Yeah, strange title, I know. But honestly, I wasn’t really sure how else to put it. It does. It really does. I guess what spurred this post right at this time is a couple of deaths I encountered recently. One was the death of my mom’s best friend. She passed away last week. (I don’t know why I always tend to try to use “passed away” instead of “died”. It’s not like it’s any different either way. I guess it just sounds less harsh to me. Death’s a harsh reality, so maybe it makes it a bit softer? Not really. Anyway.) Apparently, she hadn’t been too healthy lately. Getting old kind of sucks sometimes too. But I remember spending a lot of time with her and her husband when I was a kid. They were my parents’ best friends, and they hung out with us quite a bit. They had known my parents’ since high school and were practically an aunt and uncle to me. My parents’ didn’t do the whole “godparents” thing, but if they did, I have no question that this couple would have been my godparents for sure. The guy passed away (there, I did it again) in 2004, and that had been difficult. He was a really cool guy. They never had any kids, but they were great with them. He was always a fun person to talk to. He was pretty into cars, and had this really neat slot car racetrack set up in his basement that I remember playing with as a kid. They were just a really neat couple. Everyone loved them. I know he has been really missed for a while now, and his wife will be now too. Especially by my mom.

The second thing that has this on my mind is the death of a good friend of mine’s dad yesterday. It sounds like it was pretty sudden and he had some health issues that didn’t really come up until pretty recently. I really felt for her when I saw her post about his death on Facebook. Losing a parent… well, there’s not really anything you can compare it to. And there’s no way to know what it feels like until it happens to you. There’s not really any way to prepare yourself for it. And there’s not any way to “get over” it. It basically just creates this hole in your life that will be there from then on. You don’t get rid of the hole, you just get used to it being there. It never gets any smaller. You just learn how to live with it. It will always hurt, you just figure out out to live with it hurting. Life goes on despite the pain.

I’m not really sure of the point of this post, other than just to articulate what I have been feeling. Losing loved ones changes you, especially losing a parent. There’s just no way to prepare yourself for the death of one of the people that brought you into this world and raised you. I know my friend will be ok, but I also know she’s forever changed now. I guess for me this scene from Grey’s Anatomy just sums it up. I know I’ve posted it before, but here it is again. Welcome to the dead dads club. I seem to have several friends that have been inducted into it now as well, and it pretty much sucks. But the rest of us members will do our best to help you through.

I’m not even sure where to begin or how to write this review.  A friend and I were out on Sunday, and we decided to go see a movie.  Neither of us had seen Kingsman: The Secret Service yet, but we both had heard good things about it, so we decided to go see that.  I, for one, did not quite expect the movie to be what it was.

This is a hard review to write without giving away spoilers.  We had been at a baseball game before we decided to go see Kingsman, and as we were leaving we ran into two girls that my friend knew, so we asked them about it.  Apparently they hadn’t liked it, and thought it was too “vulgar”.  Hmm, intriguing.  We had heard good reviews from pretty much everywhere else.

As Kingsman started out, it reminded me a bit of the movie Men in Black.  Young guy gets recruited into a secret agency and has to pass a bunch of tests to be the one selected for the position they have open.  Sounds familiar, right?  Only this movie doesn’t have aliens.  What does it have?  Samuel L. Jackson.  Yep, he plays the pretty hysterical character of a tech genius with lots of money and a lisp.  The lisp is very noticeable and memorable, and just makes the character a little more interesting.

Colin Firth plays our recruit’s sponsor as he goes through training and testing for this secret agency.  His character actually turns out to be very likable and appealing.  And he kicks some pretty serious butt.  To try to sum up the plot of Kingsman without giving anything away, let’s just say that Samuel L. Jackson’s villain comes up with a plot to destroy most of the world. And the Kingsman service takes on the challenge of stopping him.

Kingsman started out almost a little serious in the beginning and got funnier and crazier as it went along. I liked it, but I can see how it wouldn’t be for everyone.  I’m not sure vulgar is the right word, but it did get a bit graphic in spots.  My friend compared it to Quentin Tarantino films, and I could see the similarities. At any rate, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, and an interesting story that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  If you don’t mind a bit of gratuitous violence, I would definitely recommend it.

I think I first heard about Rainbow Rowell’s books when her book Fangirl started getting so popular. Oddly enough, I have yet to read that one. My introduction to her writing was from the book Eleanor & Park, which some friends of mine read together as a book club. Well, we’ve tried to be a book club. We have started on a few books, but I think Eleanor & Park was the only one we really managed to finish and then get together and talk about. We’re spread out all over the country, so we have to get together via Google Hangouts. It’s kind of a chore. Or we’re just not disciplined. Make of it what you will.

At any rate, I had seen friends reading Rowell’s newest book, Landline, over on Goodreads and decided it might be interesting to check out. I mean, literally, check out. I read most of my books on my Kindle, and I absolutely love the ability to check out books from the local library on your Kindle. There’s just usually a pretty long waiting list for the good ones. However, I did finally manage to get my (virtual) hands on Landline recently, and decided to give it a go since I’ve struggled with really getting into a lot of the other books I had started this year.

I lucked out. Landline ended up being one of the ones that I almost can’t put down. I love those kind. You know, the books that just hold your interest and you find yourself going back to them as often as you can so you can see what happens to the characters in the story? Just to give you a summary, Landline is about a woman named Georgie McCool, who is married to Neal. They have two children. It’s Christmastime, and something important comes up with Georgie’s work to where she is almost forced to stay in California where they live, while Neal continues on (with their kids) with the plan to go visit his family in Omaha over Christmas. While trying to focus on her work, Georgie ends up really missing Neal and wanting to work things out since he hadn’t been happy she stayed in Cali for the holiday. Then something sort of strange happens which forces Georgie to really examine their past and their relationship.

Landline was probably more about Georgie’s relationship with Neal than anything else. In Rainbow Rowell’s other book that I read, Eleanor & Park, the two main characters were teenagers, but Georgie and Neal definitely had a much more mature feel to their relationship. (And get your mind out of the gutter, I don’t mean “mature” THAT way.) This wasn’t a blossoming romance, although you did get to see that part of their relationship as well, through Georgie’s flashbacks. I won’t go into the specifics because I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but in a way, Neal and Georgie’s relationship could be typical of almost any couple’s relationship. And that’s what I loved about this book. Though there were magical moments, it wasn’t just some magical happy ever after. It was real, with all the problems and fights that come with relationships.

“Nobody’s lives just fit together. Fitting together is something you work at. It’s something you make happen – because you love each other.”

I loved Landline because it dove into the questions that we all have when in a relationship with a partner. Do they really love me? Are they really happy? Do I really love them? Am I happy? Should I have picked someone else? If you’re in any kind of long-term relationship, you can’t tell me you haven’t thought through some of these questions at some point. This book takes you through the main character’s journey to try to find answers to them – her journey to try to make the right decisions for her life. Life is full of choices, and none of us are always sure we are making the right ones. Heck, are there even really any right ones, or is it all just arbitrary?

“How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It’s an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you’re that lucky, who are you to even ask whether it’s enough to make you happy?”

I thought Landline was a great book. I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, because not only did I really get into it, I appreciated and agreed with the message. We may not have all the answers, and we may think sometimes we made the wrong choices, or at least we’re not sure about them. And that’s even more true about relationships, where the choices we make seem oh so important. But life is not defined, and the only thing we can do is make the choices we think are best and make the most of them. Which really is not always as hard as you might think.