clevermanka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clevermanka) wrote2011-11-08 09:52 am
clevermanka) wrote2011-11-08 09:52 am
Entry tags:
Reasonably safe on this road
All things considered, I get along pretty well with my parents. We have adopted our own policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell regarding certain matters in order that a general sense of family happiness and equilibrium is maintained. Every once in a while sometime pops up--just once with each of my parents in the past five years I've been negotiating these Birthday-Instead-Of-Holiday visits. Thankfully, nothing cropped up this time, and there were no actual fights like happened during my Spring 2009 visit (that was awful), but every time I go visit them, I get a little more frustrated. Every time, it's all "Well what do you want to do?" Well, I don't know, guys, I'm not the one who lives here. By the way, they ask this question of me numerous times during every visit. Once, I asked if they knew if anything was going on in town (one year we missed a national barbershop quartet competition), and Mommy's response was a dismissive "Oh, I have no idea." Like it's too much trouble for her to check the paper the week before I visit to see if anything's going on.
Annoying.
And then there's all the little things that accumulate with age. Daddy's getting fatter (paleo eating is a thing of the past for him--the twenty-five pounds he lost on his Whole30 weren't enough of an incentive to put down the Doritos). Mommy's getting more, well, cluckish is the best way I can describe it (she frets about everything, and explains everything that bothers her in great, unnecessary detail). They both have developed a habit of occasionally speaking in weird, muppet-like voices.
Daddy's is sort of a Goofy voice (Goofy from Disney cartoons),and he uses it when he's talking about something mundane and doesn't really have much to say but wants to say a lot about it. So it goes something like: (begin Goofy voice) Well, I went to the store and then I picked up all the stuff I needed. Yep, I sure did. I got it all, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it (he uses the last phrase a lot, and I can't figure out why).
Mommy's is high pitched and baby-talk sounding, and she uses it to express strong emotion. I'm pretty sure her use of it is a carry over from the preschool story-time sessions she does at the library. She's always been a little bit of a drama queen, and the story-reading performances give her a nice outlet. It's disconcerting, however, when she's talking about going to visit a friend for her birthday and she breaks out into this squeaky inflection: "And then we went church the next morning and it was so! nice! to see! old! friends!"
I've instructed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mckitterick to tell me immediately if I begin to exhibit a tendency to use weird voices in regular conversation. And that if I continue to do so after repeated admonitions, to please just shoot me.
While we were out running an errand one day, Mommy asked me if I ever thought about my parents getting older. I told her that I didn't really have to think about it. I'm not sure how she took that, but I thought it was an appropriate answer. What a strange question!
There were also some food problems--or rather, lack of food problems. For some reason, Mommy just didn't have much there for me to eat. Since I'm on a Whole30, that made things trickier. I was a little hungry pretty much the entire visit--which probably didn't help my patience with their weird voices.
But I'm making the whole thing sound like an awful trial, and it really wasn't. We watched a lot of stuff on the T.V. (for one, the five-hour A&E production of Pride and Prejudice from 1995), which meant I got to spend a great deal of time on the couch, as planned and hoped-for. I also read a book (while on the couch) that Mommy had checked out of the library, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. This came out earlier this year, and I was predisposed to hate it because I'm tired of those long, pretentious, and Victorian-sounding titles that everyone seems to be attaching to their stories. But the book was good. Really good. The characters are charming and the plot is surprisingly, well...surprising. But the language! Oh my goodness, the language. So beautiful. For example:
"The wooden woman had four arms, each outstretched in a different direction, pointing with authority. On the inside of her easterly arm, pointing backward in the direction September had come, someone had carved in deep, elegant letters:
TO LOSE YOUR WAY
On the northerly arm, pointing up to the tops of the cliffs, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR LIFE
On the southerly arm, pointing out to sea, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR MIND
And on the westerly arm, pointing up to a little headland and a dwindling of the golden beach, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR HEART
September bit her lip. She certainly didn’t want to lose her life, so the cliffs were right out, even if she thought she could climb them. Losing her mind was not too much better, and besides, there was nothing about with which to fashion a seagoing vessel, unless she wanted to sink promptly on a raft of gold. She had already lost her way, walking for miles in that direction, and anyway, if one’s way is lost one cannot get anywhere and she definitely wanted to get somewhere, even if she didn’t know where somewhere was. Somewhere mainly involved food and a bed and a fireplace, whereas Here had only Fairy gold and a roaring, cold sea.
Only the heart was left.
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do."
Isn't that lovely?
There was another piece from the book, a much shorter one, that I'm going to work into another LJ entry later this week.
Friday's thrift-store shopping was a bust. Indianapolis thrift stores don't have dressing rooms anymore. Fuck that noise. I only bought two shirts that I could try on over a tee shirt I was wearing, and one (70s, burgundy, velvet) jacket.
