House:
Before JGW gets here:
Errands
Kinwork and Lisaism
Reading:
Just before midnight, we paused our game of Taboo,* switched the set from DVD (either "Dead Again" or "Henry V": Clove was in a Kenneth/Emma mood) to Dorian Gray's Rocking New Year's Eve, and tried to pour sparkling cider for the non-champagne contingent. The cider needed a bottle opener, and RDC dashed upstairs to get it. I paused the ball drop at 11:59:02 to allow time for the dash and pour.
Besides that the ball had dropped two hours before, how much of an insult to time was it to Tivo the time-delayed drop?
* Taboo really isn't much of a game if you have any command of synonyms or culture. I couldn't say "Dutch" but I could say "Don Quixote tilted at ---" and go on to the next word.
Conversation over lunch led to RDC saying, "I always said I was going to be an inventor when I was a kid."
"What did you say you were going to be when you were an adult?"
"The kind of person who beats his wise-acre wife."
I was reading a site about basset hound rescue and care and came across something about anal sacs, which sometimes become impacted and need to be emptied (you hold the tail up and squeeze and whatever it is, which the site admitted was "smelly," comes out.
That took the bloom off the rose somewhat.
But Clove said this happens to their dog too and they have the vet take care of it. That sounds reasonable to me. The next impediment was one of the site's dog-readiness questions: Is the decision to adopt a basset hound a unanimous one?
It's really not. RDC wants an eventual German Shepherd because he knows to what degree their obedience and discipline can be honed. I say, and he knows, that we haven't the space, inside or out, for a Shepherd. That's why I downgraded from Labrador Retriever, myself. At basset hound, I want a used one, older, to ease myself into a parent relationship with a dog, and he suggests that a puppy is more trainable and will have grown up with a cockatiel and won't have emotional trauma.
The dog's been shelved for now (in the public dog library). Alas.
This morning, with Blake on my shoulder, I scraped and spackled more of the watercloset. There's more I won't do until I have convenient hot water again, and some of the walls need joint compound, spackle's tougher cousin, but I could do some. I spackled and then I trimmed some 90-degree angles where a previous painter had let a long bead of paint dry, and I scraped the scar of a one-time phone line (?) off the ceiling. Spackling is boring (Blake just preened), but the scraping made noises that he had to imitate.
A basset hound would not be able to help like that.
Wednesday I broke from scraping the watercloset because I had to do some particular reorganizing in the furnace room right immediately then and no later. This led to an observation: "RDC, there's a leak in the hot water heater."
There wasn't a single leak in the heater. There were several. So much for the hot water, on New Year's Eve, with a prime rib and oven-roasted potatoes and chocolate mousse and wine and champagne to serve and clean up after.
(It did mean that we went to the gym right on New Year's Day, though only to shower.)
The plumber arrived Friday morning, zounds, with a new heater. He told us a few unwelcome things:
When we moved into the house, RDC added a pipe to the hot water heater. A gasket meant to vent in case of...something...was placed at eye level, so the escaping steam would boil your face off. The pipe meant only your toes would come off. Home Depot suggested a certain metal pipe to RDC as more cost effective, but the first thing the plumber said was that code required copper.
Denver code also requires combustion air to the furnace. He looked greedily at the outside wall--the one whose masonry we just had repaired this summer. Instead RDC suggested the coal chute. Now we are vaguely "Brazil"ian and have six-inch aluminum pipe from the coal door, strapped to the ceiling of the coal cellar, piercing the wall between coal cellar and furnace room, and basically facilitating cold air in and warm air out. Also fresh air for safer and more efficient burning in the furnace and heater, if you're into that.
The defunct heater had sprung leaks because the water pressure, as coming in from the outside, was too high, was the third thing. So the plumber also installed a pressure-reducing valve. Which I suppose will reduce our consumption, which is good, though I noticed the difference in the shower and I haven't even washed my hair yet. Watering will take longer, which is not so good, especially since I have to be much, much more assiduous about the trees if they're to stand a chance, according to the tree-trimmers.
This fall I added a curtain to the doorway between the den and the laundry room, which made it cozier-looking and -feeling, but does just about nothing to combat a six-inch aperture in an otherwise not at all airtight house. We closed the door between laundry room and workroom--the door I meant at first sight to remove but then opened against a wall and forgot about for the past nearly four years except insofar as to hang laundry from it--and rolled towels against its sill, but still. We hung a tarp in the furnace room doorway too, but we need a weather-stripped door. Soon.
So that was Friday.
Today An Official Measurer from Home Depot appeared to calculate the kitchen. Blake was upset at not meeting the plumber yesterday and today did meet the measurer, who was charmed (of course), and chatted with Blake on his shoulder: "I don't know what you're saying but I see you've got a lot to say anyway." We talked about vents and cabinetry and deepening the north countertop and narrowing the south one and what to do about the lighting and so forth. On his way out, the measurer noticed the plethora of cards on the mantel and said, "Your friends certainly don't neglect you," which made me happy. He touched the tree softly--yeah, I liked him--and put on his shoes to go. Blake squawked with abandonment and I told the measurer that he likes to be told goodbye; the measurer did so readily, understanding that the little things are important.
