It's a lo-o-o-ng day in the world...

The afternoon is slowly crawling by, as if it just emerged from the primeval sludge and hasn't fully developed its legs yet. Molasses and tar pits! Why can't it be 5:00 already?

At least the radio is playing Christmas music. At last.

I really like secular Christmas music. I love the Christian Christmas carols, of course, but there's something catching about the classic Christmas tunes. Two years ago we watched the movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. It was a great movie, although the song I remember the most wasn't the classic White Christmas but Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me.

Love, you didn't do right by me.
As they say in the song,
You done me wrong.

Somehow it suited my cynical streak, delivering just the perfect dose of Bah humbug.

Which reminds me, we have to go log a Christmas tree this weekend and it's going to cost us at least five times as much as trees cost in Oregon. Can you believe that when we lived next to a tree farm, we could cut our own tree for $1/ft? It's almost enough to drive one to artificial trees with fake fresh pine scent. And we also need to string white Christmas lights on our house. Why didn't we string lights up last year and just leave them on? Blah humbug.

Unmetred verse

For some reason I felt inspired to toss off a few lines of rant and rave, a la Ogden Nash.

Why do people approaching doorways at the same time as me feel compelled to give me such a wide berth?
Do they automatically assume that just because I am pregnant, I must necessarily have a substantial girth?
It’s so much nicer when people tell me I am not showing at all.
Such compliments are calculated to bring a pleased flush to cheeks that were not glowing at all.
It’s said that trials and tribulations and such experiences can expand our borders, metaphorically;
But that that principle is turning out to be a bit too literal in my case I can state, categorically.

Dragville

There is a home video that Leah and I watched when we went out to Oregon for Thanksgiving 2001, of Uncle Brad and Aunt Rosanne doing a 'candid' interview. With typical quirky Brad humour, the scene in question consisted of Brad and Rosanne sitting side by side staring blankly at the camera; somehow Brad had manipulated it so that there was the clip art of a big red heart cut-out surrounding them. 'Well, here we are, Rosie,' Brad began. 'Sitting in the middle of a big red heart.' 'Oh, groan,' Rosanne said. 'It's Monday tomorrow. Blah. Pit City. Dragville. Monday!' 'You might as well get used to it,' Brad said. 'I bet you spend at least 1/7 of your time on Mondays. In fact, you probably spend ten years of your life on Mondays!' That's a great line to quote whenever I'm inclined to feel azure about Mondays. This Monday wouldn't be so bad if it didn't follow up on four days of partying and laziness. There's nothing like a four-day weekend to spoil a good work ethic.

On Thursday morning we got up (not too early, thankfully; last whirlwind visit to Virginia we swore off early morning flights once and for all) and finished packing, and flew into Reagan National Airport. It was only the second time I'd ever landed there, and the first time was unintentional. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner of turkey and co. with family, and then sat around digesting all evening. Michael and some of the boys set up a game of Axis and Allies. Toward the evening we ran out to HSLDA to look around and see how much had changed, and endeavoured to buy a paper on the way home to ascertain the sales. There was no paper to be had, not even for ready money. We spent nearly an hour chasing geese, and finally returned empty-handed. So much for the biggest shopping day of the year.

Friday we spent with relatives and friends alike. Saturday the menfolk went to see the Air and Space Museum Annex while we ladies had tea with Mrs. Smith. I shall never fail to be impressed with Mrs. Smith's hospitality, graciousness, elegance, and cultivation. You recall Darcy's definition of a woman of accomplishment - the cultivation and improvement of her mind by extensive reading? Mrs. Smith exemplifies this to a nicety. The spread laid before us recalled to mind the glory and splendour of book tea, dearly cherished and keenly missed. It's amazing how filling trifles and tidbits can add up to be. On Sunday we went to church and got to see so many dear familiar faces. The time was far too short and I wish we could have lingered longer. However, we had a pleasant afternoon of eating popcorn and playing Scotland Yard. Michael was introduced to this game two years ago, during the first Thanksgiving he spent with my family, and made so bold as to play Mr. X this time. He did quite well, attaining the bottom of the second column before capture, despite being dealt an inconveniently located starting tile. Benjamin also took a turn at villainy, evading us for an impressive length of time. His final demise lay in failing to notice that a bus line ran between two critical points. Well, the web was tightening, anyway.