On Saturday, I took a photo of myself with one of the signs for a Pike County Commissioner candidate.
If you don't get the reference, click here, and forgive the slight spelling difference. I considered Photoshopping it, but thought that would be cheating.
I always appreciate the opportunity to spend time with my parents. They are fantastic, and I love them. I think, though, that maybe I'll play my own cruise director for the April trip and will have some things planned out in advance.
Annoying.
And then there's all the little things that accumulate with age. Daddy's getting fatter (paleo eating is a thing of the past for him--the twenty-five pounds he lost on his Whole30 weren't enough of an incentive to put down the Doritos). Mommy's getting more, well, cluckish is the best way I can describe it (she frets about everything, and explains everything that bothers her in great, unnecessary detail). They both have developed a habit of occasionally speaking in weird, muppet-like voices.
Daddy's is sort of a Goofy voice (Goofy from Disney cartoons),and he uses it when he's talking about something mundane and doesn't really have much to say but wants to say a lot about it. So it goes something like: (begin Goofy voice) Well, I went to the store and then I picked up all the stuff I needed. Yep, I sure did. I got it all, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it (he uses the last phrase a lot, and I can't figure out why).
Mommy's is high pitched and baby-talk sounding, and she uses it to express strong emotion. I'm pretty sure her use of it is a carry over from the preschool story-time sessions she does at the library. She's always been a little bit of a drama queen, and the story-reading performances give her a nice outlet. It's disconcerting, however, when she's talking about going to visit a friend for her birthday and she breaks out into this squeaky inflection: "And then we went church the next morning and it was so! nice! to see! old! friends!"
I've instructed
mckitterick to tell me immediately if I begin to exhibit a tendency to use weird voices in regular conversation. And that if I continue to do so after repeated admonitions, to please just shoot me. While we were out running an errand one day, Mommy asked me if I ever thought about my parents getting older. I told her that I didn't really have to think about it. I'm not sure how she took that, but I thought it was an appropriate answer. What a strange question!
There were also some food problems--or rather, lack of food problems. For some reason, Mommy just didn't have much there for me to eat. Since I'm on a Whole30, that made things trickier. I was a little hungry pretty much the entire visit--which probably didn't help my patience with their weird voices.
But I'm making the whole thing sound like an awful trial, and it really wasn't. We watched a lot of stuff on the T.V. (for one, the five-hour A&E production of Pride and Prejudice from 1995), which meant I got to spend a great deal of time on the couch, as planned and hoped-for. I also read a book (while on the couch) that Mommy had checked out of the library, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. This came out earlier this year, and I was predisposed to hate it because I'm tired of those long, pretentious, and Victorian-sounding titles that everyone seems to be attaching to their stories. But the book was good. Really good. The characters are charming and the plot is surprisingly, well...surprising. But the language! Oh my goodness, the language. So beautiful. For example:
"The wooden woman had four arms, each outstretched in a different direction, pointing with authority. On the inside of her easterly arm, pointing backward in the direction September had come, someone had carved in deep, elegant letters:
TO LOSE YOUR WAY
On the northerly arm, pointing up to the tops of the cliffs, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR LIFE
On the southerly arm, pointing out to sea, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR MIND
And on the westerly arm, pointing up to a little headland and a dwindling of the golden beach, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR HEART
September bit her lip. She certainly didn’t want to lose her life, so the cliffs were right out, even if she thought she could climb them. Losing her mind was not too much better, and besides, there was nothing about with which to fashion a seagoing vessel, unless she wanted to sink promptly on a raft of gold. She had already lost her way, walking for miles in that direction, and anyway, if one’s way is lost one cannot get anywhere and she definitely wanted to get somewhere, even if she didn’t know where somewhere was. Somewhere mainly involved food and a bed and a fireplace, whereas Here had only Fairy gold and a roaring, cold sea.
Only the heart was left.
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do."
Isn't that lovely?
There was another piece from the book, a much shorter one, that I'm going to work into another LJ entry later this week.
Friday's thrift-store shopping was a bust. Indianapolis thrift stores don't have dressing rooms anymore. Fuck that noise. I only bought two shirts that I could try on over a tee shirt I was wearing, and one (70s, burgundy, velvet) jacket.
On Saturday, I took a photo of myself with one of the signs for a Pike County Commissioner candidate.
If you don't get the reference, click here, and forgive the slight spelling difference. I considered Photoshopping it, but thought that would be cheating.
I always appreciate the opportunity to spend time with my parents. They are fantastic, and I love them. I think, though, that maybe I'll play my own cruise director for the April trip and will have some things planned out in advance.