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There’s an old joke that asks what someone who can speak x number of languages is called, and goes through (depending on how pedantic the teller is) the various prefixes down through bilingual for someone who speaks two languages. The final question is, of course, what one would call someone who can only speak a single language. The natural progression would be to monolingual, of course. The joke turns it around and says “American.”
All too often, this is true. Though my mind has started putting an “insert your own frothing-at-the-mouth-Republican joke here” after bilingual, due to the all too frequent bitchings about “if you’re going to come to this country, learn the damned language!” from the right wing.
Unfortunately, I fall pretty squarely into the “American” stereotype, because I have a hard time following a conversation between two native Spanish speakers. It has a bit more to do with the inflections and lingual shortcuts native speakers of any language take than lack of understanding of most of the words, because as a word geek, I can tease out the meaning of most words, especially if I see them written down.
However, I’m also not going to go to another country and automatically expect them to know perfect American English just because I’m in the vicinity, which seems to be the modus operandi of most of those frothing-at-the-mouth-Republicans who expect immigrants to know perfect American English upon day two or three after setting foot on American soil. …If they’re feeling generous. Yes, this his hyperbole. Unfortunately, it’s not hyperbolic enough to be less than true.
Instead of speaking my American English more loudly and slowly when someone doesn’t understand, I tend to be embarrassed that I don’t know their language well enough to speak it in a way they’d prefer to hear. In fact, I think that if I ever end up going to any country other than maybe Canada, I’ll make it a point to learn the sentence “I apologise for my inability to speak your language.” before anything else. Or, at the very least, have it written down.
This place held for an actual post. Basic thought: relationship with God is a private thing that is only shown by certain behaviors, like marriage is a private thing only shown by certain behaviors.
I’ve got a fairly wide variety of caffeinated beverages I like. Well, okay, it can basically be narrowed to three. Coffee, tea, and Pepsi. Dr Pepper and Coke will do in a pinch (usually occurring at a burger joint that doesn’t serve Pepsi products or Barq’s root beer).
Ooh. And G33k B33r, but that’s in a category all its own.
But I’ve found myself leaning more and more toward tea when I want something hot and caffeinated. Not just because I like the taste better, but in a way, at least partially because of the whole culture surrounding tea—everything from Japanese tea ceremonies to the much more abbreviated but still as fraught with meaning British version. It’s something that’s come down through centuries both intact and changing with the times. The basics of warming the pot, having special blends of teas imported, and sipping haven’t changed, but the fact that an “electric kettle” is now the preferred method for boiling the water is a sign of currency.
Coffee has its own ceremonies, to be sure. Everything from the yuppy dash to Starbucks to the resurgence of the community coffee shop where discussions on everything from art to philosophy are had. Coffee culture, perhaps in reflection of its higher caffeine content, is a bit faster, more on-the-move, hours-long discussions aside.
Perhaps it comes down to taste after all.
John and I have said for a while now that when we get our vehicle paid off, we want to buy a house. Of course, that got put off when we totalled our car just a few months before we paid it off, back in ’07.
I’ve put some thought into what I want in a house. Some of it comes from experience, of course. Some of it comes from what my sisters have.
A few things I really want are:
A separate utility room. At least big enough to have our front-loading washer and dryer in, preferably big enough for a folding table and a Cat Genie as well.
3 bedrooms, with the master a decent size. about 14×14 or so would be ideal, but anything larger than our current 10×10 will work.
At least 1¾ baths, though I’d prefer at least 2 full baths.
Storage space, either an outdoor room off a porch or patio or a shed in the back yard.
A dishwasher.
Those are the real deal-breakers, the things that will make me consider a slightly more expensive house.
Things I’d like:
A garden tub, i.e. one with bowed-out sides and more room than a typical rounded-rectangle. If I can get one with jets, I will be one seriously happy Kes.
A wet bar. Hey, even if we don’t keep a lot of alcohol around it’s a nice thing to have.
A fireplace. Yes, even though this is Texas, most of the houses my family had while I was growing up had one, and it’s still nice to curl up in front of a fire on a chilly night with a good book and a mug of tea.
A secondary main living space, aka family room or den. This would be in addition to a dining area, and would be the space set aside for gaming. A nice big table (or even smaller one with individual tables [TV trays] for players), some chairs a few bookcases holding gaming books and/or minis, and we’re set. Room for a fridge would be nice. I mean, who wants to go clear to the kitchen for a drink? *L* Of course, having the wet bar in this room would be mightily convenient.
Laminate, vinyl, tile, or hardwood floors throughout. This is mostly due to our cats, who shed like crazy. Carpet is much more adept at grabbing and holding onto shed pet hair, and harder to clean it out of. Rugs are just fine.
These are things that I would absolutely adore, but won’t break a house for me.
I’ve found a house with most of these. I can’t tell what kind of tubs are in the bathrooms, but everything else is just about perfect. I’m not going to link to it, but boy do I wish we could break our lease for this house.
I’m not into astrology, but like pretty much every person I’ve ever met, I know my sign and some of the basic traits ascribed to people with that sign.
I’m a Capricorn, but I was born pretty much at the last minute to be one. I’ve never been the typical driven, type A personality I usually hear ascribed to Caps, and I’ve only grown more laid back as I get older. In certain ways, at least.
Recently, I found a site that listed some likes and dislikes for each sign, just futzing around. If I went solely by that list, I’d be a Pisces. Likes were listed as “foods of all kinds, romantic places, sunsets over the sea, waterfalls, ponds, poetry, people, mystical settings, candles, incense, freedom to drift along from moment to moment, and their own uninterrupted personal privacy”. I went through and ticked each one off with a “Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Uh huh. Yup. Absofrigginlutely.” Dislikes were listed as “bright, noisy, crowded, popular places and dirty, ugly, garish objects, and the wrong people. Again I ticked each of the three off as applying to me.
