January 5, '05

I'm sitting here sobbing along to the soundtrack of the Phantom of the Opera movie, saw it yesterday, LOOOOOOOOOVED IT. As I mentioned earlier, I'm on this anti-irony tear right now and perhaps I've skipped sincerity completely and gone straight for the cheese, but I left the theater with my heart in pieces. Hmmm..big fat tragic romance with lots of soaring music and gorgeous photography....YES PLEASE, I WOULD LIKE A HELPING OF THAT. In fact, I want seconds and soon.  I couldn't wait to run out and buy the cd this morning, it's been all I can do to practice swooning on my fainting couch all day. Molly finally marched in and turned it off.

"Mommy! I HATE THIS MUSIC!"

It does not hurt one single bit that in this version, the phantom isn't some creepy old ghoul but rather COMPLETELY HOT. He looks like Antonio Banderas with a scar on his face. No woman in her right mind would've chosen milquetoast Raul over his smoldering sexuality.  I LOVED IT!!!! Katie Pivec, who saw it with me along with JP and mom and who was less than impressed, said the Phantom was a rotten murderer who didn't deserve love, so what if he'd been rejected from society, things were tough all over. Then she pulled out the worst insult anyone with Hubbell blood can muster: she said I was nothing but a bleeding heart liberal.

WELL IF HAVING A BLEEDING HEART MEANS I ENJOY THE CINEMA, THEN SO BE IT. Besides, I still think bulgar is totally gross.

Saw Beyond the Sea, loved that too. Not as much as Phantom, but still. Also loved Spanglish. Maybe I'm just so thrilled to be going to the movies again I'll love anything. I definitely am in some weirdly emotional state of mind, not that I don't always enjoy an over-the-top musical extravaganza.  But even Jerry McGuire, a movie I've seen ten thousand times, made me cry last night.  Why is it I'll watch a movie I like on cable complete with commercials that stretch it an hour past its running time even if I own it?

Driving to the movie yesterday, we passed this nightclub called Shooters or something, big sign on it that said, "Drinks and Dancing!"

"You're father and I went there," mom said.

"Wha? When?" I asked.

"Well, we had gone to Costco to get Kleenex, and when we got to the check-out, it turned out to be 1.34 a box. I said 'that's crazy!'"

Pause.

"And then what happened?"

"Well we went to Walmart, it was only .97 cents there."

"WHEN DID YOU GO TO THE DANCE CLUB?"

(with a look on her face like she smells something unpleasant) "We never went to any dance club."

It's eleven pm and my battery is out of juice, so I have to go to bed. HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE.

January 12, '05

Just got back from Arizona, sports fans...went down to run the Rock 'n Roll half marathon again.  It all started because my sister, Margy and I have been trying for a year to have a gal weekend together since we live in different states and never get to hang out...she comes for summer visits but kids are involved so it's not the same.  So we settled on Phoenix and hey, as long as we're down here, let's run the half marathon together! Problem is, it morphed from gal weekend into race weekend  so I still don't think it counted. Waaaay too much thought went into the dumb race, plus I was nervous about it and never slept.  That's not all that unusual since sleep and I have never really gotten along, but I kept doing things like only having two martinis and drinking jamba juice and boring stuff like that.

We arrived Friday morning and went to our condo. Mike Griak, who's renting it, was nice enough to let us stay there instead of us forking over our husbands' hard-earned dough on a hotel room.  I had to bring an entire suitcase full of sheets and blankets since the place it totally bare.

"How on Earth did you fit bedding for two into a suitcase, Katie?"

I used those space bags, have you ever seen the infomercial? I fit two bed sets into a suitcase. The drawback is, it weighed 8000 pounds. And I had to bring a bunch of merchandise for the store down, which meant I had room for only one set of clothes for myself.  No biggie, since all I cared about was the hot tub anyway.  Get to the condo, unpack, don the swimsuit and we walk down to the hot tub, totally psyched especially since it was cold out. The key didn't work.  Apparently new keys were given out and no one told me, so we were just about to hop the fence when this a-hole saw us, held up his key and waved it in our fat faces, but did not offer to open the gate for us. Prick. So we slunk back to the condo, tails 'tween our legs. Booked massages for the next day, then went to see Phantom 'cuz Margy hadn't seen it yet.  

Loved it even more the second time, could feel the seeds of a full-on obsession taking root. Look, it happens sometimes, ai'ght?  Last time it was Moulin Rouge, before that Casablanca and Bogie's entire filmography, actually.  I just have a soul that loves love, especially doomed love.     

Saturday found us at the world's filthiest massage place. We'd booked it sight unseen, since neither of us is real familiar with the area, and it was NAHHHHSTAAAAAAAY. Small, dingy, dirty...and the massage was nothing more than a neck rub. I'm serious. I had to put on this icky, threadbare gown and her hands never went below my shoulders. When she turned the lights on and said I was done, I was shocked.

"No happy ending?" I whined. I didn't really say that.

We also got manicures, if you can call slopping cheap polish on untrimmed cuticles a manicure. The polish was gone an hour later, but the upside is we both had the beginnings of fungal infections blooming under our nail beds.

We got up at 5:30 am Sunday morning, since last year it took JP and I two hours to get there, but apparently they ironed out all the traffic kinks because 6:10 found us in the parking lot. The race was at 8:30. So we sat in the car stewing and munching on a stale loaf of bread we swiped from Griak while he slept. Nice houseguests.

The race was fun and easy, despite the cheesecake I inhaled the night before making it's presence known around mile five.  We went to San Felipe's Cantina afterward for omelets and beer, then I took a nap and Margy spent the rest of the afternoon huddled under a blanket trying to get her bowels to calm down. We didn't go to the post race concert, it was Jason Mraz for the love of Pete. There should be a law against giving concerts when you've only had one hit song, and another law barring any more young men with thin voices and dull music to record anything for at least twenty more years.  There are so many Lilleth-boys running around now, I can't even keep them all straight. So we, uhhh...went and saw Phantom again. It's just better to surrender when this happens to me, OK? Trust me, it is.  I gotta just roll with it.

On the plane home I sat next to a man who felt the need to tell me all about the terrible cold he had, how it's been bothering him for three weeks and that he was so miserable, he didn't care if he died soon. He said this all between hacking up various internal organs into my lap. And guess what! I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose and a cough. I quickly Zicammed myself, though, so hopefully I'll knock it out before it gets too bad. Zicam is this miracle cure for colds, I'm serious.....it's a zinc gel you squirt in your nose and it works.

January 19th, '05

The cold I felt coming on at the end of my last note? Full-blown flu, my friends, it was a full blown flu. I've been down and out for over a week. So basically, nothing has happened unless you want to hear all about the mountains of Kleenex I've abused, and I don't think you do.

© Katie McCollow, 2005 • katie.mccollow@mac.com