Quick Note

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I’ll have a post with actual content coming soon, but for now- thank you for comments on the last post, and I just wanted to say that since I posted that, I am actually feeling much better. Monday was, apparently, a darkest-moment-just-before-dawn kind of day. It seems fitting, somehow, that after numerous little things added up and brought me down, different numerous little things brought me back up. So- right now I feel much better and much saner, and if anyone is worried about me after what I wrote on Monday, you do not need to be.

How I Really Am

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When someone asks you how you are, what is there to say besides, “Good,” “Okay,” “Fine,” or something like that? Most of the time, people are just making conversation and don’t really want to know. They just want to move the conversation along.

But lately, the truth is…I’m not good. I’m not okay. I’m not fine. In fact, I’ve been crying a lot almost every day for most of the last month, and I don’t know how to talk about it.

Don’t worry- I haven’t fallen into a black hole of despair or become a victim of any other overdramatic phrase like that. I’m not suffering from anhedonia. And while I might not be fine now, I will be. I’m doing my best to make myself feel better. There are too many reasons to be happy, and life is just too short not to spend it that way.

But sometimes, it’s hard to see that when the things that are upsetting you just will.not.leave.your.mind.

I’m not going to go into the specific reasons for why I’m upset, partly because they’re not the kind of thing I want to discuss on a public blog and partly because they sound really stupid and inconsequential if I say them out loud. It’s not as if something obvious, like a breakup, is what’s upsetting me.


In the vaguest terms, what has been bothering me is a large sense of loneliness to which several different things have contributed. I’ve just been feeling sad and lonely. I have some amazing people in my life who bring me great joy, but sometimes, despite all that, loneliness just still creeps in and takes over. Also, there’s the matter of blaming myself for that loneliness- analyzing everything I’ve said and done and beating myself up if I remember something that I shouldn’t have said or done.

I hesitated about whether to post this because I don’t want it to come across as a plea for sympathy or attention. It’s not. I’m sad, but it’s not as if something huge and terrible is wrong. And like I said, I will be fine. I know I will.

But for now, I am just really sick of smiling and saying I’m fine when I’m not, pretending that I’m looking away for any reason other than preventing you from seeing that I have tears in my eyes. And so, in some small way, this is out there now. Thank you for reading.

Please Don’t Kill the Dream I Dream

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To say that I love Les Miserables would be an understatement on the scale of calling the Grand Canyon a crack. The first words I ever wrote on this blog were a Les Mis reference. I could write an entire post on how I came to be such a big fan and what I love about it (in fact, I will write that post) but this is not it. This is a post about the Les Miserables movie. Not the 1998 movie with Liam Neeson (now, normally I don’t care that much if movies change things from the book, but this movie, which I probably would have liked if I hadn’t read the book and seen the musical, got SO MUCH WRONG), but the upcoming adaptation of the musical.

A movie adaptation of the musical is one of those things that had been talked about for years and years but always got stuck in development. But then I started hearing casting details, so I thought, “Huh, maybe they really are going to make a movie this time.” Still, things get put off in Hollywood all the time, I figured. Who knew when or if they’d get around to making this?

THEN, just this weekend, I heard that they’re currently filming the movie and that it will be released THIS DECEMBER.

!!!!!!

Merry Christmas to me! And it’s being released on December 14th rather than Christmas, which means I’ll get to see it even if the apocalypse happens!

Well, I hope. I am now very nervous about how this movie is going to turn out. Seriously, since Saturday I have not been able to get this movie, which doesn’t even exist yet, off my mind. So this post is kind of a way of getting a handle on all my thoughts about it.

First of all, I have always loved the idea of a movie version of the Les Miserables musical. Some shows work onstage largely because of the visual spectacle, and those musicals, i.e. The Phantom of the Opera, generally make lousy movies because they don’t come across as well onscreen. But the music, the characters, and the storyline are what make Les Mis so appealing, and I think that the freedom to show more than the stage limits a musical production to showing could be great. Already in my head I have visions of how different songs could be filmed—for example, showing flashbacks to Fantine’s relationship with Tholomyes during “I Dreamed a Dream,” and I also have a very clear of how songs like “Who Am I?”, “On My Own,” and “One Day More” would look onscreen.