Our flight left at 8:05 from Reagan. Not sure of what to expect in terms of crowds, we left in plenty of time. It turned out to be a breeze. The airport was dead and security a veritable walk-through. We reached our gate well in time, and then Michael had the happy thought to wander over to another gate where the 7:05 flight to Atlanta was boarding, and ask whether we could fly stand-by on that one. Genius! Amazingly enough, they had room, and we arrived home an hour ahead of schedule, with no rush or frenzy and no wasted time on the front end. It was much the pleasantest flight in recent memory, in terms of ease of boarding, comfort level of the plane (cosy to my thinking, stuffy to Michael's), selection of beverages (whole milk!), brevity of flight time, and deliciousness of airport food. Despite saving an hour, though, it was still far too late when we got home and brutally early this morning. Yawn. Well worth the weekend, though.

Gratitude

On Monday we went to the doctor for my monthly checkup. We had so much other stuff to take care of (dental appointments, courthouse stops, etc.) that had to be done during business hours that we both took off the whole day to knock it all out at once. The benefit was that Michael was able to see the sonogram too. It was truly an amazing experience. Even more so than the first time, Baby is now very distinctly human. The technician was on a mission to get all the shots she needed, so she kept stopping at shots and typing in ‘Stom’ or ‘Blad’ with little arrows pointing to the pertinent parts. In between the freeze frames, while she was vying for the right angle, we got to watch live time images of our baby kicking, curling its fingertips, and pursing its lips. It was amazing to watch all the activity going on and to admit, ‘I can’t feel a thing.’ ‘Shouldn’t I be feeling that?’ I yelped, as Baby took a big swing upwards and kicked away with both feet. ‘How oblivious could I be?’ Apparently Baby is not very strong yet, and the environment is so cushioned and weightless that the impact is minimal.

Life is full of ups and downs, of course. I try not to wait until Thanksgiving each year to count my blessings, but endeavor to cultivate a spirit of gratitude and contentment whenever I’m tempted to do a little wistful gazing down the road. Sometimes it’s easier than at other times to maintain a level perspective, or what I call ‘a good dose of Pippin-style unquenchable cheerfulness.’ (‘There is a crumb of comfort in all this, at least, and perhaps more than a crumb: now we can sit down to breakfast.’ This after the Black Riders ravage their rooms and set loose all their ponies and spoil the start of their secret journey. Why can’t I always look on the bright side of things like that?)

So I’m grateful for the adventure that lies before us. We knew that having a baby would change our lives, but it’s impossible to grasp the full impact – it still keeps dawning on us in little ways, like when we were setting our next dental appointments for six months from now, and at first we went for the same time slot: just like on Monday, if we have simultaneous appointments, then we can drive together, save time, and be more efficient. Until I remembered, ‘Oh, wait, we’ll have the baby then…we’d better stagger our appointments, so we can take turns with the baby.’ That’s a consideration we haven’t had to make heretofore! And yet, though we could choose to see this as an impingement on our liberty, I am finding it an exciting and incredible chance for adventure – this is uncharted territory! All those years when I was pretty generally happy, content, perhaps occasionally complacent, even bored, what I most feared was falling into a rut. Now change is inevitable, and that makes Life very interesting.

I can’t help cataloguing all the specific things to be thankful for this year – good jobs, nice house, healthy baby, satisfying election results – and yet these are all part and parcel of the big picture, which is simply to acknowledge that God is sovereign. If it were a rotten year, if times were tough, wouldn’t it still be incumbent upon us to give thanks in all things? So not only do we have the underlying assurance and comfort of His blessing, come what may, but we also happen to have the temporal and very gratifying blessing of happiness in our present circumstances. And that’s just icing on the cake.

