I recently decided to take control of our Netflix account and get a few movies I’ve always wanted to see. J does a fine job presiding over our movie viewing but every once in a while we get something totally ridiculous. Like a documentary about birds. Or the movie “Rosemary’s Baby,” which J ordered while I was pregnant, because he thought I might like to watch a movie about a pregnant woman. A horror movie about a baby.

I decided to get “The Notebook,” even though it didn’t seem like my kind of movie, because I’d heard a lot of good things. Well, if you equate “I cried so hard,” with good. So many people had told me, in fact, that the movie made them cry, that it achieved this unrealistic status in my mind, and I decided the actual experience of seeing it would never live up to the legend. I figured it would be kind of like “Wedding Crashers” because Rachel McAdams is in it, but maybe someone would die at the end or something.

OH MY GOD. It wasn’t anything like “Wedding Crashers.” I stood there in front of the television, bouncing Nora up and down so she would remain quiet until the movie ended, sobbing, then took her upstairs to change her diaper. As she looked up at me quizzically from the changing table - tears streaming down my face, sniffling - I explained to her that Mommy had “just seen a very sad movie, one where they decided you hadn’t quite had enough by the end so they pushed you just a little farther. I mean who the hell do these movie makers think they are, seriously? You have got to be kidding me.”