Caroline Grant's Blog, page 2

Support Independent Filmmaking!

Come to a preview screening/potluck dinner/discussion/fundraiser for independent mom filmmaker Deirdre Fishel, who is raising funds to complete her documentary, Sperm Donor X. Donations gratefully accepted, but not required; come for the movie, stay for the discussion!

Here is Deirdre's story:

I began filming Sperm Donor X at 40, when I found myself at a precipice. I wanted to at least try to have a biological child yet doing it alone with donor sperm felt bizarre and terrifying.

I had no idea h...

Double Feature

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One of the most memorable post-kid dates for Tony and me came sometime around Ben's first birthday. We went out to a movie (American Splendor) and then, realizing the night was still young and Ben wouldn't need to nurse again for a while, we went to another (The Secret Lives of Dentists, which I wrote about much later). They are both good movies, but it didn't even matter; what mattered was that we were free enough to do something extra, something spontaneous. It felt great.

Since then, of cou...

Me on TV!

In case you missed it, here's the clip of my recent segment on View from the Bay:

The Day I Didn't Meet Florence Henderson

So I was on television today, and I have to say it was a lot of fun, though it all got off to kind of an inauspicious start. I arrived at the studio promptly at 2:20, as requested, accompanied by my supportive friend, only to find I wasn't on the security guard's List. I wasn't listed under my name, or my website, or my segment name. The security guard at the desk called the producer while my friend and I watched the 4 televisions in the lobby, hoping we wouldn't be there long enough to watch...

Fantastic Mr. Fox: The Sequel

At lunch today, Eli started talking about the differences between Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Wes Anderson's film version. We've only seen the movie once, but Ben has been reading the book to Eli in the car, and the conversation about the two different versions of the story shows no sign of abating. So Eli announced he wanted to write a sequel to the book, one that would come to a more exciting conclusion than Roald Dahl's. I offered to type it up for him, not knowing that I have been ...

Mama at the Movies: Fantastic Mr. Fox

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One of the sweet highlights of our Christmas vacation was our first-ever family movie outing, which provided fodder for my newest column at Literary Mama. Here's an excerpt:

We've been looking for Ben's first movie theater-movie for years. It had to be fairly quiet: no big explosions, no loud soundtrack (though we would bring ear plugs to protect against overzealous projectionists.) It had to be a gentle story: no heightened drama, no second act inflated by chase scenes. I could do without a l...

9 for '09

I didn't manage 9 categories, but here are my top 9's in 6 (9 upside-down) categories for 2009:

Memorable Meals

Eli's first meat, a meatball at the Pasta Pomodoro in San Rafael, of all places: "Mama, I know it's meat, and I want it."
Jewish Quarter falafel with Lilya
Tony's 40th birthday party at Beretta – burrata on pizza, mmmm…
Dinner with Libby and her family at Jamie's Italian in Oxford
One lukewarm bottle of water at Legoland in England (where it does get hot but they still don't have ice): th...

What I've Been Working On...

Check it out.

And if you ever hear that I'm planning to wrap up a longterm project -- one my husband has been chipping away at for a year and one that takes up increasing amounts of my spare time, too, until we both find ourselves staying up past midnight, several nights running, to meet self-imposed deadlines -- during a big holiday week, while my kids are out of school and my parents are in town, you might want to dissuade me.

But it seems to have worked out okay.

Dear Santa

Santa Claus has been responsive to us in the past (remember the year of the pogo stick?), so the boys are optimistic about their letters this year. And I have to say, with such reasonable (and relatively old-school!) requests, I think Santa will respond favorably:

First, Eli's. We do not have a dog, but he takes good care of all his stuffies, and feels the dogs need their own bowls:

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back scratchers
calculator
Please
Love eli Grant

Then Ben's letter, using his new paper-engineering and...

Mama at the Movies: Motherhood

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How perfect! A movie about a woman trying to raise two kids in the city while also carving out time to write. I was eager to see Katherine Dieckmann's new film, Motherhood, especially after reading the interview with her on Literary Mama. Here's an excerpt from my latest column:

Dressed in jeans and an old fleece, my hair pulled back into a messy bun, I looked exactly like what I am: a mom who'd just barely made it out of the house, leaving the post-dinner mess, homework supervision, and the k...