Random thoughts, best kept short.
So, sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut when people say dumb stuff. Other times, it's hard not to slap them. A friend of mine said to me recently that:
"My friend isn't racist, she just didn't want to sell her house to Asians". What the hell does that even mean? Is the money owned by people of different racial heritage different to "regular" money? How do you figure?
I went to an awesome wedding on the weekend, however while I accept that my friend was not designing place settings with me in mind (and I did warn him of the perils of placecards), it was probably a mistake to put me on a table with two former priests who spent much of the night saying things like:
"You know, the media was very unfair to the Pope, picking out those two paragraphs on contraception when his encyclical was 200 pages long" and
"Yes, but it's about homosexual manifestations, isn't it?". I'm sure it may be (about these so-called "manifestations"), but this isn't the conversation I'd be having at a same-sex wedding. Just an etiquette tip - I'm sure Emily Post would have something to say about it. Although I am unlikely to ever see either of these people ever again, it was nevertheless beyond the pale to start a floor fight at a wedding which was frankly a tinder-box of unspoken tension. Fun times, though.
One of my friends is 38 weeks and four days pregnant and "
doesn't want to have a Babee!" I advised drugs (for the birth), and moving back from the UK as soon as possible.
I did both the best public speaking I've done in ages and the worst, all in one week. Admittedly, I didn't faint as my entry to the "worst" category (I've seen this happen) but I was so stupidly nervous that I fear I may have repeated myself several times. Grizzlewick asked me "Mummy, why did you speak into a microphone?" That child asks the most relevant questions at times.
I am taking Grizzlewick to his first school orientation day this week. I hope he loves it, as I did.
My friend's three year old daughter has a stuffed giraffe, one of those Gund creatures. It's name is Corey. I don't know why I find this amusing.
I went for a walk with a friend last night and started a sentence with the phrase "So I found out on Saturday that I'm...." and she thought the end of the sentence was "pregnant". It was actually "....hosting Christmas for our family this year". Hands up if you can guess which was the more disappointing answer, and to whom it was more disappointing.
I have discovered, through the re-reading of his 25 year anthology, that my writing inspiration is PJ O'Rourke. This isn't entirely unexpected, although it's fair to say we don't share a world-view.
For some reason 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy' keeps popping into my head. I have some problems with this:
a) Don't regularly thank god
b) not country
c) or for that matter, a boy
d) I don't "got me a fiddle", and if I did I wouldn't be inflicting it on others in a fit of maniacal cheer;
e) when the sun comes up, I don't have cakes on the griddle, I have a bleary-eyed lack of interest
