 Weekend |
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This weekend was sponsored in large part by Ben & Jerry's. H. came over on Friday night and we ate burritos and phish food and watched a few episodes of Sex and the City season five. She brought rum from Puerto Rico and made yummy drinks with crushed ice and cranberry juice and limes. By the end of the night we were making pie charts for ourselves based on how parts of each character comprise our personalities, which is probably a sign that we had hit our drink quota for the night. We also watched Oprah's special about Africa that aired in December because she hadn't seen it and she loves Oprah possibly even more than I do. I bawled yet again into my cocktail. I spent a lot of the weekend re-reading Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, which was as wonderful as I remembered. I first started reading Chris Crutcher's books back in grad school in an adolescent lit class, and I especially fell in love with this one, Stotan, and Chinese Handcuffs, which I worked into a big project I did on teen suicide and which I started to re-read last night. I have no idea how I can so love these books that so heavily feature sports, but I do. They can all get a little movie of the weekish, but somehow Crutcher makes them work. His writing style makes the books dramatic but not melodramatic. In Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Moby and Sarah Byrnes become best friends mainly because he's very fat and she's very scarred and they band together as outcasts. But when Moby becomes a swimming powerhouse and subsequently more buff, he worries that they won't be friends anymore. So he tries to stay fat for Sarah Byrnes. But it doesn't work because he can't fight his metabolism for very long, so he explains that now he only accepts invitations that include Sarah Byrnes, and if people ever want to exclude her, he blows them off without thinking twice, and that's how he stays fat for her now. THAT'S HOW HE STAYS FAT FOR HER NOW. God. Moby. I love him. Anyway, that's just the basic premise, and lots of other stuff happens, involving a coach and fellow athletes and parents and other students and teachers at the school, all included in the basic framework of Crutcher's novels. It sounds lame, but it isn't. These are some strong books, and the characters are hard to forget. I'm always glad to re-read them, even though the subject matter is often harsh and Crutcher approaches it without blinking. There are kids who are heroes and assholes, and there are adults who are heroes and assholes, and usually everyone's a little bit of both. On Saturday night, I went to my co-worker's house, where we drank wine, ate spinach and artichoke pizza and peanut butter cup ice cream, and rejoiced when the missing cat returned from the rainy abyss. I spent most of Sunday making some makeshift curtains with stitch witchery after hitting the gym. I bought some really cute curtains at Target (thanks again for my gift card, Dawn!) and embarked on a curtain making project with which, while certainly not perfect and quite haphazard, I'm pretty happy. They add a lot of color to what was before a very bland room. Last night I went to Jeannie's to watch the second to last episode of Sex and the City, and I cried throughout the ENTIRE SHOW. I didn't realize how attached I am to these people. Tears were shooting down my face during practically every scene. I won't miss Carrie's wardrobe (last night's striped dress -- need I say more?), but I will miss these characters. It's been uneven at times, but it's been a really big part of life. I don't really know what to think about how it will end. I haven't looked for any spoilers so I don't know if they're out there, but I think I'd be happy either way. (In New York: With Big or Without Big.) I realize he's been a dumbfuck more times than we can count, but so has she! My God! Do we not remember how she treated Aidan? I still break out in a cold sweat remembering poor Aidan. I mean, Big has been a part of the show since episode one, and even though I could stand on my feminist principles and say that she's better off without him and it's ridiculous for them to be setting up some kind of Big rescue scenario -- rather than letting her get rescued by the girls or by herself -- I'm only human. Come on. If he rescues her, I will swoon. As Kymm would say, I am not made of stone. Season three of Felicity is now available for preorder, and after almost two weeks, the sun is shining. At lunch today I'm going to go home, scoop some backyard poop, set the dogs free for an afternoon of play, and watch another character bite it on Days of Our Lives. For a Monday, life could be worse.
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