Friday, January 13, 2006
Ok, here's some pleasant stuff
Purely by chance, when I was desperate for something other than a sitcom to watch and it was the only interesting thing that was starting right then, a few days ago I saw the wonderful movie "Princess Mononoke"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=123325&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
It's a Japanese animated film, dubbed in English in the version I saw, and it's about "a mystical battle between Animal Gods of the forest and humans during Japan's Muromachi Period"; it's beautiful, innovative, and deals with hard issues and gray areas... very different from American animation. The style is so distinctive that when I saw the even MORE wonderful "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=132012&displayBoxArt=true#Full
today, I actually recognized it as being done by the same master hand... namely, "acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki." The humans vs nature theme is a central one in this movie too, and once again trying to create harmony rather than win victory by force is the solution to the problem. Much to my pleasure, the very next movie shown on that channel (Turner Classic Movies) was another Miyazaki masterpiece, "Castle in the Sky"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=127922&displayBoxArt=true#Full
which is about the search for a mythical floating city... and how some sorts of power are too great for human hands to wield. One of its many unusual elements, at least from an American perspective, is how a group of people who start out as hard-core enemies of the heroes do a sudden change to becoming allies in the face of a common enemy; it made sense that it happened that way, but American movies tend to have characters that are either "good" or "bad" and stay that way (with the only significant exception being when it turns out that a good guy was actually a bad guy in disguise), and the idea of just changing the perspective and showing how people can be "good" or "bad" depending on circumstances is so foreign to our black and white worldview that it was hard for me to change how I perceived those characters... this sort of challenge from an animated film, from which we normally expect nothing so grandiose, was very refreshing.
I'd never even heard of Miyazaki before today, and now my husband and I are big fans; we're going to rent every movie of his that Blockbuster has... and I strongly recommend that you check out his films if you can.
I saw a super-cute ad for the KIWI Express® Shine Sponge; it showed their trademark kiwi (bird, not fruit) with a rocket strapped to him, looking as freaked out as a simple silhouette can, and, eager to share it, I looked for the ad online... but no dice. However, if you go here
http://www.kiwibirdfilms.com/
you can see a hilarious MOVIE of the jet-propelled kiwi, along with movies of him being shot from a cannon and driving a racecar; I'm impressed that such an awesome campaign was created for something as un-glamorous as a shoe shine product.
And finally; I had a world-class example of how something that seems to be bad can actually be part of a process that works to your benefit. Because I have digital cable, I normally use the only online guide I've found that both shows all the channels I get AND allows me to weed out the channels I'm not interested in
http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/grid.asp?partner_id=national
That site has been undergoing some code updates, and as a result was only showing 20 channels rather than the 100 or so I want to keep track of; as a result, I was using this site
http://www.excite.com/tv/grid.jsp
which shows ALL the channels, wanted or not, to pick things to watch. I was feeling pretty bummed about having to take so much longer to check the listings... until I found that "The Pink Panther" was being shown on a channel I'd never heard of, Boomerang
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/boomerang/index.html
which shows only classic cartoons... the GOOD stuff, rather than the icky stuff they make nowadays. I checked my customization page on the other listing site, and it DID have Boomerang available, I just hadn't selected it because I didn't know what it was; it's been selected NOW, though, trust me.
And it gets even better; also in the Excite listings, I saw a program that I instantly knew I had to see, called "We Are the '80s," which was on yet another channel I'd never heard of, VH1 Classic... a channel that purports to play videos from the 60's, 70's and 80's, but since there AREN'T many videos from the first 2 decades they show mostly 80's stuff even when they're not showing that particular program. Given that my entire musical life came from watching MTV in the 80's, I was THRILLED to find a station that not only was playing nearly all videos rather than rarely playing videos as both MTV and VH1 have been for years, but was mostly playing the videos I care about. They have an unfortunate tendency to play the LEAST appealing videos of each band, including boring live clips and videos so obscure that even my countless hours watching MTV had never exposed me to them, but overall it's been a fab blast from the past, and I've seen enough videos I really like to make it worthwhile watching.
I'd never have found these 2 cool channels if my regular listing site hadn't been having problems; this is why it's so important to be on the lookout for new opportunities every time it seems like something has gone wrong. Between the cartoons and the videos, I feel like a kid again...
