The Making of Movie Memories. Or Juvenile Delinquency. Take your pick.

During a conversation about movies recently, I mentioned that I love watching The Goonieswith my 4-year old son. "Isn't that movie kind of scary?" said the other mother.

Yes. Yes it is.

"And doesn't it have some dirty language?"

Yes. Yes it does.

When one of the Goonies says "damn it!" my son always shakes his head no and says, "We don't say 'damn it,' do we mommy?"

No. We don't. I answer proudly.

And yes, The Goonies also has a fake suicide, guns and a dead guy all of which I try to obscure by stretching myself in front of the television at the opportune moments.

Motherhood takes flexibility.

But truth be told, I don't really care. To my son it's all about the treasure hunt in a dark, spooky cave and booty traps. "That's what I said, 'booby traps!'" (For those who know the film.) Throw in a big, buttery bowl of popcorn, piles of blankets and ... ta-da! one fuzzy childhood movie memory. If there's any latent psychologically damage from low-level violence, I'm sure he'll be fine.

Goonies, after all, do teach resilience.

How could I deny him? Movies add so much color to childhood. And I want my son's to be colorful. Mine was. Not just because I am one of seven, but because my parents took us with them. Everywhere. To boxing matches, the horse races. And best of all, the movies.

I remember us kids in slippers and pajamas piling into the station wagon to watch triple features at the drive-in where "family-friendly"meant the kids sat on blankets spread on the ground leaving the parents alone in the car.

Then there were the rainy Saturday afternoons sitting on a scratchy carpet remnant in a cold library basement listening to the hypnotic clack of the film projector spinning out movies like Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 sci-fi film where scientists shrink themselves to attack a deadly blood clot in some guy’s body. Very creepy in a medically invasive kind of way.

To this day, I can't help wondering if a team of miniscule scientists has stowed away inside the syringe each time I get a shot.

And when Star Wars was released my dad took us to see it, not once, but 13 times. In a row. The last time, the local theater owner didn’t have the heart to charge him. I remember feeling like a starlet, pulled out of line, the red rope unlatched just for me. "Please. Just go in. Your money's no good here."

There's a reason the zombie film Shaun of the Dead is my idea of the perfect romantic comedy. Seeing Amityville Horror on the big screen as a child will do that to you. So will getting locked in the basement by your brothers afterward. It took months before I could go into our basement's dark, dank fruit cellar, a Portal to Hell if ever there was one.

You don't have to tell me twice to "Get out!"

And sometimes the right movie is a gateway to wondrous, transformative, albeit slightly deviant, things.

Enter Heavy Metal, an animated, R-rated, rock-and-roll extravaganza that my father took my brothers and me to see. We liked it so much that he let us hide under the seats between shows, dodging ushers sweeping up popcorn, so we could watch it again without paying. Very rock-and-roll.

Actually, I'm not sure which was more transforming - the movie with it's blond, buxom, sword-wielding heroine kicking ass in a leather bikini or committing a misdemeanor with my family. But as a tall, skinny, frizzy-haired girl with glasses, braces and poor posture, I took whatever help I could get.

Stop the Bus! I'm Having a DC Moment.

If you aren't a very political person, living in Washington DC will change that.

Politics is all around you. It permeates the air. It's in the water. Along with lead and trace pharmaceuticals.

Take for example the DC moment I had yesterday. I'm sitting with my son on the H4 bus going to Whole Foods to buy some bulgar wheat. I had just read in this Magic Foods book that I really need to eat this grain if I want to live longer. And since I do, buying bulgar wheat moved to the top of my to-do list.

The bus passes by Sidwell Friends, the Quaker school where the Obama girls go. I look over and see Malia swinging a tennis racket with her classmates on the court just a few yards away from the road. Sigh. I hope my son gets into a good school where he can learn tennis. The DC school lottery, where parents learn the fate of their children's education, is tomorrow. And even with all my research and leg work, it feels so arbitrary. No chance of getting into Sidwell. It's private, for one. And even with one of their teachers, make that one of their former teachers, facing allegations of child sex abuse, it's still the elitist of the elite.

I know. I don't equate the Quakers with Elitism either. But there you have it.

The bus stops alongside a triad of young male professionals you might normally see in this neighborhood wearing black pea coats and khakis. Except these guys are all wearing dark sunglasses and have the distinctive white spiral wire curling behind their ears making them look like very casually-dressed androids. Oh. "These aren't the droids you're looking for." These are Malia and Sasha's Secret Service detail.

