crooked house

How to Watch The Season Premiere of Downton Abbey In Real Time Today

The third season of Downton Abbey premieres in the UK today. If you are not fortunate enough to live there, there are a couple of blogs that are suggesting ways you can watch it in real time today or, failing that, tomorrow. Worth a try, don't you think? This blog suggests ways you can make it seem as if your computer is actually located in the UK, so you can watch the livestream from itv.com. And this one is going to provide links to other sites that are livestreaming and they are going to share the episode on Monday. (I just noticed the Dowager's new hat. Wow.)

Lucy Worsley

My new obsesssion: Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, and BBC presenter of fascinating documentaries, including this one, which looks back at the historical development of four rooms in the modern home: the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room. Someone has made all the episodes available on youtube. She has also written a book called If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, which I have reserved at the library. Next up: Worsley's documentary called Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls. According to her blog, she is currently researching a series on the history of the murder mystery and its fascination for British society. (Big thanks to Sara O'Leary for suggesting Worsley's documentaries to me!)

Things That Caught My Eye This Week

I have a soft spot for the Enid Blyton book The Magic Faraway Tree as it is the first book I can remember my mother reading to me and many of the fantasy games I played in childhood were based on it. The house we grew up in was surrounded by trees and we named the largest one after it. This mom makes one out of cardboard for her kids to play with -- she is very faithful to the details.

You must watch the British family sitcom Outnumbered.  Apparently it is largely unscripted, and it is hilarious. The kids, especially. Via My Porch. You can watch oodles of clips on youtube, if that link doesn't work for you. I would love to be a fly on the wall while they film this -- wonder what the process is and just how much the kids come up with on their own.

In the United States, you can get excellent postage rates on unusually shaped items that weigh less than 13 ounces. The people in this flickr group share the fun things they've sent through the mail. I need to check if similar rates apply here in Canada as it'd be neat to send some of these things to the  kids' cousins on the other side of the country.

Here is a really great-looking recipe for Brains in a Jar. Probably doesn't taste half-bad either. Would love to make these for Luke's class. Via notmartha.

An interesting post on apothecary show globes.

Joanna Goddard is starting an articles club, instead of a book club. She's starting with this article, in which the author advocates calmly ignoring one's partner when he or she claims to want a divorce.

 

How To Make A Dowager Countess Hat

Holly and I made a Dowager Countess hat for The Awl. You know, from Downton Abbey? Go find out how to make one for yourself. And see some more deeply unflattering photos of me. (Man, is that mirror ever dirty.)

Sneak Peek: Top Secret Fashion Project

Vivi has generously leant me one of her official pirate hats for my super top secret fashion project. Here's a sneak peek. Hint: it involves painting periwinkles purple.

Can you guess what we're working on?

Elmo's World... Domination

Elmo surveys the work of his minion.

Thanks, Elmo. Note: I found him standing there -- I swear I did not place him there for photographic purposes -- when I discovered that all the walls of the downstairs hall had been marked as his territory. Yet again.

Elmo attempts to gaze  hypnotically into his disciple's eyes.

First he was "Mo," then he was "Momo," and then "Melmo." Clearly his name is Legion. If I have to hear his song one more time I may shoot myself. And if that happens, someone else will have to scrub those walls.

Television Series: BBC's Survivors

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I've been reading a bunch of post-apocalyptic fiction for a project, picking and choosing from the fiction section of this list. Just this week I switched to the film and television section, downloading both seasons of BBC's Survivors from iTunes and devouring them. I managed to watch it late at night, after the children were asleep, and therefore I've been a bit of a zombie during the days. Happily, though, there are no zombies in Survivors, something that, obviously, can not be said about a lot of post-apocalyptic stories. Although I am a big fan of fantasy, magical realism, and the like, for some reason I prefer my post-apocalyptic fiction as realistic as possible -- straight up, as it were -- maybe because the circumstances of these stories are surreal enough already. Survivors is this kind of story, about how a small, diverse group of ordinary people manage to keep it together after 95% of the world's population is decimated by a flu pandemic. The leader of the group is a middle-aged woman, Abby Grant, who is looking for her twelve-year-old son who was away at camp when the virus struck. She meets up with a survival-minded systems analyst, the recently divorced Greg; Tom, a career criminal who'd been serving a life sentence in prison; Anya, an altruistic young doctor; Al, a wealthy playboy, and Naj, a twelve-year-old boy and a devout Muslim. Beyond the group's survival efforts and Abby's search for her son, a great deal of the show is devoted to an exploration of morality in a completely broken society.

Survivors is a remake of a BBC television series of the same name produced in the early 70s, based on a book by Terry Nation. I've reserved the book at the library and would love to watch the early 70s version. Now, because when I think "BBC television series" I think "The Prisoner," that odd yet oddly appealing late-60s show featuring a guy trapped in a village by an enormous white beach ball that moved in slo-mo, I suppose I was unconsciously expecting the current series to  have low production values or something. Boy, was I wrong. I was especially impressed with the casting and the quality of the acting.

While looking for a link to The Prisoner, I've discovered they'd made a remake of that, too. Excuse me while I disappear for another week. And by the way, Survivors, which I highly recommend, is available through netflix, too.

Little People, The Smooth-Away, and Luke

Yesterday we accidentally bought Luke a Fisher-Price Little People set that contains a figure Luke already has.  (Michael, for those in the know.) When we got home and he realized this, he said, "I already have that one! Now I won't know which is itch!"

