Well, I certainly didn't intend to vanish from my blog for days and days. There hasn't been too much going on here as of late.
I overdid it with the organizing and sorting and hoisting of boxes, and had a small setback in my surgery healing process, so I have been taking it easy and reading a lot of books and finishing my unicorn needlepoint along with the boring necessities of laundry and cooking and whatnot. No big projects for the last little while.
I really didn't anticipate weeks and weeks of soreness and restricted activity after this surgery. I can do most things, it's just lifting heavy stuff and reaching up high that has proven too much. Also I think I started sleeping on my chest too soon, so I have had to get very strict with myself about sleeping on my back again.
Anyway, that has all proved as dull to live through as I'm sure it is to read about, so not much blog inspiration there.
The big money maker at the sale is usually the handmade quilts. Todd and I have attended the relief sale several times in the past ten years or so, and have always wanted to buy a quilt, but the ones we really liked always went for more than we were prepared to pay.
I didn't realize it, but Todd was bound and determined to buy a quilt this time. So we did! It's a gorgeous Lone Star quilt in dark blues and greens. It was all very exciting.
Natalie and Marissa could not stop talking about riding with "Sonny and Cher," the horses who pull a wagon around the small county fairgrounds where the sale is held. You can see the anticipation on Marissa's face as the horses come up.
I don't know how many times they rode the wagon Friday night and Saturday, but it was a lot! Here they are riding with their friends Adam and Luke.
I wish I had a profile as cute as this. Love the way her nose turns up at the tip:
The sale serves dinner on Friday night, which we all partook of, and breakfast on Saturday morning, which Todd and Jeremy and I went early to enjoy. We had to stand in line a bit (the line runs far into the big barn:)
But it was fun. Here's me and Jeremy after omelets and sausage:
Yet another ride on Sonny and Cher...that's my sister-in-law Tracy, our little friend Luke, Marissa, Natalie, and me:
I got to catch up a little bit with my friend and cousin Trina:
My cousin Dan and his wife Lynley were there too, but I didn't get much time to talk with them, as I had to go off on another horsie ride.
Here's Marissa getting her face painted:
And Natalie and Tracy enjoying some homemade potato chips:
I'll post a picture of our new quilt once I get our bedroom all neat and tidy. I also bought homemade apple butter and stone-ground cornmeal. The donuts, alas, sold out before I could get to them. Just as well, I suppose.
The girls have a new kitten named Luna, who is the sweetest, most laid-back kitten I have ever met. Case in point:
She will sit and hang out on a four-year-old's lap.
She likes my brother, too.
In fact, she likes everyone, and the feeling is quite mutual.How I do love kittens!
So I was thinking about racism today, as I guess a lot of people are. Jimmy Carter says that Joe Wilson's outburst during Obama's speech last week was racist, and there are lots of accusations of racism being thrown at the protestors who amassed in Washington this past weekend.
I talk about politics (or I used to, now I mostly just listen) with a large group of women on a forum...the core group has been talking politics together for more than five years. There's a good mix of Republicans and Democrats from all the shades of the spectrum. The outrage some of the conservative women feel over being called "racist" reminds me very much of the mouth-foaming outrage I used to feel from 2002-2008 when I was called "unpatriotic." One epithet is more distasteful than the other, but both are far too simplistic.
I voted for Obama and was very pleased that he won, but that doesn't mean I mentally rubber-stamp everything he does with a big smiley-face. I'm very unhappy with the vast amounts of money his administration is throwing around like confetti. And I'm not at all convinced that this is the proper time for the government to step into health care, much less that we should run a health care bill through in fast motion.
And although I think Rep. Wilson was rude in his outburst, sometimes I think Congress and the President could benefit from some of the no-holds-barred discussion that you can watch in the British Parliament on C-SPAN--those guys are masters of theatrical disagreement.
And since "my people" could exercise their rights to protest the war in Iraq, I have absolutely zero problem with the other side protesting government spending. Protest is good; it keeps the powers-that-be on their toes, or it should, anyway.
Is Rep. Wilson a racist, since he comes from South Carolina? I have no idea. Were there racists in the crowd in D.C. this weekend? Probably. Are there people in the U.S. who hate Obama and everything he stands for simply because he is a black man? Not much doubt about that.
But protesting against and disagreeing with a President who happens to be black doesn't automatically make one a racist. And voting for a black man to be President doesn't automatically make one non-racist, either.
