My top five rankings of the many Mr. Rochesters from Jane Eyre

Here is my top five rankings of Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. There are at least three other movies, probably more, but these are the five that I liked the most. Even though I have heard that Orson Wells does well too.

#5 Ciaran Hinds - In this version of Jane Eyre the script does not follow the book, almost at all. It is very cheesy, and I laughed at it more than it was supposed to. Ciaran is one of the few that closely resembles the character in the book, and he is a great actor, but his mustache looked so odd on him. I found myself wondering if it was real, often. The emotions in this version are a little dry, but they aren't completely lacking. On a side note, Ciaran Hinds is great as Capt. Wentworth in Persuasion.

#4 William Hurt - William looks nothing like the book description, but he does a great job. I love the scene right after the fire scene in this one. This version is better at following the book, but it is hard to fit a 500 page book into a two hour movie. There is a lot of emotion in this version, and it helps to explain a few things better.

#3 Timothy Dalton - Timothy is another that resembles the character in the book. He does such a great job of being "changeful & moody". This version is an eleven episode made for TV mini series by BBC, so this version follows the book a lot closer than the regular movies.

#2 Michael Fassbender - At first I didn't like him as much as I liked Timothy Dalton, however he has grown on me. I love how well he plays the moody part. I love the emotion in this version. Mia Wasikowska does great at playing the passionate Jane.

#1 Toby Stephens - I just recently watched this version. I feel in love with it. It is another BBC mini series, and the total run time is about 4 hours.It follows the book fairly well, but they do change some of the dialog, but it seems natural.Toby Stephens does such a great job at playing Mr. Rochester, he comes off as passionate, and real. I love how almost tangible the chemistry between Mr. Rochester and Jane is. Ruth Wilson also does a great job at playing Jane in this. This is my favorite version of the story, as well as my favorite Mr. Rochester. I also adore the ending of this, which funny enough does not follow the book completely, but it is by far the best ending.

For Reasons I Can't Explain

A Little Catching Up

I did the Color Me Rad Run on Saturday, I walked the whole thing, but I did it. It was fun. It was also a much needed distraction from all the craziness that has been going on. I swear that every time I get one thing figured out something else happens.
About a year ago, I hit my stress wall, literally. One day I couldn't think. I couldn't concentrate. I was having a super hard time remembering things, I would be doing something and completely forget what I was doing, it became a black hole. Plus all I wanted to do was sleep and if I sat still long enough I would nod off.
At the time I didn't know what was wrong, I went to the doctor thinking I was just dehydrated. The doctor in the urgent care ran several tests, and couldn't figure out what was wrong. They had me make an appointment to see my regular doctor a few days later. When I went in, and my doctor had looked over all the test that were run (the urgent care and my doctors office are all part of the same clinic, it is fabulous!). She asked me several questions, which included a couple of questions about my current stress level, when she heard some of what was going on she gave me a anxiety/depression test. My anxiety and depression were so high that she was a little worried. She put me on a low dose of a medication that would help with both the anxiety and the depression, by just taking the edge off of things. I had to go in a few times to kind of tweak the medication to get it to work better for me.
Unfortunately I am not sure it is still quite right, but my doctor had to quit practicing due to her own health issues. Plus around the time my doctor quit, my insurance company tried to say that my issues were a pre-existing condition. I hate insurance, it causes so much stress for me! The reason all this started was because I had a whole bunch of things dropped on me. I also had so much going on, and I was trying to do too much. I didn't know how to do everything, nobody was there to teach me, and I was expected to know all the answers. A year later, and I still don't know all the answers, but I am managing. I also quit doing so much, I started putting myself first. If I can't do it, I won't. If I don't take care of myself, I can't take care of anyone else. I will say no when people ask me to do somethings. If I feel it is not going to help me, or help my family, I won't do it. If I feel it will take time away from my family, I won't do it. I don't feel guilty about it either.

