I'm in Movie Heaven

I love going to movies, and hadn't been for months. Yes, there are theaters in Vermont, two within a dozen-mile drive of my house, but driving 12 miles in Vermont means going over hill and dale, crossing rivers and covered bridges, and braving snowstorms and snow-packed and icy roads when you haven't put on studded snow tires because you are driving south soon. It also means that everyone who sees you will, if you go alone, wonder why you are not with SO, and if you happen to go with another friend, will elicit rumors that SO is not in the picture, and if SO is around and you manage to find time to go together, you still have to endure the rather dark and dingy theater and, if you happen to go to the alternative movie theater, the faux intelligentsia, who affect a disheartening combination of unmended clothing and unkempt hair, all the better to hide their trust funds.

Here in Nashville I can go easily, and often, and anonymously, and I do.

Day 1: Twilight - it's amazing how the infusion of a few plot points helps a phenomenally weak storyline - and how the other actors kept straight faces when the vampire foster father Carlisle showed up in his white Kabuki makeup. Hello? Didn't anyone notice he is obviously a vampire?

Day 2: Slumdog Millionaire - how I loved this, despite several way-coincidental and unlikely plot points - the filming and the actors were so good, I didn't care.

Day 3: Inkheart - a movie that should have been magical, with wonderful actors (Fraser! Mirren! Broadbent! Bethany! Sirkus!) and a cool plot, but fell woefully flat - camera angles? direction? pacing? soundtrack?

Day 4: Last Chance Harvey - how can you go wrong, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson? You can. He's a grumpy sad sack, his daughter's wedding scenes excruciating, and we could perhaps swallow either the age, height, or temperament difference, but not all of them. Even the magic that is Emma Thompson couldn't save this misconceived script and unfortunate miscasting.

Day 5: Australia - if you want to feel like a kid at the movies again, here it is - all that wonder and seat-gripping tension all rolled up in one spectacular package, with the glorious Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, the wonder of the Australian countryside, and an astoundingly beautiful part-Aboriginal child. I loved every minute, even the unlikely ones.

Day 6: Gran Torino - Clint Eastwood deserves an Oscar for that muted growl alone - his movie is brilliant in places, self-indulgent in others - but the character he plays has the same specific symptom of the ailment that ended my father's life, and this awakens a pain I'd thought long ago dissipated. So I cried quietly in the dark. Which, in a way, can be healing.

And on Day 7 I rested.

Note: And at the end of it all, which did I enjoy the most? 1-2-3 would have to be Slumdog, Australia and (believe it or not) Twilight.

Stepping Out in Nashville

You love going out in Nashville because you're invisible. Whether at a society function or in a darkened honkytonk, you don't exist. No one sees you - perhaps because you're not obviously "someone" and because you don't wear lots of makeup or or have blond hair (or big hair) or wear anything excessively tight or short. It's one of the reasons you no longer live here - being invisible gets a bit old.

But it means you can watch, and listen.

Like at a recent function for people who donated a certain amount to a certain cause, held in a private home - all 27,000 square feet of it. The hostess wore an outfit out of place for anywhere you have ever been or ever thought of being, and one that the guests would have scorned had anyone other than someone presumably incredibly rich been wearing it (or unless frequenting a street corner in a part of Nashville you have never visited). You devour chocolate-covered strawberries, crunchy vegetable pieces, and mouth-wateringly rare roast beef, eaten off a carrot stick because you cannot eat the wheat rolls and there is no silverware.

The mayor attends, with a name tag that says "Mayor" followed by his name, in case you missed the fact that he is the mayor. All of the guests are white, as are the car valets. Every member of the serving staff is black.

This is Nashville.

You watch, and listen.

A Day at Your Mother's House

You see that the new dog beds you had shipped for Christmas are sitting on top of the dog crates, instead of in them. I was waiting until I cleaned the crates, says your mother. You know this is never going to happen, so you clean the crates and wash the old dog bed covers, and put the new beds within.

You discover that the dogs are a month overdue for shots, so you take all three to the vet's. They try a new procedure, taking dogs individually into a separate room for blood test and weighing, and this does not go well for rescued dogs that seldom leave the house or each other. You learn that Dog 3, usually the most placid, when upset can spray poop on walls and floors and you with remarkable thoroughness. You are thankful that you have worn old overalls for this visit.

You discover, just in time to avoid irretrievably shrinking your beloved Ibex wool pants, that the cold water setting on the washing machine actually produces hot water. Your brain is working slowly after the long drive here so it takes a while to figure out that the hoses have been connected backwards and then to shut off the water, find channel-lock pliers, and reverse the hoses.

