Bow down before the one you serve

Fucking Sears.

Fucking "American Home Shield" home warranty.

Why is it so difficult to get anything done simply these days? Why do I have to spend so many of my precious Nolan-free minutes on the goddamn phone with a goddamn robot trying to get someone to come fix my goddamn washing machine? It's not just: "Oh, the washing machine's broken, let me call the repairman." And the repairman shows up and fixes the stupid thing.

Instead, it's: "Oh, the washing machine's broken." Let me call the home warranty place (on a Friday) and get a robot and push button after button on their voice menu before getting a live human, who then proceeds to tell me to wait for a call back. So I wait for a call back and speak to a human for 30 seconds before being transferred to Sears to talk to their robot (who at least has voice-recognition software so I can talk instead of pushing buttons). I finally speak with a Sears human and am given an appointment time five days in the future (a Tuesday), which means five days of toddler living with no laundry getting done. Then when the repairman comes he tells me he needs to order a part, and when the part arrives THEN I can call to make another appointment to effect the actual repair. Under no circumstances am I to call BEFORE the part arrives (even though there seems to be a five-day lag in appointment-getting). The part finally arrives on the following Monday (after one Thursday trip to the laundromat sans car, trying to get Nolan to walk at a pace slightly faster than a handicapped caterpillar as I push my little-old-lady grocery cart full of dirty laundry and hold his hand at the same time. That was three hours round trip, only an hour and a half of which was actual laundry-doing.) and I call to make a new appointment. I am told Tuesday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. I am stupidly happy to get an appointment for the next day. I foolishly assume that the information given to me on the phone by a Sears rep will be accurate and go to the gym in the morning, only to miss 3 phone calls from Sears wondering where I am when my appointment was for 8-12 that morning. I call back upon returning home from the gym (going through all the robot brou-ha-ha yet again) and am told that I'll have to reschedule. I say, "I don't want to reschedule, I want my washer fixed when you told me you were going to fix it." I am transferred to a "tech repair" specialist who takes my phone number and tells me she will call the local repair routing office and have them call me. Two hours go by. No one calls. I call the main Sears number again and am forced, through gritted teeth, to once more recite my phone number and address for the robot. The customer service rep based in Manila, Phillippines tells me she cannot transfer me to anyone in the "tech repair" department because she doesn't have that capability. I tell her the previous rep did exactly that, but she persists in wanting me to reschedule instead. I am unfailingly polite - I say, "That is unacceptable. I would like my washing machine repaired today, as I was told it would be." She clearly does not know what the hell to do and ends up giving me the phone number for what she says is my local repair department. I thank her, hang up, and call the number (which does have a local area code) and, like something from a Sartre play, am connected to the same fucking robot who wants me to tell her my phone number and address. I hang up and jump up and down furiously while hissing "fucking fuckity fuckity fuck fucking fuckers" under my breath, startling the cats, but thankfully not waking up Nolan. I decide it's really not worth getting that mad and surrender to the robot. I call back one more time and get an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. From 1 to 5.

I will keep my fingers crossed. And shove one more day's laundry into the hamper.

I hate that this has me so upset, and I hate that this is the kind of thing that's making me upset these days - it's so lame. It's so 1950s housewife. I'm in pearls and a full skirt vacuuming and telling KB "Darling, the washer repair got a bit botched, I'm afraid, and so you shall have no clean hankies for work this week." Blargghg! There are more important things I could be doing with my time!

Thanks for reading. Sigh.

You think you're tired now, well wait until 3

Hey, how about them Oscars, huh? Were they long, or what?

But seriously, folks. Did anybody watch the whole thing? Really? I told myself I was going to watch everything, just because I could (KB had no interest and I managed to get Nolan in bed by 8, so I was free to sit there and tube out for four hours) but in the end, I had to skip some of it, it was just so tedious. I found myself flipping back and forth between the Oscars and something on the BBC America with Michael Palin and a flimsy excuse to show all his favorite Python skits. Even when I wanted to want to care (like when the 98-year-old Production Designer/Art Director dude was giving his speech) I just couldn't.

Although I did find some serendipitous moments of switching back and forth between the two, such as clicking to the BBC and the architect/abbatoir/block of flats sketch with John Cleese screaming, "You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds, squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss about the struggling artist..." and then back to the Oscars to see Cameron Diaz trying not to yawn while listening to Robert Boyle (the above-mentioned Honorary Oscar recipient).

