"Up in the Air" about Movies

Happy New Year! We had our usual quiet New Year's Eve at home. We're not ones to go out on the road to celebrate this occasion. I stepped out onto our front doorstep with a noisemaker at midnight and hollered Happy New Year to the empty street while hubby laughed at me from inside the house. It was perfect!

We just got home from seeing "Up In the Air" starring George Clooney. He plays a "terminator" who goes around the country firing people for various companies that don't want to do it themselves. He is a more-than-frequent flier who feels like he is providing a valuable service, helping to let these people go in a face-to-face personable way. With all of his traveling, he doesn't have a home life ... or even a home. It was a fascinating movie, especially if you like to ponder the psychology of people and situations. It is very thought-provoking but I am a happy ending kind of girl and this one didn't cut it. I usually gauge how much I liked a movie by whether or not I'd like to see it again as I'm leaving the theater. This one, not so much.

One of my favorites this year was "The Blind Side" with Sandra Bullock. If she doesn't get an award for her role in this, I'll be sorely disappointed. It is the wonderful true story about a well-to-do white family in Texas who takes in a homeless black boy, Michael Oher, and wholeheartedly makes him a part of their family. He goes on to college as an All American football player. This was a heartwarming story of love and encouragement that I am looking forward to seeing again.

If you've read the Twilight books, you know "New Moon" is the second in the series and the movie was terrific. They did a nice job with the supernatural changes, turning people into werewolves on-screen. This ongoing saga of a high school girl who falls in love with a vampire, and whose best friend just happens to be a werewolf, is fairytale great. Looking forward to the third one.

We saw a few animated movies with the Granddaughter, including "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" and "Up." The Chipmunks movie was just plain fun. There was a lot more to "Up" than just a cartoon, including love, death, mourning, trust and loyalty. Definitely an all-around great cartoon for kids and adults. Carl's voice (the senior citizen in the movie) was done by Ed Asner, who I've always loved. I once stood in a long, long line in Las Vegas to meet him and have a photo signed by him. (Not sure where it is right now, but it's here somewhere!)

And, of course, my favorite, favorite movie of the year was "Julie and Julia." We rented it recently and I fell in love with it all over again. It just makes me smile. I now have my own Blu-ray copy on order from Amazon and when it gets here, I'll happily watch it again.

We saw other movies this year, but those were the standouts.

So, New Year's resolutions anybody? I have a few ...

Continue to get organized. Sometime during 2010, I will have gone through every single drawer and cupboard and closet in this house and cleaned. We keeping using the word minimalist, which means a lot more donating and garage sale-ing, as well as just plain throwing stuff out.

Work on my zen. I will let things go, dismiss those that aggravate and frustrate me, and just be happy ... in the moment.

Eat more salads. And that's as close as I'll get to the word diet.

Take more walks. And that's as close as I'll get to the word exercise.

Happy New Year!

The After Christmas Haze

At 6:04 this morning I'm snuggled into a comforter on the family room love seat with both Miles and Louie wrapped into the folds, just tips of noses showing. And I'm reading *so happily* the new "Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines" that Youngest Daughter got me for Christmas.

Hubby:  What are you doing up so early?

Me:  Well, I got up ... and there I was ... up.

Hubby:  That was profound.

Me:  I know -- I should probably talk more.

Hubby:  Just not outside the house.

It's nice to read something with big pages and type I can see easily. I am dealing with eye strain right now. Hubby got me a Sprint Moment touch phone with a slide out keyboard. We've discussed it for a good 5 months -- when he began testing the water to see if I'd want one. I opened it Christmas morning, plugged it in to charge, and we took the Granddaughter to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel." That was a lot of fun. Many, many tiny kids and lots of noise off-screen. Everything is funnier when you speed it up to a helium-sucking level.

Anyway, once we got home, I started playing with the new phone. Just getting the touch part down took me a while. Since then I have run the battery out 4 times, which was a blessing so my eyes could rest while it charged.

The Mason-Dixon book is wonderful. Whenever I read anything by those gals, Kay and Ann, I feel like I'm visiting with girlfriends. Here are a couple of excerpts from the book:

Page 35: Tip from Leafy Reticule pattern ... Why do I have to change the position of the marker in round 15?

The Short Answer: We don't know why; just do it, or there will be trouble.

Ha!

And from Page 73: Tip from Baby Dotty blanket pattern ... Make up little songs. Fair Isle is all about rhythm: 2 2 3 1 2 can be sung to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." If you're a Prince fan, "I would die 4 u" also works.

Double Ha!

A couple of funny things happened over the holiday. When we went to bed around 1:00 a.m. Christmas Eve, I was so tired I actually forgot about the stockings. This has never happened before. Hubby said, "Hey, don't we have to do the stockings?" And we raced back down the hallway past the 13-year-old Granddaughter's room (she spent the night at our house which was so awesome) and filled the stockings.

A few hours later, she comes into our room in the dark and says, "Merry Christmas, Nana!" I looked at the clock ... 4:27. I said, "No, not yet. Go back to bed."

Then she comes back again a little later, this time on Bampa's side of the bed (smart girl), wakes him up and crawls into bed between us. This is nice. She has done this since she was a baby ... crawled into bed with us and we lay there and talk. Now I know she is past the stage of believing in Santa, but she still gets a kick out of pretending to and, of course, so do we. So we're laying there talking in the dark and she says, "Did you remember to put out cookies and milk for Santa?" And I'm thinking, "Oh, crap!" So I say, "Of course we did. I'm going to start the oven to warm it up for the Caramel Pull Aparts," and I race to the kitchen and choke down half a cookie and slurp some milk and run into the living room with the crummy plate and glass to leave them out. I just hoped she didn't touch the glass because the milk was still cold.

And I get back in bed and we're still talking and she says, "Do you think Santa remembered to put dog bones in the puppies' stockings?" And it's, "Son of a ..." and I leap back out of bed and say I'm going to check on breakfast. Hubby says, "Should we just get up?" and I practically yell, "No!" And I run to the laundry room to get chew bones and then to the living room to put them in the dogs' stockings. I was exhausted before we ever got up!

Something else we thought was funny ... we hosted a small Christmas Eve family dinner at our house. We served Honeybaked Ham, parmesan mashed potatoes, cranberry-dried cherry chutney, pinto beans, fresh baked rolls, Hawaiian salad and chocolate bundt cake with chocolate frosting. Of course, we had a ton of food and ate the same thing on Christmas Day for lunch and dinner.

Then the day after Christmas, hubby's brother called and said they had a lot of food left from their open house and would we come for dinner. Hubby says, "Thank God, we don't have to eat ham and potatoes and beans again," and off we go to BIL's house. And guess what? They served ham and potato casserole, Boston baked beans and chocolate cupcakes. So we virtually ate the same meal again. We laughed all the way home!