Right now I live in a neighborhood and a city that is far more racially diverse than any place I've ever lived. And it makes me uncomfortable almost every day. I never had racist thoughts when I lived in lily-white communities. Living in this neighborhood that I none-too-affectionately call "ghetto" (which is both inaccurate and also racist of me) has brought out some feelings in me that I have really had to struggle against. I am so not proud of that.
So a disinterested observer might look at my voting record and my beliefs about social issues and stamp me as a bona-fide open-minded and tolerant liberal. But I know the truth about myself.
That's why I can't look at the typical conservative voter who hates big government or health care reform or whatever else Obama does, and call them racist. (The nuts with the threatening signs, yes, I think we all know how they feel, and they are terrible and very wrong.) But not the people who merely (or loudly) disagree with me and the guy I voted for.
This topic, as it's bandied about on all the talk shows and blogs right now, fits in with the general drift of the past ten or twenty years: it polarizes people and divides them even further. The media loves this, because it helps them sell ad time. But it's not reality, and we are foolish if we believe it to be. Racism is real and very wrong. Throwing labels around willy-nilly is also wrong.
Ah, what a lovely day for cleaning out the linen closet! Which is what I did this morning. Also sorted Todd's clothes, and dusted our bedroom. I guess I'm in fall nesting mode. I sorted out a bunch of books for disposal on Friday...it's truly scary when a person can remove 150 books from her shelves and it isn't really a noticeable difference. Yikes.
Todd is pressure-washing the house in preparation for some trim painting later this fall. And after my burst of activity this morning, I'm hanging out in my study pondering fall craft projects and cruising the Internet and chatting with my cousin Roland on Facebook. And blogging.
Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since my surgery and I'm doing just great. I have a haphazard method of taping up my incisions as recommended by the plastic surgeon, and massaging the incisions with Palmer's Vitamin E lotion, as recommended by the nurses at the breast health forum I read. Hopefully the combination of the two methods will result in a reduction of the Frankenstein effect I'm sporting right now.
Other than the tape/massage, and still not doing any strenuous lifting or tugging, I am completely back to normal and working on losing some more weight. Baking pumpkin scones and cinnamon rolls is not contributing to that effort much, but those are things that feed the soul, so I'm making allowances for them, at least until my Tuesday weigh-in when I can see how much harm they've done!
One unforeseen, and slightly frustrating, element of my reduction is that very few of my old clothes fit well--but now that I am raring to buy some new clothes, there is nothing in the stores that remotely appeals to me. In fact, the last few places I've looked, the fall fashions have been actively hideous, like the designer was trying to offend the eye on purpose! So I'm waiting it out. Sooner or later I'll find something I like, and till then, I'll just keep trying to go down another size.
My friend Beverly has started writing a column for a local news site. She's covering mortgage information right now, but hopes to branch out into other topics. There are tons of articles on the site, on every topic you can imagine. She's an excellent writer--go check her out!
I re-read a very sweet book from my childhood this week called Miracles on Maple Hill. I know I read it back in the day, but I had almost no memory of the story as I re-read it. It has a tremendous amount of detail about the natural world, especially wildflowers, and it made me feel a little bit sad to think how few people today would have the wealth of information about the natural world that the kindly neighbor in the book, Mr. Chris, has, and that he imparts to the main character, ten-year-old Marly.
What made me even sadder is the thought of how few people have the opportunity to amass such knowledge--the knowledge that comes from living in a place your whole life, and that your parents and grandparents lived in, and having their knowledge in your bones as well. Mr. Chris is out every day walking through the fields and forests and observing and working in the natural world. When the book was written 50 years ago, it was already an endangered lifestyle...now it seems almost archaic.
Fall seems to be truly here-some days are quite warm, but that breathless, sweltering humid feeling is gone now. And the nights--and most days--are cool enough to have the windows open again. This time of year is so wonderful in Virginia.
We've had a nice Labor Day weekend. Todd's done some fishing and some working on our new mantel. I had a yard sale and did laundry and went on an excursion with my friend Beverly. And today was cool and rainy, which was kind of nice. It felt cozy, even though we still had the air conditioning on to keep the damp out.
A friend gave me a recipe for pumpkin scones last week, and today felt like a good day to make them. Talk about delicious!
2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.
