Martini Rescue Squad

"Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?" by Amy Nicholson

In homage to the Oscars...

Link:    http://www.laweekly.com/los-angeles/who-killed-the-romantic-comedy/Content?oid=4464884

Excerpts:     "Men and women are still falling in love, of course. They're just not doing it on screen — and if they do, it's no laughing matter.... Titans of the genre such as Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey dashed back to dramas...'More movies are puncturing the fantasy...so you're getting more of a sense of people working through things, as opposed to fate swooping in and making everything happen.'"

 

"Why Gratitude Makes You Happier and Wealthier" - Christine Kane

To complement "Ungrateful"...

From: http://christinekane.com/why-gratitude-makes-you-happier-and-wealthier/

(In Honor of Thanksgiving.)

Gratitude is about so much more than being thankful. Gratitude is a practice. For some, it is a way of life. Why do some people swear by this practice? Why do those people live happier and more abundant lives than everyone else?

- Because gratitude is about presence.

Gratitude is about waking up in this moment and being here – really being here – and noticing what’s around you. Most people are so busy thinking about the next thing, or their horrid past, that they don’t wake up and look around at their present moment — the only moment there is.

- Because gratitude is about honoring your life.

Do you ever compare your life with someone else’s? Do you ever wish your life were better and more like another’s? Sometimes we can lose ourselves in wondering how we “measure up” to some standard set by someone else or by the media or by our parents. My belief is this: Comparison is the mind killer. And the antidote is gratitude.

Gratitude requires you to validate your own life. (And you really don’t have any other life, do you?) It forces you say YES to the gift that is you. The choices you’ve made, the changes you’ve gone through, the track you’re on — all of those have brought you here. Even if here is a place that needs a little adjustment, that’s okay. There are always gifts in any present moment.

- Because gratitude is about attracting.

It’s difficult to attract abundance and joy if you are saying “no” to what IS. You say no each time you focus too much on the future or past, or when you criticize something that is in your present moment. When you say yes, you shift. Attraction is about “yes.”

Gratitude says, “Yes, I love this!” And then more of this is attracted, because the this is what you’re focusing on.

- Because gratitude is about choice.

How you translate any situation is the situation. What you choose to see is the truth (for you). This isn’t proposing that you live in denial or phoniness. It’s reminding you that your translation of any life situation is your own choice. Over and over we’ve all heard stories of people who have ignored others’ translations of their talent, their projects, their art, their looks, their lives. These people chose their own translations and succeeded. You always have a choice when it comes to how you look at things. Choose to choose gratitude.

- Because gratitude is about wisdom.

I think people believe they’re being smart if they criticize, complain, and focus on the problems of the world around them. Smart? Maybe. Clever? Sure. But not wise. It is wise to look for and find the knowing place in your heart. It is wise to choose joy. It is wise to honor your riches. It is wise to focus on and grow the blessings of your life.

- Because gratitude is about recognition.

Use your power of focus to hone in on the beauty and on what makes your heart smile or sing. Recognize the spirit in your life. It’s all around you waiting to be noticed. In the words of Franz Kafka, “It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

- Because gratitude is about receptivity.

Gratitude makes you receptive. It makes you concave. It makes you a vessel, waiting to be filled.

I carry a small notebook with me everywhere I go. In it, I write down song ideas as I hear them. I write down quotes I hear. I write down ideas for stage stories. As I do that, I become more receptive, and more ideas and songs come to me. It’s a tool that says to my subconscious, “Send more my way!” And the subconscious always responds.

Gratitude is the same way. It says, “I am receptive! Send more!” And more arrives.

- Because gratitude is about creativity.

Creativity is really all about attention. When I write a song, I build a relationship with that song. I spend time with it. I get to know it. I pay attention to it. Artists do the same thing with drawings. They spend time in rapt attention and the drawing is born.

Gratitude is the same way. It is a creative act to notice and pay attention to the moments of your life. Some days it’s an enormous act of creativity to even find things for which to be thankful.

Be creative. Be present. Be receptive. Be wise. Be wealthy. Be grateful.

Midwestern Mourning, Part III of III

You might expect a person who had just lost someone as incredible, beloved and important as the Queen Mum to write that the few hours after Big Nance left us were a blur, but that is not true.  They’re quite clear.