You cut your mother's hair, which badly needs cutting. You take her to her favorite used book store, and read book jackets to her from the books on the shelves she cannot reach, and have her check inside the dust jackets for the special code you have her write in so she won't buy back books she has already read. Afterward you buy her the small Frosty and 99-cent double-bacon cheeseburger she hints that she wants, even though it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. You comb the dogs and clip their nails. You do several loads of laundry, and confuse your mother by trying to explain that she has been washing her clothes in hot water, not cold as she thought.

You take your mother's scribbled grocery list and do the Wal-Mart run, tossing multiples of each item into the cart so she will feel that she has plenty of food. You look through the stack of never-worn tops she wants to get rid of and choose two of the least colorfully striped, and promise you will try the rest of them on during your next visit. You give her the calendars you have brought her, and the photos of the baby cousins, and she looks through them all, one by one.

And when you leave she cries, even when you promise you will be back soon.

Lessons I Learned at the Inauguration

Do not trust the powers that be. You'd think I'd know this one. But the government knew how many tickets they issued for each section, and knew people were traveling all over for this event. It never occurred to me that they would send us to pack several streets - and then leave thousands of us there (estimates as high as 10,000), stranded, blocked in, our assigned gate in view but closed off by fencing, missing the inauguration we had foolishly expected to see because we had been invited and given lovely embossed official tickets. Not until things got dangerous and two policeman and a fireman ignored our cries for help (SO eventually squeezed out his cell phone and called 911) did I realize that we had all been abandoned. For all intents and purposes, we simply didn't exist. It's probably a good thing to experience and to remember what it feels like - but not fun.

When you're very cold, you burn lots of calories. I went through most of my snacks by 10.30. Yes, I found more food later, but you don't want to know where. I should have brought twice what I thought I'd need.

Some people give up too early. I understand folks with children or health problems taking themselves home when the gates didn't open on time - but once inside, we would have been standing in a bunch, much as we were now. But some people wiggled their way out of the crowd at 10.15 or 10.30 and went home (it wasn't horribly bunched up at that point). I was bone cold and back-achy from standing, with a bladder that was not going to forgive me for several days, but I wasn't going to give up until it was all over.

People are amazingly patient and good-natured - up to a point. Thousands of packed-in people, some who had been there since 5 am, were astoundingly pleasant and gracious to everyone around them, despite the cold, despite the fact that no one told us what was going on and why our assigned gate wasn't opening. But every crowd has a collective breaking point. Ours came after 11 am, when we were squished so tightly we could barely breathe and were just beginning to realize We have been screwed and the fourth or fifth ambulance started trying to squeeze through an impassable wall of bodies who had nowhere to go and a policeman yelled at us Get off the street.

When a dense crowd starts moving, you lose everything not attached to you. I fared well because I had a neck warmer instead of scarf, a hat so snug it couldn't fall off, and my heavy mitts actually clipped to my sleeves like a first-grader - and my belongings zipped inside pockets or in a fanny pack, which, however tacky it may be, was perfect for this endeavor. All I lost were the empty bottle tucked down my jacket and the snack wrappers from my pockets - but other people lost bags, hats, scarves, gloves. Hundreds of them.

When a dense crowd is moving and frantic to get to an event, it's scary. You shuffle your feet so you don't trip. You shelter the small children around you. You pray.

Wear running shoes whenever going anywhere with SO. Running in snow clogs - after we escaped the packed crowd - after standing unmoving in sub-30 degree temperature for four hours is not a pretty sight, especially when several toes on one foot still get numb from a broken bone and surgery last spring. Can we say splat? But I picked myself up and ran on, and today have a lovely purple knee to remind me of my time in the Purple Ticket line.

Miracles do happen. Someone opened a small section of gate, at nearly the last moment. Somehow we found it. Somehow we got in, just before the vice president was sworn in.

And today I am a little less naive. I am grateful I didn't get trampled. I am grateful I met so many wonderful people, a little more up close and personal than anticipated (having experienced the singularly odd feeling of having a stranger's cell phone, tucked away in a pocket, vibrate against my thigh).

I am grateful we have a new President who has given us all hope, and I am grateful that I did manage to, just barely, get to witness his inauguration - and what I hope is the start of a new America.

Clorox: It's a Verb as Well as a Noun

Bet you didn't know Clorox was a verb. In my family it is. I go into my mother's kitchen and the smell of bleach assails me:

Mom, you've been Cloroxing again. (Accent on the first syllable: CLO-roxing)

It's her method of attacking stains - pouring full strength Clorox on them.

