The Queen Goes Walkabout...er, Sitabout

A few weeks ago I mentioned to Missy Moo that I'd like to make a visit over to see her on her Island farm, always a lovely place to visit in the summer. We agreed on a weekend when she and most of her assorted hangers-on would be likely to be around, and also when RedCarGirl, who wished to accompany me, was available. That weekend is the one coming up.

Since first discussing this, you'd think I was planning a trip to Europe with all the fuss I've made about popping over to see my sister for a weekend. I have sent emails galore updating her on the complex plans for this event.

Shall I stay with Missy Moo in her house? Well, she's preparing it to show for selling (hence also the aforementioned painting), and I was uncomfortable with the idea of creating more to-do (and indeed to do) under those circumstances. So after some electronic waffling, I booked RCGirl and myself into a nearby motel.

Then the question was, to bring the car or arrive as foot passengers? Wafflewaffle. Foot. Car. Foot. Car. But then we became the parents of the adorable Fit. Car it is.

Just as an aside, when we were handed all the final papers for our new car upon picking it up, one of them was identified to us as the car's "birth certificate". So there you go.

Then today I had to email Missy Moo again to alert her as to which ferry we'd be on, because nothing can be done on a whim. All must be thoroughly planned out. Now, I'd say this is another classic step on the granny path, us old folks needing everything pinned down and plenty of notice about what's happening, except that I think really I've always been a bit OCD this way.

RedCarGirl, the sun-worshipper, is hoping to spend pretty much the entire weekend in the Moo pool and sunning on the Moo deck, although I THINK the weather is supposed to cool down a bit by the weekend. (Oh lord, I do hope so, or I'll just be insane, and not in a good and humorous way but a frightening and alien-invasion sort of way.)

I am also hoping for a nice, low-key weekend after being so busy with work the past month. So I am hoping Sister Moo hasn't planned any 17-mile hikes or mountain climbing or building homes for the poor or anything of that nature. (HA! As if!! She has actually met me!) I would like to sit wherever is coolest round about the Moo abode, drinking things with ice in them, and eating the wondrous and beautiful berries from the farm, all of which, of course, I expect to be brought to me by lackeys. Because I am old. And because I am Me. But that's okay. I'm bringing my own flesh-and-flunky, so my demands on Moo minions will be few.

The Queen has spoken. Prepare thee, Moo household, for the royal visit.

Would you rather...?

My sister is currently very busy painting the exterior of her house. I feel close to requiring hospitalization just thinking about that. You see, I really dislike painting. No, you don't understand. I really, really dislike painting.

Let me make this clearer. Of all housewifely tasks, ironing is my least favourite. I LOATHE ironing. And as all you who know me are well aware, I also absolutely cannot tolerate hot weather. When it gets above 25 degrees, I am uncomfortable and cranky. When it gets above 30, I am like an animal in a trap being tortured. I am beside myself.

If I were given the choice of ironing for eight hours in 30-degree weather and painting for the same amount of time on a nice, cool day, I would take the ironing.

Yes. THAT is how much I hate painting.

Now, if the choice were the eight hours of 30-degree ironing and FOUR hours of cool-day painting, I would take the painting. I mean, let's not be silly. We're not in the realm of hyperbole here. But five hours of painting…? I'd have to consider that one carefully.

It's sort of like the sleepover game "Would you rather". You know the one: a sort of verbal Fear Factor where everyone must choose between two equally awful options. I'm very poor at this game because I always need more detail.

Would you rather eat a rat or a booger out of someone else's nose?

Well, is the rat cooked or raw? This makes a big difference to me. I would eat the rat if it were cooked, but the booger if the rat were raw. And if the rat's alive, well, obviously I would eat someone's entire booger-filled head before I'd start gnawing on a live rat. Duh.

Would you rather have sex with George Bush or Larry King?

Now, again, I have questions. Am I allowed to wear a blindfold? Is the man allowed to speak in any way? Will there be paparazzi? Medical personnel on hand? I simply cannot make a decision without knowing such things.

So you could play the "Would you rather" game with me with painting on one side of the equation and almost anything on the other, and I'd choose the other. This is what I'm saying.

You go, Missy Moo*!