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=123325&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
It's a Japanese animated film, dubbed in English in the version I saw, and it's about "a mystical battle between Animal Gods of the forest and humans during Japan's Muromachi Period"; it's beautiful, innovative, and deals with hard issues and gray areas... very different from American animation. The style is so distinctive that when I saw the even MORE wonderful "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=132012&displayBoxArt=true#Full
today, I actually recognized it as being done by the same master hand... namely, "acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki." The humans vs nature theme is a central one in this movie too, and once again trying to create harmony rather than win victory by force is the solution to the problem. Much to my pleasure, the very next movie shown on that channel (Turner Classic Movies) was another Miyazaki masterpiece, "Castle in the Sky"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=127922&displayBoxArt=true#Full
which is about the search for a mythical floating city... and how some sorts of power are too great for human hands to wield. One of its many unusual elements, at least from an American perspective, is how a group of people who start out as hard-core enemies of the heroes do a sudden change to becoming allies in the face of a common enemy; it made sense that it happened that way, but American movies tend to have characters that are either "good" or "bad" and stay that way (with the only significant exception being when it turns out that a good guy was actually a bad guy in disguise), and the idea of just changing the perspective and showing how people can be "good" or "bad" depending on circumstances is so foreign to our black and white worldview that it was hard for me to change how I perceived those characters... this sort of challenge from an animated film, from which we normally expect nothing so grandiose, was very refreshing.
I'd never even heard of Miyazaki before today, and now my husband and I are big fans; we're going to rent every movie of his that Blockbuster has... and I strongly recommend that you check out his films if you can.
I saw a super-cute ad for the KIWI Express® Shine Sponge; it showed their trademark kiwi (bird, not fruit) with a rocket strapped to him, looking as freaked out as a simple silhouette can, and, eager to share it, I looked for the ad online... but no dice. However, if you go here
http://www.kiwibirdfilms.com/
you can see a hilarious MOVIE of the jet-propelled kiwi, along with movies of him being shot from a cannon and driving a racecar; I'm impressed that such an awesome campaign was created for something as un-glamorous as a shoe shine product.
And finally; I had a world-class example of how something that seems to be bad can actually be part of a process that works to your benefit. Because I have digital cable, I normally use the only online guide I've found that both shows all the channels I get AND allows me to weed out the channels I'm not interested in
http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/grid.asp?partner_id=national
That site has been undergoing some code updates, and as a result was only showing 20 channels rather than the 100 or so I want to keep track of; as a result, I was using this site
http://www.excite.com/tv/grid.jsp
which shows ALL the channels, wanted or not, to pick things to watch. I was feeling pretty bummed about having to take so much longer to check the listings... until I found that "The Pink Panther" was being shown on a channel I'd never heard of, Boomerang
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/boomerang/index.html
which shows only classic cartoons... the GOOD stuff, rather than the icky stuff they make nowadays. I checked my customization page on the other listing site, and it DID have Boomerang available, I just hadn't selected it because I didn't know what it was; it's been selected NOW, though, trust me.
And it gets even better; also in the Excite listings, I saw a program that I instantly knew I had to see, called "We Are the '80s," which was on yet another channel I'd never heard of, VH1 Classic... a channel that purports to play videos from the 60's, 70's and 80's, but since there AREN'T many videos from the first 2 decades they show mostly 80's stuff even when they're not showing that particular program. Given that my entire musical life came from watching MTV in the 80's, I was THRILLED to find a station that not only was playing nearly all videos rather than rarely playing videos as both MTV and VH1 have been for years, but was mostly playing the videos I care about. They have an unfortunate tendency to play the LEAST appealing videos of each band, including boring live clips and videos so obscure that even my countless hours watching MTV had never exposed me to them, but overall it's been a fab blast from the past, and I've seen enough videos I really like to make it worthwhile watching.
I'd never have found these 2 cool channels if my regular listing site hadn't been having problems; this is why it's so important to be on the lookout for new opportunities every time it seems like something has gone wrong. Between the cartoons and the videos, I feel like a kid again...
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
The year is ruined already
Does that sound melodramatic? Silly? Do you assume that I'm upset and spouting nonsense? That I'm a drama queen? What if I tell you that I'm a mature and level-headed adult? What if I tell you that I'm speaking totally dispassionately? What if I tell you that I NEVER make sweeping statements without an inarguable reason? What if I tell you that I just found out that my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer?