I expected all of us would melt into tears and be nonverbal, heaving messes, but that did not happen.  We were mostly quite composed.

It was probably shock, combined with peace – odd roommates – and a tacit understanding, especially among the grandchildren, that the best way to get through this was to keep moving.

The five or six of us who were there made the necessary phone calls to the relatives en route and the friends who promised to fly in for her memorial.

Yes, they would fly in from Northern and Southern California, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, West Virginia by way of Mexico, New York City…They, “we,” would all be there.

The five or six of us who were there called the professionals who could help us put everything together.

Within a few hours, Michael the funeral home director – the funeral home his great-grandfather’s father started around the same time our relative opened her general store – arrived with his booklet and some files.

In those files, he still has his handwritten notes for my grandfather’s memorial 20 years ago.  Yes, thank you, we want to make almost exactly the same arrangements.

The town club where we had his memorial service reception still has their notes as well.  Yes, thank you, we would like to plan almost exactly the same reception.

My mother, Little Nance, had a very good idea to engage a videographer who could compile a video slide show of Big Nance’s life to play at the reception after her memorial service.  A high-tech touch that was not an option 20 years ago.

But who would be appropriate…?  Paigey, can you look in the Yellow Pages?”

Within an hour or so after Michael had visited, Betsy the videographer arrived to offer her condolences and plan the video.  Betsy, who is the Bentons’ daughter.

"Oh, of course!  She really knew Big Nance – she even has footage of her at the Garden Club a year or so ago.  She will know what we want.”

To Betsy, we handed the canvas beach bag with hundreds of photographs from almost all 88 years of Big Nance’s life.  The ones Big Nance had placed in canvas beach bags, boxes and books throughout her home without ever having really organized them.  The ones that had distracted all of my tears the last handful of hours as a couple of us sorted them.

Betsy confidently told us that Tuesday afternoon she could produce the perfect 30-minute video slideshow to honor Big Nance by Saturday.  Little Nance put out the APB in our family for all branches to send their favorite pictures of my grandmother.

Betsy’s voice started to lose confidence by Thursday as we continued finding photos in drawers, books and cupboards – as family members continued emailing, dropping off and sending more photos by courier.  This went on until Friday night.

By show time on Saturday, Betsy’s 30-minute show had become a 90-minute production with over 1,200 photographs from relatives all over the country, set mostly to Frank Sinatra background music.  A production that would have made the Queen Mum very proud.

Within a few hours after Big Nance left us, the food gifts started to arrive.  Hand-delivered by the gifter in many cases; Sue’s world-famous coffee cake with a basket of fresh fruits, crackers and cheese, a Honeybaked Ham from one of the key figures at my great-grandfather’s company, a platter of sandwiches and cookies from Kim and Wes, Candy’s and Bill’s homemade soups…pies, cakes, cookies and cold cuts.

The food - the love - poured in from all corners of town.

On Wednesday, Mom, Dad Bob and I met with Pastor Clara to plan the specifics for the Queen Mum's service.  Yes, thank you, we would like Jim to play the piano and Sydney to sing the "Ave Maria" solo before my aunt sings the "The Lord’s Prayer."

By that evening, we had planned almost everything for the Queen Mum’s memorial and reception.  It would be grand.  It would be “her.”

Those of us who had run around town all day planning the memorial and those of us who spent the day holding together life “as normal” joined those who had just arrived in town to spread the food – the love - all over the counter and nosh on our soups, sweets and cold cuts.

We were going to be OK.

By then the peace had started to crowd out its awkward roommate and we continued in our tacit understanding, especially among the grandchildren, that the best way to get through this was to keep moving.

This is where things get somewhat blurry.  Busy and blurry.

For the next two days, we refined the memorial and reception plans.  We revised and re-revised the memorial service program.   We nitpicked and perfected, just as the Queen Mum would have wanted – without saying as much.

And we all had to find something red to wear to the memorial.  Papa had given Big Nance a gorgeous red suit that she wore to his memorial and she wanted all of us to wear red to hers as well.

What?