A blessed Thanksgiving to one and all!

Of strawberries and cream

Several days ago Baby decided that we desperately needed some fresh strawberries. Baby has rather limited capability in this regard, so I was commissioned to carry out the venture. There followed a long, epic-like strawberry quest, which rivaled the strawberry caper conducted by the Roman centurion in Asterix the Gaul. Fortunately I was able to identify the exact context in which the strawberries were required: fresh, ripe, sweet, and ground up into a milkshake. On Saturday I spotted a lovely picture of a strawberry shake at the Atlanta Bread Company. We were on the right track. But no strawberry-flavoured drink would do: we had to make our own, from fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries. Michael was very impressed at how refined Baby's tastes were, and offered to run to the grocery store and pick up a carton of strawberries. This wouldn't do, however, as grocery store strawberries are notoriously expensive and unripe. We decided to hold out until Monday, when we would be going by the farmer's market in hopes that fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries could be found.

Yesterday was a day unto itself, but the upshot of it was that there were no fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries to be found, not even for ready money. This was a crushing blow indeed. As a final resort, we stopped by the grocery store to look and found pitiful, pathetic little flats of unripe, greenish, sickly-looking strawberries for the iniquitous price of $4.99 per carton. Baby wasn't very impressed, and I wearily concurred. The quest ended in failure, arduous and fruitless.

Upon returning home, Baby decided that the idea of a milkshake was a sound one, despite there being no strawberries, so we decided on a chocolate-peanut butter shake as consolation prize. No recipe exists for this shake, but we knew what to do by instinct: we poured milk, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, peanut butter, and leftover vanilla ice cream into the blender, and ended up with a really smooth, delicious, chocolatey-peanut buttery milkshake that almost made up for the lack of strawberries. Almost. In the process we spattered the counter and cupboards with chocolate spray (Duh! That's why the side of the blender is clear, so you can see the progress without opening the lid!), burned the 7-layer bars we were baking for my office Thanksgiving party tomorrow (Moral: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush = a dessert in the oven is worth two in the blender - never neglect the one in your excitement over the other), and broke the ice cream scoop in our eagerness - back to using the melon-baller we used when we first got married. We retired from the field of battle victorious but weary. Oh, well. It's a short work-week, and there will be good food aplenty on Thursday.

Posted on our vending machine

Typed up nicely: Out of order, sorry.
Scrawled underneath: That's okay.
Scribbled underneath that: No it's not.

Largess

I've discovered a new line of graft: simple, highly effective, seemingly endless potential for returns. I've decided to share my success story only upon the reflection that the majority of my readership are (is? are? Arrgh!) not local and thus in no danger of cutting in on my market. The scheme is this: Get pregnant, and wait for the returns to come rolling in.

Suddenly people are flooding me with attention, food, services, and, most importantly, clothes. At least once a week someone offers to stand me lunch, and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't offer to bring me something from the snack machine. Or they're sharing their bag of chips. Or making sure I have enough to drink, or eat, and of the right nutritional composition. Most amazingly, though, is the clothes situation. Somewhat put off by the steep prices - albeit cute styles - of maternity clothes that day we went shopping a few weeks ago, I fell into a brown study on the topic of my maternity wardrobe, contemplating with almost wistful regret (O me of little faith!) the thought that, if we were living in Virginia, no doubt the stones themselves would rise up and flood me with maternity clothes - but alas, starting off in a new community, with friends of the right size mostly in a stage of life not to be getting rid of maternity clothes...well, it was too bad, but there you had it. And yet, this past month has positively been a meteorogical study in the phenomenon of the opening of the windows of Heaven, as several ladies from work have brought in assorted collections of pants, sweaters, and dresses that more or less work, and should work for at least the next three months. It's like Christmas every day!

