Don't Tell Me the Lights are Shining Anywhere But There

Different times of the year really do have their colors. My blog, which looked kitschy-colorful to me in December and January, suddenly became too vibrant for me. Why, when the Earth is about to bless us with all kinds of natural colors, my blog colors became too much, is beyond me, but there you have it. I am giving our eyes a rest for a few months. I wish I could change the colors in my house this easily. Another reason to love the internet. But that's not what I wanted to write about today. The warming weather turns our thoughts to romance.

My beautiful little sister is getting married in May in St. Louis. It is going to be a small ceremony followed by a dinner, and, knowing my sister, it will be thoroughly planned to the last detail. While I applaud her tasteful venue, I can't help but be disappointed that she is missing out on a golden opportunity. Her failure to ask for my advice on where she should marry means that my dream of visiting the Precious Moments Chapel will have to remain just that. Yes, yes, my sister is a grown woman with many responsibilities who can make her own decisions, but when it comes to the big decisions of life, I think I am the go-to girl. After all, why get married in a breakable, finger-printable glass conservatory of flowers in Spring when you can speak your vows in a chapel that is "inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel." I have been fascinated with the place ever since I first heard of it a few years ago. There are Precious Moments figurines everywhere, including in the many, many awe-inspiring murals. Only Jesus seems to be depicted as a normal-headed human. Everyone else is a huge headed doll, including paintings of famous Old and New Testament figures. There is also a mural of children who were "taken too soon." Words will have to fail me since I have never visited and my sister selfishly refuses to give in to my desires.

So we will miss Wedding Island, which along with the famous fountain, was a money making part of the chapel grounds. Apparently we would miss it anyway, since it is closed down now due to a local casino taking the tourists away. But the chapel is still there waiting for any of you (you know who YOU are, MBB and CMB) to make me happy. In the meantime, I will have to make do with this excellent description.

Oscar Semi-Live Blog

PJ suggested I do an Oscar Live-blog, so I'm giving it a try. I have my velour sweat pants on, so I'm ready for the ceremony. They're black. I'm wearing QVC tonight.

I just heard Regis talk to a man he called Xavier Bardem.

My nominee for line of the night so far: Jon Stewart about Norbit's nomination: "Too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good."

My first dress: Jennifer Garner looks beautiful in her tight black sleeveless gown. Quite a necklace, too.

So, Anne Hathaway and Katherine Heigl have just shown up, one after the other, with a red dress with a sleeveless right shoulder and some strange fabric thing on their left shoulders. They look lovely in them, but it seems a strange coincidence. A sweep of the audience reveals many red dresses, too. I guess I should have worn my red velour sweat pants.

Amy Adams is singing Happy Working Song from Enchanted, which, outside of the context of the movie, seems like a really dumb song. I keep hoping the rats and cockroaches are going to show up and help, but no luck.

I was going to go all Joan Rivers on Cate Blanchett's gown, but then I noticed that she is very pregnant, so I guess she is allowed to look like she's going to the beach.

I'm happy about Javier Bardem, who seems far less scary than his character. I guess that's why he just won an award for acting.

Keri Russell looks lovely from the waist down and from the neck up. In between, there's some weird shelf action going on with her dress and her breasts.

I'm counting the third red dress on stage now. It's on the woman who won for animated shorts.

Tilda Swinton has decided to do red hair and a black dress instead of vice-versa. The dress, well, is guaranteed to get her lots of press tomorrow. I'm sorry that the designer was unable to finish it.

Miley Cyrus was wearing...red, and Jennifer Garner's hairstyle.

Tally at 90 minutes in: 3 black dresses, 5 red (if you count Jessica Alba's dark red one)

Okay, my pick for best song is on..Falling Slowly

Rene Zellweger did not wear red, but did wear lots of botox.

Nicole Kidman's dress is nice (and not red), but I'm not sure why she wore Christmas Tree tinsel with it.

Wow. Big production numbers for Enchanted tonight. It's almost as if Disney and ABC have some kind of a partnership.

Love Cameron Diaz's dress, but not a fan of the hair. Everyone seems to be doing this thing with a single curled bang in their face, which I do every day, but not on purpose. But really, the dress is great.

They just had soldiers in Iraq announce the documentary winners. Nice touch. Eat that, Fox News.

Helen Mirren looks gorgeous as always. Daniel Day-Lewis was downright sweet.

So, if they're supposed to end this after 3 hours, why do they still run ads after 8:30? Shouldn't they just give out the last two awards commercial free? This could make me turn cynical.

Woo hoo. I saw the winning movie!

