Love | Peaches Prattlings

{March 19, 2021} Meet the stuffed and furry family

I would like you to meet the stuffed and furry family that I have had, well, most of them, since I was a baby, some were even my mom’s, and mean the world to me.

Some of you who know me, know that I have quite the collection of stuff. Stuffed this and stuffed that. My stuffed animal collection is quite something! When I lived at home, it was all on my bed and people who sometimes spent the night in my bed marveled at how I could sleep with all those things on the bed with me. They also went into overload looking at all the stuff I had on my walls. Those of you who have known me forever, I know you’re not surprised! Well, now I would like to introduce you to some friends who are incredibly important to me.

Last night, I mentioned Winnie the Pooh, I’ve had him since I was a baby. One thing you might notice is that he has two red discs on his chest, those were buttons for the blue felt vest he wore, long since gone. His mouth is a meer scrap of very hard red fet, and his nose, not much different. If you look closely, you can see that his armpits have stitches in them, and oh my, but he is not the vibrant, bright yellow he started off as! He has been loved, hugged, cried on, slept on, dragged everywhere, very much loved bear, just like his namesake. I am a HUGE Winnie the Pooh fan! My first tattoo…guess who. He has gotten me through so very much!

The Winnie love fest continues, meet Gund Winnie the Pooh. He was a treasured gift from someone. He sits up, he’s not a soft bear, on the firm side, but…his joints move, so you can move his legs and arms around, love! One more teeny Winnie, I don’t remember who made him or where I got him, but he’s a love.

I am also a lover of Raggedy Ann. Do you see that pillow? My mom made that for me when she was pregnant with me, it’s something and I absolutely love it. It’s been on every bed I have ever had! You may remember it from my studio apartment when I lived in Bahston, before I moved to Hawai’i with PSM. To continue with the Raggedy Ann fest…meet my Raggedy Ann doll. He dress is very worn, her hair, still there, her face hasn’t changed, but her poor feet and legs! See the stuffing coming out of the tops of her shoes? And poor Raggedy, she broke her leg, so I put an ace bandage on it, I think I was either in high school or college and it’s been there ever since! I didn’t know how to fix it, I don’t think I could have sewn it, so…there it sits. She’s another incredibly loved friend, might be almost as many tears as Winnie!

Now, this little brown bear was one that my sister had as a child and at some point, she gae it to me and it’s stayed with me ever since, how could I let it go? That’s all, sister love.

Now, Snoopy is from childhood, he is well loved, still white, but not quite as white as he started. His eyebrows, might still be there, I think, but man oh man do I love this dog. Maybe that’s why I love our beagle Bee so much! I have to tell you…my first tattoo was a toss up between Winnie the Pooh, Kermit the Frog, and Snoopy. Winnie won out, but that’s not to say the other might not be joining him sometime in the future. What I loved about my Snoopy is that he has a wardrobe! I had so many outfits for him! My favorites…Beefeater, hat and all! Then there was the red nightshirt with the red nightcap, which inspired my own winter hat with Snoopy all over it in the shape of a stocking or night cap! Which also inspired me to ask a few people to make some for me! Camper Snoopy, Yellow Rain Slicka and Hat, again, maybe that’s why I just had to have the yellow rain booties and slicka for Bee! I know I had more, I just can’t think of them right now!

This adorable cat was made by my very talented MGS. She took a sewing class and this was one of the things she made, incredibly impressive. What I loved was why she gave it to me. When I moved to Hawai’i, I couldn’t take my cats with me and I was sad. Her first thought, to her mom, my sister, “Let’s get Aunt J a cat!” “Um, no, I don’t think that would be a good idea” A sweet idea, but not a great idea! Then…she had a great idea…this cat and I simply love it! I traveled with it, it stayed in my bag and I actually took it on the road with me when I traveled for work, love…it!

The bright orange bear with the green shirt isn’t very old, but it is from the school that my mom taught at in Brooklyn: Edward R Murrow High School. She bought it to support the theatre department, which was fantastic! I remember going to many shows at her school, they inspired me to want to do something with theatre when I went to college.

Now…let’s talk about my last two. The first one is the turtle, it’s actually a musical turtle. It plays Frere Jacques, which some kids also know as Where is Thumbkin, if the melody sounded familiar. But now when I play it, it’s a little slower, sounds like it’s winding down. This is a much loved turtle, the fur isn’t as soft as it once was, but his felt feet are all still there and he is so very much loved. I remember playing with him and sleeping with him when I stayed at my grandmother’s house when I was a kid.

The next is this terry cloth dog with a vest and bow tie on. Notice…he is painted exactly the same on both sides! LOVE! I have to be equally careful with him, you can start to see the seams fraying, but he’s still a very dapper dog. He’s another one I used to play with and sleep with at my grandmother’s house, and now he’s with me.

