Aug.01 - Blaugust Day 1

Blaugust has arrived

It's Blaugust! As in, an internet event wherein one attempts to write something in their blog every day in the month of August. When I heard about this I immediately signed myself up, to which, if I'm going to come up with a list of topics for this project, I may want to add: The problem of signing my future self up for things. This habit is definitely improving. But not fast enough.

Which isn't to say I don't want to do this, I do! What a cool idea! This may just not be the ideal year, as I'm currently trying to finish a BA degree while simultaneously enjoying/withstanding the Summer Social Crunch, the only time of year except for the holidays where weekends and even some weeknights are busy with meeting up with new friends, old friends, our family, other peoples' families, on and on. A lot of birthday parties this year, too! Remember the years when everyone was having babies or turning 30? That feels like eons ago. Right now it's the year of everyone turning 50 (some of us were forced to turn 51, but it's all lies, they're actually just three 17-year-olds in a trench coat).

It's fun but for a slow-social-mana-regainer like myself, it's also tiring and overwhelming and causes me to begin fantasizing about selective mutism and living in a cabin in the very remote area of Norway where a friend was born. So of course I signed up for an event where I have to write something every day. On the other hand, I have spent the last few years on a very productive and excellent personal recovery journey from chronic illness, and one wonderful concept I picked up was - drum roll - boundaries. Hey hey, recovering fawners, have I got a concept for you! Boundaries mean that I can just write whatever I want and not feel bad about it. Because it's my blog. And you don't have to subscribe to my RSS. If I keep tinkering with it, you might not even be able to for long! Muahaha!

I have 32 minutes before midnight. I should write about something....

MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD! If you want to watch Bring Her Back, then stop reading here!

Bring Her Back is described as an "Australian supernatural horror film," and I love supernatural horror as a genre, and I'm fond of Australia too, in that way that I really appreciate there are so many courageous humans in the world who are committed to coping with deadly fauna at a scale I can only dream have nightmares about.

So you know what I did! I SIGNED FUTURE ME RIGHT UP FOR THIS. When Jupiter said they'd watch a movie with me, my twenty-year-old youngest child who is currently home from college, it was part of a larger deal: they'd watch Bring Her Back with me if I'd watch KPop Demon Hunter with them. Handling adult children is all about striking these delicate balances.

I don't write very fast, I only have 17 minutes left, okay I have to hurry this post along...

SO ANYWAY, it's about a woman, whose occupation apparently used to be a counselor in some kind of social work environment, whose daughter dies in some freak drowning accident. Which we only see in flashback, and it's vague and there are questions.

And then somehow (we never find out how) the mother comes across a video of some Russian cult doing a ritual wherein (take a drink every time I use the word wherein) they take a child who has died - presumably a child they liked, since I wouldn't exactly say liking children is their forte - and then somehow manage to summon a demon ("angel") into the body of a second living child, and then they kill a third child in the same manner as the death of the first, and then the second demon child eats part of the first dead child, collecting its spirit (don't question it), and then regurgitates it onto the third dead child, thus bringing that third child back to life but with the first child's spirit, and I can't believe I have typed this, I literally just typed this, and now I am questioning so many life choices.

So this woman, she has this all on VHS (as you would), and she proceeds to try and enact this ritual with the two foster children she has managed to collect, and it all goes downhill. For literally everyone. Even the demon that gets summoned is left high and dry.

I'm going to just stop here and say, it's not a choice I'd make again, this movie.

When we got done, we were....in shock. Jupiter finally said, "That was a good horror movie because I WAS IN HORROR MOST OF THE TIME."

I said, "Okay you know I love you and your brother more than my own life but I would never..."

"...kill other children in order to summon a demon to bring us back? Yeah I can’t picture that either, that isn’t you."

Well [dusts off hands] that seems like a great first post for Blaugust. Well done, me. Onward and upward, I say.