Then I took down the tree. All the ornaments to the couch, to be dealt with last. Streamer-garland down, lights unwound, skirt unhooked. I got the tree outside, the needles swept and vacuumed from inside and the needles swept though not vacuumed from the porch. (The tree will become mulch, courtesy of the city.) I had a mess of boxes from shipping this year, so I reorganized everything, which was fun. (The measurer paused in his work to observe of the Fractured Proverbs magnets on the fridge, "very tidy, all lined up." Yes indeed: the subject phrases are right- and the predicates left-aligned making a neat part down the line.)
I went through the cards, cutting pictures from greetings to fit in an album and writing on their backs, tearing fronts (images for homemade cards or gift-tags) from backs (greetings and new addresses). Then I went through the albums, adding all the photographs from the past four years, since we went digital.
Meanwhile RDC was devising and rethinking the breakfast nook. There was much sitting in dining chairs side by side to determine length of bench and facing one another to decide that only one bench would fit (two facing would leave no knee space) and sitting on a length of board propped on crates in the sun room to decide how deep a seat should be. The woodworking book says 15", which is not comfy. Eighteen in more like it.
Anyway, the hot water's back. Blake's cage is dismantled in the dishwasher, laundry's in the clothes washer, and I need to get back into the watercloset with a bucket of warm water and TSP substitute cocktail. Whee.
It is nearly long enough to put up again after November's choppage. I mean, I can put it up, but it's nearly long enough to stay up even if I, say, move. So here it is, up, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I wondered if I could deal with hair actually as short as this looks, because I liked this effect. I don't mean to look like Norman Bates, either, I was just hiding my chin.
But I can't hide my eyebags.
The setting: the Children's Museum of Denver. The players: JJM and JPM, who will need aliases, and me.
The first scene: a room with a road carpet (? a rug printed with roads to zoom cars along) over here, Duplo blocks over there, and a lot of wooden blocks in the corner. JJM said JPM would like the cars and Duplo and I said, "Goody, blocks for me." I did two things with the blocks: one, putting them all away in their cubbies, like with like, because I am all into organizing--magnetic poetry and proverbs, stuffed animals--which JJM knew from at least Thanksgiving, when my playing with JPM's toys consisted mostly of nesting the five-sided cubes--and two, building low towers for JPM and other kids to knock over. I would cry "Yea!" and applaud at each topple (and quietly feel slightly proud at detaching myself from my creations). One little boy wanted to demolish a tower, but his grown-up, thinking that would be rude to me, called to him not to knock the towers over. How should I have told the man that it was okay, that that's why I built them? I even built them wide and low with the thinnest blocks on top, for minimal toe-smashage.
Mostly I was stowing away the blocks, though.
Our next stop was a 30' wall covered with giant fridge poetry-style magnets of letters, numerals, and words, thoroughly jumbled. I approached the board to assemble JPM's name, and JJM observed to her son, "Uh-oh, this one could take Lisa days." (I hadn't even told her about the measurer's comment yet.)
I howled with laughter, partly because it was true but mostly because, damn, on first seeing it, I didn't think to order and sort the characters, but as soon as she said it, I felt the need.
Later, I mentioned dismantling the tree and dealing with the cards, putting photographs in albums etc. JJM said, "You keep photographs of other people's children?" Or something like that. Not contemptuously, but mystified. And yes, yes I do. This struck me as so obvious I didn't know how to explain it. I used as an example a card we both received: "If you saw Begonia, Ms. Begonia, and Baby Begonia at a party and happened to take a good snapshot of them, you might put it in an album, right?" She allowed as how that was so. What's the difference?
I freely admit I am a freakishly, unnecessarily over(-)tidier of blocks and magnets and books and DVDs and lists. I cannot see in any wise whatsoever how keeping pictures of my friends' children, as well as those of my friends, is freaky in the slightest.
Nordic Track: 20', 2.3 miles, while watching "Sex and the City." Much easier than going to the gym in January (not that I was battering the door down). Then some twists on the ball for my obliques.
I have two paintings of Granny's that I need to reframe. When my mother first offered them to me I should have noticed how cheesy the frames were, how integral they were not to the paintings and how easily the canvases lifted out.
The two have been sitting on the curb of my study since my mother sent them (with a jar of elderberry jelly on top), next to an 8x10 photograph of my mother and her husband that she also sent, maybe as a Christmas present. The red poppies will wind up in the sunroom, and the slender jug on the blue and olive background in the landing, when you look left on first entering the house.
Torpor:
1 : APATHY, DULLNESS
2 : a state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total insensibility : extreme sluggishness or stagnation of function
Turpitude:
: inherent baseness : DEPRAVITY
The latter word I learned from Bloom County.
The other day I wondered if I was projecting my inability to function after 10 p.m. on a friend. I was not: she too shuts down and longs for her bed.
Torpitude: the craven propensity to take too many naps or need to go to bed earlier than normal people. My first new word since "stomple."
I finally raked up the cherry leaves, though I have to do the whole lot again. Also I thoroughly cleared out the former gravel bed on the south side of the garage for a new vegetable bed. It was so warm that Blake came out and helped me.
Nordic Track: 20', distance 2.54, calories (allegedly) 312
I don't count the one, half, half, and one mile walks the bus ride entails. I might count the morning mile, because my heart rate does rise, but I don't (yet) because it's piddling.
