Sweeney Todd

Today my mom and I went to see a stage production of Sweeney Todd. I had wanted to see this play for a long time, but was on the fence about the movie that’s out now. I’m not a big fan of Tim  Burton anything so I figured I’d wait and rent it maybe. My mom and I talked about going to the movie but she was worried it might be really graphic and didn’t want chance it. When I saw that the play would be here in town, I snatched up some matinée tickets for today.

We had good seats to begin with, but due to the layout of the stage, they were moving people sitting near us. We got moved to the center section, second row. It was like getting upgraded to first class, except we got no champagne and no one brought us any hot towels.

The show was really good. I’m always so amazed that there are people who actually do that, who can sing and dance and act and play instruments. And make a living at it, to boot. Being so close to the stage was really cool because we got to see everything.

And now I might use an MDO day next week to go see the movie because I’m interested to see how it translated on film.

Atonement and Date Night

Thursday, when Bridget was at Mother’s Day Out, I used some of the movie gift certificates I received for my birthday to go see a movie. Based on the amount of GC credit I have and how cheap the “early bird” movies are on week days, I’ll be seeing movies for basically free for weeks. Love it! Thank you, Sarah and Mother’s Day Out!

I saw Atonement on Thursday. I can’t say I loved it. I can say that despite the WWII backdrop, it’s a chick flick of the highest order. Don’t take your husband or boyfriend to it, thinking he’ll enjoy the action scenes or else you’ll end up paying for it later when he drags you to see the newest Rambo movie. (I shit you not, there is a new Rambo movie coming out.) And it’s depressing as hell. I did like it though, no doubt. And I am enchanted now by the name Briony for a girl. I should ask Swistle to do a poll on how people feel about that name. In case you aren’t an avid reader of Swistle’s, first I’ll ask you why the hell not, and then I’ll tell you that she’s obsessed with baby names and will help you name your baby. Maybe even your puppy if you asked her nicely.

On a completely unrelated note, Jake and I went out to dinner last night! With two other grown-ups! With no kid! It was really nice. Yummy Thai food and good wine.

Oh, here’s a question. Does anyone else do this? I have about three things on the menu at this Thai restaurant (and the Indian restaurant we love, come to think of it) that I love. And I always want to try other things, but I worry that I won’t like something new and then I’ll be mad that I didn’t get one of my favorite items, thus wasting an all-too-infrequent trip on a dish I didn’t like. What is one to do? Jake always gets the same thing so I can’t trick him into ordering the new item, allowing me to steal sample it. I think the key is to go out with other people who would be amenable to letting me steal sample from their plates. Unless of course they only like the same items I do. Or just accept the fact that I only order three different Thai and Indian dishes and may never know what else is out there to eat. I guess I could always order the new dish and if I don’t like it, say I found a hair in it and send it back or something. There’s a thought.

This is One Doodle That Can’t Be Undid, Homeskillet

Yesterday we broke out and left the kiddo with my parents for a trip to the movies. We were all set to see Charlie Wilson’s War but when I went in to the theater to get seats, I discovered that it was packed and the only seats available were on the floor. I don’t pay $8 to sit in a crappy seat at a movie, especially when we get to go to the movies so infrequently. (I say that but I do realize that the week before Christmas, while Bridget was at Mother’s Day Out, we got to see I Am Legend. It was good but I digress.) So we went back to the box office and exchanged our tickets for Juno starting about thirty minutes later.

I had really been wanting to see this movie. I had heard good things about it but I try to stay away from movie reviews lately. It’s just depressing to know about all these wonderful flicks out there that I will likely never get to see until Netflix sends them to me. Movie reviews are really just taunts to me now. And yet, here I am giving one. Ironical*, huh? Damn, I am digressing again. I hate it when I do that.

