how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

I caught The Sound of Music on TV a week or so ago, right at the bit where Maria's leaving the abbey and pumping herself up to be the best gosh darned governess Captain von Trapp and his gaggle of anklebiters could ever imagine. Julie Andrews as Fraulein Maria has to be the most adorable lady ever pasted onto my television screen. I actually teared up a significant amount right in the middle of her "I Have Confidence!!!! IN ME!!!" routine, because I had realized that:

a) My mom grew up with this movie, and would have been at a somewhat impressionable age when it came out; I'm relatively certain it holds not only a lot of nostalgia or her but some significance for her adolescent attempts to form her sense of identity (she was kind of a quirky kid, no surprise). And:

b) Julie Andrews and my mother have some resemblance to each other, making point (a) more poignant. (It's easier to see in photos where they are of similar ages, but the angle here I thought was good for comparison.)

I never had much of a soft spot for The Sound of Music, but I think that's changed now. Also, I find I have a strong desire to get some Mary Poppins queued up. Brock has never seen it! Can you imagine!

bluhhhhhhhhhhhh

I have had three major activities after work this week:

1) laundry
2) cleaning
3) making food

None of this is, I guess, that alarming, except that it is slightly out of the ordinary for me, since I historically have spent many an evening quality-timing it with my laptop for several hours on the internets. But, I'm tired of feeling bad about not getting things done around here, so this week, for example, I have:

- baked off the last of the Cornish pasty filling with more puff pastry AND a quick gravy concocted of onion + beef bouillon (defeating the "vegetarian" aspect entirely)
- cooked up a vodka sauce + artichoke/red pepper pasta pastiche
- made Thai peanut-sesame noodles with carrot and green onion
- baked a half-batch of banana-chocolate chip bread, which finished off my flour stores
- vaccuumed the shit out of the furniture in the sunroom
- scrubbed the stovetop
- washed a load of laundry
- re-washed that load of laundry
- started altering a button-down plaid shirt into a tunic/dress with pintucking (currently stuck on how to treat the top half)
- ironed a stack of very wrinkly clothes
- probably some other stuff

It feels like more than that because I am currently Ladycurse Exhausted, which means the only activity I truly excel at right now is trudging, and all of my toils seem like a major accomplishment given that they were conducted entirely without the assistance of lower-back-massaging-gnomes. However, my bank accounts are embarrassingly low and I cannot afford to buy lunch this week, PLUS I was an idiot who let her delicious Thai curry sit out and spoil all Sunday night into Monday [actually, this may have been a subconsciously intentional murder on my part, because the vegetables were already overcooked and I never loved that curry like I should have from the start]. At least I sent the lion's share of it home with Brock, who, being a sensible boy, actually put it in the refrigerator. Clever turnip, that lad.

Anyhow, to cut off my rambling, I will just note here that I am equal parts excited and apprehensive about the next several days, as they will involve extended interaction with people whom I love dearly, but rarely see - that alone is enough to make them more draining than usual. The fact that two of the people I will be hanging with are my parents ratchets the stakes up a few hundred tickets. I'm jazzed to see my pal Sara, though, and on the itinerary for parental bonding are GARAGE SALES and WINERY VISITING so I am truly excited for those excursions, too. All in all I expect it will be turn out for the best.