

Maybe there is a book on this topic. Like you can buy books on how “every body uses the potty” (oh, which reminds me O wrote a book specifically on this topic) or you can buy books about when your family pet dies and goes to animal heaven. I need to purchase the How to teach your 4 year old she is part of a wedding, but it’s not her wedding. Ugh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Then there is W. Look at that face. It just screamsssss trouble, it may not scream it in an articulate manner in which you the recipient would understand, but you would get the point.

They are both so excited for “their” wedding and ask me nonstop when their going to have it.

It's perfect

Posted on 08/17/2015 by amberunraveled

lol. Catch me if you can – it’s fast, don’t blink.

Keratin Smoothing Treatment

Posted on 07/23/2015 by amberunraveled

My hair is a hot mess. I heard a persons hormones change every five years and that can have an impact on hair texture. Mine has progressively gotten coarser. I had thin pin straight hair until puberty then it went curly. I never had a beautiful curl like O but more of a Brittney Spears type crimp, and mostly in the back… very weird and stupid.

Here are some unflattering pictures of my lion look. This is blown out with no product. I should go out in public like this. I could scare kids. It is so fluffy. Like a collie. I look like Lassie.

You know how people get dogs that look like them? I should get a Lassie. OMG I have a mini Lassie…

Her hair changed to a woolly freaking mess after she got fixed. We are both in the same sinking hair ship. At least we have each other.

Anyway, I bought this:

Keratin Complex Natural Keratin Smoothing Treatment 4 oz

$54

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G1MOZ2K?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

Got it off Amazon and gave it a try and it worked really good! It took forevvvvvvver but mostly because like I said I have a lions mane. And I should have gotten the 8 oz for sure.

wash with a clarifying shampoo
blow dry
spread on smoothing serum and bake for a while
wash again
blow dry again
flat iron for like a million years

done. This was after the serum application and blow dry. It is still fluffy but there is a small difference.

This is after flat ironing for a gazillion years, It was very smooth and thin. You can’t get it wet or wear any hair ties for 3 days. I got stuck in a terrible downpour on the second day but after washing it stayed very straight and didn’t frizz or curl up at all.

It worked really great and did exactly what it was supposed to do. However… I will never do it again because my hair though frizztastic was very super soft. After the treatment it felt like straw for daysssss. I couldn’t wait until this shit washed out. I could stab someone with the disgusting stiffness of my perfectly stick straight hair. Ultimate decision it worked great, felt terrible. It lasted like 2 – 3 months. It’s finally out and I am so much happier. Guess the grass isn’t always greener!!! I just bought a iron wand thing and I am going to embrace my curlish hair and try to at least reduce the frizz but I must say I am much happier dealing with frizz than stiff nasty straw!

that's a wrap

Posted on 07/20/2015 by amberunraveled

I am impatient.

When I start obsessing over something I want it yesterday. Some things I have no problem letting go while others fester like an old bag of chicken neck baits on a hot summer pier. That is really nasty if you’re wondering.

I just wrapped the Redmonton webseries and I feel so much emotional turmoil. I am so happy to now reap the benefits of all the long hours spent getting off-book, running lines, developing my character and filming. I am so ready to start something new and really great but at the same time I have to try and be patient and strategically plan my next steps get all my tools together and proceed with a knockout plan.

This webseries was such a blessing though. I really learned and spent so much time in front of the camera it literally became invisible. The cast and crew were so much fun and really talented.

I haven’t actually been submitting to much of anything else lately because of the commitment to the series so I am excited to get back out there. Just totally impatient. I think to make matters even worse is I surprisingly booked two gigs just last week! Of course they were scheduled to both film on the same day so I had to stick with my first commitment but it seems like the long hours on the webseries has really helped my audition technique.

I don’t have a lot of BTS but here are a few snaps from the past couple months filming (in absolutely no particular order)….

box trolls

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

O. M. G. this movie was horrible. Not only are these things totally creepy but the movie was weird and dark. Guess it was my fault for not looking at the rating before we had family movie night and watched this awful train wreck. I just assumed cartoon – kids, plus C’s mom was talking about how the daily shows were all touting that someone carved all these figurines and positioned them all individually throughout the whole movie so it wasn’t computer generated or something – that could all be rumor mill though I wasn’t interested in this enough to find out so I have no clue what the facts are…

***spoiler alert***

What I do know is the movie was creepy, the trolls were creepy and at the end during the big monologue of individuality where the bad guy smashes all the trolls with a big stamper O lost her shit and flipped the F out and I was left dumbfounded staring at the TV thinking WHAT THE F IS THE RATING ON THIS SHOW!!!???? Yes, again bad parenting I should have done my HW. Obviously the trolls were all fine and had snuck, (WTF is “snuck” not a word? Spell check keeps telling me it’s not a word. What is the problem – what is past tense for sneaked???)

Anyway all the trolls had escaped their boxes and all was well with the world, happy ending tra-la-la, but still to see O completely devastated made me want to hurt people. Whatever. Lesson learned, although the rating thing only would help with the creepy-ness of the movie because O has since had complete and utter breakdowns from Big Hero 6 and Home. It saddens me that she got stuck with my emotional instability. I just watched the latest Fast and Furious and cried like an infant. So sad!!!

AND to top it off my kids want to wear boxes like all the time. Its so annoying to try to cut holes in boxes. Big Hero and Home are totally EXCELLENT movies. I mean, who doesn’t love Jim Parsons?

fair

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

We took the kids to the fair last week. I am excited just thinking about it. I love taking the girls to do fun stuff. Plus I have been shooting a webseries on the weekends so I wanted to do something fun and special with them. Plus, plus I wanted to see how W did on the rides because I want to plan a Disney trip.

