dual personalities

My dear DP came through her surgery with flying colors but is taking a few days off to recover, so here I am posting on a Friday!

We’ve had a busy week full of surprise visits from workmen. First, the carpet guys called out of the blue to schedule the installation. They called back a couple of hours later to ask whether they could come right away. As a general rule, it’s best to say ‘yes’ no matter how unprepared you are. They were friendly, swift and extremely competent (although they didn’t wear masks. Hush, don’t tell). And now we have one bedroom with freshly painted walls and new carpet.

Once the pictures are up and I figure out a lamp for the bed, it will look nice, don’t you think? A new bed and coverlet would help as well (does the navy clash?).

It doesn’t look like we had to move much back in, but this is what the other bedroom looked like while this one was empty.

The DH and I had quite a job moving everything around corners and through the narrow hallway. I’m still sorting out boxes but we’re making progress.

Yesterday, right on schedule the porch painter and his helper showed up and got to work. It’s a tiny porch so it didn’t take them long. The paint color is a wildly bright blue — brighter than intended — but at least the porch looks better.

While painting and carpeting were going on, yours truly got her trusty sewing machine down from the attic to make the kitchen valance. I haven’t sewn anything since Halloween costume-making days (probably 20 years ago) and even then I wasn’t very good at it. However, I persevered and voila!

Let’s look at a close-up:

I have enough material left over to make a couple of oven mitts, but first I have to venture to the fabric store to buy the quilt batting for insulation. I figure I can sew anything that (1) isn’t very complicated and doesn’t require perfectly straight lines and (2) no one will see up-close or care about. I take inspiration from Marge…

That was my productive week in home improvement. Now if I could get some job work done I’d be in great shape!

By the way, if you’re in the mood for low-key, feel good flicks, I have two to recommend: The Mountain Minor (2019), a story about a family’s tradition of playing Appalachian music (the boy is quite the fiddle player),

and American Folk (2017), a road movie in which, according to IMDB’s description, “Two strangers, both folk musicians stranded in California, take a road trip to New York in the days after 9/11. A story about the kindness of strangers and the power of music.”

Both are available on Amazon Prime and are timely reminders of American values. I suspect the people who made these movies wanted to counteract the negativity so prevalent today. Are we really prepared to abandon our roots? That’s worth pondering…

One final thing before I go… Happy Birthday to the OM, my brother-in-law! I hope you have a pleasant, relatively uneventful day! These days, that’s about as much as we can hope for. Let’s hope the next year turns calmer!

*Lyric from “Arise! Arise!” a song in English Folk Songs in the Appalachian Mountains by Cecil J. Sharp

Before I launch into baby updates, a quick reminder to keep our mother in your thoughts today, wishing for a smooth surgery and quick recovery. I am hoping that lots of cheerful pictures of bright-eyed Katiebelle (now 6 weeks old!) will help keep morale high these next couple of weeks. It’s hard for us to be far away but we are there in spirit!

I mentioned last week that DN and I have an affinity for making up songs for our daughter. Well, I also find the funniest old love songs popping up in my mind these days. Here’s one that’s been stuck in my head, the chorus of which I often find myself cooing to the little one…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJXbIP83A8

It only gets weird in this context when he says he’s “forgotten every woman but you,” but I find that the chorus works wonders on a fussy babe. There’s even a line about the love interest’s hair falling out — total newborn behavior!

Here’s another that leapt to mind, and which I’ve sung off-key to my patient daughter:

I mean I don’t have to call her, she’s lying right there on her playmat, but I do mean it from the bottom of my heart!

Finally, I also find myself frequently using my Bing Crosby voice to soothe Katiebelle. Remember in White Christmas when Betty is mad at Bob (“$200,00 in free advertising!”) and he just wants to practice singing “Counting Your Blessings”? He says, “Oh come, come now!” before she storms offstage. I say this approximately eight times a day. Does this mean I am a knight atop a charger or that Betty was acting like a baby?

In other news, DN and I recently managed to watch an entire movie from start to finish. This was a lovely way to feel like adults for an evening, but we couldn’t stop laughing about all the moments that reminded us of our daughter. And the movie was The English Patient! I mean really.

Catherine never betrayed her country for love, but she is indecisive about the status of her sleep.

This is my new mantra. As my mother said, we watched The Pajama Game this weekend. I found myself relating most to the side character played by this actress. Sadly, I couldn’t find any good images from the film to convey that joke well enough.

Today, has the potential to be a real rage post. But I’m going to resist the temptation to write the same post I always do. Also, I waited two hours and ate dinner before attempting to beginning to write.

So, from the files of videos I’ve stumbled across on YouTube, this one really made me laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppXA9p3bAY

This weekend, at an estate sale, I got a framed print of one of my favorite Winslow Homer paintings which I promptly hung in my dining room.

This painting makes me think of Hemingway, but I dug out Moby Dick because the eternal struggle-vibe is more how life feels these days and I don’t think I have a copy of The Old Man and the Sea.

