dual personalities

Nothing I did this week merits comment here, and considering current events, I think the best thing we can do over the weekend is to count our myriad blessings and savor them. Family (a new baby!) and friends go without saying, so here are a few less obvious things that I particularly appreciate these days.

1.Nature’s bounty

At our cabin a mighty rhubarb plant takes over a corner of the garden every year. For the first time ever (something like 22 years), I harvested some stalks and made a yummy rhubarb crumble out of it. Here’s to using what grows in the garden!

2. Whathavewedunoon, the adventures of a young Scottish couple who accidentally bought a derelict house at an auction and are slowly bringing it back to life. I am their avid Instagram follower.

There are an awful lot of decent people out there in the world and it’s good to remember that.

3. Watching the little boys next door “help” wash a car or do yard work. It usually ends up something like this

or this,

and naturally that reminds me of my own boys.

4. Any endeavor that demonstrates that people are working hard to make good stuff happen. SpaceX made history this week as the first private company to launch humans successfully into space — and at a fraction of the usual price.

Not all the news is bad, so let’s stop with the negative waves! And speaking of negative waves, if you like Clint Eastwood movies, why not watch Kelly’s Heroes?

Well, that’s this week’s attempt to promote positive thinking. Enjoy the weekend and don’t feel guilty if you are happy or otherwise doing okay. If you want to make the world better, remember what Teddy Roosevelt once wrote, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” The rest will follow.

*Kelly’s Heroes

Note: none of the photos posted here are my own. I found them all via Google Image.

DP note: Darling daughter #2 scheduled this post early because she knew she was going to be busy yesterday giving birth. Yes, baby U was born, weighing 8 lbs./15 oz.–a big bouncing baby Katiebelle! More tomorrow…

I have been off of work for over a week now, with a lot of waiting time on my hands. I have spent most of it napping and watching bad Netflix shows here and there. But a few nights, I’ve indulged in some random movie-watching impulses.

First, we landed on School of Rock, which is streaming on HBO. When we came across it, it seemed like the perfect choice. I hadn’t seen it in years, probably since the last time my family watched it together in the 2000s. School of Rock was one of those movies everyone could always agree on — no small feat for a family of five, with siblings ranging five years in age.

I think DN was pretty surprised by my familiarity with the movie and its lines, several of which fully entered our family’s lexicon. He had no idea that School of Rock was the provenance, for example, of this particular gem:

Admittedly, I did fall asleep in the third quarter of the movie (I missed Joan Cusack’s Stevie Nicks moment!) but that’s only because of my non-existent sleep schedule. The movie held up overall, with a good cast of characters working together toward a goal, each growing in their own way and accomplishing something by the end. Add in the gif-able moments, and it’s a solid choice for movie night, in 2002 or 2020.

I recently also experienced an overwhelming urge to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. DN owns them (“Everyone bought those DVDs, Susie”) and dug them out of storage at his parent’s house. While no one in my family ever got really into the Lord of the Rings fandom, the movies were a thing for us. At least once, we went to see the new release on Christmas day. When the DVDs would come out, we would watch the extended director’s cut AND all of the special features.

This was the intense moment that leapt to mind when I remembered the movies and suggested we watch them. I guess I was in the mood for some epic Gandalf good-versus-evil.

While watching, we were also struck by this moment, which has become a total meme:

But ultimately, I was kind of underwhelmed! The hobbits irritated me — they were always causing trouble and then having to be saved — and it takes nearly 2 hours for the movie to even feel like it’s beginning. We do plan to forge ahead, and as I recall the movies might get better as they go? (I’m not looking forward the Gollum storyline, though.) Mostly, I will stick with it for Viggo Mortensen:

He is undeniably the best part of these movies — very convincingly (and handsomely) representing what is good about the race of men. (Did I mention how often he saves the hobbits?) It strikes me that Viggo might have been what we loved most in the early 2000s, too. I remember that after the series had concluded, we wanted more of him, renting every Viggo Mortensen movie we could. Well, he made a lot of gritty, sex-filmed movies, but there’s always 28 Days, another film that became a family favorite.

Well, now that I’ve rambled for several gif-filled paragraphs, I should probably make a point. I was thinking that perhaps all this nostalgia-watching I’ve blogged about in recent weeks, particularly with these two films, stems not from quarantine but from family. We were all stay-at-home types growing up (I mean, I was just not cool) and watched a lot of movies together in our “TV room.” We went to the Movie Hut to rent something new, or chose something from our vast collection, and in retrospect that was a very comforting ritual. So it isn’t that I was craving a Jack Black joke or an orc battle — I was missing my family! And thinking about eventual movie nights with my own children.