O being herself. Hollywood 24/7.

Look at that face! She was so adorable. I was nervous she was going to blow a gasket because she’s all in the “do-it-myself” phase which literally makes me want to throw shit. There is a lot of stuff that drives me crazy that I have been able to let go of since having kids; like order, hygiene, a clean house… but when I am in a rush, like every morning – I don’t have time to watch you take 27 minutes to put on your underwear, W. Nor do I have time for you to change your outfit 64 times, O. I am just about capped on my maximum OCD tolerance. I digress…

Anyway I thought W was going to loose her shit and fight me standing next to her on the carousel but she let me hold on to her. Actually I was pretty bummed because C bought them both unlimited ride bracelets before we realized W was too small to ride any rides!

Lucky for us this fair wasn’t too strict on rules and let W onto the rides anyway! We just watched the rides first to make sure there weren’t size restrictions for a reason… like the higher up ones.

That was her first ride by herself, she had this weird face the entire time and she didn’t move a muscle, O had the same reactions on her first rides when she was little! We were like… “is she scared?’ “is she going to cry?” “why is her face like that?”

Then she got off and wanted to do it again, and again, and again so we knew she loved it.

W reallllly liked all the rides that were horses. I think she would totally *love* to ride horses when she grows up but I doubt C will ever let that happen. I used to ride horses for years when I was younger and decided to pick the hobby back up after I met C. He would come watch me in my lessons sometimes and decided I wasn’t very good. Just because I got thrown off a lot doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good rider, I like to think I had very challenging horses – therefore I was actually an excellent rider… but anyway –

They let her on a bunch of rides she was too small for – oops!

We were safe about it though. This little kid swing was awesome.

C won a prize throwing a baseball at a wall of bottles. He had to break a bottle. He’s so manly and strong.

O and W played this game of throw a ball in a hole – win a prize. O picks a cute blow up pony. Ugh, W not so much.

She picked some crazy ass purple alien. Whats worse is the damn thing stands up by itself and she puts it in odd places throughout the house and scares the shit out of me. She also put stickers all over its face for some reason. Creepy.

Ssssso fun. I want to try Dutch Wonderland next.

snapper

Posted on 06/03/2015 by amberunraveled

I have done a garden every year with moderate success. We have great morning sun and lots of ground so it’s pretty easy to get veggies to grow around the yard. Last year C made me a really great formal looking veggie garden and we had tons of veggies that went to waste. Every year we say we are going to only plant one of each type of veggie plant like cucumber or zucchini but then I always plant two in case one dies and then I feel to guilty to pull up the other one because it’s like alive and all and I don’t want to kill it. So weird, I know.

I experimented this year and did Lima Beans and Broccoli. I have never done these before and didn’t care too much if they worked or not so I just planted them right in the ground, oh I did spinach too.

I dug a trench and put in spinach and the broccoli. The next day I saw the Guniea Hens in my garden with big holes all in the areas I planted the seeds. Ok. That round was done for. No biggie.

Well a few weeks later I planted a row of sunflower seeds and they came up all nice and neat and then a whole bunch of other stuff came up all jumbled in a group. It’s lima beans, broccoli and 1 small spinach plant.

We are working on replanting the front too because the super cold winter killed a lot of our plants out front. Ugh so much work.

To my surprise a friendly (NOT!) snapping turtle took a liking to my small zucchini also. We were all staring at this prehistoric beast and realized it was acting all weird, like in a trance. I knew from my extensive National Geographic watching (and C said he knew from that kid sea turtle movie) that it was nesting!

How crazy is that?! Like real life NatGeo. I’m scared now we will have an infestation of snapping turtles.

O did some amazing artwork at school to represent our little turtle family.

new toy

Posted on 06/01/2015 by amberunraveled

Ok, soooooo I caved and purchased a selfie-stick. I know, so lame. Just typing these words I feel a hot wave of shame and embarrassment, but I gotta be honest… It. Is. AWESOME.

I busted this little gem out in the car on the way to our camping destination and you can read C’s lips probably… he’s saying “you are such a losssser”

Oh ok, wait – Lemme get in on this – I’ll throw up some gang signs.

It is so cool. And it just made sense that I totally needed one. I never get to be in any pictures! It’s not like I’m some duck face, straw sucking, bathroom snapping selfie obsessed kinda girl. But I might become one now… joking!

or am I joking?? I actually did a little research on selfie sticks, not because they were expensive – they were all about $20 but more on the different “types”. There were some with plugs that go int your phone, some with bluetooth remotes for snapping the pic. I went for the newest 2015 MPow model. It has bluetooth so it hooks up with your phone, then on the handle there is a small button you push for snapping the picture. It folds up pretty small and fits easily in a purse. It feels really secure and safe when holding my phone too, a lot of reviews said other sticks were very flimsy. You can kind of see W’s arm pushing the picture button in out first selfie attempt of the three of us.

Actually all pix posted was the real extent of my selfie taking. It was a very worthwhile investment though and just for all you parties interested I got it off Amazon for like $20. There were a few colors available, I got Blue because for whatever reason that one was on sale for cheaper – like $15.

[New Generation] Mpow® iSnap X One-piece U-Shape Self-portrait Monopod Extendable Selfie Stick with built-in Bluetooth Remote Shutter-Blue

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UV3D24M?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00