Just might not make it, folks….

A follower of this blog (I know there's a handful of you) might know that I was planning to NaBloPoMo December. It would have been my twelfth time doing a "blog posting month"; I've done eleven (a different month each time) since February 2009. While it's true I've managed a post a day so far this December, I haven't dared sign up for NaBloPoMo this time.  I have a major presentation early in the new year, and though I'd like to make it to the end of the month -- or at least submit a minimum of one hundred posts for 2013 -- frankly, I may fumble when I come down to the wire.

Speaking of which, this has been my favourite song during the past couple of weeks:

There's all sorts of reasons that I like this song. I love the driving rhythm, the it's-not-you-it's-me lyrics (I-know-I-know-I-know you're going to be okay anyway -- ha!). We've all heard that one, right? I love that the Haim sisters look like real people, that they clearly play their own instruments and sing with their own voices.

However, I'm not sure that I feel much affection for the official video for this song. Oh, I get the joke; the Haim girls dump three sweet sensitive types in much the fashion that women are usually dumped, and the guys react in stereotypical feminine floods of tears, but I think the song deserves better. I'm glad I heard it on the radio first, without visuals.

There. At least ninety posts for 2013. But I'm not promising anything...

Making the slow turn

These photos were taken in Stanley Park in New Edinburgh two months apart -- not from the same exact angle, but they do give you some idea of the rather frighteningly dramatic change Hades makes, usually in a couple of weeks. On May 4th, winter had barely departed and the grass and trees dared to become green. It's as if summer comes in a rush, fearful that winter will come back.

Sometimes it does.

But now June is coming to an end. Securely summer. I sat with my family in Zak's Diner in the Byward Market yesterday, watching the crowds stream by: several generations of families in jeans and teeshirts, in to catch the Canada Day kerfuffle up on Parliament Hill this Monday; flocks of young women in bright mini-dresses and impossible heels, en route to the scores of wedding receptions in the city. Elder daughter told of an uncomfortable bus ride cornered by a school-mate from her elementary days, who loudly described her intentions of staying drunk until July 1st (having started on June 28th) and claimed I had dressed her down on the street for smoking. Elder daughter managed to remark that this sounded a bit out of character for me, but doubted this had much impact. Shaking our heads in bewilderment, we held up and swayed imaginary lighters while an old Aerosmith ditty played on the jukebox, startling our waitress. Younger daughter revelled in the thought of no more school until September and ate with more appetite than she has had for months.

I've never cared much for the first six months of the year, despite many happy things occurring during that time: the births of my daughters, meeting the Resident Fan Boy and marrying him two years later. However, June is ending and I can feel the ship that is the ongoing year making the slow pivot through summer to change direction in the autumn and steam back to Christmas. This is the part of the voyage I prefer.

(June 2013 has been my eleventh NaBloPoMo, a project that started with February 2009 and has continued two or three months a year. My twelfth NaBloPoMo will be December 2013, at which time I will have done all twelve months. There will be some posts between now and then -- just not every day. Thank goodness.)

Comedy Cheat #1: Jerry Lewis does the Count.

As you may have noticed, I'm NaBloPoMo-ing again, my eleventh NaBloPoMo as I strive to cover each of the twelve months of the year over five years.  (If all goes as planned, I will finish with December this year.)  Now, the idea of NaBloPoMo is, of course, to blog every day for a month.  This inevitably means that some days I find bedtime is approaching and I need to get something up.  I've learned to have a sort of emergency plan of quick-cheat-posts, and this month, I've pulled together a small collection of comedy moments that have burned into my psyche over the years.

Here's one of the earliest.  Back in the dark ages, we didn't have Netflix, DVDs or even (*gasp*) videos.  If we wanted to see an old film, we either had to wait for it to show up on television, or we had to grab the opportunity should it be screened at an art cinema or at a university.  The latter shows were usually double-features.  When I was quite small, my mother took me to an out-of-way movie house in northern Edmonton to see Bambi which was paired with an old Jerry Lewis comedy. (Heaven knows why.)  Bambi was memorable all right, and I remember nothing of the Jerry Lewis flick except this scene, which I never forgot, along with the music. I haven't seen it since. Until now.

