2 Comments:
Oh Bess! This must be a Virgo "problem". I'm not a big movie watcher, but I do have my favourites (84 Charring Cross Road, Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, It's a Wonderful Life, The Preacher's Wife...). And then there are the Books! I too have never given m'self permission to loll about all day either watching or reading. For all the reasons you list...but now! Your permission has become mine! Just wait! :-)
No one ever mentions 84 Charring Cross Road. What a wonderful film. The Starz network has shown it twice recently and I watched it both times. A young Anthony Hopkins, an even younger Ann Bancroft and a small but delightful part for Dame Judi Dench. I am delighted you liked the film. Judith
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Some childhood taboos are so deep you never really violate them without much effort and an equal amount of guilt. This is good - some of society’s taboos are essential to its smooth functioning. But now and then, it doesn’t do any harm to smash some cultural barriers and yesterday I did. I watched (what is essentially) television all day. We don’t actually have television reception here - down in the river bottom and sans antenna or satellite dish. But we do have a VCR player hooked up to the television and yesterday I wallowed.
I had been wanting to do this for a long time, but had been unable to give myself permission. When I can’t let myself do something I blame anything and anyone who might be near by. I have too much housework to do. I have bills to pay. I have to get the laundry done. I should be exercising. I need to take a walk. It’s BD’s fault. He will:
think I am a lazy brain dead low life
think my choices in movies are moronic (sometimes they are)
will ask me if I have done some chore he’ll think up for me
will tell me I can’t (?!?!?!?!?)
Of course, when I won’t let me do some innocent but non-productive activity and then blame the nearest carbon-based ambulatory biped, you better watch out. The BitchGoddess arriveth. Fortunately, when I get to that point of ridiculousness, I tend to look reality in the face and say to myself “go buzz off you imbecile. It can’t be worse for your intellectual development than your present circular thinking.”
And so I did.
I sat and watched movies and knit away on my lace cardigan. I watched my favorite Shirley Temple movie, Captain January, and since I haven’t seen it since way before I met BD, it was fun to see just what I loved about it. All her movies have her singing and dancing, which she does with amazing skill for a child. One need only listen to any 5th grade class trying to sing America the Beautiful to realize that most children can’t carry a tune in a bucket. This movie, though, was more of a musical than her usual play with a song or two. It's very well staged, has lots of embrionic MTV effects and includes one of my favorite musical songs, Codfish Ball. It has some really silly bits in it, but it also has one of my favorite actors, Buddy Ebsen, of Beverly Hillbillies fame, tap-dancing. Wow. That man looked like a rubber band.
Well, I always claimed my heart pumps sugar water instead of blood.
That was followed by Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor in Father’s Little Dividend - which was such a slice of “We are so NORMAL now that the war is over”-1950’s ‘murakin dream. Honestly, if you aren’t in the mood to time travel, either to be really glad things aren’t like that any more, or to wish for it to be like that - don’t waste your time. I always loved ST, both as an actor and because he looked like the Anglo version of my Franco/Irish dad.
Hmmm. Then I watched an episode of P&P, which I own.
Someone had given a bag full of videos to the library. We don’t keep R rated movies, I don’t want the hassle with parents, but I often watch them myself before I put them on the sale shelf. By this time BD had joined me while I watched City by the Sea with Robert de Niro and Broken Arrow with one of my favorite bad guys, John Travolta. ( I can watch Face/Off, an admittedly implausable concept, over and over, because my other favorite bad guy is Nicholas Cage.)
During most of this mind vacation, my fingers were busily knitting away on the lace cardigan. I'm working on the sleeves even though I haven’t finished the body because I don’t know how much yarn they will take and that information has direct design implications. I am making both body and sleeves with about 8 inches of lace along the bottom edges in the variegated yarn and switching to the solid color to knit the rest. There is plenty of variegated yarn to knit the lace parts, but I’m not sure if there is enough solid. I can deal with that by bringing the variegated back into the sweater at the shoulders, but I’d rather not. So - I shall knit a sleeve and see how much yarn is left. Let us hope there’s enough. I’m knitting all the pieces flat because when I tried to start the sleeve in the round I screwed up the count for the lace pattern 3 times. I figured the yarn was trying to tell me something and since I switched to the combination style of knitting, I don’t really mind knitting flat anymore. I still prefer knitting in the round, but hey - I can be flexible.
I’m well up this first sleeve and very pleased with the look of things. Let us just send up a prayer to the yarn-goddess. “May there be enough solid stuff for Bess”.
Not particularly reverent, but succinct.
Tonight I have my beginner class and a third student is supposed to join me. One of the original ladies who wanted this class. Next week the MyFirstSweater class begins. I have 3 already signed up for that and 3 maybes in the wings.
Oh la! It’s after 8 already! Ta.
posted by Bess |
7:45 AM
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