Work and Family
Jul. 17th, 2007 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOmaha's on schedule to work nights most of this week, so I've been getting to work first thing in the morning and leaving in time to pick up Kouryou-chan from her summer school schedule at 3:15, then over to get Yamaraashi-chan from the YMCA at 4:30.
I like these times. They give me a chance to hang out with the girls together and individually, and to cook and do ordinary domestic things with them. Yesterday I made my pasta sauce and we had tortellini; today I made a risotto with farm vegetables and prosciutto.
Yesterday, we also watched Godzilla together, the Matthew Broderick version. It's a Roland Emmerich film, so it has lots of bangs and explosions and a moral to the story, much like Independence Day and Stargate. I worried about the level of violence, but Yamaraashi-chan's been exposed to so much of it at her mother's house and she's old enough now to start taking in some of that with, literally, parental guidance, and Kouryou-chan... well, Kouryou-chan got all upset because (and this is the big fault of the Emmerich Godzilla film) she understood that the battle was between men who wanted to keep their city and a big animal who really was innocent of any moral culpability. Godzilla has an unfortunate tension: it's man versus nature, but the "nature" here is a living creature that shows its maternal worth toward the end of the film. Kouryou-chan grokked that; she understood that the outcome of the film, while inevitable, simply wasn't fair and couldn't be fair. Nobody wins in Emmerich's Godzilla: it's just that someone has to lose.
In the end, it is a big, dumb monster movie without much personal violence (and no interpersonal violence), so on the whole it was fun to watch. We also talked a bit about the skill of special effects in 1995 (i.e. why did it rain throughout the whole darn movie? Because it was easier to animate, and cover up glitches with raindrops) and the obvious bluescreening in a couple of scenes; we also talked a bit about the character development, and how to "read" a movie, how to watch it for hints and foreshadowing.
Today, Yamaraashi-chan and I played a few rounds of Pente, the five-in-a-row board game. She wasn't very good at it. We also flipped through a few pages of Cute Overload before something crashed the browser hard. I've told them to hit the showers and get ready for bed.
I'm not getting much writing done this week, I'm afraid. Too much work and family.
I like these times. They give me a chance to hang out with the girls together and individually, and to cook and do ordinary domestic things with them. Yesterday I made my pasta sauce and we had tortellini; today I made a risotto with farm vegetables and prosciutto.
Yesterday, we also watched Godzilla together, the Matthew Broderick version. It's a Roland Emmerich film, so it has lots of bangs and explosions and a moral to the story, much like Independence Day and Stargate. I worried about the level of violence, but Yamaraashi-chan's been exposed to so much of it at her mother's house and she's old enough now to start taking in some of that with, literally, parental guidance, and Kouryou-chan... well, Kouryou-chan got all upset because (and this is the big fault of the Emmerich Godzilla film) she understood that the battle was between men who wanted to keep their city and a big animal who really was innocent of any moral culpability. Godzilla has an unfortunate tension: it's man versus nature, but the "nature" here is a living creature that shows its maternal worth toward the end of the film. Kouryou-chan grokked that; she understood that the outcome of the film, while inevitable, simply wasn't fair and couldn't be fair. Nobody wins in Emmerich's Godzilla: it's just that someone has to lose.
In the end, it is a big, dumb monster movie without much personal violence (and no interpersonal violence), so on the whole it was fun to watch. We also talked a bit about the skill of special effects in 1995 (i.e. why did it rain throughout the whole darn movie? Because it was easier to animate, and cover up glitches with raindrops) and the obvious bluescreening in a couple of scenes; we also talked a bit about the character development, and how to "read" a movie, how to watch it for hints and foreshadowing.
Today, Yamaraashi-chan and I played a few rounds of Pente, the five-in-a-row board game. She wasn't very good at it. We also flipped through a few pages of Cute Overload before something crashed the browser hard. I've told them to hit the showers and get ready for bed.
I'm not getting much writing done this week, I'm afraid. Too much work and family.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-18 08:31 am (UTC)And the best part of a Godzilla movie, for me, is the parts where it's most like a really scary natural disaster pic. This trailer rocked my socks (same trailer as the one in my own LJ a few days ago).