I searched for it on YouTube, using terms such as "Jerry Lewis" "jazz", "business meeting" and "mime", and up it came.  Amazingly, it's pretty well exactly how my childhood self remembered it.  I'm not a huge fan of Jerry Lewis, but this really is comic genius, all set to Count Basie: 

The pendulum is the pits

When January began, we were still in the midst of the twelve days of Christmas.  The snow people made by neighbourhood children grew under layers of new snow.  I can't ever remember snowmen lasting beyond a day or two.  These lasted for weeks.  However, the pitiless pendulum of the new year has been swinging back and forth between piles of white, and pewter freezing rain.

Last week, I carefully picked my way around the slick streaks and solid slippery puddles along Iris Crescent and saw that the cheerful and slightly askance couple who seemed to be cautiously watching to see what the Accent Snob would do last month had been reduced to emaciated pillars this month.

The pendulum swung again, and a truck-cum-snow-plough was trapped on Bertrand Street one Saturday evening.  Someone had drawn a triumphant smile in the blade-devouring drift.

This week, we've had hip-high hills of white washed away (nearly) by rain which was dried (nearly) by howling winds this morning before the temperatures dropped, freezing treacherous smears across the sidewalks.  And we've still got February to come.  March and April usually aren't that much better here in Hades.

This is my tenth NaBloPoMo.  I began with February 2009, followed by September that same year. In 2010,  I did March, August, and November. I blogged for the whole months of April and October in 2011, and my NaBloPo-months for 2012 were May and July.  For almost each month in which I've participated, I've gone through my diaries to see what patterns emerged over my years of journalling.  Looking over past Januarys was rather depressing.  It's such a damn dark month, mostly in various hues of grey.  I seem to have had rather more friends die in January than other times of the year, but I don't feel like checking, thank-you very much.  I suppose January has usually been a time for facing reality for me.  Too bad the light is so poor.

 I plan to NaBloPoMo in June.  I'll still be blogging in the meantime, but not nearly as regularly. I'm tired, and there are things that need doing before I come out swinging again.

Lilacs in Russia

The new (well, slightly-used) version of Blogger offers a way of accessing statistics about your blog, and I gather that yesterday, after four and a half years as a blogger, I posted my 500th post-it note from Hades  -- albeit not in Hades at the time. 

I used to check my statistics regularly through a Google service.  It was a humbling experience, and when I lost the link after a virus mishap, I really didn't waste much time mourning.  Now, I find it interesting (and still damn humbling) to have a gander at my Blogger statistics whenever I'm participating in NaBloPoMo --- chiefly because my readership is up slightly at that time.

It's a wee bit mystifying as well.  Most of my hits are people searching for something else, usually an image.  I gather they stumble across my blog for a matter of seconds and move on in their pursuit of . . . .lilacs.  What's even stranger is that the vast majority of these lilac-seekers seem to be living in Russia.

If one of you Russian lilac-fans care to pause and tell me the significance of lilacs in the former Soviet Union (other than the fact that they seem to grow well there), I'd be delighted.

There are a lot of tricycle fans out there as well.  Also people looking for pictures of Charles and Diana, but I've known about you lot for years.  Time to move on, wouldn't you say?

Fixing my little red wagon

This is, I believe, my eighth NaBloPoMo, and for seven of the eight months covered, I've gone wading through my old diaries to look at that particular month over the years of my misspent life. (Couldn't do August because I was in Victoria at the time, and my diaries were in Hades.) It's a surprisingly depressing exercise, because although I do stumble across happy memories, I also run smack into unpleasant ones, and frankly, that just makes the loss of the happier times sting more. However, I'm nothing if not slightly obsessive-compulsive, so I hauled out the dusty beaten notebooks to go through past Mays.

May has always been a problematic month for me, since I associate it with struggling to be ready for the summer and always falling short. When I was in school, it meant leaving the safety of the known for the unknown. It wasn't that I was particularly happy in any given grade, it was just...I'd gotten used to it, y'know? When I was in university, it meant my courses were over and now I was faced with the task of trying to get a summer job. Now, it's a case of setting up stuff for younger daughter, and never feeling I'm getting it right.

Strolling through those past Mays, I did find points of light:  younger daughter was honoured at district-wide school awards ceremony when she was seven; elder daughter was identified as gifted in a long-past May.  (Actually, the second item was a double-edged sword in the long-run, but how lovely to hear only positive things from a developmental psychologist!)  Most Mays, though, were just darn stressful.

