Christmas Movies 2

You already know the answer to this. What do Die Hard and The Santa Clause have in common? Yes! They are Christmas movies, but, specifically, they start with unlikely work parties on Christmas Eve!! But what I want to tell you about today is how I got to delight myself by announcing loudly in my head, "It's a Thanksgiving movie!" while re-watching You've Got Mail as a likely Christmas movie!! Tom Hanks sticks his head through a turkey photo op cut-out! There is more than one turkey image in this film, and more than one holiday, and it goes through seasons, ending with love in the spring, but, yes, Christmas is crucial in determining whether the bookshop will survive.

You've Got Mail is based on The Shop Around the Corner (which is based on a Hungarian play), and that resolves on Christmas Eve. We have that one at the library, so it's likely to be up next in my Christmas-movie queue! I remember a sadness at the heart of it, a human complexity sometimes missing in popular contemporary holiday movies, but maybe I'm just becoming a curmudgeon. 

Other surprises from You've Got Mail: character names Kathleen and Christina (my sister and me!)! Kathleen owns the bookshop, and Christina works there. Christina is played by Heather Burns, also in one of my other go-to feel-good, funny movies, Miss Congeniality. Kathleen mentions Rudy Giuliani! She confesses during a break-up scene that she forgot to vote in the mayoral election. His opponent was Ruth Messinger, so she maybe forgot to vote for Ruth.

Yesterday and the day before I took long walks in the Thanksgiving weekend sunshine, mailing a first batch of Christmas cards at the Uptown post office, avoiding the shopping strip (though I do love our local shops), restocked the Little Free Library with children's Christmas books for Iris Harley, and hung a strip of tiny white lights on the patio door to dangle free and loop around the houseplants. I yearn for a tree. We'll see. I have lost track of the day of the week, but since I did all my housework yesterday, I'll call it a Slattern Day in the blog.

Christmas Movies

What do Love, Actually and Die Hard have in common? Well, 1) Alan Rickman as the bad guy 2) airport scenes 3) specifically, a girl running to a guy in an airport and jumping on him, wrapping her legs around his waist, and 4) they are Christmas movies. I have begun the annual watching of the Christmas movies with these two, plus The Santa Clause and White Christmas. (I may have started this in the spring or summer, but I have started it over now in the usual seasonal fashion.)

Not everybody loves Love, Actually, but I do. The lush interludes of music, during which someone does or doesn't get the guy/gal, always grab my heart. Emma Thompson listening to Joni Mitchell, through tears, as Anton Chekhov would say. Certain things always make me laugh, cry, or cringe, and I enjoy the pop songs. But this year, the airport scenes were excruciating. They had all their original power as scenes of love and joy, as people greet each other, but I saw them side by side with news photos of people in airports for Thanksgiving travel, and I ached with worry and dismay.

Because I tend to watch these movies late at night, to fall asleep, I fall asleep. Then I pick up where I left off to see the rest, so I watch them gradually over mostly consecutive nights. This morning, though, I wanted to finish White Christmas with breakfast (yogurt, granola), and tears sprang to my eyes when the old General sees his old soldiers. I'm a silly old fool for love.

I am glad to say these movies have managed to cheer me up, as did a long walk in the afternoon sunshine. I have much to be grateful for, and I am indeed thankful. And I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving weekend, good vaccine news, and merrier times to come.

Soft Joys

Probably a cherry cordial Hershey's kiss is not a healthy breakfast, but today it was one of the soft joys keeping me (emotionally & spiritually) alive. We had our weekly grocery shopping date early this morning, and I got the $2.99 special on Hershey's holiday candy (if you buy 5 packages), an item actually on my list, because I had been decorating my house, and it was time to put colorful (individually-wrapped) candy out in the various dishes...for us to eat for several months, as nobody else is coming in our house... Sigh... 

But, back to the joy part, I had no trouble picking out 5 bags of what I wanted, including mint, almond, plain milk chocolate, and peppermint bark bells. Instead of eating breakfast, I was placing the dishes around the house. Somehow, this helps.

