Monsters and Candy

To Hrothgar was granted glory in war.....

Sound familiar to anyone?  It's the first line of "Beowulf," the oldest surviving long poem of Old English literature, consisting of over 3,000 lines.  We read it in school, probably 9th grade, and to this day I remember that opening line--but absolutely NOTHING else.  I didn't even remember what the poem was about, so when I agreed to review a Panto version, I had to do research.

Panto (sort for pantomime...though this is not silent) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is still performed throughout the United Kingdom, generally during the Christmas and New Year season.  It is a very physical production that uses dance, tumbling, and buffoonery.  There is always a man dressed as a woman, there is a lot of candy thrown out to the audience, and balls given to the audience to toss at the performers.

I started doing research on Beowulf, but what I found was so convoluted that i decided to see if there was a movie on Amazon.  There was.  All I can say is Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins must really have needed money when they agreed to do this film! Hrothgar (Hopkins) and his kingdom are being attacked by first gremlins and then a dragon, Grendel.  Beowulf the HERO comes to the rescue and when he starts fighting Grendel, Grendel's Mom (Jolie) gets pissed and joins the fight.  Somehow it didn't seem to be the stuff of panto. especially when I saw all those gremlins.

To my credit (I think), I did watch the whole movie, but it's 2 hours I'll never get back again.  It seemed to be mostly screams and growls and very little dialog.  But at least I had a vague idea of what the story was supposed to be.  I have to admit there were some pretty impressive special effects, especially when Beowulf, hanging from the dragon Grendel's body by a chain manages to punch a hole in the dragon's chest and reach in to stab the heart.  When his knife wasn't long enough, he cut off his other arm, to make his body hang longer and then grabbed the heart in his hand and squeezed it.  I'm not used to movies like this!

So I didn't know what to expect when we arrived at the little 100 seat black box theater in West Sacramento.   There are 13, or more or less, people in the cast.  The narrator is not listed and there were at least two more people on stage than in the program.

The "horse" in the picture doubles as the dragon with a few scales added to the sides and face of the horse.  The character on the right is the dragon's mom (in case you couldn't tell)

It was definitely for kids, but cute and not boring.  The audience yelled at the cast, they tossed balls, ate peppermint candies and in the end two young kids from the audience came on stage and made faux pigs in a blanket as a contest.

More enjoyable than I expected but I definitely didn't need to waste two hours watching that movie!  I think I could have figured things out for myself.

This is how the kitchen looked when Ned left last night, so Walt and i went to Denny's after the show to have dinner, where I managed to totally embarrass myself by spilling a PINT of water and ice on myself.  The waitress brought A paper napkin to mop it up, then a very thin non-absorbent cloth while I'm sitting there with water pouring down my sweater and into my lap.  It was a cold ride home.  Fortunately we had a towel in the trunk of the car.

Fortunately Ned left me a way to get to the coffee pot so I could heat up yesterday's coffee this morning--getting to grind coffee beans was a bit more complicated, so we just went with re-heated.)

But the ceiling is now painted and this morning he is going to install the ceiling light.  Fiat Lux!!!

I showed this picture to my mother when I went to visit yesterday afternoon and she told me that it looked "cute."  I am not sure she even knew what I was showing her.

Life without Lizzie

When I was growing up and devouring dog books, my favorites were those written by Albert Peyson Terhune.  Terhune was a real-life owner of prize-winning collies and he wrote lots of books about them, some based on true events, some fictional stories.  He wrote them for adults, but surprisingly found a large audience of children too.  I longed to have my own collie and the closest I ever had was after Walt and I were married and had two kids when my cousin Peach, who at that time raised shelties, gave me Jeff, a wonderful dog who was afraid of his shadow for most of his life, but who looked like a collie and I loved him.

I loved reading about Terhune's Lad a Dog.  I don't know if Lad was his first collie, but he was the first that he wrote about.  I loved hearing about how Lad spent all of his time lying at "the master's" feet under his desk, or how he spent so much time grooming his paws.

Lizzie wasn't a collie, but she was my self-appointed guardian.  Most of the time she was as unobtrusive as a Secret Service agent, but wherever I was, she was eventually there, not making a big deal of it, just being here with me.  This included spending many hours in the bed I fixed for her in my newly decorated office, which was as close as she could get to being at my feet.

If I got up from the desk and moved to the family room, within five minutes, Lizzie would casually saunter into the family room and climb up on the couch.

