movies

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Five for Friday

Happy Halloween! I know it’s not for everyone, but I adore Halloween. The costumes, the candy, the decorations. It’s all fun. 

Oddly (for me), I haven’t done much more than decorate. Okay, I haven’t done anything more than decorate. And even then, Carla did most of the decorating herself. I haven’t bought any candy, I haven’t made any Halloween treats (although there’s still time for baking!), and we didn’t even buy a pumpkin! The only jack-o-lantern around here is my ceramic one.

Why must you insist on photographing me with these strange objects, woman?!
  • Carla has been really into Halloween this year, and has been leaning into the scary side of it.We’ve been listening to some “scary” audiobooks in the car, which is so fun. Pleasingly, some of my favorite books from when I was a kid hold up pretty well. We’ve listened to as many Zilpha Keatley Snyder books as are available at my library: The Egypt Game, The Witches of Worm, and The Headless Cupid. I love how these books have a slightly supernatural element to them without being overly frightening. As a parent, I also appreciate how insightful they are about kid psychology. Carla loved them. We own the other Stanley mysteries, so hopefully we’ll get to those once we’ve finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is not particularly scary at all and might even be kind of boring. We’ve been reading it for a long time and it’s kind of a slog. But in my memory it was so good! After we exhausted the Snyder audiobooks, we turned to The Dollhouse Murders, which remains an excellent novel and is, unfortunately, the only Betty Ren Wright audiobook my library carries. I see that Audible has Christina’s Ghost in its catalog, but none of Wright’s other wonderfully creepy novels. I get it, they’re old. But they are SO GOOD.  Right now, we’re listening to Doll Bones by Holly Black, another Newbury Honor Winner. It’s pretty good so far.
  • Our seasonal media hasn’t stopped at books; we’ve been watching some scary movies, too. My husband and I watched the first Scream movie with Carla. I think it holds up okay, for a 90s film. It wasn’t as scary as I remember, and Carla was unfazed. Then we watched The Sixth Sense, which I hadn’t seen since I first watched in back in the early aughts. It was much slower than I remember, and Carla didn’t seem quite as shocked by the big twist as I remember being. I suppose movies have gotten a lot twistier in the intervening decades. We tried to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I remember was a lot of fun. But wow. It is SO BAD. My husband and I have also been watching some scary movies instead of our normal nightly TV show. We’ve seen Weapons, which was excellent, and The VVitch, which was also good but in a much less horror-movie kind of way. I liked Weapons because it was kind of a mystery story disguised as a horror movie. It did have some truly graphic violence though, the kind where I had to look at my husband watching the movie instead of looking at it myself. This weekend, we plan to watch Bring Her Back. 
  • Lenny / Leo finds Halloween to be quite perplexing. But he’s rolling with it. There are a lot of fun new things to sniff and bite and knock over.
Despite appearances, no pumpkins were harmed in the taking of this photo.
  • Will this be the last year of trick-or-treating? According to Carla, she is going to be dressing up and trick-or-treating for many years to come. But some of her friends have already indicated that they aren’t dressing up next year.  I don’t mind either way. If she decides not to trick-or-treat next year, we could invite a couple of friends over to watch scary movies and hand out candy. Of course, I’m happy for my kiddo to be a kid as long as she wants to, so dressing up and trick-or-treating sounds fine to me. I have no memory of when I stopped trick-or-treating. Maybe it was in middle school? I do remember that in middle school, I started to have friends over to watch scary movies. Perhaps this wasn’t just around Halloween, though; it seems like every sleepover I went to involved some sort of horror flick. I was big into witchy stuff – I had a Ouija board that I loved and pulled out at sleepovers as often as possible. We played games like Bloody Mary and Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board and told each other scary stories. Being scared – while knowing you were ultimately safe and secure – was such a delicious feeling. 
  • If you dressed up for Halloween, what was your favorite costume? My mom handmade me a Halloween costume every year – how she managed that, between working full time and raising two kids, is beyond me; I am a strictly Store Bought Costume kind of mom – and my all-time favorite was a fortune teller costume. My mom found this gorgeous crimson paisley material and made me a long, full skirt. I think she made me a sleeveless top out of some sort of gold gauzy material, and a belt out of some sort of gold fringe. I felt mysterious and beautiful in that outfit and I think I had her repurpose it a few years in a row. Carla has been a ton of fun things for Halloween over the years, but I think my favorite was when she was two. She loved the Super Grover segments on Sesame Street, and she specifically requested to be Super Grover for Halloween. She was adorable. 

