The life of a Catholic school teacher

“Omg, you’re one of them…”
-Drew Barrymore from Music and Lyrics

This movie is one of my favorites because the whole idea of cozying up to a famous celebrity, albeit an 80s has-been, is so intriguing. In fact, every now and then, I can count on having a dream in which I am best friends with a super-star (usually Jim Carrey). In my dream, I am hanging out with the person and referring to movies or shows they have been in, almost in a reminiscing kind of way. It’s a very cool feeling, and in my dream, I always come to the realization that nobody is ever going to believe that I am hanging out with whoever it is. This realization always comes at the end, when I’m about to wake up and find out that truly, it is an unbelievable dream because of course, it wasn’t real.

There’s another reason that I chose this quote for this week’s edition of Movie Quote Monday. I picked this one, not just because I was watching it last week in an attempt to distract myself while on my new/used elliptical for the first time, but because I can sort of relate to it. I’m not attempting to relate to Hugh Grant’s character who is the 80s has-been that Drew Barrymore is realizing for the first time when she says this line, in fact, my connection to this line is completely different. I chose it because I feel now, that I am “one of them”. One of those people who are into diet and fitness, one of those people like the women I work with who are very careful about watching what they eat. For the longest time, I have watched from the sidelines, knowing that I desperately wanted to be in the game, but just didn’t have it all together to play. My motivation was there, I had every reason to get on the diet and exercise “bandwagon”, but something, my own laziness perhaps, was stronger than my willpower. But now, finally, I am one of them. The reasons to lose weight are now outweighing, so to speak, my desire to remain lazy. As of now, I have a plan, and more importantly, the motivation, to take the weight off. As Billy Blanks put it, on one of his many exercise dvds that I have tried, “You put it on, you can take it off”. For almost 30 years, I have been steadily gaining weight. It is time, to steadily lose weight.

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Because of the medicine I take at night, I can always count on being in a very deep sleep all night. As a result, I am able to have, or remember, very vivid, lengthy dreams every night. The dreams I have usually always leave me scratching my head. I have a couple of dream interpretation dictionaries on the shelf because there are some strange things that pop up in my dreams. I still haven't found the meaning behind coming across an orca whale stranded in the parking lot of a hospital that I am rushing into. There are some recurring dreams that I have that I don't have to guess the meaning behind. I quit smoking about 6 years ago and every now and then I'll have a dream where I am smoking. Though in the dream, I have already quit and I know I shouldn't be smoking. There's a feeling of guilt that accompanies the act in the dream. I always wake up feeling very relieved that it was just a dream and my decision to quit is reaffirmed. I find that those dreams usually come at a time when I'm tempted to start up again. There is one recurring dream, however, that I find relevant to Christmas. Every now and then I will dream about waking up on Christmas Eve, only to find that I have missed the entire Christmas season. I've missed all the Christmas music, the television specials, and the general air of anticipation. Now here it is, 4 full days before Christmas and I haven't missed anything 'Christamsy', but how can it possibly be that it is only 4 days until Christmas?! That's the part that baffles me. This entire year has gone by SO fast! It seems like I have been flipping pages on the calendar every other day. This isn't the first time that I have noticed time going by fast. Every Christmas, for me, brings about a sense of "Where has this year gone?". I look at Christmas as an adult as the direct opposite of Christmas as a child. When I was a kid, as I'm sure it is for every kid, Christmas took forever to arrive. Now, the days left can be counted on one hand. I don't think time is going to slow down any time soon though. The next step in my life will be to have children of my own and I'm sure that all parents will agree, time passes by so quickly when you are watching your children grow. So for now, I'm going to do my best to cherish the remaining time that I have before the Christmas music stops being played constantly on the radio and a new year is upon me.

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