Settling In

Things you do when the parents are on their way:

1. Trash - I mean . . . recycle - the empties.
2. Take out the three trash bags you left on the floor because you didn't feel like wandering into your sketchy back parking lot at 2 AM.
3. Hide any and all evidence of a boy staying over (how many tooth brushes are in the holder?).
4. Make/de-dog-hair-ify the bed.
5. Attempt to clear enough floor space in your tiny apartment so they can walk in the door and set down the boxes they're surely bringing.
6. Turn the Cosmo over/to any page but the "Guy Sex Confessions" article.
7. Leave a few school books lying around - preferably open - to simulate studiousness.

I mean, I realize that they know that I have my own life, but at the same time, we don't have to acknowledge that fact. Everyone's at their happiest when no expectations are being blatantly disappointed.

Sometimes the best things you can do for someone are the small, cheap things that just show you care. Words and grandiose gifts can often only go so far - that small gift of thought is in the end the one that people really long for. I've been on both ends of that equation. I've been given little gifts that so clearly say "I love you" - pasta, necklaces, a rambling 13-minute video about life in a state I left - and also tried to give them. I just hope that I offer back these small gifts of thought as often as they've been given to me. So tonight I dragged dear sweet Greg to the 24-hour BiLo to pick up a chick flick (Wimbledon), ice cream (chocolate chunk), and beer (a 40 of Modelo) as a break-up care package. 10 dollar total, but the two hours spent consuming those items really meant more than anything else I could have said or brought her.

Every now and then I'm still caught off-guard by how much I love film. After three years of analyzing it and picking it apart and studying it, those moments of inspiration come fewer and further between. But every now and then I'll start talking to someone about a movie, and I'll find myself again caught up in that rush of excitement that a brilliant movie can give me. Chatting with my parents tonight, it was one camera movement in Gone Baby Gone and the mirror-bridge sequence in Inception that reminded me of the fact that cinema is such a brilliant medium. It can have a visceral impact in a way that few other media can.