Those of us who had dutifully, respectfully packed something all-black to wear to her memorial had to search the shopping center for something dutifully, respectfully and audaciously red.

Finally, a couple of the cousins agreed, we needed mani-pedis.

As I settled into my massage chair for my pedi, I noticed an elegant, sweet and clever woman across from me.

"Hi, Mrs. Althouse,” my cousin said.

Mrs. Althouse is an administrator at the girls’ school my cousins attended.  The one my mother and aunt, and grandmother before them attended.  The one whose headmistress Liza was one of my grandmother’s very dear friends.

"I’m very sorry to hear about your grandmother,” she offered, after my cousin introduced us.

"Thank you,” I answered.

Hold it together, Paige.

We spoke for several minutes longer and found that one of her best friends is one of my favorite teachers from the girl’s school in Los Angeles I attended.

"Oh, my goodness,” I remarked.  “She made such a huge impact on me.  I was in her British Literature class during junior year…and maybe this is a little bit freakish, but I still remember the Introduction to the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales that we had to memorize – with an Old English accent!”

Yup, that was freakish.

"Oh, uh…Well…I’ll have to tell Eileen I met you.  She’ll enjoy hearing that.”

Freakish.

We spoke a few minutes longer.  Eileen, or Dr. C, was a pivotal person to me.  I was in her class the year my grandfather passed away.  I lost my grief in the Canterbury Tales and Beowulf 20 years ago, just as my family and I had lost ours that week in canvas beach bags of photographs and memorial service program revisions.

Dr. C now lives in the south, where she is a director at another girls’ school.

How crazy was it to meet Dr. C’s best friend, who works at the same girls’ school my grandmother attended, that very week my grandmother passed?

The memorial service morning, our family members assembled at the church in black and red.  Pastor Clara’s service was perfect - the grandchildren’s remembrances, Jim’s piano, Sydney's solo, my aunt’s "The Lord’s Prayer"…everything.

Whew.  We made it.  Until the bagpiper started “Amazing Grace” as our family filed out.

Sadness overtook peace and shock and the only tacit understanding, especially among the grandchildren, that the best way to get through this was to give pause and be in that moment.  To give grief its due.

At the reception at the town club, everyone laughed and everyone mourned.  Everyone loved Betsy’s slide show.  Everyone commented there will never be another one like our Big Nance.

Our flamboyantly gorgeous Queen Mum did not die alone, nor did any of us grieve alone.

In the Midwest, sympathy, grief, love and strength come alive and vibrate back to your great-grandparents’ grandparents.  Your friends are your family and your family members are your friends – even if they’ve divorced each other.  Your love comes across in your homemade coffee cake and your offer to drive carpool that week.

In the Midwest, all of this becomes starkly self-evident as you awaken to the fact that you’ve just lost someone who meant the whole world to you.  As shock, grief and peace settle into their improbable cohabitation that will last for at least the foreseeable.

And yet we know we are going to be OK.

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I Don't Like Florence - and Other Fascinating Matters of Perspective, Part II of II

Midwestern Mourning, Part II of III

For the second day in a row, I woke up holding my breath. Is she...?

Exhale. She’s still with us. And Pastor Clara will be here at 10:30.

Pastor Clara is the associate pastor at the church where the Queen Mum would worship if and when she went to church.

The church where my parents married, where my brother and I were baptized and where we had the memorial for my grandfather Papa almost 20 years ago.

When you meet Pastor Clara, you can see why she excels in her position – you trust her to take care of you. You trust that whatever she says will be loving and appropriate. And she will say it with her eyes gently fixed on yours.

When she arrived, five or six of us in our family were at the Queen Mum’s bedside in the same positions we had occupied the last couple of days; crouched at the foot of her bed, curled up on the bench at the foot, standing gently next to it.

We held hands and closed our eyes for Pastor Clara’s prayer. Yes, the prayer Big Nance would want.

Pastor Clara had not yet reached the front door when one of the nurses walked over to Big Nance to check on her and told us, “Guys, she’s fading fast. Say your...” good-byes.

Pastor Clara had not yet gotten to her car before the Queen Mum faded peacefully from this life. Silently and gracefully.