In the flat, factual tone that people use to discuss issues of deep personal meaning with strangers, she told me what everyone else who knows her has known for WEEKS; that in December a lump came out just below her collarbone, that at 1st she thought it was another of the "harmless fatty tumors" (she couldn't remember the proper name for them, but I'm fairly sure from her description that they're lipomas) that she's apparently been getting lots of for at least a half dozen years and never mentioned to me, but then it suddenly began to grow rapidly, and she went to the doctor... and it's cancer. I'm not sure how it can be BREAST cancer when it's not in her breast, and if it started out as a lipoma (they CAN occasionally turn cancerous), which is one of the things they're trying to determine, you'd think it'd be different from breast cancer, but those little details don't matter much; it's still cancer.
Actually, in ONE way it DOES matter what the specifics are; if it IS truly breast cancer, MY risk of it just DOUBLED, from the regular-risk population's 1 in 8 to 1 in 4... except since she's my only 1st-degree female relative (I have no sisters or daughters) we can't validly say "at least it's only ONE 1st-degree relative," which is important because TWO 1st-degree relatives with breast cancer would quintuple my risk to about 85%, and we can't judge my actual risk without them to offer evidence one way or the other... and if her cancer came from an alteration in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, and she passed that on to me, my risk is now 80%. Since there's never been anyone with breast cancer in her family (or ANY cancer, I kid you not), it's wildly unlikely that she's got altered genes, or that if I had other 1st-degree relatives that we'd suddenly go from no cancer ever to 2 cases in my family subunit, but we can't be sure... and doubled risk is plenty damned bad enough, don't you think?
Does it seem selfish for me to be thinking of myself at a time like this? You must be a new reader, then; let me bring you up to speed. There's no love between my mother and I; there's not even any LIKE. She made my childhood and young adulthood miserable, causing emotional damage from which I'll never recover. She's a bad person. A psycho. To this very day, years after her power over me ended, she still TRIES to get me worked up and freaked out, knowing that I can get keyed up for days, weeks, MONTHS if I start worrying about something. She lives a few minutes drive from me, and we virtually never see or speak to each other; if I never had to interact with her again, I'd be thrilled, and she'd probably feel the same. Do you doubt that? This is the same woman who, although I was living in her home, had seen my then-boyfriend ONCE in the year and a half between when we started dating and when we married, except for a couple of brief moments in the final pre-marital week when he was over a bunch of times to handle final arrangements. She never showed any shred of interest in him, never asked anything about him, confidently proclaimed until 48 hours before the ceremony that the wedding would NEVER happen, and then switched to how it'd never last a year. I have over 1200 wedding pictures (lots of people brought cameras), and there's only ONE with me and her together, because she was pointedly as far away from me as she could get all night long; in that one picture, she's looking grim and standing with as much space between us as the photographer would allow... while my husband's mother, in contrast, is holding my arm and looking up at me lovingly in that same photo. That's how little emotional involvement my mother has with me... and how psycho she is, that it never occurred to her that people would notice her behavior and find fault with it (years later, my friends are still commenting on her sick behavior every time my wedding is mentioned).
As a consequence of all that, her sufferings don't move me any more than a stranger's would, in fact maybe not as much; I did NOT suddenly get overwhelmed with tender feelings towards her when I discovered that she's seriously ill... in fact, what I mainly felt was puzzled at how this could happen in my freakishly healthy, extraordinarily long-lived family. The other thing that kept popping into my head was; karma. She's the most negative person I've ever known, both in the regular definition of seeing everything in the worst possible light and the karma-specific definition of always having negative thoughts and feelings, and causing negative thoughts and feelings in those close to her... is it really so surprising that she'd be the one to break the generations-long cycle of health?
