Friday, March 31, 2006

Under the Tuscan Sun

Today, I introduced Gram to the wonder of DVD's. "Oh, this is just like my CDs!" I showed her the main menu and special features. "What's this 'scene selection'?"
We watched Under the Tuscan Sun, which I got her for her b-day. (I moved my DVD/VHS palyer downstairs for her. It was only the second time I've seen the movie the entire way though. It was great to share it with my Gram who, being a disgruntled divorcee who has recently bought a house and each day learns of something else in disrepair, absolutely loved this movie. She said it gave her a new prospective.
When she'd asked what the movie was about, I'd told her it was a love story, without love. She'd been skeptical, but in the end appreciated how Francis finds happiness in herself.

It was a good day. Gram is now referring to her house as a villa.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Clash of the Tits

Story of the day - I'm at the mall picking up a few things, headed to the bookstore to see Matt, the hottie-tottie-book-boy, when I run into another Matt - Matt the gay guys I was kinda friends with for a while. We stop to talk & he tells me he and his "husband" are going through hard times. Apparently gay men suffer the same trials of straight women - Matt's hub kinda cheated on him. We're walking & talking & up walks Joe, Matt's hub. Now, Matt's still kinda upset & I'm trying to make him feel better because, well, I still like to think we're friends.
Joe's always had this thing with not liking Matt to touch boobs. I don't know why. I also don't know why Matt, being gay, is so attracted to boobs...somewhere I have some fairly indecent pictures of him worshiping at mine. My costume last Halloween was a 12 on the 1-10 clevage scale, just because the party was at Matt's & I wanted to freak him out.
Anywho, I offer Matt a free grope if it'll make him feel better. I offered this in front of Joe, knowing he hates it. So, that's how at roughly 3:30pm EST I came to be standing in the center hallway hub of the local mall having my tit squeezed by a gay man.
>never let it be said I'm not giving towards my friends!<

Also keeping abreast of news, I was working on the nightly crossword in the paper. The clue was, "They sometimes clash." Right away I thought, "Titans," but I only had 4 spaces, so I found myself wondering if it had been abreviated into "tits." I cast that idea away as soon as I realized what exactly I was thinking. ...turns out it's "egos," by the by. (I thought tits was funnier.)

Also today, I had the delightful pleasure of being awoken by the local flower company ringing the buzzer to deliver 25 GOREGOUS long stemed, thornless roses! I put them on the kitchen counter, run back to the bedroom to get laundry, start a load, and am just getting ready to hop into the shower when the buzzer rings again. Another vaze of flowers. Also....some baby trees from the Arbor Day Foundation were crammed into my door.
So, what could possible be better than getting 2 bouquets in one morning? Well, it would've been nice if when I'd accepted them & smelled them & thanked the delivery guy I hadn't known they weren't for me. Today is Gram's b-day & I was accepting gifts all morning.
My gift to her was cooking dinner & dessert. Dessert was apple crisp. Gram isn't a big cake eater. And I swear she hid all the birthday candles in preparation for her b-day, so after the apple crisp cooled, I put a tealight in the center. Dinner was Mystery Chicken. The mystery is if it's poisonous. So far so good.
I also got her a copy of Under the Tuscan Sun, which as an embittered divorcee, she HAS to see! We'll be watching it tomorrow afternoon when we won't be interrupted by the entire family calling every 2 minutes to wish her a Happy Birthday.

And finally - Boston ate a 5" strand of ribon. Gram let her play with the string tying the cards to the flowers. Two minutes later, she looks down & all that's left is a slobbery envelope with bite marks where she chewed the ribon off. I told Boston I might as well have gotten a puppy for all the trouble she is - at least I'd have a chance at training a puppy. That cat is impossible!

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

The Great Rescue Operation

I FOUND IT!

I found the mouse book I've been talking about! It's The Great Rescue Operation by Jean Van Leeuwen. It was published back in the early 1980's & is out of print, so you can't just go out to any bookstore and pick it right up, but it really is a great book! If you have kids between 5 & 10, I'd totally recommend this book. My mom read it to me when I was a kiddo & it was one of my faves. It's like Stuart Little, only with more balls.

Also, since I have no karmic insight today, I thought I'd regal you with a quote from A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is the first in a five book series for young adults. I picked it up because the third book is being made into a full length anime movie and I want to read the series so I can anxiously await the English dubbing in 2 or 3 years. (As previously noted, I'm an anime FREAK!)

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.
- The Creation of Ea

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Dear Blog,


Boondocks is awesome.

Are You Afraid?