I found a counselor, that my insurance covered, and started seeing her. Now, just as things seem to be settling in, things have started to go crazy again. One day one of the ladies I work with came in and asked me why she got a notice saying our insurance was cancelled. I had to email our CEO to find out what was going on, turns out they decided to change insurance companies, but hadn't told anyone that it was being done. The really sad thing is, I am the one that has to enter the bills, and mail out the checks...So after getting new insurance that wasn't very good, I found out my new insurance no longer covered my counselor, and Kate broke her arm, again. The good news was thankfully my counselor was willing to work with me on payment, and I am still going, just not as often as I would have liked to be going.
Shortly after that my grandpa Patrick was put into the hospital due to issues from his dementia. He is to the point he no longer knows what year it is, he started to forget little things like eating and showering. He spent about four or five weeks in the hospital. He was than taken to a nursing home, because he is no longer able to live at home alone. He rarely remembers who any one is, and often confuses people with people from his past. Just as I think things with this are starting to work out, the nursing home is saying they can't care for him, that he needs one on one help.
 Plus in the middle of all of that my job has cut my pay, but $3.00 an hour. Last week, due to the new insurance being so crappy, not as many people signed up as they thought would and the original quote was based off of, my work cancelled our insurance. We were given two weeks notice that we will no longer be insured, and to rub it in, we still have to have it taken out of our checks until the beginning of next month, because they were taking the money out late basically.

I have been making a few changes, I am no longer allowing people to walk over me. I am standing up for myself more often. I am weeding out the people and things in my life that cause stress that I don't need, I won't be able to get rid of all stress, but I don't have to live with constant stress. I am not pushing myself past my limits anymore. I am here to live for me, I don't need to prove anything to anyone else. I am not going to be something I am not, just because someone thinks I need to be something, doesn't mean that is me. I am slowly learning to let things go. I don't need to keep holding onto things that no longer serve to lift me. Nobody else has the right to tell me who I am, or what I am, or what I will be. Years ago I quit dreaming, and now I am working on finding my new dream.
"One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see.” ~Gabourey Sidibe

Prayers, Good Vibes, & Good Thoughts...Please

This morning, a friend from high school lost his daughter. She has been fighting leukemia for almost 4 years. She was such a happy little girl, and had a beautiful outlook on life. She will be missed by everyone that knew her, and has been following her story.

Things Nobody Tells You

 Nobody tells you that being a mom is always more work than fun. Nobody tells you that being a mom is seriously stressful. Nobody tells you that being a mom is never as easy as most women make it seem. Nobody ever tells you, that when you are bi-polar, being a mom is 100 million times harder than it is for most women.

 I wish someone could have told me what being a parent was really like before I became one. I also wish someone could have told me that a little more then a year ago due to a medication I was on, it would definitely trigger bi-polar two. I love my daughter, I would never give her up. However I wish someone could have been honest about being a parent. All I heard before having my daughter was that being a parent was the best thing, and that kids are so fulfilling. I heard that two and threes could be a little hard. The truth was, Kate screamed for the first three and a half months. She is stubborn. She tests my patients, and has since almost the day she was born. When she tries to be super independent when we are in a hurry can drive any parent crazy. She thinks things are suppose to work a certain way, and when they don't she gets mad. She will get mad when you do what she demands. She will get mad when you don't do what she demands. She will meltdown when you do what she wants, and when she doesn't want it at the same time. She will get so silly that she starts getting mad. At times she has a very fine line between being very happy, and melting down. She has never been mellow. She has never sat still. She has always had to move constantly, to the point when she was really little she had to be held all the time, and she wouldn't let you sit still. I wish someone could have told me just how honestly hard being a mom is, at least then I could have gone in with more understanding. Babies are not easy, and mine was not fun most of the time.

Now that I have been a mom for three years, I can honestly say I could NEVER be a stay at home mom. I would either go crazy, or I would probably hurt someone. There are times I think I could do it and I feel guilty for being a working mom, than I spend a few hours with Kate by myself when she and I are both having a bad day. Being a stay at home mom, would not work for me. When I say I don't want another child because I can't handle it, please understand I mentally can NOT handle another little kid. It doesn't matter if second child is different, different doesn't mean better. When they are super little, they may not play with each other. There are some kids that won't play with kids that are younger than they are. Trying to convince me that I need a second child just makes me frustrated. I know me. I know what I can handle and I know that another child would cause me to break completely. That isn't fair to me, it isn't fair to Kate, it isn't fair to Kraig, and it would not be fair to that child. I have my bi-polar mostly under control, but that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated. It also means that someone that has never dealt with the frustration that comes from bi-polar can never understand where I am. You can't teach, what you don't know or understand.