Then there’s the matter of casting. My favorite Jean Valjean is the one who made me fall in love with this play, Randal Keith, whose CD I own. Here he is doing “Bring Him Home.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8OCWJdq5_E]

But of course, they need a big-name actor for the lead role. So Jean Valjean, as Gina at Fantasy Casting correctly predicted, is played by Hugh Jackman. After looking up clips of him singing on YouTube and seeing this picture he tweeted of himself as Valjean, I think this is a great choice. He’s done a lot of theater, and here’s a clip of him in Oklahoma! (a musical I don’t really like, but he has a great voice!).[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFjxMGM36Hk]

The antagonist, Javert, will be played by Russell Crowe. Hmm. This choice I’m a little warier of. Acting-wise, I can completely see him as Javert. I had no idea that he could sing, but he’s apparently done quite a bit of singing, as YouTube clips indicate. So, yes, he can sing. Can he sing a big, dramatic, belt-y song like “Stars”? That remains to be seen.

Anne Hathaway will play Fantine. She can definitely sing—here she is at the Oscars singing with Hugh Jackman, in fact. Acting-wise, she’s not the first person I would think of to play a nineteenth-century single mother forced into prostitution, but I’m sure she could surprise me. And she definitely has a voice that would sound lovely on “I Dreamed a Dream.”

Amanda Seyfried will play Cosette. Now, my apologies to her, but since her first movie was Mean Girls, I cannot look at her without thinking, “There’s a thirty percent chance that it’s already raining.” Physically, she is not how I pictured Cosette. As it did with Russell Crowe, Youtube is giving me plenty of evidence of her ability to sing, but I’m not sure how she would do in this part, which requires a pretty high range. Wikipedia tells me, however, that she’s trained in opera, so that makes me feel a bit better.

Eponine is my favorite character. She’s poor and down on her luck and madly in love with a man who doesn’t love her back but for whom she’s nevertheless willing to die heroically. For awhile there was a rumor that Taylor Swift would play Eponine. Now, no offense to Ms. Swift, who I’m sure is a lovely person, but that would have been the WORST DECISION EVER. (Thank you, Michelle Collins, who I have found shares my opinions on just about everything, for backing me up on this.) She is just not right for that part at all. Personally, my favorite Eponine is Lea Salonga. If you don’t know her name, you definitely know her voice—she’s the singing voice of both Mulan and Jasmine in Aladdin. And speaking of Disney, if I could steal any person’s voice Little Mermaid-style, it would be hers. Unfortunately, she’s a bit too old to play the role now. I wondered how another Lea (Michele) would be as Eponine, too, since she actually turned down this role on Broadway to do Glee, although I was a bit skeptical of her ability to act the part effectively. But then it was revealed that instead, Eponine would be played by a British actress named Samantha Barks, who played Eponine in the West End. After seeing this clip of her singing “On My Own,” I’m now really excited to see her in the movie.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYWIVmTBECE]

And the Thenardiers will be played by Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. EFFING BRILLIANT. I know both of them sang in Sweeney Todd, but for these characters, it’s the acting that’s the most important. They’re villains but also the comic relief (it’s a show whose title means “the miserable ones,” so you need to have comic relief somewhere). I think both of these actors will be amazing in these roles. And I really hope that “Master of the House” is as awesome of a scene as it has the potential to be. It’s by far the catchiest song in the show (just ask George Costanza) and is a great ensemble number.

Additionally, the brilliant Colm Wilkinson, who originated the role of Valjean (listen to him here! He holds that last note for like twenty seconds!), will play the bishop and Frances Ruffelle, the original Eponine, will have a small part as well.