I really liked the narrator of The Human Stain, no one I had ever heard of named Arliss Howard (also Debra Winger). I am not so much enjoying the narration of American Pastoral--and why would Audible have two different narrators when both books are "by" Nathan Zuckerman? Especially since Nathan Zuckerman exists in The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
The reason I don't like this narrator is--well, one of them--why do people pronounce the g in words like "sing" and "thing" as much as they do the k in "sink" and think"? The velar nasal, ŋ, is a sound on its own, not a diagraph. It's [ng], not [ng-g]. Hmm. (The phoneme is represented in IPA as an n with a long, slightly hooked right leg, but both ŋ and ŋ might not display correctly.)
Today season 4 of "The West Wing" started on Bravo. I didn't like the character Bruno before, I think because of his personality. I haven't seen "West Wing" since I started listening to American Pastoral, but as soon as I heard his voice I knew. Ron Silver. Now I'm going to project Bruno's character onto everyone in American Pastoral, and the book doesn't need another strike against it.
This morning for whatever reason--I did have one--I asked Intern if he knew about Flowers in the Attic.
He replied, quite seriously, "Is that by the same guy who wrote Where the Sidewalk Ends?"
---
Minutes later I was able to tuck what remained of my brain back between my ears and sit up. The Giving Tree. My Sweet Audrina. Lafcadio. Petals in the Wind. The Missing Piece. If There Be Thorns. Falling Up. Seeds of Yesterday. Where the Sidewalk Ends. Garden of Shadows. The Light in the Attic. Shel Silverstein wrote 'em all.
Finally I have a hobby besides snorting cockatiel dust and tearing at my cuticles: proofing texts for Project Gutenberg. I started with a beginner's text, a brilliant piece of fiction circa 1912, melding the best of Nancy Drew and Tom Swift, by Margaret Burnham, entitled The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly. (Merriam-Webster dates "aviatrix" to 1910.)
(The title reminds me of a one-sentence movie summary that CLH called to tell me about, approximately, "An Amazon princess dances the lambada to combat evil forces." CLH said, "Now of course that I have to watch.")
I tore through one hundred pages of the book because the story propelled me along (planes, futuristic enough to be Tom Swiftian in 1912; yet a motor car--with a "tonneau"--that still needed to be cranked; lads and lasses with a chaperone and tonnes of unwritten yet throbbing sexual tension; barnstorming as in Illusions; dreadful storms; fires; gypsies; moonshining; adventures galore). Malheureusement the proofreading is set up for, of all things, proofreading, not reading cheesy books, so I can't find out how it ends until it's posted (you can sign up to be notified).
It's about time I gave something back, though. Besides those on-the-fly Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll quotes Gutenberg affords me, it's also allowed me to read The Blue Lagoon (surprisingly, just as bad as the movie) and Enchanted April (book and movie each good in their individual ways) and Ben-Hur (I'm only a quarter through; Lew Wallace writes like Charlton Heston acts: ponderously).
<--Before and After -->
And the chip. In early third grade I fell off the jungle gym and broke my front two teeth. It must have been third grade, because Center School didn't have that jungle gym before then. Maybe second grade, because I did already have my adult teeth, possibly as late as fourth. Mrs. Newman, my beloved speech therapist, came and sat with me in the nurse's office until my mother arrived. The front two teeth were capped--I've alluded to this twice before--and what mystifies my mother and me is that no dentist since has ever detected any trace of said capping, despite my vivid memories of the fall, the blood, the "wust" taste, and the tape-recording, despite my mother's memories of being called, racing to the school, and having me capped.
Anyway, eventually I managed to chip off a corner of the right front tooth again. For ages I considered it Character. Didn't Sally J. Freedman's teacher have a deliberately chipped tooth? I was thinking it was the father's secretary in Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing but Peter was befuddled by, not envious of, her beauty routine. It's been a while since I considered it Character. I have been able to justify it, in my own head, as repair, not make-up. And today I had it done.
(The title is from Geek Love.)
Dot Org has a director, my ÜrBoss, and an executive committee (like a board of directors), whose membership, including its officers, rotates. So while the latter is completely refreshed every few years, ÜrBoss has been with Dot Org since its inception more than a quarter of a century ago. Occasionally the committee meets in Denver, and occasionally occasionally there is a function. Tonight, we dedicated the building; and when I found out that a magnum of champagne wouldn't be smashed on the cornerstone, I had no expectations.
Though I am no fan of urban sprawl and have only grumpily dealt with the move out to the hinterlands, this evening I clapped as loudly as anyone, and maybe longer, when the president announced that the building will be named for ÜrBoss, after his retirement, which sad loss we all hope won't be for years and years and years.
I talked to Haitch, who reminded me that I love Blake even when he's a footboy. We had a shower together--Blake and I, not Haitch and I--and the post-shower preening distracted him. I watched him fuss in a spatch of sun on a corner of the dining table, shaking off clouds of dust, and talked to CLH, who might come to Denver again.
I told her CoolBoss's latest two lines: Friday when I, dressed in a suit and wearing makeup for the executive committee's presence, bared my teeth at her, she said, "They look really good, except you've got lipstick on them." Later, talking about the next Big Top, which will be held in Salt Lake City this summer, she said, "Lisa, you have to go--you're the only one who won't mind no drinking." CLH has met CoolBoss a couple of times and likes her; now she likes her more.
Before the phone calls I smeared joint compound on the water closet walls so tomorrow I can sand them. Unlike scrubbing, smearing isn't so loud that I can't listen to American Pastoral. So that got done.