    As I mentioned, I have not bought a single piece of Halloween candy this year. I did ask that Carla try to snag me a Snickers or a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she’s out trick-or-treating. (I would also love a Milky Way Midnight or a Skor / Heath bar, but those are few and far between.) What kind of candy will you be hoping for tonight?

    That’s right pumpkin heads. BEWARE OF CAT.
    by

    Times I Cried Watching A League of Their Own

    Carla and I have been working our way through some of the family movies you suggested. So far, we’ve done Freaky Friday, in which I think Lindsay Lohan is excellent. Bend it Like Beckham which was more relationship-heavy than I remembered (and, dare I say, sort of boring?). Newsies, which has a banging soundtrack, and to which Carla said, “Why aren’t there any girl characters?” (She’s not wrong; by my count, there are four total women in the entire movie.) 

    Most recently, we dove into A League of Their Own. I started crying pretty much right away. I don’t recall it being a tearjerker, do you? The tears welled up so often that I started making a list. (Um, mild spoilers if you have somehow not yet seen this absolute masterpiece of a movie.)

    • When Marla’s dad blamed her lack of femininity on himself, because he raised her alone after his wife died
    • When Marla left her dad, who was so supportive of her baseball prowess, but is now all alone
    • When Shirley Baker couldn’t find her name on the list, and then when another player figured out that Shirley couldn’t read and helped her find her name and they all cheered
    • When all the women were so excited to be chosen as members of the All American League
    • When Doris talked about how her boyfriend made her feel less-than because she can play ball
    • When Mae said “they ain’t closing me down”
    • When the Black woman threw a ball to one of the Peaches and nodded to the Peaches in a way that said, “Yes, I know I should be among you and it’s super shitty that I’m not simply because of the color of my skin.”
    • When the stands were full of cheering crowds
    • The first time the Peaches sing Evelyn’s song in the locker room 
    • When the telegram guy comes into the locker room with the telegram for Betty Spaghetti
    • When Dottie sobs with relief that the telegram wasn’t about Bob, and with worry for the potential that the next one might have his name on it
    • When Bob shows up at Dottie’s door and she can’t believe he’s there, in person, alive
    • When Dottie says “Can we just hold each other for the rest of our lives?”
    • When Jimmy gives Dottie the “baseball gets inside you” speech
    • The entire portion of the film devoted to the series when Dottie is up at bat against Kit, and Kit so fiercely wants to win and Dottie is so stoic and unflappable
    • When Dottie drops the ball and Kit’s team wins
    • When Dottie tells Kit the things she won’t miss from baseball and hugs Kit and tells her she loves her
    • When Old Dottie tells Old Marla she lost her husband just that winter
    • When Old Stillwell tells Old Dottie his mom died

    I’m pretty teary these days. I always tend to get emotional around Carla’s birthday (although less so the past few years, which I thought was a good trend; maybe “turning ten” feels like such a big deal, it’s bringing up extra stuff?). I cannot believe she’s hitting double digits. I cannot believe I’ve known her for a full decade. I cannot believe she is about to head into her final year of elementary school. She brings me so much joy and fills my life with so much light and love and energy and glitter – literal and metaphorical – and I just want time to slow down. 

    Some people try to talk me out of these feelings. It’s good that Carla is growing up. It’s what she should be doing. It’s better than the alternative. And to those people I say: yes. You are right. I am so proud and overwhelmed by happiness that I get to watch this person grow and change and become ever more herself. It is a precious gift and one that I do not take for granted. 

    And yet I am unabashedly sentimental about Carla of yesterday. I want to feel unborn Carla kick against my hand pressed to my stomach. I want to cradle fresh-baked-loaf-of-bread Carla in my arms and watch her head loll, milk-drunk, against my shoulder. I want to trail toddler Carla down the sidewalk, stopping as she points out every acorn, every leaf, every ant with wonderment and glee infusing her squeaky toddler voice. I want to watch kindergarten Carla spin in her twirly skirt and second grade Carla slide down a snow-covered slide and fourth grade Carla play her guitar. I want all of these things at once, just as much as I want to see what middle school and high school and college and parent Carla will be like. I can hold both of those things – the joy and nostalgia, the excitement for what is yet to come and the grief for what no longer is – in my heart and I can give myself space to feel it all.

    We also watched A League of Their Own on the day we put in an offer on a new house. I could feel it, that this was OUR new house. It has everything we could want – a mudroom! a crafting space! room for so many books! – and more. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, with kids Carla’s age in houses on either side of the house and across the street (the one thing our wonderful current neighborhood lacks is kids her age). It has walking trails and ponds and a playground. And there are so many dogs, you guys. So many dogs. It’s pretty close to perfect, and we put in a competitive offer, and I had a good feeling we would get it, but then we had to wait. Watching A League of Their Own was as much a way to distract myself as it was exposing Carla to the great films of my youth. So I’m sure at least some of the crying was less about the characters’ situation and more about the opposing forces of wanting something so much while also being deeply afraid of letting go of the wonderful thing I already have. 