I love my daughter, most days I have a hard time with her, but there are days that she can show me the beautiful world as she sees it. There are so many things about her I do not want to have change. I love her curiosity. I love her imagination. I love her eagerness to learn as much as she can. I love that she is wild, and crazy (I just can't always handle it).

Here is a little about Bi-Polar 2 (from Bipolar Disorder Symptoms):
Bipolar 2 disorder is a milder type of bipolar disorder than the classic form of “manic-depression”, now known as bipolar 1 disorder. Although the mood of a person with bipolar type 2 disorder cycles between a “low” or depressed state, and an elevated or “high” state, they do not get the severe symptoms of full mania such as hallucinations and delusions. Instead they go through episodes of a milder type of mania, called “hypomania,” with comparatively mild symptoms. But the symptoms of bipolar 2 disorder – also known as bipolar II and bipolar type 2 disorder – can still be severely disruptive, and may make normal life almost impossible until the symptoms pass.
You can read more at their website at http://www.bipolar-disordersymptoms.org/bipolar-2/

Now just for fun, a few pictures of Kate. Some are old, and some are not.

Kate is Three!!

Sorry for the blurring picture, it is actually from a cell phone video.

Kate turned three today! It is crazy at how fast time flies! Here are some fun facts about Kate:
*She loves animals
*She doesn't care at all if she gets dirty. She could be covered head to toe.
*She doesn't have a favorite color, and I don't mind that.
*She loves most fruit, but doesn't like candy. Veggies it completely depends.
*She loves books, and she loves to read. For reading she usually makes up long stories to go with the pictures.
*She loves to play outside. She would play outside all day long if we let her.
*She likes jumping on Asher's "jumpoline".
*She likes slides as long as they aren't too high, and they aren't tubes, and they aren't really fast.
*She likes to swing, including by holding onto a bar and using her arms to suspend herself (she apparently has strong arms, she has been able to do this since before she was two).
*She love princesses.
*She loves to play in water, but does not like her face getting wet.
*She is scared of loud noises, and some loud noises are worse than others.
*She loves people, she will usually try to say hi to everyone she sees, she is rarely shy.
*Her best friend is Asher, followed close behind by Titus our dog.
*She loves to be independent, but she thankfully does not change her clothes a dozen or more times a day.
*She has crazy hair, that never looks like I brush it, but it gets brushed all the time, and she likes it crazy.
*She loves to have her stories read to her. It is one of the few times she sits still, at least for a minute.

Time goes by so fast, it is so crazy!

Equality

I know that I have a lot of family and friends that disagree with me on this. However, I feel the need to state my mind on this.
Please be patient with me as I stumble my way through making my points. I have a lot to say, and I am not sure how to get it all out.
 I support gay marriage. I do not believe that those who are gay, choose to be gay. I believe people fall in love.
I have heard so many stories of boys figuring out they were gay, while in fifth or sixth grade. I do not believe that those boys would go through the literal torture of being constantly teased, just to rebel. (Trust me, I have first hand experience of being bullied for one reason or another, it is pure torture.)
I don't see a problem with people who are gay getting married, because it doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt my family. I don't care if one day I have to explain to Little Miss why someone has two mom's or two dads. I am more afraid of trying to explain abuse to her.
I view same sex marriages as a civil rights issue. I do not believe that we have the right to tell others who they can and can not love.
It bothers me so much that there are so many people, who can not accept others for who they are. I am not going to change who I am to make someone else happy, and I don't believe anyone else should have to either.
A friend of my worded it far better than I can right now:
"Do you really believe in freedom? For everyone? Or just the people who want to live how YOU believe is best? Equality is deep and tricky. It takes a great deal of unselfishness, strength of character, and loyalty to country to allow people to live as they see just, to live their own "pursuit of happiness". So long as no one is harming anyone else, let freedom TRULY ring."


Image was stolen from the internet. So if the image is yours, sorry.