I'm thinking in particular of the May just before the Resident Fan Boy got hired by the federal government.  He had been let go from a small private law firm the previous September and in fact, went in to apply for Unemployment Insurance benefits six hours after seeing his dead mother in her hospital bed.  Eight months of uncertainty followed.  We had just taken on a mortgage, of course, (no kids as yet, thank goodness) and I was midway through a part-time Master's degree.  Each month, we waited for the UI payments to be cut off, while I got what sub-teaching and short-term contracts I could.  By May, the RFB was in despair, and I was struggling to stay afloat emotionally and spiritually.  I attended Quaker meetings and was working myself through the Ira Progoff books on journalling, which included the concept of the seven-syllable mantra.  So I found myself writing way more revelatory diary entries than usual (frankly, I squirm a bit re-reading them) and making up seven-syllable meditations such as: "waiting for the fog to lift", "fork in the road will appear" and rather less obvious, "steps go down to the water" (from a school memory -- I was looking for meaning anywhere).

I was also listening to Jane Siberry, and her latest album at that time was Bound by the Beauty which included a song called "The Life is a Red Wagon" which seemed to fit just what the Resident Fan Boy and I were going through.  With a start, I realized that the title contained seven syllables.  A few weeks later, the long agonizing wait ended with the Resident Fan Boy's new job -- which eventually took us to Hades.

Watching the video so many years later, I'm startled to recognize younger daughter's face and mannerisms in Jane Siberry's performance.  Maybe there's meaning in that.

Maybe not.



You watch the slow train moving through the city late at night
adjusting back and forth against the darkness and street lights
I know that you're feeling bad but I'm glad you didn't lie
easy to get caught up...but you know,
you can always you can always
you can always walk away

the life is the red wagon rolling along
the life is the red wagon simple and strong
the life is the red...is the red...oh, it's no big deal
but when the feet are draggin'
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh...
you pull for me
and I pull for you

past the teeming marketplace and the blur of faces there
past the silent dockyards and the darkness looming there
maybe it won't work this time but that's the risk you take (and you want to
take it)
and just as long as it feels right doesn't matter
just as long as...doesn't matter
gotta feel good even though you don't know why

When we alteration find

"Samhain", I just learned today, translates roughly into "summer's end". As cold as the last week has been (I've been finally driven into wearing coats and capes), this afternoon was sunny and warm. I popped down to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for our infamous "Witches' Fingers". The store was a zig-zagging of carts, each with at least two pumpkins in them.

As has become my tradition in NaBloPoMo's, I've spent a bit of the month going through past journals and checking ancient Octobers. As when checking past Februarys, Septembers, Marches, etc. (October is the seventh month I've NaBloPoMo-ed), this has been an ambivalent exercise. They don't call it "nostalgia" fer nuthin'. It can hurt to look back. So much has vanished forever.

Each time I go diary-diving, I check to see if a theme emerges. It turns out that October is a complicated month. Several possibilities ambush me: "stress", "momentum", "in progress", "aftershock", even "haunted".

I've always thought of October as the month when we establish equilibrium; after the adjustments of September, we hit cruising altitude.

My journals tell a different story. I look at samples of our schedules, particularly when the girls were in preschool and elementary school and wonder how on earth we coped. I see myself sinking under the load of keeping things up and running by myself when the Resident Fan Boy was in another province. And I see worlds crumbling around us: someone close to us had an abortion in a bygone October; another friend lost her pregnancy in another October. A baby born next door died in less than twenty-four hours; we received word that a marriage we had thought impregnable had fallen to pieces.

A theme for October?
Shift?
Careen?
Lurch?

It's not all bad, of course. October is cool and colourful and there's the thrill of a long line of Hallowe'ens: my childhood ones and those of my children.

And the sweet, long-lost memories of my girls as very small children. Elder daughter was, at age two, having such a good time at Sunday school that she ordered me to "Go home!" She then decided to soften the dismissal: "Go home, dolling..." Younger daughter in a past October when she was about four or five, snuggled into a towel that had been warmed up for her in the dryer: "Mmmmmn...you love me!" Seeing me looking thoughtful that same month, she tucked herself next to me on the couch: "Don't worry, Mum, it will be all wight..."