A few other tidbits I’ve learned:

  • It’s directed by Tom Hooper, who also directed The King’s Speech, which I adored.
  • Cameron Mackintosh, the original producer, is producing the movie as well.
  • Rather than recording the songs beforehand and lip-synching on film, the actors will be filmed singing live on the set. Interesting. I hate the way lip-synching looks, so I feel like this can only be a good thing.
  • They’re keeping the sung-through format and adding very little additional dialogue. A+.
  • They ARE adding one additional song—it’s called “Suddenly” and it’s sung by Jean Valjean after he adopts Cosette. This is pretty standard practice for a musical—when they make the film version, they add a song so that they can be eligible for the Oscar for Best Original Song. Dreamgirls added “Love You I Do,” Grease added “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” Evita added “You Must Love Me,” and Chicago threw “I Move On” in at the end credits. That’s definitely an area of the plot that could use a song, and it’s composed by the original composer. So I’m excited to hear it.
  • I don’t know if they’re eliminating any songs, though. I certainly hope not.

So, in conclusion, I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be the best movie of all time. I’ve never gone to a midnight showing of a movie, not even any of the Harry Potter movies, but I will absolutely be going to this one.

Until then, I have Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel’s take on the confrontation scene to entertain me.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXsJjVdj1E]

Attack of the Vodka Bottle

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Last night, vodka almost killed me. And not in the way you think.

So, it’s Restaurant Week in Boston, a misnomer since it actually lasts two weeks. Julie and I decided to go out to Tremont 647, a restaurant neither of us had been to. I was wearing a cute red dress from ModCloth for the first time. The food was excellent, and afterwards we decided to go out for some after-dinner drinks. I had been to a South End martini bar called 28 Degrees for a Boston Bloggers event last summer (there’s another one coming up soon, and I’m looking forward to meeting some new people!) and I wanted to go again for a normal night out.

Julie and I went to 28 Degrees, which is a very nice, lounge-y bar that also has a DJ playing. We were delighted to secure seats at the end of the bar, near the wall. I ordered a Ginger Snap Martini and Julie had a Cranberry Sour. We were sitting there drinking and talking and having a lovely Friday night.

Then all of a sudden there was a gigantic crash and my new red dress was absolutely soaked, and the bar in front of me, my purse, and my lap were all covered in shards of glass.

What the hell?

My first thought was that someone behind me was either crazy or somehow offended by us sitting there drinking and talking and had thrown a drink at us, so I turned around to see who was there, but the people behind me looked as bewildered as I felt. The bartender was apologizing profusely, so then I thought maybe he’d broken something, but then he told me what had actually happened: on the shelf on the wall next to me, the vibrations from the music had inspired a big vodka bottle to start dancing, and it had shimmied its way off the shelf to its spectacular demise on the bar in front of us.

Seriously. Aside from being very lucky that it was something clear rather than red wine or something else that would ruin my brand-new dress, I don’t know how we weren’t hurt. And what if we had been? Can you imagine being killed by a falling bottle of vodka? I just finished Six Feet Under, a very weird but sometimes touching show, on DVD, and someone dies at the beginning of every episode, often in a very strange manner. Death by vodka bottle seems like something that would fit right in on that show. And can you imagine calling my parents if I had been hurt? “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. H., your daughter was injured at a bar. No, she wasn’t drunk. No, she wasn’t in a bar fight…she was just hit by a falling vodka bottle.”

And dying this particular Friday night would have been especially tragic. Not only would I have not gotten to accomplish the rest of the items on my bucket list, I would have missed the return of Mad Men and the Hunger Games movie!

To be clear, though, I still definitely recommend 28 Degrees. The staff was very nice and found us two new seats at the bar. They also gave us all our drinks on the house and threw in some bread pudding as a we’re-so-sorry-please-don’t-sue-us gift. Julie, I’m sure, will be blogging about our Friday night desserts soon!

