random thoughts during the 2015 oscars

Notes from the Red Carpet..

Dakota Johnson looks great and I love that she and her mom are embarrassing each other on worldwide television.

Reese Witherspoon looks amazing. Loved "Wild." My fave movie of the year!

Don't love Emma Stone's dress but still love her and her quote of the night: ".. Bradley Cooper, who I know...he's a normal person." Uh yeah.

Why did Faith Hill cut her hair?

Kerry Washington looks great, as always.

I love Bradley Cooper. ...he's "a normal person" ya know.

I love Chris Evans too. But I love Chris Hemsworth more. Where's Thor?

Fun fact: Patricia Arquette lives across the street from my boss. (And Justin Timberlake lives across the street from my poker hostess with the mostess... I think this "across the street from famous people" is becoming a thing in my life.)

Now on the with Show!

Ok NPH, I have big hopes for you tonight. #nopressure

Loved NPH's opening number with Anna Kendrick and Jack Black! Super fun!

Thanks Lupita Nuongo for getting me the "teleprompter flub" spot on my Oscar bingo card by saying "And the Actor goes to.." JK Simmons already won an Actor. And now he has an Oscar! "Whiplash" was a crazy intense film and his performance was crazy, intense and amazing! And his speech was also one of the best ever. Call your mom and dad! I love you Juno's dad!

Oh hi Adam Levine. Who predicted "Lost Stars" would get a nomination when she saw "Begin Again" last summer? Oh yeah, that would be me.

I hated "The Grand Budapest Hotel"...just fyi. It felt like it was 10 years long. But it can win Hair/Makeup and Costume, as long as that's all it wins.

Wes Anderson has been making movies for 17 years?!?! He looks like he's only 17.

Ok. Best Oscar Performance EVER! "Everything is AWESOME!" Love you Batman!  Plus, thanks 

for the "Wacky Tux" space on my Oscar bingo card, Adam Sandburg. 

New best quote of the night, from NPH:

"I love that dress. It takes a lot of balls to wear that dress."

(Talking about this woman who won for "Documentary Short Subject.")

Gwyneth Paltrow really likes wearing pink to the Oscars, doesn't she?

The Glen Campbell song, performed by Tim McGraw, was totally sad. Thanks Julianne Moore for the "tears" box on my Oscar Bingo card. Could we have the "In Memoriam" now too so we can just get all the sad over with at once.  #rememberrobin

NPH reenacts the "Birdman" tighty whitie scene. Painful. Part Deux.

Jared Leto in a powder blue tux. No comment. Okay.. a comment... Why Jared, why?

Yay for Patricia Arquette! And yay for her equal rights and wages for women speech! She rocks.

Christian Grey's sister is singing. A song from super songwriter Diane Warren. That is all.

Okay, I haven't seen "Interstellar" yet. But I find it hard to believe it just beat "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Dawn of the Planet of rhe Apes" for Visual Effects. Can someone tell me why?

Anna Kendrick is taller than Kevin Hart. And it's not just her heels, Kevin.

LOVE Jessica Chastain's dress. That's one of my colors! I WANT that dress!

"Birdman" wins for Cinematography. Shocker!

Now the sad "In Memorium." #rememberrobin

Jennifer Hudson's voice is sooo good. Wow.

Best Filming Editing goes to "Whiplash." This is sad, because if "American Sniper" had won, I could have continued my "across the street from famous people" theme, as nominee Gary D. Roach lives next door to my BFF Christina up in the SCV. Oh well...

Great "Glory" performance. More "tears" for my Oscar bingo card.

Idina Menzel rocks. That is all.

So you're telling me John Legend's name isn't really John Legend? It's John Stephens?!?! Mind. Just. Blown. (And Lonnie Lynn? Really "Common"? But can't say I blame you on that one....)

Umm... is Lady Gaga really singing songs from "The Sound of Music," or have I just had too much wine? I mean she has a good voice, but she's definitely no nun.

AHHHHHHH JULIE ANDREWS!!!!  Bow down people. Bow down.