As the bus passes them, I wonder how they are trained to see us. Us Everyday People. Who arouses their suspicions? I bet that homeless guy hunkering down in front of a brick wall doesn't concern them at all. He could even leave one of his many bags unattended and they wouldn't blink. A luxury afforded the homeless.

I feel like waving. To the Secret Service detail. Not the homeless guy. Not that I have anything against homeless people. He would probably enjoy it. Then again, who am I to assume. But I don't wave. To anyone. Waving may be classified as stalker behavior, enough reason for them to throw me and my child in that Secret Service paddy wagon parked down the street.

DC is small. If you live here long enough you're bound to have many DC moments. And this one is warm and fuzzy. It involves children and Quakers. How could it not be?

Some DC moments aren't. Like the time my husband and I were having lunch after a Michael Moore matinee featuring Fahrenheit 9/11. Love him or hate him, it's really quite impossible to feel ambivalent after watching one of his films. I was sitting there feeling considerably non-ambivalent about the whole Let's Attack Iraq thing when then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice passed by on her way to her usual table. Her jacket sleeve brushed my back.

"Check, please."

Love her or hate her, Dr. Rice is not warm and fuzzy.

My husband's favorite DC moment, officially on record, involves Veep Dick Cheney, his motorcade and the Middle Finger.

It's the little things.

Please don't think us stark, raving mad partisans. Some of our closest friends are Republicans.

Well. That's exaggerating things a bit.

But I was nearly eviscerated at a party once for daring to question some of Obama's campaign promises. What can I say. I was raised on a healthy diet of Mark Twain and taught to distrust all politicians. Even the hot ones.

Anyway, if politicians didn't fudge the truth just a wee bit, we'd have to scrap all those good political jokes. "Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed frequently. And for the same reason." One of my favorites.

But it wasn't my intent to be political. Here or in general. It's just hard to avoid when you live in this town.

What Exactly Is "Free Time"?

Free Time, in my world, is an elusive beast that needs to be attacked and wrangled with strategic foresight and, if possible, leather restraints.

With my husband and son out for a couple of hours, I have the entire apartment to myself. This is rare. My husband works from home and my four-year old isn't in a school program. He seemed too young to be in school all day. I thought this was a good idea. At the time.

But "Now" is what is important. There are many options and I must pick carefully. I will not clean a thing. I will not lift even one Lego. The strategy is to do something that I absolutely can not do while they’re home. My husband could've at least given me a little heads up so I could plan. Dali's Persistence of Memory actually means something to me now. Which is completely unintended. I just needed a clock picture. But now I'm drawn in. Free Time is slipping. And drooping.

I could read a magazine. It’s so hard these days to just zone out with a good decorating or fashion mag without my son interrupting. “Mommy, I’m hungry. Can I have a snack.”

It’s already 1:28 p.m. My husband said they’d be back around 3 p.m. What was that? A threat?

I decide to watch “Singin’ In The Rain." My husband hates musicals and doesn't buy my "but, it's so existential" argument. This is a good time to watch. I really just want to see the dance scenes, so I also mend a sweater and my favorite double-breasted opera coat, a real show-stopper that I bought in New York City from a costume shop. It’s winter white with white embossed swirls. And I'm feeling theatrical. But I’m wasting time. I can always sew on my next visit to the Building Museum while my son plays.

Tap dancing. I haven’t been able to tap dance in a very long time. But I don't feel well. And tap dancing may not be the best thing for the onset of flu. It feels good to cross something off the list. Though, I bet a few head and body aches never stopped Debbie Reynolds.

Anyway, Chinese is more important. I think. I’ll listen to the news in Chinese. Or write some characters. I need to keep up my fluency so I can get a job after my son fires me (which he threatens when we butt heads). Something to fall back on in case this mothering thing doesn’t work out.

I know. I can work on my Chinese classes for children or that bilingual children's theater piece that is slowly brewing in my head. A surreal dream-scene from a British mystery I watched very late the other night gave me a great idea. All ideas seem great at 2 a.m.

Was that a key in the front door? Perhaps I'll make a cup of tea.

With my camera-phone, I take a picture of my mended opera coat and send it to my husband so that he can email it back to me. I haven't really worked out all the technicalities of this blogging thing. Another project.

