Girl Detective

#5 in my 2007 movie challenge was Kung Fu Hustle, which my husband thought I would enjoy. He was right. This is a strange, fun, darkly funny kung fu movie that wasn’t off-puttingly violent. I’m sure I got only a fraction of the references. Things kept happening that I didn’t expect; I was amused and entertained. This was a good mental palate cleanser after Pan’s Labyrinth. The clueless, overweight buddy in the movie reminded me more than a little of the character of Randy, from My Name is Earl.

My shows are disappointing me all over the place lately. In last week’s Veronica Mars, “There’s Got to Be a Morning After Pill”, Logan gets drunk and teary, then gasps between words to convey his anguish. Apparently he’s been taking acting lessons from Neve Campbell. Richard Grieco and his non-natural nose showed up so he could become a suspect. And Veronica and her dad talk about sex. I wish it were affirming; instead I find it creepy. Dick is funny and the best part of the show.

On last week’s House, “Needle in a Haystack”, the show did a 180 from the week before’s turgid rape drama. House was his glib, irreverent self as he tried to steal a wheelchair-bound colleague’s parking spot. Both attempts at characterization felt heavy and contrived. The earlier episode tried too hard to show House’s human side. Then last week’s stripped that away to imply an almost sociopathic disregard for others. Somewhere in between there is a nuanced, complex character. I hope.

On the Office, the parts of Michael were so frequent, and so painful, that I kept wincing. It’s a hard balance they do, but this week’s show of Phyllis’s wedding was too much in the pain range.

But then Bones surprised me. I had been so disappointed with it earlier that I was on the verge of abandoning it. But then Stephen Fry showed up as the shrink to counsel Booth. He was funny, humane, and gave me a great deal of hope that he might be a recurring character. And Brennan now has a love interest. Things are definitely looking up. There was a noticeable absence of crying.

One recent night the kids were in bed, and there were any number of things I should have done: resting, reading, writing, etc. Yet what I really wanted was to go to a bookstore. And when I tried to talk myself out of it (don’t need to, don’t want to buy books, what about the new book vow, etc.) I realized that I didn’t want to go book shopping; I wanted to browse.

Aimless browsing (aimless anything, really) is one of the casualties of this parent’s life. Trips to Target, the grocery store, the library, or anywhere else, are constrained by my kids’ short attention spans and my often depleted reserves of patience. But to browse? To wander hither and yon, with nothing to lead me on but my own whims? I went out directly.

With just over an hour till closing time, I browsed fiercely. I looked at all the Hemingway titles, trying (vainly) to figure out which collection of stories I read in college (turns out it was In Our Time.) I checked out the editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, since I’ll want a new one before I re-read it, and I don’t like the photo-cover TPB they sell at Target. I scanned the new-release tables, with their alluring covers and blurbs, but I was immune to their siren calls. Then I spent a good long time in the kids section going through the maddeningly subdivided board-book section. (Alphabetically by author! What’s so hard about that? I don’t need to look through Disney/Basics/Things That Go/Colors/etc.) I found so many gems in the paperback picture-book section that I had to take home a few. I Stink and Farmer Duck came home with me, but Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, It’s My Birthday, and Fables all went back to the shelf, amid much regretful sighing. I went to the register at the fifteen-minutes-to-closing announcent, and got a dollar off the price of one of the books because it was banged up, and because I asked. So yes, I did buy some books. But I didn’t go book shopping. I went book looking. And that was much more rewarding.

This week we celebrated Guppy’s first birthday, and our first year as a family of four. It’s been a year of big adjustments, as I’ve continued to struggle with post-partum depression. But I frequently tell Guppy that it’s a joy and a privilege to be his mom. He is a good-natured, smiling baby. He loves books and being read to. He splashes in his bath with glee. In stark contrast to his older brother Drake, Guppy is an adventurous eater, even with only two teeth. He says hi and ‘bye, and is very good at waving. He is not yet walking, but is crawling fast and pulling himself up, so it’s not going to be long. For all the challenges of this past year, I am continually glad that Guppy is here to complete our family. I’ve been able to enjoy his babyhood in ways that I couldn’t with Drake because I had a job and we were moving. And I look forward to seeing and helping Guppy become the person he will be.