Pictures forthcoming

This is to assure Sarah that we do have pictures to post. They are saved on our computer at home, and we even spent a few minutes last night trying to figure out how to put them on the blog. We signed up for something called Picasa, which promised to make emailing and posting pictures easy, but after three disillusioning minutes of following directions, wearily clicking on Yes after Yes, only to have no pictures magically appear on the blog, we gave up and decided it was time for bed anyway. If some kind soul who has managed the trick would like to post a comment with instructions for simpletons, it would be much appreciated. Ideally there should be a post with a link to click on to open a photo gallery, as opposed to pictures splat on the blog homepage, which might make things too slow for those with slow computers.

Quid? Quid?

A great shout of rejoicing ought to be going up throughout the land, because for the first time in a generation – perhaps the first time ever – the Asterix books are being re-printed in America. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get Asterix books in the States? Most of my collection comes from England or Canada, procured through E-bay or Amazon. Now Orion Paperbacks is rising to the occasion and printing the whole series, the English translation, at a very affordable price. This is the original series all right, with a few minor typographical changes, the most lamentable being the lack of diversity in the type (in the original English manuscripts, the Goths speak in Gothic script, the Norwegians speak in Norse script, and so on. Obliterating this twist removes a small but funny joke from the series).

Asterix can readily be described as high-class comic books, highbrow humour in a classic form. Each time I read through one of these books I discover something fresh to laugh at and am amazed anew at the profundity and wit, not only of the authors, but of the translators, who managed to pull off the most brilliant puns and classical allusions from the original Italian.

What I would really like to see, someday, is a complete annotated and footnoted Asterix collection, to explain to me things like the following:

In 'Asterix the Legionary' the pirates' ship is sunk by Asterix and Obelix (again). The image of the pirates on a raft in mid-ocean is derived from a 19th Century French Romantic painting, now in the Louvre, 'The Raft of the Medusa' by Géricault. In the French version the pirate captain says to the reader 'Je suis médusé' ('I'm stunned'). In English this is rendered equally cleverly as 'We've been framed, by Jericho.'

Even if these details escape one at first (or seventh) reading, surely the most unclassified mind can appreciate such lines as ‘This is a bitter pilum to take, by Jupiter’ (from a legionary about to get speared) or laugh at an Egyptian named Ptennisnet. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of perusing an Asterix book, I offer you the advice of Scrooge re: the prize turkey: ‘Go and buy it, my boy.’

Brrr!

Frost is on the grass every morning now, and today there was mist on my way to work. Yesterday I wore sandals, and my toes froze. I knew it was a foolish notion, but I had just painted my toenails; 'And what,' said Lasaraleen, 'is the good of a new dress if no one's going to see it?'

The nice thing about the second trimester is that I'm not really into maternity clothes yet - next size up, normal clothes, works fine on most things, especially with low-rise pants and skirts. Yesterday Becky brought me a whole bag of pants she no longer wore, and it felt like Christmas as I dumped them out across the bed. Michael stood by and offered commentary - 'No good - those don't have any belt loops. How do you expect them to stay up?' This in reference to an ongoing conversation we have about belts, begun in an IM chat once when I remarked, 'Weirdness. Can you imagine pants not staying up without a belt?' I contend that belts are a mere accessory, nothing more than an ornamental flourish, while Michael thinks they actually hold pants up. One morning, soon after we were married, I told him, 'You know, girls don't put on their pants that wasteful way, one leg at a time. We jump into them both feet at once! Twice as fast!' I haven't managed to convince him of this yet, however.