3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl. Using a pastry knife, fork, or food processor, cut butter into the dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly and no chunks of butter are obvious. Set aside.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, half and half, and egg. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Form the dough into a ball. (Lizzie's notes: I refrigerated the ball of dough for thirty minutes before patting out and cutting)
5. Pat out dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a 1-inch thick rectangle (about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide). Use a large knife or a pizza cutter to slice the dough twice through the width, making three equal portions. Cut those three slices diagonally so that you have 6 triangular slices of dough. Place on prepared baking sheet.
6. Bake for 14–16 minutes. Scones should begin to turn light brown. Place on wire rack to cool.
7. To make the plain glaze:
8. Mix the powdered sugar and 2 tbsp milk together until smooth.
9. When scones are cool, use a brush to paint plain glaze over the top of each scone.
10. As the plain glaze firms up, make the spiced icing:
11. Combine the ingredient for the spiced icing together. Drizzle this thicker icing over each scone and allow the icing to dry before serving (at least 1 hour). A squirt bottle works great for this, or you can drizzle with a whisk.
I used my largest round biscuit cutter and got ten scones from the recipe, so the amount varies depending on how you cut them.
These would be good with some Pumpkin Ginger Tea from Republic of Tea. Or some milk. Or coffee, Starbucks or not. Or you could just not wait for any beverages at all.
I have done ZERO crafting since Christmas, but like clockwork, our heat and humidity blew away on September 1, and like clockwork, my brain gears turned toward "making stuff!"
So I'm throwing a line out to see if anyone would like to do a vintage Halloween Artist Trading Card swap. Artist Trading Cards are little pieces of cardstock measuring 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches (or if you have a brain fart like I did last time I participated in one, 2x3 inches...oops) that you make art on. Then you sign the back with your name, the date, and your e-mail/blog address if you wish.
I would like to have at least five people in the swap...so if you're interested, let me know. What you'll do is make an identical card for each person (actually, I don't even think they need to be identical, but sometimes it's easier that way) and then mail them to me with a SASE enclosed. Then I'll divide them up and you'll get one of yours back, plus one from every person in the swap.
You can use absolutely any technique or combination of techniques you like on your ATCs: scrapbook supplies, stamps, markers, paints, colored pencils, inks, textures, vintage pictures, you name it. The only rule is that they have to look "old" in some way and they have to be Halloween-themed. The deadline for getting these in the mail to me would be October 15, that way I would have time to send them on and get them to everyone by Halloween.
Here are some ATCs from a swap I participated in a year or two ago, for those who aren't sure what they look like. You can see that anything goes, and that these are all completely, wonderfully different from each other:
And here are a couple I made just for fun a while back:
ATCs are quick creative fun because they're small and manageable. The canvas you have to fill up is so small that before you know it, you're done!
Drop me an e-mail (jscrappy(at)cox.net) if you're interested, with your full name and address. If I don't hear from at least four other people by this Wednesday, I'll scratch the idea and find something else to make!
Happitudes: things you're happy about and feel gratitude about at the same time.
1. Went to the plastic surgeon yesterday for my follow-up and he says I'm healing just great. I'm over most of that awful exhaustion, too.
2. My cousin Janine gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Isaac on Wednesday.
3. My niece Natalie had a stellar first week of first grade.
4. My gorgeous 6-year-old niece Evelyn became a gorgeous 7-year-old this week. (And your slacker Aunt Janelle is going to call you this weekend, promise!)
5. My husband went to the grocery store with me (number 13,000,000 on his "favorite things to do" list) and loaded the bags into the car and then carried them into the house for me.
6. It's supposed to cool off next week. (Hallelujah!)
7. I've read two good books in the past week...after months of duds.
8. My brother's dreadfully infected toe is all healed up.
Todd and I briefly discussed Senator Ted Kennedy's death at dinner this evening. Todd has absolutely no use for the man because of Chappaquiddick. I have more ambivalent feelings--knowing that he committed negligent homicide and got away with it, and yet knowing all that he did for this country and the groundbreaking laws that he worked to pass, it's pretty hard for me to say how I feel about the guy.
It's been interesting to read and hear from people who actually knew him as a friend and who testify to Kennedy being someone who wanted desperately to help other people and to give his friends and family anything they needed that he could give.