#4 in my 2007 movie challenge was Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro’s horror fantasy. It’s mesmerizing to look at, so much so that I often had trouble dragging my eyes to the subtitles. There is a great deal of violence, and I sometimes had to turn my eyes away, too. It mixes history with fantasy, but with a darkness that is decidedly adult, even though the heroine is a young girl. I was reminded strongly of one of del Toro’s earlier films, The Devil’s Backbone, as well as the films of Hayao Miyazaki. It is not for the young or faint of heart, but it’s bittersweet and rewarding.

For several years now, I’ve tended to favor colors in pairs. These color combinations are then reflected in our home, and my clothing. Before we got married, I chose the towel colors of amethyst and peridot, though to be exact, the tones were too smoky and dark for those jewel names. After that came my flirtation with hot pink, paired first with bright orange, then with light lavender. For a long time, my infatuations with color pairs were sequential. Of late, though, I’m finding the mixing and matching too much fun, and too full of possibility, to confine to just one pair. Perhaps this is also a reaction to the drear of winter.

My current favorites are combinations of blue and green. Blue teal with olive, sage with navy, light blue with forest green. Shades are also good: sage with olive, and light blue with navy.

And while basic black is a mainstay of corporate drab, dark brown is a richer shade to work with. I pair tobacco brown with light purple. It also goes well with grey, though I have to be careful not to leave out an accent of some sort. Light blue is a lovely and striking contrast with brown. Camel is a good contrast of shades, but again, it can be drab without a bright accent like a colorful bag or piece of jewelry. Bright pink over camel is a way to brighten up that basic neutral.

If I feel at a loss, scarves are a source of inspiration. Great scarf makers, like Hermes, Ferragamo, and Missoni, are skilled at putting together unexpected and vibrant colors.

Most readers know that recommending books is a dicey business, made more fraught when one lends or gives a book. Because the recommender, especially if she is also a loaner or a giver, hopes (not unreasonably) to share the book she’s enjoyed, and wants to hear, preferably sooner than later, that you enjoyed the book as well. There are a few potential problems.

For those of us (I think there are at least a few of you who can relate) who make reading lists, and commit to certain books for certain discussions, and are enthusiastic patrons of the public library and frequent ab/users of its reserve system, a book loaned or given throws a wrench in our carefully (some might say obsessively) laid plans. It is good manners to return the favor of a recommendation/loan/gift by reading the book soon. All those other books that we’ve bought over the past however many years, the ones we swore we’d read soon, get bumped again. The reading list gets crammed, and we need to whiz through books we’d rather savor, put aside books already begun, or return books unread to the library that have been in our queue for months.

All these, though, are fairly trifling in comparison to the good will of a R/L/G. I feel petty and small as I write this, as it implies I begrudge the R/L/G. Some of my best book friends have been R/L/Gs!

And yet. And yet.

Is there any book scenario more perilous than when one dislikes the R/L/G? An analogy: several years ago, when my husband and I were still courting, he bought tickets to a ballet production of Carmina Burana, a musical work he liked. Wow, I thought, how romantic! The ballet!

After the show was a different story. I wasn’t feeling well that night, and had a hard time sitting still. When G. Grod asked me what I thought, I was less than gracious. I was, unfortunately, honest. “It was long. My bum hurts from the uncomfortable seats. And why did that music sound like the anti-christ was going to come swooping in at any moment?”

Poor young G. Grod. He’d taken the time and expense to surprise me with ballet tickets, and that was my response. Ten years later, this still comes up occasionally. I’m still sorry. But I still think of Damian any time I hear CB.

A similar situation happened with my sister Sydney, who sent me a copy of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. I loathed the book, so much that I was moved to write an article detailing why. It was hardly the response my sister had hoped for.

Even though G. Grod and I have years of experience of why R/L/Gs are bad, we still do it. How can we not? We love books, and want to share the love. We each have several books we think the other should read, and both of us have put those books off for some time. Perhaps that’s one of the benefits of being married lo these several years; we can take both the delay in reading and the potential eventual dislike of each other’s R/L/Gs with equanimity.