Want to know what’s so very special about these two? They were my mom’s own stuffed lovies, I played with them as a kid and now, I get to love on them for as long as I can. Those two I only look at, talk to once in a while and leave lovingly on the shelf, they’re old and delicate and it just means so much that they are with me. For now, they’ll sit on the shelf and be loved above my head!

I still have more stuffed loves, but these are the ones that I keep with me always, they have a long, much loved, and happy history. I don’t know where our next adventure will take us, but one thing I know…they are all going with me.

{March 17, 2021} Alta Mar [High Seas]…bring Dramamine

I had really high hopes, no pun intended, for Alta Mar [High Seas in English] on Netflix. The tagline from IMDB.com: Two sisters discover disturbing family secrets after a string of mysterious deaths occur on a luxury ship traveling from Spain to Brazil in the 1940s. That’s a good way of putting it.

I was excited about watching because of a few things. I love period pieces, we’ve talked about this before, but the 1940’s was a great time, from a fashion perspective and the show did not disappoint. The women wore skirts and dresses, but they also wore pants and playsuits, which was of that time, along with wearing dresses with bobby socks, mainly because their silk stockings were needed to make parachutes and waterproof maps, fascinating! The hair, the makeup, all of it was done just so.

I was also excited because watching the preview, it looked like fun, my kind of show. Murder, mystery, intrigue, mayhem, what more could you want?! Apparently, a lot more…

It started out with some intrigue right away, the two sisters, on their way to the ship had a slight mishap and accidentally hit a woman, who claimed if she was caught by her husband, he would kill her, which spoke to the sisters and they stowed her away in their trunk. They were accompanied by their maid, I think that would be the term, she helped raise them and still takes care of them, like a ladies maid, I guess. They are also accompanied by her daughter. The two women don’t really want to go along wtih this scheme, but what choice do they have, they have to do what their employers say.

One of the reasons they are going on the boat is so that Carolina can marry Fernando, who owns the ship, along with his sister and her husband. Their mother passed away when they were young and their father was killed in the last year or two. They are joined by their uncle, who was in business with their father, and another partner, who is also a doctor, which comes in handy during the voyage. There is romance above deck, and below, between different classes, officers and passengers, it goes all over the place. Almost like The Love Boat but definitely with better costumes!

Then, the intrigue, murder, or so we thought, passengers in disguise, distrust, anger, fear, valiance, strength, dismay, dirty cops, abuse, murder, disappointment, shock, surprise, happiness, and a wedding, but not the way it was supposed to be. Is that enough? And this is only the first season!

Season two has ghosts, betrayal, con artists, sadness, loss, fear, loathing, murder, discovery, disappointment, suicide, frustration, that one was mostly from me. Season two starts with a continuation of the season one story, bridging a new storyline that tied into season one, but going down an entirely new path, sort of, well, maybe not really. See how frustrated I am?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like it when good characters turn out bad and that’s what happened, I can’t tell you more, but it was someone protecting someone they loved, doing what they thought was right, see where that got them…

Then…we move on to Seaons 3. It’s been a few months since the sisters have seen each other and they get ready to set sail again, oh, I should mention that one of the sisters is a writer and these adventures, let’s call them that, are great material for her books. Before they get ready to sail, there’s more intrigue…espionage this time, and a deadly virus, shootings, disguises, betrayal, torture, drugs, or keeping someone drugged and captive, spies, mutiny, sneakiness, abandonment, I think that’s it.

Here’s where the issues come in…With one of the story lines, even though there is an answer, there is no consequence for something that happened and in another, one of the bad guys gets away. With another story line, even though there is an answer, there is no sense of peace, even with the one who was searching for answers. With the last story line, love is lost, people are dead, lines are crossed, loyalties are tested and crushed and the one good guy, well, no happy ending for him and overall, no happy ending period. I walked away from the last episode wondering why I started. Hence…the Dramamine.

All of this, as you know, is strictly my opinion, I would never stop you from watching it, my dad, I stopped, ha ha. We have similar tastes and when one of us tries a show, if we’re not trying it at the same time, we tell each other what we thought and that either encourages or discourages the other. Now, this is when it comes to mysteries mostly, some comedies, some dramadies, as it were, period pieces, sci fi, wait, I take back the mostly statement, ha ha! We’ve recommended things to each other and told the other to run screaming, which is quite nice! He started to watch High Seas and lost interest and when I told him I was watching it, he said maybe he’d try it again, whenever he was finished what he was watching. When I finished the series, I told him not to bother! I knew he would definitely not enjoy it, I know where he stopped, which was just before one of the bad dudes got his just desserts, but it wasn’t worth watching the entire show. Again, my opinion. Take it or leave it.