I said to Todd that I certainly wouldn't want to be remembered only for the worst things I'd done in my life. Of course, I haven't committed anything quite as egregious as some of Kennedy's sins. (Not yet, anyway, but hey, I'm still young.)
I've wondered before, and thought of it again today, whether the biggest sinners out there might not also (if they've experienced grace and taken it to heart) be the most compassionate people out there, too. It's easier to have compassion for other people's failings when you're all too aware of your own tremendous failings. It's easier to see people's pain and regrets when you carry around a huge pile of your own. Maybe it's easier to see people as human beings who deserve rights and respect when you've been in situations where you had to take an uncomfortable look at your own humanity.
I certainly don't know if any of this is true of Senator Kennedy, but some of what I've heard and read today makes me think it might be. The Kennedy men have always interested me--such inspirational public lives, such degraded private lives. It fascinates me to read a biography and look at a life and try to balance the good and the bad in it, and Senator Kennedy's life has much larger goods and bads than most people's, that's for sure. If it's not fair to laud him without remembering Mary Jo Kopechne, I also don't think it's fair to condemn him without remembering civil rights, voting rights, rights for the disabled, OSHA, COBRA, FMLA, Title IX, AIDS research and care, Head Start, WIC, Meals on Wheels, and a host of other things that have made the U.S. a better country.
Just some stuff I was thinking about today while cleaning out the closet and listening to NPR.
I've always found this eulogy he gave for his brother Robert to be extremely moving.
Why is organizing such a satisfying thing to do? My garden looks terrible, like a freaking jungle, so I sublimated by cleaning and organizing my fridge instead, which was much easier (and cooler.) My wheat germ and oat bran and flaxseed and dried fruit sacks are now resting neatly in plastic shoeboxes instead of piling up at the back of the fridge. What a feeling of accomplishment from two plastic shoeboxes! The jungle still awaits, though. Unfortunately, I am not up to yanking weeds just yet, I don't think my still-healing incisions would like it one bit.
I have had to retire two beloved pieces of clothing this week--a big comfy t-shirt that I bought at a yard sale 7 years ago which finally developed too many holes for decency, and today my wonderful cool cotton pajama capris completely fell apart, ripped right across the leg where the fabric had gotten thin. And of course I can't find any appealing petite pajama pants at all online now, let alone petite pajama capris, which don't seem to exist any more. So sad!
We went to see "District 9" last night and while it was an okay movie, it has replaced "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" as the most gooey, oozy movie I've ever seen. Body fluids (both human and alien) of every color oozing from every orifice (both human and alien.) I was sorry we'd eaten dinner beforehand...although one wouldn't really be in the mood to eat afterward, either.
And I think I may have to either stop going to movies, or else start entering the theater late, if they don't stop showing horror previews before every darn movie. "District 9" was not a horror movie, it was just a sci-fi alien thing--and yet 6 of the 7 previews beforehand were for horror movies. I don't LIKE horror movies! I don't want to be scared even a little bit! And some of those previews are really disturbing! It doesn't make me look very cool to be the only person in the theater with my eyes squinched shut and my fingers in my ears, like a frightened toddler.
Don't you love it when you go to the post office, or the bank, or an eatery, and you walk right in at the head of the line, not a soul in the place, and then you turn around two seconds later and there are 10 people behind you in line? I just love it when that happens--it makes me feel so special, like I have some supernatural sense of timing.
The only good thing about August is delicious peaches. And the fact that my grandma, my dad and my niece Evelyn were born in August. Those are August's only redeeming qualities.Let's have some fall now!
I picked up two very old books of fairy tales at an estate sale a few weeks ago. They look like two from a larger set, because each book is slim, with just four or five tales in each one.
The pictures are just stunning. Here's "Little Red Riding Hood:"
And "Rumpelstiltskin":
"Jack and the Beanstalk"...I love the funky design on that beanseller's pants:
These are from a story called "The Goose Girl," which is not a story I remember, but which seems to be about a passive-aggressive princess with golden hair:
We also have "Tom Thumb":
And "The Frog Prince," soon to be Disneyfied in a theater near you, I believe:
"Puss in Boots"--look at the cool windmill in the background:
And "Bluebeard," with his fetching wife poking her nose in where it was best left unpoked:
And here are a few of the pictures from the story of "Beauty and the Beast," a favorite of my nieces Natalie and Marissa.
The last picture is the picture that made me scoop up those books! Love the fireworks!
