I know I will never catch up on all the good movies I have missed in the last bazillion years, but this weekend I finally got around to March of the Penguins (narrated in Swedish) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (both of which were okay, but nothing to really write home about). There are so very many movies I would have liked to have seen and probably hundreds more that I don't even know are out there, since I'm so far out of the loop where movies are concerned. If it's not a huge blockbuster or a kid-friendly animated feature, it doesn't even cross the radar these days.

How sad for someone who used to regularly visit the independent & foreign films section of the local video store, who usually saw nearly every film that was nominated for major awards and who loves watching movies.

I managed to get out of my musical cultural quagmire thanks to first Pandora and now last.fm, but those were free. Renting or buying DVDs costs money and it's even worse trying to find time and money to spend at an actual movie theater these days.

What have you missed in the past 10 years that you really want to see? And alternatively, what movies from the past 10 years do you think it's a crime if I haven't seen them?

Already on my list to see some day or as soon as I can swing it
Pan's Labyrinth
The Fall
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (read the book, at least)
Once
Whale Rider (have the book to read soon)
Little Miss Sunshine
An Inconvenient Truth (read the book, at least)
Nobody Knows
Pride & Prejudice (the one with Keira)
A Very Long Engagement
The Importance of Being Earnest (a favorite play!)
Pleasantville
The Triplets of Belleville
Spellbound
Ghost World

I'm feeling a little helpless about one of our fish right now. He smacked into the side of the tank a few days ago during a spazz-out zoom-around-the-tank fit and ever since he's been sitting down on the bottom of the tank. He can get about, but he's mostly just holding still and sometimes he's on his side and almost upside-down although he seems to be managing to stay upright most of the time. I don't think he's dying, but he's definitely injured and from the research I've been doing tonight on the web, it sounds like it's his swim bladder that is damaged.

I can't tell if he is managing to eat or if he needs to get to the top of the tank for air, though I don't think so; he's a good-sized Siamese Algae Eater (not a pleco) and quite a nice fish (we have two and they're well-behaved in the tank, minding their own business and doing their job). Most of the sites I found said that some swim bladder injuries will heal and some won't, so I guess I just wait it out and see if he either recovers or dies, but I sure wish there was something I could do. :(

Where's an emergency piscine pet vet when you need one?

For some reason, I've been musing about guilt lately. When it comes, when it stays, why I feel it, why I DON'T, in any particular situation or circumstance. Some things I feel guilty about but that doesn't stop me from doing or saying or thinking them. Other things I don't feel guilty about at all until they are pointed out to me from a different perspective.

Feeling guilty is different from having regrets, although the two are sometimes so close as to be practically incestuous. But they're fundamentally different things, and though I might feel regret about something I said or did and ALSO feel guilty about it, the line between them is still there. I can certainly regret things I don't feel at all guilty about, such as not buying that horse vase last weekend, and the fact that I live so far away from my family. I regret it, but I don't feel GUILTY about it.

All the way home in the car tonight, I thought about the things I DO feel guilty about. Some of them are obvious, like the times I've yelled at or been unsympathetic to my children. Others that came into my mind made me wonder: why exactly would I feel guilty about discarding potted houseplants that are no longer thriving? Because they are still alive. I still do it, though sometimes the poinsettias stay in the front windows until April. This is the reason behind why I never buy poinsettias any more. I love them during the holidays, but I feel awful about throwing them away afterward. I cleaned out 18 potted plants from the house a couple of months ago and I had to steel myself to do it. I felt really stupid about that particular guilt, and still do.

I know the reason why guilt has been on my mind lately is because it's one of the primary motivators for why I am still going to choir. The other primary motivator is because I love singing, and I would really miss it if I stopped like I did for the many years when I wasn't singing. But for the past year I've had to force myself to go. When our choir leader left last summer, the choir lost over half of its members. Part of my guilt arises from the fact that because there are so few people left, every one of us makes a huge difference to whether the choir can continue at all. I hate to be a nail in the choir coffin, just because I don't want to drive a half hour to Malmö once a week for a 2.5 hour practice session when 1) gas is so fricking expensive and 2) I have commitments every damn night of the week. So my guilt, and my love of singing, cancel each other out and I keep going.

I know that life is too short for guilt trips and while I am extremely successful at heading off the ones that other people aim at me, I'm not always as deflective when it comes to my own. I felt guilty for years about not recycling more than bottles and cans, and am really happy about the effort I've made (along with the entire family) to rectify that this year.

I feel guilty about all the walking I haven't done lately.

I feel guilty that the desire my children and I have for a cat or dog makes my husband feel bad about his allergies, especially considering the fact that if it wasn't for the cats I had when we met, he probably wouldn't ever have developed asthma.

I feel guilty about swatting flies, but I DO IT ANYWAY BECAUSE DIE, YOU BASTARDS! DIE!

I feel guilty about some of the snarky things I say or think, but not always.