Lizzie's "working hours" seemed to be about 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.  At night she slept on a chair in the living room across from the couch where I sleep.  If I got up at 3 and moved to the recliner in the family room, she didn't move, but around 5, I'd hear her sauntering into the family room and climbing onto the couch.  If it was 11 p.m. and I still wasn't getting up to go into the living room, she'd sigh, get off the couch, and retire to the living room.

After moving back to the family room at 3, I usually fall asleep in the recliner, and often wake up around 6, but I stay cuddled under my quilt for an hour or so, pretending to be asleep.  Lizzie's eyes never left me.  She either raised her head, or kept them on her paws, but her eyes were always opened and when she either figured out that I was awake or decided she wanted me to get up, she would get off the couch and come over to wake me up.

I missed her last night.  I missed seeing the white blob that was her body on the chair across from me in the living room, and I missed looking over at the couch when I woke up and not seeing her staring at me. 

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is feed the dogs.  I pick up Lizzie's bowl and then Polly's, I fill them both and add cottage cheese, then I put Lizzie's down and then Polly's.  This morning I started to go toward Lizzie's, but stopped myself and went to get Polly's.  I filled Polly's bowl and started to put it where Lizzie's food, stopping myself after a few steps. Old habits need to be broken.

Lizzie was like Lad in that she spent most of her waking time cleaning her paws.  Unlike Lad, you'd never know it to look at her feet, which always seemed to be dirty, but she left puddles of drool wherever she was because of the licking.  I won't miss those puddles.

Two nights before she died, she curled up on family room couch and put her head on the pillow there, like it was a real bed.  She was so cute I wanted to take her picture but I knew that if I got up to get my cell phone, she would move, so I didn't.  I figured I'd take the picture the next time she did it.  I didn't realize that would be the last time.

When we got home from the vet's yesterday, I realized that I had forgotten to take Lizzie's collar off.  I called the office, but the people who cremate the animals had already picked her up.  The vet gave me their phone number and I called.  The nice lady told me that when they go through all the stuff they collect after the cremations, they would try to find Lizzie's collar.  Today she called and said they found it and will deliver it to the vet's office tomorrow, so we will at least have that bit of Lizzie back, since we chose not to have her ashes returned to us.

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Ned has started a new project around here.

We've been talking about putting in a ceiling light.  Right now the only light in the kitchen is over the sink and the light on the stove.  Walt has had some misgivings about the project which Ned waved away.  He's finally tired of hearing about us "going" to put in a new light so he decided he would take matters into his own hand.

Today he spent the whole day draping the room and washing the ceiling.  Tomorrow he will paint and the next day he will get the light in.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am to think of not having to cook in the dark any more!

Lizzie

We bid a sad farewell to Lizzie today.  ("What shall we do for Christmas?"  "I dunno...how about let's kill the dog....")

Fortunately she went quickly and if we had waited 30 more minutes before going to the vet, she would have died at home.  Last night she vomited several times, then her legs wouldn't hold her and she kept collapsing when she tried to walk.  It was 10 pm so I waited until morning before calling the vet.  They gave me an 11:15 appoinment and by the time it came time to take her, she couldn't walk at all.

They took us right into an exam room and we waited for the doctor to come.  I took what I feared would be Lizzie's last photo.

 

And it was.  The vet said it felt like she had a mass in her stomach.  `The vet took her back to check a few things and said that yes, it was a mass and talked about the extensive things that could be done.  But she was a ~13 year old dog and already very, very sick and I had known from when we took her to the car that it would probably be a one-way trip for her.

Yesterday she acted normal, but when we got home from the show last night, though she met us at the door, as she always did, she hung back and didn't go into the kitchen for a treat.  I thought she was feeling embarrassed because she had pooped on the floor (the back door was closed and it was her only option) but then I saw the big puddle of vomit, which we cleaned up (this morning I found two more).

She had lost a lot of weight, but seemed otherwise happy until last night, so at least she didn't suffer long.  We agreed it was time to euthanize her, but she took care of that for us.  Before the doctor could get the meds together, Lizzie was gone.

We said our goodbyes and there were tears.  But she has been a wonderful dog.  She came here about 10-11 years ago as a foster named Happy, but I knew immediately that I wanted to adopt her, so we kept her.  In her early days, it was like she was built on springs because she jumped at everything, so I renamed her Leaping Lizzie.  She used to sit at the back of the couch looking out the front window and leap at anything that dared threaten us by walking past the house.

Many people walked past just to watch Lizzie's display.

 

The older she got, the less she leaped, but she still always jumped and jumped and jumped on me when I was fixing her a meal.  I won't miss that.  Walt loved watching her "pre-wash" the dishes when he loaded them in the dishwasher.