They Just Left Us There

We got off the Metro and headed where directed. If we stood on tiptoe, we could see our assigned Purple Gate past the crowd ahead. Spirits were high. People laughed and talked and sang, people from all over the country, different races and ages and backgrounds, and we were all proud and happy to be there. And we waited.

8 am came and went, when one official source had said our gate would open. An emergency vehicle squeezed through. Then another. Now it was 9 am, when our ticket said the gate would open. Nothing happened. 9.30 passed - normal delay, we figured. 10.00 came and went. 10.30 arrived, and now we knew something was wrong. We had been directed into this street in sight of our gate and abandoned, thousands of us.

Some people left, exhausted, cold, disheartened. Several people were carried out, apparently collapsed from either the cold or the crush. Police kept directing emergency vehicles through, forcing us even tighter together. A fireman on a walkway ignored us. The police ignored us. The spotters and sharpshooters on the rooftops ignored us. Secret Service guys parked nearby ignored us. Another ambulance arrived and everyone groaned. At this point we were squeezed so tight you couldn't pull out a camera or a cell phone. The man behind me was screaming Mr. Policeman, can you tell us what to do? Another ambulance, and now this policeman yells at us Get out of the road.

Where are we supposed to go? People around us have flown here from California, Texas, Iowa, have stood in line for hours the day before to get their tickets for this event. They are upset, they are angry. They cannot believe we have been abandoned here. SO manages to squeeze out his cell phone and calls 911 and says the magic words This situation is becoming dangerous - you have about 5 minutes before this gets really ugly.

Soon after a barricade is lowered and the elated crowd moves ahead, at a fast shuffle, because there's no room to pick up your feet. This is briefly terrifying - we think of that WalMart worker crushed to death by the Christmas shoppers. People lose clothing in the push. We get to the outside and see our gate, still not open. People are crying.

But SO is resourceful, and has scouted the area the day before. We run down another street - me in snow clogs managing to trip over something and fall full force. But we find an area where, rumor has it, a gate has opened briefly. And we hear the magic words Purple tickets only and Hold up your tickets. We wave our tickets madly. Time is ticking past. Noon is fast approaching. We start moving forward. We are near a man with a boy, around 8 years old - his wife lost behind him, but he can hear her voice, so knows she is somewhere near. I blockade the child to his left, holding onto the sturdy woman in front. Someone else blocks him on the right, his father to the rear and SO behind him, and we shuffle forward in a protective quadrant. It takes all my strength to hold back the crush of the crowd so this child never realizes the potential danger to his small self.

And then we are in. And here are TSA screeners and metal detectors. We rip off our bags and cameras and cell phones with numb fingers, grab them up and run as hard as we can, past dropped hats and scarves, and find a patch of open ground just in time to hear Joe Biden sworn in, and then history being made.

Some other Purple Ticket debacle coverage and some contributions from fellow "survivors."
Update: the Huffington Post explains the Purple ticket turmoil.

The Ibex Inaugural Experience

What the well-clad Vermonter wears to the inauguration: Ibex Loose Tights, Ibex Zepher Sport top, Ibex Woolies top and bottom - all wool, all wonderfully comfortable.

Plus, of course, a wool sweater, your favorite Sundance jacket, wool socks, Salomon snow clogs, a neck warmer, hat, glove liners, and Thinsulate gloves.

Yes, I Was There

Yes, it was crazy. Yes, it was exhilarating. Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, it was cold. Yes, I was one of the Purple Ticket Holders. But, yes, I got in, just in time for Joe Biden. More later.

Something You Don't Want to Hear from Your Passenger

Is that a sweet potato sitting on your dashboard?
Only possible answer: I plead the Fifth.

What's Delightful About Being Alone

You can spend the entire day in your pajamas.

You can eat for dinner a bowl of cold leftover Chinese food, a spoonful of crunchy peanut butter topped with the last chocolate chips and some raisins, iced tea, a handful of almonds, and a spoonful of plain yogurt (consumed at intervals, not all together).

You can watch American Idol, all two hours of one of the egregious audition segments, without feeling you should apologize or do something useful at the same time like peel apples for applesauce or mend something that needs mending.

You can bury yourself in Tana French's IN THE WOODS without coming up for air.

What's Not Delightful About Being Alone

No reason to not spend the entire day in your pajamas.

No one to eat dinner with or impetus to prepare something that resembles a normal meal.

No one to relate the best/worst moments of American Idol to.

No one to tell how much you love Tana French's IN THE WOODS.

And a zillion other reasons.

When Things Go Wrong

I have a friend who says All things happen for a reason - which doesn't make it any less maddening when plans go awry.

So there was a reason things conspired for me to get caught by a huge snowstorm, one that caused enormous pile-ups in nearby New Hampshire, and to have to cancel my Sundance trip, for which I was packed and poised to leave.