So, that wasn’t the way I would have chosen to get free drinks, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

Song of the Moment: “Lift the Wings”

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I love being Irish. On my travel goals, Ireland is the place I want to visit more than anywhere else. The actual percentage of my Irishness is up for debate (turns out my dad just likes to pretend he’s 100% Irish and there are actually a couple of other things mixed in there), but although diversity is clearly a good thing and I like learning about other cultures, I’m still firmly convinced that Irish is the coolest thing to be. Tonight I will be going out and getting in touch with my roots…by which, of course, I mean “drinking Guinness.”

So my Song of the Moment is one with Irish roots- “Lift the Wings” from Riverdance, a show I was very into in middle school and high school. I love the voices of the singers here, Morgan Crowley and Katie McMahon.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qIzDQQGZLo]

The runner up: this song, “Bugger Off,” which is one of many hilarious Irish drinking songs on a mix CD that my former roommate Christiana Krump has. I remember her playing this song for me not long after we moved into college.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv3qFrGlAgk]

Why The Voice Is Better Than American Idol

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I stopped watching American Idol after Season 9, and even during that I was losing enthusiasm. But I do like watching people sing, so when I watched The Voice season premiere after this year’s Superbowl, I was happy to discover that it’s better than AI in every way.

While they’re both singing talent competitions, the formats are completely different. We all know AI’s—auditions before the judges, Hollywood week, then weekly performance rounds voted on by America. The first round of The Voice is somewhat different. The singers do “blind auditions” where the four coaches (Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton, and Adam Levine of Maroon 5) listen to the song with their backs turned. If they like what they hear, they press a button which turns their chair around, and if more than one judge presses the button, the singer gets to choose which team to be on. The coach of the team will mentor the singers on it. Coming up soon are the “Battle Rounds” where singers compete against each other by singing the same song at the same time, followed by rounds where the public votes.

Remember Goofus and Gallant from those Highlights magazines you read as a child? (By the way, I recently read a Highlights in a waiting room, and it has changed very little.) Well, AI = Goofus with less fun, and The Voice = Gallant with less annoying-ness. Let’s take a look:


American Idol has uncomfortable, obnoxious, bad auditions. Once in awhile you get a bad audition that doesn’t seem staged and doesn’t make you cringe with its awkwardness, but they’re few and far between. At first, the bad auditions got some attention at AI, but I think at this point most people just want to see the good ones. There’s nothing entertaining about someone being told that he or she has no talent and being subjected to extremely public ridicule.


The Voice only asks people who are actually talented to appear on TV. No one who makes it to the blind auditions is a bad singer—some are just better than others, and there’s actually an element of suspense regarding whether or not the singer will advance. When a singer doesn’t make it through, the coaches are nevertheless very encouraging and offer constructive criticism rather than insults.


American Idol tries to fit people into boxes. You can’t do anything too far outside the current music mainstream, and singers who are overweight or not conventionally attractive always get comments about “image issues.” The judges constantly muse about how singers would fit in on the current music charts, giving no consideration to the idea that people might like them the way they are. No one over the age of twenty-nine can audition.


The Voice works with all different kinds of singers. This season, along with the usual pop, rock, country, and R&B singers, there’s an opera singer and an MC, among others. A lot of times, they are people who are outside the music industry mainstream and auditioned for The Voice in hopes that they could finally be themselves. One singer, Nicolle Galyon, is hoping to bring piano into country music. (Now that I think about it, why isn’t there any piano in country music?) The opera singer, Chris Mann, says that he’s always been told to “shrink his voice down to size,” but doesn’t want to do that anymore. The blind auditions ensure that the judges aren’t thinking about an artist’s look rather than sound, and there is no upper age limit—one contestant this year, Kim Yarbrough, is fifty years old.


American Idol has judges who are now most famous for American Idol, or who peaked a long time ago. Had you ever heard of Simon Cowell or Randy Jackson before AI? And how long ago was Paula Abdul last relevant as an artist?


The Voice has four coaches who are relevant and current now, and they represent many different genres. There’s a reason why it’s often hard for contestants to choose between coaches—and watching the coaches bickering when more than one of them turns around (“I turned around first!” “My team won last year!”) is half the fun.


