twangypearl the elastic girl

some things of very little consequence

No bon mots have been forthcoming from JB, unfortunately, though he is going through an entertaining/annoying phase [delete as applicable] of Playing the Martyr.

I'm just a fooool who loooves you! he proclaims, at the drop of a hat, in an industrial strength Kerry accent.
Also: SADNESS, said in robotic manner, in response to anything that doesn't particularly please him.

Sorry there's no bread left, JB, someone might say.
SADNESS.

It looks like rain.
SADNESS.

Working late again, JB?
I'm just a fooool who loooves you!

Marge Simpson-like: Hrmmmmmmm.
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My mother is 70 as of yesterday. What do you get someone who says she wants nothing, and needs nothing and maybe even genuinely wants nothing?

Dare I say: something?
Something, it has to be! To give nothing is a metaphysical impossibility, isn't it? Not to mention a bit of a social faux-pas.
It's quite a conundrum, as you can see.

*(If metaphysical is the thing I mean, clever readers?)
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I have it on good authority (JB's colleague's wife/partner told me) that cats don't meow at each other, they only meow at people. So, in fact, according to the good authority, meowing is a cat's attempt to speak Human. Isn't that charming and clever of them? Like tourists in Spain, trying to communicate with the taxi-drivers, only instead of asking for a hotel, el aeropuerto or the station, what do you think they want to share with us? We should know, we're the ones with the big, fancy, supposedly evolved brains. (Whereas theirs are the size of a bean).

Maybe this:

 
Insights from people who know these things are welcome.

I wish we had a cat or dog, but the JB seems to have mixed up the Mean Parent Handbook with the Good Husband Handbook and keeps saying: We'll see.

SADNESS.

(Har).

April 1980 - May 2009

A sad day yesterday. Goodbye, old friend.

This morning

my mother woke me with her enthusiast drawing of curtains in the next room. She told me she wakes early and likes to look out at the dawn coming up over the sea.

- A last gasp of sunlight expelled from under a heavy blanket of cloud. I had a wonderfully novel day with Ma, buying horse food and going to Lidl (it's true! it's cheap) and going to Fest.ina Lente to offer help with the RDA crowd. (Riding for the Disabl*d) Fest.ina Lente is such a great idea - it trains young people with learning disabilities to have a career in equitation. But they've taken their particular brand of horse PC/empathy to a ridiculous degree. They stick up notices all over the place, speaking (rather presumptuously) from the horse's mouth: Ouch! Please don't pat me on the head, it's hurts. And, in reference to the yellow line drawn around their doors: Stay out of my space! And: I don't like jumping! What I really like is grazing with my friends. And: Get off my back, big arse! You're heavy!
Alright, not that one, but it is the natural progression of what they are saying. It seems a bit like nonsense to put words into the mouth of a horse, even with their best of intentions. I mean, how could they possibly know? Which horse told them? If it was those miniature Shetlands, for instance, I don't believe a word.
I mean,I could just as easily say that Smokey told me that he is the horse president, and he likes a gin and tonic before dinner, served with a slice of lemon. After that, what really pleases him is a Shiatsu massage and a palomino mare for company. )
That was a long parenthesis.
I conclude this piece of horsey nonsense with this:

social eptitude

It's been a quiet week at my home of Hawthorn Hill, at the edge of the - eh - suburbs.
In the flat featureless landscape of the week's news, finding a frog/toad at the side of the gate was a big spike in the thrillometer. The froad sat there, fat, motionless and even perhaps a bit dead. I rushed back to the house to get it something - what? a glass of water? some aspirin? a small reviving whiskey? but when I got there realised the pointlessness of the mission and got my camera instead to capture the froad moment. Sadly bots, you will have to wait to see the pictures, since I am struggling with narrowband at a prehistoric 24kps and no cable for my camera.
When I came back from the walk in Little Forest, froad was gone - presumably having come back to life and crawled off. Or, very possibly, maybe a princess kissed him and transformed him into a prince. I have heard of that happening alright. I think it was on the Disc*very Channel.

I may be a bit lonely. When the JB came down to visit on Saturday I tried to keep him here, but he made good his escape on Sunday evening, back to Dublin on the Irish Setter bus. Pity. I would have been good to him. I would have fed him, cleaned out his cage, taken him for a walk everyday.
I sweeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar. I would so!

Today the only words I have exchanged with Other Humans were:
Oh, you're working today. Grand, so!
Polish fellow: nodding and smiling fiercely as one does when one doesn't speak the local language.

And a desultory chat with Ger, the neighbour who was finishing off his wall. I might have lost a bit of the power of conversation, due to lack of practice, as in:

Hi Ger, how are you?
Not so bad, how's things with yourself?
Ah grand, how are you?

