Aw Diddums

You know those “what’s in your bag” things that go around? Last night I crawled into bed with a stash of stuff to enjoy before lights-out, and it occurred to me to wonder if anybody’s ever filled out a “what did I take to bed last night?”

If we launched that as a meme, we’d have to stipulate that sleeping partners and other living beings (except possibly pets) don’t count. Also it has to be what’s in/on the bed, not next to the bed or on the floor.

The following joined me last night:

1. writing pad (unused reorder forms) and gold-coloured Staples pen
2. cuddly moose
3. cuddly mouse
4. cuddly lion
5. cuddly bear
6. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
7. box of Toffifee sweets (unopened)
8. Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class by Bikram Choudhury with Bonnie Jones Reynolds
9. Art by Robert Cumming
10. birthday card from someone… not sure why it was there, but it was

Can anyone beat that?

I should have been inside, working, but found myself standing outside in the sunshine, watching a bee on a flower.

It hadn’t got there by itself. I spotted it in the house, sitting dejectedly on a shady windowsill. I got out a small drinking glass and a holiday postcard, and used these to take the bee outside. I chose a large purple flower on a vigorous plant that had lots of these flowers. Do bees like these? I suppose so… I think so. Go for it!

At first the bee was too busy struggling weakly with the glass and the postcard, gritting between clenched bee-teeth “leave me be!” Then it noticed the purple flower right under its black feet.

Ah…

It turned round and grabbed the flower’s centre. I stood by for a little in case it fell off, but it clung on despite a strong wind. After a little, it crawled round the flower and onto the next one. Other bees buzzed past, visited neighbouring flowers, then flew away. I wondered if they knew this bee. Did they notice he’d been missing? How long for?

I went inside to turn on the washing machine and make coffee, then returned to see if the bee was still there… at first I couldn’t see anything. Bees buzzed from flower to flower, then flew briskly off. It would be nice to think my bee was one of them, but it seemed unlikely. Where was he?

A nearby flower shuddered and shook, and I thought “oh yes, there he is! I recognize the way he’s pushing that flower about.” The bee crawled into sight on the flower, then buzzed lightly, and plumped slowly onto the next sprig. He’s airborne!

I came back inside and grinned happily at Mum’s cat Grumble. I should get back to work, I suppose… beside my shady windowsill.

Following on from yesterday’s post Minimal Capitals… today I was watching one of those antiques game shows on the TV and a dealer used the phrase ‘minimal furniture’ about an item.

After reacting with “there’s that word again!” I thought about how odd the phrase was. I think he meant ‘plain’. ‘Plain’ would be much less of a mouthful, just as ’sentence case’ is less of a mouthful than ‘minimal capitals’… but maybe it arises out of an urge to make it sound a positive thing.

Exasperating… first of all I was avoiding the computer with a headache and sore eyes, and just as those were clearing up, I got stomach pains. Still fragile, but better on the whole. I have another wee arty contest to enter so I better get cracking on that.

Meanwhile, I was looking through my ScribeFire notes and found the following from a couple of weeks back which I didn’t post.

I was trying to get a bunny looking like a bunny, and Mum kept saying “it looks like a mouse!” It haunted me, so after hours of unsuccessful tinkering, I went to see if there were any hints online. I found instructions on how to get the general physique of a bunny right, and how we shouldn’t draw them like cartoon bunnies. Fair enough… but the animal in the photo looked suspiciously like a hare. The artist’s rough sketches, based on this animal, had the hare’s physique.

Meanwhile, my bunny still looks like a mouse.

PS: Another WordPressy bone of contention… whenever I add a new category, such as ‘Art’, I always capitalize it… and just at it writes itself up, it changes to lower case. I want all my categories to match each other in style, so I’m not going to leave it like that, but I can’t edit it where it is… have to search around the dashboard for the right place to edit it from, which is not sensible. Using these ‘overwriting what you put’ scripts is not the best idea either.