Books G. Grod thinks I would like/should read

Dune by Frank Herbert
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
A Fire on the Deep by Vernor Vinge
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Books I’ve bought because I liked them, and I want G. Grod to read them

King Dork by Frank Portman
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Book I bought before I made my most recent book vow, that I want to read, and think G. Grod will like too

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can; Emma, Jane Austen

It’s very cold here in MN. We woke and it was -13. It’s a good day to stay at home and keep all under shelter that we can. The boys are sick again, and the nights have been interrupted. I may need to get out to combat cabin fever, but all non-critical errands are postponed until temperatures are more friendly to humans–say, above ten degrees F.

My husband G. Grod is a Philadelphia Eagles fan. Every season since Drake was born, G. has tried to watch the games and create an early father/son ritual. Unfortunately, Drake has never been on board with this plan. During his first season (he was weeks old), Drake slept through most of the games. During his second season (1+yo) he didn’t look at the screen at all, and ran around the basement, getting into dangerous items. During his third season (2+yo), he would watch a few plays, then get up, run around, and be distracting. And in this fourth season (3+yo) he would watch the TV, but be bored during the game, and fixate on the commercials. Progress has been slow, and not encouraging.

One commercial in particular got his attention, Dodge “Street” with rock-em, sock-em robots. Drake got upset at the violent robots, even when G. Grod explained that no one was in the truck, and the robot didn’t hurt the truck. Drake continued to talk about the commercial and the “bad robots” in a tremulous voice. It was in heavy rotation, so eventually, he was watching a game, the commercial came on, and no one was near the remote to pause or mute it. I heard his shrieks of fear from across the house. I spent some time calming him down.

This has now been weeks ago, and we still occasionally hear about bad robots. Something will remind Drake of it and he’ll become upset, or he’ll wake from a nightmare about them. We’ve been trying to invent examples of good robots.

In spite of individual hatred and a nomination for worst commercial, I’m sure the commercial will air during the Super Bowl, so Drake won’t be watching. I hope that the next several months will bring a bit of critical understanding so that he can like the game, and ignore the commercials.

Also, I’m not going to buy a car from a company that makes a violent commercial that frightens my 3yo and gives him nightmares. Nice one, Dodge.

I’m a frequent user of the library reserve system. My favorite of the three nearby library systems has a great site with a good search function. I’ve been true to my 2007 vow to use the library less for books, but I am still using it to reserve and borrow new DVDs and CDs. There’s a high demand for these, so the lists are long. I am often flirting with the upper limit allowed of reservable items, since some take months to come in. But last time I went to reserve items, I saw a notice that the library was limiting reserves to twenty items, down from fifty.

My first response? How can they do this? (Disbelief; I think it’s the Kubler Ross first stage of loss.) Then I was angry, then I was defiant. I went online and put several more items on reserve, pushing myself very close to the previous limit of fifty. Ha, I thought. Whatever this new limit is, it isn’t working yet.

I wondered if I should get a card for 3yo Drake so I could double my reserves. Then I realized, who am I fooling? Mightn’t I have a problem if twenty reserve items isn’t nearly enough? Are there support groups for library ab/users?

The next time I tried to reserve something, I got this message: There is a problem with your account. Please see a librarian.

I don’t need to see a librarian. The gig is up.

It was with some trepidation that my husband G. Grod and I watched Bones last night. Since last Friday’s wretched Battlestar ep, we’ve watched some dreadful TV. So much for absence makes the heart grow fonder. Heroes (why is there anyone but Hiro on the show?), Veronica, House all chipped away at our confidence in tv to entertain. And again, I think we can blame things on the frakkin’ crying. Bones was so bad that we fast forwarded through most of it. The only redeeming point is that Epps is now dead, so they can’t do any more stories about him. What does it say that one of the protagonist’s chief nemeses makes for the worst eps? Bones gets one more chance to be good before we cancel our Tivo season pass. Sweeps week starts tonight. Will it bring an increase in quality–were the shows blowing the crap out of their systems to clear a path for dazzling entertainment? Or will they continue to shovel faux-emotional drivel at us? And depriving us of good stuff while including said drivel? Some people should start looking at handbaskets, if you ask me.

