The Upside Movie Review, Red Hats to Mad Hats and Other Chit Chat

“Every moment of every day we can be our best, most loving and vibrant selves. Together, let’s step up to show up better than yesterday.” Jimmy Rosenberg, the founder of Evolution Fresh, signed his name to that bit of inspirational philosophy on the side of an orange juice bottle that I got at Starbucks this morning. (The company is a subsidiary of Starbucks.) In the almost two decades I’ve been hooked on Starbucks this was the first time I’ve bought an orange there so I don’t know if the same bit of philosophy appears on all its bottles or it changes from time to time like similar words do that appear on the disposal cups you get at this so-called "yuppie, left-wing liberal" coffee shop chain. But I’ve sung my Ode to Starbucks before so I’ll skip to the reason I was up early enough to require a shot of orange juice along the way. I wanted to go the hazardous waste collection site and it’s only open from 7:30 to 9:30 one day a week. I had a twenty-five year old fire extinguisher in the garage that still showed it was fully charged but I wouldn’t trust it after all those years and a gallon of windshield washer that was nearly that old. I don’t even know how to open the hood of my car, much less where to fill the washer bottle. As they say in the better parts of town, “I have people for that” now. 

There was a day, though, in my distant past when I could check my own oil and transmission fluid and top them off, if needed. My dad didn’t think his kids should be driving if they couldn’t do those things plus change a tire and I had to prove I could do it all before he’d let me take the family car. Fast forward to when I met my husband and he did all those things. But Don did put me in charge of tire safety with a ceremonial gift of a tire tread depth gauge. It was a joke gift because I was tire obsessed with the tires on Don’s menagerie of nine pickup trucks and four pieces of heavy equipment, and I made good use of that tread depth checker. He no longer had to listen to me ask, “Are those tires safe?” Instead I got to say, “Those tires need to be replaced” and off we’d go to Costco. I still have that tread checker but I don’t drive enough to put any wear on my tires so it’s in my toolbox now instead of in my glove box. Ya, I know Marie Kondo, the Tiding Up lady, would say I need to honor that tread checker’s history then throw it in the garbage. Hey, lady, I honor it by keeping it! Maybe she can live with just one sweater---white at that---in her wardrobe but I’m a spiller and I’m digressing….

New topic: My Red Hat Society Chapter officially dissolved with our Christmas party. We’ve been together since 2002 and I was one of the founding members. The National organization raised their yearly dues significantly. So we’re changing our name to the Mad Hatters and everything else will stay the same except we will wear whatever darn color hats we want---as long as we wear one to our teas and outings. Other than the licensing rights to use the Red Hat name and logo the National hasn’t been of any benefit in recent years like it was when we were younger and could travel to conventions. Last March I blogged that I was seriously consider dropping out of the Red Hats altogether but I shifted my attitude and stuck it out. Now I go to the fun stuff and skip the things I didn’t like doing like visiting nursing homes and going on endless church tours. Mostly I stopped feeling guilty about skipping what I skip and more importantly I stopped resenting the dictatorial nature of the person making most of the decisions. My philosophy? If you don’t like something either work to change it, move on or find a way to accept it. I choice door number three. 

I saw a good 'dramedy' movie this past weekend, The Upside with Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart and Nichole Kidman. IMDb sums up the storyline this way: “Philip is a disabled [quadriplegic] white billionaire, who feels that life is not worth living. To help him in his day to day routine, he hires Del, an African American parolee, trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. What begins as a professional relationship develops into a friendship as Del shows his grouchy charge that life is worth living.” The reviewers have not been kind with their ratings—three out of four that I read gave it two stars and the forth gave it three. Two harped on the fact that it didn’t measure up to the French version (The Intouchables). Big deal! How many Americans watch foreign films with subtitles? And one reviewer didn’t like that comedian Kevin Hart took on a roll that included a good deal of serious acting along with the comedic parts in the film. I couldn’t figure out if it was comedians in general, black guys or just Kevin who shouldn’t be stretching their type-casted wings. All I care about is the film is based on a true story and it took movie goers through a full range of emotions from belly laughs to empathy to sadness and back to happiness. I left the theater feeling uplifted and I felt I got my money’s worth. So a pox on the two star ratings! The Upside has a lot of upsides…. ©

