Monday, January 29, 2007

Sick

I think I'm coming down with this chest cold that my mom and grandma and sister have been passing around, so I stayed home from work today. I need to take my Gma to the doctor this afternoon too, since we are going to have her stop driving - she got lost on her way home from my grandpa's nursing home on Saturday. She drives the same route every day, so it's not like she doesn't know where she is. Her eye doctor told her she really shouldn't be driving since she can't read the signs, and he limited her to going places she goes all the time and knows the routes to by heart. But I think that's coming to an end.

I feel really bad for my Gma. She's cooped up at home all day by herself (thankfully she and the cat have bonded, and he provides some company). She can't really go anywhere, she's lonely, her body hurts. Thursday she was at the doctor for 7 and a half hours, and the next day she couldn't make herself eat, so she lost 5 punds in 2 days. The doctor prescribed this medication that she is supposed to take in spurts (4 days in a row, and that's it), and it really messes with her - makes her very absent minded, etc. Well, Saturday she double dosed herself and made herself sick. Then my sister Jessica and her boyfriend came over for dinner and we'd opened a bottle of wine. My grandma isn't really supposed to drink because of the medication she's taking, but she loves wine and will sneak herself a half glass every now and then, as she did Saturday night. Then I see her pour another half glass... then later another half glass. I told her I was going to have to cut her off after that one. But I don't want to. I want her to drink wine and enjoy her life. I'm worried that fighting the cancer is decreasing her quality of life so much that it's not worth it. But that is her decision to make...

Ebony moved to Texas on Friday, and my Gma was pretty sad. I guess she told Bobby we weren't allowed to move out (he said her voice was cracking like she was going to cry). I cleaned that room and rearranged furniture, and moved furniture (like the toy box) from the back room and set up the room for Emma. The TV in Ebony's room is my grandma's so I set it up with our extra DVD player (so Emma has a TV in her room and we don't). It will be nice for when we have guests over too, cause now they won't have to sleep in the back room. Emma's going to be really stoked when she sees it.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Pan's Labyrinth

Went to see Pan's Labyrinth last night. Good movie - great visually, interesting story... but downright brutal at times. It is definitely a grown-ups fairy tale. If you can handle the gore, then it is a must-see.

Here's the synopsis from RottenTomatoes.com:
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, PAN'S LABYRINTH is a thrilling, violent fairy tale set in post-Civil War Spain. Ivana Baquero stars as Ofelia, a young girl who moves with her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), into the home of Captain Vidal (Sergi López), in an abandoned mill in the middle of dark, dangerous woods. Vidal is leading his team of soldiers against resistance fighters--and he will do whatever is necessary to kill every last one of them. As Vidal bosses around the pregnant Carmen, a flying creature leads Ofelia through a garden labyrinth and into an underground cave ruled by Pan (HELLBOY's Doug Jones), who believes that Ofelia might be the lost princess of this strange yet magical place. To prove she is royalty, Ofelia must complete three tasks, each more difficult and terrifying than the previous one. Meanwhile, Vidal is becoming more and more paranoid, torturing and murdering seemingly at will. Del Toro (THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, HELLBOY, CRONOS) creates a marvelous battle between good and evil, between heroes and villains, in both the real world aboveground and the mystical land below. Baquero gives a compelling performance as the terrorized Ofelia, who is befriended by Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), a woman who harbors some secrets of her own. Stellar production design, superb special effects, and a stirring score by Javier Navarrete add to the scary fun. Selected as the closing-night entry in the 2006 New York Film Festival, PAN'S LABYRINTH is a captivating story that is not for the squeamish.

