Faye Cheadle

I had a really good weekend!  On Friday night, Tim and I just relaxed with some pizza and watched Terminator 2.  It was his birthday, and usually we’d have a nice dinner somewhere, but he just wanted to chill out.  The next day I cleaned up a bit in the morning and then helped out to shoot Lyman and Marcela, a short film that I’m working on.  I just did sound, so I basically held the boom mic up from 2-6pm.  It was pretty interesting though.  I haven’t worked on films before, so I got to see what it was like.  Lots of waiting :p  What was cool was seeing the film come together after reading the script.  Seeing the characters in front of you interacting can improve the words on the page.  You also have to plan quite a bit.  The director already had storyboards and everything, but we still had to work things out, like keeping the boom mic out of the shot.  The cinematographer and director also argued a bit over “the line“.  And finally, it took 4-5 hours to shoot about 3 minutes of dialogue.  Something I’ll keep in mind as I continue my filmmaking exploration.  After this experience, I set a goal for myself to write a script for the next Scary Cow round, so I can try out being on the creative end of things.

After I finished the shoot, Tim and I went out for a belated birthday dinner.  He had special ordered a chocolate pie from Mission Beach Cafe, so we went there.  I had this awesome eggplant and cheese raviolis.  The cheese was Red Hawk triple cream from Cowgirl Creamery, a local cheese maker.  So good!  It was a very creamy, but somewhat tangy, cheese.  Then we took home the chocolate pie and I also got a slice of Key Lime Velvet Cream pie to go.  Oh boy.  If you love lime or citrus, this is definitely the pie for you.  I’ve also had the Lemon Velvet Cream pie which is also really good.  After dinner, we relaxed some more, and had a pretty lazy Sunday.

It was just such a nice weekend!  I remember thinking many times how happy I felt.  I had such a grateful feeling the whole weekend.  Grateful for my husband and grateful for the choices that I’ve made.  Here’s to cherishing life!

I saw this article on BBC News the other day, about the development of sperm from stem cells, and the response of certain bloggers:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8142104.stm

“Yet I feel compelled – and not just as the mother of two small boys – to make a spirited defence of the weaker sex. Where would I be without my husband to read 80 pages of a car manual, in French, to find out how the back windscreen-wiper works?”

“Women have always known that men are a bit of a waste of space … Now British scientists have proved how unnecessary blokes truly are by creating the first human sperm from stem cells.”

Sure, these are sarcastic comments, but you hear this sort of thing often.  That all men are pigs for instance.  The problem that I see is that men aren’t held up to any standard anymore.  It’s (apparently) prissy to look nice, to clean up, to be kind to and revere your wife (or partner).  Men are redundant and unnecessary, and mothers are telling their sons that what they’re good for is looking up how to fix a windshield wiper (!).

When you say all men are pigs or slobs, they have no reason to act any better than a lazy bum.   When you proliferate throughout the culture the idea that men are useless, why would they strive for greatness?

My husband is a good man who showed me how to have pride in myself.  My father and brother are intelligent and productive men, who both taught me the values I still hold today.  My father-in-law and brother-in-law are both kind and caring and welcomed me into their family, which I’m grateful for.  I’m friends with men that are doting fathers, dedicated husbands, who dress nicely, clean up the dishes, paint works of art, fight for justice, and certainly are no sissies.  They all add so much value to the world, and it would feel like a lesser place without them around.  If you don’t see what I see, maybe the solution is to start looking in the right places, instead of slandering the whole sex.

Atlas Shrugged is my favorite novel.  I’m re-reading it now, and had the opportunity to talk about it very briefly with some of the members of my book club.  A couple of women mentioned that they thought the characters were very cold and they wished they could see more emotion from them.  At the time, I explained that these characters represent an ideal, and not flesh and blood people.  Ayn Rand writes in a Romantic style, so if you want Naturalism, her novels are not the place to look for it.  However, when I thought more about this later, I realized that there’s another aspect of the novel that I neglected to mention.  These characters aren’t unemotional.  They’re just not emotional about the things that most people are emotional about.  For instance, what other people think of you, whether or not you’ll find love, or how to go about pursuing your dreams.  I realized that this is what I love so much about these characters.  They know what they want and how to get it.  They have pride in themselves and don’t need the approval of others.  Romantic love feeds their souls like any other person, but finding a soulmate is not their primary purpose in life.

Dagny Taggert feels elation and joy at the grandeur of her coming out ball, but utter disappointment when none of the young men attending live up to it’s beauty.  She rages at her brother Jim when she realizes that he’s using her to save his own hide while also stabbing her in the back.  Hank Rearden knows exactly what to do at his factories, when he’s pursuing his goals of making one of the best metals in the world.  But in his home, surrounded by his sneering wife, his ungrateful mother, and his purposeless brother, he is tortured when he doesn’t even know how to speak to them and tethered by a sense of duty to take care of them.  When Hank and Dagny meet Ellis Wyatt after the success of the John Galt Line, they are all thrilled to be surrounded by true peers and individuals of strength for one fleeting moment.  All such beautiful and heartbreaking scenes.  How could you say these are cold people?