All five or six of us seemed to hold our breath and to simultaneously remember it was time to let it go. And time to repeat that again and again. Time to cry, time to hug our reigning monarch and time to say our own good-byes.

As I stood and turned around, the first contact point my eyes met were Papa’s eyes, looking back at me from his handsome photo Big Nance had on her dresser. The only photo on that dresser she had turned to face her bed.

“She’s with you now,” I thought, vividly picturing Big Nancy as a young college girl running to her beloved soldier boy.

(To be continued next week...)

Sensibly Silly

The other night, I had not planned to do anything special.  No drinks and apps with co-workers, no valiant gym attempts and definitely no dinners into the wee hours with old friends.  The whole day and the evening to follow were going to be quite sensible.  I liked that.

Isn’t it true, just when you start to feel a bit too proud of yourself for your sensibility, you find a delicate reflection of your own silliness?

That day, I awoke far too early for my comfort and a bit too late for the ideal.  Quickly I dressed and proceeded with the morning on fast-forward, because at 10AM, my co-workers and I needed to depart for an important conference.  It would take an hour to get there, we estimated.  And we estimated correctly.

With adequate caffeine, hydration and nutrition throughout the day, I felt I had remained alert and retained a great deal of important information by the time the conference closed, which was just before 4PM.

My co-workers and I were eager to hit the road before it became too late so we could all make it back up to the city by dinnertime.  I had planned on an early dinner with my mother and an Auntie Broward.  Again, quite sensible.

En route, comfortably belted into the backseat while my co-workers shared the front, I started to fade….and fade…and fade…until we returned to the office garage.  This is where I had fantasized about disappearing into my backseat, having been swallowed whole by my wooly pashmina – the only sensible defense against frigid conference center hotel meeting rooms.  My plan had been to sleep there for about 10 minutes before mobilizing homeward.

Instead, I decided to pay traffic its due regard and skip the nap; if traffic that evening was not such a demanding commute companion, I could proceed home swiftly and arrive there with enough time for a 20-minute nap – twice the rest I could afford in the garage at work.

And wouldn’t you know, traffic had just as much to say about that as always.  I did not arrive home until three minutes before I was due to pick up my mother.

Quickly – i.e. without much thought – I shed my work skin and dressed in something much more comfortable; jeans, a knit camisole, a pair of cute, but not-too-high pumps and another thick,  yes wooly, jacket.  The kind of jacket that feels like you made a bathrobe out of your favorite pashmina.

My mother was grateful for the quick turnaround and in very little time, we arrived at the beachside trattoria to meet my Auntie Broward.  A nice, quaint, candle-lit place that has been there for 24 or 25 years, I think.

I can remember feeling very sophisticated dining there when I was about 12.  It had been open for at least a couple of years back then.

This place has a non-descript, grey façade, a covered patio that is splendid for dining in the warmer months and an interior dining room with tinsy tables.  Tables that ideally accommodate two – married, unmarried, married to other people – and when shoved together, can accommodate possibly, though not quite hospitably, four.  They are just perfect for parties of three.  Like us.

We rushed in to find my Auntie B. already at that ideal table.  We laughed, caught up and ordered.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I have to wash my hands,” as I scooted my chair back from the table.  Frankly, my hands needed a wash, but I was also grateful for a moment to internalize my day without traffic squawking in my ear.

I swiftly moved from the dining room to the narrow walkway between the kitchen on the left, the restrooms on the right and the backdoor to the car park straight ahead.

The closer I got to my destination, the quicker my pace became until, “Whoa, hold up!,” I alerted myself.  “There’s another woman walking in from the car park, headed this way and walking just as briskly.  And extending her hand toward the same restroom handle.”

“Oh my gosh!,” I muttered aloud as she jumped back as well.

She was so startled that her hands had snapped back so they were nearly pressed against her chest, with her palms facing outward in a defensive gesture.

“Um, that’s a bit extreme,” I thought.  “No need to be that shocked.”

In an awkward 1/16^th of a second, I diverted my eyes to my right and noticed two white doors with the pewter woman silhouette – two ladies rooms - next to the one with the man-shaped cut-out.

"Phew!,” I thought, “How sensible of this place to give us two restrooms for the ladies.”