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly deserves, and more than suspects that the joke is nobody’s expense but his own.”

–Moby Dick

“And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve around me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.”

–Moby Dick

Recently, son #2 reminded me that El Cid died on July 10th, 1099. From there discussion moved to the 1961 movie El Cid starring Charleton Heston and Sophia Loren. We agreed that this very long, mostly boring film is only redeemed by its great ending [Spoiler alert for the rest of the post!]. The mighty hero dies of wounds, but so great is the moral power of his presence that his compatriots lash his body to his trusty steed to lead the army to victory against the attacking Saracens.

When I saw the movie on TV as a youngster, the end both deeply affected me and made me feel that sitting through the rest had been worth it. What a payoff!

Well, as you can imagine, El Cid got me thinking about other movies that had great endings — not necessarily ones that turned a bad film into a better one (that is truly rare), but an ending that took the whole thing to another level. Here’s what I came up with in no particular order.

1. The Natural (1984), starring Robert Redford. I read the novel in college and truly hated it, so I was a little worried about going to the movie. Happily, Hollywood changed the ending and thereby transformed a cynical tale into an incredibly uplifting baseball myth. The good guy won.

2. The Life of Pi (2012). A boy, an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a tiger get stuck on a life boat together.

This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But the ending, in which our hero offers an alternative version of his experience — this one involving people rather than animals — alters everything. A pretty fable about life becomes a statement about belief and God. Pi asks his rescuers, “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘That’s an interesting question.’ Mr. Chiba: ‘The story with animals.’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘Yes. The story with animals is the better story.’ Pi Patel: ‘Thank you. And so it goes with God” (Yan Martel, Life of Pi).

3. Signs (2002). A minister (Mel Gibson), who loses his faith when his wife is killed in a seemingly random accident, struggles to care for his children and feckless brother. Then aliens arrive on earth and all hell breaks loose.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bjv7CVhZXNs

Though the attentive viewer picks up on the message as the movie progresses, Mel Gibson’s character only begins to understand when he repeats his wife’s last words, “Swing away, Merrill”, to his baseball-bat-wielding brother as an alien threatens his son. Only then does Mel begin to see that everything happens for a reason and we are not alone.

4. Cool Hand Luke (1967), starring Paul Newman. This might seem an odd choice, but I’m including it to represent the category “when the hero’s death clinches the message”.

Face it, Cool Hand Luke would not have been as powerful if Luke had survived. Sometimes the hero has to die. I suppose this contradicts the title to this post, but what can I say? That’s just the way life is.

What endings changed your opinion of a movie? What about books? Perhaps we’ll save them for another post.

Have a great weekend!

*Oscar Wilde

Did you know that technically an infant only qualifies as a newborn for 28 days? It seems that more informally, 12 weeks is the newborn window, but our pediatrician congratulated us at our one-month appointment on making it past that mark. Now we officially have a “baby.” Ok then!

At 5 weeks, Catherine is 10 lbs 7 oz and 23.5 inches long. This continues to be off-the-charts in height and is 78th percentile for weight! She is a healthy girl whose only physical complaint seems to be “eye goo.” We’re coping.

Meanwhile, DN and I are coming into our own as dorky parents. At this point, we have a number of songs we have made up to sing to our child, including my personal favorite: “Baby Burrito,” sung to the tune of “Baby Beluga.” (Remember this iconic Full House episode?) I sing this song after Katiebelle has a bath, when I wrap her up tightly in a cozy blanket to warm her back up. I’m not sure there’s anything cuter than my baby burrito. (The second line of the song is, “You look so cute and you look so warm,” if you’re wondering.)

Breaking news from my neck of the woods: I finished my sampler!

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty proud of it. And I have COVID-19 to thank for providing the time and lack of things to do for helping me finish it.

In other news, I had planned to scale back my during the week drinking this week to my pre-COVID levels. That is, only having a glass or two of wine on the weekends. But then, with my parents visiting this weekend, some open bottles were left behind and I really should finish those and not let them go to waste. Maybe I can work on cutting back in 2021.

Also! I get to pick up my new mouthguard at the dentist in Columbia tomorrow. I really can’t tell you how exciting this is. Seriously, I clench my teeth so hard at night that I wake up most mornings with a headache. I hope this does the trick.

So, as you can see, lots of exciting things going on in my world. I did have a really splendid time with my guests this weekend. We travelled out and about and everyone was respectful of the guidelines and properly social distanced. But, I still feel like maybe we shouldn’t have been so confident. And I’m getting pretty tired of feeling this way. I listen to an hour and a half conference call every morning that goes over exactly what is happening in the state and I still feel this way–I can’t imagine how people who only have the news as a source feel!

One thing that I learned from working on that sampler is that sewing or having something to do with my hands really helped keep me grounded. I found reading difficult during quarantine because my mind wandered, but sewing allowed me to focus on something that didn’t require too much thought.

As usual, a reminder to not worry so much is in order.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

–2 Corinthians 4:16-18