Yes. The second How are you? (though not unheard of in Ireland, the place whose motto might as well be Never Use One Word When Two Will Do) was a bit superfluous. But Ger and his wife are very socially- whatdoyoucallit, ept. And carried on regardless.

Going to watch Nigella making fast food, now.
Oh I am middle-aged, again.

sky last night

was this spectacular - to the west:
 
and to the south:


This is one of the best things about my parents' house - it sits on a rise so that the horizon forms a hilly circle around it, jagged to the south over the hill, and low-stretching to the west and north over the valleys. In the daytime the sky splits into two halves, the kind warm sky to the south of the house and the blue cold to the north. It's like an inverted bowl around which rain and wind and hail chase each other in the winter, but on a kind summer night, like last night, faroff sunsets fire up the sky over the Dublin mountains, and it's as beautiful as anything.

spike at our new house trying out the floor

sky from home

Terrier Major

Terrier Minor

Negatory

e felt sick this morning so got up early to google early pregnancy symptoms. Tick! tick! tick! -ish! I had the nausea, tiredness and late menstruation. (Bo*sooms not swollen, more's the pity. Normal, modest size.) And so it was that e became instantly convinced of impending parenthood, blood, guts, anxiety,  no more sleep, the whole fray of adult life.
(I am so suggestible. Oh dear. If they told me the planet was actually ruled by yellow peas, I would believe it. Well, definitely if it was in a Discovery documentary.)
So I waited and waited and soon enough, didn't wait anymore and woke JB up and cajoled him into joining me in the anxiety and convinced him of the need to pee-test. He went out to get a multi-peestick pack (smart boy sees future occasion for use). I pee-d and no.
Negatory.
After a moment of disappointment I bounced back to my usual comfort-level of being in my body on my own-ee-oo. Phew, in a way. Ahhoooo :( in a way.

Nausea? Gone!
Odd, that.
Still late with the Time but that is not unheard of, specially when whipped into a self-induced sweat of hysteria and stress.
B*osooms normal sized. (Pity, as above).

Will "try" again later.

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In other news, not much is happening. I had a nice green oasis of calm down at home. Smokey is well, if a bit moth-eaten still. Jen is getting better. I gave a hand at F*stina L*nte, a charitable organisation that trains special needs young people to ride and look after horses for a living. We had Plum a lovely mare with some kind of skin cancer, which they swear is not causing her any pain (they are very sensitive to the horses there, with bitless bridles, and weight-carrying charts). She was pulling a bit, and staring at the wind coming into the school, but she was gentle and good really. Afterwards there was the AGM of the association, which I was invited to as well in a house with a lovely view - and a studio. There were some Really Poor Paintings on the wall, our hostess (a very nice woman in all other respects) seems to be the perpetrator of those Excreable Girls in Floaty dresses With Occasional Lumpen Child Invariably Swirling on the Beach that appear on Merrion Sq on Sundays. Ooooo, woe is me. Such Badness.

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Old Friend's mare had a foal that is mostly chestnut with a dappled grey rump.
!!
Have to see her. OF is delighted with her.

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Thursday had great fun with Spike rough and tumbling in the garden. AGAIN! He'd run through my legs and have a swing and roll around on the grass with me. AGAIN! and then, Bobby? he took my hand and we went and fell asleep in front of the 101 Dalm*tions.

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Hah, yes, not to be moaning minny, but I feel the pukey again.
???

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Oh, and a rant, my mother has this habit of making snarky side comments about me when we are out with Other People. I think it's nervousness, and I do understand - I have recognised the same Beast within myself with the JB, but I don't like it. I was saying hello to B*ryl and she was giving me a hug and saying she hadn't seen me since the weddding and asking me how was JB and I was saying he was a bit of a saint. My mother:
He'd need to be.
He'd need to be?? Why? and btw, wtf?
Huh. She never does this with e's brother.
Tis so true that the expectations are gender-based and So Much Simpler for the males.
Still I am sure it was just a joke. She is sweet and gave me a lift yesterday to the station and is always there for me. And looks after my geriatic horse.

wholesale and on-going exorcism of ghosts, embarassments and anxieties

It occured to me belately that this is what this blog is for. Blog-therapy with the Bots! What a revelation! I can dump them all here. Ooh, have I got stories for you!

Brilliant. So, loads more to come, Bots, when e has a window of opportoonity.
I hope you have a strong stomach and a patient and compassionate attitude.
(Which are not things robots are necessarily famous for, come to think of it).

In the meantime, a photo of Jen, assessing the chances of food being on the way, and if it might be worth getting up for it. She's getting sore with the lammo, so time for lammo diet. Poor Jenzer. I really like you, though you seem to include me in your general loathing for mankind and would gladly bite me, if you only had the nerve and didn't find the idea of human flesh so repulsive.

HELLO!

If Jen was JB she'd exclaim "hello!" when she woke like this