terms of endearment

the baron worked a half day today, and wow, was she glad for the time away from her desk. the weather today, though cool, was clear and bright, and she spent the afternoon either in the yard with the dogs, or in front of the television sewing.

she's lately been working on a quilt - the biggest so far - and it's taking a VERY, VERY long time to complete. to help pass the time, the baron has been steadily working her way through the television series 'Angel', and YES READER SHE IS EMBARRASED ABOUT IT. SO PLEASE DON'T JUDGE HER; SHE (and the guy at cdepot, from whom she just purchased 'Angel' season 5) IS JUDGING HERSELF A LOT ALREADY.

ahem.

one of the episodes that she saw today was from the second season, called untouched, about a young woman with telekinetic powers. it's a terrible episode - as most in the series are - but one thing stuck out for the baron: the young woman's father (who had evidently abused her in her youth) called her 'rabbit.' the husband calls the baron 'rabbit', too, but, you know, without the creepy context. well, unless you think robert jordan is creepy.

ahem. the baron finished quilting her largest ever quilt, and had moved on to the binding around the time the husband came home from work. they decided to order out for dinner, and to put in the movie that had come to them from netflix. it was 'breakfast on pluto".

directed by neil jordan and starring every male irish actor you, reader, can imagine (seriously: liam neeson, brendan gleeson, cillian murphy, and stephen rea all in one movie?), 'breakfast on pluto' is kind of great, about a (criminally) thin boy - called patrick - who really wants to be a girl, and who spends the first hour and 50 minutes of the film looking for his mother in london. this slip of a boy, barely and sometimes passing as a girl, experiences happiness, something like love, sadness and a fair amount of brutalilty. this brutality comes in all the ways you think it might, at the hands of men for whom patrick's all mixed-up masculinity and femininity is too easy a target.

patrick, on his way to female, tries out a couple new names: patricia and kitten. you know what, reader? the husband calls the baron 'kitten', but something about patrick's lovers saying 'kitten' in their husky voices was very, very off putting. and what else? one of them, stephen rea - as a sad sack magician - called patrick 'princess'. and reader? that's right, the husband calls the baron that too.

so.

all in the course of one day, some of the baron's favorite things to hear have been made, uh, icky. icky, icky, icky.

fortunately, the husband has a couple of other names for the baron, ones that most probably won't make it into the vernacular any time soon. you're wondering what those names are, reader? keep wondering - some things have to be kept secret and safe.

(post script: the title 'breakfast on pluto', since its release in 2005, has always reminded the baron of a song called 'girl from mars', which is why, in recounting this story, she was heard to sing, 'and i still dream of you, i still love you, the girl from mars'.)
(post post script: incidentally, reader, the band who sings 'girl from mars' is ash. they're irish.)