He's disappointed that it wasn't a naked picture of me. He's joking. Or is he? My thoughts turn carnal. Dirty. With the image of the one sure thing I definitely can not do by myself right now firmly implanted in my brain, I hope that Free Time isn't the only thing that gets wrangled with leather restraints ends soon.

The "I Love Blizzards" People

There are two types of people in this world.

Those who love blizzards. And those who don't.

I'm married to the former.

Actually he loves all major weather events. Some husbands may peek at soft porn when the wife is out of town. Mine tracks animated meteorological radar.

To set the mood, I need only reference a weather map.

He also has strong opinions on the snow removal process. His critique on DC’s scraping and salting technique is long and scientific. “Most people just don’t know when to salt,” he laments. (This critique also extends to those who don’t understand the science behind their car’s defrost mechanisms.)

For the February 5^th blizzard, the only shovel available was our landlord’s squat, short-handled, square-edged garden shovel. At this recent memory he shakes his head in disgust. He'll be a happier person if he can just buy a proper snow shovel for the blizzard that is chasing us north to Washington, DC.

Only two days after the last blizzard that dumped two feet of snow on the DC metropolitan area, I’m on snowy roads with son and husband navigating home from a Virginia rock-n-roll roadtrip in a rented two-door sports coupe. (It's all they had.)

Along the way, we stop at five different stores looking for a snow shovel. Not some German-designed lug nut for some specialized snow blower. A snow shovel. At Target, Lowes, Ace Hardware, Costco, Home Depot, not only is the answer "No," but they all laugh at us.

The manager at Home Depot tells us that when a news crew showed up to document the arrival of 200 snow shovels, so did a mob of people fighting over them. When a riot broke out (his words, not mine), they had to call the police.

Over snow shovels.

Let's add a third type of blizzard person - those who panic.

I know my husband really, really wants a snow shovel because he loves shoveling as much as he hates shopping. And we stop at every possible store along Virginia's highways looking for a snow shovel. Shockingly, in this Land Of Plenty we can't buy one. Not even our quaint neighborhood hardware store has some expensive ergonomic, handmade Amish model. We can't even find the usual sketchy character wandering the streets with necessary items trying to price gouge. "Hey buddy. Wanna buy a shovel?" Nothing.

As the snow starts falling my husband returns the rental car. This entails walking a couple miles along a hilly road with treacherous sidewalks buried in snow and ice. This is where he scores. He returns home with a plastic scoop from a broken snow shovel.

"Someone actually threw this away. Can you believe it?"

Yes. Yes, I can.

Like a magician, he materializes an old broom handle. "Good thing I kept this."

"???, ??? ????," I respond.

Out come the tools.

While I'm comfy on the couch watching Foyle's War, the best mystery series ever made in the history of television, he roots through a Tupperware container of screws and bolts, spreading them onto the living room carpet. Next come the drill bits and the old, oily drill.

Into the plastic scoop he drills and drills. And then drills and drills. I take one for the team and do not complain. I've seen this episode already. Twice. Okay, more than that. But that's not the point.

After the drilling and duct taping, he has himself a proper snow shovel. It leans up against our apartment door waiting for the snow to pile up outside.

A blizzard is an event. To be part of it is important. According to the I Love Blizzards people. So, when it happens, I head outside to help with the shoveling. My son makes an ice cave in the front yard. And except for the howling 30 mph winds blowing razor-like snow across my face, it's beautiful and quiet. No cars or busses come down our normally noisy street.

My husband and I develop a routine - he gets down to the ice with the garden shovel then I come along with the snow shovel. Then we switch.

Trying to get a full-body work out, I devise a shoveling technique that targets my thighs as I greet others out braving the storm. They are kindred souls – they who throw themselves into the fray and wash themselves with the brutal force that is Nature.

Or they’re on a beer run. Which I also appreciate.

Later when we're all inside warming up, my husband settles in to watch the weather updates. He finds Doug Hill, the only local meteorologist he trusts with the weather.

"This blizzard has broken DC's record snowfall set in 1899 at 55 inches! That's awesome," he says rubbing his hands together with a devilish, boyish gleam in his eyes.

I know that devilish, boyish gleam well and quickly search the web for a great weather map to share with him attempting to broaden my cardio activity options beyond that of shoveling. Cha-cha.

Oh, how I love I Love Blizzards people.