Unwanted Gifts and it's Mueller Time

Time is passing by so fast. It’s hard to believe that December is almost half over and I just went to my second holiday party of the season. The gods of Michigan Snow are being kind to little old me who has lost her stomach for driving in Winter Wonderlands. The temperatures are bone-chilling cold, the landscape is covered with snow but the roads are down to bare asphalt. The worst place I have to drive is on my own driveway that, for reasons I can’t explain, is the only one on the entire cul-de-sac that is still snow covered. Not a lot of snow, just enough to make going to the mailbox akin to standing at the top of a ski slope wondering if you’ll make it to the bottom without falling. I put on my boots with ice fishing cleats attached and I use my husband’s old, four-footed cane for the trek. I also go to the mailbox in the late afternoon when people are coming home from work. In case I do fall, I figure I won’t have to lay there long before someone would drive by and take pity on me. My momma didn’t raise any fools. 

My second Christmas party of the season took place out in the boondocks which means the weather often prevents me from going but this year when twenty of my Red Hat Society sisters gathered at an upscale restaurant to order off the menu, I was one of them. This group, without exception, always orders dessert at parties so it gets pricey. I could not believe they have desserts listed for as high as $9.50. Still, we all went home with a box with half our entrées inside and the taste of brownie, hot fudge sundaes or crème brulee on our lips.

We do a $10 gift exchange that are distributed using the Right/Left game so you don’t know who will end up with what you bring. Two other groups I belong to have the bring-only-consumable-goods  gift rule and I’ve suggested that rule to the Red Hatters. We’re all in our 70s and 80s and who needs more jewelry, scarves, candles or décor do-dads, but the suggestion falls on deaf ears. This group likes bling. Wouldn’t you know it, the gift I got at the party was a watch with exchangeable bands that I’ll never wear. “You spent more than $10 on this,” I said as I thanked the woman who bought it. She smiled and said, “I just buy what I like and I don’t care about the price.” I spent July e-Baying collectible watches out of the house and I’d re-gift this one if I could, but I can’t think of anyone who'd wear it. Google priced it at $25. For a fleeting moment it made me feel cheap for only spending $11 on my $10 exchange gift. I’m thinking of wrapping the watch back up and leaving somewhere for a stranger to find. Well, except I couldn't leave it at an airport, school, mall or theater where someone would call the bomb squad about a ticking box.

Even with consumable gifts you don’t always welcome the gift you get. Last year a diabetic got a box of chocolates in an exchange and at my Gathering Girls party I went to recently I gave an assortment of teas along with a King Arthur gingerbread cake and cookie mix arranged in a cute snowman box and the next day I got a text asking me if I had the original tea boxes and receipts. Unfortunately, the recipient doesn’t drink tea. At that party we used the stealing game to distribute gifts but our game ended before she got a chance to ‘steal’ a gift she liked better than the one she opened. Oh, well, her family does a gag gifts exchange---things like toilet bowl brushes---so hopefully, she can re-gift the tea. If not, Goodwill probably benefits after the holidays from a lot of gifts that missed their marks. Even Donald Trump Jr. was joking on TV recently that his father re-gifts to him a lot of monogrammed gifts that are given to the president.

Change of topic: I probably shouldn’t bring this up but I feel like we’re getting early Christmas gifts with the high profile sentences and pleas that came out of the courts lately. (Spoiler Alert: Trump supporters should probably quit reading here.) So far the Mueller investigation has brought 36 indictments and he’s getting closer and closer to wrapping things up. To see some of the president’s lies and cover-ups finally being exposed in the courts gives me joy. Trump’s fall from grace, I predict, will be swift once all the redacted areas in the court filings get revealed over the next six months of trials and additional indictments. I personally think Donald Jr. is going to go down hard with some prison time and his father will stand by while the bus he’ll throw junior under runs over him. And the only reason Ivanka and Jared haven’t been charged in an emolument clause case is because they aren’t getting salaries while working in the White House. But I think the domino's of justice will eventually take them down, too. If you think I’m wrong about all this, don’t tell me until after the holidays. Let me live in my cocoon of believing the Rule of Law is coming back to the White House. Do I want to see Mr. Trump get impeached? That’s a question with a complicated answer but the bottom line is, we need to wait until enough wrong doing has been proven in court that even the hardcore Republicans in the Senate are calling for his head. Now, if you ask me if he deserves to be impeached my answer would be a resounding “HELL, YES!”  ©