A merry heart

1 Chronicles chapter 4 is a really funny chapter. In fact, it's absolutely hysterical if you read it late at night in a silly mood. This we discovered last night as we read our daily Bible chapter together. It started off in verse 3 with the most priceless name I can recall in recent history: Hazelelponi. Michael pronounced this as 'Has-a-lil'-pony,' and we both erupted into laughter. Throughout the rest of the chapter one of us would suddenly think of the name, and start laughing again until the tears came to our eyes. Then there was Coz. Inspired by our spoiled little rich girl whose daddy bought her a pony, I giggled, 'Why did his mother name him that? Just Coz!' Ha ha ha! Er, of course, we had already met in Genesis, but I had never noticed before how stammery his name sounded. Next we met 'Just jokin' Jokim, who lived 'among plants and hedges' (toadstools maybe?) Ah, me, and I thought 1 Chronicles 4 was all about Jabez.

Parents’ rights – but which parents?

Recently I’ve been considering an overhaul of our country’s adoption laws. I admit I’m not terribly familiar with the details of the laws. But I know of at least one state where, up to six months after the adoption transaction is completed, the birth mother can change her mind and demand the baby back.

Now, I know this is a terribly sensitive issue. We should all want what’s best for the child, and a rational viewpoint demands the assumption that individuals (read: the child’s parents) can make this decision far better than the State. If a child’s biological parents decide to keep their child, isn’t that their decision, regardless of whether we feel the child will be better off elsewhere?

I’m all for parents’ rights. And I certainly applaud those mothers who choose to keep their children. My concern is for the prospective adoptive parents who go through the agony and the ecstasy of believing that they were finally blessed with a child, only to have the baby torn from them, even after they have taken him home.

It seems that in an effort to protect the interests of the biological parents, the State (using the term generically, since I’m still not sure if it’s mostly federal or state legislation) has erred on the side of doing wrong to adoptive parents. Why do we feel compelled to install such a failsafe plan in our adoption process as to enable someone to change his mind after the fact and back out of a contractual agreement? Is it based on our society’s fascination with no-risk, money-back guarantees, the notion that if you change your mind, you can still get what you want, at whatever cost to the other party? It seems that those considering adoption should be warned, as are those contemplating marriage, that this is a serious decision, not to be made lightly but soberly and reverently; and that, once the die is cast, they are left with the consequences.

Tempus fugit

Last Christmas Michael's 12-year-old nephew Jacob gave us a can of ant & roach spray. According to the package, it 'Kills up to two weeks.' This is a very useful function for, say, Eric, who, due to his Iraq tour last year, has accumulated far more vacation time than he is likely to need and which he needs to use up by the end of the year. He was even planning a visit to see us in an effort to use up some of this time. Michael offered to send him the can of spray if he needed to kill any more time - guaranteed to kill up to two weeks - but Eric didn't seem to think it would help. Meanwhile Stephanie is coming to town tonight to pick up her stuff, now that she has her own apartment. It's been nice storing her bedroom set all these months, but this is good as it will enable us to get the room ready for Baby. It's nice how it all works out.

Not long now until Thanksgiving!

Sailing by ash breeze

Michael and I have now finished reading Johnny Tremain. It was a very good book. (Upon breaking his arm, Joseph had nothing to do but sit around and read books, so he read it too. It made for interesting conversation when I'd call every night to see how he was doing.) We have now begun to read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. It's a children's book, but a great one, simply written and well narrated. It's full of interesting concepts and ideas - being becalmed at the chandlery, losing your anchor to windward - and provides some amazing insights into the development of navigation and 'scientific sailing.'

Either I'm coming down with a bad cold again or I'm reacting to the air from the vents now that we've turned the house on its winter head mode. It's gotten to the point where, whenever I sneeze, Michael will just say, 'Yeah, yeah, you just want more attention.'

It happens that I will drop the occasional cynical remark about Institute. This does not stem from malice aforethought but simply happens because the observation was begging to be made. Michael is pretty tolerant of my perspective, though, not having gone through that gauntlet himself, he doesn't always appreciate the finer points of my wit. Recently I made some reference to my theory on the Institute's subtle agenda for the discouragement of the higher education of women on grounds of eligibility. 'Madam, you go too far!' he said to me. 'Oh, come on,' I protested. 'You have to see the funny side of laughing at an establishment so full of customs and rituals that they even teach you the proper way to raise your hand!' And demonstrated it forthwith. That got his attention. 'You have got to be kidding! No one could be that obsessive!' It took a lot of convincing to persuade him that I wasn't making it up.