American Idol does not have openly gay contestants. It’s a show that’s very popular in red states, so while I’m not sure whether the show discourages the contestants from outing themselves or whether they choose not to, either way, they’re not free to be themselves. While Adam Lambert had a boyfriend while he was a contestant, he never mentioned it on the show. There have been other gay contestants, but none of them have mentioned it on the air.


The Voice has had openly gay contestants in both of its seasons. This season, I can think of two off the top of my head—Erin Martin, whose girlfriend came with her to the blind audition, and Sarah Golden, an out folk singer who has had trouble making it in the music industry due to her unwillingness to feminize her appearance. I didn’t watch last season, but four of the contestants then were openly gay, including Vicci Martinez, who came in third and landed a record deal.

It’s easier for contestants on The Voice to be out in other ways, too. Do you remember Danny Gokey’s friend Jamar Rogers, who auditioned with him on AI but didn’t make it past Hollywood week? AI’s narrative focused on Danny’s wife’s death, but it turns out that Jamar’s backstory is just as interesting. Now that he’s on The Voice, we got to hear it: he’s a former meth addict who has been homeless and is HIV-positive, but has been clean for six years and volunteers with an organization that helps fellow HIV patients. In an interview with him that I read, he said that on AI, he wasn’t comfortable revealing his HIV status, but I’m glad that The Voice didn’t hide that part of his life.


American Idol tries to pretend that it provides an opportunity for people waiting tables or singing to the cows on the farm, ignoring that many of their contestants have actually been toiling at the fringes of the music industry for years.


The Voice is frank about being a second (or third, or fourth) chance for many of its contestants. I actually have one song from Charlotte Sometimes, one of this year’s singers, in my iTunes already. Tony Lucca used to be on The Mickey Mouse Club with Christina Aguilera. Jordis Unga was formerly a contestant on Rock Star: INXS. Tony Vincent has appeared on Broadway, and Jermaine Paul was a backup singer for Alicia Keys. I like this aspect of the show—it’s not easy to make it in the music industry, and people are often rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with their talent. I like that the show gives people who deserve to be heard another chance.


American Idol does not have any animals.


The Voice has Cee Lo’s pissed-off-looking white cat, Purrfect, whom he’s always holding in his talking heads:

Need I say more? Gallant has kicked Goofus’s ass. If you’ve stopped watching American Idol, it’s time to start watching The Voice instead.

The 17-Day Diet

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Remember this post, where I lamented all the weight I’d gained? Since New Year’s Day, I have lost fifteen pounds. Ten of those were lost in the first two weeks of the year.

I’m doing my best not to sound like an advertisement (so we’re clear, I don’t do promotions, giveaways, or paid entries on this blog), but seriously? The 17-Day Diet really works!

Before you buy the book, just know this: while the diet developed by Dr. Mike Moreno is great, his writing style is kind of obnoxious and condescending. So you’ll have to try to ignore that when you read the book.

But here’s what you’ll find in there. The name is somewhat misleading, since it’s actually three cycles that each consist of seventeen days. In Cycle 1, you can eat as much lean protein (chicken, turkey, some types of fish) and certain vegetables as you want, plus two servings of certain fruits, two probiotics such as yogurt, one to two servings of “friendly fats” such as olive oil, and condiments in moderation. You also drink lots of water and green tea. You drop weight rapidly in this stage, which encourages you to keep going, but you do it healthily—no starving yourself, no following rules that are contrary to common sense.

In Cycle 2, you alternate days that follow the Cycle 1 rules with days where you can add in some more foods—shellfish, lean cuts of beef and pork, and certain starches. In Cycle 3, you can add more foods—more dairy, whole-grain breads, one serving of alcohol a day, and certain healthy snacks—and also kick the exercise up a notch.

If you’ve lost all the weight after those three cycles, you then follow one of the three cycles during the week and strategically indulge on the weekends. If you haven’t, you start again at Cycle 1 and continue until you’ve lost the weight.

