20 June 2002

Sleep... Drowsy warmth and lazily floating colors behind my eyelids... I wake up, just the tiniest bit, to scratch an itch on my leg. Nothing feels as good when you're awake as it does when you're mostly asleep. Once I've started, I can't seem to stop. Suddenly my leg is crawling with itchy spots.

The bed shivers slightly. The cat, alerted by my movement to the possibility that someone is (sort of) awake, has jumped up to investigate.

I am not quite awake enough. I think, Crap. Maybe if I lie still, he'll go away.

Fat chance. The cat navigates an obstacle course formed by Matt's head and elbows, sniffs briefly at my ear, then walks around me to stand on my alarm clock, which never fails to wake me up as the plastic groans and creaks.

All right. I'm up. Fine.

I sit on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting for my equilibrium to settle, and then I slip on my sandals and head for the stairs.

In the monotone of early morning (What time is it? Four? Four-thirty?) the cat is a shapeless blob on the floor, barely distinguishible by virtue of being darker than the carpet. He walks just in front of me to the stairs, and hops down one step.

On the stairs, which cast their own shadows, the cat is nearly invisible. I know he is lingering exactly where I want to put my foot. We have danced this dance before. Gently, I nudge him down, then take the first step myself.

My balance isn't so good when I first wake up. I step heavily down, leaning on the bannister, then bring the second foot to join the first. I look for the cat. Is he lingering on the second step, or has he moved down again? I can't see.

Carefully, I probe the space over the step with my foot. No cat. Leaning on the bannister, still half-reeling with sleep, I put my foot down.

YEOAOWWWWL!

Startled, I yank my foot off the cat's paw, hand tightening on the bannister, certain I'm about to lose balance and fall. In the near-deafening silence, Matt calls, "Sweetie?"

(He will tell me in the morning that he heard not the cat's yowl, but the thump when I moved my foot.)

Absurdly, movie lines jostle in my mind. One dominates, and almost pushes itself through my teeth: Uh... Fine, we're all fine here... How are you?

I went with K.T. and Kevin last night to see Windtalkers. I really liked it.

K.T. said that the reviews she's seen complained that it was trying to recreate Saving Private Ryan, and that not enough time was spent on the Navajo soldiers who were the centerpiece of the story.

I didn't see Saving Private Ryan, so it didn't bother me that they were similar.

As for the second... I'd like to have seen more of the Navajo, but they weren't the centerpiece of the story; they were the plot device. The actual story of the movie is about Nicolas Cage's character, the Marine assigned to protect one of the Navajo codetalkers and prevent him from falling into enemy hands.

If you keep that in mind when you go into the movie (or if you go in, as I did, knowing hardly anything) then you'll be fine.

I thought it was a good movie, at any rate. Very visually impressive. Good acting all around. (Though it is Hollywood - the couple of average-looking guys on the Marine squad wound up looking like dogs next to the pretty boys surrounding them.)

Very damned depressing. Just in case you hadn't guessed it would be, being a war movie and all.

There was a loose end that I thought needed to get tucked away or tied off, but all in all, I thought it was a good movie.

(It would have been much more enjoyable if the fifteen-year-old sitting two seats from me didn't keep cheerfully yelling, "Boom!" and "Yeah!" whenever something exploded, and crunching ice cubes over the dialogue.)

--Liz