It is now nearly 1am and baby G is finally sleeping. Right now he is next to me on the sofa. We arrived back in the UK on Tuesday. Since then two new teeth have come through, and right now it looks like there is a third. On top of jet lag. Poor baby!
One great thing about having flown back on a weekday was that I got to watch daytime TV. And what SG1 episode was Sky Two showing? Cold Lazarus. Finally, after all these years, I have managed to see it as it aired on TV. Up until now I've only had a VCD kindly donated to me by Feli. Somehow, and I don't know how, I've missed it every time it screened.
It is a superb episode, and it always gets right to me. It ends with me desperately wanting Jack and Sara to be together, to have more children. This time around was harder than any other time I've seen the episode. It was the first time I had seen it since Baby G was born. I cried my eyes out.
There is one thing that bugs me though. For convenience of the storyline they totally disregarded the characters of Sam and Daniel. Neither one of them would have gossiped about Jack. The conversation in which Daniel blithely told Sam all about Jack's tragic past and what happened to his marriage would really have gone like this:
Daniel: well Jack doesn't like to talk about his past until he has known someone for a long time.
Sam: fair enough. Want to come look at the crystals in the lab/
Daniel: Yup.
so instead I have to re-engineer the gate-verse - it must be that Daniel, although he barely knew sam at this stage, could already intrinsically sense how incredible a person she was, and how trustworthy, and also knew without having to be told that Jack would trust her implicitly anyway, without having to have known her for a really long time, and that Sam also felt the same way about Daniel and Jack. Whew. Lucky then that being SG1 you just know they do trust each other.
Our time in New Zealand was wonderful. It was great to catch up with my family. I didn't get to meet up with as many of my friends as I would have liked. However, I did get to meet the grandson of one of my oldest friends. We have known each other since we were six, and she is only a few weeks older than me. He is as bright as a button, and just too cute.
My folks no longer live in the home I grew up in, but they do live in the same suburb. Wainuiomata as a place to live has lots of positives, and plenty of negatives, but it has only one way in and one way out. The Hill Road - twisting, steep, with a fantastic view of Wellington across the harbour and right up the Hutt Valley. At night the lights of Wellington look like a delicate tiara, while the Hutt flows donwards in a V like one of those strings of diamond necklaces. The sheer monotony of always, always, always having to go the same route though, was depressing as a teenager and it still gets me down. Most people can't wait to leave, but many stay and even marry people from Wainui. It has a great community, and I know that is what keeps the folks there.
We spent the first week painting my folks place - dining room, kitchen, bathroom, hall. This was a bit of a surprise for me and my brother, also over from the UK, as we only found out the day before. But the other siblings (there are six of us) had decided that it would make a great birthday present for mum. And they were right, she loved it. Blimin hard work though, and I felt sorry for Mr G. Not quite the holiday he had in mind. We did have fun though.
Then mum got sick. Would she go to the doctors? Would she heck. What is it with that generation? If I had a big event coming up and was feeling a bit under the weather, I'd be straight down the doctors demanding everything to make sure I was on top form for the big day. Instead she put it off until the friday (the birthday lunch was on the Saturday) by which time she could barely talk, and had virtually no breath to even get out of bed. The doctor wanted to send her to hospital - it was a lung infections - but she refused. With the antibiotics and a good night's sleep she made it to the lunch, but spent most of the rest of the week in bed. She is back on form now. Being a heavy smoker for over 50 years doesn't help. On the day before we left, hubs and I had been for a walk down to the mall (you need to have been to the Wainuiomata mall to understand just how truly soul destroying that can be). When we got back dad happily announced that they'd just made lunch and did we want some? On the coffee table in the lounge sat lunch. Ice cream and packets of sweets. All perfectly normal for my folks.
Gipsy joined GateWorld when it was STARGUIDE in January 2001, and has
been watching Stargate since the movie. Originally from New
Zealand (specifically, Wainuiomata), she started backpacking around the
world in 1989 and hasn't stopped yet. Life is spent mostly in London with
husband Mr G and baby G, born in 2005. She is also blessed with a
beautiful step daughter and wonderful step son.
Aaah teething...I wish I didn't remember those days. Of course my mother wasn't much help. She just kept telling me to soak a towel with whiskey and put it in his mouth.;)
Cold Lazarus is a pretty wrenching episode. The stuff with Daniel and Sam didn't really bug me but that's mostly because I tend to be pragmatic and looked at it merely as exposition to aquaint any of the audience not familiar with Jack's back story. It was the death of Jack's son that I have a hard time with. Even before my son was born I had a hard time watching or reading anything where a child is hurt or killed but since my son is born I can't stomach it at all. During the BSG mini-series I just knew something bad was going to happen when Six picked up that baby so I turned the channel until I was sure that scene had passed because it just made me physically ill to think of a baby being harmed. So with the flashbacks to the day Jack's son shot himself I almost didn't make it through the episode.
Couldn't put him down last night, poor thing. He wouldn't settle anywhere that wasn't on my lap. Hubs was out, he went to see a band called Black Moses (if anyone is into British music, check them out, they're very good). So when he got home at 2 am (he doesn't drink, thankfully) he took over. Five and a half hours sleep. Funny how only six months ago I'd have been thrilled to have got so much sleep in one go!
Book, TV, movies - they all need a parental warning. Caution, this work of fiction contains scenes that some parents may find hard to handle. I thought 21 grams was a brilliant movie, absolutely blinding, but oh boy, if I'd known about the event the plot was based on I'd never have been able to go see it. As it was, I nearly had to walk out the theatre.
I never thought anything unusual about that scene in Cold Lazarus, which is one of my favorite season 1 episodes. It seemed completely normal to me as new team members talking about another team member; also it was such an early episode. After that episode I wouldn't have expected it as Jack's privacy issues would then have been known. Interesting, different perspectives.