“Here,” I said to the woman quickly, “There are two for us.  You take this one and I’ll take…”

“Oh my God, this chick is reaching her hand toward the same handle.  Doesn’t she get it?” I thought as I anticipated the imminent awkward moment when our hands collided.

“Oh, wait, no…they are the same handle!” I realized.  “That woman is me!”

HAHAHAHA!!!!...

I doubled over into an improv two-step.  What a silly goose.

That walkway could not be wider than four feet and it bows to its greedy bigger sibling, the kitchen, who hordes all of the light it requires to execute its artistic creations.  I could not blame that skinny, underdeveloped  hallway for deceiving me that it was deeper than it actually is.  That’s its only defense against feeling used by all of those who are just passing through, on their way to bigger and brighter.

That was my imagination.  My assumption that a walkway so deep, dark and mysterious must have some substance at the end.  Some cars.  Foreign ones.

Therefore it was my assumptions that made it make sense the woman walking toward the restroom had probably just come from her car and was walking in the back way.

We had some laughs back at the table. At first, my mother and Auntie Broward exchanged worried glances, holding their breath for a moment to calibrate their response with the other’s reaction.  And then they both laughed.

“Don’t worry, Honey,” my Auntie B. said.  “I’m sure I will have the same response when I go back there.”

And in a few minutes, she returned laughing.  “I see what you mean!  That is the strangest hallway!”

A few minutes after that, my mother made her visit back there. “Paigey, I see what you mean too!,” she exclaimed as she seated herself.  “I did not do the same, but as I walked out of the restroom toward the table, a cute girl passed me on her way back there.  A couple of seconds later, I heard her say, ‘Oh, excuse me!’”

The jealous, little sibling hallway’s perpetual revenge on that garish, self-important kitchen and its thug buddy, the rush hour traffic who won’t give you any peace until it passes you off to be taunted and tempted with culinary delights.  And in all such situatiuons, we are just the pawns. Hmm…sibling karma.

They are not our fault – not the near collisions with ourselves in the mirror or with the tiramisu.  And neither end well, do they?

Silly, silly.

10 Top Odd and Wonderful Things...

It’s summer – our social lives seem to speed up and many other things slow down.  We have time to reflect.  Sort of.  Or at least, we have a few more moments to appreciate some odd, but wonderful things.

This week’s entry is a short and sweet homage to 10 of those top things for which we women can be grateful right now:  

1. That the least expensive brewing apparati make the yummiest coffee. 
2.  The “Silent” mode on our mobile phone.
3. That a glass of red wine and a cheeseburger solve pretty much anything.
4. Sexy flip-flops.
5. That the tendency many of us may have to be chatty helps us form friendships – and recover from heartbreaks - faster than not.
6. The dry cleaners who magically make our oopsies go poof! (Reference:  “Your Autobiography in Spots, Parts I and II")
7. Our body’s resiliency that has forgiven us when our judgment has failed us.
8. Friends who agree that watching “House Bunny” in our jammies while enjoying an omelet delivered from the corner deli is heaven.
9. The thigh-height file cabinet at work on which we impale our leg at least weekly when we round that corner too hard.  Reminds us we’re mortal.  That, and to slow down.
10. That we can paint our toenails any color we please and no one has to know.

For a most of these, a blog entry will soon follow.  Meanwhile, have a fantastic week.

 

*This week’s format is inspired by my friend, Courtney.

A Frozen Yogurt/Red Wine/Rob Lowe Kind of Night

Don’t you love those great nights you had not planned, but everything magically worked out to be everything you needed?  That is what I thought Saturday night would be – a surprisingly festive and completely uncontrived night with some friends.

The last few months have been very intense for most people I know, me included.   Through most of that time, Rob Lowe has been lying on my bedside table, shirtless – do you notice a theme here? - and wearing a beautiful, smug expression on his face.  Rob has been my carrot. 

After several challenging weeks at work, Rob and I were finally going to spend some time together on Saturday night.

Most of us have our nighttime rituals – our little traditions that symbolize to us that our whole day is about to end peacefully.   I keep the LA Times or Santa Monica Daily Press crossword puzzle, or the newest issue of a fun magazine like Vanity Fair on my bedside table.  Right where I can grab it once I’m in bed so that the last thing I do before drifting off to sleep is spend 20 minutes working on the puzzle with a happy film on the TV in the background, or reading the fun magazine.