On the design defects inherent in capes

Sunday night our church had a special evening service at the end of our missions emphasis week. Heather Mercer (missionary to Afghanistan captured by the Taliban) gave her testimony, and then we had an international food bazaar to honour our missionaries. Marcela was very excited about doing a table for Costa Rica, and spent all day Saturday baking in preparation. She enlisted Amanda and me to help serve, and so we slipped out of the service early and served tamales, pineapple empanadas, and papaya picadillo. Very yummy food! Michael, meanwhile, browsed the bazaar and brought me back baklava, pita, and feta cheese, German chocolate cheesecake and sausage, Jamaican jerk chicken, and indian rice and garbanzo beans. So I got the best of both worlds: the satisfaction of helping out combined with the opportunity not to miss out on a thing! Husbands make such wonderful butlers.

Last night we went downtown to meet some friends for dinner and a movie: The Incredibles. If I still lived in Virginia, I'm sure I would have gotten a full review from the Hall kids. As we sat down, Amanda groaned, 'Oh, no! Who put Ron in the middle?' He kept up an entertaining commentary through the previews, but no comment was necessary for the duration of the movie: we were all laughing hard enough already. Quite the evening of jollification and merriment.

Happy days

We’re still basking in an aureate post-election glow. It seems that nothing can go wrong. Winter weather is here, the thermostat is set to a toasty temp, and we may have to build a fire in the fireplace soon.

On Saturday we had absolutely nothing planned, and so for the first time in many weeks we had a big breakfast of French toast and bacon and eggs. I mixed up the egg and milk batter and dipped the first slice of bread in before realizing that I wanted to fry the bacon first so I could decide if I wanted to fry the French toast in the drippings. Hastily I got out the skillet and merrily fried the bacon. This would have gone more quickly if the bacon hadn’t been frozen solid (next time I will plan ahead better, quotha). By the time I was ready to fry the French toast, I discovered that the egg and milk mixture had disappeared! I had used four eggs this time, and they were all gone. The piece of bread, meanwhile, looked somewhat waterlogged but nothing out of the ordinary. I whipped up more egg and milk and fried up the French toast.

By the time it was done, the first slice was noticeably bulkier than the others. It looked like it was on steroids and tasted rather like quiche. It was funny and would be a great practical joke to play on someone if all slices served were uniformly swollen: without the wimpy-looking slices for comparison, it looked almost normal.

Our young married class is doing a series entitled Marriage on the Rock, about communication. This Sunday our teacher was talking about different avenues for good communication, including I Feel Lists, The Conference, and Word Pictures. Instantly my mind was filled with word pictures, which I started scribbling on my notes for Michael. Most of them are a bit hard to convey in straight text, but examples would be gegs (scrambled eggs) or RETUrns (diminishing returns). Then it turned out that the teacher was really talking about Analogies (‘When you don’t fix the dishwasher when I ask, it makes me feel like we’re not on the same team’) instead of Word Pictures. Oh, well.

Boys will be boys

Apparently my younger brother Joseph fell out of a tree last week and broke his arm. (Actually, I found out last night that it was in fact a honeysuckle bush.) I've been calling him nearly every night to see how he is doing and to keep his spirits up. The first few days were pretty painful for him, and he was on a lot of ibuprofin. When I would call, this was reflected in his conversation - or maybe not.

There's a scene from one of the Asterix books when Getafix is on the way to the Druid convention when he is stopped by a cohort of Roman legionaries, challenging the group because there have been Goths sighted in the area. To prove that he is a Gaulish druid, and not a Goth, Getafix performs some of his magic: he gives a bunch of herbs to one of the legionaries to eat, at which the legionary can only say 'Hee-haw!' The cohort marches off, with the legionary braying every so often, while the commander remarks, 'Funny, it doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference...'

