Saturday

Today was to be the day when I zip ahead with life! So much to do and a beautiful, sunny day, with nothing scheduled for it! Let's move quickly with holiday preparations! With maybe a hike squeezed in there? I would love that!

Except that when I wake up, my knee is twice its regular size and I know that I better cool my jets or the damage I did to it last week will not be undone anytime soon.

I hobble downstairs and give a great big sigh at all that beautiful winter sunshine (I step out to feed the cheepers...












 -- that's all the vitamin D I'll get out of this day!)...






... and then I come back inside to fix breakfast.





Now what? Every sensible person will tell you that you need to raise that leg and keep it in a resting position. Well that's a bummer. What kind of holiday chores can you do with a raised leg?

Menu planning! I do a lot of menu planning, pestering my equally busy daughters about details, just because people who spend their day on a couch with an elevated leg often get to be great pests to anyone and everyone.

I think of ways to wrap presents. I can do that! Sort of kind of.

The day continues to be so lovely outside! Ed gets ready to go out for a hike on his own. I suppose one has to pay a price for indulging in excess, even if that excess (sauntering up and down the streets of Paris from sunrise to sunset) seemed mighty fine to me at the time.

Hey, here's an idea! Why don't I watch the Polish movie a friend in Warsaw gave me? It's called Cold War and it is by the same director who brought us the Oscar winning Ida. I'm extremely interested, as it is set during Poland's post war years -- meaning pretty much the years of my childhood. How people depict that period in Poland's history is, to me, endlessly fascinating (and it is the topic of my Great Writing Project, which is gathering cobwebs somewhere in the clouds of the internet).

Except that a movie made in Europe cannot be viewed on your American TV screen. Did you know that? Apparently my friend didn't and I hadn't remembered it either. Ed to the rescue: his computer can accommodate it. He's off hiking, I watch the movie on his little screen.

And I have to say, when it's over, I walk away (I speak figuratively here) rather dissatisfied. I cannot place it on a continuum of good or bad. It's obviously artistically very very good (as was Ida). But as I summarize it for Ed afterwards, I think -- wow, strip it of its art and it becomes a rather underdeveloped love story set in the politicized everyday life of Communist Poland. I'm not one who insists on a good story line. Beautiful films can stand on their own artistic merits. But this film does have a story and I suppose I felt it to be flat. Two lost souls who could not find a place on earth to live out their passion for each other. Perhaps you'd say that the Poland of the time led to their ruin. Or you could say that their lives were ruined from the minute they laid eyes on each other. Ah, but the beautiful visuals, and the Polish music of the time -- enough to send shivers down a Pole's spine! Oj oj oj!

Evening. I put aside my unfinished menus, the cook books, the wrapping paper. I note that the house is not cleaned yet (no way can I move around in the way that I would need to move around to get it ready for the holiday visits) and that the laundry basket is full of clothes that need a wash (no way can I navigate those steps to the basement today).

Ah well. The thing about lists of tasks and chores -- they're just an ideal. The holidays will be beautiful even if some items remain unchecked. No one will notice. Shhh, Ocean readers! Don't you tell.