Monday, January 31, 2011

She is love.

How many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. – Y.B. Yeats

These days Daisy is always in ten places at once. She is crawling all over the house, pulling herself up on the coffee table and perusing the library books we checked out last week. She is peering out the window, putting her square, triangle, circle and star into her toy turtle, and playing the music on her airplane walker. She is eating Cheerios while I weed. She is laughing with delight at Casey playing with her rope. She is singing and dancing to the music that fills the room.

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She is bumping her head on the desk. She is toppling the office paper recycling bin. She is diving into Casey’s water bowl. She is babbling at herself in the mirror. She is saying “hi” to the women in line behind us. She is crawling in circles around me, laughing as I dance, waiting for me to tickle her. She is splashing her daddy at bath time every night, squealing and mimicking the funny noises he makes at her.

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She is pulling her toys out of her “baskets,” and then carefully places the toys back. She is pulling up on her “stand and play table,” occasionally letting go to test the strength of her legs. She is smiling as she tentatively takes a few hesitant steps hanging on to walls and futons and coffee tables. She is rolling her soft soccer ball to towards me, waiting to “catch” it when I roll it back. She is pulling paperbacks off bookshelves, thumbing through each of them.

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She is taking her socks off and is laughing in delight. She is playing with her measuring cups, banging them on the hardwood floor while I prepare dinner. She crawls right toward her daddy when he walks through the door, giggling as he sweeps her up into a big hug. She is flashing me a toothy grin, asking me with a twinkle in her eye if I will play with her. She climbs up my legs with a book in hand, asking in her silent way for a cuddle while we read. She is squishing banana in her hands before she places it in her mouth.

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She is making me fall more in love with her. Every. Single. Day.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Reasons I’m getting old: A night at the cinema

I have decided that I cannot possibly go to the cinema anymore (I get a secret thrill about calling it the cinema as it makes me feel very sophisticated. Please don’t judge.) When you go to the cinema, you see, you are entirely too dependent on the people around you to be reasonable and sane, quiet and somewhat still. Most people in the cinema are reasonable and sane, of course, but every now and then you get one bird-brained knucklehead who breaks the social contract – you know the proper movie-going etiquette.

Take last Sunday night, for instance. While visiting some friends in Mill Valley for the long weekend (by-the-way, does anybody want to donate to my “Mill Valley house fund?” I have found the neighborhood I want to live in, I just do not have the income to support it, Thanks.) we decided to leave Daisy in the very capable hands of a grandma-to-be and saw The King’s Speech, which I ended up really liking, by the way. Of course I could watch Colin Firth give a tutorial on pencil drawing in Ukrainian for five hours, so maybe I am not the best judge of character. Also, I have an unnatural love for the British monarchy. In fact I watched the NBC Tom Brokaw Dateline Special on Prince William, Kate Middleton & and the Prince of Wales half a dozen times before my DVR died.

Anyway, back to my big double date at the cinema. We arrived literally seconds before the movie started, I have a pathological fear of being late to the movies, and I get an actual feeling of dread if I walk in and all the back aisle seats are taken. (I have been known to get sick in theaters, so I need to sit in the back, and able to make a quick exit if needed, but that is neither here nor there), and if the aisle seats are all taken and you have to be that person who goes excuse me pardon me sorry as you shuffle past with your either your front towards them or your back towards them, and oh god, I am breaking out in hives just thinking about it – and the theater was about three-fourths full, with four seats in a row, usually a bit rare for a movie just seconds from starting.

We’d been sitting in them for the first preview when I got the first kick to my chair. “Did you feel that?” I asked J, “Yes, just ignore it”, he said. Halfway through the next preview, there was loud giggling and another jolt. I turned around and glared at my assailant. “You can’t feel that?” I said to J, “doesn’t it completely annoy you? Who do these kids think they are? Can’t they just stay seated in their seats? Why do they have to continually cross and uncross legs, stand up, sit down, and kick my seat?”