I, personally, am going to leave it, right there, where it lies, at the bottom of the ocean floor.

{March 14, 2021} Raya and the Last Dragon

Today, since it was raining, no motorcycle rides for us, but…we decided to go to the movies and saw Raya and the Last Dragon, the newest Disney movie. The IMDB tagline is “In a realm known as Kumandra, a re-imagined Earth inhabited by an ancient civilization, a warrior named Raya is determined to find the last dragon.” Pretty accurate.

A little bit of trivia…Kumandra was inspired bythe Southeast Asian cultures of Brunei, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The story is that Kumandra is peace and harmony and all peoples living as one, with the five lands in the shape of a dragon: Heart, Talon, Spine, Fang, and Tail, all connected by the River Dragon. One day, a very long time ago, the Druun emerged, a swirling mass of purple and black, reminding me of The Nothing from the NeverEnding Story, it basically swirls and swarms through the lands turing the people and dragons to stone statues.

The dragons pooled their magic into a magic gem called the Dragon Gem, to protect against the Druun and the five lands are now divided. The dragons who pooled their magic gave the Dragon Gem to their sister, Sisu, the last remaining dragon. The Heart Land was tasked to guard the Dragon Orb for centuries and when Raya’s father brings the lands together, hoping for peace and a return to Kumandra…unfortunately, I think you can guess what happens, and the orb is broken apart and each leader takes a piece of the orb to try to protect themselves and their people. Unfortunately, that unleased the Druun to begin it’s attack on the people and the lands again. And the mistrust is even greater amongst the people.

Raya’s Ba, or father, is turned to stone as he pushses Raya away, gives her his piece of the orb and tells her it is on her to go and bring unity back to the world. That’s a lot to put on a 12 year old’s shoulders, but she rises to the challenge. We see her six years later, riding on Tuk-Tuk, her loveable pet, comprised of one third-pill bug, one third-armadillo, and one third-pug hybrid, with the ability to roll into a ball, it’s pretty cool. He’s adorable, as a wee bit, and then a big bit and stays very much a goofball throughout the movie, but he can move! Where do I get one?! These movies have to stop creating characters that I want for my own!

As Raya sets out, she goes to each of the lands to attempt to take the piece of the gem to reunite them together. Along the way, she finds Sisu, who seems to have been asleep for a while, not really sure what’s happening when she ‘wakes up’. It was interesting to watch their dynamic, and to see Sisu see the world through new eyes, a lot has changed since she’s been gone, almost the eyes of a child, or at least a very trusting, naive innocent, she still has faith in humanity and what it can accomplish if you put your trust in one another, something hard to do at this point, for most of the people still there, or left behind, as it feels.

Along the way, as she is going to each land, Raya meets someone that she has to trust and earn their trust in return and as you might imagine, they become their own band of merry men, so to speak. It really is an interesting combination of characters that she brings together. I hope you can picture all they can do, when they learn to trust and work together.

And that’s what the movie is about, believing in yourself, having the power and strength to open yourself up to others, to trust them and allow them to trust you and what you can accomplish together. Did they succeed? Was there unity? Were people reunited with their lost loved ones? Did Raya get her Ba back? First…if I tell you everything, how will you be surprised. Second…it’s a Disney animated movie, yeah, that about sums it up.

The cast is great, Raya is played by Kelly Marie Tran, Sisu by the brilliantly funny Awkwafina, the dialog was perfectly her and there were a few times I felt like she was channeling Robin Williams, in that way he would kind of do his own thing with dialog, go off the rails, like he did in as the genii in Aladdin. Gemma Chan was Raya’s nemesis, from Fang, Benedict Wong was Tong from Spine, Sandra Oh was Chieftess Virana from Fang, Lucille Soong was Chieftess Dang Hu from Talon, Daniel Dae Kim was Chief Benja and Raya’s father. I love that Alan Tudyk played Tuk Tuk, he didn’t say much, but his noises were mighty cute!

Overall, it was a great movie, a lot of wonderful symbolism, pageantry, colors, feelings, story, action, humor, humility, unity, trust, and love. What more could you want?! I hope you enjoy it, I’m going to watch it again!

{February 22, 2021} Yoga…Love…Love…Yoga

As you know, PSM and I have been taking yoga together for almost two months, well, you may not have known how long, but you knew we were taking it together.

People ask me how I like yoga…I’m getting there.

My favorite question and answer:

“How do you like hot yoga?”

PSM LOVES hot yoga.

I LOVE PSM.

Email Subscription

What was I thinking?