So the movie. Yeah. Wow. Amazing. I knew it would be funny. I knew I’d like the movie. I was not prepared to love it. I knew I’d laugh, but I also did my fair share of crying. I don’t normally give a fig about Jennifer Garner. I hated Alias and really, what else has she done worth talking about? But she was great in this. In her character, I identified so much with that consuming, visceral need for a baby. I was kicked in the stomach with the memories of wanting it so badly that nothing could fill that hole. I won’t give too much away because I am cool like dat. But it’s so good. It’s intelligent humor, it’s not just stupid humor. I find myself really caring about what happened to the characters after the movie ended.

I couldn’t have asked for more for my day at the movies.

*and yes, I know “ironical” is not a word and that technically since irony is a literary term, it doesn’t actually exist in real life. If you want to get all technical about it. I figured I had to footnote that since I bitch about bad grammar all the time. Usually when I use it here it’s intentional.

Beowulf

Today Jake and I managed to drop the whiny munchkin off at her grandparents’ house for the afternoon and go be grownups without a kid in tow. We really just grabbed a Starbuck’s and got Jake’s hair cut. We were a bit pressed for time but we really wanted to see a movie. So we went to the theater to see what was playing at what time and how long. At that point we didn’t care WHAT we saw, we just wanted to see something. So we ended up seeing Beowulf.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good. I don’t remember the details of the story from reading it in high school, just enough to know that if you referred to someone as Grendel’s mother, that was a really bad thing. So I can’t say if the movie was true to the story or if creative license was taken. But I can say that it was really exciting. The animation was really cool, although I don’t understand why they chose to do it.

So yeah, there are a few things I wish we had been able to see instead but it was still very cool to sit in a theater and watch a movie and munch popcorn, like we used to do before we were parents. Not that there was life before parenthood. Was there? I can barely remember….

Spiderpig, Spiderpig

Does whatever a spiderpig does…..

We just got back from seeing The Simpsons Movie. Fun fun fun. That’s about all I can say about it. If you are at all a fan of The Simpsons, go see it.

The Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

Sigh…. it’s been a rough couple of days. I don’t have a coherent post, just a litany of complaints.

In the last week, we have spent about $10,000 on the house. I knew we had two big ticket items to replace - the heating and air system and the carpet. I knew we could pay cash for one and would probably need to finance the other, but I didn’t know which was which because the estimates didn’t come at the same time. So we actually financed them both and I’ll be paying off one right away. But that does put a big crimp in our Caribbean vacation plans. I’m going to wait to see how it shakes out to see if we are going anywhere at all. We could still do a domestic beach vacation but I think Jake has his heart set on the Caribbean. He works so hard, I really want him to have the vacation he wants, but it just might not be doable this year. At least not exactly how he wants it.

In the quest to afford the Caribbean vacation and avoid finance charges for the aforementioned heating and air system and carpet, I have been working a lot, pretty much accepting any work they want to throw my way. Did I mention that I got promoted to project team leader on one project? I think I mentioned that I was offered the promotion, but I did eventually accept it. But I am pretty much the only one on my team who works on weekends, so I’ve been the ONLY one working weekends for a while now. And I have just agreed to be team leader on another project, which will be solely mine for the first week or so after it launches. The work is not hard and I am lucky to be able to do it and still pay attention to Bridget, but it does clog up the brain sometimes.

I’m still missing Neo. I had a dream about him last night. He was crying at the back door to be let in. Not too hard to decipher that one. I guess the hardest part for me is not knowing he’s ok. I hope that he got placed in a foster home right away, or maybe even adopted that day. But it’s possible that he is one of the cats that has to stay at Petsmart all week and that thought breaks my heart. So I have to try not to think about it. I am going to make a donation to the agency that took him back from us. I meant to do it on Saturday but things got confused and I was a blubbering mess and I forgot. I think the pets are a bit confused about where he went but seem to be adapting alright.