Oh, Earl and Office, please don’t let me down tonight. I am tired, and need to laugh. (Brief, bitter memory of dear, departed Arrested Development. Gah.)

I know, from experience and professional training, that unrealistic and vague goals are destined to fail. In defiance of this, I have decided 2007 will be the year I get my sh1t together.

Deluded? Probably. For purposes of this delusion, I define my sh1t as: disorganized finances; blowing and drifting piles of paper; teetering piles of magazines; unopened boxes from the last x? moves; bookshelves crammed with unread books purchased long ago; random stashes of junk throughout the house (why, yes, I do think I should keep these seven keychains, because I never know when I might need this exact one.)

I have to stop there. I’m just depressing myself.

In preparation for this unrealistic and amorphous goal, I’ve done a little acronyming. The 2007 goal is hereby named CMP. Take your pick what it stands for: Crap Management/Minimizing Program, or Clear the Crap, Manage the Money and Purge the Paper.

See, all those years spent in corporate America weren’t for nought. Now if only I could get a budget for snacks and authorization to conscript a team:

Drake, Guppy, it’s time to clean house. Put your toys away! Pick up those crayons! Get that train out of your mouth! If you do, we’ll have a post-mortem meeting with Cheddar Bunnies, Veggie Booty, and juice.

Two hours of disappointing television last night. House treats a rape victim in clinic, and imprints on her as if she’s a baby duck. She ropes him into tedious philosophical conversations. Cameron gets another dying patient. People get tears in their eyes. Chase had a few good lines, like telling Cameron not to romanticize House and pretend he’d act like a human, and telling House to lie to the patient. Wilson also was funny: “Are we role-playing? And if so, am I you? Because I don’t want to be you!” Cuddy ran around looking peeved and concerned in a too-tight, not-flattering suit with an unpleasant collar.

Television, wherefore art thou? Amuse me! My days are kinda tough, lately.

That’s right. I’m a stay-at-home mom, so I don’t work. Today I took care of my virus-addled baby, had friends over to play, changed half a dozen poopy diapers (some of which were diarrhea), got puked on, was smeared with snot from shoulders down, spent quality time with my 3yo who told me the other day I didn’t love him, listened to twenty minutes of infant hollering, bent back a fingernail cleaning the kitchen, sang eleven songs from Dog Train, and made lunch for five. I am woman; hear me roar.

I said I would be less tough on Veronica. I lied.

This episode was only good in the corners, it was rotten throughout. Hookers, bad jokes about hookers, winking at guy stuff about hookers, an evil madam with bad plastic surgery. Awful stuff. A plot that is a mishmash of True Romance (G. Grod’s call) and a storyline from season two of Rescue Me. Veronica and Logan bore me. Not to tears, though, because the cast had more than enough of those to go around. Ack. The Battlestar geekery was gratuitous, too. I remember laughing a few times, though, like when Veronica comes back to her house and says she’s going to Logan’s to meet two hookers. That line had the proper sarcastic edge that the rest of the ep sorely lacked.

Didn’t you hear Warren Ellis? Or me agreeing with him? Enough with the frackin’ crying, already. Baltar, Starbuck, Sam, Dee, and Apollo were all in tears. And enough with the drinking, too. Tears and drunkenness do not character development make. At the end of the ep, the four crossed lovers were in exactly the same boring place they were at the beginning. It is not enough to write “ugh” to convey my frustration and disgust. Imagine me rolling my eyes while doing a disgusted, escalating “ugh” that starts all the way down in my belly.

And Joe R at Television Without Pity makes this excellent point:

Bonus Scene: Roslin interrogates Caprica Six! And it wasn’t part of the episode so we could watch Lee and Tyrol bitch about their women! So not cool!

John Knightley only was in mute astonishment. That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London should set off again, and walk half a mile to another man’s house for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o’clock in the morning, and might now have been still–who had been long talking, and might have been silent–who had been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!–Such a man to quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!–Could he, by a touch of his finger, have instantly taken back his wife, there would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up the party. John Knightley looked at him with amazement, then shrugged his shoulders, and said, ‘I could not have believed it, even of him.’ Emma

I just finished re-reading Jane Austen’s Emma, #5 in my book challenge for the year. It was a joy; the nearly 500 pages flew by. I laughed out loud at passages like the one above, because I found the book consistently funny. This was not the case the first time I read it, just over two years ago. I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it, and found it slow to read.