YES! "The Grand Budapest Hotel" did NOT win Original Screenplay. Any of those movies were better. So congrats "Birdman." (Why do I feel that's not the last time I'll type that tonight? #worktweettoclientscomingsoon)

2nd Best Speech of the Night goes to former weird kid Graham Moore, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Imitation Game."  "Stay weird,  stay different." Yes!

And now, the only acting award that could go more than one way.....

Whoo hoo! Eddie Redmayne winning Best Actor for "The Theory of Everything" makes me soooooo happy! Such an amazing performance in an amazing film!

Julianne Moore wins. So well deserved. But why couldn't Matthew McConabeard say "Alright" three times instead of just once so I could win on my Oscar bingo card?

Best Picture... "Birdman" or "Boyhood?" (It shoulda been "Wild")

Birdman. Not a surprise. Have I mentioned that "Wild" was my favorite movie this year? Le sigh...

P.S. None of these Oscar bingo cards won. You suck Jimmy Fallon. Is the Jimmy Kimmel Oscar special on yet?

goodbye granny

My grandma passed away Tuesday afternoon. And a huge part of my heart went with her. So many memories of my life involve her.

She was my last living grandparent. She was also my first babysitter, and my life-long cheerleader.

When I was a baby, my mom worked in a bank. Granny took care of me every day.

When I was a kid, she lived in a big house on Boy Scout Lane in El Paso. She had three acres in the back of the house, two fenced off for horses and one was the backyard, full of trees and bordered on each side by irrigation ditches that would fill with water a few times a year and flood the yards. But when they were empty, they were an adventure land to my siblings, cousins and I. We'd spend hours out in that yard, climbing the big tree on the side of the house and running up and down those ditches, under the trees, making up stories and battling each other or imaginary bad guys, while Granny sat on the porch watching us.

She had a barn and when she was boarding horses, we'd go out and toss hay to them. We would collect eggs from the chicken coup. She even had a goose that I vaguely remember... mostly because it bit me when I was three and I still have the scar on my arm. I think that goose became dinner shortly after that ;)

Inside the house, we kids would play hide and seek through the bedrooms, hiding in closets or under the baby grand piano no one ever played in the front room and running and/or sliding down the long tile hallway in our socks with Granny yelling at us not to run in the house.

She had a bar that opened from the kitchen into the den and we'd play restaurant with her there, taking orders and filling fancy glasses with water from the bar sink. Her kitchen is also where I developed my life-long hatred of coffee, when she let me and my cousin Dave try some when I was around 6 or 7. It was too hot and gross and I am repelled by the taste of it to this day. We'd also sit at the kitchen table playing kiddie card games -- Slap Jack, Go Fish and Old Maid.

Granny and I shared a love of all things purple. I don't remember when exactly I decided purple was my favorite color, but I do know I chose it because she loved it. For at least the last 10 years, I've called the local flower shop in her town a week before Mother's Day, and three months later, a week before her August birthday and told the shop owner I needed a bouquet "with lots of purple in it." I'm sure after a year or two, that woman at Flowerland in Raton, NM, must have started thinking, "Oh, it's the purple girl calling for her grandma's flowers."

When Granny moved to an assisted living facility a few years back and was giving away a lot of her stuff, she gave me a beautiful tea pot, cups and saucers with purple flowers on them. The set is so beautiful I haven't used it for fear of damaging it.

It's weird... I was in my kitchen on Saturday rearranging stuff in my cabinets to make room for a new tiered platter set I got for Christmas. I became fixated on a top shelf that holds my other grandparents' china and Granny's purple flowered tea set. I rearranged the whole thing so that the purple teapot is showcased in the middle of the shelf.

The next day, my parents told me Granny's health had taken a turn for the worse.

I called her Monday night because I had to talk to her. Two weeks ago I was thinking I would see her this June when I traveled to my cousin's wedding. But it was made sadly clear to me Sunday that that was not going to happen.

She was really groggy and hard to understand on the phone. I told her how much I loved her. She said she loved me too. That I understood.

But I also already knew it. How could I not? No one loves you like your grandma, and my two siblings, seven cousins and I had the best grandma of the bunch.