Saw Sherlock Holmes-- score by Zimmer (good but wasn't placed well during the movie, though still had good moments)
--Moriarty was unseen but lurking, good
-chocolate pudding-- enough cornstarch?
-watch Castle, Modern Family, Mad Men later, Psych??
-wrap presents and make card --- &&&&& cookie box
-little tape cassette mood theme, ?????
-Tomb Raider Anniversary Egypt ambient music
-itunes gift card, what to get
-nylon mix download it
-make potato pancakes
-put rice pudding in freezer?

I GOT AN 'A' IN 607!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

...and a quilt from aunt helen :D raindrop too! something of heaven, it's called

-essential for gift pack for xmas: calimyrna figs (green)

Most people, I’ve found, have one particular aspect of life (the more mundane the better) that they enjoy a passionate anger about.

Case in point, an old friend of mine, she’s got herself PhD in English Literature… something about Austen or Bronte or Elliot or one of those ladies. Louise, vessel of the brilliant mind, bearer of the longest red hair you’ve ever seen, and author of the mind numbingly tedious PhD – her personal fetish is the Twilight thing. She reads them because she just enjoys how angry they make her. That is a direct quote from the Doctor’s mouth.

Louise, or Dr. Louise as she’s known to her friends, can talk for hours about all the moral implications and the substandard writing and how Bronte – that PhD is definitely on Bronte – would be turning in her grave to see the representations of femininity and how it’s sent the crusade for female sexual liberation back decades.

I really don’t do her justice on this subject. She’s much more entertaining than I am, give her some jello and an inflatable pool and we could make a killing on admission. I’m not kidding, she came to Gotham a few months back and there was bloodshed between her and a friend of mine Suzy who has a deep attachment to those books (which reminds me – we may not be that close anymore, yoga came between us, but I’d still appreciate people voting for her in the finals of Gotham's got Talent). Suzy and Louise, that was a night to remember and I have Stephanie Meyers to thank.

It isn’t just Louise who has this deep-rooted pleasure-anger. In my experience most people have it – even people who practice the fine art of professional Zen.

Madeline, my yoga instructor, which I’m told is somewhat of a cliché but I’ve never let the fear of a cliché stand between me and a damn good time, her pleasure-passion is the lack of a coin compartment in men’s wallets. Every single time she sees a man’s wallet she launches into how ridiculous it is that men don’t have coin compartments. I actually believe I’ve heard this mantra more times than a cry to free Tibet or how global warming can be stopped through strict vegetarianism. All other issues pale compared to the Men’s Wallet Issue.

Madeline cannot stand the jingle of coins in a pocket, her hatred of this is almost pathological – she has a physical reaction to the sound of coins clinking and clanking even more violent to the reaction that most people have to that Mentos jingle.

Personally I just don’t accept loose change. I just round up to the nearest note and leave it at that – which I believe is why Madeline and I get along so well. That and we’re both uncannily flexible.

Old and new – it’s all a matter of perspective, just a matter of in which moment you stand in time and stare out at the world around you. Everything is new when you’re a child – and everyone around you is old. Then you grow up and you realise that everything has been done before and you’re all just here for a moment, infants in comparison to the world you’re borrowing for the little time you’re here.

He’s eight years old – the world is still new and the people in it still seem insufferably old. Bruce Wayne, age eight, knows about old – he lives in one of the oldest cities in the country and he lives in one of the oldest houses in that city. Wayne Manor stands as testimony to the people who have lived in it before him, they grace the walls with their stern faces, their history is embedded in every room, their stories attached to each piece of furniture.

Bruce imagines that at night when the contemporary of the Wayne’s have fallen asleep that these ancestors emerge from their gilded prisons and dine on the china they once ate from and drink from the crystal that had been a wedding present however many generations ago. At night when the new Wayne’s sleep the old Wayne’s dance in the ballroom and Bruce imagines he can hear their laughter through the walls. It scares him sometimes and his mother laughs.

“Old houses make noises, Bruce.” She tells him. “It’s nothing to be frightened of. They’re just telling you a story, that’s why the floors creak and the windows shake, they’re trying to tell you about everything they’ve seen before, they’re trying to make you listen.”