Why, then, does her cancer mean that my year is ruined? Since I'm the only relative within 1000 miles of her, when she starts needing to be driven around, monitored, and having things done for her, who do you suppose is going to get stuck with it all? ME... and my husband too, of course, which means that HIS year is ruined also. Considering how unpleasant she is under the best of circumstances, I cringe to contemplate what she's going to be like once she starts treatment (which should be in a couple of weeks). Worse, although she's spent her entire life trying to force everyone she knows to do everything her way, she's turned into a doormat with the doctors, so much so that she's resisting getting a 2nd opinion; everyone else in the developed world knows to get, and demands, a 2nd opinion for all but the most trivial procedures, and she's arguing to undergo major surgery, plus chemo and/or radiation that'll radically affect every cell of her body, without considering for a minute that doctors are fallible human beings, not gods, and that they can and do make deadly mistakes all the time, and so you have to check and double-check everything they say and prescribe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hammered her on that one, and will continue to do so; if necessary, I'll enlist the help of other family members... I'm not thrilled with the idea of having to fight her every step of the way to get her to make some sort of effort on her own behalf, but this whole mess is my responsibility, because I'm her daughter and I'm here, so....
I remember how every time *I* was sick as a kid, her attitude was put upon and petulant, as if I'd gotten sick just to inconvenience her, and she'd complain about having to hear me cough, about how many tissues I was using, about how my laryngitis (I used to get it with every cold) made me hard to understand, about how the necessity of me touching things meant that she had to go around disinfecting them, and would overall be even nastier than usual rather than sympathetic... and now I, of all people, am the only one she can turn to when she has a life-threatening illness. Ironic, isn't it?
As I said, my year is ruined; I'm going to be spending it taking care of the person I like least in the world (aside from my father). That shouldn't affect this blog, since I don't intend to dedicate any more posts to it, and DO intend to keep thinking about things and spewing my thoughts into cyberspace... but in case I vanish for a chunk of days without prior explanation at some point in the future, you'll know the reason why.
sigh
In the flat, factual tone that people use to discuss issues of deep personal meaning with strangers, she told me what everyone else who knows her has known for WEEKS; that in December a lump came out just below her collarbone, that at 1st she thought it was another of the "harmless fatty tumors" (she couldn't remember the proper name for them, but I'm fairly sure from her description that they're lipomas) that she's apparently been getting lots of for at least a half dozen years and never mentioned to me, but then it suddenly began to grow rapidly, and she went to the doctor... and it's cancer. I'm not sure how it can be BREAST cancer when it's not in her breast, and if it started out as a lipoma (they CAN occasionally turn cancerous), which is one of the things they're trying to determine, you'd think it'd be different from breast cancer, but those little details don't matter much; it's still cancer.
Actually, in ONE way it DOES matter what the specifics are; if it IS truly breast cancer, MY risk of it just DOUBLED, from the regular-risk population's 1 in 8 to 1 in 4... except since she's my only 1st-degree female relative (I have no sisters or daughters) we can't validly say "at least it's only ONE 1st-degree relative," which is important because TWO 1st-degree relatives with breast cancer would quintuple my risk to about 85%, and we can't judge my actual risk without them to offer evidence one way or the other... and if her cancer came from an alteration in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, and she passed that on to me, my risk is now 80%. Since there's never been anyone with breast cancer in her family (or ANY cancer, I kid you not), it's wildly unlikely that she's got altered genes, or that if I had other 1st-degree relatives that we'd suddenly go from no cancer ever to 2 cases in my family subunit, but we can't be sure... and doubled risk is plenty damned bad enough, don't you think?
Does it seem selfish for me to be thinking of myself at a time like this? You must be a new reader, then; let me bring you up to speed. There's no love between my mother and I; there's not even any LIKE. She made my childhood and young adulthood miserable, causing emotional damage from which I'll never recover. She's a bad person. A psycho. To this very day, years after her power over me ended, she still TRIES to get me worked up and freaked out, knowing that I can get keyed up for days, weeks, MONTHS if I start worrying about something. She lives a few minutes drive from me, and we virtually never see or speak to each other; if I never had to interact with her again, I'd be thrilled, and she'd probably feel the same. Do you doubt that? This is the same woman who, although I was living in her home, had seen my then-boyfriend ONCE in the year and a half between when we started dating and when we married, except for a couple of brief moments in the final pre-marital week when he was over a bunch of times to handle final arrangements. She never showed any shred of interest in him, never asked anything about him, confidently proclaimed until 48 hours before the ceremony that the wedding would NEVER happen, and then switched to how it'd never last a year. I have over 1200 wedding pictures (lots of people brought cameras), and there's only ONE with me and her together, because she was pointedly as far away from me as she could get all night long; in that one picture, she's looking grim and standing with as much space between us as the photographer would allow... while my husband's mother, in contrast, is holding my arm and looking up at me lovingly in that same photo. That's how little emotional involvement my mother has with me... and how psycho she is, that it never occurred to her that people would notice her behavior and find fault with it (years later, my friends are still commenting on her sick behavior every time my wedding is mentioned).