Then I walked out to feed some friends' cats. It was a lovely walk, and I sat on their couch with a glass of water and Beryl Bainbridge's Every Man for Himself prepared to cuddle some lonely kitties. They were having none of that, but two in turn (I swear the third is invisible) drank from my glass--after they had eaten their disgusting cat food. At the end I did get some Charley-love. Maybe by tomorrow they'll appreciate me more.
I stopped into the Park Hill Co-operative Bookstore and came away with some treats: Because of Winn-Dixie, which I've read but did want to own; What's Bred in the Bone, which had been my goal at the library (my next stop); a Newbery Honor that I haven't read, Dragon Wings by Laurence Yep; and a great Twinkie treat, A Royal Pain by Ellen Conford.
The library yielded two Douglas Couplands (Hey Nostradamus and All Families Are Psychotic) and A Great and Terrible Beauty, which I think Melissa recommended. Or not: I find no mention of it in The Usual Suspects. Well, I heard about it somewhere.
And now after a satisfying though dogless walk I am home with Blake, reading cheesy YA fiction and watching "The Sea of Grass," one of the few Hepburn & Tracy movies I haven't seen and supposedly one of the best.
I love them all, some in spite of themselves, some more than others.
Adam's Rib
I don't love this as much as it might deserve. I have a hard time not resenting Spencer Tracy sometimes, and I can only wish their relationship was as equitable in real live as on screen.
The African Queen
My earliest favorite. Adventure and romance and victory against the bad guys!
Alice Adams
I haven't read the Booth Tarkington book and I understand the movie's happy ending is not at all that of the book, just as Magnificent Ambersons got butchered. Screen filler.
A Bill of Divorcement
"You mean, there's insanity in the family?"
Break of Hearts
I just recently tried to watch this, but the print was so terrible I couldn't bear it.
Bringing Up Baby
Cary Grant, so what could go wrong?
Christopher Strong
The eventual fate of either of the heroines in The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly?
The Corn Is Green
A Delicate Balance
Despite Paul Scofield, I didn't like this. Maybe it was just too painful, maybe it didn't translate well from stage to screen.
Desk Set
Prescient and charming and she's not under Tracy's thumb.
Dragon Seed
Wow. Despite the same problems of Caucasians playing Asians that plague a contemporary viewer's experience of this and the cinematization of another Pearl S. Buck novel, quite a powerful movie. And because I hadn't read it first, I didn't find it as fraught with inadequacies as the mangling of my beloved Good Earth.
The Glass Menagerie
Grace Quigley
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
The Technicolor glares, and I can't quite separate it from knowing she never could bear to see it.
Holiday
I love it. They're both like Dinah Lord all the way through instead of only at the end.
The Iron Petticoat
Keeper of the Flame
This one's Plot Twist was obvious a mile away. I am a later generation of movie-viewer.
Laura Lansing Slept Here
The Lion in Winter
Although it's impossible to say for certain, certainly among my very favorites.
The Little Minister
It's waiting for me on TiVo right now. I think it's the sort of thing I should proof during.
Little Women
She's a great Jo.
Long Day's Journey Into Night
I haven't seen it in many years, since before the love really blossomed.
Love Affair
Love Among the Ruins
The Madwoman of Chaillot
The Man Upstairs
Mary of Scotland
Katharine Hepburn playing Mary Stuart Valois Darnley Hepburn. What could be better?
Morning Glory
Is it in this or in "Stage Door" that she speaks of carrying calla lilies on her wedding day? That was one of the captions in my wedding album.
Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry
Olly, Olly, Oxen Free
On Golden Pond
I haven't seen this since its cinematic release, I think. It might have started the Kate love. I'm not sure I connected this woman with Rosie Sayer though.
One Christmas
Pat and Mike
My least favorite Tracy pairing. It's not just that it's about sports, or even mostly. It's just cheesy.
The Philadelphia Story
I can't give this anything but love, baby.
Quality Street
One of those that I have watched out of sheer determinedness to see all of them.
The Rainmaker
I tried to watch this once. I'll try again.
Rooster Cogburn
The Sea of Grass
This was good for a while.
Song of Love
Just as "Casablanca" freaked me out because it paired Charlie Allnut with someone other than Rosie, Victor Laszlo with Rosie was weird. But it was good.
Spitfire
I didn't pay much attention to this, which I just saw last week, because Kate's Pennsyltucky accent was so atrociously bad.
Stage Door
I confuse this with "Morning Glory." One of the several I saw at the Wadsworth the summer of 1992 with ABW and RDC, when the only one I remember is "Bill of Divorcement."
State of the Union
A great movie
Suddenly, Last Summer
Elizabeth Taylor can act. Between this and the O'Neill, I figure Kate had enough Freud.
Summertime
Sylvia Scarlett
Cary Grant, so what could go wrong? They could wind up not together, that's what.
This Can't Be Love
The Trojan Women
True Love
Undercurrent
This could have been so much better, with such a concept and cast. Ah well.
Without Love
Better than I expected.
Woman of the Year
I suppose when the movie came out Tracy's character was more sympathetic. No more.
A Woman Rebels
Much better than I expected, though that iceberg thing, or the production code, meant I rewound a couple of times, not having picked up cues its original audience would have parsed correctly and been shocked by.
