“The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.”
~ Dudley Moore
Shame and an odd sense of adulthood are warring within me, kittens. Yesterday I received my first speeding ticket. 10 years ticket free and my perfect record now ruined, but now I feel like a normal driver.
The cop was quite nice, I told him I simply hadn’t been paying proper attention and he reduced it. I also got the impression he was glad I didn’t burst into tears or hysterics.
Honesty is the best policy, ducklings. You’d be surprised at how refreshing it is for some lines of work!
“I even made him eat healthy food. Mostly.” “Bless you.” – Peregrine, C.
I was lazy all weekend, and I regret nothing. Long phone calls with some of my the girls (although Scarlett still owes me one), biking, Thai food – bliss.
In the meantime, while I was being a loungey housecat, Peregrine took a long vacation to the UK to visit some friends in Oxford and frolic in her former home of Scotland. Naturally she crashed on J.’s couch in London from and to the airport, which meant I got to Skype with two of my favorite people at the same time. My brain nearly shorted out from glee.
My only quibble is that I was not there too! This will be rectified in July.
“It’s 4:58 on Friday afternoon. Do you know where your margarita is?” ― Amy Neftzger
Oh, PBS, talk dirty to me…
Friday is again upon us, minions, and praise Jupiter for it because this week has dragged at work! Most of the staff seems to have taken at least two days off (lucky jerks) and whole hours go by without so much as phone call. But that’s alright because this weekend I’m working on finalizing wedding travel plans for Flyboy’s nuptials, going to yoga, cleaning my flat (of which it is in dire need…), and I’m also planning a couple of marathon phone calls with the girls and J. Sunday looks like a good day to ride Harley and read some books before settling in with a bowl of kettlecorn, switching off my phone, and devouring the last episode of Sherlock.
In a similar vein, tonight (wild hedonistic thing that I am) I’m planning on working out, doing laundry, and pretending I’m at the Met with Scarlett by watching an Opera on PBS. Heck, I might even get some takeaway! That’s just how I roll, ducklings. What are your weekend plans? Tell me in the comments, and enjoy the links!
Funny tumblr of the week, for all you nerds out there. And let’s be honest, kittens, to paraphrase Lewis Caroll, we’re all nerds here!
How common is your birthday? Do the math backwards and apparently we discover the winter holiday season is the time babies happen. ‘Tis the season?
I have…opinions about this commercial. Clever? Perhaps. But… What do you guys thing?
These…pants?…offend me. Minions found wearing them will be sacked.
SoupAddict (whose blog I love and stalk) just posted some lovely pictures of her blooming garden. Mum and Dad apparently put in a garden at home recently too and are already enjoying the fruits (pun!) thereof. I have a black thumb, although I’ve managed to keep my bamboo alive for years now, so a full garden is out for me. But for my Someday House, I have a vision of growing herbs outside of my kitchen. I think I could manage that.
Alright, I’m going to come out and say it: people like this make me despair at the human race. I’m not sure when notoriety became the only thing worth seeking, when talent was eclipsed by self-branding, and idiots became so admired, but it needs to stop. History shows that this is not a new phenomenon, but I contend it’s never been so bad in all of recorded human experience.
On the other hand: yes, you can. I have met one, and I say that without the barest hint of sarcasm or hyperbole. Scary, uncomfortable, and very sad.
It’s rainy today (for the first time in months, blasted American West) but for the past while it’s been sunny and hot. Summer is here, and that means product testing time! I’ve discovered a whole host of things that have made life easier. This amazing product from Kielhs currently tops the list. I tried it because apparently Certain-Dri does not work forever (hi, chemical burns on my underarms!) and normal antiperspirants/ deodorants don’t work at all. Summer is not kind to your friendly neighborhood Small Dog, she is a creature built for cooler climes, but such things help.
Sheep, even the weekly ones, are jerks. One charged my little sister when we were hiking Hadrian’s Wall on holiday and it caused a bit of consternation at the time, though it makes for a good story now.
“Start out perfect and don’t change a thing. Always accentuate your best features by pointing at them. And conceal your flaws by sucker punching anyone who has the audacity to mention them.” – Miss Piggy
Dear Sir:
In time (a lot of it), this could be you.
In a class of 50+ women, you found a place on the floor and manned dinky little hand weights with the rest of us. When asked by the instructor who was new, you raised your hand fearlessly, and when asked your reasons for coming, you responded, “I’m just trying to get healthier, and I wanted to try something new.” Bravo.
Surrounded by girls who looked at you askance, you marked choreography. You learned to cha cha. You laughed and had no trouble making a fool of yourself. When a load of loutish freshman boys walked by the doors to the gym, pointed you out, and laughed, you returned a roguish grin (in no way lessened by the sweat running down your face) and gestured to the ridiculously fit and attractive blonde next to you and shrugged.
In addition to an admirable attitude, your shimmies, dear sir, are magnificent.
