Celebrations

I have to admit that we sat around on Saturday like three lazy-boned people. It was great. The sun was shining through my bedroom window and MacTroll and I snoozed pretty much on and off the whole day with a variety of fuzzy animals. X-man was busy playing by himself for a while, and then MacTroll went and played the Wii U with him. In the afternoon his friends from down the street came over and played for a couple of hours, too.

Today, was a bit different. It was miserable outside. We were still kind of lazy (in bed until 9:30 a.m.) but then we watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." We finished the book a couple of weeks ago, and X-man wanted to see the movie. We did have to fast-forward through the end fight, but other than that, he did pretty well. What was great was that throughout the movie, he was pointing out things that were different from the book. It was amazing not only how much he comprehends, but how much he can recall from finishing the books two weeks ago.

He also started his private swim lessons with Ms. Ellen at the Y again. He finished them last July, and due to my surgery, wasn't able to start them up again. So, he had six, 30-minute sessions. Today's were on Sunday but the next five will be on Monday evenings at 6 p.m. For the first time ever, though, he was able to swim from the deep end of the lap lanes in the family pool to the shallow end. It was 25 yards. It was all face-in-the-water doggy paddle. But it worked. Ms. Ellen was impressed, because all last summer he was scared to go too far. He was thinking about it too much.

While he was at his lesson, I took roughly 14 minutes and went up to the track and walked/ran a full mile. It's the first running I have done since March 2012. It was a big deal. It felt weird, but there was no pain. Afterward, when I dropped X-man off at Skateland to go play laser tag with MacTroll at 2:50 p.m., I swung by Body N Sole and picked up "The Orb." As I ran, my calf was tight. It worked, but I really had to concentrate to push off using my toes. I seem to push off on the lateral (or outer side) of my foot. This means I have a tendency to supinate. It's something I get to talk about with my doctor when I see him on Feb. 4 for my final "post-surgical" appointment.

It's possible he may want to make me custom orthotics, so that I don't lean out on the outside of my foot, which is called supination. It's easy to feel, as I'm running that I lean on my peroneals, and I don't want to risk another tear. Since 90 percent of runners pronate versus supinate... I often wonder if it would drive a podiatrist mad to try and make inserts that actually perpetuate pronation in order to prevent supination and work up muscles in a different part of the leg. I guess I'll find out!

But I did the mile. I didn't have to walk in between (i.e. I felt I could run longer and wasn't winded when the time was over. I was advised by my PT to try it out first and to go slow, and I'm a very compliant patient. I'm hoping that I'll get to do it again on Tuesday.

The only other thing we did this weekend was play an 8-hour game of Monopoly. We ended up calling it a three-way tie because it went on for so long. But we noticed that X-man was totally adding up the three die (we use the speed dice in the championship game) and adding and subtracting the money really well... into the hundreds.

I hope everyone had a restful and fun weekend, too!

Forget the cow...

I'm actually doing very well at this dairy-free thing. I'm not as resentful as I was before, but maybe that's because my library search for a lot of vegan cookbooks (they don't make a lot of ovo-vegetarianism specific ones, and most vegetarian-only cookbooks use cheese) has come back with a lot of recipes I'm not only interested in eating, but am happy to make.

Today, we took X-man to Chuck E. Cheese in Bloomington because MacTroll's brother was driving from Peoria to Wisconsin today and he left his camera at our place. So, we arrived at CeC a little after 9:30 and X-man and I went in. MacTroll waited a few minutes and then gave them the camera.

We played games for two hours (100 coins for $20) and then we took off down the street to Zoup for lunch.

It sells soup and sandwiches and salads and is a pretty small, but enjoyable space for a quick lunch. I had the V, DF, LF Split Pea Soup. X-man got a cup of potato and cheese soup, but he thought the guy said cheesy potato chip. :-) He also had a grilled cheese sandwich. MacTroll had some kind of cup of beefy soup and half a sandwich.

When we got home, X-man and I finished the Monopoly game he started last night with KTDID while MacTroll and I went to the movies.

We saw This is 40 at the Savoy 16. It was an odd experience. First of all, there were a million people there for the 6 p.m. movie. They were waiting in incredibly long lines. But no one was at the automated ticket selling machine. So we parted our way through the line and bought our tickets in 60 seconds flat.

Then we went into the movie. Since it was Judd Apatow, I was hoping for dumb and funny mixed together. I'm not a big fan of his other movies. But for some reason, I thought maybe I could identify with this one. But I couldn't. The characters were very shallow. It was like watching some kind of strange anthropological study of a culture you just couldn't understand but were trying not to look horrified.