*The painting sister

Run for your lives!!

There was a small headline on page A14 of today's Vancouver Sun which has caused me some alarm, Blog People. I don't want to create any sort of unnecessary panic here if you were fortunate enough to have missed this terrifying article, but in the circumstances, I think we need to band together.

Aliens may be 'too weird' to spot. Extraterrestrial life may well be so weird we would not immediately recognize it…

I mean, this is just staggering. Of course the only way I am going to recognize an alien is if it looks like:

1. The traditional little green man, bulbous of head and scrawny of limbs, prone to abductions and inappropriate probing.
2. ET
3. Us except for pointy ears (in which case it could just as well be an elf, not an alien), or an excessively wrinkly forehead.
4. Robin Williams
5. Brian Williams, the sportscaster. Those eyes! Every time he does the Olympics, I get nervous.

So I've been running around my house, trying to keep an open mind. Why is that geranium in my front planter facing the house when all the others are facing away? It's…it's watching me! With subtle dehiscing, it's sending tiny communication pods wafting back to the Mother Bed!

Or wait! That little pile of glittery substance I recently vacuumed up off my living room carpet. It was just below the fireplace hearth and I had thought it was just some of the granite chipping off. But perhaps not! Perhaps it was the forefront of a crystalline invasion! Prepare to be stoned!

Must. Remain. Calm. What else around here is so weird I might not immediately recognize it as an alien?

AAAAAAA! What's that in the mirror?? It's -- it's --

Oh.

The New Honda Fit

We bought a new car today. This is not something most of us do that often in a lifetime, and especially not Retired Husband (aka He Who Shall Remain Nameless) and I, who tend to drive our vehicles at least 10 or 12 years into the ground before replacing them. So it's still a pretty exciting event.

Until very recently, we owned an 01 Honda Accord and an 03 Honda Civic. Although we liked both vehicles, we had come to a realization that it was a slight tactical error to equip ourselves with two sedan automobiles. In neither car, for example, is it easy to put a lawnmower for transporting to a repair shop. Or large boxes and things. Just not practical.

So we had been thinking of trading the Civic in on a little hatchback. We had thought we'd wait another year or so, until Broken Leg Boy (who is well mended and needs a new name, which I think I will bestow upon him momentarily) was out of the house and/or had a vehicle of his own before getting a brand new one for ourselves.

However, BLB, henceforth to be known as Scrapheap Boy, rather precipitated the event by a couple of weeks ago involving our Civic in an accident in which no one was hurt, the airbags didn't even deploy, and yet trashed the car beyond redemption. Something to do with the whole engine being knocked out of place or something; I don't know. Grammar doesn't worry her pretty little head about those manly mechanical details. (She is liberated in all ways except for mechanical details. Never going to happen.)

So ICBC declared our poor little Civic unworthy of repair, and without fuss or ado issued us a cheque which, somewhat to our surprise, we considered more than fair market value. We had researched that topic thoroughly on such websites as Craigslist and Buy and Sell and had been quite prepared to debate the issue.

So today we went to our favourite Honda dealership, where we have had excellent service over the years, and now we own a car that looks just like this:

Isn't it cute?

Grammar sez reedzis

The last great linguistic change in the English language occurred some 400 years ago in the riotous blossoming of its modern form. The English of Shakespeare is about as old a version of the language that people today can understand, and in his century (the 16th) some 10,000 to 12,000 new words were coined, many of them by the bard himself.

I would suggest that the networked culture has propelled us into another such linguistic blossoming. A huge new lexicon has been created, such that people today could speak whole paragraphs that would be scarcely comprehensible to someone who died as few as 50 years ago. It's difficult for modern dictionary editors to keep up with the vast numbers of terms originating from computer terminology which have become standardized, such as download, reboot, google, text (as a verb), and the whole messaging language of acronyms such as brb, omg, wtf, imo, lol (and hundreds more).

All this is by way of introduction to the fact that I have just discovered the term "lolcat". This very specifically refers to published photos of cats with humorous captions in non-standard English. (I direct you to www.icanhascheezburger.com for about a kazillion examples.)

Now, as a cat lover, these amuse me simply in themselves, as in the following:


But I also find the non-standard English use interesting from a linguistic point of view.