I’m not sure what made the difference. I’m reading at the same time of year, and with about the same level of parental fatigue. It could be that I read the book previously, and several other Austen books recently. I was reading for enjoyment, not to find out what happened. Since there are several plot points that are kept hidden till near the end, this allowed me to savor the careful hints that appear throughout the text. Reading the other Austen novels Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, has made me more fluent in Austen’s prose style. As I find with Shakespeare, reading more is the best way to be able to read more because I learn the customs and rhythms of the language. In any case, I found Emma a delight, even though Austen acknowledges some of the inherent difficulties of her tale, like Frank Churchill’s behavior, Emma’s failed attempts to improve poor Harriet, and a grown man falling in love with a thirteen-year-old girl. I found a few other things bothered me in the book. The racism in a scene with gypsies, and the classism and snobbery that may not be tongue-in-cheek. Yet in the end I was happy because everyone was, whether they deserved to be or not. I’ll take my cue from Emma’s thoughts about Frank Churchill, and not be severe:

Though it was impossible not to feel that he had been wrong, yet he had been less wrong than she had supposed; and he had suffered and was very sorry; and he was so grateful….and so much in love…., and she was so happy herself, that there was no being severe Emma, Chapter LI

Her parting look was grateful; and her parting words, ‘Oh!…the comfort of being sometimes alone!’ seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her, even towards some of those who loved her best. Emma, chapter XLII

Drake, Guppy and I spent nearly two weeks out east visiting family. I am quick to correct those who call it vacation. For me, a vacation is time away for R & R (rest and relaxation; reading and writing. Either pair works.) Family visits are enjoyable, and may include some of those Rs, but since they are not exclusively, or even largely, about them, I don’t equate them with vacation.

We returned to a messy house, piles of mail, loads of laundry, and a mostly empty fridge. There was work to be done. By Thursday, I felt completely tapped out, and contacted a local retreat center. They had space, so I got me to a nunnery from Friday night to Sunday morning. I got all the Rs, plus some quiet, solitude, and time for meditation. I shunned my tendency to make a to-do list, and instead tried to go with the flow. I was interested to see that my day unfolded reflecting the life priorities I recently clarified: Rest, break fast, read, work on novel, sup, exercise/fresh air, rest, tea and snack, weblog, dine, read, rest.

It was a tremendous relief to get this 36-hour break. When I again saw Drake and Guppy, they were crying, screaming, not listening, and not changed at all by my time away. I’m not sure I was changed by it, either. But I did get a bit of time and space to replenish my reserves of patience so I could wade back into the fray. I think it’s naive to think that a brief break will magically make us more tranquil. It did make me feel less tapped out. And that’s something.

The long, dry TV season is over, and the shows are returning in force. Like the mid-season ender, the latest Battlestar episode was strong, and put some of my previous concerns at ease. While the ep sometimes lagged especially around the will he/won’t he drop the bomb (sheesh, of course he won’t), there was some good character development. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Baltar is looking more like Jesus (or Judas?) with every episode.

The big question is, who did D’Anna see in the temple that she said “I’m sorry” to? I think Adama is too obvious. I think it’s Starbuck, but I’m terrible at guessing these things. I read that one of the dead characters might come back as a Cylon. I’m hoping for poor dead Billy. I was glad to see the end of Kat and Ellen.

A reminder that part two of Masterpiece Theatre’s Jane Eyre is on this Sunday 28 January 2007, and there are several re-runs of part one if you didn’t catch that last week. It received largely good reviews in England, and continues to do so here. I have only been able to watch the beginning of Part I, and was disappointed. It moved far too quickly, and I wonder if it would be intelligible to anyone who had not read the book. (And if you haven’t, why not? It’s one of the best books, ever.) I was glad to see young Jane’s clever response on how she’ll avoid hell, though poor Helen hardly got any screen time at all. I think some of the detail should have been left out, rather than giving it such short shrift.

I’m eager for Jane to meet Rochester, and I expect to have a better experience as the show progresses.