And as this present October slides away forever, I find myself thinking of one of my favourite poets, Phyllis McGinley, musing about her own teenaged daughters many years ago:

Neither my friends nor quite my foes,
Alien, beautiful, stern and clannish,
Here they dwell, while the wonder grows:
Where in the world did the children vanish?
Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
These are my daughters, I suppose.
But where in the world did the children vanish?

Phyllis McGinley: I should write a post about her, some time...

The not-so-soote shoures of Aprille

I entered the chapter room of the cathedral with elder daughter (then six), pushing younger daughter (then two) in her stroller. My heart and stomach sank as I felt that old familiar suffocating pressure of barely repressed hatred emanating from Bête Noire (whom I've described in a previous post) who was studying the bookshelves. Demeter offered her hand to his wife who ignored her and greeted the cousins who had entered with us. We retreated to the other end of the room; Demeter was white with shock and hissing her indignation.
"Mama, please..." I whispered.
"They can't hear me."
"Yes, but the girls can."

That had the desired effect and in a mercifully short time, the little procession of family mourners made their way to the front pews. I brought up the rear, coaxing younger daughter along. The Resident Fan Boy sat on the aisle next to elder daughter's first godmother, then me with younger daughter, elder daughter next to her grandmother, the two cousins, and finally the Holy Family (the RFB's term for the Bête Noire, his wife and children). The body of my late father-in-law was escorted in by six of his brother priests clad in their black cassocks, their surplices left off for this Maundy Thursday. We rose, and I turned, then remembering it wasn't a wedding, studiously cuddled younger daughter, using her as a buffer against the hurt and the hostility. She leaned forward, gazing at the lit candles on the stripped altar, murmuring: "Birthday, birthday..." I prayed she wouldn't burst into song.

During the recessional, I held the Resident Fan Boy's arm as he followed the casket into the late afternoon sunshine pouring through the open west doors of the cathedral. Younger daughter held his other hand, goosestepping merrily to Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary. I glanced over my shoulder to elder daughter, whose tears glistened in gold rivulets down her cheeks as the sun caught her face.

Another uncomfortable hour at the reception. The Bête Noire's wife had set up court in one corner of the chapter room, while I flitted around chasing children and greeting whom I could. After a discreet message from First Godmother, who had been aware of the rift for years and who had never mentioned it to either party, awkward arrangements were made for the bewildered cousins to join the Holy Family for drinks at their hotel, then have dinner with us.

I escaped as the crowd dwindled and with relief, stepped out of the side entrance into a soft spring evening at sunset.

Godmother Two had left a casserole, a true sign of love from one who hated to cook to another who felt the same. When the cousins arrived, the talk was of the service, how father-in-law would have loved the theatricality and symbolism of the somber black guard of brother priests and the Maundy Thursday setting. The Resident Fan Boy told of elder daughter's reaction to the stained glass window in the modern chapel, a recent addition to the cathedral: "That's not what God looks like!" On hearing this, elder daughter made a bee-line for the study and emerged some minutes later bearing this portrait: "The good things come from his hands and the bad things come from his feet," she explained.

This is the sixth month I have "Nablopomo-ed", and for four of the previous five, I have gone through the rather painful "Mirror of Erised" exercise of leafing through old journals in search of a kind of unifying theme for the given month in my own http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflife. November is preparation, February limbo, September transition, and March crisis. April, since it comes right after March, seems to be a time when the crises blow up in my face, or I end up exploding myself. What shall I call this? Eruption? Outburst? Would "effervescence" do? Maybe not.

How about the "outpouring" of April? It's a time of the first thunderstorms of the year here in Hades, a time when, if I'm to learn anything from my journals, it's best not to take too much initiative, since there's that increased risk of being blown sky-high. My next Nablopomo month should be October. In the meantime, I hope to keep blogging, not in a steady downpour, but in intermittent showers.

♪Just bitchin' and mopin' and sinkin' and brayin'♫

I'm battling with my inner bitch today. This afternoon was the last of the online chats that form a part of the online course I've been taking in genealogy this month. There were four chats, one at the end of each week.

