11 July
Yesterday the day began about as well as it was possible to.
I got up in time to get breakfast at McDonald's, then came home and watched The Muppet Movie on the Disney Channel. I do love that movie, it's just about perfect.
Then I talked to my Mom on the phone, and told her about this movie I wanted to see, Return With Honor, that I have become obsessed with after reading this article by Anne Lamott.
I read it on Friday, weeping the whole time, then I read it to Mom on the phone, weeping more, then I started checking on the net to see where it was playing.
And it's playing nowhere.
Nowhere in New York, nowhere in New Jersey, in searching to see if it was anywhere at all, I found that it was playing at one theatre in LA, but that doesn't really help me much. According to Yahoo Movies, it opened 11 June, but it seems to have completely disappeared.
Why the fuck did Anne Lamott write so eloquently and make me want to see it, why the fuck did Salon "print" it only a couple of days ago, when the goddamn movie is gone and no-one can see it anywhere except for Laemmle's stupid Monica Fourplex in Santa Monica, CA!
Not that I feel strongly about this.
So I went in the backyard instead.
It wasn't so hot yesterday, but it was really very humid. Baldrick, the Destroyer of Screens, insisted however, so we sat out there and tried to ignore the damn Little League game.
I don't really mind the kids (though some urchin had recently gotten a harmonica from some adult that hated his parents, I can only assume), it was the adults that drove me batty.
Our backyard is right by one of the dugouts, you see, but it's not a dugout like I have seen before, it's more like a tiny clubhouse with the back pretty much open towards us. So these stupid men are inside screaming "Run to third, Billy, will you just fucking run!" while I'm trying to just sit in the yard and listen to my good old-fashioned Commie folk music tape.
Then I babysat for Cynthia and Fran so that he could go and see her show.
The children both took turns in being appalling and adorable. Molly was weeping when her parents left "I don't want Mommy and Daddy to leave!" "Too bad," was my unsympathetic reply. I've been through it often enough to know that, if ignored, she would get over it fairly quickly.
It's handy, there being two kids, because when one is rotten you can usually concentrate on the other until the first one turns nice again.
Cynthia told me that there was pizza in the fridge, and that Molly should get one and a half slices and Bonnie half a slice, so I started cutting a slice in two, and Molly said "I don't want you to cut that piece in half!"
"Well, you're getting one and a half slices and Bonnie's getting half a slice, so I have to cut it."
"I don't want to share my pizza with Bonnie!"
"You're not sharing your pizza with her, she's sharing her pizza with you!"
Looooooooooong pause.
"Bonnie is sharing with MEEEEE????!!!!"
"Yes, she can't eat a whole piece, so she's giving you half."
All amazed, "I think this is the first time that Bonnie has ever shared anything with me!"
It was extremely cute.
So we ate dinner, and Molly started acting rotten again.
I swear, I say the most terrible things to them sometimes, but Molly has this trick where she does something that you don't want her to do so you tell her not to do it anymore, and she just stares at you like she doesn't actually speak the language and keeps on doing it.
And I'm telling her to stop and her eyes are glazed over and I realized that she's acting exactly like I did (and still do) with my mother, sort of waiting for her to stop babbling about whatever she's babbling about.
It was at that point that I said, after explaining at length why I don't want her to tickle Bonnie while Bonnie is trying to eat and she just keeps doing it, "Are you retarded or are you just a brat?"
Then I was like "I'm not talking to you, you're too nasty to talk to right now," and concentrated fully on Bonnie. About one minute later, Molly was wreathed in smiles again and being sweet and I said "O, you're gonna be good now?" and she said firmly:
"Yes Kymmie, I am!"
Then we played for awhile, and in our playing managed to end up in Molly's room at 7.30p, so I took the opportunity to whisk her into bed before she really knew what was happening.
Stories had been read, teeth were brushed, songs were sung, and I was back down in the living room by 8p, which is when I like her to be in bed. That's when her parents like her to be in bed as well, but that doesn't really mean alot.
The only slight disaster was that Bonnie was wandering around on Molly's bed during this whole "putting to bed" extravaganza, and she tripped on the mattress and conked her head slightly on the wall.
O the wailing, o the gnashing of teeth! Molly was doing what she sees her mother doing, stroking Bonnie and saying "No more tears, sweetie, it's okay," but in stroking her face she was kind of poking her in the eyes so I'm not certain exactly how soothing it was.
Anyway, that was it for Bonnie, she was impossible ever after.
It took me pretty much a solid, whiny hour to get her to sleep.
She was really tired, too, and kept going to her little pillow nest and falling on her face in sleep position, then shrieking and jumping back to her feet.
She was so operatic, going on and on about whatever the hell she was talking about, but since she doesn't actually know that many words as of yet, and I don't know all of her code, I was more or less at a loss towards meaning.
Considering what I did understand, I doubted that it meant much. You see, she was holding her sippy cup of apple juice and she was drinking from her sippy cup of apple juice, all the while screaming for apple juice.
"Appazee! Appazee! ARRRGGHHH!!!!"
Reasonableness was not her middle name. Of course, it did not actually improve matters when she drank up the apple juice and was forced to move on to the bottle of water, since there wasn't any more.
So I rocked her and I sang to her sweetly "Go to sleep now, you horrible baby, you are the worst baby ever born" to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine" and it just took forever.
And then even after she was asleep, she was hitch-breathing, like when after you cry, for hours afterwards.
I was complaining to Cynthia and Fran about their appalling children when they got home, and Cynthia said "You had her asleep by 9p? You're getting no sympathy from me even if she did cry for an hour, it takes us much longer to put her down!"
Once she was asleep, I watched a Monty Python rerun on A&E, an episode that I've seen approximately 400,000 times in my life, the "Sheep" episode, and there was a skit that I have never seen before!
It was kinda crap, which is why I assume that it was usually edited out, but it was pretty cool to see something new!
On the other hand, the "Full Frontal Nudity" episode stopped about half-way through the "buying a bed" sketch, rather abruptly I thought, and I'm pretty certain that there's more after that. It was really very strange!
Today's horoscope:
Future dreams tie into your recreation--community action, science fiction movies or books, inventing something, or fantasizing.
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Starry starry night by:
Samantha Marcelo!
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Last Updated Sun 11 July 13:35:09 1999