    Because when we say hello to a new house – a house we want, and love – we have to say goodbye to the wonderful house we live in now.

    It’s just a house. But. This house is so inextricably tied up with Carla. With Carla and the rapid passage of time. 

    My husband and I decided, here, in this house, that we wanted a baby. I walked from my bathroom down the hall to my husband’s home office and announced I was pregnant. We painted our baby’s room the perfect shade of pale purple and carefully chose art for her walls. We brought baby Carla home to this house. I slept on the floor in front of her crib countless times. I sat with her on the carpet in the living room, pointing out the sliding glass doors to the wonderful goings on in the yard: the squirrels and bunnies frolicking in the grass, the sun moving over the lawn and peeking through the hedges, the leaves of the oak tree shifting overhead. She learned how to walk here, how to ride a bike, how to swing and blow bubbles and do multiplication. This home was our refuge during the lockdown of 2020. It’s housed ten thousand make-believe games, a hundred thousand art projects, countless hours of singing. How can I leave this house when it’s so full of Carla? So full of versions of Carla that exist only in memory and the molecules of these walls?

    Letting go – even when it is a good thing, even when it is the way things should be – is so hard for me. Maybe it is hard for you, too. If not, I envy your ability to leap across the gap to the next thing, confident that you will find footing on the other side. 

    As always with anything: Things could change, things could fall apart. As it stands now, we close on our new house in July and will likely move in August or September. This will be Carla’s last birthday in this house, the house she’s lived in her entire life. I am so excited. I am so sad. I hold both of these feelings at once in my heart.

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    Things I’m Thinking About Thursday

    This is the week my parents move to my state, which is extremely exciting. And yet everything – everything!!! – seems to be going wrong for them. I am so furious at the community to which they are moving, which in my opinion seems to have the viewpoint that their clients should feel LUCKY to be paying them money, and should not complain about things like borked timelines and shoddy workmanship and complete lack of transparency about EVERYTHING, because there are a bunch of people lined up and ready to take the abuse that my parents are objecting to. I really could go on and on about their experience, which has been a shitshow and I do not use that word lightly. But I can’t do anything about it, and nor can my parents who have already paid a lot of money for the privilege of being jerked around. My ONLY HOPE is that this moving-in nonsense is all the fault of the one seemingly incompetent person in charge of bringing new residents into the community, and that once my parents are finally settled they will find it to be a lovely place that doesn’t suck. 

    Anyway, while my blood pressure surges with impotent rage, I thought I might type some things. 

    It’s been a busy few weeks, and the next few weeks don’t seem to have a whole lot of let-up on the busyness front. But it’s very nearly all good busyness, so I’m trying to focus on that and not on the stressy feelings that I get from being so regularly busy.

    Realtor Guilt: My husband and daughter and I continue to look for a new house, which is adding to the busyness because it seems like every week or two we have to drop everything to squeeze in a viewing. We are in the excellent position of not needing a new house; our house and neighborhood are wonderful. But we would all like a little more space. And that has become especially clear lately, because we have had one houseguest and will have two more in a couple of weeks and it’s sadly VERY possible that my parents may also need to stay with us instead of in their newly renovated home which was supposed to be done June 1. No, June 6. No, we really promise June 8. We have a guest room; we have two full bathrooms. This is more than many people have! It really shouldn’t be an issue to have a couple of houseguests, and yet it just feels cramped and crowded when we do. My daughter gives up her bathroom so the guests can use it, and uses our bathroom. And it’s fine, it really is, but it would also be SO NICE if we had a separate bathroom that guests could use. Plus I really, really, really want a mudroom. You know how there’s that saying that kitchens and bathrooms sell houses? In my case, a house could have the most gorgeously appointed gourmet kitchen but if it doesn’t have a proper mudroom I’m not buying. 

    So we are looking for a house, but it has to be The Exact Right House for us to leave our perfectly wonderful existing home. And that means that we are being SO PICKY. Which leads to my realtor guilt. I love our realtor – she is a very brisk, efficient type of person who gets us in to see whatever we need. But I am a little worried that she secretly hates us. She never acts like it; she’s too much of a pro. But she takes us to see all these spectacular homes and then we find some little stupid thing to nitpick and I wonder if she thinks we are jerking her around. We AREN’T. We actually put an offer in on one of the first houses we had her show us, and she was so surprised that she kept saying, “I didn’t think you were that serious yet!” as we were scrambling to get pre-approved for the mortgage and find a lender and put together an offer on a Sunday night. 