Now, I'm not great at online chats. I'm not even that crazy about instant messaging. It's like conversation with a ticking timer. Online chats are kind of like cocktail parties. With the Loose Women (if you're British) or The View (if you're American).I don't like either show. They're talking a million miles a minute, overlapping each other, about things that usually hold little interest for me, unfortunately exactly like this month's chats.

As it happened, I only made it to two of the chats, the first because I forgot it was in Greenwich Mean Time. There's no excuse for this; I've taken a course from this company before -- I plead temporary insanity. I missed the third chat because I failed to receive the week's lesson and I was damned if I was going to subject myself to an online chat if I hadn't even done the assignments. So I spent part of this week doing two weeks' worth of lessons, then glumly presented myself at the final chat.

They chatted, all right. About the snow in Britain. About so-and-so's birthday vacation to Tenerife. About getting dad to look after the kids to so she could do her genealogy research, lol. I got up and made myself a snack. Sat down, checked the printout and saw I'd missed nothing. Checked my email and surfed a little. When I looked again, they were sharing platitudes about the importance of organization in family research and explaining to someone else what IMHO meant.

I'm pleased to say that the course I took last spring wasn't like this, although I didn't like the chatroom aspect then much either. It's useful for enforcing assignment deadlines, but that's about it.

This course wasn't a waste of time (she says hastily). I found small, tantalizing records of a branch of my family who lived in the village of Great Torrington in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I discovered the difference between a tanner and a leather dresser -- my great-great-great-great-grandfather was the latter. And I learned never ever to take an online course in November. Especially when you're doing NaBloPoMo. Which I don't think I'll ever do again in November either....

Remembering Novembering

Back in the nineties, when my girls were very, very young, I used to record "A Prairie Home Companion" off the Seattle public radio station (which we could access from Victoria), so I could listen to it at my leisure throughout the week. "PHC" was so saturated with music, skits and stories, that a single listening didn't suffice, and besides, I found it hard to settle down and give it my full attention on a Saturday night. I remember a kind of November when the streets in Victoria were coldly damp and the air full of a sort of grey/gold light from the almost winter sun shining through the clouds. I was hurrying to wherever I was going with my Walkman on, listening to Garrison Keillor repeating emphatically: "Be prepared for something wonderful to happen..."

This is the fifth month I've "NaBloPoMo"-ed, and almost each month I've done this, I've hauled out my journals from the past twenty years and read entries of the month in question. I wasn't able to do this for August 2010 because I was three thousand miles away from my diaries, but for each of the other three months - February and September of 2009, and March 2010 - a theme has seemed to emerge. My past Februaries seemed frozen in limbo. Septembers were months of transition, and Marches rife with crises.

Novembers? Well, they have been spent in preparation, mostly for Christmas of course, but they seem to be a period for things that aren't quite due, but soon will be: December seminars that I quaked about teaching, school field trips and projects, my own children's being. November was the month in which I underwent amniocenteses and saw my children for the first time on the monitor during ultra-sound. In the case of my elder daughter, it was a time of joy and wonder; during the second procedure, my fluid started to leak and I spent twenty-four miserable hours wondering if I'd lost my younger daughter.

Looking through my journals is not an easy thing to do. I'm hit with waves of nostalgia and regret, bewilderment at the motives of someone whom I am no longer. There are flashes of joy and warmth, though. Memories of friends, of concerts, of things shared, and pleasures savoured alone.

Two gems, one from each daughter's earlier years:

We discovered, having moved into the neighbourhood of Fairfield near downtown Victoria, that the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies were an easy walk away. Elder daughter, then at age two, persisted in calling it "Forgiveness Day".
Younger daughter had received a gift of the book Angelina and Alice from the Angelina Ballerina series.
"I can read it," she told me earnestly, "because I was a mouse..." (And so she was. For Hallowe'en.)

In a few cases, I had mentioned music that reminded me of particular times. Here are two songs that, for me, belong to two different Novembers:

Oh, gosh. So much coming at me. Every time I look around... I'm going under....

Well, that was...interesting....

Now here's the odd thing. The handful of you who check in with me here know that my younger daughter lives with the label PDD-NOS, a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum. Today is Communication Shutdown Day (along with All Saints' Day and National Vegan Day, but never mind that), so the idea is to cut yourself off from the internet, or at least from Facebook and Twitter, so you can share that sense of isolation that someone on the autism spectrum faces every day.