What I love about this style of illustration is all the detail, the floral patterns and the textures on clothes and fabrics, the swooping sleeves and flowing hair--just so perfect for fairy tales, especially.
(Sounds fancier in French.) I cooked up a whole bunch of things the week before my surgery, and we're still digging down to the bottom of the freezer and enjoying some of them. This is one of the things I cooked...I got the recipe from a Pea at Two Peas, and it is unbelievably good. While it's cooking, it smells like my great-aunt Helen's house when we used to go over there for Sunday dinner when I was very little. Pure essence of pot roast, only better.
Italian Beef Sandwiches
1 envelope dry onion soup mix 1 tsp. oregano 1 tsp. red pepper flakes 1 tsp. basil 1 tsp. dried parsley 1 large garlic clove, minced 3/4 cup water 3-lb. rump or chuck roast
You just plop the roast in a crockpot, pour the water and spices over it, and let it cook all day on high, or till the meat's tender. Then you shred it up with a fork and let it simmer for a few more minutes, then eat it on a nice soft steak roll.
I like horseradish sauce on mine, but Todd prefers steak sauce. Apparently some people like to put banana peppers on the sandwiches...personally, I think a pile of grilled onions and peppers would be delicious on top. You can add provolone cheese or not--we didn't.
Todd thinks the meat is too spicy, so next time I make it I'll probably just use a half-teaspoon of red pepper flakes, but I think the heat is just right. And if I can find a reduced-sodium onion soup mix, I'll use that in the future, again for the hubby's sake. But boy, is it good.
I'm feeling slightly more energetic today. My body has rebelled and refuses to sleep on its back any longer, so I've had to contrive a way of sleeping on my side with lots of pillows under and all around me. I don't think it's the greatest thing for my incisions, but I'm compelled to do it. I've never had my body wake up in the middle of the night before and force itself into a position--it's like being demon-possessed. Very weird feeling.
I have a few randomly-connected pictures to share...my aunts put together the most beautiful bouquets for the church windows at my grandpa's funeral last week. They pulled together garden flowers and wildflowers and added cattails at the last minute, and it looked like something we could have picked on a random summer stroll around my grandparents' property 20 years ago.
Speaking of my grandparents' property, one of the items my aunt Molly salvaged from there was quite a bit larger than the odd chair or table. She took the summerhouse that stood right outside the front door and had it moved to her own yard a mile or two away.
Molly lives in an old brick schoolhouse, where my grandma and her siblings attended school, incidentally, and the summerhouse fits into her yard as though it had always been there.
She's having it painted and refurbished a little, and her neighbor gave her a wonderful old door with etched glass panels that will replace the original door. It's going to look great. But I think it looks nice, now, too. Here's how it was at my grandparents' house, painted blue to match their house:
Grandma had wildflowers and mint growing around it in the back, and rosebushes and other things in the front of it. I can't wait to see what Molly does with it!
Todd and I dropped in at an estate sale on Saturday that reminded me a lot of the sale we had at my grandparents' place last September. It was an old house with a barn where the parents had lived for 55 years, it was their large family of descendants holding the sale, it was piles and piles of very old junk that no one had thrown away for decades. And the family was Mennonite.
I had a very nice chat with the daughters, who are the same ages as my mom and her sisters, and picked up a few odds and ends. I got these three cream bottles from a whole huge box of saved bottles and decided to throw some garden flowers in them for my kitchen windowsill.
Can you see the price molded into the top of the bottle? Those were the days.
Is everybody sick of my whining about how tired I am? Too darn bad.
Today is like a whole new level of tiredness. I have to exert effort to plop each finger down on the keyboard. This may just be the most exhausted I have ever felt in my life. The gnomes in my body must be very hard at work repairing my chest area today, that's all I can figure.
What's that you say? There are no gnomes in the human body? Well, maybe not in yours. But my body is maintained by a team of tiny gnomes. They like Ben and Jerry's ice cream for a special treat. I don't provide it for them very often, though, as their next task will be to address my tummy area and butterfat ice cream isn't the tool required for that.
Sooo tired. Blinking takes an effort today. I feel a disbelieving annoyance way down under the tiredness...I didn't expect to be this tired at this point. And I'm more bored than ever...what am I supposed to do between passing-out-on-the-couch periods? I type a sentence and then have to sit and rest for a minute or two!
