After a good day of work (which entailed fishing through 100-year old letters and newspaper articles to gather up relevant details on the extraordinary and ordinary lives of the wealthy Cone family), I decided it was time for a date. So, I baked some brownies and climbed up to my little loft to watch Antonia's Line. The space is unreachable by Ruby, since the only way to get up there is via a steep ladder against the wall. This makes Mookie, the cat, quite happy. Not only does it give her a safe vantage point away from the dog, but it also allows her to nibble on food at her leisure instead of having it stollen by the newcomer. But the same situation taunts the dog, since she mostly just always wants to be in near vicinity of her person and the cat that she thinks should be a dog.
But all that is an aside to what I meant to write directly.
Which is, that.
After watching the movie, I climbed down that ladder and was greeted to two chewed up black boots and a shredded roll of toilet paper. All of this courtesy of Ruby, the destroyer (as Laura accurately, and affectionately calls her).
and I felt like a parent coming home from a date
and the kids had been rambunctious and the babysitter was too busy doing other things.
And all I could honestly do was grin—grateful in my own strange ways for this scene, and for the sweet escape I treated myself to as I watched this most beautiful Dutch film that beautifully says almost everything worth saying, and for the way that life just keeps on going after the movie ends.
