wow.....that's what it's all about

I tend to be a very sentimental person. Every now and then, I see something that will just stop me in my tracks and make me either cry or smile. I had one of those experiences tonight while walking the dogs.

Normally, I hate Valentine's day with a passion. It's basically just a commercial invention and places far more importance that necessary on having that "special someone". It's a holiday that makes everyone who does not participate feel like crap. That said, it's a given that I don't particularly like seeing Valentines flowers and notes. Mostly, they annoy me. What I saw tonight though was different. Part of my walk with the dogs takes us past a cemetery. I always look around to see if there are any flowers that have blown over and make the effort to pick them up and straighten things out. It just so happened that today, a bouquet of cut flowers was blown over on a gravestone. As I picked them up, I noticed that it was a relatively cheap grocery store type bouquet, but that it had a note in it. It turned out that the wife (whose grave the flowers were on) had died in the spring of last year. Her husband had bought her flowers for Valentine's Day and had written her a love note. I absolutely bawled when I realized what he had done. That gesture completely describes what love truly is. Feeling inspired, once I got home, I filled a bottle to refill the water in the flowers. I cried once again while watering them.

It's hard to think about many people making the gesture that this little old man made for his wife. It was just absolutely touching.

disney princess movies

This idea has been fomenting in my head for quite sometime. I know I posted it once as a status on Facebook, but I feel the need to expound more upon it tonight. I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Disney Princess movies over the years, in as far as how they impact how girls think. They are performing an incredible dis-service.

In all the Princess movies, just when things in her life have gotten horrible, some charming prince sweeps in and makes everything wonderful again. The process doesn't take long, sometimes even just the day that they meet. However, in real life, that is all too often not the case. In real life, "Princ Charming" doesn't come riding in on a white horse to rescue us. Instead, "Prince Charming" can cause a lot of very real damage and doesn't almost instantly make everything okay.

The other thing about the Princess movies that bothers me is that while the Princess rebel against authority sometimes (Jasmin, Ariel, Mulan, Cinderella), once they meet their Prince, they generally submit to him. Disney is teaching girls to obey the men in relationships, and to lose sight of themselves. That is something that should never happen in a relationship. Instead, things should be equal and have compromise.
While I love the Princess movies for the stories, the hidden message that they convey is just disturbing.