I guess I'd have to be more addicted to Facebook than I am to experience a real sense of being cut off from humanity. I "tweet" about once a month and sadly, don't even get so many emails that I can't go without checking for a day. I'm also old enough to remember life when houses without PCs were the norm.

However, I do intend to NaBloPoMo this month for the fifth time, so participating in a computer-free day is a challenge. If I stayed up, I could simply post one stroke past midnight. NaBloPoMo is on Pacific Daylight Time, so my post would read "November 2nd" at my blog, and "November 1st" at NaBloPoMo.

Given that my constitution gave up on party hours years ago, though, I simply unplugged the computer at 9 pm last night and logged back on twenty-four hours later. That will have to do. Oh yes, and I did donate and "x"-ed out my profile picture at Facebook.

Did dropping out of the so-called social network teach me anything? Well, depressingly enough, I got a lot more done. Did it teach me more about the challenges of autism? Well, no. I live here with my daughter in the outskirts of Autismland (a suburb of Hades). Taking away the computer doesn't teach us more about rejection than we already knew.

Gotta fly. No, really.

It's 8 am in Victoria and we leave for the airport at 10:30. I'm typing this quickly between laundry loads before hurling myself at the vacuuming. Leaving a house-sit is a bit like trying to remove all traces of yourself from the scene of a crime, really. The four Schnauzers (two of them diabetic and blind) may make that a bit more challenging. I don't have time to explain; I suppose it might make a great post --- when I can laugh about it.

Anyway, once again, Eden Kennedy of NaBloPoMo, the post-counter is claiming I've only posted 30 posts for the month of August. Thirty-one, Eden Kennedy, I've counted. All submitted before midnight PDT. So I'll be taking my completion badge, thank-you very much. Just not now. I have to fly.

If it's all the meme to you...

Two more blog posts to go for NaBloPoMo and I'm running out of time. I have to pack, clean up the remnants of four Schnauzers (two blind and diabetic -- oh please don't ask...) and vamoose from this house-sit by 11 am PDT.

The deliciously desperate Belgian Waffle just did a meme at her excellent blog, and I haven't a hope (nor the time) to try to equal her effort, so I'm just rushing through it:

Favourite time of day: Twilight, when the sun has just set, the first stars are timidly appearing in the greeny-blue darkness, and no one has drawn the curtains yet, so you can walk by and glimpse everyone's quotidienne.

Where and when did you meet the love of your life?: Details here.

What three words would your friends from outside the blogging world use to describe you? Persistent. Private. Witty (that's why they're my friends).

What country would you like to visit and why? Well, I've visited England and long to go again. I've never been to either Wales or Scotland, which is a crying shame, given my ancestry.

What's your favourite dish to cook? Um, this would actually involve my liking to cook, wouldn't it? I do fabulous pies, all evidence this summer to the contrary.

Salt or sugar? Sugar. Duh.

What are your favourite make up and beauty items? Not that it does any good, but I generally wear liquid eyeliner and waterproof mascara at the very least. To offset my suede-blue eyes, y'understand. ♪Here she comes again. See her dancin' 'neath the starry skies...♫
Sorry, where was I?

What are your favourite flowers? Roses. They're simple and complex at the same time.

At what time of your life were you happiest and why? One blissful week when I was fifteen and felt I belonged. If heaven exists, that's what it will be.

Memes are meant to be passed on. G'wan. I dare ya.

Wasp-washing

I'm bushed, unlike the indefatigable wasps that keep clustering on the table leg near the deck chair where their hive was before I blasted it with the hose a couple of nights ago. Every evening, I wait until sunset, then wash them away again. They keep coming back. I have several posts aborning, but I must sleep.

Is wasp-washing like straining at gnats? Is this why I'm so exhausted?

A solid girl like me

We're running into a week of hot days for Victoria. "Hot" in Victoria means high twenties (Celsius) which means upper to mid-thirties here in Saanich. I struggled to somehow get the large front yard and simply enormous backyard adequately watered, as we'll be out tomorrow evening watching The Taming of the Shrew on the Camosun College campus (where we'll probably be cold). Inside, younger daughter was delighting to the 1965 television version of Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella which features one of the best songs ever written about falling in love ("Ten Minutes Ago"); one of the truest songs about longing ("Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful") and one of the most painfully funny songs about how men unoriginally keep falling for the pretty girls ("Stepsisters' Lament"). With all that damn watering, I barely have enough time to post something before midnight PDT, so I'm posting the 1957 version of the last song with Alice Ghostly and Kaye Ballard:

Not gonna make it

My blog is on Hades time (EDT) and I'm house-sitting on Victoria time (PDT), so if you're wondering why there are not posts for every day in August at my actual blog, let me assure you, that at NaBloPoMo, the dates are correct --- so long as I post them by midnight PDT.