As a consequence of all that, her sufferings don't move me any more than a stranger's would, in fact maybe not as much; I did NOT suddenly get overwhelmed with tender feelings towards her when I discovered that she's seriously ill... in fact, what I mainly felt was puzzled at how this could happen in my freakishly healthy, extraordinarily long-lived family. The other thing that kept popping into my head was; karma. She's the most negative person I've ever known, both in the regular definition of seeing everything in the worst possible light and the karma-specific definition of always having negative thoughts and feelings, and causing negative thoughts and feelings in those close to her... is it really so surprising that she'd be the one to break the generations-long cycle of health?
Why, then, does her cancer mean that my year is ruined? Since I'm the only relative within 1000 miles of her, when she starts needing to be driven around, monitored, and having things done for her, who do you suppose is going to get stuck with it all? ME... and my husband too, of course, which means that HIS year is ruined also. Considering how unpleasant she is under the best of circumstances, I cringe to contemplate what she's going to be like once she starts treatment (which should be in a couple of weeks). Worse, although she's spent her entire life trying to force everyone she knows to do everything her way, she's turned into a doormat with the doctors, so much so that she's resisting getting a 2nd opinion; everyone else in the developed world knows to get, and demands, a 2nd opinion for all but the most trivial procedures, and she's arguing to undergo major surgery, plus chemo and/or radiation that'll radically affect every cell of her body, without considering for a minute that doctors are fallible human beings, not gods, and that they can and do make deadly mistakes all the time, and so you have to check and double-check everything they say and prescribe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hammered her on that one, and will continue to do so; if necessary, I'll enlist the help of other family members... I'm not thrilled with the idea of having to fight her every step of the way to get her to make some sort of effort on her own behalf, but this whole mess is my responsibility, because I'm her daughter and I'm here, so....
I remember how every time *I* was sick as a kid, her attitude was put upon and petulant, as if I'd gotten sick just to inconvenience her, and she'd complain about having to hear me cough, about how many tissues I was using, about how my laryngitis (I used to get it with every cold) made me hard to understand, about how the necessity of me touching things meant that she had to go around disinfecting them, and would overall be even nastier than usual rather than sympathetic... and now I, of all people, am the only one she can turn to when she has a life-threatening illness. Ironic, isn't it?
As I said, my year is ruined; I'm going to be spending it taking care of the person I like least in the world (aside from my father). That shouldn't affect this blog, since I don't intend to dedicate any more posts to it, and DO intend to keep thinking about things and spewing my thoughts into cyberspace... but in case I vanish for a chunk of days without prior explanation at some point in the future, you'll know the reason why.
sigh
Monday, January 09, 2006
Sunday was a big day
The lead-up was pretty major too; hour after hour of cleaning and putting stuff away, with it getting steadily later and both of us getting steadily tireder and more short-tempered. There were some high points on my journey to a 7:30AM bedtime (and that's not a typo), however:
I saw the movie "Walk on the Moon"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=123220&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which features Viggo Mortensen, not brown-haired and scraggly like you've probably seen him in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, but blond and babelicious; more importantly, the movie features him without his shirt in several scenes. And he's got a hairy chest. A BLOND hairy chest. Ohhhhhhh, give me a moment..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh... My husband was taking a protracted nap during the movie (with all that cleaning to do, yes), and I woke him up to announce; "I'm in LOVE!!" He was amused as always by my enthusiasm for certain hotties (he himself barely notices that there ARE attractive people in the world other than me, how's that for a role reversal?), and by my intention to see whatever other of Viggo's movies seem likely to have him with his shirt off; he might not always have the tight bod he had in the movie I saw, but with blond chest hair there's alot of leeway. I suppose a more extensively nude scene is too much to ask for... but wouldn't it be dazzling to discover if he's, er, blond all over?
