My dad's favorite play

...was Annie. This has nothing to do with anything, except it's a good excuse to say "Hi dad, I love you" and wave to him in a ghost whisperer sorta way, as he passed away when I was .... 33 I think. A long time ago. It doesn't feel like a long time ago. But a friend on an e-mail list unexpectedly lost her father recently, so of course that made me think of my dad. Our lives are so entwined.

I also thought of it because I was paused with my fingers over the keyboard, wondering what sort of title to put on this blog, how I should let folks know right off the bat that I'm no longer moody and unreasonable (no more then normal, that is), the black mood of yesterday seems to have safely packed it's bag and left town. And suddenly my head started singing "The sun will come out TOMORROW! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow..... come what may..... TOMORROW, TOMORROW, there's always TOMORROW...." and so on, or something like that, I might have the lyrics a bit upside down there. But the point here is, whew, I'm in a better mood.

The day turned out to be about CLEANING MY DESK. I didn't know that my day would center around cleaning my desk. I just sat down, with a cup of coffee my husband was kind enough to make for me, and start to read my e-mail as usual each morning (or afternoon or whenever - remember I stayed up most of the night) and somehow I ended up spending the day in my computer chair.

It started, I think, with William coming over to do some school work in the chair near me, so I'd be available if he had a question, and I started puttering so I could BE available. I grabbed up the new address book I've started to use (as my old one is now pieces of address book that don't seem to manage to stay together when the cats knock it on the floor - go figure) and a pencil, and began to pull one teensy scrap of paper after another out from underneath some larger papers and transcribe them into the address book under the appropriate alphabet tab.

I alternated between that and cleaning up e-mail, and grabbing other scraps of paper with websites or book titles or some obscure subject scribbled on them, the idea being I had planned to look something up, and so I did that, and I reheated the same cup of coffee several times, and chatted online with a friend, and spelled vocabulary words for William. At some point I decided that I was no longer just puttering and was, in fact, in for the long haul, and I decided to stay at it all day until I was finished and had a shiny clean desk to show for my efforts. About that time I even had the sense to take a "Before" photo so I could then take an "After" shot and show off my huge accomplishment.

Well, I did stay at it all day. At least until the sun set and it was getting too dark to see, at which point I got up and turned on some lights, and then I realized I was cold and I went around shutting the curtains and made a fire for the night and spent some quality time sitting side by side with William on the couch and watching Wheel of Fortune. Okay, quasi-quality time.

And my desk? I DID get a huge amount of it cleared off but I'm sorry to say that to the casual observer, it would still appear to be very good candidate for a "Before" shot. I really had no idea how much work it would be! Maybe I'll go back to it tomorrow. It sure would be nice to get to the bottom of the piles, some which have paperwork that isn't even dated in this century. How embarrassing.

Completely changing subjects, this evening I went to see Brokeback Mountain. I know, everyone else was huddled around their televisions watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. Since I'll probably be so Olympic saturated within a few days that I'll have skiers coming out of my ears and skaters caught in my hair, I figured this was a good night to go see the movie and perhaps have the theater to myself. (Literally, as I couldn't find a single person who wanted or was willing to go see it with me - sigh.) It wouldn't be the first time I'd have a controversial movie to myself, or practically to myself, in this small town.

Suprisingly, there were about a dozen of us. Maybe there were other people avoiding the start of the Olympics. They stuck us in the very back room with the tiniest screen. Great. The one thing everyone I knew had agreed on was how beautiful the movie was cinemagraphically (I have no idea if that's actually a word!), and I end up with a movie screen not much bigger then my large screen home television. Oh well.

Mostly I just wanted to see the movie before I heard any more spoilers. I hate spoilers. And with this movie, they're everywhere. Plus, I wanted to find out for myself what I thought of the movie. I've heard it all from "I don't see what all the fuss is about." to "It's the best movie I've ever seen!" - and that's just from the folks who'd seen it. Most people I know wouldn't even GO see it, although of course they still had an opinion about it. This last, btw, is one of my pet peeves - how people decide how they feel about something by using second hand information. But, I'm in a good mood, so let's not stop and dwell on this. My point is, I wanted to see it and decide for myself.

I give it a big thumbs up! I thought it was above the standard movie fare, sometimes brilliantly so, across the board. It's getting the amount of serious (and not so serious) attention in large part because it's a controversial subject. But for those who have actually gone to see the movie, the continued talk is because the scenery is stunning, the directing was noticably clear and effective, the acting was brilliant, and the story had multiple levels of meaning. It's about a relationship between two men. It's a love story. But it was also about how life makes all of us, any of us, make choices that we then have to live with. It also spoke to me a lot about the culture of the geography and the culture of the time period in which it took place. I wasn't raised in the west, but I've lived in some of those isolated, lonely areas, and even in this day and age, they are a world apart from the culture at large. It occured to me that people who have never spent any time in the dusty ranch culture depicted in the movie or under the huge western skies, might totally miss this particular layer of the story.

I'm back home, caught the last bit of the Olympics despite my best efforts to avoid it. The popcorn and soda I had at the theater is beginning to feel a bit insufficient as a dinner choice. So I'm done playing critic. My opinion - Go see the movie. Even if you end up disagreeing with me, at least you'll have your own opinion instead of parroting one from your mouthpiece of choice. Now, I'm off to the kitchen. Hunger calls.