Changing the Routine

I believe I've really mixed up my routine now. I went out of town, took a long weekend, then this morning I had physical therapy and a dentist appointment. This afternoon, I finally got to use my new swimsuit. I was thinking about going grocery shopping, then when I went to the mailbox, I saw that the pool was empty and very inviting-looking, so I scrapped the plans and hit the water for a while. And now I'm very sleepy because swimming seems to do that to me.

I think I've proved that I don't have an Internet addiction, since I've been almost entirely offline from mid-day Wednesday until this afternoon. I did skim e-mail Thursday because there was a bit of local drama my church was in the middle of (of the making national news variety) and I needed to see if they'd need a choir or hostesses. Unfortunately, the downside to going offline that long is that the Internet keeps on going, and that means it's hard to catch up. Right now, my mailbox is making me whimper and cringe when I look at it, but since there's nothing from a publisher or my agent, I think I'll wait to deal with it. In the future, maybe I shouldn't post something designed to generate feedback while I'm mostly offline for a few days (the idea was that I could let the feedback pile up while I was gone so I could assess it as a whole instead of as each response came in, but that still meant a lot of notification e-mails adding to the stuffed mailbox).

The nice thing about going to East Texas at this time of year is the fruit. My dad got a box of peaches from a nearby orchard, and my parents shared them with me (there will be a cobbler in my future, I think), and then when he took some figs from the backyard tree to share with a friend, the friend gave him a big sack of blueberries from his garden, which I got some of. I'm kind of afraid I'm going to turn into that girl from the Willie Wonka movie at the rate I'm eating blueberries, but they're good for me.

In other news, the shoulder has progressed to the point I only have to go to therapy twice a week. I still have to do my exercises at home, but I'm within 15 degrees of normal in most positions, and totally back to normal in one. It still feels a bit tight and it hurts sometimes, but about the only things I can't do now are zip up certain dresses and dance the robot (the latter doesn't come up very often). I did discover that swimming isn't entirely pain-free, and I should probably avoid water activities where I can't just walk to shore because treading water hurts and I'm not sure I could do it for very long.

Back to the chick flicks ... I watched Legally Blonde on one of the cable channels sometime in the past few days, and you know, that's a really fun movie. There's a lot to like about it under the pink, fluffy exterior. It seems to get classified as a romantic comedy, but it isn't really -- the relationship with Mr. Right doesn't get romantic during the movie itself. When you look at it from a structural perspective, it's actually an inversion of the romantic comedy.

Most romantic comedy films start with the heroine (or hero, but most of these films seem to focus on the woman) having a goal or desire. Often, it has something to do with a career -- wanting a particular job or promotion or project. Sometimes it involves a guy (almost always Mr. Wrong), but Mr. Wrong is usually related to the job thing, and generally, both the goal and Mr. Wrong are symbols of a particular life the heroine wants to have. If she could just get that promotion/house/project and be with Mr. Wrong, she'd have the perfect life. Then things change when Mr. Right comes on the scene and starts making her question her previous goals and assumptions about what she wanted out of life (not that he always directly challenges her, but his very presence makes her think twice). She has a change of plans and starts to develop a new desire, to win Mr. Right, even if that desire is unconscious or unspoken, and she's torn between this desire and her previous goal and will ultimately have to choose between that initial goal and True Love.

Well, with Legally Blonde, her initial goal is all about the guy. She wants her boyfriend to propose to her, and when he dumps her instead because she's not serious enough, she decides to show him serious and sets out to get into Harvard Law School so she can get him back. But the change of plans comes along when she meets the new "Mr. Right" -- law -- and her new goal is to be a good lawyer who helps people. So, instead of going from career goal to love goal, she goes from love goal to career goal. It's really more of a coming-of-age story than a romance, even if the epilogue gives us a romantic happy ending that shows that career and love aren't mutually exclusive. She's never torn between career and love. It's just that finding out what she can do when she really tries makes her realize that her boyfriend is actually kind of an idiot. It's a fun twist for the chick flick genre.

Now I must find food because swimming also makes me hungry. Maybe something involving peaches or blueberries ...