“Then we should get a new house that isn’t so noisy. One with a lot less to say. Then we’d all get more sleep.” He tells her and she laughs at her precocious child.

She strokes his back and remembers when he was a baby and she wonders how time comes to pass so quickly. There won’t be many more years when they can lie here like this, there won’t be many more years when he shouts out to her in the night, there won’t be many more years when he’ll let her so close. So she stays longer than she needs to because she knows her days are numbered. He’s getting older, she’ll always be his mother but soon enough he’s going to resent being treated like her little boy.

And he pretends to be more frightened than he is, perhaps he feels the days are numbered as well, or perhaps he just loves this time when he has her to himself and they lie together and talk about things in a way he would never again be able to talk to anyone.

Little in Wayne Manor is new, except perhaps him, perhaps that is why he is as treasured as he is. The little piece of something new in a place so old – he’s the future and his parents believe in the future with as much passion as they honour the past. And their Bruce is still young and shiny; he has not yet become one of those sterns faces in a gilded cage.

He’s thirty-three years old – the world is no longer so new and he now feels insufferably old. Bruce Wayne, aged thirty-three, knows about old – his own story, his own tragedies have become embedded in the history of the city, his own history, his own tragedies, are written on a body that is not superhuman, it scars the same as any other, it ages like everyone else. He’s no longer young and shiny and he’s created his own gilded cage, as decorative in its own way as the gold frames that house his parents, but perhaps not so traditional.

The conversations he has in bed at night are not the same as the ones shared by a young boy with his mother. They’re shorter; they’re to the point. The companionship that once felt so easy is gone.

“Business.” He says to her.

Who does he think he’s fooling? Everyone knows that Bruce Wayne doesn’t do business anymore than he does monogamy. Besides, who does business at two in the morning? Bruce Wayne doesn’t do business anymore than he does breakfast. He doesn’t do business anymore than stays the night. He’s such a fucking asshole. He’s such a fucking, fucking, fucking -

“Not mine.” She says. “Not anymore. It’s not my business what you do anymore, Bruce. Or who you do it with.”

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t throw his pants at him or cause a scene. She does her best to make sure her voice doesn’t falter. The words come across as harder and colder than she’d intended but if that’s the price you pay to end this with dignity in tact she’ll take it. She’s never been the damsel and she’s never looked for her knight. If a man like Bruce Wayne is going to reduce her to tears she’s not about to pay him the compliment of allowing him to witness them.

She’d known who he was when they’d started this, she’d been told and she’d been warned. But then again, anyone who has ever dabbled in a romance knows you never really know what you’re getting into, not until you’re left alone at two in the morning wondering how you ever could have been so stupid.

“I wish I could I stay.” He tells her – and she’s not even sure if he’s heard her, this conversation is getting so old that she suspects he’s just running his lines. He sounds sincere – but he always does.

His regret is always so sincere. The difference now is she’s hit her own limit and she’s past caring. You make choices, you show up to dinner or you stay for the show or you stay the night. Or you don’t. And if you don’t then it’s because you have somewhere better to be. And she’s not going to be the girl who is always second to that something better.

“I’ll call you.” He tells her.

“Don’t bother.” She replies. She imagines he flinches when she says it, she’s still young enough to imagine a world where your ancestors dance in the halls while you sleep and men like Bruce Wayne flinch when you say goodbye.

And he’s already out the door. He’s danced through this routine so many times now, with so many women, he’s almost immune. The same scene unfolding again and again and again. There’s nothing new about this. It’s all been done before.

It’s part of the façade, it’s part of the façade, it’s part of the façade – part of the role he has to play, a necessary part of creating, of being Bruce Wayne. But sometimes, when he’s not careful, when these interludes linger longer than their role required, when the scene plays out a little longer than was wise, when the moment begins the feel less like a part played and more like a scene from his own private purgatory, when he thinks for a moment that perhaps one night he will lie there and share with them the stories that Wayne Manor told him so long ago – sometimes – sometimes.

But this isn’t about him. This isn’t about the past or the future. This is about something greater. This is about Gotham City. He is an instrument. He will do what is necessary to be the instrument that protects Gotham City, to protect the woman crying as his car speeds down the freeway. He may not be able to save Gotham City but he will protect her.