Amazingly, I had another movie-related epiphany; that Ashton Kutcher, who hadn't previously impressed me with either his screen presence or his Oedipal fixation, could actually make a movie that was, not sorta cute and vaguely funny, but complicated, clever, and truly engrossing... "The Butterfly Effect"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=1083404&displayBoxArt=true#Full
"Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher with facial hair) wants to free himself from his disturbing childhood memories. As a kid, he often blacked out for long periods of time and tried to detail his life in a journal. As a young adult, he revisits the journal entries to figure out the truth about his troubled childhood friends Kayleigh (Amy Smart), Lenny (Elden Henson), and Tommy (William Lee Scott). When he discovers he can travel back in time in order to set things right, he tries to save his beloved friends. However, he finds out that relatively minor changes can make major problems for the future."
I don't want to risk spoiling the movie for you if you haven't already seen it by saying anything further; watch it, and you'll see why I liked it so much.
Between the movies, my husband and I had a hilarious marital moment. I was in the family room, and faintly heard him calling "Help, can you hear me?", so I muted the TV and asked him what the problem was; he sheepishly admitted that he'd used up all his toilet paper, hadn't replaced either the roll or the backup package, and was now stranded in his bathroom in dire need. Laughing, I told him to hang on and I'd bring him something; I was almost to the doorway with a piece of sandpaper when he said "You're gonna bring me sandpaper, right?". I yelped in dismay that he'd wrecked my joke, and then we both howled with laughter; he admitted that he hadn't REALLY expected me to bring sandpaper, so it was just perfect that I HAD. My next ploy was to go off again, supposedly to get toilet paper, only to return with 1 of the countless toothbrushes he has strewn around (as he's apparently incapable of brushing his teeth in the bathroom, or returning brushes there once he's used them) and present it to him with the suggestion that he "do the George Carlin thing with it"; this refers to Carlin's line about how he wants to have just one brush for all his grooming, teeth, armpits and... well, you get the picture, lol. More laughter ensued, and then I finally got the TP.
It gets funnier; there was a full box of tissues right behind him on the toilet tank. It gets even funnier than that; he told me that he knew about them, but didn't trust ANY # of tissues to hold together when used as toilet paper substitutes (I suspect that if he hadn't been able to get my attention he'd have sacrificed one of his socks instead of braving the imaginary risks of tissues). There was a little more banter, mostly in reference to what he thought was a hilarious reference to Star Trek and Klingons... only a married couple will understand how all this occurred from a simple need for TP.
When my husband went to bed, with much cleaning left to be done, he claimed repeatedly, not to mention pompously, that he'd be back up again in a few hours because he'd already had a long nap, and that I was being foolish staying up and doing more work because he'd have done a couple more hour's worth by the time I got up, and there was nothing to worry about. What actually happened is that he sacked out in his study as he sometimes does when we're going to have radically differing bedtimes and/or wake-up times, and, instead of getting up when he was supposed to, he hit the snooze alarm for 2 HOURS, was up for less than half an hour before I was, and had wasted all of that time staring vacantly at a chair he was supposed to have fixed and hadn't... he hadn't done ANYTHING. The kitchen surfaces were gross, the bathroom surfaces were unspeakable, he hadn't cleared his boxes of junk out of the way, and the vacuuming and mopping hadn't been attended to... and my friend was due in an hour and a half.
If I hadn't gotten up half an hour earlier than I thought I needed to, we'd have been totally screwed; as it was, I got to work in a panicked frenzy, screaming and cursing at him to change his usual dead-slow pace to something more appropriate, and the race against the clock began... and mind you, I hadn't even had a chance to wash my face yet, much less get ready. After about an hour, he started telling various lies to stop the cleaning; "She won't go in the kitchen, so it doesn't need to be cleaned" (it's fully visible from the family room), "I already cleaned the kitchen surfaces" (when there wasn't a single square inch without crumbs or smears on it, and there were chunks of petrified food on the stove big enough to choke a horse), "She probably won't use the bathroom, so you don't need to clean it" (she NEVER fails to use that bathroom), and, my favorite, "That's not dirt on the toilet seat, that's where the paint has worn off" (when the dirt was washing off). He started demanding that I go get ready; since HE could let her in the door and entertain her even if I was still half-dressed, the cleaning was still the higher priority, and I refused. He came closer to death than he'll ever realize when he actually tried to blackmail me into stopping by refusing to vacuum any further (and mind you, the carpet was covered in birdseed and other stuff that he drags in constantly because he never wipes his feet on the doormat) unless I went and got ready; the murderous fury with which I greeted that little ploy apparently convinced him that he needed to just shut up and turn the vacuum cleaner back on.
