The Three Faces of Me

Typically, I will start a blog in any given few spare moments I manage to steal, write a few sentences and fully intend to go back to the blog to finish what I started when I get a few more moments. Sometimes a whole week will elapse between these events, but such is the schizophrenic nature of writing. (Unless, of course, you are a professional writer, getting paid to do your work, with a set writing schedule and all that. Then you are more apt, I think, to finish something relatively close to the time that you began it.)

Let me begin, then, backwardly with this week's Movie Review of Movies You Have Already Seen or Don't Plan to See (or whatever it is that I call this feature). This week: Sybil. I refer to the television movie that played on CBS last week (I think it was last week - I lose track of time). Awful. Awful. Awful. I had the misfortune of watching this movie just a couple of weeks after the original mini-series (I really miss seeing mini-series, don't you?) finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue.

The newer Sybil was four hours of material crammed into two hours, terribly rushed and the writing was awful. I know the source material intimately, having spent many hours of my childhood reading the book Sybil, one of the first thick paperbacks I would carry with me when I was likely too young to be reading about such things.

(Sidenote: I went through a period where I was obsessed with books about women and mental illness in various incarnations. I read every book I could about multiple personality disorder and anorexia and various other maladies. Insert your own joke about me here.)

The mini-series, Sybil, however, was slower paced (in a good way) and nuanced and featured wonderful performances by Sally Field and Joanne Woodward. Joanne Woodward was also so brilliant in The Three Faces of Eve. I adore her.

And that brings us to the three faces of me. For those who aren't aware, Sybil is the story of a woman with multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder) and who had 16 distinct personalities. The story also really fascinated me, but as I got older (as opposed to growing up, which I am still not sure I have done), I see that most people have so many different aspects to their personalities that it seems that we all have a bit of dissociative identify disorder (such a fancy name for a disorder). People adapt as they must to various social situations, relating to different groups of people in different ways (and yes, I have touched upon this in my blog before, but it interests me).

For me, I find that it is difficult for me to answer questions like "What is your favorite [insert item here]?" I used to think I had trouble answering this question because of my indecisive nature, but as I get older, I tend to think that it is more that different things appeal to different aspects of my personality. I've found this very true with movies: a list of my favorites changes pretty frequently because different movies speak to me in different ways. This week (last week?) I enjoyed Sybil, and then the next evening sat down to watch Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny and I laughed. Yes, it was silly and juvenile, but I still laughed. I have a soft spot for Joanne Woodward and Jack Black equally -- though not the same.

Dealing with an almost-four-year-old requires me to use nearly every aspect of my personality (along with brains and resolve) because preschoolers are strangely intelligent creatures for people with little real-world experience. Let me preface this next part by saying that I do not, in any way, endorse cannibalism. However, Jude and I play this grotesque game where we pretend to tear each other's limbs off and eat them or discard them on the floor. I like to rip off his elbows and hide them behind the couch, while he likes to pull off my ears and throw them onto the top of the television set. Earlier this week he was struggling with his pajama top and I offered to "rip off his arms" to help him out. So, I did, tearing off his arms and setting them on the floor. Instead of laughing and reciprocating as he usually does, he just looked at me very seriously and said "Mom, that wasn't nice. How am I supposed to get dressed with no arms?"



Sully still has less moods. He is pretty much happy all the time (unless he is over tired), smiling and laughing which is really great. I think he must get his disposition from his dad. In other news, Sully has officially been introduced to all of his fruits and veggies and has just celebrated his eight-month-anniversary of birth with a simple ceremony in which I said "Hey, Sullivan is 8 months old today" and everyone else in the household nodded and smiled.

In other other news (or maybe I am up to other other other news), Dung! is revamped and running again. Of course the blog's owner refuses to burn his feed, but you can check out the link here if you're so inclined.

Today's song of the day: "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead. It came up today when I was driving in my car, using my poor-woman's Ipod (a burned CD of various songs, set to play on "random" on my CD player) and I shrieked a little, excitedly, even though:
a. I burned the CD;
b. I only burn songs that I like.

Some times it takes so very little to amuse me.