Dinner At Eight...

Hiya Steve,

Have you ever seen that movie?  Dinner At Eight?  It was on Turner Classic Movies earlier tonight, and I absolutely love it.  I just get a kick out of all the gags and jokes and fun lines throughout the whole thing. I mean, come on, it's Jean Harlow!! Wallace Beery! Lionel Barrymore! Billy Burke!  You can't go wrong with those people, they were all so awesome.  God I love old movies.  Anyway....how are you tonight?

I spent the day dealing with another Mercedes nickle-and-dime episode----it needed a state inspection, we were two weeks late on that, silly me---and we had to get the winter tires put on, and something else needed fixing, but I couldn't tell you what the heck it was...so I drop it off yesterday, and drive this loaner Mercedes around, and I just got totally blown away by the awesome sound system!!

So of COURSE I had to listen to some tunes, as loud as I possibly could.  I listened to Greatest Hits 2, and holy CRAP, what a huge difference a CD player makes......the one in Florence's car sucks.  I mean, the Greatest Hits 2 CD sounded awesome (or so I thought), when I played it on hers the day I got it in the mail....but when compared to the loaner car's CD player, it was stunning and unbelievable.  I couldn't even sing along with it---like I usually do----nope....not this time.  I was just mesmerized....so I had to listen to it, really concentrate and focus on it, and let it just permeate my whole being.  I got CHILLS.

GOOD GOD MAN, you're talented.  Stop being so damned awesome, will ya?  You're buggin' me.

So then, I get the 2 mom's into the car, and we go Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart.  I hate that store.  But, whatchagonnado?  The mom's love it.   After an exhausting time of pushing Florence in a wheelchair, and trying to get a few things on my list, while she was being distracted by everything she sees, making me stop and look at every item she was enamored with, I finally got Florence the hell OUT of that place. Then we go have lunch, and I'm DYIN'....DYIN' because I can't listen to MUSIC on that damned awesome CD player while the mom's are with me...."it's too LOUD," they complain..."can we just have radio instead?" blah blah blah.

But as soon as I dropped them off at home and finally found myself blissfully ALONE again in that car, I made SURE I grabbed 2 CD's that I hadn't listened to in EONS.....an Etta James CD and Enigma!!  WOOOOO!!!  She was singin' some blues, I was diggin' it, and when she got to "The Sky is Crying," I was just absolutely in love with that woman.  DAMN she is awesome.  My grandpa loved her too, and he got me interested in jazz and blues and all that stuff when I was a kid.  So I thought about him awhile, and smiled a lot, and just missed him while I jammed to Etta James.

Then I put on ENIGMA....now, mind you, it's nearly rush hour and I'm HAPPILY stuck in traffic so that I can listen to all this cool stuff, and suddenly I am transported out of my dreary lame-ass existence in a traffic jam, and I'm suddenly enveloped by Enigma....feelin' all sexy and seductive, with a little bit of a naughty smile on my face.....that music just transports me out of my whole world.  They have always been one of my favorites, but I hadn't listened to it in sooooo long, I had forgotten just how cool they sound.  I mean, it is the absolute BEST dungeon music EVER MADE.  Seriously.  You can totally get into a groove while being spanked while listening to it, and I gotta tell ya, it's amazing.

So, I had a nice time riding alone in this awesome brand new Mercedes loaner car, most of the day.  I miss music...I don't often get to listen to it at home, not with the 2 boring MOM'S around.  If Florence is asleep, and my mom is downstairs, I might have a few minutes to sneak upstairs to the computer where I can listen to some iTunes once and awhile, but I don't have a boom box of my own to play my CD's on or anything.  I think I'm going to ask Santa for one though.  Seriously.

My life, before all this weird shit happened and I ended up married in Pittsburgh with 2 mom's, consisted mainly of watching old movies all weekend with my dog, eating popcorn and just chillin'...or lighting candles all around me while I listened to music that I loved.  So, I miss doing that stuff sometimes.

Tonight, (and probably every night for awhile), Pete is working late. This is the busiest time of year for Apple computers, you know, they gotta have that next new THING out before Christmas, so they can make a ton of money.  So, they have all these huge deadlines going on and Pete is working nearly 24/7. After November and December, though, it calms down a bit.  But, while he's out working so late, I actually had some inclination to CONTROL THE REMOTE ON THE TV for once.  So I turned on the old movie channel...and fell into "Dinner At Eight."

