Memicry
I’ve been tagged to do some memes, most recently by by Eryl and Foots. I’ve done memes before here and there so I don’t do them often, but I’ve been off-blog for a while so I thought I’d get back into the way of it by responding, albeit tardily, to their tags.
So then, 7 autobiographical things and an aspiration.
- When I was pregnant with the twins I craved liquorice, my granny’s mince and potatoes and Heinz Cream of Tomato soup. When my children were born they were black, brown, white and orange. I don’t think this is a coincidence although around the time of conception I did have several lovers: a black man, a brown man, a white man and an LA weatherman.
- I favour blue toothbrushes but, when I’m travelling and have forgotten my own, I will use an aqua-marine one in a pinch. Flexibility is not a gift everyone has, so I’m lucky to have been blessed that way.
- I don’t know where I stand on the whole, heated pyjamas vs. nightie debate. I eschew electric blankets though. I eschew them right off the bed, through the doorway, down the stairs and back in the box from the catalogue.
- I talk too much.
- I talk too little.
- WWII national stereotypes were slow to disappear in the Lewis of my youth. As a small girl, I thought that the way that germs killed you was by standing inside your tummy or crouching behind your liver shooting at your heart. I imagined whole battalions of tiny German soldiers blasting cannons and stuff in the bellies of the ill and the thought terrified me. When I was sick in bed sometimes, I would see their ineluctable forces scaling my ribs to bayonet my heart and finish me off for good. This sprung directly from my mother telling me to wash my hands before eating in case of Germans. I was also told the Japanese were inscrutable but that intimated we were therefore scrutable, which sounded a whole lot worse to me somehow.
- I think that it is appropriate that children are scared sometimes and not coddled too much. Stuff is scary – the more times you can get a reassuring hug from your mammy about it the better. To this end I have decorated the girls’ bedroom with a really realistic cemetery-of-the-damned-at-night theme, and I regularly dangle them by one leg from second storey windows. At night I prowl the hall outside their room wailing like an anguished soul and rattling chains. Often I’ll fling the severed heads of dear wee puppies at them yelling “Catch!” But then afterwards I always make sure to comfort them/mop up their hysterical tears/inject sedatives as only a mother can. Several people have accused me of suffering from Poxy Munchkin’s Disease but then, everyone’s an expert, these days, aren’t they. There are far too many faddish parental styles, in my view. They only divide us, as adults, which is what the children want, see. Make no mistake about it, parenting is a looming battle to be fought and won and, believe me, children have no scruples on the battle-field. They already have us over a barrel with their impossible cuteness and millennia of triggering the Nurture reflex in us, damn them! But seriously, our role is to prepare them for life – to be the first objects of their fledgling attempts at dissembling and deceit, to mould their inchoate fears into proper grown-up suspicion and paranoia and the many, many isms, so that they may grow to be successful adults.
- Eryl’s meme required an ambition, goal or aspiration. My ambitions oscillate like a donkey’s doodas but I do have some very firm aspirations: “k” “p” “t” “sh”, “th”.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:44 am
I don?t know where I stand on the whole, heated pyjamas vs. nightie debate.
What about the “teddiette v. chemise” debate?
Cheers.
July 11th, 2007 at 1:04 am
You’re a funny lady.
I must have a purple/mauve/lilac toothbrush. This is essential for clean teeth and fresh breath.
So have you decided whether you’re scrutable or inscrutable yet?
July 11th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Haha. Loved this list, especially numbers 1 and 7!
Now, since I didn’t know there even WAS a debate about heated PJs and nighties, I am off to do some research…
July 11th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I just recently started using one of those new-fangled electric toothbrushes after an unfortunate visit to a dentist named after that giant mountain in Japan. Anyway…I have to use one of those from now on and I’m convinced it’s slowly giving me radiation poisoning.
July 11th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Randall, Marilyn Monroe once said that the only thing she wore to bed was Chanel No. 5. These days for me are gone. I often have to leap from my slumbers to attend to a small child in the night, thus I always wear a night garment of some description. I worry I will have to transport a child to hospital in a life-threatening emergency that requires me to be clad; at the very least one’s mother ought to be clad when she’s murmuring over your x-rays, don’t you think. So for me, these days, I favour a chemise – more cover-uppable and less fidgety than a teddiette. I was a Girl Guide see, yes and a Brownie too. “We’ll always be prepared, Brown Owl!”
Carolyn, sadly scrutable, I’m afraid. I’ve practiced making my eyebrows all arch and indecipherable but, no: my story is writ across my face and I fear I fool noone.