Sunday Jake and I went to see Spiderman 3. It was ….. eh. Fun I guess, but I thought the dialogue was very cheesy and villains were just too many. I think there should be a new rule in movies. ONE sequel maximum. I honestly can’t think of any part three that has been very good. But it was still fun to be out with Jake like real people.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with an orthodontist. Fun, huh? My dentist has been after me for ten years to go, saying that if I didn’t get some work done, my jaw would really bother me later in life. Of course he also said he’d like to see my jaw broken and reset so it would be perfect. I pretty much said he could piss off with the idea of breaking and resetting my jaw, and I tossed the idea of orthodontia as well. But lately I can feel my teeth shifting and it hurts. They don’t line up like they used to and I often wake up with a sore mouth. So I’m going tomorrow for a consultation to see what I need and how much it will cost and how long it would take. Ugh. Just what I wanted - braces at age 33. But I would like to get it taken care of, so I’ll suck it up. Although seriously if I had my jaw broken and reset, I bet I’d lose a ton of weight. Hmmmm…. something to consider.

Did I mention my visit to the vag doctor today? Well, I won’t go into details there, but being kept waiting there for an hour really made me just a ray of merry fucking sunshine.

But on the bright side of things, we have an efficiently running HVAC system now, which will hopefully mean the end of $500 electric bills in the summer (Gotta love summer in Texas!) The house is much more peaceful with Neo gone (as much as it pains me to admit that). Soon we’ll have new fresh carpet for Bridget to learn to crawl on (which scares me to even imagine).

It’s all about the looking on the bright side, I suppose.

Holy Hell

As I sit here watching Blood Diamond, I am reminded of an indisputable truth. That being that Leonardo DiCaprio is HOTT. Why do I keep forgetting that? I guess that makes me a very shallow person, to be thinking like that while watching such a serious movie, but what can you do? So far the movie is great. Hard to watch, but very good.

You know what movie was not so good? Children of Men. We watched it last night, and we had both been looking forward to it for a long time but it was depressing for one thing and just didn’t hook me at all. Clive was fantastic looking, as always, but the movie just didn’t do anything for me.

OK, back to Leo…..

Sap and a Movie Review

I got a card at one of my baby showers that says “Motherhood is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” I liked the quote immediately when I read it, but today its meaning really hit me. Today for the first time, we left Bridget with my parents and went to lunch and a movie. And the entire time I felt like a piece of me was missing. Don’t get me wrong. I had a good time. It was nice to get away and just be a couple again, but it felt different.

It was hard for me to walk out of my parents’ house without her. I knew she’d be very well taken care of but I worried that she’d miss us or think we weren’t coming back for her or she’d cry the whole time and my parents would think we have a bad baby. Silly, I know. She was an angel according to them. She ate, she slept, she played, she smiled. She was perfectly charming. Of course they let her sleep on her tummy (laying between them on the couch so she wasn’t alone, so I’m not worried about it), and watch a little tv, but they are grandparents and they spoil. It’s what they do.

We went to lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. We talked about college days, a conversation that was sparked by the sighting of a Little Caesar’s pizza place. Pizza! Pizza! We ate and talked about non-baby related topics, for which I was very proud of us. We headed to the movie theater and it was dead. I guess the day to go see a movie is the afternoon of Superbowl Sunday. File that tidbit away for next year. Our movie choices were pretty much dictated by time more so than by our preference. There was so much we both wanted to see, not having been to a movie in months, but timing was off for a few. We ended up seeing The Pursuit of Happyness. It was an incredible movie, but perhaps not the movie to see on our first trip out without the baby. New parents shouldn’t watch a movie about a dad struggling to support his son and a mom who abandons her husband and kid. I mean, it was great, but I bawled almost the entire way through it. A function, I am sure, of the movie itself and my own emotional upheaval at the time. Still, I can’t say enough good things about the movie.

So there you have it. Date Sunday was a success. My parents didn’t pull their hair out. I did not, in fact, die like I thought I would, and now that I have Bridgie back, that little piece of my heart that was missing is back in its place. All seems to be right with the world for now.