She accepted Polly as a resident of the house but other than running outside to bark together, they never really played, though Polly seems confused  that we left with Lizzie and came back without her.

She was a sweet, loving dog and I will miss her.  But probably not think about replacing her!  For now we are a one-dog family.

Back to Seedy Bars

There was a time in our parenting lives when the only way we could get to see much of our kids was by visiting them in seedy bars in questionable parts of town.  Three of our kids were in a band called "Lawsuit" for ten years and we tried to get to most of their shows--and since they played nearly every weekend, we spent a lot of time in bars.  Which is fun for someone who doesn't drink!

Lawsuit packed up its bags and faded in to the annals of music history in 1996 and while there is a revamped band, Preoccupied Pipers, they aren't as organized, don't play as often, and only Ned is in it regularly, Marta occasionally, and Jeri when she is in town (rarely).

But tonight Preoccupied Pipers played as part of an extravaganza called....

Ned has been working with Tom Fay to put  this show on and publicize it (lemme tell you...if you want a good publicist, Ned's your man!  He managed to make and post a video a day for the past week advertising this gig, in addition to an appearance on a Sacramento morning TV show and getting his mother to write a half-page long article, with two color photos, on Tom Fay, "The Christmas Miracle.")

And so there was no way we could skip this concert.  Harrow's isn't exactly as "seedy" as some of the bars we have visited following our kids around Northern California.  It actually has a menu of real food, so we could have dinner there.  Ned saved us a table overlooking the stage and dance floor

A quartet opened the show and then Tom and his band, the Rhythm Kings, took the stage and did their set, ending with The Santa Rhumba.  To look at him tonight you wouldn't think he was 75 and nearly died of a stroke two years ago!

There were a couple of other bands following the Rhythm Kings and then Preoccupied Pipers came on  The thing that was always interesting about Lawsuit is that they always filled a dance floor.  Even in a crowd that hadn't danced to other groups the same evening, would always be dancing to Lawsuit.  That's what I thought when I saw the group dancing to Preoccupied Pipers.  It was a Lawsuit flashback.  (Walt pointed out that I could tell my mother that we went dancing tonight!)

It's always fun to see Ned on the drum, though he's hidden behind all the instruments in front.  He did come out in front with guitar to do a duet with Marta.

There were also several "guest stars" whom I did not get pictures of, like Sarah "Sarge" Clanton and Barbara West singing a trio with Marta and later Paul's best friend Kag sharing the lead with KC Bowman on the finale, one of my favorite Lawsuit Songs, "The Grassy Knoell," their off-beat tribute to Christmas and the Kennedy assassination.  Even Ned's brother-in-law Brad got in there playing the tin whistle.  Everybody just had a great time.

There was another band after Preoccupied Pipers, but we decided to skip it and just came on home to watch Jeopardy.

 

As I write this, I am uploading my video of "The Grassy Knoell" to YouTube.  If it actually uploads, I will link to it here tomorrow.  It made me teary remembering the Lawsuit years and missing Paul.

We came home on such a high, the show having been so much fun, and with the happy news that Doug Jones had won the Alabama Senate run-off.  

Of course by the time I got to the end of this entry, Roy Moore had refused to concede and was demanding a re-count and you just know they'll find some way to reverse the votes.

Sunday Stealing

 Bah Humbug!  Before we get all warm and cozy for the upcoming holidays, here's a chance to let out all those angry feelings you've been harboring .  I copied this a long time ago and don't remember where I stole it from.



TV show I loathe:
If I loathe the show, I won't watch it.  There are several shows that I have never watched that I know I would loathe if I did...any "mating and dating" show (The Bachelor, Bachelorette, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, etc), anything with Kardashian or "Christley" in it

Movie I loathe:
I can't think of a movie I loathe (except I remember hating The Stuntman decades ago but don't remember why now.  There are movies I'm not fond of, especially at this time of year-foremost among them would be It's a Wonderful Life (because it's played to death in December) followed by any of the sappy formulaic Christmas movies that Hallmark shows during the whole month of December.Music genres I loathe:
Anything loud and "splatty," which would include not only heavy metal, but also most modern operas and/or symphonies!

Magazine which annoys me:
I don't really read magazines any more because the print size is too small, but I would think I would not enjoy any right wing propagandistic publication.

Makes me cranky at restaurant:
Two things -- parents who let their kids run around unsupervised, and overly solicitous wait staff.  It's one thing to be attentive to your customers; it's entirely another to interrupt them every couple of minutes to ask if everything is all right.  Olive Garden in Sacramento is famous for this.