Otherbear, no! The debate is heated between the pyjama camp and the nightie militants – if there are heated pyjamas I know nought of them. May the best bed attire win!
Kara, I may be putting myself in mortal danger by telling you this, but you’re right!! Electric toothbrushes are just the latest weapon in thought control wrought by The Man on our credulous society. Trust noone – especially your dentist – have you seen Marathon Man. ((Shudder))
July 11th, 2007 at 6:59 am
I could have guessed that you’d have no time for electric blankets, Sam. What excuse do they leave for cuddling? I would have also predicted your craving for liquorice during pregancy.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I’m with you on the electric blanket. Who wants a carbon footprint the size of a double bed, for god’s sake!
And there’s far too much mollycoddling central heating these days. And draught-free houses! No wonder everyone’s so sensitive. Bring back itchy heavy clothes say I, and send the complainers out for a long walk in the rain, it’d do their complexions a power of good.
July 11th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
You have two of the luckiest children I’ve ever envied.
Also pyjamas rule, especially fleecy rabbity ones.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Electric blankets have been linked to ovarian cancer and other nasty diseases. You’re wise to avoid them, Sam.
I’ve read that Marilyn always slept naked but then I’ve also read that she wore a bra 24-7 and that Madonna copies her on that.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Like Marilyn I was generally down with the Chanel No.5 approach myself, (less the eau de toilette), mostly because I run hot. The wife dresses for bed as if Arctic winds were howling outside. Like yourself I was forced into night time attire by kids. After a minor temblor it dawned on my in the advent of an big Earthquake being dressed gave a distinct survival advantage when wrestling sleeping children under the nearest table while the house shimmied!
July 11th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
back with wit & style, sugar
well done!
July 11th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
POXY MUNCHKIN’s DISEASE………. Now that is just lovely. Verrrry well done, indeed.
July 11th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
That’s odd. When I was eating a baked potato filled with liquorice, mince and tomato soup I craved twins. Couldn’t afford them, though, as a penniless student.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Nanas, You would have predicted my liquorice craving during pregnancy? You impossibly smart simian, you. Have I let slip somewhere that I have had liquorice cravings for all the time’s I haven’t been pregnant too? Was that your clue?
Conan, a house without a draught is a house without a soul. How are we meant to get old in the time-honoured fashion without a draught to complain about? People gave us travelling rugs as wedding presents with precisely these draughts in mind, so that we may better protect out knees in our old age. What’s going to happen to the travelling rug industry without draughts, eh? And the draught excluder sausage dogs/snakes for the front door industry? Nobody thinks of the little man. Progress is a harsh master, indeed.
fmc. then why do they run sobbing into police-stations and child protection agencies whenever my back is turned? And why are they so pathetically grateful to me for their daily stale bread and hard cheese? I can’t work children out at all, mysterious wee blighters.
Medbh – hmm, interesting. Does 24hour bra wearage delay the onset of droopiness then? Maintain perk and derring-do? I shall experiment. I’d heard that electric blankets could cause infertility in some cases but the ovarian cancer thing is a step scarier. I often wonder what all my recumbent hours with a wireless laptop on my tummy is doing to my insides. It’s blommin’ microwaves after all.
John – do you get many tremblers up there? I’ve only felt one since we moved here and it was bizarre. I was standing at the sink and 5 months pregnant at the time so I thought I was just getting dizzy but then I turned around and all the light fixtures were swinging from the ceiling. Then my dad rushed in to tell me the pool had started sloshing around all of a sudden. Very spooky. You must have some better trembler stories up there though – it’s more active, isn’t it ?
Savannah, sweetheart, you say the nicest things. I blush often when I read your comments although I suspect they arise less from anything I’m doing and more from a very open and generous soul. You’re lovely.
Vince, I thought I may not have constructed that jokelet very well and, upon rereading, I found out I was quite right to think so, but was too lazy to change it. But you got it anyway, bless your socks and all your undergarments!! I don’t know how many people even know about Munchausen’s by Proxy disease – it can’t be common. I only know about it because there was a big story in Britain about a murderous nurse with it when I was growing up that made my blood run cold to the extent I never forgot about it.
Foot Eater, they cook up pretty nicely with a bit of garlic and a well-chopped shallot. When simmered in a white wine reduction and served on a coulis of dates and dialysed blood – twins are certainly the fad meat of the moment in certain parts of Europe. But then I expect you know that, you sick, sick man.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Sam
I haven’t felt too many over my 13 years here. Several noticeable jolts and one sizable wake me up shake. However 2 years back, you might remember there was a decent sized quake in Central Cali – it killed one person. It caused my whole building (200 miles away), to shake like Elvis on speed, in a blender, it set off all the alarms which meant we had to evacuate. It was a very very very disconcerting feeling walking across the our floor and having it move like a boat underneath me. Of course, it was a new building, on rollers, (absorbs earthquake energy), and we were on the 7t floor, so we really felt the shake. people on the first floor hardly noticed.