That was exactly how I felt after my conversations with Joseph. 'As you can see, he's really doped up on ibuprofin...funny, it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference...' I told him that Michael was taking my car in to get my tires rotated. Pause. 'Oh.' Faraway voice. 'Doesn't that happen when you drive?'

Hip hip hurrah!

Let's give three cheers and one cheer more for the winner in 2004!

Masterfully done. The perfect finishing touch to give Kerry respectful space to bow out gracefully. All is most happily concluded.

Victory is sweet.

What news from the north, Riders of Rohan?

Michael and I both voted early this morning, and stood in long lines to do so. Maybe it wasn't just all hype about early electioning and prognostications of overloaded polls.

Just saw a clip of Kerry saying something like 'It is time to take America to a new and safer place.' Ooh, like someplace where the terrorists won't find us? Someplace safer than North America? Why didn't George Bush think of that one?

Fall back

Always before, my rest and relaxation quotient has gotten such a boost from the reversion to Standard Time. But this time it seemed that the extra hour was no help at all. Instead, my flagging constitution simply absorbed it. My body woke up this morning and said, ‘Okay, that was nice. Need more sleep.’

We went out to catch a matinee on Saturday. Alas, we pressed our luck too long and The Village is no longer playing, even at the cheap theater. So we went to see The Bourne Identity instead, and fortunately got there in time for the previews. I am such a sucker for previews. I don’t feel as if I’m getting my money’s worth out of a movie if I don’t get a sufficient sampling of the other movies out there while I’m at it. When we rent a movie and there are no previews, I feel so ripped off. But there was one preview that is still bothering me. Well, first of all, I thought it said at the beginning that it had been approved for ALL audiences, so I wasn’t even in the mindset of closing my eyes until toward the end, when Michael leaned over and whispered, ‘You know, you can close your eyes.’ But I had still seen enough to puzzle me. I kept saying things later like, ‘Now, wait a minute. There were the zombies, and then there were the gargoyles that came alive, and then there was that creepy alien-like tentacle. How could a bio-chemical experiment gone awry give normal humans all of those properties?’ ‘Rose,’ Michael would say patiently, ‘it’s just a B-grade horror flick. I’m sure it doesn’t have a reasonable plot and it’s not supposed to make sense.’ ‘Oh.’ And then, a little later, ‘Why didn’t the man with the gun notice that alien tentacle curling around him? Don’t you think you’d notice something like that? And if you had a gun in your hand, wouldn’t you shoot it?’ ‘Rose! It’s just a movie! He stood there stupidly because he was scripted to do that!’ ‘Oh, that’s right.’ And then, later, ‘Hmm, well, since it said at the beginning that they sealed the vault, then all the action takes place in the sealed vault, so it’s a contained disaster, so the subtitle is really inaccurate right? I mean, apocalypse means total destruction of the whole world, not just a localised disaster.’ It was a very puzzling preview. Somewhat less puzzling in plot, but just as mysterious in premise, was the snake movie. Supposedly a team of explorers braved the wilds of the jungle and the wrath of mating anacondas in search of the Blood Orchid, a rare flower that was supposed to have healing, fountain-of-youth properties. ‘But,’ I told Michael, ‘why go off into a dangerous jungle for that? Why not just breed it from the comforts of the laboratory, as they did with the black tulip, or the blue tea rose?’

Much more satisfying is A & E’s Pride and Prejudice, which we are watching together for the third time. Once again, it was at Michael’s instigation. He remarked on Friday night, ‘I think it’s time to watch Pride and Prejudice again.’ With my current sleep requirements, we only get in one episode per night, but it’s such a good movie! When the ominous music played as Mr. Darcy rides through the woods - and you just know he’s going to come face-to-face with Elizabeth any minute - I patted Michael’s hand and said, ‘See, this is the kind of scary music I like! This is exactly my level of tension!’