So, I sat through the entire movie with a pounding to my lower back, of course, I tried to imagine I was getting a deep tissue massage on my lower lumbar while watching a serious movie about a royal stutter. After the movie, I wanted to let the teenagers know exactly how much they bugged me, but I thought that might make me seem a tad older than my 30 years. And anyways, what would have they done if I stood up, flexed my muscles, and announced I was making a citizen’s arrest because two teenagers couldn’t keep still during a 2-hour feature film, and I needed to call their mothers.

Probably, laughed in my face.

So that’s why I’ve decided I can’t go to the cinema anymore: as you might now suspect because it could be full of antsy teenagers. And there’s no guarantee it won’t be, you know? It’s all down to fate! So, I’d rather stay home, wait for the DVD on Netflix, and watch my movies from the comfort of my couch, with a proper back rub from my husband.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The day I kicked Kirsten Dunst in the face

The first thing you should know about me is that I am not – nope, not in the slightest – someone you would call star struck. I am not a religious People Magazine, US Weekly or Star Magazine reader. I only know a handful of celebrity names and faces. And lastly, I am usually completely oblivious to the world around me. For example, several years ago I sat next to Tara Reid at a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood, and never realized it until after our party left. This is partly due to the fact that I don’t watch much TV or many movies, and partly due to the fact that I am not up on pop culture. In fact, I recently went a showing of a documentary attended by the cast of Criminal Minds, at the Pasadena Film Festival, and I didn’t realize I was having a conversation with Shemar Moore, aka Derek Morgan, until someone interrupted to ask for an autograph. And yet, I kicked Kirsten Dunst in the face last week in my ballet class.

I told you a few months ago about my hard-core ballet class, which continues to kick my butt every Monday night. Part ballet, part Pilates, part drill sergeant, we sit-up, push-up, grand pliĆ© and arabesque our way to slimmer legs, stronger abs and better posture. Usually, I hide in the back, giving myself as much room as possible since I well, have a history of running into walls. But, space has been at a premium lately, probably due to newly made New Year’s resolutions, but also that swimsuit season starts in March in LA. And recently we’ve had a new dancer join the ranks: Kirsten Dunst. While I know that I should be used to seeing celebrities as I live in the valley, epicenter of celebrity sightings; I am never used to seeing them quite so close, barefoot, sweaty and makeup free.

The whole class was so nonchalant like, the famous Spiderman heroine wasn’t standing right next to us. I feel like I could tell a hundred stories about my life and things that have happened, but none of them would have the dramatic effect of “and then I kicked Kirsten Dunst in the face.” And Internet, I know you are suppose to play it cool around celebrities and act like it’s no big deal because Stars, They’re Just Like Us!, but I don’t mind telling you that I was Freaking. Out. Oh look, she’s sweating from the 100 leg lifts we just did, just like me! She’s reaching for her water bottle after bar work too, just like me! She wears two bobby pins in her hair too, just like me! I felt like People Magazine had come to life just before my eyes, and I couldn’t stop staring. Now, the first time she had come into class, I averted my eyes for fear of making any sort of eye contact. However, this time I was too busy watching her every move that I failed to pay attention, resulting in a merge of her left cheek and my right foot. Of course, she was a classy girl, just brushing off my clumsiness and laughing alongside of me at the painfully exhausting leg lifts.

By the time class was over I was so exhausted, but I was desperately trying to start a casual conversation with her. We could be best friends, and she could run away with my brother-in-law Chris who is inexplicably in love with her. I wanted to tell her that I always cry when watching Little Women, she played a faithful Amy. I wanted to ask her if her name is pronounced KUR-sten or KEER-sten, and how I can get tickets of the On the Road premiere, my all-time favorite book? But instead of further embarrassing myself, I decided to head home, and tripped over my own two feet on my way out the door. Yep, just call me Grace.