Playmate,
Come out and play with me,
And bring your dollies three,
Climb up my apple tree,
Slide down my rain barrel,
Into my cellar door,
And we’ll be jolly friends,
Forevermore!
I’m sorry Playmate,
I cannot play with you:
My dolly has the flu,
Oh boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
Ain’t got no rain barrel,
Ain’t got no cellar door—
But we’ll be jolly friends,
Forevermore.
So I just typed up a big long post whining about seeing something and having the ghost of a reaction caught in my head and being unable to grasp it completely. This particular bout of rambling was triggered by a post about cellar doors. All I could manage to make out of my initial response was that I knew a rhyme with the word “cellar door” in it, and that it had been a favorite of mine as a child. Half-way through that, I remembered. So here it is, that frustrating rhyme I was so focused on figuring it out. It’s one of those rhymes you see little girls clapping or jumping rope to. Now it’s stuck in my head.
That feeling you get when you hear a song or see a word or phrase and you know where it’s from, but you can’t quite remember exactly. It’s like when you get up and go to your room to look for something, and you get there but can’t remember what it was you were looking for. You can see a shadow of what you want at the very edge of the back of your mind, but you just can’t place it exactly and you’re left with an empty sense of purpose. It’s the feeling I get when I hear an instrumental to a song I know but not very well and am too stubborn to ask the person next to me if they recognize it too, or when I see a quote or song lyric standing alone and am too lazy to type it into Google. This feeling is the worst, though, when I see a word, or a picture, or an action and it reminds me of something else, but my mind doesn’t quite make the connection. This feeling isn’t something that I agonize over precisely, but it’s an almost painful something to deal with: to have all the dots, and the means to connect them, but still somehow being unable to complete the picture. I almost always end up with what I was looking for in the end, but most times the end comes so much later that my success serves no end other than self-satisfaction—And sometimes that’s just as frustrating all by itself.
And this is a big financial decision to be making because lessons are expensive, so I wanted to consult with my mother first. So I brought it up, and I was one sentence in and the first thing she said was, “Don’t look to me for money.”
And when was the last time I asked you for money? Maybe I’ll ask for cash when I don’t have my wallet, but you do that too. When I was growing up, you always told me you’d help to put me through college, and you said when I got my financial aid package that you’d put in four hundred a semester on top of my loan. But my scholarships and that loan have been paying my way through (although, whenever I get sent money for books, and gas, and other school supplies, you tell me that I’d better save it because it’s counting toward your four hundred next semester), and I’ve not said anything about it though you haven’t put in a cent. I know you’re paying tuition for Em so she can go to that special private school. I know you’re working two jobs, and that I pay no rent, and you buy the food. I get it. So I’m not upset about the money. What I’m upset about is the fact that I was asking you for advice on an adult decision, and you looked at me like I was a child asking you for a shiny new toy.
I don’t even know why I thought I could look to you for help with this kind of thing. When I had to buy a new computer because my old one had broken because of circumstances beyond my control, all you did was whine about it. I called you up while at the store, which I’d taken the initiative to go to myself, and all you could do was complain that I wasn’t making a good purchase. But you can’t even tell the difference between the router and the modem. Don’t talk like you understand computers, and don’t bitch at me about money—I paid for the damn thing myself, I bought one on sale, and I made an informed decision without your help.
But now, I don’t even feel like I can make a good decision anymore because I want to take the class out of spite to prove that I can.
twodadscook:
Owen has many nicknames: O, O-Man, Owie, Munchie, Peanut and Monkey are just a few. But “Norma” is the one that makes us laugh hardest; he shares all the best traits of his great-grandmother. Before she passed away more than ten years ago, Grandma Norma turned out stuffed artichokes each Thanksgiving dinner. Jerry never got the recipe, so he set about faithfully recreating the ‘chokes based solely on taste and memory. We think we’ve gotten pretty darn close, and one day soon Owen will get to enjoy Norma’s finest.
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Another delicious recipe to try when we have a kitchen again? My mother raised me to like interesting foods, and I’ve loved artichokes ever since I was little. When I was younger, I used to call them “hearty-chokes.” I still get teased for it now, and I’m nineteen.
I love all the recipes I’m finding on this Tumblr. Everything looks so delicious and, well, healthy. xD It’s always great to find good food you don’t have to feel guilty about eating—although sometimes it’s worth the guilt. I’ve said it too many times: if ever I have to chose between good food and my figure, I always pick the food. It’s probably why I can’t lose weight. ^-^;;
We need to go exercise, Ryn! Dx
So I have this thing for accents. I’m one of those girls who shamelessly objectifies men—that is, if you consider ranking them in attractiveness from one to ten objectifying—and there are certain “bonus points” that make a guy seem more attractive to me. As a friend recently pointed out, I like “softer” accents, and he was right. I like hearing the added lilt to their voice, the softened tone of the Aussies, the Brits, and the green-eyed, dark-haired Irish. Scottish and Italian accents too, are nice, and I will also admit a certain fondness for the New Orleans Cajun drawl (but I can’t be the only geeky girl with a bit of a fangirl crush on Gambit, can I?).
When I was in Japan, I met quite a few Aussies. I remember these three guys my friend met over a stubborn toaster. We had an extended conversation with them over some chocolates from home we’d brought as omiyage. They weren’t exceptionally attractive physically, but they were charming. Upon seeing our gifts of macadamia nuts and chocolate one promptly asked his friends, “Quick, what do we have that’s Aussie?” And when we left, it was with a, “Well it was lovely meeting you, ladies.” I still remember walking away and giggling like little schoolgirls over a man telling us something had been “lovely.”
Oh yes, I am a sucker for a nice accent, but I grew up on a tiny little island. Everyone here sounds the same (apparently locals all have an accent even when not speaking Pidgin, or Hawaii Creole English, technically), and I’ve had enough experience with immigrants to easily understand those with common Asian accents. To be clear, I’ll say this now, I don’t like Asian accents—nothing Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or Filipino does anything for me; they’re just so familiar to me that they’re no longer something foreign. And that’s what I like about accents: they tell me the speaker will bring to the table experiences and viewpoints outside my own. It makes them new, and different, and quite possibly something completely unfamiliar, and that’s exciting. Or at least, I find that exciting—the possibility for engaging conversation, at least, and stories of far away places I myself may never get to see or hear of from anyone else.
[End Rambling]
