The soothing benefits of Dickens, Heyer, and Pho

Tonight was Friday, Mom's night out. I resisted the temptation to go (again) to see That Movie, and instead settled on Nicholas Nickleby. Rob didn't get home until 7:00 p.m., which meant the 9:40 show was my only option, so I headed out for dinner to the Uptown neighborhood.

I was walking through Calhoun Mall on my way to a restaurant, and I happened to glance to one side to look at a store display as I started to walk between two benches. Because my head was turned, I failed to see the four inch square steel bar that joined the benches right at shin level and ran right into it. I gasped and swore, my momentum carrying me right over the bar, and I landed in an ungainly heap on the other side.

"Are you okay, miss?" a woman minding one of the booths said.

Of course I felt like an idiot, and so I tried to make light of it. "I'm . . . all right," I gasped. "Just a little bruised."

"People keep hitting that bar between the benches," she mumbled as she turned away.

I barely kept myself from screaming, "If people keep tripping over it, why don't they remove the bloody thing?"

I hurt so badly that I went upstairs to the restroom, locked myself in a stall, and cried for a while. How strange, when you think about it, that I was so embarrassed that I had hurt myself so badly. And when I was done crying over the pain, I cried about something else, and I don't quite know what it was. About winter or about how hard it seemed to come back to the routines of my life this week. My perfectly ordinary life with all its perfectly ordinary infuriating demands. The pain somehow brought down all my usual barriers that I use to keep going, and I really fell apart.

Gradually, I pulled myself together. I mopped up my face with toilet paper and was able to make myself presentable enough that I could walk through the mall without people staring at me in horror. I still limped a little, however.

Clearly, comfort food was in order, so I went to the Lotus and with very little deliberation ordered egg rolls and Beef Pho. If ever you are in need of warm comfort food, pho is the way to go. It's noodle soup, to which you add bean sprouts and basil. It comes in a bowl almost big enough to bathe in, and the broth, delicately anise-flavored, is soothing to the soul. I had even brought a Georgette Heyer novel along to read as I ate, which made the pho doubly delicious.

Then on to Nicholas Nickleby. I have read some Dickens, but not a lot (A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities) I hesitate to pass judgment on the movie, as I have not yet read the book (one reviewer snippily said "This isn't just the CliffsNotes version of Nicholas Nickleby, it's the CliffsNotes with pages missing"). But I liked it, and it was just what I needed. Dickens is a master character sculptor. He can be overly sentimental, but there is no doubt that he has things to say that are deeply felt and, I think, most true. Certainly he had a burning desire to speak to the effects (particularly upon children) of misery, poverty, and neglect. This movie reminds me of That Speech at the end of That Movie by That Favorite Character (cover your ears, papersky). You know the one: "There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." On a night when I felt my defenses down, where I could be suddenly unstrung when stung by unexpected pain, it was good to see a story about people who try to do the right thing, even in the face of pain, and who choose to love each other, and how that path is more admirable than those who choose selfish cruelty and indifference to their fellow human beings.

Yeah. Like that.

I will read Nicholas Nickleby soon, I think.

Peg

Abortion politics, argh

Like chn_breathmint, I find that this makes me just about foam at the mouth. It seems that to our President, being pro-choice means letting the terrorists win. Surely thinking people, no matter where they stand on this particular question, must object to the sheer sloppiness of such reasoning.

[Goes off to thwap something].

Book research!

As this new novel is supposed to be about the St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace, today, logically enough, I went with the girls to the St. Paul Winter Carnival, which I've never seen in the fifteen-plus years I've lived in the Twin Cities because, logically enough, I live in Minneapolis. Note: Because this jaunt was for research, this made my parking fees tax deductible and everything. Specifically, we went to see the ice sculpture competition and the King Boreas parade. Read about the King Boreas legend here. The ice sculptures get very elaborate:

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The parade was unexpectedly long (an hour and a half), and the girls were whimpering from the cold after only a half an hour--their boots were not insulated enough. So we retreated to a Starbucks shop on the parade route and watched in warmth and comfort for the next hour. I did run outside when the Vulcan Krewe came by to get the black "V" drawn on my cheek, which supposedly gives you luck for the next year. For the book I wrote down the names of the groups and floats that passed but soon wearied of that. I mean EVERYBODY was in this parade. The Lions International. The Shriners. The American Legion. The Unicycle Club. The Elvis impersonator. The Board of Education. A float for the "Wells Fargo Family Farm Display at the Minnesota Zoo." I kid you not. Also the new Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who was elected after Paul Wellstone died (I kept my boos sotto voce).

There are more events this weekend, but I don't know how many more I will attend. I think that the events of the book will be mostly focused on the ice palace itself, and they are not building one this year.

Cheers,
Peg