Makes me cranky in public:
Everybody walking around looking at their cell phones.

Makes me impatient at home:
Polly's bark to let us know we are not doing something she wants us to do.  There is no "off" button on a Chihuahua!

Makes me impatient at work:
I'm retired, so this doesn't apply.

Celebrity I hate:
"Hate" is such a strong word, but I find I can't look at Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey or Matt Lauer now and I used to like all three of them.  So very disillusioned!

Music artist I hate:
I don't know any current music artists enough to hate any of them.

I could care less about:
What Bill O'Riley, Rush Limbaugh or Steve Bannon have to say, though Bannon is a very scary guy with far too much influence on #45.

Blogger's habit that annoys you:
It annoys me when a blogger writes something really good....but has no comment or contact information so I can compliment him/her on it.

Feature on your blog you hate:
I'm pretty much content with it.  I would like to change the look just because it's looked the same for many, many years, but every time I try I end up with the same look -- it's why I change the wallpaper and colors each month.  It's the only change I feel comfortable with.

Politician that you hate:
Could there be any doubt?

Saturday 9

Welcome to Saturday 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! 

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song is about a woman who loves singing along with her car radio. Is that something you enjoy?

I am more likely to sing along with CDs, but in the last few years, my voice seems to have disappeared.  I have a vocal range of about 4 notes and it's to depressing to try to sing.

2)  The video begins with Maren Morris finishing her cigarette before getting behind the wheel. Do you allow smoking in your car?

I don't know anybody who smokes any more, but if I did, I would ask them to please not smoke in the car.

3) In this song, Maren admits she's lied. What's the last fib you told?

I always tell my mother I'll see her "tomorrow" because she gets upset if she thinks I won't be there the next day but she can't tell one day from another and even if it's several days that I don't see her, she doesn't know. "I'll see you tomorrow" seems a kind deception.

4) She mentions having her radio on the FM dial. Are you loyal to a single radio station? Or do you spin the dial?

Mostly I listen to CDs or an audio book, but if I have the radio on, it's either NPR or a classical music station (the only two set buttons on the car radio)

5) Maren was inspired to write this song while on a long car trip from Nashville to Los Angeles. When do you get your best ideas? (In the shower, behind the wheel, over lunch with friends ...)

Actually, I seem to be my most creative as I lie down at night and get ready to go to sleep.
  
6) She performed this song on Saturday Night Live last year. The host that week was John Cenna. Do you follow professional wrestling?

Heavens no, but I've seen John Cenna on talk shows and he seems to be a nice guy.

7) In 2016, when this song was popular, Alex Rodriguez played his final Major League Baseball game. He has embarked on a second career as a broadcaster. Would you be comfortable on camera?

Our kids (now adults) have been making movies for so many years, that it doesn't bother me to be on camera, but I'm never comfortable with it.

8) A 2016 study revealed that 43% of Americans own mutual funds, many in their 401(k)s and IRAs. Are you involved in the stock market? 

My husband handles investments.  I know we do have mutual funds, but that's about all I know.  (Lord help me if he dies first!)

9) Random question: You have something awkward and embarrassing that you simply must tell a pal. You know your friend will not be happy with the news. Would you prefer to deliver it by email, in a phone call, or face to face?

It depends on who the "pal" is and how comfortable I am speaking with that person face to face.  (I'm basically a chicken)

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Just a comment that Holidailies drives me crazy some time.  I am trying to be diligent and check out most of the entries that people have submitted and, if possible, add a comment to each entry (unless there is nothing that I can think of to say to the entry).  I think that one of the reasons we join Holidailies is to get to know other bloggers and invite them to look at your stuff too...commenting is a great way to do that.

But there are a couple of people who have neither a comment box nor any contact information.  The frustrating thing about this is that these are the entries that are really interesting and have things that I want to comment on.  It's like wanting to scream at the news on TV at night.

The other people who drive me nuts are those who put the Holidailies address in the place where their entry address is supposed to be, so when you click on their entry it takes you back to the front page of Holidailies and never do see their entries, though the excerpt they posted about the entry may be very intriguing, but you'll never know it because they put the wrong link in their post.

However, most of the participants have comment boxes and post the right way and most of them are generally interesting, so I continue participating every year.

Christmas Around the World

Our Christmases these days are quite different from the days of old, much calmer, for one thing -- but part of me misses the "old days," when we had to borrow an extra table and chairs from the local community center and when we were never really sure how many people would show up.

