This morning I woke up around 6 and that would normally be fine, but I didn’t go to bed until close to midnight. That equates to less than 6 hours of good sleep. I was doing great for the week and then, WHAM, it all went down the drain because of one night. In any case I’m at the gym early and it’s Saturday so the kids won’t be up for hours. I’m totally sick of all my play lists and feeling really uninspired. There’s nothing worse than an uninspired poet. 😜

My go-to in this situation is to give up the reins to the Universe and see what I will be served up from the master shuffle. I can’t go too wrong because the set is still limited to music on my phone — all my favorite artists and albums. So far, the Universe has not disappointed me. It’s been Cake and Snow Patrol and Pearl Jam. (Just accidentally spelled Pearl “Perl”, such a nerd). I’m feeling better already.

Now I have a serious work rant brewing, but “ain’t nobody got time for that”. I’ve been whining and complaining too much lately. I mean what hourly person – ever – complained about having too many hours??! But enough about that, how about that new Fantastic Beasts movie?

The kids and I had dinner and a movies night last night and we are pretty solid Harry Potter fans so anything that has to do with the wizarding world is a must see. My memory for movies is really poor. I see them for entertainment value only and don’t ever retain much of the characters and plot after. As is the case, I didn’t remember much from the first Fantastic Beasts movie so I went into this one cold.

Sometimes sequels do a good job of filling the audience in on important plot items from the first movie. If done correctly, you could watch a sequel without even having watched the first movie and not be lost. This movie either did not do that well or was just generally confusing. I’m inclined to think it was the latter as there were things I was still confused about toward the end of the movie.

I mean, the general plot is pretty basic. Bad guy escapes detainment by the ministry of magic (that’s not a spoiler, yo, cuz there would not be a movie if this didn’t happen) and they need to recapture him before he gets to some other important character who is connected to another prophecy. Oh, by the way, they refer to this prophecy as poetry and I dig that! Anyway, that was the stage that was set. Beyond that it was a lot going on from scene to scene that my brain struggled with.

The special effects were bad-ass of course but unless what you are seeing makes sense, you kind of just go “uhhh cool??”. It is not lost on me that this is #2 in a series and so if there are questionable characters introduced that we don’t yet understand or areas of the plot that did not get resolved, it’s because they are setting up for #3.

Again, if you do that too much, it leaves the audience unsatisfied with the movie as a singular unit. I know I left feeling unsatisfied. It wasn’t just me. Talking with my kids on the way home they were confused about it too. I mentioned the prophecy which was a major plot element and in my daughter’s head, she mixed that up with some other “prophesy like” things that were also mentioned. I said all that business about the Phoenix was foreshadowing, and then we had an argument about it (teenagers 🙄).

To be fair, she was partially confused because what takes place in the movie precedes the Harry Potter story by many, many years. She didn’t connect that the Dumbledore character was a younDumbledoreor. I can see where that would throw everything off. Was it a good movie? Yes. But it definitely left something more to be desired. More resolution maybe. More explanation or connecting the dots. I dunno. I think when #3 comes out, we should watch the first two again, just to prepare. I’d watch it again anyway to see if I catch something I missed the first time around. So there’s that.

My personal DJ started out great a half hour ago but the last few songs have been total “skippers”. Hmmm, what’s up with that? 🤔

In other news, we are rolling into the end of the semester and I have like 10 days to finish my last packet. I really only just had a conversation with my mentor about my last packet a few days ago. This weekend I plan to do a fair bit of reading and research for my final essays and revisions based on feedback. I’d love to roll into the upcoming holiday week/weekend with some of that all wrapped up and off my mind.

I solidified my decision this week to skip a semester of school because of my workload and the pending move. There are things I want to do really well, and I recognized after this semester’s constant struggle that trying to do all that AND move would probably push me off some edge. I want to take my time and enjoy this transition. I don’t want to have to split my time and consequently not be able to put my whole attention to any task in front of me. That includes school. When I go back in the fall, I want to be able to devote a lot of attention to that.

I talked to my MFA program coordinator about alternate pathways that would allow me to take classes and I think that’s something I really want to do. There is no way I can do that this spring so the timing for going back in the fall will be perfect. By then the move will be ancient history and I will have minimized my work hours back to 20 a week. 👍🏻👍🏻

Ok, now my DJ is serving me all kinds of crap and I’m not cool with that. And here I thought there wasn’t that much garbage in my library?! It’s that or I’m just not in the mood for Adele or Dave Matthews or John Mayer. Yeah, Mr. DJ, it’s not you, it’s me.

I’m not breaking up with you over this though, I’ll still be back for more tomorrow! 🙂

Spin Me Right Round,

~Miss SugarCookie