I managed to stick to the diet pretty well in Cycle 1, although I admit to a bit of cheating in Cycles 2 and 3. I also could have exercised a bit more (lately, I have been so exhausted from work that I have not been doing much exercising), so honestly, I think I could have lost even more weight. Some additional thoughts:

  • Cycle 2 was by far the hardest. In Cycle 1 I kept telling myself, “Seventeen days, you can do it!” but Cycle 2 is not much different.
  • It was also hard trying to tell people why I wasn’t eating certain things. “Diet” has a negative connotation, so I was reluctant to tell too many people that I was on one.
  • What was not hard at all, surprisingly, was not drinking alcohol for thirty-four days. While I’ve never been a big drinker, I was expecting alcohol to be hard to avoid in social situations. But whenever I found myself at a birthday party or at a bar with coworkers, I just drank water and diet soda and not very many people noticed. I was dry for most of college, even living in substance-free housing for my first two years, and this experience reminded me how much I actually do like not drinking.
  • I recommend locating recipes that work for each cycle before you start them. I went through my Weight Watchers cookbook before I started the diet, so I ended up cooking a lot more.

I am lucky that I’ve never been very overweight and staying in the healthy range has never been too difficult for me, but this helped me get back on the right track. In December, I spent too much time eating crap and not exercising, so I needed something to help me stop. And this isn’t a gimmicky diet—it just takes things that you know are common sense (i.e. eat lots of vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein) and gives you a practical way of applying it.

In conclusion: I absolutely recommend this diet to anyone trying to lose weight. If you have any questions for me, ask away!

Katie Recommends: Downton Abbey

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Right before the second season premiered in the US last month, I started hearing about Downton Abbey everywhere, kind of the way Mad Men was suddenly everywhere before its second season. So I decided to check it out.

I learned my lesson about blogging about shows before the season finale—The Killing’s season finale was so bad it soured me on the whole show and I probably won’t watch Season 2. Happily, I can’t say the same of Downton Abbey, whose second season finished just as I got caught up with the show.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a quick crash course. Downton Abbey is a large estate in England inhabited by Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham; his American wife Cora; their three young adult daughters, Mary, Edith, and Sybil; Robert’s mother Violet; a cute yellow Lab named Isis; and a whole army of servants. The first season starts out in the spring of 1912 as the Titanic has just sunk. Unfortunately, the heir to the estate, their cousin Patrick, is killed in the shipwreck. Patrick was unofficially engaged to the eldest daughter Mary, therefore ensuring that she would inherit the estate despite an entail prohibiting her from doing so because she is a woman. With Patrick dead, they have to track down the new heir—a distant cousin named Matthew who works as a lawyer. That would be nothing to sneeze at for most of us, but for English aristocrats one hundred years ago, even an upper middle class working man is light years away from what they’re used to.

Nevertheless, Matthew and his widowed, former nurse mother, Isobel, move onto the property at Downton. While there are some clashes initially, and while Matthew and Mary get off on the wrong foot, Matthew becomes a part of the family. Matthew and Mary eventually develop a friendship that may become more, and may save Mary from a scandal she has found herself in.

By Season 2, however, World War I has rolled around and things have changed. The old societal order seems less important, and barriers are being broken down. What it will mean when the war is over is less clear.

