Ringer

     This week....this week after Easter, when the weather finally turned warmer (read: You will still be cold, just not, you know....blue), this week when I had 900 other things I should have been attending, this week I embarked on a journey. A long-avoided journey with John and a couple of my kids. I started to watch the The Lord of the Rings movies.
     For years I have happily remained stupid to this particular set of books and films. They just never seemed to appeal to me. Also, I've seen the people waiting in line for the first midnight showing, and I gotta tell you....I counted myself better off and grabbed a romance novel instead.
John is a fan. He read the books in high school. (And he SWEARS they were required reading....though I can neither confirm or deny this. I took almost every English class available in high school and I never read them. Not even the Cliff's Notes.) At any rate, he has long claimed that they were so good, he read them again after high school. He has assured me, numerous times, that I will like them. Ashley loves the movies, although she hasn't read the books. Both Brianna and Austin have seen the movies and neither had any really negative reaction. Me? Well, as uninterested as I was in the movies, I hadn't read the books and therefore, (according to my own code of What Is Right and What Is Wrong) I could not see the movies. Bummer. They've asked, on several occasions, for me to watch with them, but I have always taken a pass.
     Then The Hobbit came home with us. (hahaha....not, you know, an actual Hobbit, the movie...because Hobbits aren't real....I don't think.....) Anyway, I don't know what happened. Maybe it was Easter candy overdose. Maybe all the ham I ate affected my decision making abilities, maybe it was the pollen I came into contact with outside on Sunday afternoon while doing some minor yard work. Whatever the case may be, Sunday night found us huddled in the living room in front of the T.V, with the BluRay player glowing in the darkening room.
     I really, really liked The Hobbit.
     So, on Tuesday night we popped in The Fellowship of The Ring. I made it two hours and ten minutes into the movie before all of the "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" ridiculousness made me contemplate hanging myself from the nearest tree. What the WHAT is the matter with giving folks a little hope, in something less than fifty gajillion hours of movie???? I went to bed. Angry, unsettled, and in my head I had a conversation that went something like this:
          Brain Part #1: I totally told you these movies were suck-o.
          Brain Part #2: Shut up. No one likes a know it all. Also, you liked The Hobbit, too, Bitch.
          Brain Part #1: But the "Fellowship"?? Have we ever been so depressed? Why in Heaven's            name can't they just start a movie, let an hour's worth of stuff happen, then end it on a good note and go from there?
           Brain Part #2: Right? I mean for the love of all that is Holy! This guy is about two frickin' feet tall, and rather than use one of the giant ass birds that the Elves sent to rescue them, he has to WALK across the damn world to get himself half killed every five freaking minutes! For a ring? That his Uncle found?? And what's with Gandolf? He's a G.D. WIZARD, for cripe's sake! Couldn't he help out just a little more? And I'm gonna tell you right now......
          Brain Part #1: WHOA.......you've changed.....you're....I don't know.....different.....You've gone to the dark side.
          Brain Part #2: I have not! Also, that's the wrong set of movies. And I haven't seen those yet    either.

     So, I will have to reluctantly admit that I maybe got myself a tiny little bit invested in this movie. And tonight I came home and watched the rest of it. Let me just say here, (you may quote me on this, if necessary) "WHOA."
     I can't NOT watch the next movie, though I have no earthly idea what it is called. I've got seventy hundred thousand hours of movies left, I think, so no one call me between tomorrow at 6 p.m, and the twelfth of June. Already I am thinking there is no possible way my DNA will allow me to watch these movies, fully aware that they are based on (amazing!) novels, and NOT be the jackass that will eventually walk around saying "The book was totally better".
     I guess the point, Kind Folks, is this: HELP!!! This opens up a whole new Orc hole for me. (You see what I did there? You are welcome.) Fifty babillion kachillion hours of movies, and another eleventy hundred hours of reading to finish this series off because I am actually having trouble sleeping because of all the unanswered questions. (Seriously, Gandolf comes back, right? Also, do they ever get to take back the mountain from the dragon from The Hobbit? And, while I'm asking questions....didn't Gandolf say that freaky little Golum had been following them? What happened to that dude? He's gonna pop out of the dark, I just know it. At some critical point when I have to pee but don't wanna miss anything and then KABLAMMO!)
     Then I guess I will have to eventually watch those Star Wars movies, too, because I'm downright exhausted with being UN-American enough to have NEVER seen them.
     But, aside from all of this, would you like to know what REALLY irks me? (Yes, you would like to know, because I'm telling you even if you don't care.) What really gets my goat, gets under my skin and festers, what really irritates me is: John was right; I really do like these movies.
     I have no idea what is happening right now. Up is down, down is left, right is wrong.....it's all so unclear.