Everything is borrowed. All of it. Every smile, every tear, every breath. He knows that better than most – he lives that better than most. There’s no denial, just the constant reminder of how transitory this is. Everything is old and everything is new depending on where you stand. And everything is always borrowed; our days are numbered.

That’s just how it is.



Bruce Wayne
Batman
Word Count: 1340

Why not blue? That is what this is, right? The Bride's poem -- something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue and a six pence in your shoe.

First of all, it is very horribly out dated. Not just because six pence don't exist anymore, or at least they are antiques or all, collectibles, Bruce has one I'm sure, and Tony -- or no, Norman annexed it, I suppose ... this isn't the point. The point is

a) six pence is no longer in circulation
b) women are generally not sold into marriage anymore

I said generally, don't yell at me or quote statistics. I'm talking about America. Generally.

I don't like this topic.

Anyway, ignoring sixpence entirely because not everyone knows that part anyway -- why not blue? Maybe I don't have anything old or new or borrowed to talk about. I hate 'what's new' almost as much as 'how are you'. Hate is too strong a word. Point being does anyone ever really want the answer? Or listen to the answer? Or, conversely, give an answer?

Nothing's new. Nothing I particularly feel like talking about to anyone still listening.

And old is depressing.

And borrowed, I don't have that either.

I don't even have blue.

Katie's eyes are blue.

I am just in the best mood ever. My hair is shiny, my skin is SO clear, my baby is totally cute and people stop me and say how cute she is and I say "She looks just like her father" which is true (she looks like a pretty version of The Osborn!) and then they say how Adhra looks just like me (such a pretty girl, they say!) which is also true - and it's Christmas and the future goes on for years and years and I suppose I've realised I just don't need to take crap from anybody - I am better than this. I'm smart and funny and OK looking and I have a great wardrobe and a good heart and I have years and years ahead of me - years. My thighs could be thinner and my boobs could be bigger (but I went up a cup size!) and well, my stomach, still a work in progress post parasite explosion...

Oh! And it finally started to snow here!

Which is lucky coz I told Adhra it would only snow if she was good. I probably should stop using threats I can't control. I'm just lucky it worked out this time.

This is so sad - and I thought Adhra runs wild. Suddenly her tantrums and crazy regression mania seem kinda... I'm not so sure if boring or relieving is the word. Maybe normal is the right one. She's such a beastie. I feel bad for not just the kid but the mother, too. Like, if things get to that point... you must just be totally overwhelmed and not know what to do or whatever. It's not easy being someones mother --- I think people need a lot of help.  People say a lot when they read stuff like this "some people should never have children"... I don't think that's helpful tho. I mean, that mom is pretty young and her husband is in jail! If Harry was in jail that would be AWFUL! I don't even like him working long shifts! If he was in jail I'd just die. I just think people like that need a lot of help because when you're young and whatever --- I don't know. She's obviously not coping with what's going on. I feel bad for her. I know how that feels not to feel you're coping or to feel like a bad mother --- and wow, you don't get much worse than your FOUR YEAR OLD stealing beer and presents and wandering the streets at like 1am. I mean, imagine how bad you'd feel if that was your kid. He could have been KILLED. Seriously. You'd just be thinking how your kid could be dead now. DEAD. I mean I still feel guilty coz Adhra's finger got caught when I closed a draw last week (was so awful, I thought it was broken but it wasn't, just bruised and she screamed like crazy and was so upset and I was so upset and the worst thing was as soon as it happened I yelled at her coz I was so in shock and screamed - "I told you not to put her hands in there!" as if I was mad at her, but it was just all that adrenaline and you're rushing to do something and the beastie wants in and then you slam the draw shut and suddenly there's hysteria - was seriously awful - my poor baby cried so much and you feel SO BAD because you just closed a draw on her damn hand! And you cry and cry because you feel so guilty and when you take them to the doctor you're so guilty and you think everyone will blame yoU!!! and you're a terrible mother and then you see their little bruised fingers and feel so bad even tho it was an accident!!!) and so wow, if my kid was found wandering the streets all crazy like... I don't know... I'd feel so bad. It's so awful! I just think that mother must have a life totally out of control and how horrible if everything was so bad you were that bad a mother. You'd be devestated. That's her kid! He could have died!