dual personalities

My weekend was a nice quiet one. The weather was beautiful. I went to a DAR meeting and to Target for the first time in a couple of years to buy a second car seat. On Saturday afternoon the OM and I attempted to install it, along with our other car seat in the SUV, but failed. Seriously you need an engineering degree and the strength of Hercules to do this. I accept that I lack these things, but it frustrates the OM mightily when he is unable to do such tasks easily. We had to ask the boy to come over and use his man strength and general know-how to accomplish this not-so-simple chore. C’est la vie.

I needed the two car seats because I wanted to pick up the wee twins and take them to church on Sunday so they wouldn’t miss again when their Dad was working. This I did. And all by myself since the OM went to the baseball game–the last home game of the season**. He would have benefited from hearing the sermon which was on the third commandment:

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

–Exodus 20:7

There was a lot of blaspheming during the carseat installation incident on Saturday.

Anyway, the twins were great and I got them in and out of their carseats (another engineering feat) and home safe and sound. Lottie filled me in on all the gossip.

It is October so I am beginning to watch some of my favorite Halloween-ish movies, i.e. ones dealing with the supernatural. First up was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.

Rex Harrison stars as the ghost of a sea captain who appears to Gene Tierney’s young widow Lucy Muir when she moves into his Gull Cottage and dictates his “memoirs” to her. George Sanders is the children’s author who temporarily steals Mrs. Muir’s heart. Edna Best is Lucy’s devoted maid and Natalie Wood plays her daughter. It is a wonderful, subtle and genuinely haunting movie, beautifully photographed by Charles Lang. The score by Bernard Herrmann is perfection. Every time I see it, I like it more. This time I was struck by how much Gene Tierney reminded me of my friend Nicki, who died in January. This made me even more sad, but the OM had left during the opening credits, so I was free to weep throughout the movie.

Here’s the soundtrack suite from the movie. According to Wikipedia it was Bernard Herrmann’s personal favorite.

So watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, forebear to swear, and enjoy the lovely fall weather (if the hurricane missed you.)

*”October” by Robert Frost–read it here.

**In his final Busch Stadium at-bat, Albert Pujols hit homerun #702 to tie Babe Ruth on MLB all-time RBI list. And the crowd went wild.