So, in conclusion, mostly nice dresses, but some strange hair. Too much red. All four acting awards went to foreigners. We need to build a fence around Hollywood. The Republicans need to get right on that.

I'll have Polar Bear Tartare with Clay Pot Vegetables Cooked with A Ton of Mint

I stopped watching The Grammys and The Emmys years ago. I will sometimes sneak a peak at the Tonys before bed so that I can see the musical numbers, but I often totally forget they are on. I can't understand how anyone can sit through the entire Super Bowl without lots and lots of breaks. But I love the Academy Awards and I sit through them every year, missing as few moments as possible. I don't know why the Oscars have never fallen by the wayside for me. I'm sure that there's a lot of nostalgia involved. I was raised on a steady diet of awards shows, and even to this day, my mother and sister and I will spend a large fraction of the Oscars on the phone with each other during the broadcast. After all, we can't have other people deciding who looks good and who doesn't for us. And even though this year I've only seen one movie, which is about all I usually have seen since they made the broadcast date in February instead of March, I'm sure that I will have strong opinions about the many movies that I haven't even seen.

A couple of years ago, I got HDTV, which I actually don't make good use of, but I definitely watch the Oscars on it. I get no thrill seeing wrinkles on aging actresses' faces, but I do enjoy seeing details on their gowns that regular television can't pick up.

For a few years, I made dinners where each dish had to have a name (or occasionally a theme) that matched a nominated movie. So, in the past, we have had to endure my Gosford Pork and Million Dollar Baby Back Ribs and Buttermilk Seabiscuits.

I don't think I'll be doing any big cooking this year, but I still like to make a virtual menu. This year's nominees seem to be taxing my limited talents. So, have at it. What should I serve for my imaginary meal? Here are the nominees:

No Country for Old Men
There will be Blood
Juno
Michael Clayton
Atonement

I promise that I will bring the imaginary Pepto-Bismol.

Left Behind

A few weeks ago, I was feeling torn about my primary vote, but very excited about the great choices we had. But something has changed since then, and I'm not having fun anymore. I'm not sure why, but I think the reason might have to do with my age and I'm less than thrilled with that prospect.

I ended up voting for Clinton. I carefully weighed both candidates and found both to be wanting in some areas and strong in others and I couldn't decide. I finally thought to myself, "What is my number one issue?" and I realized it was health care. It came down to Clinton's stronger health care policy. Fair enough, I thought, and cast my vote.

I think I could already feel the groundswell for Obama the morning I cast my vote. I realized that I didn't want to tell anyone who I voted for. I was a little embarrassed. Obama was the cool candidate. I am aware of his charisma, but I am suspicious of charisma. Reagan had charisma and I hated him. Reagan also was the candidate for change. Remember: It's morning in America. Or perhaps you don't remember and that's the problem.

The Clinton voters don't have anything against Obama. They acknowledge the charisma, the caring, the left of center politics. We tend to think more experience might be a good idea, but we like Obama and wish him well. Really we do. The Obama voters LOVE their candidate. They hate Clinton. They didn't seem to at first, but their increasing numbers have made them brave and they've become quite vocal about it to the point that I don't think the double bill I've wished for will happen.

Everytime there's a primary, I hear about the Black/White/Hispanic vote and the man/woman vote, but I haven't heard about any kind of an age gap, and yet my gut tells me that that is exactly what's going on here. I think my suspicion of charisma probably comes from age and experience. There's a part of me that wishes I could join the party, but most of me knows that I can't. Maybe I never could have.

So I'll just get my shawl and wait for the convention.

I'm just not into you, KitchenAid

In the previous post, I chose my beautiful KitchenAid mixer as my number three most important recent invention, but some soul searching has forced me to face an ugly truth: given a choice of life without my mixer or life without my ATM card, I would chose life without my mixer.

Kids, I don't want to frighten you with this story, but there was once a time when you had to decide by 6 p.m. Friday how much money you needed for the weekend. The banks closed at 6 on Fridays (3 o'clock other days) and you had to go in and (usually) deposit your paycheck and take out the cash you thought you needed. The banks were closed on the weekends, and though, by the early 1980s, credit cards were pretty common (though not taken at every store), they didn't give you cash back. Yes, grocery stores and most other stores allowed you to write checks, but restaurants and movies and other places you might want to go on a weekend did not. Sorry, KitchenAid, I just don't want to go back to that. But you'll always be my number four. Until I think of something else.

I will also add another category--the invention I think I would most not want to live without if I got one, so I'm avoiding getting one: GPS for my car.

