Month: October 2012

Letters from friends

Something wonderful…. my mOm’s newest project. She has collected all her letters to her two female best friends (Sue and Elizabeth), along with all the letters she kept that they sent her, into yet another enormous book, and I am ‘not exactly proofreading it’. What I am discovering is that the kids and our extended family and I are CHARACTERS in this opus, and I am wandering through the early days of childrearing and the blasting back and forth to Montreal and Toronto and the early days of the move here with wide eyed interest. One third of the time: I have no recollection of that event. One third: Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. One third: W T Fffff?. Occasionally my mother makes censorious comments about some stupidity I have committed and makes nervous comments about stuff she finds scary (all in a tone which would make Jane Austen proud) but when it comes to the adoration g’mas have for the grandbabies she takes a back seat to NO WOMAN.  Keith and Kate are beautiful, obedient, intelligent, kind, observant, loving and adorable in every way.  As Keith remarked at lunch the other day, “What happened?”  Nothing dear, you are still all of those things.

Kittle cattle

This is an expression I was exposed to in reading Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I only got through the Anne books once, and not attentively; most of my Montgomery reading was the same two books, over and over again, because that’s what I did, when I was a kid, was to read books over and over again, like the Mary Poppins books and the Hobbit and the Narnia books, and then Lord of the Rings and then Dunnett, ah, Dunnett.  I obsessively re-read Blue Castle and A Tangled Web.  Like, a lot, and repeatedly, to the point I memorized great chunks of dialogue.

When I’m trying to be warm and funny and chumpathetic with human foibles and vices, it’s to Montgomery I look for the blessed tone.  She gave me characters of occasional dignity and variable worth; all more or less attempting to be good while surrounded with the potential for thunderous criticism inherent in a small Prince Edward Island town early in the 20th century.  Where people really cared about what their neighbours did, having no tv poor things, rather than strangers living in Babylon several thousand leagues away and anything you saw them doing happened three months ago, which is good because it keeps you in perspective.

In this environment kittle cattle means – easily spooked or set awry.  The descriptor from the text is “so intense”. To me it’s a combination of being easily startled and self-willed, ‘difficult to manage’.  Not fun to be married to, as I construe it.  A troubling person, perhaps with genuine mental health difficulty.  Liable to stomp off.

 

Unsuccessful cheesemaking

Is unsuccessful. Sigh. I have a big clean up in front of me.  On the plus side, I just pulled some more home made chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.

Had a salmon dinner with my new extended family last night.  Since the Katie’s pinnacle of DO NOT WANT  exboyfriend may read this I am not going to provide kidlet names, but it was awesome, even if I got tired really fast.  I got to drive them home. They are EXTREMELY CUTE and reasonably well behaved.   NEVER underestimate the power of a large and robust cardboard box to maintain the interest and imaginations of four and five year olds.

Keith, lunch, Homeland, laundry

I love Showtime’s Homeland so so so much. Just watched S2E2 and all three of us yelled “Holy s@@t!” as the credits rolled. Keith said, “I did NOT see that coming” and is just now catching up on the most recent Castle. Time to close the laptop and go back to folding lawwwwnnnndray.

Keith took me to lunch at Hi Dozo, the dear one.  My prescription has IMPROVED.  That’s crazy, but that’s middle age.  My eyeballs are healthy.  I will post a picture….

I’ve got rants in my pants

I called somebody out on using a gendered slur recently and he paused & adjusted his speech. Sometimes it’s that easy.  Now if I could just stop using my own slurs and replace them with something better.  I am in search of a few good words, to replace a few slur-ry ones.  I’m looking at YOU r-tarded and p-nsy, two words which shouldn’t even be coming into my mind, let alone leaving my mouth.  If the action is stupid, I’ll use ‘ill-considered’, and if the person is stupid to the point of being a threat to life, limb and body politic, ‘witless’.  P-nsy is more problematic.  I am thinking ‘mollescent’ or ‘mollusc’ or ‘spineless’, although if I use mollusc I am afraid the Old Ones will cotch me.  I’m working on replacing “Thank G-d” with “Thankfulness!” and I’m already well into replacing the exclamations “C—-t!” and “J—s!” with “Darwin’s Beard!”

 

Excellent news

I have a job test on Monday at noon which I am very pleased about.

Also I actually TYPED the minutes and sent a draft to Sue already; the board meeting was last night.

Also Sue and I ground our way through the Stewardship Drive work (she did most of the work but I will be instrumental in getting it all printed for the pledge package).

Furnace on for the first time this year.  House smells like a dusty cat.

 

Worth stealing wholesale from boingboing.net

A letter from Sydney Smith to Lady Georgiana Morpeth (right), Feb. 16, 1820:

Dear Lady Georgiana, — Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done — so I feel for you.

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short views of human life — not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely – they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life — a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,

Very truly yours,

Sydney Smith

Brain hurts

It’s like a slap in the face to get up and realize there’s NO MORE SUN.  But hell, it’s October.  And October is SOME OTHER PLANET Month. (Obligatory Joe Hall reference).

I’m off to put gas in Ziva, maybe even for the last time as the plates expire at the end of the month and I’m not renewing them.  I will collect Katie and bring her back here for laundry and other mischief, and then churchy type stuff in preparation for the Board meeting tomorrow.

I am working on three new songs simultaneously.  One of them is because I downloaded a free app which allows me to strum chords I couldn’t play tanked up on painkillers, meth and ketamine, one of them is vibrating rapidly back and forth between being George’s theme (Lady of the Deep Waves) in my imaginary show and being something sad from the Game of Thrones universe, and the other is a Celtic style “Go forth and be happy” kinda tune.  I must be driving Jeff nuts, I’m practicing for hours every day and unfortunately it’s rather hard for me to write songs without actually, you know, like, singing.

I am contemplating the list of things I’ve put off with misery.  I’d like to trade that in for some feisty action and a dirk to slit the gizzard of my procrastination but the friendly NPC at the counter is NOT helping.

I’m enjoying having a phone that allows me to post pix directly to my blog though, I think it instantly made it more fun and interesting.