My Lazy Weekend

I was incredibly lazy this weekend, and it felt good.

Well, Saturday, I wasn't quite as lazy. I took Monet to visit my mom at rehab. It's pretty cool that they allow pets to visit. There's a giant orange cat that roams wherever it wants there, and it just happened to be right in the foyer as Monet, on her leash, came trotting in.

I've never seen a cat hiss like that thing did. Cats are secretly demons, but I saw through this one's magic. Monet did too, because she tucked her tail between her legs and tried to flee, with only the leash preventing mach speed. I was a little unnerved by that hiss; to me it sounded like the last exhale of a person destined to Hell.

Once we were safely in my mom's room, Monet wanted to sniff everything and explore more than she wanted to stay in my mom's lap. That disconcerted my mom a little, because she thinks of Monet as her favorite child, and her favorite child wasn't showing her as much attention as she thought. She started to complain that Monet had forgotten her, and basically spent the time fretting that Monet was dying for water and finally said I should take her home so she could have clean water, as opposed to the water at the rehab, which was "dirty."

Needless to say, my mom doesn't like rehab. I don't really blame her, even though this is the poshest rehab around. She hates everything there, especially their coffee, so she asked me to bring a couple venti coffees from Starbucks, and I think that will be her daily demand for her visit. Aidan gets to fulfill that request today.

Speaking of Aidan...she actually got off work early enough yesterday for us to have a few minutes to chat. She wants yet another tattoo, one that says "little fire," which is the Welsh meaning of her name. She also wants the Montgomery Clan crest like the one my brother showed her while visiting my mom in the hospital. You can vaguely see it in this picture. Our motto is "Garde Bien," which means "Watch Well." The woman in our crest is holding an anchor in one hand, and a severed head in the other. Of course, for my brother's tattoo, the woman is, as he says, "sexed up."

Here's our crest close up with our tartan in the background. I would love to find a cozy flannel shirt with those colors.

Here's another family crest, which seems to have been created by someone with a foreknowledge that some future Montgomerys would end up in Florida:

Anyway, Aidan found a postcard from James on my nightstand and said, "What the heck does 'puh' mean?"

She laughed when I told her it means "precious," and possibly has some other meanings as well. I'll tell you all the cute story of that one day...

So Saturday, I cleaned the house a little, did some laundry, then retired to my room to play some Dragon Age. Monet decided to join me, and kept giving me looks like she blamed me for exposing her to the demon cat.

Then Saturday night, James and I watched a Netflix movie long distance, and texted each other comments about it as we watched. We decided on a movie called Thale. It's a Norwegian film, all subtitled, about two guys (Elvis and Leo) from a crime scene cleaning company who are cleaning some disgusting mess of a liquid human body from some guy's cabin in the woods.

However, it doesn't seem like a good job for poor Elvis, because he pukes for about five minutes in the opening scene while Leo chews gum and watches him in sociopathic silence. When Leo isn't saying "Elvis," which is probably the most often used word in the whole movie, he's stoically chewing gum and scrutinizing things with almost a bored look.

Then they find a woman (Thale) in a bathtub of milk, and she nearly chokes Elvis to death. Leo talks Thale down, and goes about his work, calling in to HQ for some backup and saying he thought they found a "hulder." I thought that was sorta funny for a cleaning company to have an "HQ." While he's doing this, we get a glimpse of something else in the forest, at which James texted an adorable, "wtf."

I replied, "That was her brother." And it turns out I was close. It was her sister, and she had many more, as we found out later.

Thale immediately goes and hides under the bed, and Elvis, despite nearly being killed by her, goes and lies down next to her as she stares at him with wide, confused eyes. Thale is mute, but she starts to hum a little tune, and Elvis responds by humming back, and then Thale reaches out and grabs his face, not to rip the skin off it, but to share her memories. It freaks Elvis out a little, but then he understands. Thale looks like she's about 24 or so, but she's really only five. The now dead old guy mad scientist or whoever has documented her care on cassette tapes, which Elvis plays throughout the movie.

Then they find a severed tail in a little rusty refrigerator. Why the old guy kept it, I don't know.

Then, out of the blue, we learn that Leo has lung cancer, and at points he starts to act ill.

Then all of a sudden, some team in decontamination suits and carrying machine guns show up. For some reason, they tie the two cleaning boys to chairs and put hoods over their heads in the forest. Some older guy talks to them, and seems to know a lot about Thale. Leo is unconscious, presumably from an attack of cancer.

Then Thale kills some of the decon crew, rising up from the milk bath and shoving a machine gun through some guy's body.

Then we see a flashback where Thale is a young girl and takes a handful of dead white flowers and closes her hand. When she opens it, the flowers are alive. I knew then that Leo would be healed, and sure enough, he was.

But before that, Thale's sisters arrive on the scene, looking all hideous and CGI, and murder all the bad guys.

And Leo and Elvis live happily ever after, and Thale goes and wanders the forest without her tail.

So, after the movie, we looked up hulder and found out they're beings from Norwegian folklore, typically super beautiful and seductive mermaid-type women (but they also have tails) who live in the forests. Pretty interesting stuff.