For the last few months, I have not allowed myself to do that.  Instead, I have had to spend an absurdly disproportionate amount of time preparing for a couple of work-related exams.  I have spent an astonishing number of hours with my face buried in a book, or glued to a computer screen.  It’s been pretty.

I can honestly say my verbal communication skills with fellow humans have been set back at least a few years in their development; I have a difficult time communicating with people who don’t speak to me in multiple choice questions.  Which is no one.

And to make matters worse, I have tried that dream programming thing. Do you remember hearing about it on the news or the radio a few months ago?  The idea that you can map out your dreams by making notes or doing certain meditation exercises before you go to sleep?  Yes, that seemed like a brilliant idea to me too.  That’s how obsessive about these exams I have been.

Thus, for the last two or three months, I have not done my crosswords or read my Vanity Fairs, oh no.  Every night since early April, I have tucked into bed with my exam prep notes or flash cards and read through them one more time as the last thing I have done before going to bed – hoping I would dream about the exam material.  Yup, ridiculous.  But impressively effective.

And the only way I could sustain my determination to stick to that program was by leaving the May issue of Vanity Fair on my bedside table.  The one with the shirtless, smug-faced Rob Lowe on the cover.

I have no idea if I will enjoy the article and I’m really not sure I care, but that Adonis has served one crucial function since I brought him home from the newsstand a couple of months ago – he has been my encouragement to keep studying, because someday, i.e.  last Friday, my tests would be over and I could resume my crosswords or reading before bed.  Rob has been my carrot.

But instead of tucking into bed early on Saturday with my Vanity Fair, this Saturday looked like it was turn out to be exactly what I thought I needed – a fun, relaxed time with friends, after which I could return home and not worry about those evil  exam study materials leering at me from the corner.

My friends, Brad and Callie, and I decided that day to get together for the evening.

Brad’s schedule is challenging and Callie has had a tough time as well – she has carried two of her coworkers’ responsibilities for the last few months.  She is exhausted.  We are all exhausted.

None of us had made specific plans for Saturday night, but I knew Callie and Brad were going to have a late lunch and would call me to meet afterward.  Maybe we would see a movie in the theater or see where the evening took us.  Instead, they called me to join them for a sunset glass of vino near the beach, then dinner. “Excellent!,” I thought.  “That is much more fun.”

A short time later, we met at the beachside place and had a drink, then proceeded to the restaurant we had chosen. 

Once we had ordered and were starting to settle into our chairs, we all went into operations failure.  Callie was the first to call “Uncle” - that look came across her face, the all-systems-shutting-down look we all get when we just can’t stay awake any longer.

"Guys,” she said kindly, but frankly, “I have to get home.  Now.”

Agreed and done.

We gathered our things and quickly canceled our orders.  Callie’s home is not far from the beach, so she was our first stop.  Brad lives a couple of blocks from Callie, so he said he would make sure she got into her apartment, then would head home himself.

This evening was going to be the perfect evening that just fell into place – and then it became clear it was falling apart.

But honestly, as I drove away from Callie’s place, my Plan B started to unfold in my mind.  “I’m extremely tired.  Probably less than half a step behind Callie in shutting down.  This is the perfect time to swing by the market and pick-up some yummy take-out from the hot food bar…and the frozen yogurt place is two blocks away…and I have that bottle of Spanish red wine on my counter with a good glass worth left in it…and Rob Lowe on my bedside table.  This might be a very good thing.”

Yes, I would pick up a small bite at the market and a delicious frozen yogurt creation to put in the freezer, then would go home and do a few chores – the kinds you complain and moan about doing, but doing them actually makes you happy, e.g. folding the laundry in the dryer, hard boiling some eggs for your breakfast-on-the go during the coming work week, sorting through the mail that had accumulated the last few days, etc.

The things you can’t really justify getting someone else to do for you, but probably would not anyway.  The things that connect you to your life. And as soon as I had finished the folding and the eggs, I  thought, “What the hell…let’s do this all the way.”

