Shopping and a Great Doc

After posting the other day about how I constantly occupy myself with projects of my own choosing, I decided to take myself out for fun and games. Having received a (very) small unexpected windfall check I headed over to Big Lots where I treated myself to a strange collection of odds and ends, mostly relating to my ever developing home work space.

I spent an inordinate amount of time lollygagging in the scrap booking aisle. Long time readers may recall that I possess a rogue crafting gene which often works to influence me to embark on projects to produce things that I would never EVER actually want to display in my home.

Anyway, I nearly succumbed to the siren song yesterday. Did you know there are hole punches that make holes in the shape of flowers? Triangles? Squares? Stars? Pinking scissors that leave the edges of your paper in all manner of exciting scallops? And stamps...oh, Lordy. I loves me some stamps.

In the end, I walked away, opting instead to feed the 13-yr-old girl that is still alive and well (and still in possession of firm shapely thighs) inside me by purchasing a paper covered satchel in a pastel blue stripe and flower in which to store my note cards and mailing supplies. Ah...the joys of organization. SO satisfying.

Later the S-Man and I watched "51 Birch Street". The film begins with documentary film maker, Doug Block, making routine videos of interviews with his elderly parents, Mike and Mina Block, married over 50 years. The story takes a turn, however, when Mina contracts pneumonia and dies suddenly leaving behind a stunned family, a lifetime of diaries chronicling her innermost thoughts, and a husband who remarries a scant three months later, leaving their confused son to question everything he ever thought about his parents and setting him on a quest for answers about their, as it turns out, complicated relationship.

For some, this might be considered boring subject matter, but for me it is the stuff of fascination. Why do people get married? Stay together? What is love? How happy can two people hope to be in a life long relationship? The story of the Block's marriage, ultimately recounted before the unflinching eye of the camera, is both routine and unique; heartbreaking and hopeful. I was spellbound.

View the trailer here.