However, I'm not going to finish the post upon which I've embarked tonight. So I'm cheating and posting a YouTube video.

I'm not a country music fan, but I adore this song. I do not adore this video. If I had my way, I'd post a clip from the late lamented A&E programme By Request, back when A&E actually meant "Arts and Entertainment". On her appearance, Trisha Yearwood performed this song with the songwriter Kim Richey, plus one of my favourite singer/songwriters Mary Chapin Carpenter. It was fabulous. The vocal here is also fabulous, so I recommend closing your eyes and ignoring the video, which is inoffensive to the point of being bland and pointless:

I'll endeavour to produce a real post tomorrow, I promise!

Audience participation

Mary Ann Johanson has asked at her blog Flick Filosopher about her readers' preferred way of viewing movies. Since I'm attempting NaBloPoMo again, I'll spare her my natterings at her blog and witter on here on my blog:

This question has come up on other blogs and I'm bemused by the replies. On one side, we have the DVD viewers who decry the irritations of price, timing, and people who behave as if they're at home watching television themselves. On the other, we have those who like the cinema "experience": the concession, the big screen, the special effects if the movie has 'em.

I have a cinema preference myself, but it's mainly for the shared experience. Sure, I want to throttle the guy who repeats every joke, or the teenager sticking his feet through to my armrest, or the couple who are chatting (and are so offended when requested to stop!). However, my favourite movie memories have involved being part of the audience reaction.

I was lucky enough to see Singing in the Rain for the very first time with a university student audience, all howling with laughter at Donald O'Connor's acrobatic mishaps as he sang "Make 'Em Laugh". I saw my first Ginger Roger/Fred Astaire musicals as part of a festival for the same, and watched delightedly as a couple rose from their seats afterward and executed some pretty fancy footwork in their exit up the aisle. I recall the silent boyish awe of a row of nineteen-year-old boys eating up ET and the stunned gasp during the opening scene of Star Wars as that enormous Empire warship passed...and kept on passing....

This past year, I experimented with the looping device at my local arts cinema to see if I could catch the dialogue better. I can, but I miss the chuckles and sniffles around me. I'd rather miss a few words than be shut off from the connection around me, even if that means the risk of wanting to throttle someone.

Kinda like my rationale for marriage, I guess.

A blazing penny for your thoughts

It's cool and overcast, just before 9 am PDT on a Sunday morning in Cook Street Village. As I hurry down the hill under the ancient chestnuts, the sun is a penny rising on my left, promising to eventually burn off the sea mist.

A younger woman waiting for her chai latte examines the newspaper clipping of today's horoscope which dangles from the counter.

"I don't like her," I say cheerfully, nodding toward the photo of the astrologist, "She hates Tauruses." (As indeed she seems to; in yesterday's paper, she promised me increased stress and rarely has a nice thing in store for us Bulls.) Chai Lady behaves as if I have not spoken, or even if I'm not standing right next to her. Possibly not from around here. Or shy. Or deaf. Or determined not to acknowledge a lowly drinker of mocha lattes. I stop making mental excuses for her and find my favourite table.

This is my one chance this summer to sit by myself on the veranda of the Moka House, an independent coffee shop which has flourished defiantly to spite the Starbucks across the street.

Our eight-week house-sit has turned into a see-saw affair. You may have guessed this by the infrequency of my posting, but giving my recent posting history, maybe it's not all that evident.

Oh, the home-owners are nice enough people, but as far as I can figure, they're that most dangerous combination: scattered control freaks. I'd go into more detail, but I've just learned they want us back in the house tonight (yes, we've been out --- it's a long story...), which means I have access to a reasonably quick computer (unlike my dear mama's dial-up), which means I can try my admittedly hare-brained scheme of attempting NaBloPoMo again. My hostess, for want of a better word, has sworn we have the house until August 31st. Given recent events, which I'll go into later (maybe), I'm pretty damned cautious about this. However, for now, let's pretend that I'll have the house-sit for the entire month of August and therefore can attempt to post in the blog every day. Keep your fingers crossed.

