Weblog 285

July 31, 2011~ 12:00 am
Here's another month totally kicked in the butt. Amazing. How could it be that the year is already more used up than what's ahead? You blink...... and it's Christmas. (Or, as Arlene Francis, American game show panelist once said, "To grow old means every ten minutes, it's breakfast.")

There's been no let up to the heat around here. Saturday was 88 degrees, and though the humidity was lower, it was a blazing SUNNY day, so the house warmed up to an uncomfortable degree. Despite that, Wayne and I watched a BBC film I'd taken out of the library this past week. We settled in with fans running full blast, to watch



I'm a sucker for a good Holme's tale-- original Conan Doyle or not. Rupert Everett played a very convincing Holmes (even withOUT the deerstalker hat.) The period setting was 1902, and Holmes wore a jaunty black fedora... and even once, a Lincoln-esque stovepipe. (You could put a chamberpot on that guy and he'd still look distinguished, I swear.) The plot is that someone is abducting and murdering the upper-crust's young debutantes right out of their own stately homes, so Holmes, having already 'retired' from solving cases, is enlisted by his sidekick and friend, Dr. Watson, to bring the nasty string of murders to an end.

I have to say that I picked out the murderer within the first 10 minutes of the film. (I KNOW my 'creeps'...lol. Hey! Maybe I'll take to wearing a deerstalker hat and start to smoke a pipe.) There were fresh-faced, privileged young beauties aplenty.



All the actors and actresses were more than capable, the story held one's attention, and the atmosphere of foggy old London



the perfect setting for a an early twentieth century, Gilded Age serial killer. I'm thinking back on how many movies I've loved over the years with a 'London Fog' and nefarious deeds theme, or a Jack the Ripper come to call. 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman, 'The Lodger' starring George Sanders, 'Gaslight' (Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman again... love all of them.)

One weird thing is the DVD did the strangest things when we were watching the movie. First, the pause button stopped working. I thought it was the batteries, so I changed the double AA's in the remote. No dice. Then, after I'd screwed around and started the damn thing back at the beginning by accident by fiddling around with the buttons on the DVD player itself, it would periodically go backwards to scenes we'd already watched, and this was without us trying to do that, or pushing any buttons at all. LOL!!!

The weirdest one was putting it on pause for a bathroom break-- I'd gone into the kitchen only to hear the movie start up again. Wayne was just coming down the stairs and I called out to him, "I didn't do that. It started up on its own." (Well, I've either got a spook in this house-- a misbehaving, oft-played DVD, or it's the heat and humidity. Who knows?) At one point I called out, "Beethoven!"- who's my deceased cat, 21 years old when he died a couple of years ago. It would be just like him to be playing pranks.



Perhaps..... nah...... (But lemme tell ya', my TV still DOES look JUST like that, no fancy LED flat-screen, wall-mounted for me.) It's because I'm always about a decade behind any trend- as this 1999 computer running Windows 98 will attest to. My motto is: if it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT, because Lord knows, whatever is coming down the pike is chintzier, probably made in China and has a warranty with about 50 clauses in it. (Wayne, for instance... still has a rotary phone.) You can see why we bonded so well.




July 31, 2011~ 8:00 pm
I believe I've written in this blog before about the dreaded 'Sunday feeling'... that end of the weekend despondency that settles in on Sunday evenings, with only the prospect of five days of pushing paperwork to look forward to. It originated with me back in grade school and has remained with me since. I can't shrug it off. It's there. And it looks like this



and it's never altered in all these years. Even the years when my children were very young and I stayed home, the Sunday Feeling persisted. It's like a doppelganger... me, yet not-me. It's like a malformed twin nobody talks about and who lurks at the curb and walks the streets when everyone is inside. It never rests. Never disappears. It feels like my own shadow. Darker. Cooler. Always alone.




August 3, 2011~ 6:00 pm
My day was brightened considerably by an ENTHUSIASTIC email from daughter Holly. She takes mortality in stride. (As long as there's some re-birth mixed in there too.)Yes..... she's acquired a new exotic pet.

"(Sadly, Ziggy passed on Monday. He is with Buddha)....when I woke up on Monday, he was on his back, which indicates a molt. Male spiders have difficulty surviving their postultimate molt. He was in a weakened state due to his mite infestation, and expired sometime Monday afternoon. I can remember from the start with him, the restlessness which never abated, always searching for a mate. I, of course, had to run right out and acquire a new exotic companion, and so...STREUSSENBERG! Streussenberg is settled into a tunnel already and looks quite cozy. She is a Cobalt Blue Tarantula. (Haplopelma lividum) She hails from the tropical forests of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Goob and Streussenberg are new neighbors, but they simply sit, taking no notice of the other, waiting for the next cricket to fall from the sky."

Poor Ziggy. Knocked himself out looking for a mate, lost 2 legs, got mites.....died. (Male tarantulas don't have but 1 year in captivity, tops. Even with Holly's exquisite care, she couldn't surmount the averages for those fellas.) I'm glad GOOB has company, however! Two little lady arachnids, gossiping, dozing, scarfing down bugs.... Heaven! LOL!!

And how about MILDRED?



Click on that photo and find out about Mildred's Meltdown Ring, the newest piece in Holly's Etsy shop...'Battygirl Enterprises'. (The lovely young model is granddaughter Kay-- who is SIX YEARS OLD TODAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY!!!) She's modeling various buggy hairclips and headpieces, proud as all get-out. (By the way, I am now the proud owner of the purble spider bag, which no longer appears, but it's much like the lime green one. I could no longer resist it.) And wonder of wonders.....my mother, who hates anything 'unconventional', happens to LOVE my new purse, and was miffed I didn't keep it on my arm when we went down to the dining room for dinner on Sunday. I have to remember to do so this Sunday coming or she'll begin to grump around. LOL!!! VIVA LA CREATIVE TOUCH! I love handmade anything, especially when it shows wit... and a touch of the absurd. Made my day.





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