Moreover, we saw you checking out that same cute blonde to the right of you, making funny comments to her during water breaks, and offering to turn in her weights for her when class was over. I watched you fumble cutely to ask her out, sweaty mess that you both (to say nothing of the rest of us) were. I’m pretty sure I saw her give you her number; I sure hope I did. I think you earned it.
J. starts a discussion he wishes he hadn’t in response to the earlier post.
“Why do you like the name William?”
“It’s a good English name, I just like it. Or I could get all medieval on you and name the boys after other less palatable Normans, like Tancred!”
“That sounds like a container for ale.”
“Bohemond?”
“Is this the real life?”
“Huh?
“Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“Ah. Dagobert?”
“Sounds like a Pokeman.”
“Baldric.”
“Toss up between Alec Baldwin or the Baltic Sea.”
“You know I’ve got tons of Roman and Greek ones too, right?”
“Joe. We’ll name the first one Joe.”
“I can do this all day!”
“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
~ Marshall McLuhan
Look, we’re sorry, but your pseudo aunts and uncles took all the good stuff. Alright, Tidaporn Nebraska Agnes*, we get it, but you’re really going to have to get over it.
I have no intention of spawning soon, but several of my mates have already kicked off that great adventure. And I’m starting to get a bit anxious…because I realized that some people are protective of what they name their little darlings. Most nerve wracking, apparently some of my friends and I have similar nominal tastes – leading me to discover that I am one of those said protective types.
So either we’ve got to start having kids to get the names we like…or we’re just going to have to tick off an awful lot of people and be accused of copying them.
Parenthood seems fraught with unforeseen perils. We might just end up pulling the Roman thing and name them all the same thing with different numerals: Puer Primus, Puer Secondus, etc.
*All names that have recently crossed my desk. Parents can be cruel
“The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaiety, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’m bone tired. The other night, well, you know sometimes how youtube happens? Youtube happened until 1am and I’ve been out of whack ever since. Last night, after treating myself to This American Life’s live show in movie theatres, I was off to meet Margot to work out together…when I got a text from her. She’d been in a car accident. Luckily she was fine, but I had a pretty horrible moment there.
This weekend I’ve got Trixie’s bacherlorette party with the girls from my godfamily, but first of all I’m going to the funerals for my brother-in-law’s parents and niece. Love your people extra hard this weekend, ducklings. Here are your links:
Sad though it may sound, I have not had to hunt for good reading for years – I have a battalion of unbelievably intelligent friends feeding me recommendations, links, articles, and books. Here’s a fascinating read, hat tip to Peregrine.
Not quite as fun (to a history nerd like me) as Kate Beaton, but I quite like Gemma Correll‘s puns. Like this one.
I have instituted a shopping ban that will remain in place at least until after my birthday, and probably until J.’s graduation, but that doesn’t stop me from looking. At this, for example.
Recently I had an interesting conversation with a friend who asked me, “Do you think we need feminism anymore? I mean, aren’t we past it?” Quite admirably (for me), I didn’t do a double take, I didn’t roll my eyes, I kept my eyebrows wrangled, and did not demand, “Are you serious?” I live in a fairly conservative place and work at a religious university, so I am routinely subjected to nonsensical sentences that start thus: “I’m not a feminist, but…” and usual end with some statement of equality or common sense. It was a matter of some joy, when J. said something similar in conversation once, I could retort, “I hate to break it to you, love, but you totally are.” After a pause, he laughed and said, “Yeah. You’re right.” And now, he occasionally tells me that once you have seen sexism, you start seeing it everywhere. Which is a long way of me saying that people (and in my experience, mostly ultra conservative men) can say we’re post-feminism, or that women don’t need it anymore, but I believe they’re irrevocably and world-without-end wrong. Here’s a recent example as to why.
It’s true. If you ever go to Pisa, you will see legions of tourists trying this very thing. And the next time I’m in town, I’m going to take a leaf from this gentleman‘s book.
This site is hysterical, if occasionally crude (warning, pearl clutchers). This one and this one made me snort I was laughing so hard, because living alone with Margot gone and J. back in London, I have experienced both these sensations. Mostly on account of the fact that I’d seen The Woman in Black and scary movies stick with me and make unsettling appearances in my head at 2am.
Maurice Sendak passed away this week, and I was surprised at how affected I felt. I admired so much of his work, not just Where the Wild Things Are, but the Little Bear books and the tale of Pierre, who could only say, “I don’t care.” But one of my favorite of his projects was his creative work on the Northwest Ballet Company’s brilliant motion picture adaptation of The Nutcracker. The only reason I have a VHS player is because the powers have never seen fit to turn that beautiful piece of art into a DVD. Here are some excerpts of interviews he had with NPR’s Terry Gross.
Want this. Want it so hard. Want it with all the yearning of my geeky soul.
