So, Star Wars in a few hours. Luckily I got a head start on cooking last night - we watched Julia & Julia instead of Up as we’d planned, and I got inspired and started peeling onions at 9:45PM. The snortlepig helped. She is good at onions. So the kidney bean sauce is simmering away in the crockpot, the mince just requires seasoning and cooking, and I’ve made the mango sorbet and strawberry sorbet. Actually I’ve made the strawberry sorbet twice. The first time I made it I found it a bit on the sweetish side, and being confident and well-adjusted immediately started to worry that people would think less of me as a sugar-gobbling shill with no appreciation for the natural subtleties of fruit. (This is a Thing we me. I think it stems from growing up with sisters who ordered orange juice when I was wanting milkshakes. It is only in recent years that I have learned to man up and order a caramel milkshake and fries if I want them, even if my sister is ordering a vegan panini and spirulina at the shop next door. It’s so good to grow as a person, don’t you think? Anyway.) So I ruthlessly halved the sugar in the next batch, and it turned outr wimpy and pallid. So I melted it down again, added some more sugar and will shortly plonk it back in the machine to freeze anew. Never let it be said that I lack commitment to my Art.
On the subject of Julie & Julia, I finally got around to looking up Julia’s blog today, and was faintly if illogically surprised to see it looked just like the one in the movie (for the record, atrociously ugly). She comes across better in the blog than the movie - wittier and better at cooking and generally less cutesy and Meg Ryanish. And that’s not a slur on Amy Adams, who is awesome: it was a badly-written character, and Nora Ephron is culpable. For one thing, it sounded like most of her lines were taken from her blog (although I haven’t read enough of it yet to determine whether or not this is the case). Who says “Dreading, dreading, dreading” in real life? And another thing - which was also an issue in You’ve Got Mail, Nora, sorry - people don’t emote when they blog. With their faces, I mean. All those shots of Amy and Meg sitting in front of their laptops, eyebrowing and grimacing away to their voiceovers? Doesn’t happen. Look in an internet cafe sometime. Does the glassy, vacant-eyed, slightly grumpy stare emitted by the average inhabitant give you the slightest clue to what he is typing? No, it does not. It could be a sonnet, a thesis or a Dear John - you just don’t know, because we don’t feel the need to toss our little heads and smirk in synchrony with our thoughts.
Of course, I realise she was probably just trying to jazz up the inevitable eighteen scenes of Julie sitting in front of her laptop, and perhaps she thought the glassy-eyed stare would have gotten a bit much after awhile. But still. There’s “winsomely perky”, and then there’s “I want to chuck you in a flotation tank for eight straight days and we’ll see if your cute bob is still bouncing around your cheekbones then, wench”.
Yes, well.
I made some shorts for the pig today. At least, they were supposed to be shorts: I realised too late that snortlepigs have a crotch-to-knee measurement of about an inch, so they’re kind of three-quartersy.
I like ‘em. The button detail on the hems pleases me, and the ungathered panel on the front waistband (which was due to running out of fabric and having to piece the band) gives the thing a vaguely sailory, Donalf Duckish, Frenchish air which the pig carries off rather well. I can see this in beige and blue for a boy, can’t you?
Helpdesk Man artily arranged these standing up by themselves on the couch. Very Dr Seuss.
Button detail on hem of trousies
The snortlepig, struck by a momentary panic: "Is my squish still on?"
"Smile for the camera", I said, and she did this. She didn't get biddable photogenicity from my side of the family. Freak.
So, yup. I gotta go wash my hair. It’s got a sort of “Anglo-Saxon warrior after a week of battle” vibe, and one cannot watch Star Wars with hair like that. It would be disrespectful to Princess Leia.
PS: Helpdesk Man had the grace to admit that the “Sherlock Holmes” movie was a bit rubbish. We may make it to our fourth anniversary after all.
Mother Says: