Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

For one of the first times in a long, long time, I sat down on my couch, turned off the room lights, and watched a movie from beginning to end. Something about “the anxiety of impendingness” makes this kind of settling very difficult for me.

I had been wanting to see Stranger Than Fiction for a long while, but the reviews I had read and heard via word of mouth were only so-so. Shannon loaned it to me and said that it was “cute” and “not too heavy.” For me, this was so much more. I don’t know why, but it really spoke to me. I thought it was a beautiful story, the kind of magical realism I really love; plus, perfectly cast with a minute focus to detail that I found so lovely, in a sort of Amelie kind of way. The OCD/mathiness of the main character’s world is depicted in golden sections and formulas popping up whenever he brushed his teeth or took a step. As his fairly cardboard character becomes more human, these numerical graphics dropped out, paralleling his emotional metamorphosis. So many wonderful things I could talk about: the change in Emma Thompson’s character when she meets her main character face to face is so powerful; the scenes in the bakery; on the bus; at the university… So many wonderful things. I knew right away that the music was Britt Daniel from Spoon (a band I love and intend/expect to love even more). Perhaps this quirk was specifically the right quirk to interface with what I needed this night, at this time in my life.

Thanks, Shannon, for the loaner. And also thanks for the soft foods you brought over for my ouchy post-root canal jaw. Lately, you and Brian just win!

Really fascinating music video showing the interconnectedness and complexity of our lives living on this technologically advanced global planet. In each moment of the day, we are touched by a thousand industrial and technological threads occurring all over the world, lest we forget it.

The song is “Remind Me” by the Norweigan band, Röyksopp.

I saw on Ellen many months ago that we use a million of those plastic bags (the ones you get everywhere) every minute. They aren’t recyclable, and that’s a bad thing. I’ve been trying to stop taking them whenever possible. Just found some info about how much damage they actually do. Read this, and bring bags with you whenever you can. And when you refuse the bag at the store, watch the clerk and make sure they don’t throw the bag you just refused away. They’re always trying to do that. Pisses me off! Down with crappy plastic bags. They are ruining the earth!

From Salon.com: Plastic bags are killing us: The most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, the lowly plastic bag is an environmental scourge like none other, sapping the life out of our oceans and thwarting our attempts to recycle it.

Jeep is fine. The vet said she definitely needed to come in given the symptoms, but her feeling better this morning seems to be because she IS better. Yay. I hate having a sick pet. She was REALLY not feeling very well last night. The only bad news about this is that she peed all over the inside of the bag I brought her in (she doesn’t like cat carriers and is happiest in a little dark cave, e.g. a bag with only a little open above her head). I scrubbed the inside of the bag out when I got home, then inverted it to air dry on the porch. I haven’t spent any time out there since the whole bird situation, but I’m almost glad Jeep had her nervous accident.

When I got out on the porch, there were three birds tweeting and flying around overhead. It was clearly the three baby birds that remained from the nest. I had only seen two in my photograph, so finding three was a treat. What transpired was mostly captured on film. It’s a crazy, frenetic film, and I swear one longish clip didn’t make it on to the camera – probably because the batteries were dying. But I think you’ll like this, especially if you were reading about the ones that didn’t make it last weekend. I can’t believe how fast they grew! Mom said it was probably because of the spaghetti!

Baby Birds Leave the Nest and Go Off Into the World! from abbyladybug on Vimeo

Now the nest is empty!

And guess how much I’ve studied today. 🙁