A couple weeks back I was sitting at the breakfast table with coffee and newspaper when suddenly I felt I was being watched. I instinctively looked toward the window of the family room to my right and there was a most peculiar sight for 7 o’clock in the morning. For a moment I froze. There was a deer looking straight at me! 

Trying to avoid moving my lips or making any overt move that could scare it away, I said to Hubby, there’s a deer watching us through the window! We routinely keep the camera nearby for things just like this, so my next thought was, where’s the camera? By the time I had camera in hand, I guess the deer had decided there was no use to try to get to the geraniums or other greenery inside, so she headed on down the side of the house on her way to the street. This picture is proof that I hadn’t been tipping the bottle that early in the morning, there really was a deer looking in my window! 

We began last weekend breaking routine by finishing a long ignored basement project rather than wasting spending time online with faces buried in a computer monitor, so we decided to alter our routine further by seeing a movie Monday evening–not during the afternoon matinee as is our normal routine. I couldn’t even remember the last time we’d seen a movie in the evening. Would we be able to stay awake? Who did we think we were? Teenagers? 

It actually did feel really weird driving to the theater at a time when on any other night we’d be having dinner, then sitting down to watch whatever we could find on tv for a couple of hours before one or the other of us would begin to nod off and be nudged and prodded by the other one to go off to bed. Same old, same old. Routine but safe. I continued to feel completely out of my element all the way to the theater, half wondering what–or if–some ominous or out of the ordinary thing might happen while we were out of our safe nest. Would we ever see our grandchildren again?

Whether it’s storming in the middle of the night, or blazing hot and the middle of the day, time is suspended once I enter the close confines of a multiplex theater, and as soon as we were seated I forgot all else and settled down to concentrate on Front Row Joe being seduced into dancing with Popcorn Penny (who I must say has a lot of cleavage for a cat), and I was fine. Hubby leaned over and whispered, What happened to Joe’s tail? 

He was referring to Front Row Joe, the humanized male cat in Cinemark Theater’s commercial prequel to the feature film. Joe’s the one who tells you to hurry and buy some popcorn or candy and soda pop before the show begins. In the commercial he and his female counterpart, Popcorn Penny (the concession girl . . . errr . . . cat), are magically transformed into tuxedo and gown and begin to dance and cavort on stage.

When Joe entered the onscreen theater he sported a long bushy tail, but when he’s dancing with Penny in his tux his tail has disappeared and he has no shoes on with his tuxedo. Maybe he stuffed it into his pants leg? I answer. Nothing about the evening was routine so far. 

We’d decided to see No Country for Old Men since it had won four Oscars–best picture, best director, adapted screenplay (from Carmac McCarthy’s novel), and best supporting actor. It was one of the few nominated films that we’d missed. I won’t go into any sort of review here, lest anyone choosing to see it based on what I say be disappointed and blame me for wasting their time and money.

I will say this. It’s not a movie for the faint hearted. There’s a lot of blood involved. In fact I turned my head away or closed my eyes several times. I certainly understand why it was chosen best movie though, and I also concur with best supporting actor choice, Javier Bardem. If I ever meet him in person I’ll be scared out of my wits, I’m sure. He was superb! I was figuratively on the edge of my seat during the whole movie. Not once did I fidget or wonder how much longer until the end. In most movies I see I sit there and try to figure out beforehand how I think it’s going to end. I could not begin to guess at the ending for this one.  

After the movie we drove home, arriving at what would ordinarily be our bedtime, and stayed up an extra hour or two before going to bed. And guess what? The next morning the sun rose just the same as it does every morning. We turned on the news and nothing untoward that had anything to do with our break in routine had occurred. So I guess breaking with habit doesn’t have to shake up our whole world, does it? Maybe we’ll just live wildly and go out to a movie at night again sometime. Does you good to break out of routine, don’t you think?