Happily Ever After

Today’s theme is “Put Your Arms Around Me” by Texas. Probably the only song they’ve ever produced worth listening to, but it’s a good one. The video is comprised of clips from the movie “Ever After”. You'll have to click the link and it will open it in a new window they disabled the embed.

“Put Your Arms Around Me”


I have what has been called by my husband the “World’s most impressive collection of chick flicks ever assembled”. I can’t deny it, I have perhaps every single chick flick ever made. I’m a sucker for a love story. I’ve seen them all so many times the DVDs should be paper thin. I watch them while I clean, while I cook, and whenever I need something going on in the background which is…well most of the time. I don’t like to do just one thing at a time, it’s part of my personal weirdness. There are very few things I do that are not part of my multitasking nature. Sewing is one, anything that requires my total attention, reading is another. There aren’t many but there are some.

I do have music playing during most of them because I’m not a big fan of silence. Silence makes it difficult for me to think. Not sure why but the busier it is around me, the better I can concentrate. You ever see someone driving and they turn down the music when looking for an address? I’m one of the weirdoes that turns it up. I can’t explain why, because I honestly don’t know. It really doesn’t make much sense, but…few things I do actually do make much sense in a conventional manner. These things my husband deems as “Anjish” in and of the world according to Anj.

Tonight I watched one of my favorite movies, while I was cleaning. They all have the same sort of theme of course; they’re all a love story of some type or another. I’m a sap for a good love story. I enjoy watching the dynamics unfold. A well written love story makes me all “girlish and mushy”; at least that’s what Matt calls it. I think it’s the big happy sighs and the grin. I like happy endings. I can be rather “girlish” from time to time, usually more often than I care to admit. There’s just something sweet about these stories.

Of course because of simple proximity Matt has been exposed to a vast and deep well of chick flicks. While he doesn’t usually actively watch anything that does not include explosions, gunfire and people being beaten to a pulp, from time to time my happy sighs will draw his attention to what I’m watching. Usually when I’m working on something on the couch in the office, and he’s at his computer. There are some he knows well enough to watch for the parts that make him laugh, and others he quotes from randomly. A quote he tosses about rather frequently is from “Two Weeks Notice” with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. “I find you….annoying” This he saves for the times when I get one of those “I told you so” moments but rather than actually saying anything I just grin at him. Perfect example would be when he was putting up the new curtain rod in the dining room for me. I told him it had to be higher, he disagreed. I told him he would see. Sure enough it was about 3 inches too low. I had clips for the curtains so they did not hang off the rod itself. Mind you he didn’t know that, and had they hung from the rod itself they would have been spot on. However, I tried to explain, he was already drilling. So when the rod was lifted into place and the curtains dragged on the floor I just stood there with a big grin. He turned to me, trying not to laugh and gave me the quote he’s adopted. “I find you….annoying” I grinned and told him I knew that, now could he hang the rod higher? *insert toothy grin* He did shaking his head and grumbling "Wimmen.... " It’s silly moments like this that I treasure. The curtains by the way look wonderful now that the rod is where it’s supposed to be.

This song is from “Ever After” one of my all time favorites on the chick flick list. It’s a Cinderella story. I’m a sap for these kinds of movies. I enjoy them. The best part? The kiss of course. Yes beneath this tough exterior of a logical realist lies the heart of a hopeless romantic. There’s something about a kiss. A good friend once told me all she really needed was a good kiss. You know the kind, the sort that makes you weak kneed and your heart pounds, all your senses become crystal clear and yet totally numb to anything outside the other person. I can picture my brother reading this right now rolling his eyes. Yes, I know very girlish, but I’m allowed, I am after all female. That’s the best part of the whole movie. I will admit to stopping whatever I’m doing for that part. Stop rolling your eyes Brian. You watch explosions, I watch the kissing parts. While I’m sure they would be much better if there was an explosion going on in the background it doesn’t always fit the movie. So sometimes we have to go without the fiery display for the sake of continuity. *wide sarcastic grin* Yes, it’s truly a tragedy.

The first movie I watched with Matt was Ghost. I had just gotten out of the hospital after a car accident. I wasn’t driving but was the passenger in a car that flipped five times and ended up sideways between two trees. A broken leg and cast later I called him to tell him I’d be just a bit late meeting him, and could he perhaps give me a ride home? Poor guy should have known then when I came out on crutches with the deftness of someone who was well versed in using such a tool that I was accident prone. He didn’t seem to pick up on that though.