Some things catch you both ways: I sometimes feel guilty about not posting more often, but at other times I feel guilty for being on the computer so much that I'm ignoring my family. Darn that cake you can't have and eat.

There are several ways of dealing with guilt. You can let it eat at you until you either do something about it or you go crazy. You can ignore it, if you're the kind of person who is capable of such things, in which case it almost seems like it doesn't really count as guilt anymore. You can feel bad about it every now and then but decide it's not worth changing or decide that the reasons for it are better than the reasons against.

The thing about guilt is that it's always about something you can change, isn't it? Regret is about the things that you can't.

Or as this quote I found online puts it: Guilt is regret for what we've done. Regret is guilt for what we didn't do.

***

Tonight at choir (where all the members are Swedish except me), one of the women asked me if there were other phrases that meant "WAIT A MINUTE" besides "hold your horses" which she had heard earlier and which had apparently tickled her pink. Our choir leader said that they use "hold your horses" in Swedish, too; translated literally: "håll i hästen" which cracked me up. I gave her "keep your shirt on" (or alternatively "keep your hair on") and also "hang on to your pants". I couldn't think of any more at the moment, but there must be some, eller hur?

Bouncy Bouncy Pouncy Fun Fun Fun Fun Belated Birthday Wishes to gissa and bezigebij!

Whenever I go to art or craft fairs, the things I have the hardest time resisting are the things that are embroidered or tapestry or have certain animals like lizards (goodness knows why), moose, horses, dragons, cats and roosters. I don't have ANY rooster stuff and I don't have a lot of horse stuff either, but I'm drawn to them nonetheless. I'm not allowed to buy moose anymore, but they find their way to me regardless; it's not my fault, I swear.

The art/craft fair that we went to last weekend had over 70 exhibitors showing items in every imaginable medium: ceramic, basketry, watercolor, iron, pewter, wood, textiles, lace, felt, crystal, stone, paper, clay, glass, and dried flowers. We went first through the entire fair, looking at everything and mentally marking which ones we wanted to return to. Mom found a glass star that she really liked but ended up not getting it because she was afraid it was too wide for the window she had been envisioning it in. The kids didn't find anything they really wanted, except for a little gift Karin picked up for my mom (a frog on a rock that says "World's Best Grandma" in Swedish), but I found several things, and had a hard time not buying everything that I liked.

The horse vase that I mentioned in an earlier post was one of the things I returned to several times, at a table full of other ceramic items that I was completely indifferent to. She had 2 horse vases, one black and one white, and they were fairly simple things, a foot-high oblong vase with a horse's head at the top on one side and the indication of a tail opposite. They were 600 kronor each, which is about $100: not that much in the grand scheme of things but by the time I got back there, I had already purchased some other things and was thinking that I needed to rein in the wild spending. Now, a week later, I'm still regretting it...but I do have her card and her studio is only a couple of towns over so maybe I'll throw some Christmas hints my husband's way.

But I thought I'd share the items I did pick up, because each of them was beautiful and drew me in somehow. Fine craftsmanship and a sense of color is always welcomed in the things I decorate my home with and each of these has found a place and become a part of my surroundings.

( Pretty Pretty Purchases )

First things first: ( The 20-clove Garlic Chicken Recipe )

Most of the time, when we have visitors or even when we are traveling, for some reason, we find it hard to remember to take photos. All week my mom has been saying, "Where's the camera?" "We have to get the camera out!" and then we get distracted and forget again. But! Tonight, I got out the camera not realizing that actually remembering to get the camera out is the EASY part. Getting one of the sitters to stop TALKING and one to stop STICKING OUT his tongue and one to stop MAKING STUPID FACES is the hard part. In practically every photo, someone's eyes are closed or someone's got their hand across their face or someone else has their mouth open because they were TALKING. Portrait photographers don't get paid enough, is my conclusion. My mother says paybacks are hell.



The only "good" shot from the whole shoot


Lizardmom!

Cracking Me Up 'Til it Hurts: Just the last bit and then READ THE COMMENTS

Also, DON'T VOTE! (thanks to Marilyn for the link!)

Even though I decorate my home with a peaceful palette of pale greens and tend to wear black and chocolate brown and other dark and dusty colors like forest green and eggplant purple, it's orange that is my favorite color. Orange with its bright unexpected blast of color, orange that brightens a day immediately like an adrenaline shot of sunshine, orange that makes you smile and lifts your mood and shines out with a reverberating vibe of energy.

It's the color of pumpkins and Japanese lanterns and clementines and salmon nigiri. It's tiger halves and tabby cats, tiger lilies, monarch butterflies and koi. It's redheads and marigolds, late summer poppies and autumn leaves and bonfire flames.

Orange you glad you stopped by?





