Enough for Meryl? Never

Doesn’t Meryl Streep have enough Oscar nominations? I’ve loved her forever but should she win for playing Margaret Thatcher? Can’t any one of us ladies tease our hair into a Buzz Lightyear helmet and get a film crew to follow us around the house talking to the pictures?Ah but that's mean of me. I love Meryl. Who has better skin, and a greater laugh? Who else dares sing and hop around on the Greek isle for that film version of Mamma Mia?Also she and I are the same age.The same height too.We’ve both also had our pictures taken by the famous Bachrach studio, the outfit that did the official portrait of JFK just after his election to the presidency. The Bachrach photographer who took my picture there told me she was a real challenge what with that crooked nose, but “What a face!” he said. “What a face!” The picture of me that day makes me look a cross between a mother superior and a flight attendant circa 1960. It would work propped on top of my casket someday, if it had a sign next to it saying “Really she looked nothing like this.”So it’s not that I don’t love Meryl. It’s just that she I wanted to see Keira win a chance at the prize, as I was saying yesterday.But the more I write here the more I see how irresistible Meryl is.I was watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan the other night and there she was lighting up the screen as Woody's ex-wife. And whenever I get brave enough to watch The Deer Hunter again it stops me in my tracks every time to see her in that final scene with her friends following the funeral of the Christopher Walken character, when they sing this song:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LwGt9d1-lU]She’s modest, you hear, from people who've met her and I bet she sighed on hearing the news of yesterday's Best Actress nomination. "Another pair uncomfortable shoes!" she probably thought. "Another night where even my scalp will ache from all that compulsory smiling!"Now I've just watched a scene from Sophie’s Choice, the 1983 film about a woman’s secret history and the way what she did, and saw, and endured, has changed her forever.Just watch it yourself now. What an actress! And how lucky we are to be living at the same time![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk7GWw7MagU]

Change o' Pace Snowday

When the last giant snowstorm hit a few weeks ago I curled up in my bed and read all day which is totally unlike me.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that David stayed home that whole day, briskly shoveling and paying the bills and starting on the taxes.  It just felt like the more he did, the less I had to do. (It's a marriage thing I think.)  But yesterday’s storm was a whole different thing. I woke up at 6:30 and seeing that the snow hadn’t started, jumped into my clothes and made that  7 o’clock yoga class at the Y. ‘Course then someplace between Downward Facing Dog and Corpse Pose the snow hit like a fist and a drive that had taken me 7 minutes on the way over took me 50 minutes on the way back. Hence by the time I stomped back into the kitchen with my snowy boots David was gone baby gone, off to the fun and camaraderie of office life, leaving me to have  about the most unusual day  I have ever had in that I did not read a single word during it nor even come into the same room as my conjoined twin the laptop.Instead, I stood all day cooking. And while I cooked I watched movies on HBO. And here is what I noted:

• Whoopi Goldberg does ‘dignified’ fine as in Mississippi Burning but is much more fun to watch swearing her head off  in Jumpin' Jack Flash.
• 11 years after Back to the Future Michael J Fox did a silly film called The Frighteners made tolerable only by the presence of those same scary black flying guys that go after Patrick Swayze’s killer in Ghost.
• Zooey Deschanel’s character really disappoints the kid from 3d Rock in 500 Days of Summer but she sure has cute teeth. They're actually real!
• And though it’s true that I’m getting just a teensy bit tired of  It’s Complicated I still love the scene where she’s smoking a joint in the bathroom with her caddish but lovable ex and laughing like a hyena –  right up until the moment she catches sight of herself in the mirror, stops short and says suddenly, tragically. “GOD, is that what I LOOK like?!”

She is having a moment everyone over 50 has had, lemme tell ya - which is why we older folks can no longer get by on looks alone but instead have to produce now and then. Which is also why on this particular snow day I…

• Broiled a pound of salmon,
• Made a shrimp and avocado salad,
• Mixed up a zingy meatloaf with oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs,
• Tossed up an Italian tuna and arugula salad,
• Roasted  sweet potatoes, dusting them first with sea salt and garam masala,
• Grilled a bunch of mushrooms,
• Culled, rinsed and steamed a world of pinto beans,
• And fried up mashed potatoes in butter 'til I had a wonderful golden pancake all bubbling and crisp at the edges.

All of which brings oddly to mind the lyrics to this old song, often sung to me by my mate:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9ZZgDqzAg]