We ended up at the movies and I saw him actually cry. Real tears too, I was more interested in that than the film actually at that moment. Considering the film that’s saying something. I couldn’t help but look, I was amazed. He of course being the manly man he is wiped his face and tried not to look like he had tears in his eyes. I’m not a big crier. There are some things that will move me to tears, and usually it’s not a single tear sort of thing but an all out explosion of weeping. Movies aren’t one of those things. I can remember the embarrassment of his face and I smiled at him. I hadn’t meant to embarrass him, it’s just, well I didn’t know any men that cried. When we were little and my brother and I used to get in fights and I’d sock him a good one he’d cry but he was 5. You’re allowed to cry when someone knocks you silly with a plastic bat in the eye. By the way, I'm sorry about that Brian just in case I hadn't said it then. Although you probably deserved it.

This was the first time I’d ever seen a man, he was still a boy really, but nearly a man cry over a movie. Rather simplistically the only thought going through my head was, “Wow!” It was so foreign to me, strange and different and yet, somehow it seemed very normal. It is really I’ve since come to find that normal people do in fact leak from their tear ducts. That is by the way a bit of sarcasm there. It’s just that I’d never seen a male do this before and it struck me as …not odd but very natural, true to oneself I suppose? It’s difficult to explain. It was odd to me but it was all the rest as well. Interesting for sure and something that I wanted to discuss later in great detail much to Matt’s embarrassment.

He’s used to it now, my probing questions into his soul about such things. I can’t help myself, we have such different backgrounds that sometimes what others find very normal I find very odd and require greater input to wrap my mind around them. Sometimes I feel like I grew up on another planet. We talked that night for 2 hours about what brings a normal person to tears and why, and the overwhelming emotion that wells up inside you. It was quite fascinating. He didn’t really understand how or why I didn’t understand, or anything really about what went on behind closed doors at my house.

I’m not even sure if he recalls the conversation. I remember it vividly despite all the years that have passed since. We sat on the side of a dam by a nearby lake. The moon was nearly full and it was so well lit you could see as if it were nearly light out. I had my leg propped up on a rock behind him and he was staring off into the woods around us. He had a difficult time looking at me while he tried to explain the complexities of the reasons to cry at a movie. He kept asking if I was serious as I asked him all sorts of questions about what would move him to tears. I liked him very much, but it sort of freaked me out a bit. I’m a rather direct person and needed to know if he’d get weepy at the drop of a hat that would have bothered me. He was not overly weepy I discovered but he did tear up if the emotion brought him to it. I figured that was ok, as long as he wasn’t the sort of person that cried over a broken nail or something I could live with that.

I ask him sometimes if he remembers these burning exposures into his soul. He usually says something like “When you held me down and forced all of my secrets out of me at gun point? Yes I recall.” I laugh since I didn’t own a gun then, and I never forced him to tell me anything. I just asked, he offered the answers freely. I’ve never been shy about asking things of him that most would never even consider asking someone they’re dating. Before we even started truly dating I interrogated him on everything from his views on the armed services, birth control, religion, politics and his plans for the future. I was just a kid at the time, but I figured it’d be easier to find out now if we weren’t going to be a good match then to bother spending the time and find out later. We could be friends and both would be better off than if either of us invested in anything that wouldn’t work out. Call it self protection I suppose.

He laughs at me about my movie collection. “Where’s my logical wife?” he says as I sigh happily and get the goofy girl look on my face as I watch the kiss I’ve been waiting all movie long to see.

“She’s watching her sappy girl movie.” I reply shushing him by sticking out my tongue at him. He just laughs. I do love those movies because they are sweet, and in the end the guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after.

I would have to argue that logically isn’t that what everyone wants? A happily ever after. When I ask him this he scoops me up into his lap and grins when he asks, “Did you get your happily ever after?”

Since I am a first class brat my response simply must be something to the effect of *with one eye closed, head titled slightly, trying very hard not to laugh* “Mmmm…not sure yet…why you know any cute guys?” Then I peek at him so he can feign offense.

I have found my happily ever after, and maybe that’s why I enjoy watching them so much.