Great Uncle Max

My great uncle Max came to visit this weekend. He's my grandma's brother - wanted to come visit his sister. I haven't seen the man since I was under 10. My grandma had said he was going to come by, but didn't know when. When I got home from work Friday, Bobby was sitting there at the kitchen table deep in conversation. Max was a professor of engineering at Montana State University, so they had lots to talk about. Max had brought with him a collection of old family photos. Most were of him and my grandma and their parents while they were growing up, but some were of their parents grandparents, and other family members back to the mid 1850s

It was kinda neat seeing these pics of people dressed up like something out of Young Guns... except they're family. He also had the announcement in the paper of my grandparents' impending wedding, and the quarter page article describing their wedding. I swear I've never heard a description of a wedding like that. It was all about what the bride wore (including the fabric, neck style, length, lace & embroidery, etc), and what the maid of honor wore, and what the bridesmaids wore, and the names of everyone in the wedding party, and what the mothers of the bride and groom wore... Lots of pictures from the wedding too. It was kinda neat.


Thursday, January 18, 2007

Story Corps

There is this website, http://www.storycorps.net/. On it they have the recordings of the Story Corps project, which basically sets up recording booths around the country so that random people can jump in and tell a story or interview one another, etc. I was listening a bit last night - some of my favorites were of someone telling their grandchild how they fell in love with their spouse. I thought I would share a few of them with you.

This is an older man telling his grandson about a conversation he had with his then fiancee's mother: William and Seth Jacobs

This guy was telling his girlfriend the story of the day his dad died, but then... Michael Wolmetz and Debora Brakarz

This is an older Korean woman telling her daughter how she got her traditional Korean husband to return her affections: Hee-Sook and Joyce Kim Lee

This woman is remembering the phone conversation she had with her ex-husband, as he was waiting for his building to collapse on September 11th.
Monique Ferrer

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Awesome Word

uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive shopper she has always been.-- Angela Huth, "All you need is love", Daily Telegraph, April 24, 1998

Flagler seems to have been an uxorious, domestic man, who liked the comfort and companionship of a wife at his side.-- Michael Browning, "Whitehall at 100", Palm Beach Post, February 22, 2002

Fuller is as uxorious a poet as they come: hiatuses in the couple's mutual understanding are overcome with such rapidity as to be hardly worth mentioning in the first place ("How easy, this ability / To lose whatever we possess / By ceasing to believe that we / Deserve such brilliant success"). -- David Wheatley, "Round and round we go", The Guardian, October 5, 2002

Monday, January 1, 2007

Katie's Brithday & A Mellow New Years Eve

Thursday was Katie's brithday, so we expected to pick up Emma and have dinner with the Mahoney's to celebrate, but Bobby's mom called and said she and Erica were sick, and Katie tried to go to Disneyland but they were closed, so she and David were doing something out there. Don't come over unless you want to expose yourselves. So we went to sushi instead. We knew it would be difficult to get Emma to eat anything (she' the only kid I know that doesn't like teriyaki chicken), but we got her to eat some. We went to the Apple store to kill some time, and Emma played on the computers they have set up for kids to play with. Now she wants one.

We went back to Bobby's parents' on Sunday for an enchilada lunch for Katie's Birthday. When we got there Brian and Erica were putting them together the enchiladas, and a food fight ensued... always a good time. The whole afternoon was pretty mellow. Katie had to get on a plane back to Minnesota on Monday.



New Years was really mellow. Bobby & I, Brian & Jessica, Erica, and Bobby and Brian's friend Jon & girlfriend Alisa all hung out at Jessica's mom's house. The boys played a bit of Halo (which they used to play all the time) and we all played Scene It (and the girls whalloped the boys), and Extreme Jenga. In the final moment of Scene It, we have to guess the title of a movie as the letters appear, a la wheel of fortune... with like 3 letters on the board, Alisa (who has been quiet all game) comes out with "Rebel Without a Cause."

It was probably the most innocent New Years I've had in years. I didn't even drink! We were all in bed at 1:30am (unlike last year when it was 6am), and Jessica & I cooked breakfast in the morning. Then we all went back to the Mahoney's and the boys watched the football game. Again, a really mellow day...