I’m actually quite glad to see the end of the Never-Ending Holidays. They were enjoyable, but I ate too much, spent too much, my healthy routines were all disrupted, my productivity went to zilch, projects have been back-burnered for too long, the final phase of the reducing part of my dietary regimen has been treading water for weeks, and I need to really crack down and get back to work!
Last Sunday, I met my sister Jill down at the Leominster shopping area (a bewildering maze of stores and connecting roads that include Market Basket Plaza, The Mall at Whitney Field and a cineplex). She wanted to see the movie It’s Complicated and check stores for shoes and discounted Christmas cards; I needed to go to PetSmart because I’d run out of cat food. My usual shopping patterns have been all disrupted due to the holidays and socializing, and I’ve been spending tons of money on food for parties and dinners and forgetting my own staples!
I bought our movie tickets. Jill and I checked the stores (which all close at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday) and had a bite to eat at the Border Grille. We both wanted to eat lightly, so I had a house salad with no dressing (that’s how I eat them now) and Jill had a side of guacamole. Our server was visibly disappointed that we ordered so little, and Jill, who waitressed in college, left her a whacking tip.
I checked out Newbury Comics while I was down there and really liked it. 🙂 I discovered that they sell both Manic Panic and Special Effects hair color. Hot Topic has discontinued the Color Fiend color I’m using now, and I’m going to have to find an alternative after I finish the bottles I’ve got left. It’s hard to find a real violet-blue, the blues tend too much toward blue-green.
I didn’t think much of It’s Complicated. I certainly appreciate a film that shows people my age being enthusiastically sexual, involved in relationships and otherwise fully engaged in life. I don’t so much appreciate a film that shows people my age behaving like infantile idiots. I was thoroughly exasperated with Streep’s character early on, and her situation seemed highly implausible in many ways–she runs her own business but hardly ever seems to be at work, she has this stunning house, gorgeous garden, expensive wardrobe, three kids in college, is about to put a big addition onto her house–how is she paying for all that? Alec Baldwin’s character is a mega-jerk, period, I couldn’t sympathize with him at all. He cheated on his first wife with a young bimbo, divorced his first wife to marry the young bimbo, and now he’s cheating on the second wife, while getting aggressively jealous of the unattached men who are interested in his ex-! His obesity didn’t make him a middle-aged Everyman for me, it just made him a fat slob–and underscored the gender double standard, because all of the 50-something women characters are slender as reeds, despite how much of Streep’s gourmet cooking they eat! (I found the food in the movie very distracting: all I could think was, “how can they all be eating so much rich food all the time and not be morbidly overweight?” It also seemed like another gender stereotype, the woman who nurtures by feeding everybody.) I did like the ending, and the score is by Hans Zimmer.
On Monday, my sister cooked fresh salmon for dinner, and I went up to the lake after getting my laundry done and hung on the line, running a few local errands (in a short but intense “snowburst” that made driving tricky) and doing cycling early. I’d ordered some CDs for Jill and they’d arrived, so I had one last gift to wrap! There are two things I always do with my sister: drink, and take long walks. (Generally not in close juxtaposition. 🙂 ) As soon I arrived, Jill was ready to take a walk, so off we went–a non-stop brisk march around the lake and back for over two hours! Woof, was it cold, too. For dinner, I ate all the leftover salad from Saturday, with no dressing, because no one else was going to eat it, plus some steamed broccoli, and a little salmon.
We spent some time working on dad’s holiday letters. Jill has been coaxing dad to send out cards or letters, to stay in touch with his social network, for a couple of years. Mom always took care of the Christmas cards and dad just didn’t feel up to it, he got very down at the holidays, missing mom. He had a picture of his kitty that he wanted to put on the letters, and last year, I used that photo to make a pretty graphic header, but then dad didn’t get a letter written. I had a database I’d made from mom’s address book back when Jill and I sent out a mailing for mom and dad’s 50th anniversary.
On Monday, we worked on updating that database for dad to use as his Christmas card list. Jill and I also started taking down some of the holiday decorations. We sat up late watching my new DVD of All About Eve, which Jill had never seen before, and I did more on the socks I’m knitting.
On Tuesday, I did chores and took the trash and recyclables to the transfer station, did workout early and went to the lake. By this time, I was starting to feel just a bit holidayed-out. I was tired of driving so much, I’d given up even trying to quantify my caloric intake, I was tired of doing workouts early every day…*grump* I was hitting delayed Scrooge syndrome. I did manage to squeeze in sunset attunement for the first time in days–I got to the lake just in the nick of time to scuttle down to the basement with my cell phone alarm as a timer. Dad’s cat, who hasn’t decided he likes me, was hiding down there and was not pleased to see me. I added insult to injury by doing my attunement in the chair he’d been sleeping in while he scowled at me from a few feet away. 🙂 The weather was brutal, it never went above 15 degrees with a roaring wind all day.
Jill and dad had gone to see Sherlock Holmes in Gardner–why I didn’t go is a long story for another post. They didn’t much like the movie, I’m waiting for the DVD. I brought cabbage from home and cooked dinner with the holiday leftovers, making Bubble and Squeak with the leftover roast beef and gravy. We spent the rest of the evening doing a “mailing party.” Dad had written his holiday letter, and when I got there I set it up for him with the graphic header, and made the labels with mail merge, and we all sat and folded, stuffed, stamped, stickered and sealed the letters. Even dad’s friend Z. helped. Then Jill, dad, Z. and I took down, packed and put away every scrap of holiday decorations, even the tree. Jill was cleaning out one of the bathrooms and sent me home with three bags and a box full of odds and ends. Jill and I stayed up late watching my new DVD of The Apartment and I got more knitting done.
Jill was flying home on Wednesday, but she wanted to see one more movie with dad, Nine, and go to a seafood restaurant. Legal Seafoods was farther than Jill wanted to drive, so I suggested Weathervane, of which there is one in South Nashua. So, Jill and dad drove to Manchester Airport via South Nashua and saw the 10:40 a.m. show of Nine (too early for me!), and I met them at the cinema afterwards. We went to Weathervane and had a nice seafood lunch, and then Jill and dad headed for the airport while I ran errands. I had books from two different libraries that were all a day overdue!