I ALMOST made it; I was running down the hall with her gifts in my hands within 5 minutes of her arrival, even though she was a couple of minutes early... I was exhausted, stressed, and emotionally over-wrought beyond words, but physically in the room, which is all guests seem to care about, so she was satisfied.
There were a few unpleasant moments, like when she sat down on the floor with me to look at some pics on my laptop and it was abundantly clear that my husband had failed to vacuum under the table, and when we were looking outside and I saw that the fruit-fly-encrusted bug strip was still dangling from a kitchen cabinet, but other than that it went pretty well.
We eventually headed out, and had a blast shopping; I got so much stuff it took 3 trips from the car to bring it all in... mostly greeting cards, gift bags and snack foods, I hasten to add-I didn't break the bank, I took advantage of super sales for stuff we'll need to get anyways. We then pigged out at a "homestyle cooking" restaurant we both really like, where I get a pot roast sandwich, she gets meatloaf, and we split a gigantic dessert; I'd forgotten how pleasant going out to dinner can be when you're not dealing with someone who's dedicated to making you late and other passive-aggressive stunts.
While we were gone, my husband established that my desktop computer's a dead loss; tomorrow he'll (supposedly) be getting a new one, and the complicated and disaster-filled process of both of us switching to different machines, with all the attendant issues with software, external hard drives and the network, will get underway... it's gonna be a loooooooooooong week.
I saw the movie "Walk on the Moon"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=123220&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which features Viggo Mortensen, not brown-haired and scraggly like you've probably seen him in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, but blond and babelicious; more importantly, the movie features him without his shirt in several scenes. And he's got a hairy chest. A BLOND hairy chest. Ohhhhhhh, give me a moment..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh... My husband was taking a protracted nap during the movie (with all that cleaning to do, yes), and I woke him up to announce; "I'm in LOVE!!" He was amused as always by my enthusiasm for certain hotties (he himself barely notices that there ARE attractive people in the world other than me, how's that for a role reversal?), and by my intention to see whatever other of Viggo's movies seem likely to have him with his shirt off; he might not always have the tight bod he had in the movie I saw, but with blond chest hair there's alot of leeway. I suppose a more extensively nude scene is too much to ask for... but wouldn't it be dazzling to discover if he's, er, blond all over?
Amazingly, I had another movie-related epiphany; that Ashton Kutcher, who hadn't previously impressed me with either his screen presence or his Oedipal fixation, could actually make a movie that was, not sorta cute and vaguely funny, but complicated, clever, and truly engrossing... "The Butterfly Effect"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=1083404&displayBoxArt=true#Full
"Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher with facial hair) wants to free himself from his disturbing childhood memories. As a kid, he often blacked out for long periods of time and tried to detail his life in a journal. As a young adult, he revisits the journal entries to figure out the truth about his troubled childhood friends Kayleigh (Amy Smart), Lenny (Elden Henson), and Tommy (William Lee Scott). When he discovers he can travel back in time in order to set things right, he tries to save his beloved friends. However, he finds out that relatively minor changes can make major problems for the future."
I don't want to risk spoiling the movie for you if you haven't already seen it by saying anything further; watch it, and you'll see why I liked it so much.
Between the movies, my husband and I had a hilarious marital moment. I was in the family room, and faintly heard him calling "Help, can you hear me?", so I muted the TV and asked him what the problem was; he sheepishly admitted that he'd used up all his toilet paper, hadn't replaced either the roll or the backup package, and was now stranded in his bathroom in dire need. Laughing, I told him to hang on and I'd bring him something; I was almost to the doorway with a piece of sandpaper when he said "You're gonna bring me sandpaper, right?". I yelped in dismay that he'd wrecked my joke, and then we both howled with laughter; he admitted that he hadn't REALLY expected me to bring sandpaper, so it was just perfect that I HAD. My next ploy was to go off again, supposedly to get toilet paper, only to return with 1 of the countless toothbrushes he has strewn around (as he's apparently incapable of brushing his teeth in the bathroom, or returning brushes there once he's used them) and present it to him with the suggestion that he "do the George Carlin thing with it"; this refers to Carlin's line about how he wants to have just one brush for all his grooming, teeth, armpits and... well, you get the picture, lol. More laughter ensued, and then I finally got the TP.