J.’s transformation from steak and potatoes eating, jeans and ball cap wearing, all American male to Brit is almost complete. Not only does he refer to delivered/carryout food (properly) as takeaway, he drinks tea daily. Ha ha! He also passes on a recommendation for this tea if you need to fall asleep, apparently it knocks him out like Tylenol PM. Quoth J., “Tea over here is just better.”
“L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs….” – St. Bernard of Clairvaux
A student borrowed a flatmates’ bike. Unfortunately she didn’t know the combination to the lock, and couldn’t ask for it as the flatmate was currently on study abroad deep in the rain forests of South America. She’d sent the flatmate an email asking for the code and was waiting for a reply. In the meantime, the student still had to get to class, so she rode the bike to campus and decided to take her chances by leaving the bike in a bikerack unlocked. (Editor’s Note: please don’t do this, it’s terribly foolish.)
Sadly this tale has an unfortunate end, but not in the way it usually does. Usually a member of the unwashed criminal underworld steals the bike, sells it to a pawn shop where it is sold to a dealer who stuffs the tires with drugs and uses it to take his cargo across the border. Or so I surmise.
This time, on the other hand, some nice person decided to try and help her out and locked up her bike for her. She showed up in our office in tears asking us to cut the cable so she could get home.
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
~ Emily Dickinson
Death is funny to me. Not funny ha-ha, funny strange. I don’t have a lot of experience with it, most of the deaths that I have been connected to have had the buffer of one or two degrees of separation.
As a child, the only death I remember was my grandfather’s when I was eight or nine. I felt badly, I remember crying when my mother told me, but feeling oddly detached at his funeral. The truth is I have never been extremely close to either set of grandparents or my extended family (extenuating family issues, coupled with the fact that growing up we were seldom on the same continent for more than a few days at a time). My grandmother was (understandably!) distraught, and my mother was unbearably hurt, but the distinct memory I have of that day is feeling scared that I didn’t feel sad enough and wondering if something was wrong with me.
The trouble is that as I’ve grown up, death has become more and more frequent. In this last year alone I’ve mentioned a few, but sitting back to run the tally, I’m a bit taken aback. I have been vaguely connected (second and third degrees of separation with friends and coworkers) to three suicides, three automobile accident deaths, one passing from old age, two accidental deaths, and worked on two death cases at work. It’s everywhere. And I’ve felt as oddly detached from all of them as I did to my grandfather’s.
I wonder if this is because I’ve never been touched directly by death. I have absolutely no idea how I would feel if either of my parents passed away, probably as if part of the ground had suddenly fallen away from under me. If any of my siblings died I suspect I’d feel something beyond rage and pain – they’re kids after all, they aren’t supposed to die (even though I know kids die everyday). Gio nearly drowned once and the sensation I felt was terrifying panic and corrosive guilt (I was his big sister and I hadn’t been paying attention to him when he went swimming in the deep end of the pool – I’d actually told him to leave me and my friends alone. The next time I saw him he was being pulled from the water, blue and lifeless. That horrible feeling has never left me). If J. died… frankly I’m not sure where I’d be. He teases me that he needs to die first so that I have to clean up after him and deal with the damage, I counter that he’s being a rotten selfish punk to leave me to do the emotional heavy lifting, and he comes back with, “You could handle it. I couldn’t.”
I’m sure he means this as a testament to my personal strength of will (or something), but the first time he said something like that my first thought was, “Great, even my husband thinks I’m emotionally stunted…”
The funny (not funny ha-ha) thing about death to me is that life keeps going for those you leave behind. Standing still has never seemed to be an option to me for survivors, and yet I have seen people brought to a crashing halt from personal loss and pain. I have no idea what that must feel like. I have no idea if my attitudes and detachment from death stem from genuine sangfroid or lack of personal experience, but either way I know exactly how lucky I am never to have been put in a position to find out. Most people have casualties behind them. I’m still waiting for my first massive personal loss, and just hoping I’ll be able to bear up and keep going when it does.
*Many thanks for your kind words towards my brother-in-law’s family. Many of you are able to speak from a personal and authentic place that is truly compassionate and experienced. None of us get out unscathed, and I think the only true balm is the wisdom and care of friends.
“…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” – John Donne
I had a lovely weekend with my brother, even though it was a bit rushed as I needed to get back for our new nephew’s christening on Sunday. I’m very sorry to say, the day ended really sadly. On the way home from the post-church family party, my brother-in-law’s (the husband of J.’s sister) parents were involved in a car accident and both passed away. Two of their grandchildren were in the car with them and were very badly hurt.
I did not know them extremely well, but I saw them about every other month at extended family gatherings and they always greeted J. and I with smiles and hugs. They were kind and gentle people, with a big family which they were the center of, and beloved grandparents.
Life is stunningly fragile, darlings. I don’t know if we’re truly ignorant of it (until it hits us) or if we just choose to ignore the fact for the sake of our sanity, but there it is. None of us are immune.
Please think of your own loved ones today, and please spare a kind thought or prayer for mine.
Small Dog Syndrome 