I can imagine that many people (especially over a certain age) would look at this in horror. Bastardization of the Queens' English! Dumbing down! We're all going to die because no one will be able to spell anymore! You might even think that Grammar Moses would likely be one of those people, especially given the caption on my picture at right.

But you'd be wrong, because here's where the pure linguist in Grammar surfaces. I happen to think it's kind of cool. Even when I consider the extremely unlikely event that somehow this sort of funny caption would lead to everyone speaking this way, I can't get upset. So what if we did? I don't think anyone can point to a civilization that crumbled because its language evolved in a direction some people considered silly. (If anyone could point me to such a situation, I'm sure it would be my friend Fiona T!)

So calmz down, peeps. Tzokay. We be fine NEways.

I Have No Idea What to Title This Blog

Well, dearies, time to blog again, though I have no topic in mind. Well, toilets, perhaps. You can never go wrong with toilets as a conversation piece, after all.

Work is underway on our bathrooms this week. The subfloors have been replaced by contractor Scott and flooring-layer Ron is here today doing the lino installation. (Everyone is so specialized! And male! And sweaty! Oh, never mind. Grammar's just having an inappropriate moment.) While this goes on, the toilets have been off their moorings and sitting out in the open, which makes it inadvisable to use them. It did enter my head that I should try sitting on one of the thrones whilst it sat in the public hallway so that I might better empathize with how it was for poor Paris in her jail cell. But then I thought, nah. I'm just never going to be an airhead socialite heiress breaking probation conditions. Why should I have to know what it feels like?

Do you know, Blog People, that Retired Husband does not read my blog? This is because he is militantly opposed to blogs in general. The idea that just any crackhead crazyperson on the planet can read personal stuff about other people makes him insane. He is appalled that I blog, no matter how strongly I assure him I am not putting any personal information into the ether. He has advised me that if I ever used his full name or other identifying feature on my blog, he would have to take drastic action. I am left to imagine what form this action might take, but prefer not to find out. Those quiet ones are always the scariest when they blow (our children will vouch for that!)

Oh, dear. I do hope saying that he's quiet is not an identifying feature. A quiet man somewhere on the planet having his bathroom floors fixed by persons named Scott and Ron. Well, it may be too much information, but I think I'll take the risk.

The Granny Path

Today, blog people, we're going to discuss linguistics from a different point of view. We're going to discuss it as an aspect of the granny path.

Yesterday, you see, I found myself taking another step down this granny path. I don't hold with the saying that age is only a number. The minute I turned 50, some sort of switch in my brain flipped and I was set upon a new linguistic byway. It's inevitable. It's inexorable. It's embarrassing.

It started very shortly after the half-centenary birthday, when suddenly, and quite naturally, I began calling everybody "dear". It rolls off my tongue without conscious thought, and no one ever looks taken aback or insulted by it. Because, you see, I appear an appropriate sort of personage to be calling people "dear". It suits me now. Also, twice in the last month I have actually blessed someone's heart.

Sorry. My shawl just slipped off my shoulders and got caught on the rocker of the chair. Where was I?

Oh, yesterday's step on the path. I was at a friend's house doing some bookkeeping sort of work, and I looked up from some frustrating ciphering efforts and inquired, "Do you have an adding machine?"

Yes. An ADDING MACHINE. A device that was invented in the 17th century and phased out by modern things known as "calculators" shortly thereafter. This is apparently what I was hoping to be brought to me.

(Excuse me, but could you also bring me a slide rule?)

I have also begun noticing that I am telling the same stories to people over and over. It turns out, now that I'm the granny doing this, that this behaviour, too, is a trick of the brain. It's not that I've forgotten telling the story, but that I somehow believe that the particular person I'm regaling with it has never had the pleasure. Never mind that my circle of family and friends consists of approximately 7.3 people and that therefore the likelihood that any given one of them has heard my story before is in the realm of, well, certainty. Like the anorexic who looks at a skeleton in the mirror and sees a fat person, I look at my sister of 47 years and see someone who knows nothing about me.

Gee, I wish when I looked in the mirror, I saw a skeleton. But no, that doesn't happen. I see my grandma. Bless her heart, dear.