It gets funnier; there was a full box of tissues right behind him on the toilet tank. It gets even funnier than that; he told me that he knew about them, but didn't trust ANY # of tissues to hold together when used as toilet paper substitutes (I suspect that if he hadn't been able to get my attention he'd have sacrificed one of his socks instead of braving the imaginary risks of tissues). There was a little more banter, mostly in reference to what he thought was a hilarious reference to Star Trek and Klingons... only a married couple will understand how all this occurred from a simple need for TP.
When my husband went to bed, with much cleaning left to be done, he claimed repeatedly, not to mention pompously, that he'd be back up again in a few hours because he'd already had a long nap, and that I was being foolish staying up and doing more work because he'd have done a couple more hour's worth by the time I got up, and there was nothing to worry about. What actually happened is that he sacked out in his study as he sometimes does when we're going to have radically differing bedtimes and/or wake-up times, and, instead of getting up when he was supposed to, he hit the snooze alarm for 2 HOURS, was up for less than half an hour before I was, and had wasted all of that time staring vacantly at a chair he was supposed to have fixed and hadn't... he hadn't done ANYTHING. The kitchen surfaces were gross, the bathroom surfaces were unspeakable, he hadn't cleared his boxes of junk out of the way, and the vacuuming and mopping hadn't been attended to... and my friend was due in an hour and a half.
If I hadn't gotten up half an hour earlier than I thought I needed to, we'd have been totally screwed; as it was, I got to work in a panicked frenzy, screaming and cursing at him to change his usual dead-slow pace to something more appropriate, and the race against the clock began... and mind you, I hadn't even had a chance to wash my face yet, much less get ready. After about an hour, he started telling various lies to stop the cleaning; "She won't go in the kitchen, so it doesn't need to be cleaned" (it's fully visible from the family room), "I already cleaned the kitchen surfaces" (when there wasn't a single square inch without crumbs or smears on it, and there were chunks of petrified food on the stove big enough to choke a horse), "She probably won't use the bathroom, so you don't need to clean it" (she NEVER fails to use that bathroom), and, my favorite, "That's not dirt on the toilet seat, that's where the paint has worn off" (when the dirt was washing off). He started demanding that I go get ready; since HE could let her in the door and entertain her even if I was still half-dressed, the cleaning was still the higher priority, and I refused. He came closer to death than he'll ever realize when he actually tried to blackmail me into stopping by refusing to vacuum any further (and mind you, the carpet was covered in birdseed and other stuff that he drags in constantly because he never wipes his feet on the doormat) unless I went and got ready; the murderous fury with which I greeted that little ploy apparently convinced him that he needed to just shut up and turn the vacuum cleaner back on.
I ALMOST made it; I was running down the hall with her gifts in my hands within 5 minutes of her arrival, even though she was a couple of minutes early... I was exhausted, stressed, and emotionally over-wrought beyond words, but physically in the room, which is all guests seem to care about, so she was satisfied.
There were a few unpleasant moments, like when she sat down on the floor with me to look at some pics on my laptop and it was abundantly clear that my husband had failed to vacuum under the table, and when we were looking outside and I saw that the fruit-fly-encrusted bug strip was still dangling from a kitchen cabinet, but other than that it went pretty well.
We eventually headed out, and had a blast shopping; I got so much stuff it took 3 trips from the car to bring it all in... mostly greeting cards, gift bags and snack foods, I hasten to add-I didn't break the bank, I took advantage of super sales for stuff we'll need to get anyways. We then pigged out at a "homestyle cooking" restaurant we both really like, where I get a pot roast sandwich, she gets meatloaf, and we split a gigantic dessert; I'd forgotten how pleasant going out to dinner can be when you're not dealing with someone who's dedicated to making you late and other passive-aggressive stunts.
While we were gone, my husband established that my desktop computer's a dead loss; tomorrow he'll (supposedly) be getting a new one, and the complicated and disaster-filled process of both of us switching to different machines, with all the attendant issues with software, external hard drives and the network, will get underway... it's gonna be a loooooooooooong week.