I'm sitting there, watching these great old actors in this awesome old movie, and I'm wishing I could tell them about how that music just makes me tingle all over.  All they had was an old phonograph 78 record, with bumps and scratches and static...and Rudy Vallee...I mean, he was cool, at the time...but, if they could only hear this stuff NOW.....it would totally blow their minds.  I sometimes wish I had a time machine, so that I could go back to the 1920's, and play some Journey....and watch everybody freak the hell out all over the place in sheer amazement.  That would be friggin' amazing, wouldn't it?!!  I wish Jean Harlow could have heard you sing...she was one sultry chick on any given day of the week, and badass to the core---(I love her)---but if she had heard your voice just ONCE....she'd probably be a goner.  A total goner.  Harry James?!! PUH-LEEZE!!  Glenn Miller?! FUGGETABAHTIT.  You would have single-handedly RUINED the careers of all those dudes back then, you know.

Ah well, that's just me, being silly as usual.  But I love that damned movie.  I love most every old movie, but my ALL TIME FAVORITE has GOT to be: The THIN MAN series!!!  I laugh my head off every time I see those...I love Myrna Loy!!  She was incredible.  And when she starred in that movie about soldiers coming home after the war, and how changed they were, and how the general public reacted to them, etc., I just cried like a baby. (The time of our lives?)  I'll have to look that up...can't remember...but it was something like that.  And holy COOLNESS Batman, William Powell.....he was a total HOOT!!  One of my most favorite lines in the Thin Man was when the police showed up at their apartment late at night, and start searching their bedroom for a gun or something----and William Powell is about to take yet another drink---when Myrna Loy says, "What's that man doing in my drawers?" And he nearly spits his drink out his nose!!!  God I love that.

Anyway, there was this scene in Dinner At Eight where Billy Burke was looking at this.....thing....like a jello thing, I guess, "ASPIC" is what they called it, and it was shaped like a LION of all things....it was for the special guests who were supposed to come to her dinner party...and one of her friends walked in and said, "What is THAT thing? It looks like the wreck of the HESPERIS!!"

I laughed out loud----Florence says that all the time!!  "My goodness I woke up this morning looking like the wreck of the Hesperis!" she says.  Cracked me right up.  Now I gotta go to Google and look that shit up so I know all about it next time she says it.   Might blow her mind, too, especially with Alzheimers....hehehehe....it'll be fun to mess with her about it.  We giggled and jabbered about the awesome pin-curl hair-styles, (I wish I could get my hair to do that), they mentioned "Spirit of Ammonia," when Lionel Barrymore was having some kind of heart attack, I turned to Florence (a former O.R. nurse), and asked her what the HECK that was....she said "in my day, I knew what it was, when I HAD to know...but I have no idea now." We agreed that it couldn't be any GOOD for ya though.  And when Jean Harlow said that her skin is "too delicate to be shown off" (on a beach in Florida), she then turned around, and her entire back was bare in the sexy dress she wore---and I was floored when Florence actually GUFFAWED!

It was fun watching that movie with her.  I'll always remember that.

Florence is declining very rapidly, unfortunately.  I don't know if she'll make it to Christmas.  She might surprise us all, but the way things are going, I'm really doubtful about it.  It makes me so sad to see her slipping away like this.  I wish I could grab hold of her and just keep her here, coherent, and normal, and alive...but, she's sliding into the illness more and more every day...it's really very heartbreaking.  I mean, I spent six years of my life working in a Museum about the Holocaust, surrounded by death, doom and destruction, and man's inhumanity towards man, all day, every day....I should be able to handle THIS, right???  It's just a whole different thing, it's harder to take when you actually KNOW the person, ya know?  I am not a nurse maid, I'm not the kind of person who can deal with the loss of someone I love.  It tears me to shreds for a very long time.

I feel some days like I'm surrounded by impending doom....knowing she's going to die soon....and my mom's little Chiuaua, Radar, is probably going to have to be put to sleep soon too...he's got heart disease, and his poor heart is swollen and enlarged to the point where it's crowding his trachea, and he can't breathe.  He falls over, passes out, and then pees all over the place.  It is horrible.  But we want him to stick around as long as he can, we give him medicine, we try everything to make him comfortable and keep him calm and quiet....if he barks, for instance, he coughs, and wheezes, and just cannot breathe.  My mom is really having a hard time with it, and so am I.

Well, anyway, so......my day was a good one, but as I sit here alone, thinking about how this house is going to be so damned EMPTY sooner than we may think....it just makes me feel sad.  I don't know what I'm going to do....but that day is coming.....when we go to wake Florence up in the morning, and she's gone.  The silent ambulance with the lights going round and round will be in our driveway, and the stretcher will be taken in, and she'll be wheeled out with a sheet over her head.  That day is coming.  It is inevitable.  I am trying very hard to mentally prepare myself for it, I see it playing out over and over in my head sometimes, trying to accept it, so that we can plan ahead.....get phone numbers and a funeral planned....stuff to do ahead of time, ya know??? But really, how can you honestly plan all that....

Pete's home now.  I gotta go.

Love you severely and violently to the point of ecstasy.  Hope you had a good day too.

----Rebecca