I was surprised by a number of the winners: I had thought Julie Christie would win Best Actress and Ruby Dee Best Supporting Actress, simply because the Academy likes to give Oscars to the older long-haul actors who've never won (or, in Christie's case, who won so long ago it was like a different career). Funnily enough, I thought Marion Cotillard's and Tilda Swinton's acceptance speeches were two of the best of the night - perhaps because they weren't really expecting to win and were able to be more spontaneous in their remarks.

I was dismayed to see Diablo Cody win for Juno - it was a cute and funny film, but there's no way in hell that was a better-written screenplay than Michael Clayton. (Plus I find her tremendously annoying personality-wise. Note to "Diablo" [I know that's not her real name]: You are not Bettie Page. Nor are you Louise Brooks. If we all just agree that you're a bad ass, will you please stop showing us your tattoos?) I was betting on Paul Thomas Anderson for director, too, mostly because There Will Be Blood seemed to me to be more the quintessential American picture (Corporate Greed versus Religious Fervor - hey! It IS America!) than No Country For Old Men. I thought the Messers Coen would get the Adapted Screenplay nod (as they did) but that Blood would win for Picture and Director. Shows how much I know.

And now I have two more movies to add to my Netflix list - The Bourne Ultimatum (which won in both Sound categories), because I didn't realize it was directed by Paul Greengrass and had dismissed it as another money-sucking sequel (even though the first two kicked ass, I have to say), and Enchanted, which looked to me from the previews I saw to be another sappy Disney princess-in-peril schlockfest, but which after hearing the three nominated songs I might have to reconsider, as they seemed just snarky enough to make for a fun movie (particularly for those of us who had a seriously Little Mermaid-influenced adolescence).

And Jon Stewart was great. I like that he's not really a Hollywood guy - he does his thing and then gets out of the way of the awards and winners and lets them do their thing. If he comes up with a funny quip spontaneously, he'll throw it in there, but he doesn't force it (a la Billy Crystal). Plus he gave that Czech singer a chance to give her speech, which I thought was very sweet. (That movie, Once, is on the list for my Movies with Geriatrics course, so I don't have to Netflix it.)

But why wasn't Roy Schieder in the "We're Sad They're Dead" montage with Heath Ledger? Did he not make the deadline?

So anyway. What'd you guys think?

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I'll announce the poll winner once I finish tabulating all three of the responses I got!

I used to love her, but I had to kill her

Argh. Can't sleep (clown'll eat me!) so I'm writing.

Why does my brain wait until I'm all ready for bed - teeth brushed, face washed, prayers prayed (Ha! just seeing if you're paying attention) - and I've gotten snuggled into my warm bed before going into Hyper Creative Drive? Is it just that my sense of what is actually worthy of being written down is skewed by my tiredness and everything seems like a brilliant idea? (kind of like when you're stoned and everything you think seems REVOLUTIONARY!) Or does my brain just like to torture me by waiting until I'm all snuzzy drowsy cuddly with KB before it goes, "Psst. You know what would be a great way to introduce the FBI agent in that horror script? Here listen, I'll tell you..." and I find myself laying there arguing with myself:

Me: "I'll write it down in the morning."
My Brain: "You'll have forgotten it. I promise you."
Me: "No, this is too good. I'll remember it. I know I will."
My Brain: "You won't get all the detail. You won't get the feeling of it. You'll get some vague outline and most of the facts, but it won't be as meaningful and good as it is now."
Me: "God dammit."

And I get out of bed and go into the office and turn on the blinding light and write it down. And it's true, My Brain is right, because it's happened before - I tell myself I'll remember it in the morning, turn over and go to sleep, and then when it's the next morning (or afternoon when Nolan's napping, as is usually the case) and I do try to get it down on paper, I find myself going, "Now what was that great line? Shit."

I have, since the great The Wind That Shakes The Barley tragedy of Ought Eight, been given a virtual kick in the butt, writing-wise. I am simultaneously trying to work harder at writing at least something every day, and also giving myself a break for not being able to be Superwoman and do it all plus be a great writer. KB has said to me many times that this is just one phase in our lives, the stay-at-home-and-raise-your-kids phase, and there will be other phases (hopefully the write and sell and make movies phase) in the future, and I know that's true. It's just so hard sometimes to cut myself slack.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Nolan and I were at the library today, because we've been staying home entirely too much lately, being all homebound and cocoony with no appointments or playdates and I really felt we just needed to get out. It's hard to convince Nolan to change the status quo most of the time - if he's happy playing Constructables, he doesn't want to get a coat and hat and shoes on and go out in the cold and get in the car. So I usually defer to him and we stay home and play on the floor until I'm drooling with ennui.