As far as Ellen Conford goes, it was no Me and the Terrible Two or And This Is Laura, but it went well with "Sea of Grass."
Eh. It's a Newbery Honor, but none of its interesting threads came together in any meaningful way.
Another before and after, thought this is a before and middling instead of middling and after.
The paint wants a second coat on the walls and trim, though I think that of the ceiling is okay, and the window wants scraping. It's a lot pinker than I planned, though I still like it, but it clashes with the adobe-hued floor. A rug would be nice, if I could find one to reduce instead of emphasize the clashing.
Another coat on the walls and trim, the window scraped, floor moulding, a new lightswitch and light fixture, a curtain and rug, and, of course, a new toilet, and then it will be done.
Oh, and a door. The door will be flat white, like the ceiling, unless I can find some eggshell white. (The arch between living and dining rooms is flat white, and I should get some eggshell white to do that, plus this door.) It's on sawhorses in the furnace room waiting for its next coat. And a sign for the outside of the door, a W.C. sign.
Three months for a room smaller than a closet (and it's not done yet). I am smokin'.
P.S. Tex said the wallpaper and curtain looked like they were out of "Leave It to Beaver."--21 January.
P.P.S. This morning I took my box of 96 Crayola crayons into the watercloset. The closest match to Benjamin Moore's 2005-50 "Pink Eraser"--which looked so attractive and reasonable on the swatch--is lavender (bottom row, eighth from the right). The W.C. is darker than Crayola's lavender, but that crayon matches the tone and hue if not the saturation. --22 January.
When the protagonist says, "Next I know, I'll be calling myself the queen of Romania...," it's not so different from "Marie" that I can trust that the author wasn't purposefully paraphrasing Dorothy Parker.
Libba Bray's attempt to capture the era felt a lot like Tracey Chevalier's Falling Angels and plotwise it bore some resemblance to Down a Dark Hall and lots and lots and lots to The Secret History. Plus it owed a minor plot point to Ghosts I Have Been, not that the point originated with Richard Peck either, and another to The Cat Ate My Gymsuit although it was better handled in And Both Were Young.
The book's main action is set in 1895, but enough seeming anachronisms jolted me out of whatever suspension of disbelief I could manage when I wasn't thinking of Lois Duncan or Donna Tartt. Possibly they weren't anachronisms but only seemed so to someone who has only enough trivial knowledge to think she has more, but the seeming so was enough for me.
Men wear "tuxedos" (p. 229) and while the word for the suit maybe does date to 1886 in time to fit in the book, it was in Tuxedo Park in the United States that a man first wore one. Since even Usan Miss Manners thinks the term is slangy, I wonder if the Brits would have accepted it as quite the thing that fast, and quite enough of the thing to wear instead of white tie and tails, which is what should be paired with a woman's opera-length gloves.
Although the disease influenza dates to the twelfth century and before, I never think of its being widespread or well-known until the 1918-19 pandemic. So while an outbreak in 1890 could account for one detail, again it sounded odd.
On page 233, someone refers to an allegedly proper married woman Mrs HerFirstName MarriedLastName. When did the early twentieth-century etiquette that that form indicated a divorced woman (a married one being Mrs HisFirstName MarriedLastName) come into being?
Another datum in my wildly unreferenced trivia bank is that Dickens, while immediately popular, took some time to become respectable. So it seems unlikely that, as on page 265, the headmistress of an 1895 finishing school would read David Copperfield to her charges.
Overall I wish I liked it as much as I expected and wanted to. I'm getting nowhere with The Stone Raft, which lack of progress disgusts me; and I'm zero for three with the YA books I used to leapfrog back into this reading thing I've heard so much about. To be fair I should say zero for two, since I expected nothing from the Ellen Conford, but zero for two is still zero.
Of all the movies and books I've mentioned to Intern in the past seven months, such as Egg and I acting out "Philadelphia Story" for him and all three of us reminiscing about "Breakfast Club," the one I thought he really needed to see was, of course, "Harold and Maude." He saw it, and he liked it. The only one he's recommended is "Red Dawn."
It's not a fair trade, which both of us knew going in it wouldn't be; still somehow I expected it to be more intelligent than, say, dirt. Alas, it's stupider than "War Games" and lacks that movie's charm. Intern described it being as fundamentally '80s as "Weird Science" and "Some Kind of Wonderful," but I just painted my bathroom pink, for pete's sake. (Maybe that makes me a pinko?) I knew it wouldn't be my type of movie but I didn't expect to be bored. Well, maybe the time and my age are wrong: I was devastated by the equally bad, and made for TV, "The Day After," which I saw in 1983 at age 15. (I realized it was bad when I rewatched it many years later. "Threads," though, I bet is still effective.)
I suspected this movie when I learned that the operation to capture Saddam Hussein was called "Red Dawn." And yes: the possible locations were called Wolverine.
In translation from the German, Cornelia Funke is pretty good. The one fantastic element dropped into the unlikely but possible main plot was satisfying if a little deus ex machina.
Today's acquisitions: one (1) new toilet, Eljer "Savoy" model, which name cracks me up--and the other model was "Patriot," which also cracked me up, one (1) toilet seat, one (1) wax seal, one (1) extra wax seal, and one (1) package of four (4) toilet shims; two (2) eight-foot lengths of pre-made molding for the watercloset; four (4) bulbs for the lamp in the den, 40 and 60 watts; several (x) painty appliances; and two (2) crown molding ledges that we hung, with frustration at the stupid mounting system but no snapping or swearing, in the dining room.