The best part of the film was when Paul Rudd was on his bike and he was careening around town with the Fiona Apple song in the background. On the other hand, the movie was mostly by artists that would have been most celebrated by my parents' generation (Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Lindsey Buckingham, Yoko Ono, Graham Parker, etc.).

And, um, if you're going to pick someone to play the 40 year old female lead who wants to whine about her age and how it's negatively affecting her self-esteem, her looks, etc. -- pick someone whose forehead actually wrinkles so you can tell them apart from the 20-something.

Because on all counts, Leslie Mann (born 1972) is hotter and smarter than Megan Fox (born 1986) in this movie... and it's hard to pity that at all. In essence, I guess the whole thing was just very Southern California. What is deemed in the film as "mid-life" problems for this family were pretty -- petty.

Showing Our Age

MacTroll and I went to go see the new James Bond movie, "Skyfall." This is Daniel Craig's third go around at Bond in the last six years, and I have to admit, I never saw "Quantum Solace." MacTroll told me I wouldn't be missing much. So off I went. My father loves Bond. I remember when I was little, there would be Bond movie marathons on TBS, and I'd sit in the basement with my Dad watching Sean Connery and Roger Moore. I never liked Timothy Dalton, but I was happy when they made Pierce Brosnan Bond. Bond going blond was a little strange for me, too.

You can tell that Daniel, although ferociously fit, is starting to show his years. And the theme behind this Bond was all about appreciating the wealth of experience time gives us all. In comparison to Bond, his associate, Eve, and the new Q look like babies.

But I guess when you're giving Judi Dench (who I adore) a LOT of screen time and then introducing Albert Finney and a nearly 50-year-old Ralph Fiennes a 36-year-old actress playing Eve and a 32-year-old actor playing Q do look ferociously young.

And I'm pretty sure this is the last time in my life I'll ever think of myself as young (other than when watching movies starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, etc.) It's odd to see them aging. Because when I was in my prime they were "grown ups." Now I'm looking at footage of a 50-year-old Axel Rose and a 50-year-old Demi Moore and going, "Holy crap! How did that happen?" When did they get old enough to have their children have children?

Bond was a good time. It wasn't stellar. But it was fun, which is the way it should be.

Speaking of things showing their age. One of the handles apparently broke on our vegetable/fruit drawer when I was not cooking. MacTroll tried to snap it back on, but it wouldn't go because it was -- broken. It was time to change the water filter and order a replacement "dairy door" anyway. The dairy door broke when we moved in. It wasn't attached right on the inside and when I tried to put the butter away, it fell off and hit the tile floor cracking a corner.

But if we're going to sell the house, and the folks want the fridge, we should probably make it look like somewhere you'd like to put food. While I was doing all that work, I scrubbed it out today before hitting Meijer and grocery shopping.

A Wonderful Morning with Martin Sheen

I have to admit that I've watched a lot of random stuff on Netflix over the past five weeks. None of it has made me want to run out and get a cable subscription so I can get movies or TV shows faster. In fact, often when I'm watching a movie, I have to remind myself that people view this as an art form... because what I see is so -- commercial.

But maybe that's what we've done to all fine works of art. Commercialized them. Most writers and painters that are now considered greats were relatively unknown during their lifetime. They had to die first. So we end up taking the "fineness" out of them. I guess in a way we've done that to meal time, too. For example, right now I've just enjoyed fettucini alfredo -- from a box -- that I heated up in 4 minutes in the microwave. We've taken something that should take time and effort and sped it up so that we could do other activities faster.

This morning I watched a film called "The Way." It stars a post-Jed Bartlett Martin Sheen as a father who lost his son, when he passes away while attempting to hike the El Camino de Santiago from France to Spain. When he goes to France to retrieve his son's body, he decides to take up the hike and take his son's ashes with him. I don't say this very often any more, but it was a grown-up movie. It wasn't all fake drama and special effects. There were lows and highs and a lot of beautiful scenery. There were a lot of baguettes and bottles of wine and sleeping in bunk beds.

It was a feel good movie about self-acceptance, the way life works and living a life where you get to see all of the differences in cultures in the world -- even with an American passport. :-)

I don't walk away from movies completely happy very often. Usually I'm able to guess plot lines as they develop and guess where the faux drama is going to go. I couldn't do that with this one. And it was a pleasant change of pace.

Medicine and a Movie

As it turns out, Dr. Kluesner removed 1/2 of my staples today. The nurse also recasted me (It's Green!), which was much less painful than last time, although, I think they really mean for this cast to stay on for two more weeks and then the rest of the staples will be removed, because she put the new cast on pretty tight. So I'm back on the ice bottles. But I didn't almost pass out this time. So you know -- that's good.