But not today! Today, I forced him into the coat, etc. and we went to the Library for some interaction with other human beings.

And in the lobby, we ran into this woman, let's call her, um...Heidi. Nolan and I have run into Heidi and her kids numerous times in the past at various playgrounds in Princeton, mostly last fall, just after she had had her third child. She's a pediatrician who works part time, and did I mention she has three kids? When we first met her last fall, the baby had just been born and she was on her six-week maternity leave from work. (And she was completely free of any leftover baby weight that I could see.) We met for a couple playdates (her middle child, a girl, is Nolan's age) and lunch and whatnot, and I wish I could think of a bad thing to say about her, because...there isn't one. The woman's perfect. She has three kids under the age of 5, she works part time as a friggin' doctor, and she's totally cool. About everything. She makes homemade cookies. She knits. She wears Chuck Taylors in a completely un-ironic way, and she gets away with it! And she's not that annoying kind of holier-than-thou mom who let you KNOW that she knits and makes homemade cookies and doen't give her kids any food with high fructose corn syrup. She just does those things. And is totally self-deprecating and slightly goofy and doesn't wear makeup and I hate her.

I have one kid and am home full time with him, I don't knit or bake or do anything crafty, and all I do when KB comes home from work is bitch about what a tough day I had and how difficult Nolan was to deal with. Sometimes I think I just need to turn in my Parenting License to the Parenting Agency and say, "Sorry, I really thought I could handle this, but as it turns out, I cannot. I am a complete wimp and am totally incapable of dealing with adversity in any form, especially as it pertains to my child. Sorry about that. Better luck next time!"

Aigh.

So anyway, we met this woman in the lobby of the library, and we chatted and I invited her and her husband over for dinner. Because I'm an idiot, and apparently a masochistic one at that. I'll get to know her even better over dinner, I'm sure, and it will turn out that she volunteers for Save the Children in her spare time, knits afghans for elderly Katrina survivors, and that she once rescued a litter of puppies from a burning building. While wearing her Chucks. Sigh.

So I'm looking forward to that dinner.

But, and I have no smooth segue here (alas), the real thing I wanted to write about when I sat down was...Paul Haggis. KB and I just watched "In The Valley Of Elah," and I have to say, that's the first Paul Haggis film I've seen that didn't make me want to retch. Or hoot. Or both. Repeatedly. It was actually quite good - some clunky dialogue and some rather obvious foreshadowing of plot points, but on the whole very balanced and subtle and...mature.

I guess it's surprising to me, because when "Crash" won Best Picture in 2006, it really just hurt my brain. I couldn't fathom that anyone could think that trite, preachy, poorly written, hammily acted, obvious, treacly, ponderous, mish-mash of cliches could be on anyone's list of Not Too Awful movies, much less the Best Friggin' Movie of the Year. I laughed when it was nominated, it seemed like such a joke, and when it won I was just flabbergasted.

Not to mention "Million Dollar Baby," which was slightly less painful due to the mollifying presence of Morgan Freeman (he can make reading the phone book seem like Fine Art), but in which I was still able to predict the "big" moments, right down to almost getting the dialogue word for word in some scenes. (My mom hates watching movies with me now - she says I've gotten too snobby - and this was a particularly bad one. We were watching it at her house, since she has the pay cable and the big flat screen TV, and when I started guessing what the lines were going to be, out loud, to KB, she got up and left the room she was so annoyed. Sorry, Mom!)

So with those two movies (plus the screenplay for "The Last Kiss!" Yecch! Now there's a winner!) comprising the entirety of my knowledge of Paul Haggis's, how do you say, oov-rah, I did not have high hopes for Elah. I guess when you go into something with low expectations, it's not too hard to pleasantly surprised. I don't want to be damning the movie with faint praise, because it actually really was quite good. My theory (espoused to KB, my current sounding-board/victim for theories) was that Haggis had written and directed Crash, but only written Elah, and thus had another person (the theoretical director) to reign in his worst impulses and sort of balance him out.

Buzz! Wrong! Thank you for playing, Caroline! Take your year's supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Franscisco treat, and leave quietly, won't you? He wrote and directed both of them. Huh. What do you know. Maybe he's growing and learning as a director and writer? That was the thing about Crash, it was so...juvenile. All the ideas were on the surface, nothing was left for the audience to understand. He might as well have just bought one of those giant billboards on Sunset and wrote "Racism and stereotypes...BAD. Caring about people as individuals...GOOD." and saved us all two hours.