Anyway, I found this game the other day. I can't even imagine having the energy and mental capacity to play it right this minute, but maybe someone else out there is more on the ball today than I am. It's addictive, I warn you. Kind of a cross between Scrabble and Tetris. Must Pop Words
Also my friend Beverly forced me to go to Bath and Body Works on Sunday and then she forced me to fill up a bag with stuff and then she forced me to buy it all. She had a gun stuck in my ribs and everything. I swear. She is mean.
So one of the things she forced me to buy is this scent called Vanilla Noir and it is seriously one of the best things I have ever smelled. I like vanilla scents, but often they are way too sweet. Vanilla Noir, on the other hand, smells like a warm pound cake that just found out about sex and is planning what to do with the knowledge. Yum.
I was also going to type in a recipe for something I ate for lunch and which is fresh in my memory as delicious, but I am too tired now. I'll do it later. Back to the couch for me. Sigh.
On Sunday night I made a big long list of things to get done this week, knocked about five items off yesterday and then collapsed in a sore and tired heap on the couch after supper, and was in bed by ten PM.
Today I am still sore and tired! I scheduled a massage this morning and almost fell asleep driving home from it. My original neck and shoulder pain is almost completely gone, but I have a knot next to my right shoulder blade now--I think it's from holding my torso differently and sleeping on my back, working muscles in different ways now.
I thought it might be good to have someone work on those new kinks before they solidify into real pain. And it was good! We had to work out a way for me to lie down that wouldn't completely crush my very sore boobies, though...I had to use a body pillow and sort of wrap myself around it sideways.
Now I'm feeling like that massage may be just about all I get done today--that and this blog post. It's driving me nuts to sit around when my mind is buzzing with things I need and want to do. So my pattern right now is to break into a mini whirlwind of activity for a few hours, and then pass out on the couch for an hour or two. But yesterday I overdid it--too much reaching over my head putting dishes away and hoisting wet towels into the dryer, among other things. Susan, the massage therapist, told me I need to be patient, that my body is working overtime to recover from the surgery and that's using up most of my energy. Little does she know that we Clarks are each allotted about 3 milligrams of patience as our genetic inheritance, and we use it all up within the first two weeks of our lives.
My friend Beverly and I went to see "Julie and Julia" yesterday, which is a film based on Julie Powell's book of the same name, in which Powell writes about the year she spent cooking her way through Julia Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it.
I read the book several years ago and enjoyed it, although it's a little less about food and a little more about being almost 30 and struggling with the idea that your life isn't going the way you thought it would. Powell's blogging/cooking project gives her a new path to follow, and a sort of guardian angel in the person of Julia Child.
I was surprised to hear that a movie was coming out based on the book, because there didn't seem to be quite enough in the book to base a movie on. The moviemakers must have agreed with me, because they split the movie roughly in half, and showed two parallel stories at the same time--Julie Powell's (played by Amy Adams) cooking adventure and Julia Child's (played by Meryl Streep) cooking adventure.
The Julia Child segments are based on another book, one of the best memoirs I've ever read: Julia Child's My Life in France, the story of her marriage, moving to France and falling into what was to become the defining task of her life: learning French cooking and teaching it to Americans.
So in the movie we have the modern-day segments, with Amy Adams battling subway crowds to work and then coming home to cook in her lousy Long Island apartment kitchen, and then the Julia segments, which take place in Paris in the 1940s and 50s and which feature Meryl Streep doing a dead-on and completely delightful version of Julia Child. Two guesses as to which storyline is more interesting!
The stories do play off each other perfectly, as each woman is trying to find her niche in life, supported by a loving husband, but although Amy Adams is a perfectly good actress, every time Meryl Streep comes onto the screen, you forget all about whatever Adams was doing in the scene before. You can't take your eyes off Julia, who is as bright and vivid and full of life as she was in real life. Stanley Tucci plays her devoted husband Paul Child, and you just want their scenes to go on forever, it's such a pleasure to watch them together.
Plus the costumes, the cars, the sets from the Julia segments are pure eye candy. Bev and I loved this movie. It was funny and inspiring and beautifully filmed. Sort of a chick flick, but the men in the audience seemed to enjoy it as much as the women did. It was also a pretty clean movie (much cleaner than Powell's book, anyway) with just one or two obscenities and only implied sex between loving married couples. (It's mother-in-law-friendly, Viv!) We walked out of the theatre smiling.