I sip my mocha latte and watch the comings and goings along Cook Street. If I were out here an hour later, I'd see the occasional older lady dressed for one of the several churches along Quadra Street. (I doubt Chai Lady would answer them either.) However, it's 9:15 on a Sunday morning, so I see a different class of worshipper, dog-walkers, ear-budded joggers and brisk pedestrians. And coffee and chai sippers, of course, attending service uneasily side by side in this funky coffee shop.

I see them all very well. That's when I notice that two of the most ancient chestnuts of all have been removed since I was last here, replaced by a hopeful adolescent sapling all strapped up and supported and surrounded by baby shrubs. What will be missing this time next year?

Gotta go. I can see the amber lights of the blazing penny sun reflected in the parked cars. It's actually trying to put out some heat. Someone may be missing me by now. Have you? I do hope so...

Yet another blogger nattering on about the Oscars...

This will have to be quick, as elder daughter will soon rouse herself from her Saturday slumber and turf me off the computer, supposedly for scholarly reasons...

I should mention, in case it has passed unnoticed, that I am participating in my third NaBloPoMo. After accepting its challenge to blog every day of the months of February and September 2009, I am tackling my longest month to date. Wish me luck.

We are already plotting the purchase of fatty snack foods to accompany our viewing of the 82nd Academy Awards. Okay, let's face it; the Oscars get less surprising each year -- we don't even get the delicious fashion disasters of old because all the stars consult with experts beforehand.

Yet, each year, I feel somehow compelled to view a least some of the nominees. I think it helps me to judge the appropriate moment to hurl said fatty snacks at the screen when a less worthy candidate gets handed the gold naked guy.

In brief, Sandra Bullock will win for best actress. This is because, for all the hyperbole, these awards are like a high school popularity contest and everybody likes her. For the record, I think Meryl Streep should win, based unscientifically and unfairly on the three Best Actress performances I've actually seen (also saw Carey Milligan in An Education and Helen Mirren in The Last Station). I managed to see Streep in Julie and Julia, and she was bloody amazing. Yes, I know she gets nominated nearly every year, but I think she's only actually won once.

Jeff Bridges will win for best actor. Again, I've managed to see two of the performances in this category, that of Colin Firth in A Single Man, and George Clooney in Up in the Air . Clooney was very good (as basically himself, as far as I can tell) and Firth, damn it, should get it. He won't.

The Academy, in its desire to reel in more television viewers and commercial revenue, has nominated 10 films this year, including some more popular ones. I have seen four of them, and have no desire whatsoever to see the rest: An Education is well-made, but not particularly memorable; A Serious Man is memorable and as weird as all blazes (in a good way); Up is an instant classic and should win the Animated Film category (a category in which, of course, given younger daughter, we have seen four out the five nominations). The film I keep thinking about and which I'd really like to win is Up in the Air: strong performances, strong writing. It won't. It's a head-to-head between The Hurt Locker and (gawd help us) Avatar.

I've managed to see one blessed Foreign Film nomination this year (which is one better than last year). If The White Ribbon wins, however, I'll be mightily pleased. It was remarkable, and another film that haunted me for a long time after viewing.

For me, the most exciting category this year will be Best Animated Short Film. This is because (sound the trumpets) I have actually seen all five nominations! Younger and I saw A Matter of Loaf and Death (the latest Wallace and Gromit outing) last autumn at the Ottawa Animation Festival, and The Flick Filosopher (gawd love 'er) has posted links to the other four nominees at her always controversial and entertaining blog. Hurry on over there and have a look. We adore and worship Wallace and Gromit at this house, but I'm rooting for Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, a twisted offering from Ireland which combines beautifully detailed computer animation with more traditional animation. The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) (from Spain) will probably win; it's produced by Antonio Banderas, for gawd's sake, and as I've said, Oscar Night is nothing if not a popularity contest. (Actually, I'm fine with La Dame winning, too; it's very well done.)

Gotta go; our Norton Update is acting up -- it may be time for our weekly computer virus attack...