Ooh, four-year-old article… Are Open-toed Shoes Appropriate Business Attire? But I have to say I don’t understand the anti-open-toed stuff either. I only read comments on it fairly recently, in magazines and blog posts. I never even look at people’s feet, so if people are going about with long toe nails and rough heels or glittery nail polish, I don’t see them. Seems simple to me… other people’s feet are none of my business.

I mentioned it to Mum, and she was confused too… she said “what are you talking about? I haven’t heard anyone complaining about open-toed shoes.” She held up a beautiful, well-cared for foot with straight toes, and said: “look at this foot. It’s a 75-year-old foot. Other women my age have toes crossing each other because they were determined to wear fashion shoes.”

Yes. I go for health and comfort above fashion and individual / corporate prejudices. Anyone else?

I’m still working on the tutorial – it’s taking me days. I wonder if some of the others were able to do it in one night? Maybe the more practised ones can.

In my last post I said I wanted a nice pink gradient the next day (meaning a more cheerful mood instead of the blue one). When I got up next morning, the next bit of my picture to be worked on was a soft pink. That’s what I’ve been working with all day. Request answered – thank you, cosmos.

Pacian tagged me for a six-word description of my life. That’s even shorter than a haiku!

I thought of mine last night; better put it down before I forget:

Came far, writes much, speaks little.

Even the much-loved and much-hated font I wrote it in speaks volumes (though it depends if you even have it on your computer). I’m allowed six tags but I ‘write much’ and am feeling greedy, so have allowed myself ten. The choice is up to you (and since I have four spare, four can cry off if they prefer) but my ten tags are (in alphabetical order):

BEG
Drifting
Iain (aw goawn)
Kaz
Goldfish
Pete
Shu
Snark
Timorous Beastie
Thomas

Yesterday morning when I woke too early, I thought I might fall asleep again if I tried a little meditation.

I’m unused to talking about any such thing, and have to keep fighting off the urge to say ‘medication’. Meditation would be more relaxing if they called it something else. Anyway…

It’s difficult ‘meditating’ when the kittens have woken up and are thrashing around playfully, but I closed my eyes anyway, attempting to visualize something pleasant. The other day I read about a mother who took up meditation with her little girl; they would sit together and fall asleep. When they closed their eyes, the girl liked to think of her cat. So do I. When I’m trying to come up with a pleasant image, I always end up filling my mind’s eye with Sharky. He stares at me with his clear green eyes and blinks contentedly, and that dark stripy tail wraps itself round his feet.

Feeling guilty, I’ve tried to think about the kittens instead, but in my thoughts they fix me with their devouring gaze, giving rise to the unsettling feeling they’re about to thunder over my feet with their claws. That doesn’t make me relax. So I summoned up a beautiful sparkling blue-green wave. It was tight and rolling, rearing up higher and higher – the pit of my stomach dropped away when I imagined the wave swallowing me up along with forests, villages and towns.

I shifted my thoughts to the nature photos on the Caedes desktop wallpaper site. I thought of sunlight arrowing down between tall green trees… beautiful. Static, though; no real depth. I needed something that moved.

Said hello to Sharky again and buzzed past… thinking there must be other images out there I could hold in my mind. Finally I had it – winter snow in Edinburgh. Not just any snow, it has to be early 1980s snow. You would get up in the morning for school, and look out into the blackness, and it was whirling down. Through the back window it disappeared again into more darkness, falling behind the rose bushes and apple tree, but when you looked out the front window, the sky seemed lighter and the snowflakes flew into the hedge.

Normally I hated having to face school early on a cold dark morning, but heavy snow often meant we got to stay at home. That makes it a positive memory rather than a negative one.

In my mind’s eye I tried to be part of that scene, looking out of the window at the hypnotic motion of the snow. A distant pair of headlights appeared at the far corner of the vision, startling me. Headlights? Where did they come from? I didn’t ask for headlights. But they would have been there… cars and buses creeping cautiously through the slush, window wipers beating, leaving plenty of room for each other.

Funny how those headlights beamed out of my memory all by themselves.

