We've been trying to get out as much as possible lately, aware that our life - at least the outward manifestation of it - will soon be turning inward. There's beginning to be that slight tang of desperation on a Friday night that I haven't felt since my single 20's when you don't have plans and it feels like the end of the world. Except I can't go drown that feeling in pumpkin beer, much as I would like to. We did go to see John Waters speak last Friday courtesy of Duke, and he looked in person very much like Steve Buscemi crossed with Pee Wee Herman. He made me laugh very very hard, though I was rather shocked to see some parents brought their 8 and 6 year old kids. Um, have you seen Pink Flamingos? It's not quite as "family-friendly" as Hairspray. As we walked off campus we came across a big old beast of a car with a personalized license plate reading "Pastor Herb", your requisite God and intolerance bumper stickers and the magnetic "Support our Troops" ribbon. JW had just been talking about how he was sick of liberals whining about the war and wanted us all to just tip a car over or set something on fire if we really meant it. All I had was a Sharpie and Pastor Herb's magnet which, in honor of JW, I rewrote as "Support Our Poops" and replaced. Hardly the revolution. Hardly a tipped car. But it made me feel a little bit, tiny bit subversive. It doesn't take much these days. The campus events are starting to pick up steam and it is rather lovely that they are free. I saw Greil Marcus speak on the American ballad last week, followed by a Handsome Family set, in the school library with free food which included giant melty wheels of baked brie. My kind of event.

We just spent all day in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Virginia part. These bluesky warm crisp Fall days are killing me, especially when we pick up a peck of tart green apples and stop at a diner for coconut cream pie and weak coffee in a thick china mug and drive down windy back roads with Willie Nelson singing us along.
Now I am watching Pan's Labyrinth with half an eye and typing (should be homework...) with the other. I've been struggling with TV this week, thanks in part to the book I've just read, "Living Outside the Box: TV families share their stories". I've lived every which way with TV: a boyfriend who had all the channels, many years without a TV at all, some years with a TV and no cable but a VCR/DVD player, the last few with rabbit ears so I could pull in ANTM and a few other guilty pleasures with kind, kind friends who taped me series I couldn't get and sent them on...Since we moved to NC the apartments we've been in have had Full Extreme Cable as part of the rent, no choice about it. I just discovered we had Bravo the other day and got all squealy about Project Runway coming back. Except we'll be in our new house then without cable and soon after that I'll be alone in the house most of the time and I started to wonder if maybe we shouldn't, you know, purchase cable when we move. Because you know, The Food Network and all those baby shows and PR and ANTM...and have I mentioned I'll be alone a lot with a baby? So I read this book to steel my resolve. It gave all the good reasons I already know including the most important: I always say I have no time but I manage to make time to watch people cook (when I couldn't quite get around to dinner) or redecorate houses (as my own paintbrushes sit idle.) But forgive me, I am weak, I can't take the final step they suggest and just get rid of the set all together. No movies at home? No. When they are free from the library, I can't say no. I just can't. Is it the slippery slope to parking the kid in front of Dora the Explorer? I hope not. But think of me, just a little, when Project Runway starts, won't you? Because I will be, just a little, sad.
Time for apples and candy corn and to let myself watch the dang movie completely, no guilty pangs.