Good things should never end: Unlimited Orange

Things to do with orange: Collecting Orange Things

What You Get When You Search Flickr for: Orange

Orange Art/Photography: All things Orange

Cracking Me Up: How My Kids Spent Saturday Night

Mom and I started scouring photo albums yesterday, to collect all my old school photos, and I'm afraid the school-photo-project is going to have to wait a while...turns out of the 13 years I was in public school (K-12)...I only have FOUR of them. How did that happen? I can't even find my senior picture and I have a bleached spot in a photo album where it once resided...what the heck happened to it? Why would I have removed it and then never returned it to its spot?? Very strange.

So, now mom has to hunt them down at HER house after she returns and then MAIL them all to me, because she doesn't have a scanner OR a digital camera. Sorry to get all your (and my!) hopes up for a funny post, but hopefully the anticipation will make the wait worthwhile. Heh.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up at the crack of dawn and driving to Gothenburg for the biggest book fair in the Nordics, along with several other women from the AWC. Both of us are taking empty backpacks....and copies of my 5-page single-spaced books-to-buy list. The kids are spending the night tonight and the day tomorrow with Anders' parents because...strangely enough, they DIDN'T WANT TO GO. To a book fair. Who'da thunkit?

Anders is still in Italy, but my brother and his wife are there visiting him, so they'll be hiking or biking all weekend, so he won't be missing us too much, I suspect. :)

Then, Sunday, we are going to the pumpkin patch to get our Halloween pumpkins. I have not seen an actual sugar beet on the side of the road, but today there was a sugar beet TRUCK on the side of the road so that counts, and it's now officially AUTUMN. Plus, there were pumpkins in our local grocery store, so that clinches it. After the pumpkin patch we are going to a huge art & handicrafts fair with over 70 booths...busy! busy! O! the busy!

What are you doing this weekend? Are you doing the busy, too?

Beautiful Bibliophiliac Belated Birthday Wishes to sealwhiskers!

It's been a bit of a game-playing weekend, which has been really nice, since I grew up in a game-playing family and miss it quite a lot. My husband didn't, though he plays sports (which is not the same thing at all), and in this particular area, his background is winning, since we rarely seem to play games as a family, even though we have an awful lot of them.

Yesterday we went in to Malmö to the castle and toured the museum which is a combination natural history / art / historical museum. Some of the art was fantastic (Carl Larsson's fresco cartoons in the main stairwell) and some was just bizarre...a lot of modern art leaves me cold, though it can be quite clever. The section of the museum that dealt with the building's history was recently renovated and updated and is quite nice, with all the displays in both Swedish and English. The castle has been a fortress, an artillery storage, a mint, a prison and now a museum. The most famous prisoner was the Earl of Bothwell, Mary Stuart's (Queen of Scots) 3rd husband.

Afterwards, we walked over to the Commandant's House, which is also a little museum, but it was under renovation, so the only part open was Zenith City*, a interactive treasure hunt/game. There were little stations like a miniature city standing about in a big room, each one covered with flaps and panels that had clues behind them. You started off with a piece of paper that directed you to your first stop where you read a bit about your character and then had to make decisions about what your character would do. If you chose one thing, it directed you to find a particular place for your next clue, if you choose the other you might end up somewhere quite different.

All of the stories were of the social consciousness type; they had to do with 3rd world countries, poverty, discrimination, gender, etc. Only one of them was in English, so Mom, Martin and I ended up with that one, while Karin and Anders did a completely different storyline. Our story was pretty harsh; our character was a illiterate woman in a developing country whose husband was dying of AIDS. Her choices were always horrible: Funds are extremely low and you don't get paid for 2 weeks so do you borrow money to buy the medicine your husband needs even though it will mean that your son must leave school? By the end of it, my husband was dead, my son had run away, I'd been groped by my boss, had borrowed money and had it taken away again. My brother-in-law had locked me out of the house, and his friends were waiting at the door to accost me when I tried to return home, so I lost the house too, and ended up begging on the streets.

FINALLY, just as Martin and I reached about the same point in the story, having gone different ways to get to it, since we'd made different decisions in the course of the game, we found out about the Widow's Help Network, and found a lawyer who got us in touch with an organization that fights for women's rights, and we snuck back in the house, found a pile of papers that turned out to be the missing will, and won a court case to get the house back. We never did find the son, though, because the museum curator came and kicked us out: they closed at 4 p.m.

It sure engendered a lot of discussion in the car on the way home, though! At one point Martin said, "Geez! Is it really that hard to be a parent??" and all of us laughed and told him YES.

Today we played a game that Mom brought with her (I had bought it back in April, but didn't have room in my suitcase then) called A Moose in the House. It's a silly card game that we had a lot of fun playing, and I can highly recommend it to anyone with children, ages 7 and up!

Anders left for a 2-week business trip to Italy this afternoon, so now Mom and I are on our own with the kids...I'm sure we'll find lots of things to keep us busy (when I'm not working!).

Martin's passport is expiring so we also swung by the photographer's while we were in Malmö and got his picture taken, and for good measure we took one of Karin at the same time for a matching set. People keep asking lately if they are twins. I wonder why: ( Twins? )

*Found a website in Swedish, where you can play the game online, though it doesn't seem like it's the same storyline that we had.