I pre-ordered The Avengers and got it from iTunes yesterday, so we had a family movie night. I started the movie after Loki's arrival, because I deemed that part too scary for X-man. But liked the rest of the movie. There is a time in the war where the team starts to look like they're getting beat, so he got worried. But then they came out on top. The hulk, not surprisingly, was his favorite character by the end. I felt the same way when I saw the movie the first time.

But I hadn't seen any of the other Marvel movies besides the two Iron Man's before this one came out. I still haven't seen the prior two Hulk movies. But I did see Thor (which was awful) and I watched Captain America (which I really kind of liked) and let X-man see. And Black Widow does deserve a movie of her own.

I know he's old school. But he appeals to my altruistic side. He's classy and polite. I also guess that I missed that the reason Dr. Banner became Dr. Banner was that he was trying to use gamma rays to replicate the serum that made Captain, Captain.

Yes, I am a geek.

Dinner and a Movie

Yesterday, my oldest cat turned 13. So happy birthday, Mr. C!

The family spent the morning preparing for Papa's arrival. My dad was driving down from Rockford in the middle of campaign season to visit us and spend some time with X-man. When he got here we tried to go have lunch at Black Dog Ale, but they had a 20-minute wait, which doesn't work with a hungry 4 year old, so we went to Crane Alley instead.

I got a black bean burger and sweet potato fries. This was perhaps the wrong food choice because several hours later we went to a special dinner at Prairie Fruit Farm. The farm opens each spring with breakfasts every Saturday before the Urbana Farmers' Market opens. Then they do special dinners until the close of the growing season. Usually dinners are served outside on a wooden patio. But as it was 54 degrees when the sun started to fall away, we ate in the barn next to the kitchen. Each special dinner has a theme and is prepared by Alisa Demarco and her very friendly kitchen staff. The theme for our dinner was "100 yard dinner." That means nearly everything (outside of butter and oil) were prepared within 100 yards of the kitchen. As you can guess, since they make goat cheese, we ate a lot of it. You can see the complete menu here.

The appetizer course starts at 4 p.m. We arrived at 4:30 p.m. dressed in jeans, tennis shoes. I had a t-shirt, a wool sweater and a windbreaker on. MacTroll wore his boots and a pair of jeans with a long sleeve t-shirt, a fleece and he carried the top part of a gortex coat to break the wind. The wind was blowing brown leaves from the tree, and everything at the farm looked pretty picked over.

The farm served ice water and warm pear and apple cider, but MacTroll looked kind of disappointed that I didn't inform him we were welcome to bring our own beverages. In his old age, having wine with dinner is apparently something he looks forward to. I'm sure he does it when he dines out with folks on travel. But he and I get out usually only once a month, and I can count the number of alcoholic drinks I've had in the last calendar year on one hand. So, you know, the BYOB kind of escaped my attention.

There appeared to be two groups of people at the dinner. One was a theme of local business owners supporting other local businesses. The other was appeared to be very professorial/artsy. They apparently get a lot of repeat diners at their dinners because Wes, one of the owners, said in his welcome that he recognized and knew most everyone there. I think MacTroll and I looked like the odd ones out.

We sat with a large party of folks. They were very friendly. One was an artist who was there with her significant other who owns That's Rentertainment on campus. His mother was also present. She and I had some lovely discussion. On the other side, was a couple that worked at the Natural History Survey who know our neighbors Jeff and Wendy. And then another man who was there with his college-aged daughter worked for Yahoo and his wife runs a gift shop in Monticello. I engaged him in my surprise that Bee Active Toys, which originated in store space next to his wife's mad the move to Tuscola and apparently has done so well, they're opening a second store at Market Place Mall next to Macy's. I liked the store in Monticello and I followed them to Tuscola when they moved. Think Art Mart -- but with a wider selection, particularly for bigger kids.

There were LONG waits in between each course. And, unlike, when he eats at home, I sat there and watched MacTroll eat everything -- even the stew which was full of root vegetables. He even ate a fried green tomato. I inquired why he'd try everything here, but at  home if I put chunks of tomato in anything he picks them off. He said he didn't know why. And I'm so taking that personally, because there's no other reasonable explanation.

It was the first time I'd had guinea hens. The breasts weren't anything exciting, even though they were stuffed with fruit. But I did enjoy the legs, which is funny because usually I'm not a dark meat fan. But they cooked them so well, that the meat fell off the bone. The meat was also much darker than typical chicken. Much more rich in flavor.