Anyone Home?

Yeah, I’ve been a lazy blogger the past few days. Lots going on but not much of it noteworthy. The weekend was good, but busy. Jake’s brother came in town with his new girlfriend, whom we had never met before. So there was a lot of hanging around and chatting. Jake’s sister and her family came over Saturday night and I was so lazy I didn’t even bother to make dinner. We ordered pizza. I guess I did a bit of domestic duty by making cupcakes for dessert. In my defense, it’s like one thousand degrees outside so grilling sounded very unappealing, as did any sort of real cooking, and also, I was (and still am) fighting off the ends of my cold/allergy attack, so I’m snotty and coughing and my head hurts quite often. Not my best hostessing mood, I tell you. But it was still fun. The new girlfriend is very sweet and her stock went up in my book when she told me that she works in the handbag section of Nordstrom (oh, and that she doesn’t call the store “Nordstrom’s” which is like nails on a chalk board to me). She was able to appreciate the beauty which is my kate spade diaper bag, and how can I not like someone who speaks my language?

Other than that, life has been pretty much quiet. Well, work is stressful and it’s taking a toll on me. I can’t really tell if work is more stressful now, or if I’m just not handling it as well as I used to or should be. I just know I cry a lot, at work and after work. That really isn’t making me happy at all. There’s not a thing in the world I can do to make the work situation better, so I need to find a way to accept it and let it roll off my back. I still have a little over two months to go and at this rate, I’ll end up in a rubber room before I even have the kid.

There are some interesting pregnancy things to note. I think my astigmatism either got better or worse, because my left contact lens isn’t sitting correctly on my eye. I had asked the eye doctor about vision changing during pregnancy and he explained that vision doesn’t really change, but that the cornea has the same tendencies to retain water and swell and such that the rest of the body has. So when that happens, it seems as though your vision has changed, but really, it will go back to normal later. I could waste the money going back to the eye doctor for an exam and maybe a new prescription for a while, but I don’t think that’s wise right now. I might have to resort to wearing my glasses. I don’t want to do that because I don’t have a way to wear sunglasses that way. Maybe it’ll fix itself soon. I also have officially reached the stage where it’s getting hard to sleep. I wake up often because my back or my hips hurt, plus I have to go to the bathroom a lot more. The heartburn/acid reflux make laying flat an unpleasant proposition as well, which may cause some of my other sleep issues. I guess I am just getting used to operating on less and less sleep. My feet are now pretty much constantly swollen, and sometimes they diminish in size overnight, but usually not. Today I wore flip flops to work. I hated doing it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of putting on real shoes. Curtainrod is moving a lot, but he’s quite ornery - he’ll be practicing his kickboxing and I’ll call Jake over to feel it, and the rugrat will stop entirely. Until Jake removes his hand. Then he starts it right up again. I think the child is getting my disposition. Lucky me.

And I’ll leave you with this - we saw Snakes on a Plane on Sunday. And it was good. “I know that sounds crazy, but I don’t give a damn.” Well, ok, it wasn’t fine cinema or anything, but did anyone really expect it to be? I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Definitely a fun summer movie.

Save Your Money

For those of you who haven’t already shelled out your $8 (or however much it costs to see a movie where you live) to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean, don’t do it! What a steaming pile of crap that was.

It was way too long. Two and half hours is a long movie, and if you are going to make a movie that long, you better have substance to back that up. This did not have much substance. It was just filled in with stupid jokes, superfluous sword fighting scenes, and disgusting half man half fish sea creatures. Even Johnny Depp was not terribly likable in this one. The one thing I thought was somewhat amusing was the two idiot pirates from the first movie, having pseudo-philosophical discussions. I actually found myself nodding off during the movie, which is a sure sign you should ask for your money back.

So save your money, go see The Devil Wears Prada instead. It’s much, much better.