In other words,

(Name that family favorite film)

As a resident of downtown Jefferson City (across the street from the Capitol), when learning of protests scheduled for Monday evening, I opted to drive home to St. Louis and park my car in my parent’s driveway instead of risking my car, freshly returned from the body shop, requiring a second trip. State Farm would probably stop taking my calls. The good news is that the protests here remained peaceful and limited destruction occurred. Let’s pray it stays that way.

Meanwhile, while making back-to-back drives to and from St. Louis, I did have the opportunity to listen to a lot of radio (and one very long, daily conference call). I thought I’d gather some good tunes that might lift your spirits–or at least make you feel that there are people out there who understand you.

I always kind of hate myself when I like a Kenny Chesney song–but it happens more than I’d like to admit.

There is just something about Tacky Tim (pre-Faith Hill) that cracks me up.

I just really like this song.

I took today’s post title from this.

May we all make it through to next week without completely losing our minds. xo.

The weeks have flown by and added up to years much more quickly than I can countenance. This little guy turned 30 yesterday!

In lieu of parental advice, I’ll include this passage from a letter Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo:

“The age of thirty is, for the working man, just the beginning of a period of some stability, and as such, one feels young and full of energy. But, at the same time, a period of life is passed, which makes one melancholy, thinking some things will never come back. And it is no silly sentimentalism to feel a certain regret. Well, many things really begin at the age of thirty, and certainly all is not over then. But one doesn’t expect from life what one has already learned it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.”

Happy birthday, dearest James! Here’s to your next decade, which hopefully will not include extended periods of mandatory self-isolation, but will instead bring fulfillment and adventure!

Meanwhile, back in the reality of lock-down limbo, we soldier on. Tim and Abbie came to visit last weekend and we had a grand time (I took no photos). I made spicy sesame zoodles with crispy tofu for dinner one night and then made naan bread to go with the DH’s wonderful chicken curry the second night. We got very silly playing a drawing game online with the brothers, and we even got a few chores done. It was a perfect social interlude in our otherwise humdrum lives.

Having visitors inspired a few household improvements. We added pictures to our large mudroom wall:

Honestly, they aren’t so badly arranged as they look in the photo, nor are they too high on the wall. It’s an awkward space to photograph.

As mentioned in a previous post, we removed the stereo from the living room and, at least for the time being, have a corner full of plants.

The stereo removal brightened and enlarged the space nicely. Oddly enough, the living room is the only room in the house amenable to plants, so they are beginning to take over. Anyone need any houseplants?

Finally, here’s an update on my reading and watching activity:

I’m now binge-watching Community on Netflix. I’ve never been one for sitcoms but I can relate to the college setting and to lines like this:

And someday I’d love to say to a student trying to get out of something by crying, “This won’t work. The last time you tried this, I saved a vial of your tears and I’ve been slowly building up an immunity.” As usual, I’m very late to the party, but Community is funny.

I’m two-thirds of the way through Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies and very much looking forward to starting the final book in the series. I’m also reading a fascinating book on Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans, which included deforestation, soil erosion, pollution of water, air and soil, overgrazing, and wildlife and resource depletion, to name but a few. Evidently, we have been ruining the environment since establishing the first permanent settlements. There’s nothing new under the sun.

That’s about it for this week. Have a great weekend!

*Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

As you likely know, we are nearing the 40 week mark and are getting pretty darn antsy over here. Tuesday was my last official day of work, which is a true blessing — no more Zoom calls! I should probably enjoy this blissful time between work and a newborn, but of course that isn’t really how it works. I am deeply uncomfortable and not sleeping!

I spent my first day off reading, dozing, and watching a movie. For lighter reading material, I picked up an Anne Tyler collection and started The Accidental Tourist.

I honestly think the last time I read an Anne Tyler novel I was in middle school (sometimes my advanced reading capacity made for some odd choices), and I thought it was a good time to revisit her as an adult. Well this one is a bit odd — a pretty depressing conceit from the beginning, plus a weirdo protagonist. So far my favorite character is the corgi! But I am chugging along and it’s still better than so much literary fiction, so I will stick with it for now.

Then I watched Annie Hall.

This is how I always felt on large-group Zoom calls.

My mother famously (well, famous in our family) went into labor with me after watching a Woody Allen movie, so we couldn’t help but experiment with this one. So far, no luck, but let’s not forget that these blog posts are pre-scheduled. Who knows what could happen before morning!

I’ll let you know…