I could have corrected him but I didn't. Is that so very, very wrong?

On the way to the store, Luke regaled me with information he has recently gleaned from the television about Smooth Away, a sandpaper-like hair removal product. "You know Smoov-Away, Mama?" he announced out of nowhere. "It's a product for both men and women. Both of them can use it! You rub it on your arms and legs. There is a little pad for the skin around your eyes..." Here he delicately touched a fingertip to the area between his eyebrows while gazing thoughtfully off into the middle distance. "And there is a bigger pad for your arms and legs! You'll never have to shave again!"

"Oh," I said. After a pause, I asked him, "And what does it mean 'to shave'?"

Luke thought for a second. "I don't know," he said.

He also expresses great interest in the Shamwow.

Sleep Deprivation, Genies, and Crooked Houses

So here it is, 3:50am and while Sylvie is sleeping like a dream, I'm wide awake. I fell asleep around 8:30pm and David snuck her out of the room so I wouldn't wake for her feeding in the middle of the night -- which of course meant he had to stay up long past his agreed-upon shift -- and I woke up, a bit confused and surprised, a little after 2:00am. I think that's the longest stretch of sleep I've had since she was born. He brought her back to bed around 2:40am, fast asleep, which meant I should have been able to sleep for another two, three, or even four hours. But I haven't been able to -- my mind's been racing.

My mind isn't the only busy one around here. Ever since Sylvie was born, Luke's been doing a lot of deep thinking. He came to me a couple of days ago with a perplexed look on his face.

"Mama?" he said. "Why doesn't Bella [our female cat] have a genie?"

I stared at him, in incomprehension.

"And why doesn't Theo [our male cat] have a penis?"

Suddenly understanding, I explained that they both have the appropriate boy and girl parts, it's just that they're rather hard  to make out under all that fur. And then I held a pillow over my face so he wouldn't see me laughing like a seventh grader over "genie." Although we always use the proper names for body parts whenever discussing them -- hence the child's familiarity with the p-word -- I must say that "genie" is the best diminutive for the female parts I've ever heard, including Oprah's infamous "vajayjay."

In other news, on Monday night this little-known blog got 10,000 hits in ten minutes, when the television show Jon and Kate Plus Eight featured Crooked Houses, a company in Maine that makes custom playhouses (and t-shirts that I covet). They happened to do it on the episode in which they announced their divorce -- if you're not up on this, I guess you don't read the covers of the tabloids while waiting at the checkout stand in the grocery store -- and the ratings must have been through the roof. So if you're here looking for them, well, you're welcome to hang around but you really should go there. And you Crooked House Playhouse people, please do feel free to come install a playhouse for Luke and Sylvie, too. There are only two of them -- but sometimes, like at 3:50am, they can feel like eight.

How to Talk To Your Kids About Sex On Oprah

Instead of painting my pregnant belly as an Easter egg, I should probably paint it as a giant potato. For once again I have become a big old couch potato. I was definitely one in the beginning. For the first three to four months of this pregnancy I felt like I was dying, so much so that when I had my first ultrasound I badgered the technician to make sure there was a fetus in there and not a lump of cancerous tissue. (At my age and with my history of fertility problems, I would've been less surprised by a diagnosis of cancer than pregnancy, anyway.) Then, once I got past that first trimester and started taking iron supplements, I was able to get off the sofa, at least now and then. However, as I enter the third trimester, I am once again so anemic that I suffer heart palpitations and breathlessness whenever I walk around the house. The other day I had to leave the shopping mall in the middle of a bunch of errands because I felt like a) I was about to pass out and b) the baby was about to explode out of the region of my belly button right there in the grocery store's check-out line. All this to say that I am once again pretty much a full-time couch potato and that therefore, I watched two complete episodes of Oprah this week. Maybe I should start a blog devoted to nothing but reviewing the Oprah show.

Yesterday's show featured Dr. Laura Berman, the sexpert with the Oprah seal of approval. And after watching it, I have decided to give her the Crooked House seal of approval, too. Unlike the show a few days ago about mothering, this show provided useful -- and inevitably controversial -- advice, in this case about how to talk to your kids about sex, which is, for many, many people one of the most difficult aspects of parenting. It's also probably the main area where parents screw up the most, generally by not providing enough information and by not appearing open, non-judgemental, and non-threatening enough for their children to come to them to talk about sex. What was particularly interesting about this episode was that Dr. Berman focused on being positive about sexual pleasure with your children. This translated to including the concept of masturbation (and stressing that it's perfectly fine and normal) when you first have the discussion about the mechanics of sex to a child, most likely when that child is around 10 years old. This absolutely floored many of the people in the audience and particularly Oprah's friend Gayle King, who looked like she needed smelling salts. And then, then Dr. Berman went on to say that when your daughter is in her mid-teens and your conversations are getting more specific, you might want to tell her about vibrators that are designed for clitoral stimulation. This, of course, had the audience in an uproar. But Dr. Berman was still able to make her point that, if you teach your children about sexual pleasure and let them know how they can give it to themselves, they're not going to be as quick to run out and look for it from somebody else.

If only I'd had a vibrator seven months ago, I wouldn't be stuck on this couch right now.

I'm kidding. (I mean it, Mom, I'm really kidding! I never heard about vibrators until yesterday! Honest!) But I'm not kidding about how informative this particular Oprah show was on a difficult parenting issue.