Saturday's thoughts

This weekend Tritan and Brian went to D.C. to go to the temple. They took some of our family names, so that was kind of neat. Brian had just gotten back from Charolette, and he is always tired when he travels (he doesn't have me to snuggle up to and help him sleep), and they had to leave at 5:30 a.m.--so needless to say, it's a good thing you are promised the protection of angels when you do temple work, since Brian said he knows he must have nodded off a couple of times while driving.
Meanwhile, spring has finally found its way to New Jersey, and it has been beautiful. The kids have been out riding bikes and playing with friends, and I didn't have the heart to rein them in and make them work, so I was left puttering around the house, taking long breaks to sit on the porch to watch the kids play. I suppose it would have been much more efficient to just tackle an outside project, but I just couldn't quite get enough gumption up to tackle that yet.
So, I finished painting Athena's room. She wanted 3 of her walls pink, and one bright green. It took us a few tries to get the green right, but finally Behr's Crisp Apple seemed to do the trick. It still needed about a zillion coats to get the shading right, and in the process I realized that we needed to freshen up the baseboards, doors, and windows, so I guess I still have a ways to go before Athena's room is really done. But it wouldn't be a Wortham makeover project unless it took forever.
Which got me thinking: I love the montage sequences in movies. The one where the hero, after several false starts decides to truly dedicate themselves to some *impossible* change or another, and with some upbeat music and a series of time-elapsing shots we see them change from barely doing a pull-up to becoming a hard body doing 20 pull-ups with one hand; or a clueless nerd transforming to a fashion plate; or even (in Julie and Julia) going from painstakingly slicing an onion to turning out French cuisine. It all seems so simple, and even fun, set to the soundtrack of a funky beat, to become who you really want. When really, of course, change happens glacially slow, and should be set to something more akin to elevator music. Or maybe a funeral dirge.
And here's another (troubling?) thought. Can true change come without 100% focus? When you see those montages on film, they only show the hero working with single minded concentration on their goal. Can you really change your body without thinking about calories and workouts obsessively? Can you really redecorate your house at the pace of an hour a week? And if you want to change more than one thing, where do you find the time and energy? (you never see a montage of someone becoming a hard body, a law student, and a domestic goddess all at the same time). And so (if it's even possible for the same person to be all three) which do you choose first?