7/21/1999
Wednesday

In Bloom: Wildflowers along the side of the road: Queen Anne's lace, cornflowers, tigerlilies.

Cute Things They Say: The boys have heard me say more than once, "Cut that out: it's getting on my nerves!" Lately, they've started uttering their own version: "Stop it, Stephen! You're making me nervous!" said Matthew this morning. Background courtesy of
Ace of Space


Feeling Grey

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

--Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband

All yesterday, I was feeling "off," and I didn't know why. I've suffered before from mild depression, the last time being several years ago. I wondered if I was entering into another depressive episode. Once again my life started to seem horribly dreary, the day yet another in a long string of empty, repetitive, futile days.

Talking to Tab at lunchtime, I told him I was feeling blue, then amended that. "No, I love the color blue. Blue is pretty, blue is calm and tranquil. I feel grey."

And that is how I felt: grey. Not Tolkien's elfin, silvery grey. I was the heavy, oyster grey of an overcast sky. Grey of partly melted, dirty, slushy snow. Graphite grey of pencil smudges, half-erased, on a torn and wrinkled paper.

This morning I woke up in discomfort from what I think might be a urinary tract infection. "Aha!" said I. Now I know why I felt so lousy yesterday. I'll happily blame my grey day on the evil microbes that were invading my body.

I haven't had a night out by myself for months. I used to try to get out at least every other week. Tab encouraged me to go out, so I went to see The Ideal Husband, a movie he had no interest in seeing. I loved it. It's hard to go wrong with Oscar Wilde's sparkling dialogue and actors like Cate Blanchett, Jeremy Northam, and the incomparable Rupert Everett. It was a good diversion.

One thing I didn't like was the preview for the new Kevin Costner baseball movie, For Love of the Game. I don't really like Kevin Costner to begin with, but even worse was the fact that the preview blatantly steals the inspirational musical theme from The Natural. I absolutely hate it when studios use a well-known soundtrack from an older movie to promote a new movie. You can just imagine some lamebrain marketing exec sitting there, saying: "I've got it: let's use the music from The Natural! Hey, they're both baseball movies!" It's a cheap, lazy way of drumming up interest in a movie, almost like stealing goodwill.

Other random thoughts I had while watching the rest of the coming attractions:

  • If Melanie Griffith gets any more collagen injected into her lips, there won't be any room left on her face for the rest of her features.

  • That little kid from Sling Blade and the TV series American Gothic has outgrown his little boy cuteness. Still has his accent, though.

  • Holy cow, that's Keller [one of the prisoners from Oz] playing Julia Robert's fiance in The Runaway Bride!

  • Mystery, Alaska looks like it might be interesting. Too bad it's about ice hockey.


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