So that I was here Sunday to discover the basement electric baseboard heater had stopped working, and then, shortly after, to see the propane heater flash that ominous word LO, and to hike out to the tank and push the foot of snow off the top and peer at the gauge to see it sitting on zero.

And to call the propane answering service and talk to the delivery guy on call who lives a good hour from here, and to assure him that yes, I am on automatic fill and that for some reason no delivery has been made for over a month, and to have a discussion about whether I can wait until tomorrow (and since my basement propane heater running on fumes is now the only thing keeping all my plumbing and my lovely heat-on-demand water heater from freezing, because the temperatures are in the single digits, no, I can't), and a few hours later to watch him try several times to back up my driveway and nearly tip his truck over before he decides he can come up head-first and then turn around.

And then, because my Park City trip was canceled, to be able to accept a ticket to the Presidential inauguration, and then, in a flurry of emails, to have a friend near DC not only offer her house - but to house all three dogs as well. Which means I don't have to race the length of Virginia to Tennessee, drop the dogs at my mom's, and race the 500 miles back (getting a flight or a rental car at this late date being nigh to impossible, as is kenneling three somewhat special-needs rescued dogs).

So instead of having adventures at Sundance, I will be having adventures in Virginia and DC, where I will get to see my friends and my adorable baby cousins and, of course, the inauguration.

And I can sit here this morning watching three yellow and black birds flirting on my bedroom balcony against a backdrop of snow-covered trees and ice floes floating down the river.

Some Wonderful Writing Advice

I stumbled across La Belette Rouge's blog in a Jackson Pearce posting - and found some great writing advice therein. I had coincidentally already followed the first four:

1. Buy and read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.
2. Read Anne Lamott [Bird by Bird] and listen to her advice about sh***y first drafts.
3. Do not under any circumstances enroll in a MFA ...
4. Blog.

The Bell Tower

SO is sitting on the sofa, doing something on his laptop. I am standing at the open sliding glass door. He registers that I am doing something that involves swinging my arm overhead, which produces a sonorous melodic sound. He thinks: Loud chimes, swinging arm - clearly she is ringing a bell. But she doesn't have an overhead bell - did she have Handyman install a bell tower while he was here?

I am simultaneously appalled and intrigued that he would think that I am the type of person who would have a bell tower installed on the side of the house with no forewarning or explanation.

It is winter. This is Vermont. Four-foot long icicles the thickness of my wrist are hanging off the side of the house, ready to impale any unsuspecting human or canine beneath. I am swinging the small woodstove shovel overhead to knock off the giant icicles, one by one.

Not bells - although it does sound like them. No bell tower. At least not yet.

A Lyanthropic Novel I Loved: BENIGHTED

You could call Benighted by Kit Whitfield (Bareback in the UK) a crime novel that explores society's prejudices, or you could call it a fantasy novel with a mystery to be solved. Or you could call it a damned fine novel whose full-human protagonist just happens to live in a place where turning into a wolf at full moon is the norm, and she's the oddball.

I loved it.

I'm not a fan of werewolf fiction - but this isn't. It's just set in a world where most people turn into, well, werewolves, and those who don't are tasked with keeping them in order during full moon nights.

From Publisher's Weekly:

In this impressive werewolf novel with a detective story twist, first-time British author Whitfield imagines a contemporary world whose majority are people who "fur up" at full moon; the scorned minority—called barebacks by their wolven, "lycanthropic" peers—are permanently clad in their human skin. Whitfield's bareback protagonist, Lola Galley, is a lawyer with DORLA (Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity), an unpopular organization necessary to maintaining order in a civilized world. Lola's full-moon duties include "dogcatching," or chasing down stray "lunes," lycos in vicious, canine form. When a bareback friend loses a hand to the snapping jaws of a lune—and then turns up shot dead a few days later—it's Lola's job to defend the mauler who becomes a murder suspect. In the process of her investigation, Lola must face her own biases as a minority and unearth the secret behind the divide in her society. A nuanced exploration of prejudice, this deftly written, absorbing debut deserves a crossover literary and fantasy readership.

Buy it; read it. (This was a library find I liked so much I promptly bought a copy of the book and have pre-ordered the author's next book.)

Sleeping With Garth Stein

Monty, Lucy, and Garth Stein's Raven Stole the Moon.

"How to Dress Like a Literary Star"

Courtesy of LeBellette Rouge, from Inside Out Style, via Jackson Pearce, through Polyvore:

How You Know It's Time to Turn up the Heat

When the laundry detergent is so cold and gelatinous it won't flow.