The kittens gradually stopped pummelling the lights out of each other, and in my mind the snow spiralled down against a dark grey backdrop… now lashing with fragile fury; now drifting implacably. Next thing I knew, the sun was high and Delilah was curled against my neck, chewing my thumb.

And it’s not what I mean
I mean it’s not what it seems
I just keep living for dreams
And it’s not what I mean
I mean it’s not what it seems
I just keep living for dreams

Have you ever played that game of reading back in your blog or diary to see what you were writing and thinking a whole year ago? I’m generally unlucky and find I wasn’t writing anything on a particular date, but today I found myself moving across a post from the old blog that I wrote exactly a year ago: It’s an Awful Long Way Down. In it I noted that I was writing a lot of rambling rubbish (I know – I was deleting most of it!) and then talked about a song in my head. “It will pass,” I said.

Well, unfortunately, it hasn’t. It’s a whole year later, and I’ve got the same song in my head that I had then.

People say we never learn from the lessons of the past, but I’ve got a new perspective on that now. Maybe it’s the looking back and stepping into old shoes that causes the same things to happen?

Moochy has listed 5 things to smile about… I was considering doing this for some time before I saw the post. After the contretemps involving Sharky and other things (and my general grumpiness), it seemed a good idea to remind myself of the better things in life.

1) Definitely sunshine.
2) Delilah’s young face when she’s sleeping, and Samson chirping in his friendly manner.
3) Teddy bears with growlers.
4) Delicious fooooood.
5) Getting a different perspective all of a sudden – scales falling from my eyes; doors and horizons opening up to my fascinated gaze; something new to consider and get involved in.

How about the rest of you?

I stumbled on the Lost in Translation site some time before, but found myself back there the other day. I tried various snippets from my blog (sometimes edited to simplify) – most of it turned into garbage after being translated in and out of English multiple times, but the best results were as follows:

Original English text:
Sharky died of kidney failure in January.

Translated back from Portuguese:
Sharky is died to landslide of kidney in January.

Original English text:
Maybe it even masks the real tinnitus, which to many people is just the scream of a wasp (description courtesy of my mother).

Translated back from Japanese:
Perhaps that covers tinnitus of the substance which is exactly the scream of the sparrow drumstick (courtesy of description of my mother) to many people.

Original English text:
We finally got inside and looked out, and the slush was belting down in the gathering darkness.

Translated back from French:
We finally obtained inside and looked at outside, and the slush girdled downwards in the supercilious darkness.

Something that occurred to me when studying the translations of the phrase about tinnitus (this turned into mush as well) was that there was a translation of tinnitus into French, but no translation of it back into English, so you ended up with this:

Perhaps it masks even the true acouphène, which with much of people is right the cry boring of a wasp (courtesy of description of my mother).

After that, of course, none of the other language translators could handle it, as acouphène wasn’t recognized as an English word.

Lots of words get missed in that way, and whatever snippet you put in ends up being a mishmash of untranslated words from different languages, but of course I had to take this particular omission personally… laughs at self. (I’m at a loss with no smilicons here).

I hate banks.

I’m not an Egg customer myself, but I didn’t know whether or not I was surprised when I saw this piece of news on the television last night. I stared at it with horror, thinking to myself “that can’t have done anybody’s self-esteem much good. It’s the last thing we need in this world, which is hard enough.”

“Stupid bank!” I said out loud.
“Stupid guinea pigs,” said Mum.

Mood: Troubled
Listening to: Ghostly song in my head: ‘Tide is High’ by Blondie

Well, she may be getting old, but she still has far more energy and determination than I do. She gets things done while I’m still drawing up lists and talking about it.

Edit Feb 2008: Comments for this entry when it was on the old site:

Pacian wrote at Feb 5, 2007 at 15:45:
I’m 23 and I just draw up the lists and don’t even talk about it. o_O

kateblogs wrote at Feb 6, 2007 at 00:54:
You are still finding yourself. Your time will come. Well, that’s my excuse

Diddums wrote at Feb 6, 2007 at 08:00:
Maybe you’re right. We had a mother and daughter dog, and it wasn’t till the mother dog ‘popped off’ that the daughter dog seemed to relax, stretch, sigh, and gain confidence.