Thank you, Mr. Edison

My friend Tracey was home last week when her family smelled something burning. They thought it was some musical equipment, and while everyone was investigating the equipment, Tracey saw flames leaping up behind them. The dishwasher was on fire! The fire was quickly put out and everyone was fine. I have been jokingly telling Tracey that she has ruined my life because I now won't leave the house with the dishwasher running. How is it possible that something I didn't even own until about ten years ago has become so necessary to me that just using it slightly differently has caused me discomfort?

That got me thinking about inventions I wouldn't want to be without. This list could probably go on, so I'm looking for three. I'm making it even easier. You can have anything that was normal in homes thirty years ago: television, radio, stove, refrigerator, washer/dryer, lighting. So, that being said, here (I think) are my three:

1. Dishwasher: maybe it is because I went without for so many years, but I love my dishwasher. I've never been a fan of washing dishes, except on cold winter days when the hot water feels good. I love that it makes the dishes look so clean and that it's a place to store them when they're dirty. They're now making dishwashers in the standard size that have two drawers that you can pull out and load with dishes. That way you can wash half your dishes while you are loading the other half with dirty dishes. Genius.

2. My computer: the internet has opened up the world in such a life-changing way that I can barely remember a time when you couldn't answer pretty much every question you ever had. Not too long ago, when someone said, "What was the name of that movie with Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn?" you would either know it or have to call your best trivia-minded friend. Now, a quick trip to IMDB and all questions are answered.

3. My Kitchen Aid stand mixer: this great love took me by surprise about twenty-eight years ago when my mother-in-law bought it for me as a thank you for doing her taxes. She was wise enough to know that we were too cheap to buy one for ourselves and that I would really use it. I have used it ever since and would replace it in a heartbeat if it ever broke.

Things that almost made the list: TiVo! My CD player, my DVD player, my microwave, digital camera.

Things that I have managed to live without so far: Cell phone, iPod

Something that I wish I could manage without: my car

So, what are your three inventions?

Wednesday Sunday Dinner

When I was a child, my Grandmother would cook a special meal every Sunday and invite her three children, their spouses, and her nine grandchildren. Her house seemed huge, though I now realize it was only two bedrooms/one bathroom with a tiny front yard and an even smaller (off-limits to us because of Bodo, the hunting dog) backyard. We cousins had the run of the front yard, the long driveway where Grandma planted sweet peas every summer, the living room and the guest bedroom, where I would be the teacher when we played school. The kitchen was where the women would hang out and help Grandma. The den is where the men would sit and yell at the football games on television. The meals were simple and predictable (I mostly remember fried chicken and pot roast, mashed potatoes and green salad). I loved going and was sorry when we missed a Sunday (my father was a firefighter who often worked Sundays). I didn't understand until I was older how amazing it was that my Grandmother did this. She had a full time Monday to Friday job with Kraft foods. The morning after having dinner for as many as seventeen people, she would get up and take the train into San Francisco.

Every Wednesday, PJ comes over for dinner. Like my Grandmother's Sunday dinners, this routine means a lot to me and I have a lot of memories to go along with it. I'm not quite Grandma, though. My numbers have sometimes swelled to six. My food is not so predictable, and my guests have had to endure a few fads) and a few disasters. Every once in a while, I'm too tired and we get pizza instead of the planned meal. Best of all, PJ buys us a special meal four times a year (Chinese New Year, Shakespeare's birthday, my birthday, and back to school). When we started doing this, about fifteen years ago, Marin and Cameron were in middle and elementary school. Now they are college graduates who have moved away, but Cameron is back in the Bay Area and joins us once again. Over the years, we have missed a surprisingly small number of these Wednesdays. We sometimes have work obligations, or are sick or on vacation. The day after 9/11, we were too sad and exhausted.

Here's what happens when the same thing is done with such regularity: when I sit down at that table on Wednesday, all of the other Wednesdays are there with me. Marin and Cameron are small again, sneaking Brussels Sprouts back on my plate, PJ is reading us Psalms or a sonnet, Cameron is happy because I made tacos, Cameron is sad because I made a pasta dish, Marin is entertaining us with one of her lists.

I love my quiet, lonely Sundays, and still am in awe of my Grandmother for giving hers up, but I think I understand why she did it because I wouldn't change Wednesdays for the world.

Choo-Choo-Choose Me

I owe apologies to Marin and PJ for all those times I felt that their blogs should be updated more often. Of course, they understand that it came from a place of love. Now that I'm back at work, I wonder how anyone can keep up a blog at all.
It's not just the lack of time, either. I'm too tired to be creative.