I asked Haitch once if the dining table was too big for the dining room. She hedged that it was the right size for a dining table. It seats six without its leaves, and there is no space in the room for a handy bar or sideboard. One corner has a six-foot corn plant, another presently has a fern (exiled from the sunroom for the interminable building of the breakfast nook), the third a door, and the fourth has the buddy cage on the buddy stand on the buddy rug.
So now we have two ledges. They don't hold anything really useful, like glasses and decanters, but they could as occasion demanded. Right now they hold pretties: a platter we were given for Yule, a plate RDC brought me from Ireland, the champagne glasses we had at our wedding, the bread plate I made at Color Me Mine, another plate friends brought us from Italy, and a copper plate with a Pacific Northwest-style orca hammered into it.
We weren't in the mood to deal with the toilet, which means we have to deal with it one of the next four evenings or have a houseguest with just the one.
I liked this one a lot more than Miss Wyoming, whose plot I can scarcely recall. Of course, this one's plot is a little too close to home to be either original or forgettable. But it's my favorite Douglas Coupland in a while.
Like The Lady and the Unicorn, this book is told in more than one first-person point-of-view; unlike that book, its four voices are distinct. Maybe because there are four voices and four sections (that makes it sound like Sound and the Fury--it's not) instead of the more frequent jumps Chevalier makes. There is no reason for me to link Coupland and Chevalier except that I read both of them in the past month.
And he finally set a book in Canada instead of his favorite target to the south. I appreciate that.
I am so glad this one is over. What the hell was the point? I still am going to try Portnoy's Complaint but I am done with Philip Roth.
Also I really didn't like Ron Silver's narration. I know how much narration affects my "reading" experience, so my bored indignation might not be fair. As if that's ever stopped me.
I know that the narrator's nasal whine did American Pastoral no favors, but that doesn't stop me from editorializing myself when I'm reading aloud to RDC.
Last year when I read him Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, I muttered when the farm was referred to as "Mr. Fitzgibbon's" rather than as "the Fitzgibbons'." I also snorted when Justin told Mrs. Frisby to slide down a post like a fireman's pole, because of course she'd know exactly what that is.
Last night we finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This time my annotations were obvious: when Aslan paces up from the Fords of Beruna to the Hill of the Stone Table, I said "Gethsemane" a lot (the first time, RDC said, "Gesundheit" so I kicked him). When Lucy and Susan joined him, I said "Mary and Martha" instead of their names. During the Easter Sunday romp, among the joyous leaping and bounding and laughing, I added, "And Susan stuck her hand in his side." Naturally I had to make Susan the doubting Thomas, since she's the lipstick-wearing baddie who doesn't make it past Revelations.
We are doing the kitchen. Packing its contents, removing the tile, getting rid of the dead downstairs fridge, bringing the working fridge down, setting up some small appliances downstairs in a temporary kitchen so also doing something about the utility sink so that it turns off without nine billion psi of wrist-wrenching pressure, removing the cabinetry, removing the countertops, repairing the walls, removing and hiding the dishwasher, disposing of the range and sink and insinkerator, buying and installing a hood, (paying someone for) installing new cabinetry and countertops, installing a range and sink and insinkerator, reinstalling the dishwasher, repairing the window, painting the walls, tiling between the countertops and cabinet bottoms, and possibly buying a new upstairs fridge. And doing something about the lighting.
We have a plan and the beginnings of a timeline; we have chosen cabinetry and countertops and hardware and wall color but not tile; and we have four months before it gets too hot to work inside.
Yesterday we chipped off the first three tiles just to see how it would go. Today I chipped off several more before dinner. While I cleaned up after dinner, Blake continued helping. I will remove tiles starting on the north wall with tools, and Blake will continue working on the south wall with his beak, and we will meet in the middle. I think "middle" will be "one tile east of Blake's starting point," but I appreciate his effort.
I started packing the kitchen, just a little. The china, into a sturdy plastic crate with lots of poppy stuff; the cookie and cake stuff like the spritzer and cutters in the box the sander came in; and bundling stuff like milkshake glasses and my grandmother's sugar bowl and creamer into one cupboard for when I get more boxes and packing stuff.
RDC applied a last bit of joint compound in the stairwell; when it dries I can sand it all and finally prime and paint that.
We got a quote on the cabinetry installation and, with that, now know the basic major expenses. "Minor" expenses are the hardware for the cabinetry and the tiles for the backsplashes and any under-cabinet lighting.
I still haven't replaced the watercloset door or razored the window and the trim still needs another coat plus I got some color on the white ceiling, but nevertheless I feel like after a pause of many months--since the gardens went dormant for the season--we are finally making progress on the house again.
I sanded the front landing in a respirator and safety glasses, swept the walls once, hosed myself off (my eyelashes were white), puttered about for a while while more dust settled, swept the walls again without the respirator or glasses, hosed myself off (my nosehairs were white), read, then damp-mopped the surfaces, then scrubbed them with TSP-substitute.
Tomorrow morning, the first coat of primer.
