How was your weekend?

I had a busy Saturday (for me). I met with my brand new therapist (good and desperately needed in the midst of everything that is going on in our world right now which I don’t mention here) and enjoyed a girls night out with my daughter (excellent). We went to the Basement Burger Bar for messy burgers & fries and then ran across the street, dodging heavy wet snowflakes that suddenly swirled down through streetlights and neon, for a quick aisle scan at TJMaxx. (We ended up scoring a set of Snoopy sheets for her and a new Snoopy blanket for our den. We may have a Snoopy problem around here.)

I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for quite awhile but if there’s some sort of Gothic (or Regency or Victorian) epic sprawl playing, I’m up for it. (I think my last theater trips were for ‘Nosferatu’ and the big screen revival of the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ starring Keira Knightley’s collarbones.) My daughter was meh on the prospect of ‘Wuthering Heights’ but always likes visiting our retro 1920’s movie house and the idea of snacks and popcorn. She regretted her decision as she spent part of the film with her hands over her eyes and another part weepy (it was Heathcliff riding across the moors to Cathy’s bedside that did her in) despite my whispered protestations that these were really NOT great people and definitely NOT worth feeling sorry for. Her summary review through her muffled sniffles at the end: “Mom, that was two hours of bullshit.”

As for me, I enjoyed the movie much more than I thought I would, despite it being more “fan fiction” than anything else. Pros for me were the amazing costumes for Cathy, which felt very Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the almost Tim Burtonish set design, and Jacob Elordi. Cons were the romanticism of their toxic relationship, the massive changes from the book, and Margot Robbie. I like her a lot as an actress and thought she and Elordi were well matched, despite some criticisms I read of their chemistry, but for me, her icy and symmetrical loveliness was a miscast.

Sunday was another foray into bread baking. I’ve been nursing my starter “Charlie” for a few weeks, went out of the sourdough gate big and bold last weekend and ended up with a dense and gummy loaf that could have caused severe head trauma if dropped out of a second story window. This weekend I scaled back my expectations and did the easier King Arthur Rustic Loaf. There’s still a lot of room for improvement but Brandon and the kiddo ate several big slabs with butter before it was even cooled properly and gave it thumbs up.

In other news – it’s March! We have made it through the winter.