Red Room Where the Writers Are

This has been a busy and frequently difficult week.  Money was so tight, stresses were high, and family issues all over the place.  Monetarily it improved some, thanks to KidTwo and two family friends--thank goodness.  We will now make it through until the next batch of regularly scheduled money comes through.  We have milk, eggs, gas, laundry quarters, and KidThree's necessities.  As for the family issues, so long as we're not dead, there is hope and time.

One friend sent us movie money in return for a favor done a month ago.  Honest to goodness, she needs to cut that out or I won't be able to do her favors anymore, but we went to the movies anyway!  KidThree and I have been wanting to see "W" ever since it came out, but it was at the local theatre where we don't like the wheelchair spaces and we didn't have the money to travel to find it elsewhere.  Finally, it changed theatres here in town.  They do that sometime--something will be showing at the newer theatre (which we dislike), but then it will head over a few blocks to the other one (with the good wheelchair spaces).  So, last night we headed out.  

The prices had gone up--it was $10 for an adult, with only a seventy-five cent discount for students.  Ouch.  Good thing the friend sent $20.  Inside, the theatre was almost deserted.  I could hear other movies playing in the other auditoriums but there were no customers at the snack bar, only staff members in the lobby.  In our auditorium, there was one couple, another couple with what looked like their almost-grown offspring, and KidThree and me.  That was it.  It was almost like a private showing.

We hated the movie.  KidThree was just bored, and I was in pain.  I've read so many books about the Bush White House with all its betrayals and lies and venality that I recognized some of the conversations and scenarios.  It was hard enough to live through, and then to read explanations of; to sit and watch it on screen was like having scabs torn off all over my body and lemon juice poured on the raw spots.   It was excruciating to sit through, to have it so forcefully shoved in my consciousness again that that cretin, that megalomaniac, that religiously deluded oaf, was handed control of my beloved country and allowed to drive it roughshod over the rest of the world.

We ended up leaving before it ended.  Maybe I'll be up to watching it through to the end after Obama is president, but maybe not.

At home, KidThree and I watched a documentary about Jonestown.  Thirty years ago, I was 17 and living in the East Bay, already enlisted in the Navy but still at home until my slot opened up in March.  Our local news was from Oakland and San Francisco stations, so it was all Jonestown, all the time.  KidThree was horrified at what had happened, at how the people had followed Jim Jones, and at how so many died so horribly.  I'd told her before the origin of the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid," but it hadn't really registered--now it has.  It gave us a lot to talk about, about religion and psychology and hope and the need to belong.  I was able to give her more background than the documentary did (just because of time constraints, I'm sure--the documentary was excellent) and then in the visit to the grandparents last weekend, Grandpa gave more details.  What a ghastly time that was, and how horrible that things like that keep repeating.

I finished reading "In Search of Bill Clinton," by John Gartner.  It was excellent.  In the early chapters, I was getting a bit annoyed at the author as it felt to me like he was interjecting himself into the narrative too much, but then he eased off, backed out of the narrative.  I still don't know that I would like Bill Clinton personally, but reading the book did give me a much deeper understanding of the demons that drive him; I'm more sympathetic to him now.  But, given that caveat, I'm even more leery of having him back on the political stage.  I don't want Hillary as Secretary of State--let her stay in the Senate where she have enormous influence for the next twenty-plus years.  There are others who could do an excellent job as Secretary of State.

Lorna Landvik's " 'tis the Season" was waiting for me at the library yesterday.  I picked it up, thinking to read it this weekend, but it was so short that I went ahead and read it yesterday before we went to see "W."   I do so love Lorna Landvik's books.  I first found "Patty Jane's House of Curl" on the Friends of the LIbrary sale shelves inside the library and was hooked.  Her books are something special.  On the surface, the plots seem almost simplistic, but then the characters ring so true and the situations are things I can recognize from my life and the lives of others; Landvik pokes fun at people's foibles but with such kindness; and the resolutions work.  When I close her books after reading the last page, the characters are still busily going about their lives, unaware that I've been peeking at them through her lens.  This book was an epistolary novel, which is a genre that I love when it's done well, and this one was done well.  Epistolary novels are tricky--there's no omniscient narrator to guide us along and to provide clarifications, there are just the letters (emails, etc.) and we have to figure it out as we go.  The author has to be able to make all the voices seem authentic, when it's a character we love and when it's a character we hate.  Lorna Landvik did it beautifully.  Read the book.  I'm going to buy it to give to KidThree for Christmas.

Time to get ready to face the day, which I've been avoiding doing.  The babies are here in half an hour, the dishes aren't done, and the living room's a mess.  KidTwo needed Mom Time last night, which she got.  "I love you, KidTwo, and send all the kisses and hugs and handholding and understanding I can possibly generate in your direction."

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