But my one day weekend has begun! I spent the first couple of hours catching up with All My Children, and all I can say is that the writer's strike really, really needs to end. The story lines continue, but there are some major lapses of logic, like a character in an insane asylum who has unrestricted access to a phone on the wall (he used it to arrange a murder), and the woman who, knowing she is the target of a sniper, spends time in front of a huge picture window.

My other job for the weekend is to try and pick a candidate for President. This is so strange. I've been voting for Presidents since 1976 and I've never had a real choice before. For better or for worse, the Democrat has been a foregone conclusion by the time California had a choice. Oddly, everyone I know, save one person, is not talking about their choices. All these years, I took it for granted that everyone declared their choices out loud, but that was because we had no choices.

In my liberal Bay Area circle, it seems that it is okay to declare yourself for Obama without being judged. However, a vote for Clinton may mean any of the following: you have fallen prey to the idea of a Clinton dynasty, or you have fallen for an emotional outburst, or strangest of all (from friends born after 1970), you are only voting for her because she's a woman. A vote for Edwards means that you are afraid to back a President who is a woman or who is African-American. It means that you are mainstream and conventional.

I've been spending some time on the three candidates' websites reading about their take on issues. Clinton plans to get everyone out of Iraq, starting immediately, and she has a well thought out plan for Health Care for all. Obama plans to get everyone out of Iraq, starting immediately, and he has a really nice education plan. He's clearly been talking to teachers. There is a nice, hopeful feeling to what he says. Edwards surprised me with his extremely thorough take on pretty much every issue you can think of, and I couldn't find anything I disagreed with. He even had the guts to say that he supports civil unions for homosexuals.

So, what's a liberal Bay Area girl to do? Edwards seems to embody most of what I believe in. But. If I live to my full life expectancy, I've got about 7 more Presidential elections left, and I really have hoped to see a woman and an African-American in the White House in my lifetime. Will there ever be as good a chance as this?

I guess I'm not quite ready to decide yet. I will sit back for a couple more weeks and enjoy this very, very rare occasion of having three candidates that I would be perfectly happy with.

Attend the Tale

No spoilers here. I'm just back from seeing Sweeney Todd, and I surprised myself with how much I liked it. It managed to have quite an emotional punch due to excellent acting by everyone. I found some of the song changes jarring, since I know them so well. I just have one complaint. I think Mr. Burton is deafened by love and should have considered using Marnie Nixon. I also have new respect for Angela Lansbury for somehow staying in tune while playing a character who sounds like she can't sing in tune.

Cockapoos and Tigers and Giraffes. Oh My!

It occurs to me that I'm writing an awful lot about animals, mostly of the food variety. So, of course, I'll add more!

My friend, Patrick, whose blog, The Reverberate Hills (link on the left), is both beautifully written and really funny, kindly linked to me yesterday, promising his readers cockapoo pictures. So, here goes:

That's Madeline on the left and Marcel on the right. I'm crazy about them in a way that is really embarrassing to me. I had not owned a dog since childhood, and after an entire year of researching dog breeds, I settled on cockapoos because they are friendly, long-lived, and good walkers. I pictured that I would have a loyal dog by my side. I did not picture that I would feel so maternal, and I definitely did not picture that my adoration would be amusing to everyone I know. But there you have it. Even I can't always be sensible.

Speaking of sensible, the SF Zoo tiger case is absolutely fascinating to me. Not the tragedy itself, but the reaction to it. I just listened to 90 minutes about it on The Ronn Owens Show and, well, let's put it this way--the lawyer for the young men had better settle out of court. The callers were unanimously sympathetic to the zoo and the tiger. Personally, I think there's plenty of blame to go around, but public opinion is very much against people old enough to know better who possibly visited the zoo with the purpose of taunting a caged animal, possibly with slingshots.

In November, I took our school's ecology club on an overnight trip to the zoo. We had a wonderful time, and I hope those trips can continue after the improvements are made. It does kind of give me the creeps to remember our night walk with very, very dim overhead lights and no flashlights.

As for giraffes, my Winter Break was full of excellent, memorable moments. One was M's annual Christmas cookie exchange, where she makes dozens and dozens of sugar cookies and pastry bags full of icings in beautiful colors. She invites friends and family over and we get to eat, meet, and decorate cookies. I'm not sure how long this party has been going on, but I know it's at least a decade and something I always look forward to. This year, my son Cameron was able to join us, and charmed us all with his beautiful giraffe cookies. I, on the other hand, am incapable of making a giraffe cookie or any animal cookie in anything but its natural colors. Too sensible. I'm glad that my children and friends are not like me.

Excuse me while I return to talking baby talk to my fluffy dogs.