I worry enough about earthquakes, that the first thing we did when we bought our, (80 year old), house was earthquake proof it.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
[A}t the very least one?s mother ought to be clad when she?s murmuring over your x-rays, don?t you think?
Well yes. And thank you soooo much for the image of an unclad mother hovering over me.
I need a whiskey now, if not two.
Cheers.
July 12th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Sam, I must protest! As an expert on child development and parental discipline I’ve come to subscribe to: BCH/SI (Acronym for Bungiee Cord Hanging Sensory Integration.) Although past experts; Doctor Zeuss for one…and perhaps Dr. Spock or Freud as well, have unitized with success many of your technique it takes significant time and effort to implement. This scientifically based child rearing method requires only a hook, bungiee cords and TV (The TV is to acculturate them to the dominant social paradigm) Rap them up not too tight, hang them from 4 to 5 ft from the ceiling, turn on TV- O’Reilly Report if you want to discipline them or TV Land for positive roll models such as Sanford on Sanford and Son or IT (for Language development) on the Adam’s Family and occasionally swing them to stimulate propreoception, balance, visual acuity, etc.
Any further questions you might have…? just send me a check for 9.99 for the first DVD or buy the complete set of 3 for 999.99 (shopping Channel)
Peace
July 12th, 2007 at 10:03 am
I sooo agree with preparing kids for the bad bad world. Over protective parents are lacking in imagination and I remember my step-daughter saying she wished someone had told her life was hard.
I’d love to wear pjs – some of them are so cute – but I think they would drive me nuts. Free and airy is better.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
When my children were born they were black, brown, white and orange
The correct term for that is “tortoiseshell” isn’t it?
July 12th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Ah, ha! #7! That’s what I’ve been failing to do with my charges. [Says to self] – Tough weekend coming up lads and lassies.
July 13th, 2007 at 3:40 am
John – we debate every year about whether to keep up our earthquake insurance. The year we don’t we’ll be pulverised, of course, so we’re too chicken to drop it. Wildfire is the thing that worries me most down here. It’s tinder dry all around and we’ve had 3 uncomfortably close ones in the past 4 years.
Rand’ Always glad to be a whiskey instigator. Make it 4 though, and pretty soon your disturbing mental image will double. Peace might not be yours again for a number of days proportionate to the number of times your inner vision re-doubles.
Jeremy, what if I call in the next 10 minutes? Will that not double my CDs and get me a free bottle of Orange Clean?
Pat, you know, I think I trend more towards the free and airy myself out here in California – fleecy jammies as soon as I get back to Sornoway though. I have no worries at all that my children will know the full and dire peril the world can wreak by the age of their majority. My theory is – if I can make their lives as dreadful and miserable as I can now, how much better will variable rate mortgages and broken hearts and dicey coronary bypass operations seem when they cast off the shackles of childhood. How much better equipped they’ll be to deal with shyster taxi drivers and other rotten eggs. (My parenting manual will be out in time for Christmas – it’d make a great stocking stuffer for your enchilded kids!)
Kim, ha! They’re often confused with tortoiseshells – it’s the ears – but actually they are Domestic Tabby Longhairs. Hell on the furniture.
Sneezy, Mark my words, Sneezy, a quick dangle out of the upstairs window – it needn’t take more than 5 minutes – and they’ll be changed children: compliant; quiet; maybe a bit trembly at first but they will follow all subsequent commands tout-suite. All this without having to turn that bloody purple dinosaur on. (See the comment on Pat’s comment about my hot new book that experts say will turn current parenting practices on their head by – and this is the clever bit – by turning the children themselves on their head! With several storeys of fresh air and a Victorian railing below them! My children’s financial future is secured!)
July 13th, 2007 at 4:36 am
“and an LA weatherman”
Dallas Rains? Say it ain’t so, Sam!
P.S. — If you drop your earthquake insurance, you’ll never be able to get it again.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:42 am
That very weatherman, Sparrow! Beneath that orange skin and flashing white smile lurks a tiger. “RRRRRRaaar!” As he once told me.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Crikey – these insurance companies really have us up against the wall with our hands in the air don’t they. I wonder who insures them. Do they do it themselves? Like self-insure? Filthy lot. It’ll make their blank, soulless eyes go blind. But I bet they’re insured for that.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Late to the picnic, I admit to sharing your aspirations.
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