Bunnyman wrote at Feb 6, 2007 at 22:28:
My mum was 80 in December. She went off to London to see Chicago and have a night on the town. Admittedly she’s beginning to wobble a bit on her feet but she still manages her keep fit class every Thursday, and she insists on going down to the local tea shop for her regular Friday natter with her pals. Although she might talk about eventualities, she gives me the feeling she’ll still be around for some time to come.

“Number o-one, number o-one …” You’ve even got me at it now!

Diddums wrote at Feb 6, 2007 at 23:23:
Too late - I’ve moved on to ‘Heart of Glass’ now! Heh heh.

Everybody’s mother seems to be a powerhouse of energy – I wonder where they get it from? My mother’s coffee-house coven is on Saturdays. Maybe it’s in the tea and coffee they all drink?

Whoever said ‘the moon doth shine as bright as day’ wasn’t just being poetic. It’s spooky. The thing is glaring through the cat flap and spotlighting my doll’s house, and when I look outside I can see everything for miles – including (after a startled jump) a black wheelie bin with something flapping out the top. The stars are clearly visible, prickling sharply in the greenish blue sky, and – because it’s gusty – the moonlight causes twiggy shadows to waver across my walls.

The cat flap was clanging in the porch but never while I was watching. It was bright out there too, and the Christmas stickers on the porch windows threw looming shadows like big black spiders, causing me to twitch.

When I told Mum the new Christmas tree was so big and dense that it filled my window and nobody could see in, it was truer than I realized. When the lights are off and the house is dark, the moon glows though the curtains on either side, leaving the tree as a dark, sinister shape rearing up the middle. It’s my own personal ‘nightmare before Christmas’, only now it’s ‘nightmare after Christmas’, which is far worse because the fairy lights are off.

I couldn’t sleep, so I put the lamp back on.

Earlier I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so now that I should be sleeping, I don’t know why I’m not. I just keep staring at the doll’s house at the end of the room, which is glowing eerily. No lights are showing in the windows, and the inhabitants have clearly gone to bed. Here I am, shut outside their house. Who knows what could be prowling around out here?

I was in town today with Mum and sister and wouldn’t really talk to anyone – it was sort of “ump” every time they spoke to me. It wasn’t planned – I felt surrounded by bargain hunters and children strangers, and my reluctance to speak was almost physical.

(1) I had some mugs waiting to go in the dishwasher – but a tiny spider stretched such a fine web across the mouth of one mug that you could barely see it shining in the sunlight. The spider itself was the merest speck, and I wondered what it hoped it might catch. Microbes?

I didn’t want to kill it in the dishwasher, so I put the mug aside. Every so often I checked, and the spider was still there. Then one day it was gone – and so was the web. I put my finger in and stirred it around, puzzled – the web was definitely gone. It was as though the spider had coiled it up like a length of elven rope and carried it off to a better home.

(2) I was setting off from my house, approaching a patch of grass where someone had put down a thick layer of white bread crumbs. Just in front of me, a large flock of busy brown birds came down in a clatter of wings. I drew nearer, with Jolly the Trolley rattling and rumbling in tow, and the birds immediately rose and sat on the nearest roof, staring down. It was only then that I noticed the black cat, sitting completely relaxed beside the bread crumbs. It had a delighted smirk on its face, as though to say “I was just sitting around doing nothing, and then suddenly, out of the blue…!”

Edit Feb 2008: Comments for this entry when it was hosted on Blogigo:

1. kateblogs wrote at Dec 2, 2006 at 19:44:
LOL I bet that cat couldn’t believe his luck.

2. Pacian wrote at Dec 3, 2006 at 12:45:
I think he was a sneaky cat with a loaf of bread and a cheese grater.