Never fear, the laundry room is in the basement - I didn't let the rest of the house get that cold.

Christmas is Here, at Last

I had Christmas a few nights ago, finally.

I'd planned to have it at the normal time, with my SO, and to have a cozy New Year's Eve as well. But SO got ill, while out of town, and Christmas got postponed. Then he thought he could make it here by New Year's Eve, but he was still too ill.

It was, of course, disappointing, and I had a few sniffly feeling-sorry-for-myself moments, particularly when seeing the neighbors' bonfire parties to which I wasn't invited (the problem with bonfire parties is that they are rather obvious from across the street, both visually and aurally). And of course it was too late to make other plans, and the last thing you want to do when unexpectedly alone on major holidays is foist yourself upon other people, whose holiday plans have not gone awry.

But it turned out to be a perfect quiet time to do some rewriting. And then SO arrived.

Arrival is always bedlam, as each dog thinks he is here just to see them, and each must have its own particular greeting dance or frenzy, complicated by SO's dog, Katie, becoming jealous and by Monty, aka Big Dog, viewing Katie as the love of his life.

But we were together. And so it was Christmas, regardless of the date on the calendar. And life is good.

Never Want It More Than They Do

If I were to make a New Year's Resolution, it would be this: Never want it more than they do.

I've discovered a delightful blog, Notes from the Underwire, by a woman whose writing is witty and poignant and self-effacing, and am working my way through three years of posts. I stumbled across an entry entitled Whale of a Story that could have been written directly to me. In part, it reads:

I look at everyone dear to me, and I am desperate to fix them. Desperate. Someone starts complaining about how their pants don’t fit, or how their doctor is after them to bring down their cholesterol, or about how useless their boyfriend is, and I leap into the fray. Here’s a diet! Here’s a map of all the hikes in Los Angeles! Here’s a way to start the conversation with the useless boyfriend which will lead to him moving out and on to the futon of a friend! I’m lousy at my own problems, but other people’s problems? Whee!

And the other person says, “Yeah…” in the die-away voice which means, “I like talking about it, but I don’t dislike this situation enough to actually do something”.

Sometimes I will forget what Medusa said, and I will try to nag and pester the person into improvement, which just annoys everyone involved. And then, out of the blue, I will hear her smoke-throttled voice saying, “You can’t want it more than they do”, and I will stop mid-harangue and say something like, “If you ever want help, let me know”.

What a stupendously freeing concept.

Years ago I had a pain problem for which a doctor prescribed myofascial trigger point therapy (somewhat like deep tissue massage) and a diet (which excluded all processed carbohydrates, sugar, yeast, and mold, which includes dressings, cheese, and wine - which means that you are pretty cranky at first but drop any excess weight in a hurry). Because I was in a lot of pain and generally miserable, I had the trigger point therapy and followed the diet, and had an amazing turn-around within a few weeks - with no drugs and very little actual effort on my part other than controlling what food I put in my mouth.

No, the diet wasn't easy, especially for someone who was bread-addicted, but I did it - I had horrible cravings the first few weeks that made me grateful I never took up smoking or heroin.

My recovery was so striking that the doctor asked if I would to chat with would-be clients, and I agreed. These women would tell me their condition and the problems it caused, and when their symptoms sounded just like mine I'd tell them how this relatively simple treatment had worked for me and that absolutely they should try it. That there was hope, that they could get better, that it wasn't that difficult.

And from almost all of them, I'd hear in their voice a certain tone that told me they weren't going to do it. And eventually I realized that they didn't really want to get better. They had reached a degree of comfort with their ailment, and while they claimed to want a change, they really didn't.

This past year I've learned that many people don't really want the thing they say they do. They appear to want to get their manuscripts published and may even work eagerly at marketing and querying - but aren't willing to take the time and energy to do the hard work of rewriting. They consult with you about a huge purchase - but ignore all advice and logical warning signs that this purchase would be an enormous mistake that would ruin them, and forge ahead. They talk as if they want their business to succeed - but continue doing all the things that will make it fail.

My life became a lot easier once I realized this. With markedly less frustration and more spare time.

Note: Yes, I know that Quinn Cummings, the author of the blog I've quoted, was an actress as a child, and I (like apparently everyone else alive during that era when there weren't 5,000 movies made annually) saw the Famous Movie she was in, and watched the Famous TV Show she was in (although I viewed her as a usurper because she came along two years into the series), but that's pertinent only because she has some great stories about how people behave around Former Child Actresses. What she is now is a wonderful writer (Notes from the Underwire coming out in July), mother, and businessperson who makes a child carrier called the HipHugger Baby Sling.

Temperatures Are Climbing

It's now 4 degrees.