the champagne savvy of bunny watson

peg costello: "there are 85 calories in a glass of champagne."
bunny watson: "i have a place in my neighbourhood where i can get it for 65."

today i nestled in the loft for another katharine hepburn screening. i armed myself with a whole wheat pita filled with an imaginatively-concocted arugala-garlic-mayo dip, snap peas, some old white cheddar and for dessert a handful of 70% cuban dark chocolate. to drink i had some orange juice mixed with soda water. as i stretched out on my belly, (i recently confessed to a neighbour that the university library was not my favourite study space because it didn't allow one to assume such positions for the purposes of enrichment and education), i realized that part of the charm of housesitting is the make-believe that is involved. while i've been here, it has been brilliantly simple to delude myself into thinking that this house is mine. i've built a whole imaginary life for myself that invovles tending a garden, feeding a cat and breakfasting on front steps that do not, in reality, belong to me. for the time i am here though i can quickly pass through the decade or two of my life in which i work tirelessly to achieve all this space represents and i can enjoy the fruits of my (hastily skipped) labour. in this imaginary world i've been able to satisfy so many desires: i can fill my house with music thanks to the unbelievable stereo system; i can do my laundry and hang it out in a clothes line in the sun; i can cook myself delicious french meals in wonderful ceramic cookery; i can play the hostess to my cherished friends; in short i can play fast and loose with space, time, obligations and money. i can believe in a world like the one in Desk Set, the eighth of the nine Tracy/Hepburn films, not where a woman like Bunny Watson is cursed to play the sidekick to an insufferable executive boyfriend like Gig Young, but where, between bookshelves in the research stacks, Spencer Tracy, slightly drunk on too much Christmas champagne can tell Katharine Hepburn, more than slightly drunk on the same champagne, that she must write beautiful letters. in the past of the film, i've found my future of the present which will in time be it's own past at the same time that it will be (hopefully, with lots of hard work) the future.