Starting The Year With Family

sigh

The weather was so pleasant early this week, but now it is wet and rainy. And tomorrow it will get worse, with snow and ice and the possibility of an enforced vacation on Bad Friday due to slick roads and blowing snow. (Homer: Woo-hoo! Four-day weekend!) Seriously, I did have to buy an ice scrapper/brush for my car in prep for this weekend. (I lose the one I had.)

curtains

Madre visited my house while I was at work and took my drapes back with her. The drapes were over-starched and needed washed. Okay, I thought they were just too big for the windows. She couldn't reach the drapes I already put up, so I removed them and took them to her house. I also wanted to greet my brother's dog Rebel, whose was visiting Madre with its master. It's a friendly doggie, but so whiny when its master is somewhere without it.

electricity

My brother, who visited to pick up his Xmas presents, works for a power company called Dominion, at a plant on the Indiana-Michigan border. That plant will close early this year, and brother will be looking for work. Fortunately for him, his skills make him far more employable than most of us. So he was fixing the water heater of my sister the editor, while she polishes his résumé. Now my sister has something she has not had in a while: hot water.

teeth

My editor sister also has had temporary crowns put on her cracked teeth until more permanent ones come in. I say put, not fix, because at least one of them fell out, and another broke in two. There were suggestions that she get fitted with dentures. Padre had dentures fitted when he was in his forties; my editor sister would be carrying on a family tradition. (As for me, my teeth are just fine :) … well, apart from the one crown, but that was due to a popcorn kernel I bit too hard on.)

cat medication

The editor sister has also been helping Madre medicate Callie, the elder of Madre's two cats. Evidently one of Callie's back teeth has gotten rotten, and the local vet prescribed antibiotic to be squirted into Callie's mouth. As Callie does not want being squirted, doing so requires holding Callie while her mouth is pried oven to squirt in the antibiotic. Callie has gone through the course of antibiotic, but not without a long gap due to misunderstanding.

pay as I go

As for myself, I subscribe to a pay-as-you-go plan on T-Mobile. The plan was about to expire, and I had a lot of minutes left over, and I did not want to lose them. So, I was looking on the T-Mobile site for their support chat page to learn what to do. I never found it; but I did discover that if I paid ten dollars for an additional 35 minutes, the expiration date is put off for another year. I am good on my cell-phone until January 2013 without having to flood my account with unusable minutes. Of course, I will wait for the weekend to see if that will work, but if it does, I will be greatly relieved.

the better of the two

I have bought for myself two hardback books and one DVD. (Well, I bought two, but one is so bad that it is taking a trip with the trash.) The books are biographies of two people who have passed on in the same way (cancer): Apple founder Steve Jobs and English actress Elisabeth Sladen. Everyone has heard of Steve Jobs. Unless you are a fan of Doctor Who, you would have never heard of Ms. Sladen. Yet it is evident from reading both books that Ms. Sladen has lived the better life and has done the most good.

aisling is watching you

The DVD is The Secret of Kells, an animated feature film from 2009, that tells the tale of the book of Kells from the view of a novice illuminator named Brandon. His uncle, the abbot Cellach, is obsessed with builing a wall around the abbey to protect it from the Vikings, which have been attacking the British Isles in those days. One day, an illuminator named Aiden arrives from Iona, whose monastery has been destroyed by Vikings. With him are a white cat named Pangur Ban and the unfinished illuminated gospel named the Book of Iona. Aiden wants to finish the book, and recruits Brandon as his aide.

Aiden sends Brandon into the woods to get oak galls for ink. Brandon, ignorant of oaks or galls (he never set foot outside Kells before), meets a forest sprite named Aisling, who helps him find the galls he needs. Brandon grows as goes back and forth between working under Aiden and his time with Aisling in the woods. At one point Brandon fights and kills a pagan snake god for its magnifying eye.

In time the Vikings find and attack Kells. The gate, the weakest point in the wall, falls almost at once. Brandon and Aiden escape the slaughter, only to face the Viking chief and his horde. The chief makes off with Book of Iona's gold cover, scattering its pages; but wolves led by Aisling kills his men before they can kill Brandon and Aiden. The two gather the pages and flee. As they wander through Ireland, they complete the Book of Iona, now called the Book of Kells. Years later, an adult Brandon returns to Kells, guided by Aisling in wolf form. The abbey and village are much reduced by still there, led by Brandon's uncle, guilt-ridden (he thinks Brandon is dead) and near death. Brandon reunites with his uncle and shows him the now-completed Book.