Also, in my brilliance, I painted the outside of the watercloset door in semi-gloss and the inside in flat (not even eggshell) white. When I do the trim in the landing I'll gloss the door. Define it, you know. I did razor the window clean. And we replaced the toilet, seating the new one much more thoroughly so it doesn't wobble. I hope I never have to replace another toilet. The wax seal between toilet and waste pipe gets extremely nasty over time. The first layers come off on the scraper like fresh earwax, pliable and not overly gross, but the inner ones are like the big chunks of dried earwax that that mouthbreather in third grade always had, that he could make a Bernie Botts' Every Flavor Bean out of.
But it's done for this time, as of Tuesday night, and the current project is not repellent at all, and I am showered and shampooed and cuddled in fleece and making dinner and probably will finish She Is Me tonight.
Yii. I have Sinéad O'Connor in my head because I am so aware of the difference in my outlook today. I have these hiccups of blee that I love, that I remember being my usual state of being, that haven't been for a long time.
So yesterday my psychiatrist and I (that would be one of the things I've been not 'fessing about, and the difference in my mood is why I'm 'fessing now) talked about why I'm not as comfortable socially as I once was. I have become, shockingly, an introvert, in fact if not by nature.
I told her three incidents from the class I took at Metro.
The first I told when it happened: that I mistook a classmate I had already thought looked like Sabrina for Sabrina. I think I wanted to tell her (Shrink) that I did see a potential friend there but already didn't know how to court the prefriend when that incident nixed (in my mind if not in fact) any chance of that happening.
The second happened the first day of class and set the tone for the remainder. The professor gave a spiel about how far feminism still has to go and had some clippings from recent papers to illustrate her point. One was Mr. Someone saying that sometimes it really is okay to hit your wife. Most of the class seemed to know who the speaker was, and his apparent celebrity meant that people would look up to and emulate him. I had no idea who the name was, so I raised my hand and asked, "Who is Shannon Sharpe?" He is a Denver Bronco football player, and my not knowing that, and probably quite obviously not caring about knowing it, that began (many of) my classmates' dislike of me. Shrink and I have spoken about cognitive distortions, such as my limited ability to react appropriately because I'm so busy being insecrure and overinterpreting (speaking of Cathleen Schine, "so literal-minded and fanciful at the same time… a black hole, sucking up the world around me to metaphorize it out of all recognizability") and however much that is true (very), I damn well didn't mistake or exaggerate the hostility of particularly three of them.
Once feeling brassy and superior, as we walked into the classroom, I asked one of the three whose murmurings whenever I raised my hand were the loudest, what that button on her backpack meant (MET with a slash through it--something about how the nickname for Metropolitan State College of Denver should not be Met). From my usual front right seat, I easily saw her in the opposite corner telling her companions why she spoke to me at all, and if she'd known it was me addressing her from behind as we entered the room single-file, she would have--here she jabbed backward with her elbow. Not just dislike: hostility. Whatever. For good or ill, I felt superior to them and their dislike of me amused rather than distressed me. Whereas, another time that semester in my commute home, I was so distraught when a random other bus passenger told me off, in quite foul language, when I asked him please not to stand on my foot, that at my transfer point I called Haitch asking her to come get me rather than spend another instant on public conveyance.
The third incident--well, it's just a good story when I was already talking about the class, so I didn't resist it, even though it has nothing to do with How I React When People Like or Dislike me--happened one Monday evening after I had spent the weekend in Aspen with CLH, who had flown in for a friend's wedding, and not done the assigned reading. In class, the first several people the professor called on to comment on the reading could not answer--no one else had done the reading either--so she systematically called on everyone, about the readings page by page. Because she naïvely used alphabetical order, it was easy to gauge what reading she would ask about by the time she reached H, so I nonchalantly skimmed it so that I could answer. An easy trick that continued not to enamour my classmates of me.
Shrink observed that all of these stories are about How Others Perceive Me. Yeah, pretty much. I like to be perceived well, and probably haven't enough inner resources to keep my esteem high when I don't get feedback. Maybe.
Speaking of feedback.
Last Saturday morning, I woke from an amusing if startling lascivious dream. I dreamt that RDC had loaned me out to JGW, and it was extremely erotic if not lewd, and amusing because JGW, while a great fellow, is no one I have ever found compellingly attractive. But RDC had been gone for over a week and JGW was due in a week so that explained that. Later that day, JGW called to report when his flight was due, and he asked me if I had a bed all warmed up for him and whether I had one of my hugs ready for him. As I told Nisou when we talked later, it sounded especially flirtatious to me.
Yesterday JGW arrived, and I returned from being shrunken in a contemplative mood that quickly dissipated into merriment. The three of us went to the Cherry Cricket for the best burger in Denver--well, three of them--and conversation. Flirting, I remarked that I cut my hair and mocked offense that he hadn't noticed. He said, "Well, your hair was never your most outstanding feature," and though I knew--I knew--he wasn't insulting my hair, he saw he'd have to explain himself. He said, "I'm probably going to embarrass myself here..." and continued to exonerate himself by speaking of the total package (I had anticipated my laugh or smile or eyes) and saying the hair was just what topped it off. I evened out the embarrassment by confessing the lascivious dream.
What am I getting at here (besides wanting to commemorate and publicize an extravagant compliment)? That if someone I did not trust as much as I do JGW had said something that sounded that much like an insult, no amount of follow-through explanation on their part, no matter how much I intellectually knew they meant something positive, could assuage my hurt. I don't mean only flirtatious comments either.