Mid-morning at work, I saw the email showing a picture of (individually-wrapped) goodies and little Starbuck's iced coffee bottles! So I had some! Then home to a Honeycrisp apple, and the Governor, live, telling us we are back in Tier 3, to please stay home, starting Friday, to keep us all alive. I am glad that my little chalkboard poems are "soft joys" for those who see them here, or on Facebook or Instagram. I'm grateful they are hitting the spot.

Likewise, I was delighted with the response to my story, "A Retiring Woman," and grateful to Calyx for publishing it online. My daughter and her boyfriend were gripped by it, and she quoted a passage on integrity of voice. My son said he laughed out loud! Yay! It's a long story, and so many people read it and responded. I am wowed. 

Those are big things in my life, but the little, goofy things help, too. One day, I found myself gardening in pearls. Ah, it was Election Day, a lovely warm day, and I was wearing (fake) pearls to honor RBG, and there was yard work to be done. Another day, I was dusting in earrings, post Zoom, which is the only time I put on drop earrings. It felt good to dust, and to re-stack my stacks of books awaiting the second lockdown, as I sometimes think of it, but nobody likes the word "lockdown," and the Governor is just announcing a return to Tier 3, for all of Illinois, to help avoid a firmer stay-at-home order. This is a stay-at-home-as-much-as-you-can situation. Till then...(on a Fat Tuesday in the blog) I've got candy.

Sad/Glad

Well, I got over yesterday's cranked-up crankiness and actually got even more work done than expected! So today could be an official Slattern Day, except I am actually working from home this afternoon--virtual poetry event at the library--and, as usual, working on various things in my home and home office before and after that. I am glad that Cranky Doodle Day is a fairly rare day among my "eight days a week" regular blog practice, but I suppose the crankiness can build up.

Today is sort of a sad/glad day, dark and cold outside, with a wind advisory. When I checked the weather app on my phone, the expected precip was...ice. 

I congratulate all those people who put up their holiday decorations during our warm spell! I am pulling out interior decorations gradually, and I am glad I planted that tiny tree in a pot to decorate with blackberry lily seeds and leftover earrings. Every little bit helps. My chalkboard poem for today is "Sad/Glad," about my children. When I walk into my daughter's room now, I flip the light switch to turn on her string of tree lights left behind...

Sad/Glad

I walk into the rooms
of my children

who won’t be coming home
for the holidays.

I am glad
they are alive.

I had some good news: my story "A Retiring Woman," which has gone through many revisions and various titles, coming back now to its original title, was first runner up for the Margarita Donnelly Prize in Prose Writing at Calyx. For fellow writers, I've been working on this for years, and years ago I sent it to Calyx, thinking that was the perfect home for it. It was rejected. Back to revision! And back to Calyx! I love how this worked out. 

Also, Calyx is in Oregon, and so is my daughter, so it's a Random Coinciday in the blog!

Friday the 13th

I'm a person who gets a lot done, partly by putting off some of what needs to be done. That is, if something I have to do makes me nervous, I will do a bunch of other stuff first while procrastinating. In that way, everything...and even more...actually gets done! Today, to avoid starting one of these things, I put up my sweet turquoise-colored wooden Christmas tree decorations atop the piano to make myself happy. 

Superstitiously, I also put off posting a poem on my chalkboard by writing a mock-superstitious mock-haiku. No joke, though, I really didn't want to jinx anything by posting the real poem I'd been working on...and I have learned to listen to my gut.

What things make me nervous? Sometimes it's communicating about technology via technology! I'm big on communication but aware that a lot of people don't like to read emails or communicate promptly. So, mixed fear and annoyance about lack of response. Sometimes it's dread of certain people who find fault with anything I do. I know this is probably from their own fears and insecurities, but it still gets to me, hurts my feelings. Sometimes it's because if I say something like that, someone is bound to jump on me and say I'm the one in control of my own responses to other's people's negativity, et cetera, blah blah blah. I'm laughing as I type this but also annoyed!--with them as much as me, BECAUSE, to quote from the musical Company, "I'm a living thing, too, you shithead." Wow, I didn't know that was coming. I guess it's a Cranky Doodle Day in the blog!

Anyhoo, the sun is shining, and it's pretty outside, though still below freezing. I'm staying in today to do all the stuff I am currently putting off. Happy Friday the 13th! As the Internet memes keep saying, "What could go wrong?" I love you, Captain Picard.