That was all purposely vague to avoid spoilers, but trust me, there is a LOT to love about this show. The characters, for one, are wonderfully interesting and sympathetic. Maggie Smith as Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, steals every scene she’s in. She’s such a snob, but you know that she loves her family beneath it all, and she comes up with such brilliant one-liners. When a character she doesn’t like tells her that she won’t be seeing him again, she replies, “Do you promise?” When Sybil starts getting involved in politics, Mary comments that Sybil is entitled to her opinion, to which the Countess retorts, “No, she is not entitled to her opinion until she gets married, and then her husband will tell her what her opinion is!” When she and Isobel quarrel over something Isobel thinks she has done, the Countess defends herself, ending with, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Despite him being way too old for me, I have a bit of a crush on the Earl. He’s warm and gentle and very proud of his family and his estate, taking his role as caretaker of Downton Abbey seriously. He treats his family and his servants with kindness, often reserving judgment on people who have made mistakes, and despite the concern for rank that permeates the world he lives in, he wants above all for those he loves to be happy. He’s certainly not perfect—he can be stubborn and set in his ways and towards the end of Season 2 he does something that made me yell at the TV, but whenever he messes up, he immediately feels guilty and tries to right his wrong as soon as possible. He is a gentleman in every sense of the word.

It has been a long time since I have shipped a couple as much as I have shipped Matthew and Mary. Mary is terrified of what she does not know, and her decisions concerning relationships always revolve around this uncertainty. But she does love Matthew, and their scenes together are wonderfully romantic and sweet. Also, Matthew is quite attractive.

While Mary is afraid of change, the youngest daughter, Sybil, wholeheartedly embraces it. She gets involved with women’s rights in the first season, and when World War I rolls around, not content to sit idly by, she becomes a nurse to take care of wounded soldiers. In Season 2, she begins a romance widely considered taboo. She’s a beautiful, kind, wealthy young woman who could have anyone she wanted, but she is willing to give up the life she’s always known for love.

The middle daughter, Edith, is kind of a bitch but is starting to grow on me. She has a contentious relationship with her older sister Mary, and she does something so awful to Mary in Season 1 that it’s impossible to sympathize with her. But it’s easy to feel bad for her for other reasons. While Mary was engaged to Patrick, it was Edith who loved him and mourned his death the most. I think she has a bit of middle-child syndrome, and as the least attractive of the sisters, no one expects much from her. Her parents even comment at one point that she’ll probably not marry and instead take care of them in their old age.

The narrative focuses about equally on the aristocrats upstairs and the servants downstairs. The mild-mannered valet, John Bates, can’t seem to catch a break, as his past misfortunes keep coming back to haunt him. His ongoing relationship with a maid named Anna is so sweet, and you keep rooting for them despite all the obstacles they face.

There are all kinds of interesting characters among the servants, too: Carson, the professional and fiercely devoted butler; Thomas, the evil gay footman who is always causing trouble somewhere; O’Brien, the lady’s maid who is usually plotting along with Thomas; Daisy, the honest-to-a-fault and easily frightened kitchen maid; and Branson, the highly political chauffeur who strongly influences Sybil. These are just some of the servants we meet, and the personal, romantic, and family issues they all face often parallel what is going on with the family they serve.

The 1910s and 1920s are such an interesting period in history that I’m surprised there isn’t more historical fiction about that time. As the study of modernism in eleventh-grade English class taught me, it was an era where the world was changing in so many ways—women’s rights, socialism, a changing map of Europe. One theme we see gradually emerging over the course of the show is the breakdown of the traditional class structure and people looking to break out of the boxes they’ve been born into. In the first season, it’s a bit more subtle—an upper middle-class lawyer potentially inheriting a large estate, a maid dreaming of getting a job as a secretary instead—but after the war, it is visible on a larger scale. Servants try out alternate roles as many of the men go off to war, Sybil works as a nurse, Edith learns to drive a tractor in the absence of men to do that work, and romances that once seemed forbidden are suddenly possible. As the soldiers in the war find out, bullets and bombs aren’t concerned with social class out on the battlefield.

And on a shallow note? THE CLOTHES. Oh, my God, the clothes.

I covet these women’s wardrobes. If I’ll never be able to spend my days traipsing around a beautiful estate, reading, spending time with friends, and meeting attractive men, as these women do before the war, can I at least get to wear beautiful dresses like these?

