Worth Crying About

I almost didn't see The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep.

I admit it: I am tired of seeing "family" movies where I am sneaking a peek at my watch after the first 20 minutes. In fact, looking back over this year, I noticed that I avoided a lot of them. I think even X is getting sick of them. She passed up Fantastic Four and Bee Movie, for example. Whew.

Once this year, at the wonderful Balboa Theater, D and I saw Sicko in one theater while X saw Ratatouille in other other. I thought it was a good plan, but X wasn't all that happy. She wants to see the movies with her mama.

So I sighed and bought two tickets for Water Horse at the lowest-key multiplex I could find. We got to the theater early. X got the traditional I-Cee and I scoured the snacks and came up with nothing worth eating, another multiplex feature. We settled into seats, not the plushest in town.

Then the movie started. You know how some movies signal their greatness, from the very first scene? Water Horse was like that. A young boy sat contemplating the sea and struggling with his fears of the deep. The whole movie unfolds beautifully from that scene—the experience and emotions of adults and children trapped in the middle of the war. Emily Watson is brilliant, as she always is, as a widow with two children, managing the surface of daily life with a brave face—stoic but with subtle shimmers of grief, despair and also hope. One climax of the movie is her breaking form and cursing out loud the reality of war.

But..oh yeah, this is a movie about a fantastic creature. And it's a good child's movie; the plot line including the development of the water horse from hatchling to giant sea monster, and the boy's relationship to his foundling pet.

Then it all comes together. Beautiful! X and I both sobbed, and those were tears worth shedding.

Thumbs Down for Golden Compass

We took X to see Golden Compass last night. It was a bad evening for all of us. I was grumpy before we started, but I had promised her we'd see the movie. I don't know why D and I were sniping at each other; we just were. We didn't get seats together, so X was alone in the "bleachers" because she didn't want to sit in the very front row with us. I blamed D for us not getting seats together, which made me even more grumpy.


X did not like this movie at all. She said its plot line was confusing and that a children's film should not have had so much horrible violence in it. Here's one really creepy part: two armored ice bears (polar bears on steroids) went at it, one on one, for a LONG time. The underbear, finally conquered the much better armored bear king. How? He waited until the king roars at his loudest, jaws wide, teeth bared...and then he bit off the whole lower jaw of the king. It was horrible and it was prolonged. (OK, no blood spurting from the missing tongue, but ewwww.) And there is a very, very long rather pointless battle. Also lots of places where a young girl is terribly vulnerable, alone and worse.

Should we expect this from a PG-13 movie? Harry Potter gets that rating and X is just now able to tolerate the darkness in those films. But they don't show characters ripping off the limbs of others, do they? I am clueless, having never seen one.

I wound up seated in the aisle next to X for part of the film, because once things got going, I knew she would be too upset to handle it alone. We should have just left. Next time, I will read the rating and online reviews more carefully. I'm glad X is sensitive enough to find this stuff disturbing, but I need to do a better screening job.

Online Snowflake Making: The Moral of the Story

Well I thought I was just showing off, and seriously indulging a new addiction, with this snowflake thing. But then Deb sent me a gorgeous snowflake with this message: "I get it. You can't be afraid to cut." That's right! Each time I make a snowflake I like, I cut away more than I think I should. Even though I can press "Undo", it still gives me a tiny shiver to make the bold cut. (Oversensitive? Ya think?)

So I have admit, there is some lesson for life there. I think I am happier each time I make the bold cut, getting rid of stuff I don't need or don't need to do. It's the counter to "want to do everything, right now"-- the other theme of the last couple years. Or not the counter, just the complement. The more I cut, the more room for the new and exciting. Something like that.

Yeah, more time for making online snowflakes! Hey, a moral with a paradox! OK, not really a paradox, but still...I am working in a highly regarded genre here. (kidding, really) I made this one here. Yeah turns out there are a number of online snowflake sites.

Addictive, Yes

I Made It Myself

This is fun! You cannot cut curved lines, but you can make a very intricate flake without the paper tearing.

You're Asking Me?

Here's some advice: Don't use SF Mom of One as a how-to guide. At least not for cooking technique, hairdressing, or shopping. Of course, the latest googlers landing on my site didn't have this good advice. Here are the latest popular paths to my (back) pages:

It's the holiday season, so making curls for little Claras dancing in the Nutcracker is high on the list. They'd best not follow my method! My friend the former dance teacher still laughs at my "experiment" with half a head of curls. Someone else in the holiday spirit wants to find out about chopping cranberries. They can find my work around--boil them, lest you chop your fingers off. (To this day, when my mother sees me with knife in hand, she exclaims, "Don't cut yourself!") And those who seek the perfect purse, as that perfect holiday gift? Well, at least we can commiserate together.

The most frequent search, though, is "daughter in water". I have to say, here I can help. This blog is a pretty darn good how-to guide for marveling at our wonderful daughters.

Best Birthday

My 50th birthday was one of my best.

I'd thought that X and I would be spending it on our own. My husband was out of town and not expected back til Friday. A mother-daughter dinner sounded like a nice birthday present. We'd go after her theater class, to Moki's Grill on Cortland--that was my plan.

But D drove half the night to get back to San Francisco by late afternoon. He took over chauffeur duties and I lay down to recover from my single parenting duties of that week. A headache crept out of the base of my neck, spreading into my temples. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

When D and X got home, I was in no shape to go out. The headache had me, though it hadn't wrestled me down into complete misery. So D went out to Spicy Bite and brought back ginger chicken and sag paneer. Dinner revived me a bit. I stayed on the sofa, flipping channels between bites, until I settled on the last half of The Spy Who Shagged Me.

X and D each gave me a present: a pound of my favorite Sumatran coffee and the Bob Dylan Scrapbook. They also gave me cards, with a mystery theme: feet. There were 50 toes on X's card (hand drawn) and 50 feet (X ray snapshots) on D's. More gifts to come, they told me, and I had to guess what, based on the cards. (Can you guess?)

But for my birthday night, I had all the gifts I needed. D put clean sheets on our bed. I tucked X into her bed. As I kissed X, she said, "Thank you for everything, Mommy." Then D tucked me in. As I settled in between the cool sheets, I wept with happiness.