    This was several months ago now (and we still think about the house that got away), and we have seen probably close to 20 houses. The market is BONKERS. A house pops up on the MLS and then by the next day, it has five offers – all over asking. So if there’s any chance of getting the house we want, it feels like we have to act immediately. And our realtor is great about getting us in right away, even if that’s at night or on the weekend. I am aware that she chose this line of work, and that this is apparently what the job entails, and that at some point whatever commission she makes must make it worthwhile. But I feel SO GUILTY. 

    Earlier this week, we saw a house at, like, eight in the evening. And it was GORGEOUS. The inside was perfection. The neighborhood was lovely. It had a beautiful pool and outdoor eating set up. And yet… the yard was small and not particularly private, and the lot was on a busy road and near the freeway so there was quite a lot of road noise outdoors. Plus, none of the doors seemed to want to stay open, which was odd. Like, you’d open the closet door and then it would slam closed of its own volition; the office had French doors and one was propped open with a door stop and if you opened the other door it closed by itself. THIS IS HOW PICKY WE ARE BEING. 

    Anyway. I am just feeling so guilty. Not guilty enough to put an offer in on a house that we aren’t fully in love with, but guilty nonetheless. 

    Skin Update: My face has been doing pretty well lately. I went to see the dermatologist and he prescribed me a) an antibiotic to take if I ever have a flare up again and b) a sulphur-based face wash. I haven’t tried the face wash yet. My dermatologist said that it smelled of sulphur while using it, but that the scent goes away once your face is dry. The pharmacist said this is a lie. The pharmacist’s wife, apparently, also has rosacea and so he has been able to give me both his professional opinion on the things I’ve tried as well as his personal experience. He says that the face wash smells revolting and that the smell lingers. “Your partner will be able to smell it,” he said, a look of revulsion on his face. How fun for all of us. 

    Also on the topic of my skin, I am still not eating dairy… although I have been trying to add it back into my diet in dribs and drabs. A little half-and-half here or there… A couple of slices of pizza… A taco with a little cheese sprinkled on. I haven’t noticed any big skin differences, so I am going to keep at it. My acupuncturist says that goat and sheep milk have smaller proteins in it than cow’s milk, so I should start there. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the pizza, with mozzarella that definitely came from a cow. I don’t really MISS dairy, except that I do like pizza and I do occasionally want some mozzarella or goat cheese in my salads. I do sometimes miss yogurt, and I guess maybe the next step is to try a smoothie with yogurt in it. 

    Note: I have tried almond milk yogurt, which I do not like, and coconut milk yogurt, which is fine. (I cannot eat soy yogurt, so I haven’t tried it.) But I don’t like these non-dairy options enough for how many calories they have, so I’d rather skip yogurt entirely. Also, I tried almond milk sour cream and it was abominable. 

    Summer Movie Watching: My daughter has a gap between the end of school and the beginning of camp, and I plan to spend our time together doing fun things like going for long walks at the dog park and watching movies. I have decided that as long as we are watching a movie together, it doesn’t count as Excess Screen Time. We have already watched Freaky Friday together, which I think went over pretty well, and Bend It Like Beckham which was both racier than I remembered and also kind of boring, and now I want all your mother-daughter movie recommendations. 

    I have never seen Little Women, so that’s on my list… but I’m sort of afraid to ruin the book before Carla has a chance to read it. Maybe Thirteen Going On Thirty, which I am pretty sure we watched together several years ago; Carla has no memory of this. Another one we’ve watched together that she doesn’t remember is The Princess Bride, which I would be delighted to watch again. We watched The Labyrinth at some point in the past couple of years, but maybe that would be a good one to rewatch? I’m not as hip to more recent releases, although Carla and I did go to the theatre to see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (it was just as well done as everyone assured me it would be). Carla loved it and wants to watch it again. 

    All movies are fair game. Just please don’t suggest E.T. ; she has thankfully already seen it and that is my most-hated movie of all time, right up there with Space Camp and The NeverEnding Story. (My husband watched the latter with Carla fairly recently; I cannot get past the agonizing death of the horse.) 