In the years when we were hosting foreigners in our house (70 in 10 years, from 15 different countries), whichever of them was in the neighborhood (i.e., the western United States!) they would plan to spend the holiday with us.  Sometimes we managed to squeeze as many as 24 people around the dinner table (bear in mind that our room is 22' x 15' !)

I love this picture because it kind of epitomizes those days.  Walt always used to read "The Night Before Christmas" to the kids before they went to bed, and even as they started getting older, they insisted he continue the tradition.  When there were visitors, they, too, got into the spirit of things.   So in this picture we have, going round the circle from left to right:  Pujol from Brasil, David in Walt's lap, Tom in the lap of Marcio, also from Brasil.  Next to Marcio, bent over and wearing glasses is Felix from what was then Yugoslavia, then Paul, and Ndangi from Zaire and Jeri.

Ndangi was one of the first persons from another country to stay with us at Christmas time.  We had already planned to host Chieko from Japan, but Ndangi ended up with no place to go, so we invited him to join us as well.  He didn't speak much English at that time and my French got a good workout.  For the next several years, wherever either one of them were in the states, the two of them (who developed a kind of brother and sister relationship) would fly in to join us for Christmas.  Chieko is now married with three children and living back in Tokyo.   Ndangi works in Silicon Valley, is married  and has twin girls.

I think Marcello (Brasil--Rio de Janeiro) was the next one to be here for Christmas.  Marcello arrived in this country speaking no English (awkward, because he was here to go to high school).  He was also not happy with his placement in the middle of California because he was a surfer and hoped to spend his days surfing (he had no idea the water in this part of the state was so cold!).  By the time he left here, he was better at speaking English, so good that he was able to return to the United States a few years later and, the last I heard of him, he had been working as some sort of official for Marriott Hotels.

Maria (here with Grandma Sykes) came from Mexico.  Her minister recognized that she had great potential and wanted to find a family which would take her in so she could study in this country.  I heard of her by chance, and agreed to have her live with us.  She was bright and delightful (and is now married and owns her own restaurant, which has received awards for excellence in a Sacramento magazine). 

Her sister, Sandra, came to visit one year and spent Christmas with us. 

What we did to that poor woman shouldn't happen to a dog.  It happened that at that time, Jeri was working for a theatrical supply place and so she gave David a break-away bottle as a gift.  Those were the years when the kids took movies of everything, and created elaborate plots (all involving chase and fight scenes, or falling off roofs or whatever).  The kids had been filming a complicated movie all day and it was going to end with a fight scene at the dinner table.  Sandra was totally unaware of what was going on, was new to our family and how weird we were, and didn't speak English all that well. 

So we all sat down at the table and most people had been told what was going to happen, but nobody thought to tell Sandra.  All of a sudden, David chases Paul through the house yelling at him.  Walt yells at both of them to stop fighting, David growls, picks up the wine bottle off of the table and hits Paul over the head with it, the bottle shattered and Sandra screamed.  Everybody goes on eating as if nothing unusual was going on.  I thought poor Sandra would have a heart attack.

Vince was from Malaysia and had lived here in Davis for a few years with his family while his father studied at UC Davis.   When the family went back to Malaysia, knowing that Vince's chances of a good education, as a Chinese student, were poor in Malaysia, and that they would either have to leave him here or send him to Singapore, contacted the church to find a family.  The church called us and we said sure.  So Vince moved in for three years, and continued to spend Christmases with us through his college years at UC Davis and until he married and began having a family of his own (twins now).

Victor was Ndangi's cousin and came from Zaire speaking not a single word of English.  One of my very favorite memories is of David and his friend Jeff setting up English lessons for Victor every afternoon.  Victor and David developed a special bond and after David died, though we had not seen Victor in years, he showed up at our door unannounced, tears in his eyes, to be here for the memorial service.   When it was over, he disappeared and we haven't heard from him since.

Felix also joined us for several Christmases in a row.   He came from Yugoslavia on vacation and lived with us for three weeks, but he then went to graduate school at Cal Tech, and would return for the holiday.  He later got a job with an engineering firm in Sacramento, so lived close enough that he could join us each Christmas.  

He is now married and  he and his wife own a B&B in the Seattle area.  They have two beautiful white poodles and I often see pictures of them on some hike or other around the area.  We saw him this spring when he was in Sacramento for a conference. I like this picture of him helping Ned to peel the potatoes for Christmas dinner.

When I remember all of those crazy years when we barely had enough elbow room, let alone room to move around the table, I think of them fondly.  We certainly had a lot of very special people from other countries pass through our lives and our hearts over the years.