I wonder if this is the first movie about blogging?!
Oh me oh my, I am feeling at loose ends tonight. Todd is out fishing with a co-worker when he should be home with me watching "Buffy" Season 4. Being in recovery mode for a few weeks means that I have watched almost every DVD in the house and done more crossword puzzles than any human should ever have to do. My "mousing" hand is sore from Internet usage. I've dipped into at least five different books in the past two weeks, and none have been able to hold my interest. I hate to say I'm bored, but I am.
Thus a ramble here.
It is odd that director John Hughes died yesterday, because Todd and I were talking about "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" just the night before that. Todd was sitting at my desk, and I have a painting by Georges Seurat as my desktop image, "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grand Jatte."
Todd mentioned something about that being the painting that Cameron looks at. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He said, "Yes, that's the one where Cameron looks at the little girl in the middle, and then it cuts to his face, and then back to her face, and then a close-up of his face, and then a close-up of her face...you know, in 'Ferris Bueller.'"
Well, I've seen "Ferris Bueller" any number of times, but the main thing I always remember about it is the parade where he sings "Twist and Shout." I didn't remember that scene at all. So we found it on YouTube:
The girl's face dissolves, of course, because it's composed of tiny dots of paint in Seurat's style of "pointillism," which is an awesome word as well as a cool way to paint.
It's strange that I (the English-major) forgot all about that scene, because it's a key moment in the film, and one that still moves people to pondering, if my Google search on "painting cameron ferris" reveals anything. I loved what this blogger had to say:
"In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron stands in an art museum in front of a pointillist painting by George Seurat, and as he stares at the image of a little girl, the camera cuts back and forth, jumping closer and closer to each shot. As we get closer to his eyes, it seems as if Cameron is having an existential crisis. As if he is facing the realization that we are all just little dots.
"In an industry where anything that seems superfluous ends up on the cutting room floor, it is to Hughes' credit that his film allows for the moment, one that continues to move me to this day. That is the gift of John Hughes."
Maybe I should pop in "Ferris Bueller" to ward off my boredom tonight, eh? I hate to watch it without Todd, though. I don't know about Todd, but for me that is THE high school movie of my high school years. Seems a shame to watch it without my high school buddy along.
I haven't seen all of John Hughes' movies and people my age are always shocked when I reveal that I've never seen "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," or "Some Kind of Wonderful." My favorite of his movies I have seen is "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." The first 2 1/2 minutes of this scene literally make me cry with laughter every time:
Man, I wish John Candy was still around. What a funny, funny man.
As long as I'm talking Hughes films, I also have a soft spot for "Home Alone." I took my cousins Alan and Michael to see that movie over Thanksgiving break in 1990 when they were 11 years old and I was 20 years old and I was baby-sitting for them. I had such a great time that I called Todd (my then-boyfriend) right afterward and said, "We have to go see this kiddie movie tonight."
Here's a montage of my favorite moments from that movie...it's like watching a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon...awesome.
They left out my favorite line, though ("Why are you dressed like a chicken?") and my favorite bit where Marv screams like a little girl when Kevin puts the tarantula on his face. Good times.
Maybe a Christmas movie in August would be a fun way to kill the rest of the evening...
And now for something light-hearted...being a true child of the 80's, I have always loved the band Toto's song "Africa." This is an amazing acapella version done by a Slovenian group. They start out by making the noises of a thunderstorm with their hands and feet--so cool. Such a great song, too!
I don't know how many times they rode the wagon Friday night and Saturday, but it was a lot! Here they are riding with their friends Adam and Luke.
I wish I had a profile as cute as this. Love the way her nose turns up at the tip:
The sale serves dinner on Friday night, which we all partook of, and breakfast on Saturday morning, which Todd and Jeremy and I went early to enjoy. We had to stand in line a bit (the line runs far into the big barn:)
But it was fun. Here's me and Jeremy after omelets and sausage:
Yet another ride on Sonny and Cher...that's my sister-in-law Tracy, our little friend Luke, Marissa, Natalie, and me:
I got to catch up a little bit with my friend and cousin Trina:
My cousin Dan and his wife Lynley were there too, but I didn't get much time to talk with them, as I had to go off on another horsie ride.
And Natalie and Tracy enjoying some homemade potato chips:
She will sit and hang out on a four-year-old's lap.
She likes my brother, too.