I mean that it's much easier for me to deal with people when I already have some foundation with them. Last month in Boston we played Pictionary and I was teamed with my sister's friend. My sister and cousin trounced us, but Friend and I got some brilliant ones ourselves (she guessed my "drench," which is extremely difficult to draw). I felt an immediate connection with Friend not because of anything in her personality but because of our tie through my sister.
I suppose that's universal, that it's easier to form a tie with someone when the initial boundary has been breached already, but I'm confronting the fact that I didn't use to mind that boundary, the fact of it, its presence. I used to be able, or to want, to bridge it. Now I don't bother, don't bother to make the effort.
I miss not having the social circle here that I had in school, but it's not moving that deprived me of it (though knowing no one here except RDC's schoolmates whom I was anxious not to alienate didn't help). It's the confidence I lost during My Bad Year, when I leaned way too much on way too many people, lacking discretion and restraint and even what slight tact I had cobbled together up to then.
Since then, I have been so anxious not to commit the same offenses that in the limited new social environments I find myself in, I am on my Best Behavior, and that's not fun, either for me or the society. Having to Watch myself all the time makes me anxious that I will Fail, and it's been easier to avoid the failing by not making the effort.
Which is pretty much the theme of my life. My epitaph will be "Change Is Bad" and "Crippled by Nostalgia," and a reason I am crippled by nostalgia is that Back Then, all this Having Friends nonsense was easy.
Shrink gave me a list of irrational thoughts that someone invented or compiled, and while I don't know what credence to lend the list (since I know nothing of its author), I do know I indulge in about 80% of the thought patterns listed.
I was kinda thinking, "Oh great, another thing to beat myself up about. Ain't I better off not knowing I am failing in these additional several ways?"
Cognitive distortions indeed.
I'm so anxious about people that recently at work when I, for a rarity, had to spend the day on the phone, I was getting sweaty and nervous at the prospect of each perfectly reasonable, professionally founded, call.
I know that Change Is Bad is a major reason I haven't attempted to find a more challenging, probably better paying, higher status job--although, as I told JGW this morning, I work less than 40 hours a week and get four weeks of vacation a year and have zero stress (semiannual evaluations and occasional phone calls aside) and that's worth the lower pay and status. The lack of challenge is probably no good for my mind or esteem, of course.
Do I have a thesis here? Probably not.
Anyway. I tapped a few notes this morning, when I was feeling bouncy and like my old Tigger self; now it's after eight and I ache from scrubbing the walls and being vibrated by the sander (that sounds not just painful but possibly maimful, doesn't it?) and I should see if I have a thesis yet.
Nah.
While at the Cricket JGW told his favorite lisa-goes-skiing story: RDC, he, and I at Ski Sundown. JGW remembered that I had been skiing fine for several runs but then choked on an easy green (and in Connecticut, the greens are really easy) and skied through a group beginner-skier lesson, and got yelled at by the instructor for my troubles while JGW and RDC both tried to excuse me and I shamefully apologized. RDC told EJB's favorite lisa-goes-skiing story: at Keystone, EJB was giving me a lesson on a blue run. I fell. I did not stop. Once at Whiteface in New York I fell and could not stop myself--and a perfect stranger dashed down in front of me as a brake. Thank you, whoever you were. I had yard-saled and, if he hadn't stopped me, would have had to trek back upslope to retrieve ski and ski and pole and pole. This time, at Keystone, my skies stayed on my feet, and I saw EJB grab my poles, so I continued falling with impunity. Basically I sledded down the slope, several hundred feet, on my front. As I now told JGW, I was getting down the slope and my feet didn't hurt, so skiing-wise I counted myself ahead of the game. Sledding's always more fun than skiing.
I referred to the Sundown incident as JGW's favorite lisa-story and he said no, it was his favorite lisa-skiing story but that his favorite lisa-story overall had to be the naked hottubbing at the wedding. I think it amused EJB and JGW so much because they had previously though RDC was marrying a prude, since I don't drink. Sometime during the afternoon, when most people were out front playing volleyball or croquet, I walked about with a bag disposing of plates and cups. Around back, I found APB and EJB talking about how possibly to enclose the deck, EJB in the hottub observing the Charenton stricture against bathing suits. That stricture was fine when it was just the two of them, but he was extremely startled when I skinned down and joined him. Last night in the Cricket, I told JGW I didn't remember him around the tub, and he said, "Believe me, I walked by" (presumably after EJB left and several other women joined me).
After the Cherry Cricket we met SPM and Begonia. Begonia's been going to this bar forever and the owner stood us a round of drinks and then a round of the same shots Begonia had had before we arrived. Five shots. Five people at the table. One of those people being me.
Moments later, RDC called my sister to tell her that I had had my first shot--an Alabama slammer, or something, Southern Comfort and something that tasted like Pez or presweetened Kool-Aid. Soon after that I left, having had enough smoke for the evening and leaving the men to reminisce about the Grateful Dead, to pass out from my imbibing, as RDC said.
De-smoked, I settled in to "Mary of Scotland" and TUS-chat. Between amiable, familiar friends in person and a common airing of grievances on the board, I did feel quite chatty, and some of my favorite Suspects were there. I chatted! I never chat.
So anyway, this morning I woke up nearly giddy. I am not still: that would make me manic. But I am happy, and happy to be so.