Dogs, Cats and Afternoon Conversations

I’ve got a lot going on inside my head but it's not "baked" enough yet to commit to writing. And as for doing anything interesting this week, I doubt I can write 1,000 words on that topic either. Who really wants to know about a Red Hat Society tea where the highlight of the hour and a half conversation was a discussion on the shapes and sizes of women’s breasts? One of the ten ladies in attendance used to be a bra fitter back in the day when department stores had lingerie employees who did that sort of thing which is what got us started on the conversation. All I did is listen while the others joked about their fried eggs, cucumbers and watermelons. Half the ladies had also recently seen Mamma Mia: Here we go Again! and that filled up a good fifteen minutes as they told the other half about the movie. Unlike me they all loved it and several even wanted to see it a second time. Again, all I did is listen. Why spoil their happy chatter with my less than flattering opinion of the movie? 

We also talked about the engagement of one of our Red Hat sisters. Her ring has three diamonds: one for her, one for him and one in the middle for Christ. Someone asked her when the wedding will take place and she said, “Never. I’m going to a fiancée for the rest of my life. I’d lose too much of my income if we get married.” Before I learned about the diamond for Christ I teased her with a follow up question, “So you’re living in sin then?” to which she said, “Oh, no! I have my house and he has his and I love it that way. He’s too messy and I’m too neat to live together.” Okay. I get the two houses concept and know from my father’s last decade of life that having a girlfriend living a mile apart, who early-on turned down his marriage proposal, can work out great in the senior set. Dad and his girlfriend saw each other 3-4 times a week, talked on the phone daily and took vacations together. 

To round out the conversation that afternoon, the person in charge of planning our Red Hat ‘walk abouts’ announced that the church she wanted us to tour this month has stopped doing them. Boo hoo. The endless church tours the past couple of summers is what turned me sour on the chapter. So this month’s walk about will be to a nature center that takes in wildlife that’s been injured. I’ve always wanted to go there so I’ll be attending my first walk about since what seems like forever and a day.

Also going on this week: Levi did a return performance at the doggie dentist’s office where he showed off his obedience training by automatically hopping on the scale and sitting while the technician got the reading. Like me, his weight went up this year. He should be 27/28 pounds, but he’s 30. (Too bad his human---that would be me----keeps coming up with excuses for not taking him on daily walks. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too this and too that. It’s been a long couple of weeks since Levi got three teeth pulled. He didn't liked the canned food he was supposed to eat until this appointment. And I don’t blame him. It smelled awful and looked worse and he wouldn’t touch it, even when I resorted to trying to get him to eat it off a spoon. Don’t judge me; after three days of him not eating anything, what would you do? I ended up soaking his regular hard food in water until it was soft enough and I returned the unused cans of food to the vet. Thankfully, Levi the Mighty Schnauzer got cleared to go back to eating hard stuff. And the Milk-Bones Trail Mix fairy could be heard singing, "Yippie yi ooh!". The company missed Levi’s brand loyalty.

Ever since he was a puppy, Levi has gotten a trip to Starbucks for a cup of cream and to the pet store after leaving the vet’s office where canines are welcome to do their own shopping. In his first 5-6 years he’d always come home with a new stuffie but this time he literally smelled every foot of every shelf (down at his level) in a very methodical way up and then down each aisle, so that nothing in the entire Chow Hound store was missed including the official ‘house cat’ that was snuggled down between two dog beds. Their eyes met, then the cat went back to sleep leaving Levi to wonder, I imagine, if the cat was just another stuffie. 

Twice, people stopped to complement Levi on the fact that he was so calm and polite, sitting upon their approaches like the little gentleman he was taught to be. He didn’t bark in the store either and to chalk up even more merit points for good behavior, he also didn’t mark the ends of the aisles like others males have been known to do. But what was supposed to be a short shopping trip took well over a half hour of sniffing and he didn’t once haul a single thing out of its bin leaving me to guess on a treat to take home. I ended up getting him a cookie from the specialty ‘dog bakery’ shelf because they were close to the cashier and who doesn’t want to spoil their dog with a ridiculously expensive, decorated cookie that looked suspiciously like Chow Hound’s calico house cat? ©