  I emptied my fridge of all the Tupperware containers that had housed my leftovers from the bridal shower a few girlfriends and I had thrown at my place for one of our dearest over last weekend and took that trash out to the trash bin.  Then, I washed the Tupperware, scrubbed my pot in which I’d boiled the eggs and felt happy.

I did various thisses and that’s and felt much more gratified than I could have been if any of the three of us had persisted into an evening we were too tired to enjoy.  What a luxury it was to stay in and have a night like that.

After completing my chores and doing them with my full attention, giving them all the time they need, I felt incredibly satisfied.  The night that seemed to be so perfect and unplanned at first, the one that almost materialized would not have been right at all.

Last night,  I tucked into bed with my fro-yo, a glass of plumy Spanish red wine and Rob Lowe.  It turned out to be one of those great nights I had not planned, but everything magically worked out to be everything I needed.

Definitely

What is it about films like “Definitely, Maybe” that so annoy and enchant many of us at the same time?  Think “When Harry Met Sally,”…You don’t need to have seen any of these films to understand their elements.

They follow your basic chick flick formula; the protagonists are good-looking, mostly good-hearted people who generally treat each other well, whose problems are not that serious and who, magically, have everything work out just so – just so everyone gets their just desserts and it’s implied that they will live happily ever after.  Simple enough.

No one has to leap out of any burning buildings with the scantily-clad, busty woman or free their ankle from the shackles that tie them to the tracks with an oncoming train.

Movies like “Definitely, Maybe” are credible and sweet.  Better yet, they take place over 12-16 years, adequate time for the main characters to both screw up and redeem themselves.

These films include that “Aha!” moment when the main character runs into his or her old love who had hurt him/her and they reconnect.  They incorporate that additional reconnection with someone else the main character had loved and the revelation that the way that person is living their life is not at all what the main character wants – but is the full realization of everything that is right for that old love.

They include the recognition that the protagonist really loves the one person who has always loved him/her.  And they include the cute child who seems to ask all the right questions and make all the right comments at the right times to evoke the appropriate turning points in his/her character development for all outstanding issues to find their resolution.

The only thing missing from “Definitely, Maybe” in specific is the gratuitous torso shot of Ryan Reynolds the producers of “The Proposal” - nearly half of whom are women - were so generous to provide.

Overlooking that one deficiency, it is a very complete movie - and, whether or not you believe the movie, we want to believe our lives will turn out just like that; we want to believe everyone’s story will have a happy ending, or the ending that would be happiest for their/our personality.

We want to believe that everyone who hurt anyone else will earn and be granted forgiveness, us included.  We want to believe that, though imperfect in realistic ways – an unexpected career set-back, a break-up after someone was unfaithful, possibly a divorce, and years of harboring hurt feelings - everyone’s life will turn out perfectly, ours included.

God, it’s a great film!  And everything that makes it great is exactly what annoys us.

It’s not that the movie makes it all look so simple, which is characteristic of most movies that can annoy us.  But that “make it all look so simple” is what makes it so easy for us to dismiss those annoying movies as unrealistic.

This film does not make it look simple at all.  In some of the story lines in this film, it actually takes 10 or more years for each open issue to close.  And perhaps that is what enchants us.  The idea that, in due time, after plenty of growth and self-revaluation, everything will work out just fine.

Contained in two hours, that is very fulfilling.  Playing that out in real time, however, can be frightening.  It can sometimes feel like a pretty big leap of faith to expect everything will work out, to not worry that perhaps we are spinning our wheels, exerting lots of kinetic energy in our lives without really going anywhere.

It’s a pretty big leap of faith to believe the leaps of faith we are taking are moving us forward in life instead of just taking risks, because we don’t know what else to do.

The more times we tumble into the uncertain chasm between our reality and our ideal, the more resistant most of us are to leap.  Unless we’ve just become so comfortable repeatedly taking the same leap – and, accordingly, repeatedly falling into that same chasm.

That begs the question – do we really believe we deserve for everything to turn out as we wish?

Yes, we do.  If we are generally nice people who are good to others and, more or less, good to ourselves, we do.  Definitely.

And if you throw in a Ryan Reynolds torso shot, I’m sure none of us would complain.