Day: July 5, 2014

Three sentence movie reviews: Tiny Furniture

I was a fan, as I’m always interested in movies that mark college-to-real-world transition, especially from a female perspective.  It was also interesting as fan of the television show Girls, because some of the same actors appear. There’s a scene that takes place in a playground that will probably stick with me for awhile.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2010/tiny_furniture.html

Photo from October 1990, poem by Gary Soto

Another good one taken by Cindy.  That’s me on the left and H on the right in Pleasanton, California where we traveled with the marching band for competition during the autumn of our sophomore year.   I’m wearing fishnet stockings with zebra striped glow-in-the-dark Converse high tops. My friends and I were prone to wearing the fishnet/Converse combo from time to time.  That was the band trip that H arranged for all the boys in the band to sing “16 Candles” to me on my 16th birthday.

Also in the same photo album a poem/snippit of a poem by Gary Soto that I really liked when it was handed to me by Mrs. Brown, my awesome ninth grade English teacher.  Thank goodness I kept it, because I can’t find it anywhere online.

Photo from August 1994

In my digression, I found this photo, which I’d been looking for now and then for the past few months.  This is boyfriend #4 and myself, shortly before I went back for my second year of college.
We both loved our hair, that boyfriend and I, and I think it was hard to tell if we loved the other’s hair any more than we loved our own.  I’d had a fantastic summer with him, the kind of romance that everyone should have at least once in their lives.  I really didn’t want to leave to go back to college, but I didn’t really want to stay either.  So I had my friend Cindy take our picture, us sitting on the back deck at my house, squinting into the sun while she framed the photo.  This is the first photo of me as part of a couple that I have in my possession.  I wasn’t the type of  high school girl who handed off her camera to her friends saying, “Take a picture of us!” while I snuggled into an embrace.
I’m very tan, because I was a lifeguard three days a week, working as a cook at Pizza Hut the other four days.  I had 24 hours off between the end of work on Saturday (6pm) and the start of work on Sunday (6pm).  I’m wearing Tevas (my first pair) which I wore while lifeguarding and gave me a wicked Teva tan.   My baggy t-shirt says something witty and I’m betting I have on the plaid shorts I stole from boyfriend #3.
Boyfriend #4 is 17–there was almost a two-year age difference between us–has just graduated from high school and spent the summer doing this and that.  He didn’t have a job, which bugged me, but in hindsight it was convenient, because we only had to plan around one person’s work schedule.  He is not tan, because he didn’t do much outside stuff, and is wearing socks and sneakers, despite the heat.  He wasn’t a sandals type of guy.
Like most of the relationships from that time period, I managed to mess up the breaking up part and spent a good year incredibly angry at him, for which I’m very sorry now, as I realize he was doing what he needed to do.  But at the moment when this picture was taken, I was happy, and some part of me realized this summer was one to be remembered.

A bit of a digression.

I assumed that I had run out of the material I was using to make the bias tape for the Laurel dresses, but after (it’s always after) I finished the dresses using a different bias tape for the neckline for one of them, what should I discover but a whole bunch more of said material.

This led to a massive overhaul of the closet, when I was supposed to be doing other things.

Which led to peeking into bins, which led to the discovery of this box, which was a gift from my high school friend, sent to me during college.

It even included fun pictures, of me with her nephew (who is now in his 20s) and a picture of the jazz band my senior year.
I rearranged the closet and even organized my material and patterns.  So that was a good thing.