Catching up

Just a quick post to catch up, since I didn't manage to post on Sunday. We had sort of a ridiculous weekend, mainly devoted to watching movies, even though we could ill afford to spend our time that way. But the Video Station was closing! So we kind of had to, to assuage our breaking hearts. We went to the store on Thursday evening and rented 10 movies (5 for us and 5 for the kids), and then Rocket Boy went back on Saturday and rented 5 more. I ended up watching 7 of the 15, Rocket Boy watched 9 of them, and I think the kids watched 7.

The movies I watched were The Last Picture Show, The Last Wave, A Room with a View, Last Tango in Paris, The Glass Key, Ten Canoes, and No Home Movie. Some of them were chosen because they had the word "last" in the title and some because we just wanted to see them. I don't love The Last Picture Show, but Rocket Boy does, and he did not enjoy Last Tango in Paris, but I always do. We both loved seeing A Room with a View again.

No Home Movie came out in 2015 and I'd really wanted to see it, because I keep reading about Chantal Akerman, the director. It turned out to be odd but ultimately devastating, as her "home movies" follow the decline of her elderly mother, whom she clearly adored and who adored her. I identified with it a bit too much, remembering losing my own sweet mother nine years ago. I guess it was the right movie to end the run with. When we finished that one, late Sunday night, it was time to say goodbye to the Video Station forever. The store actually closed for good at 6 pm Sunday, but you could still put movies through the return slot and they're probably spending this week packing.


I'd seen The Last Wave ages ago and had forgotten it almost entirely, so I enjoyed it as if it were new, and then when I looked up the Australian Aborigine actor David Gulpilil (who is in it) I discovered that he'd helped make a movie re-enactment of an ancient Aborigine story, with the actors speaking entirely in Aboriginal languages. I'll bet the Video Station has that, I thought, and sure enough, it did, so that's why we rented that on Saturday. It was actually very interesting. David Gulpilil is from Arnhem Land, in northern Australia, where Ten Canoes was filmed -- and that's also where one of my grad school professors did his first major fieldwork, on languages such as Mara and Nunggubuyu, which have a special place in my heart due to experiences in grad school -- which I will not detail here. But anyway, it was pretty cool to see the movie.

Maybe Netflix has Ten Canoes too. It's possible. But you can't count on it. Our experience with them when we lived in Ridgecrest was that they almost never had what we wanted to watch. Even when what we wanted to watch was something totally mainstream, we often had to be on a waiting list for it. I remember after Nora Ephron died, we were on the waiting list for Heartburn for several months -- until we moved back to Boulder and cancelled our subscription. Our current plan is not to rejoin Netflix -- don't want to reward it for helping to murder the Video Station -- but rather to get films from the library for now. So when the kids and I go to the library on Saturday I'll let them choose a movie in addition to the books.

Other than our extended farewell to the Video Station, what else happened last week? Pie Bear got his expensive ultrasound and we learned that he has either inflammatory bowel disease or lymphoma. The standard treatment is steroids, but those CAUSE diabetes and are not a good thing to give to an already-diabetic cat. So for now we have him on antibiotics (but haven't been very consistent about it) and we're trying him on different foods. We're supposed to feed him a protein that he's never eaten before, and we have a prescription for venison cat food, but we haven't found a place to fill it in Boulder (why?). What a problematic cat.

The other really bad thing that happened was that our ONE toilet got stopped up over the weekend and STAYED stopped up for several days, while we practiced workarounds (which I also will not detail here). Finally, yesterday, it magically unclogged, which was good because our plumber is on vacation. Seriously, when you only have one toilet and it's out of commission, life is hard.

Kid A went to baseball "assessment," did quite well, I thought, and has been placed on a team -- with NO ONE else from his school! I'm so irritated about that. They claim they can't necessarily put kids from the same school together because they have to have "balanced" teams, but really -- there are only five teams -- couldn't Kid A have been put with ONE other kid from his school? I'm afraid he'll drop out immediately and then I'll be out all that money. But maybe it won't happen that way. Maybe he'll like it. I actually did a cool thing recently regarding baseball: I bought myself a new (that is to say, used) baseball mitt! I did this not because I'm planning to join a team myself, but because I want to be able to help Kid A practice. Saturday afternoon (taking a break from all those movies), we went to the park and practiced. I pitched to him and he hit the ball about five thousand times, and then we played catch. Lots of fun. We also did this on Sunday, so that he was in good shape for the "assessment" later that afternoon. So maybe he'll want to keep going with baseball and we can keep practicing on the side.


And now we've got the birthdays coming up, tomorrow, in fact, and I do not feel ready -- but I'm more ready than I was two days ago. Many presents have been either purchased or mailed to us by the Aunts. Tomorrow I must make a pumpkin pie (Kid A's request), a lemon cake (Kid B's request), and cut up a whole lot of fruit to bring to their classes as a birthday treat. I must also do a little more shopping and some wrapping. In lieu of a birthday party, Kid A wants to take a few friends mini-golfing on Saturday and Kid B wants to take a few friends to the art museum on Sunday. All this is still in flux, but I'm hoping the details will work themselves out.

I'll post more, with photos, after the birthday celebrations begin. But this is enough for now.