Our favorite course was the cheese course (big surprise). We got three small pieces of cheese made at the farm, a bit of jellied currant and a bit of honeycomb. In my old age, I'd rather have honey than chocolate of any kind. I can't explain it. It just happened since I started losing weight. And that honeycomb was amazing. There's something about goat cheese and honey or goat cheese and jam that just goes so well together. Put the honey and goat cheese together on some decent whole wheat bread with a bit of pear and toast it for a few minutes and it's a heavenly sandwich.

The dessert was my least favorite. The apples were much too tart, even though they were supposedly honeyed. It tasted like a sour yogurt with fruit at the bottom.

I'm trying to remember how much we paid for the dinners. I think it was $85 a person. Hence, this was MacTroll's birthday present (which isn't until Oct. 27th). But he enjoyed it, and it was something very different than the usual downtown trip.

Afterwards, we called Papa, who was still going strong with X-man, so we went to go see the Social Network. When I first heard this movie was coming out, I was a pass. And then -- I read that Aaron Sorkin did the screen play. This was only helped by the fact that Trent Reznor does the music and that it was produced by Kevin Spacey. Crap. Okay. If Aaron Sorkin wrote it the dialogue between characters will at least be fast moving and entertaining. If you don't know Aaron Sorkin, he wrote Sports Night, the West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He also wrote the American President and A Few Good Men.

I knew what to expect from his work, and I did not leave disappointed. What was weird, was the fact that we went to a movie where the theater was full. That never happens for MacTroll and I. So the 19 year old who was behind us complaining about the "no texting at the movies" rule made me laugh. I don't give a shit about the rule. As long as there's not some beep or vibrate that's going off every 2 seconds next to me, whatever. But I found the rule entertaining given that we were sitting in a theater watching a movie which mentions more than once the addictiveness of social networking.

Indeed, it's sucked in the creator -- of course it made him billions of dollars, while it just sucks the life force out of the rest of us. :-)

Date Night

Last night my father stayed home with X-man while MacTroll and I went to see Julia and Julie, directed by Nora Ephron. I had been reading reviews and a few of them had noted that not only is it a fun story for foodies (anyone who likes butter, in this case...) but it's a fun movie for married people. I had never read those words in a movie review before. 

Usually "chick flicks" are about finding a "prince" or a "hero" (hello, Pretty Woman), or they often portray marriage in a  horrible "Disney" light OR they show how marriage is a gigantic downer and always falls apart, so why bother? 

Instead, this film showed a range of marriage issues, but for the vast part, in particular, Julia and Paul were very inspiring. And they were so freaking nice to each other -- even when they weren't. Mostly they appeared to find great humor in one another. I wonder if this is because they found each other later in life? But they weren't bogged down in the day to day, even when the day to day found her husband being questioned by the Feds thousands of miles away from her...

It was a highly entertaining film. Joel and I laughed through most of it and held hands during the most endearing as well as the sadder moments. It's one I'll be purchasing and putting on my DVD shelf for the days when I don't feel so fabulous about coupledom. It reveals the big picture of married life, which so many people don't get to see because they haven't been together long enough to appreciate it. 

In other movie news, Roger Rogers and I are finally going to go see The Ugly Truth. We had plans to go see it two weeks ago, but X-man broke is leg so I had to cancel. Two movies in two days? What is this world coming to? 

Live Long and Prosper

The Dads and I went out to see Star Trek tonight. And it was the best movie I'd seen in a while. It was fun, adventure packed and sexy all at the same time. It was also nice to get out in the middle of a week where MacTroll is gone all week and between taking my psych final today and taking my infant/toddler one tomorrow. 

I schedule movie nights out and I've been making really bad choices lately. But the other issue is that I tend to love Sci Fi movies -- and so it's me -- and all of my friends' husbands. Seriously. When I first put it on the calendar Mr. Quigs made the joke, "Wait, is this an even or an odd Star Trek movie?" I laughed. Quigs sat there in the living room with her eyebrows raised and stated, "I don't even know what the two of you are talking about right now."

Freak's RSVP was, "Love you. Hate Star Trek."

So, yeah, there I am with my 3 Dad friends -- geeking it out on a Wednesday night.  Oh, and did I say it was the best use of a Beastie Boys song in a film -- ever?

Friend in Need

After my 2nd full week of single parenting in a row... I could really use a chick flick. 

If anyone's up for going to see Women or Nights of Rodanthe at the Savoy 16 on Saturday at 9 or 9:15 p.m. let me know.