    I will say that my big bias against movies these days is content about sex and dating. For some reason, that’s what I find myself wanting to “shield” from Carla (although “shield” isn’t quite the right word), more so than anything else. Probably an impulse that requires more in-depth analysis, but I think on the face of it is that so many movies are so casual about sex and romantic relationships and tend to overelevate their importance. Like… Bend It Like Beckham has this whole side plot about the two soccer players both having the hots for their soccer coach. And… why? Why did that have to be a plot point? There was plenty of conflict already, between the protagonist and her parents, between her and her sister. If there had to be conflict between the two friends, why not make it about soccer? Or the protagonist’s refusal to be honest with her parents? And yes, I know that Bend It is also about how the main character’s culture plays up the importance of traditional values of femininity and marriage and wifeliness, but that was super clear without any sort of reference to shagging one’s soccer coach. (Or calling someone a bitch because she tried to kiss said soccer coach, after you specifically told her you didn’t like him!) And yet I am fine with The Princess Bride, I think? That’s a romance, and Buttercup doesn’t have a whole lot of agency if my memory is correct, but it seems different??? Maybe because the movie is an adventure, and yes, true love is the driving force and the reward, but the adventure is really what the movie IS, right? Am I remembering this correctly? 

    I don’t know; like I said, I haven’t really examined this bias in any meaningful way yet. Carla is not yet ten. We’ve talked to her about the mechanics of sex and have bought her books that are frank about sex and try to be open about any and all things she’s curious about, so it’s not like sex is a big mystery. Plus, romance and love are wonderful, in fiction and in life, and make for thrilling, excruciating conflict in movies and books. But I guess I don’t love how important sex and dating are in so many movies, especially those from my youth. Maybe I am just hoping to stave off, for a few more years, that all-encompassing, dizzy, yearning feeling of boy craziness I felt from fifth grade straight through until I met my husband???

    Calcium Update: Possibly you remember how I regularly freak out about Carla’s poor calcium intake? Well, we have resolved this by simply giving her Tums during the day. (This is what my father suggested a year ago and we have just now come around to it for reasons unknown.) It’s probably not ideal, and she’s probably not getting exactly as much as she needs, but it’s better than nothing. There was a blissful period of time when Carla was regularly eating yogurt. She wanted the yogurt lumps I made back when I was still eating dairy, but they ran out. So she decided to mix raspberry jam and mini chocolate chips into yogurt each morning for breakfast. Yes, I know; high in sugar. But also high in protein and calcium! She has sort of fizzed out on that fad though, but it was really nice while it lasted. 

    Home Improvements Inch Forward: One of my aspirations for the past couple of years has been to get our house trim painted. And it is DONE. Well, sort of; the person who painted the trim around the garage somehow only painted the trim that faces the driveway; the trim on the sides is not painted. Looks like he sanded the sides and just… forgot them? The painter in charge assures me he will come back, and I really believe that he believes he will… but I think the nature of the jobs he takes on means that it might be a long while before he gets back to us. For instance, he was able to do the trim the same day I reached out to him because he had another job in my neighborhood and he was waiting on the go-ahead from a larger job. Sigh. I am also hoping to have him paint the front door, which is awful and peeling. In fact, I asked him to paint the door when I asked him to paint the trim and there was some sort of misunderstanding. Anyway I hope that he eventually finishes the job. We shall see. He did our deck last year and it still looks good, so I’m hopeful. 

    Birthday Angst Redux: We have finally settled on a birthday party plan for Carla, at long last, and after many permutations. It looks NOTHING like what she requested originally, but she seems happy and excited. The theme for her friend party will be succulents, because why not. (Do not ask me how we got to succulents from wolves.) I am trying to gather the courage to call my awesome local plant store to see if they can source party-favor size succulents for the guests. This is an okay thing to ask, right? I mean, I can order them online from multiple places, but I would much rather support a local business. But maybe they won’t be able to do it? Or maybe they won’t be able to do it as inexpensively as the online options? What then? Do I just spell it out up front: I am looking to spent no more than $X on Y small succulents in small pots – is that something you can do?

    Also, Carla still wants a wolf theme for her family party. She wants a wolf head cake, and she drew a very detailed picture of her expectation. And look, I know my strengths and abilities and there is no way I can do something like this. Maybe I should just make the cake she wants and buy this cute topper from Etsy and hope she loves it???? I know that I could possibly call a bakery and ask them to do it, but I don’t know of any local bakeries that do this kind of detailed project and my experience with (okay, just the one) local bakery makes me reluctant to put the whole thing in their hands. Also it’s probably too late now, since I’ve been dithering about this for weeks and her birthday is IMMINENT. Please tell me there is some super! easy! way to do a wolf head that I am overlooking. Maybe I could print out a wolf head silhouette and cut a sheet cake in the shape of it and… it’s going to look awful. 

    All right. That’s all I’ve got for today.

    What are you thinking about this Thursday?