Last night I finished Are You Afraid by Carla Cassidy. I really got into this book, I couldn't put it down until I was too tired to make out words and I finished it in just 2 nights.
Are You Arfaid is the story of Dr. Jessie Langford, a psychologist specializing in helping people cope with fears. She has a private practice and also a radio show titled "Are You Afriad of the Dark?"
Ironically, Dr. Jessie is afraid of the dark, a lingering phobia resulting from an experience when she was 16 and a serial killer abducted her, raped her, sliced her repeatedly with a knife, then tried to burry her alive in a grave.
Jessie, obviously, escaped, but hears later still carries both physical and emotional scars. Nearing the 18 year anniversary of her ordeal, a new serial killer has begun raping and killing women in her town and leaving them to be found by unsuspecting passersby.
The hero, Jake Merridan, is a detective working on the case of the serial killer. He becomes involved with Jessie when she begins to recieve unusual phone calls that she feels threatened by.
Jake and Jessie must work through their pasts to overcome their emotional baggage, overcome their fears, and find a life where they can live safely together, which means Jake must find a killer who is terrorizingyoung women, and discover who may be terrosizing Jessie with terrors from her past.

I really loved this book! You might want to check it out. It's romance/suspense and just came out this month. On a pesronal note, Carla is a hun & I'd appreciate anyone supporting her by picking up her book and giving it a chance.

Days of My Life

My least favorite chore, which I reserve for Tuesday mornings, is cleaning the litter box. Trash goes out Tuesday night to be collected Wednesday morning, so litter needs to go out Tuesday if the house isn't gonna stink for another week.

The ritual of changing said litter box is accompanied by Boston's ritual of being the first to use the clean litter. Every time I change the box, she's sitting beside me, waiting for me to finish, so she can move in before Thisbee comes sniffing around.

Today, as I'm opening a new 40lb bag & pouring litter in, with Boston beside me, ready to dirty what I've just made clean, out of nowhere comes the thought - "Like litter into the catpan, these are the days of my life."
I go through the effort to make it clean and not smelly, and Boston can't wait to sully my efforts, even if she's gone immediately prior to me approaching the box. And the job's never done. I can scoop out the shit every single day, it's still gonna come to the point where it's beyond salvagable & I have to change everything.
I think this is a much better analogy than "sand through the hourglass." I mean, you can just flip the hourglass back over. Same sand, same amounbt of time, same outcome. Catlitter suits much better. And so I ask - what is YOUR life analogy?

In other news, I hit the bookstore today. I got Christine Feehan's Dark Demon, Anime Insider (I'm an anime freak), Farm and Zoo, a cute as hell childrens book with pictures like a bathtub with a muddy towel hung over one side and the question: Who bathes in mud?" You lift a flap covering half the page & the pink tub becomes a pig and the muddy towel is its muddy head. Can't wait to give it to my little bro! While looking at kiddie books - I was trying to find a perticular one, but I couldn't remember the title or author. I kinda get a kick outta buggin the boys there to help me find stuff, lol.
This book was probably the first book without pictures on every page that I truely loved. It's about 3 mice friends and one of them goes missing. The other 2 look all over for the third, finding clues that finally lead them to a park where there long lost friend sits in a stroller wearing barbie doll clothes. They're elated to find him & tell him now he can come home with them. He explains a girl found him and has been keeping him as a pet, he's happy in his new life and doesn't want to go back with his friends. His friends are all like, "Dude, we risked out friggin lives for you! I think that bonnett's a bit to tight, get outta the girly clothes and come home with us!" But he doesn't. Immensely sad, but endearing. I wanted to read it again, to my little bro, like my mom read it to me. I'm gonna have to Amazon for it, because the guys at the book store couldn't find it, although Steve remembered reading the same book when he was a kid. Matt thought at first I was talking about the Rats of Nymh, which led to a great discussion where the three of us bonded over our favorite books as a kiddo. Another I loved, which was also made into a great movie - Island of the Blue Dolphins.
The other book I got today, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. I read an article about it in TIME. Basically, a newly divorced woman goes on an Under the Tuscan Sun-esque vacation to Italy to enjoy the food, India to find Nirvana, and ends in Indonesia, where she falls in love. Can't wait to read it, though I don't honestly do too much non-fiction. I'll post how it turns out.

Monday, March 27, 2006

peer pressure

So, I've been blog-hoing for the last few days, reading blogs of friends and remembering my long lost blog from back in the day. I finally caved to the urge and here I am, blogging again.
I'll be more creative later, but for now there's not much to tell.

Right now I'm reading Carla Cassidy's Are You Arfaid. Good book. Good enough to keep me up four hours past I'd planned to be. I'm half way done & will finish tonight. The only reason I didn't finish last night was because the words sorta blurred together into black lines on white paper. It wasn't condusive to my curiosity about the killer catching up to the heroine. Had to give in to the sleep so I could get up this morning and sacrafice myself to Da Man for another day's pay. Ah, life.

To get things rolling, I'll start a meme sorta thing I remember from my old blog on LJ back in the day (which was really only about 3 years ago). Anyone who wants to, ask me 3 questions. Any three questions, and I have to answer. Like truth or dare, without dares - although I'd be willing to accept those as well.