The show certainly isn’t perfect. It’s a soap opera, plain and simple, and occasionally the plots get a bit ridiculous or predictable. There are also times when one storyline gets too much attention or when we should see more of another story to be able to understand it better, and one character introduced in the second season is so one-dimensional that her motivations are difficult to understand. But the acting is universally wonderful and, above all, at the end of each episode you truly feel that you have traveled to another world. What more could you want out of a TV show?

What I Want the Most

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A year ago, I blogged about how I moved past hating Valentine’s Day. At this point, I actually kind of like it because it gives me an excuse to spoil myself—and as an introvert, I have always enjoyed the pleasure of my own company, so I take whatever excuses I can. But as I’m another year older and single for another year, I have to admit that I’m reflecting on some things.

Now, before I say anything more, I want to note that this is not a woe-is-me-I’m-single post. It’s not an OMG-my-significant-other-RAWKS! post, either. (By the way, those two things are equally annoying, so basically, everyone should just shut up about their relationship statuses.) But it is a musing on getting older and how I find myself looking at the future differently in my late twenties than I did in my early twenties.

You notice my bucket list here? Lots of fun stuff on it—skydiving, mountain climbing, and some stuff that isn’t in a Tim McGraw song, like owning a boat, recording a song, and being a bestselling author. I also have my list of travel goals that I hope to make some progress on over the next couple of years.

But the truth is, I would give up every other item on both of those lists if it meant that I could have only these three:

  • Fall in love with an awesome guy who loves me back, have a wonderful wedding, and stay happily married for the rest of our lives
  • Have at least two kids
  • Own a house in the Boston suburbs

That’s it. Those are the things I want the most out of life. They are not extraordinary things. They’re things that millions of people manage to do without much trouble. And yet, for me, they might be the hardest items on my bucket list to accomplish. Let’s take a look at them.

Not only have I never been in a relationship, I have never been in love. So my heart has never been broken, but I also do not know what romantic love feels like. And as easy as it is to get cynical and think that real love doesn’t exist or that all relationships will end, I know that’s not true. I know people who are really, truly in love and will be together for the rest of their lives. And I always think of my paternal grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and World War II and who were happily married for sixty-six years until my grandfather’s death. Real love happens, but it has never happened to me, and more than anything, I want to find someone with whom to spend every day for the rest of my life.

I also want at least two kids. The challenge here is accomplishing the part before that, love and marriage, in time to make that happen. It’s very hard to get pregnant without fertility treatments after age thirty-five or so. If I met a guy tomorrow, I’d have to date him for at least two years before I’d consider getting engaged. Then we’d be engaged for about another year and have at least a year or two of being married and childless before having our first kid, which would make me a first-time mother at about age thirty-two. Which is fine, but remember, this would be the absolute earliest. I’d consider adoption in the future as well, but even if I were to adopt, I wouldn’t want to be too old when becoming a parent.

The side effect of wanting kids so badly is that it has made me pickier about whom I’m attracted to. When I look at dating sites, I end up thinking things like, “Is his career stable? Does he seem mature enough to be a good father? Does he value the same kinds of things that I do?” I just feel like I can’t waste time with someone if I can’t see a long-term future with him.

The other reason I want to find someone who is mature and financially stable is because of the third thing I want: owning a house in the Boston suburbs. Specifically, a house that is on enough land to be more private than living in the city and has at least three bedrooms and a backyard. And a house that is located in a Boston suburb that is on the commuter rail and has a good school system. And, the hardest part, a house that my hypothetical future husband and I can afford.

Now, I am pretty good at saving money. Despite paying a lot in rent and earning the first word of my blog title by working in a not-so-lucrative industry, I have managed to save a decent amount. And one of the reasons I was so excited to become a sales rep was because if I make my number, I get a much bigger bonus than I used to get. But even so, the Boston suburbs are ridiculously expensive, even if you’re just looking for a modest three-bedroom house, and it will take me a long time to save enough money for a down payment. What if I can’t meet a guy who can afford to help me buy a house?

What do you guys think? Have you found your priorities changing as you get older? What do you want the most out of life, and do you worry about how you may never achieve it?