But then, he's the one with the shelf full of shiny gold statues, now, isn't he?

Thanks for reading.

She blinded me with science

I usually don't give too much credence to those random little factoids you get on some multi-pack foodstuffs these days (e.g., Nolan's instant breakfast oatmeal packets have "Dino-Info" on them, my Splenda packets have stupid little Splenda-focused phrases on them) but at lunch today, on my Snapple lid, I got one that was interesting. (You would think these kinds of things would be manna from heaven for me, Useless Trivia Girl, but I find most of them redundant and boring - "Oh really, Snapple? A panda bear's diet is 99% bamboo? I never would have guessed that, thanks!")

My lid today said, "The motto on the first U.S. penny was 'Mind Your Own Business.'" This seemed just bizarre enough to be true, and I deemed it worthy of investigation. Of course, "investigation" in today's modern world (speaking of redundant, Caroline - "today's modern world?" Jeesh.) mostly consists of Google and Wikipedia, and sure enough, there it is.

Of course, Snapple got a couple little facets of their trivia wrong - namely, the United States Mint has never produced a "penny." The official name for the one-cent coin is "cent." And the actual motto on the coin was "Mind Your Business," which is a little more open for interpretation than "Mind Your Own Business."

But still. How often do you pick up a Jeopardy-worthy tidbit from a Snapple lid?

I also like noting the fact that "In God We Trust" was not made the official national motto until 1956 - take that, fundamentalist Christian blowhards!

Thanks for reading.

Why does my queckery biffle you so?

I is a published author!

Check it out:

IM IN UR PAPER, RAGGING ON UR CITIZENS

Meanwhile, the hunt for a new house intensifies. We have a house of interest (like people the police don't have enough evidence to call "suspects," they call a "person of interest") that we're hopefully going to be making an offer on soon, depending on how the sellers answer a few of our questions.

If things move forward according to plan, I will show y'all some pictures. We're trying not to get too excited so we can walk away if need be, but it's so hard! Especially for me. I'm a big fantasizer. I'm already planning dinner parties (with what friends?) and bathroom renovations (with what money?) and kitchen-garden layouts. In November. So, yeah - reality? Not so high on my list at the moment, clearly.

I finally got off my ass and sent out a shitload of pictures of the little man, so if you haven't checked your e-mail lately, and you feel like watching a 150-picture slideshow and pausing it every three seconds because my subtitles are so damn verbose, please check here.

In response to your inquiries, Nolan was a monkey again this year for Halloween.

The costume from last year still fit (barely), and since this was our first official "trick-or-treat" year, Nolan didn't even have any idea what the holiday was, much less an opinion on what costume he wanted to wear. (Now he's Halloween savvy - just yesterday he told me "Want to wear monkey costume and get more candy!") I'm sure next year we'll be shelling out big bucks for some pre-fab tractor-trailer/car transporter/truck kind of costume (you know I'm not that mom who's going to be able to make my kid's costume) so we recycled the monkey costume while it was still possible.


We walked up our street and back again with another little boy from the neighborhood, Spencer, and his mom Sonya. Spencer was a duck who refused to pull his duck-hood up, and since people were often mistaking Nolan's monkey for a mouse (or occasionally a bear) we called them The Mouse-Monkey and The Angry Duck.

We were the first wave of trick-or-treaters at most houses, which was good, because we moved sooooooo slowly. Any activity undertaken with one toddler is, by its very nature, excruciatingly slow, so when you factor in the combined delay exponent of TWO toddlers and add the confusion of a holiday based on walking around in disguise to people's houses demanding candy, you get a trick-or-treat excursion that starts at 5:15 and ends well after dark.

After each new house's candy acquisition, Nolan would say, "Wanna open it!" and I would tell him to wait until we got home, at which point he could open one piece of candy, and he would reply, "Wanna go home." We managed to convince him to keep going long enough to get a respectable score of candy in his bucket. The biggest hit of the night was a mechanical bat on a string that flew around and around in the air on a neighbor's porch. We spent a good ten minutes at that house, two hypnotized toddlers staring into the dark.

So now we're rationing out the candy one piece at a time for dessert after meals. It will easily last until Christmas, I'm sure, when Nolan can replenish his candy supply, and we'll have to attempt to explain the special weirdness of the traditions surrounding Christmas.

Thanks for reading.