Today I picked up cupcakes for my youngest’s birthday.
She’ll be six in the morning. I have to work and she wanted cupcakes so I picked them up today. We took a walk to the park together today and played, that was lovely.I went for a run today and felt slower, more tired, I think I’m used to more days off between running days. It’ll be good to go slower and run more frequently, acclimate to that. I also hadn’t eaten enough, which can’t have helped but above all I think it’s a matter of where my fitness is at. Not a pleasant discovery but an important one, I suppose. My ankle felt a little tweaky as well, gotta watch that, don’t want to hurt myself. It’s hard being older now and so out of shape when I remember having a younger, more resilient and fitter body!
I finished the movie The Snapper tonight while washing dishes. It’s about a young woman who gets pregnant and has the baby without any involvement from the father and who lives with her parents. It’s a friendly, heartwarming film about working class family. It reminded me of my mom and lots of my aunts and uncles and I had the thought that I really don’t care if my kids ever move out, though if they stay forever we’ll need a bigger house eventually.
I watched another Ken Loach movie, well started it, called Looks and Smiles. Good times, charming, so far not too sad. There’s a scene with a good sounding mod-punk-powerpop type band, in the vein of The Jam or Eddie and the Hot Rods, they’re called Richard and the Taxmen. Google tells me they only ever made about four songs. The one in the movie is called “Oxfam Suit” and sounds good, and they play it live in a club in the movie, the band are charismatic and energetic live. It occurred to me that this kind of thing probably happens with some frequency and is a high point in someone’s life at that point - all like, ‘we were in a movie!’ - and people make their art with great heart to it, and a lot of it doesn’t get much circulation or barely lives on if it does at all. It’s sad in a way and makes sense - a world that doesn’t value people doesn’t value art - and it’s also really lovely in a way, the ephemeral character of art, that people have all this dignity and creativity, uncommon achievements in common lives or something.
The five year old and I had a great time at the playground. She ran around and we chatted a little, repeated that pattern a lot. For a little while she wanted to play pirates and I thought she said pilots, which led to some funny confusion - she said “you’re the captain and I’m a pilot” and I said “well, if I’m the captain then you’re the copilot” “what’s a copilot?” I only figured it out when she put on a funny voice and went “arrrrrr!” Laughing now typing that. It’s wild that she’ll be six tomorrow. Still my baby and not a baby anymore, all three are like that.