Not surprisingly, as I’m an introvert. Being around crowds makes me jittery and squirmy, both due to the simple stress of being around so many other people with their thoughts and feelings and the noise they make simply by being around as well as the sense that they’re judging as people do. Inevitably, the way someone wears their hair, the way they speak, the way they walk, what clothes they wear… each little thing is categorized according to the observer’s previous experiences and expectations are there according to those previous experiences. It’s the way humans work. And the way many people (most of the ones I’ve run across) have learned to interact with others, the judgments tend to be on the harsh side. If you’re not just like me, you’re not an “us” therefore you are a “them” and to be ridiculed or evangelized or fought or ignored.
Mostly, I ignore. Anything else requires too much interaction. The one thing that drives me the most nuts is being forced to interact, even passively. Having a car drive by—or worse, sit in a parking lot—blasting their bass not only gives me a headache, but is forcing me to listen to something not of my own choosing. This leaves room for compromise, because the choice is still there.
Another frequent occurrence that tends to drive me up a tree is when parents will tell their children to “go play outside” to get them out of their hair. It’s all well and good when there’s enough room between where the kids are to play and other people, but in apartments when there’s not a playground or park or something far enough away that the noise doesn’t reach me, those parents are just inflicting on me what they won’t deal with themselves, and that’s unacceptable.
I’m really not sounding as laid back as I claim. Drawing a few hard lines, though, lets me be as laid back as I want everywhere else.
I don’t know a whole lot about it, probably barely more than a typical Anglo (and that mostly from the fiction of Tony Hillerman and David & Aimée Thurlo), but something intrigues me about the Navajo Way. It’s more than a religion, it’s a complete lifestyle that extends from the spiritual outward.
The whole point is to “walk in beauty”, to have a sense of harmony with yourself, your family, your total environment in such a way that you fit like a key to a lock into your place in the universe. Any disharmony causes sickness, though it may not always be an obvious physical illness, or even an obvious mental disorder.
I thought about this because I occasionally design my perfect house in my mind, and I realized I wanted a room that was something like a chapel – dedicated to beauty, quiet, comfort, and contemplation. I even saw it, with soft blue walls, subdued lighting, perhaps a fireplace. A true sanctuary. Perhaps now, the fact that it exists that concretely in my mind is enough to make it such a sanctuary.
It isn’t very often I come out of a dream with an insight that has me going “Oh, wow.” but I did tonight.
I fairly vaguely remember most of my dream, but like usual, it was like a movie that held snippets of something like my life and that at different times, I was taking part in.
The last bit, though, was a discussion in a college literature class, and that’s what solidified the insight for me. Apparently, the earlier part of my dream was a book (or maybe a movie based on a book?) that the class was now discussing.
One of the things that struck the class (led carefully to this by the prof, of course) and struck me in particular, about various parts of Part A of my dream (for lack of better term) was that throughout, the family featured revolved around what they thought were rooms of their physical home. At times like Christmas morning, the center was the living room with the hearth and the tree. Many other times it was the kitchen. The conclusion the class was led to was that really, at various times, the center around which they revolved was made of different people.
I was thinking about my family when I came awake, and the biggest conclusion I came to was that at its core, an ideal marriage is the center around which a family revolves—in many ways, literally its sun.
An ideal marriage is the center around which a family revolves—in many ways, literally its sun.
I kind of remember (perhaps through the rose-colored glasses I habitually wear augmented by the even more vermilion lenses of looking back to a fairly happy childhood) that my parents’ marriage was like that early on. Still half dreaming, in my memory, I definitely felt the warmth emanating from my parents as a unit. Granted, this was about pre-7 or so.
The point moved from there to have me realize that in a truly ideal marriage, that feeling for the children never goes away, though it may dim and lose its all-encompassing importance, especially as children move on to form their own families. It still provides the warmth, perhaps like a central bonfire in a camp with many campfires. The fire you’re closest to provides the most warmth, but the light and the knowledge of the warmth of the bonfire is still there, still held close.
With that meaning of marriage, to me, gay marriages strengthen the marriages of all of the hetero couples. Each and every marriage entered into with truly loving intentions to stick it out through the long haul and make things work does, if only to provide another little campfire to provide warmth and light to all.
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Labyrinthine Thoughts  Musings,
Opinions, Meditations, and the occasional randomness.On my bookshelf What I'm Reading
Just Finished: I finally finished the Honorverse books by David Weber, reading them, including anthologies and spin-off series by published order. Subsequently, pretty much tore through Mercedes Lackey's new Five Hundred Kingdoms book, The Sleeping Beauty, Nora Roberts' The Search, and immediately upon purchase, in the following 5 hours, C.E. Murphy's new one, Truthseeker.
Currently: I started Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs, but don't expect it to last long.
Toward the top of the "to be read" pile(In no particular order)
Night Myst by Yasmine Galenorn
Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon
Frostbitten by Kelley Armstrong
The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind
ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor
First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher
Lost Empire by Clive Cussler
I'm Eagerly Anticipating
Hatter M, Volume 2: Mad With Wonder by Frank Beddor, Liz Cavalier, and Sami Makkonen; came out 11/4/09, just haven't gotten it yet
The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff, due out 9/7
No Mercy by Sherrilyn Kenyon, due out 9/7
Intriges by Mercedes Lackey, due out 10/5
Side Jobs a collection of the Dresden Files short stories in various other anthologies, etc. by Jim Butcher, due out 10/26
Happy Ever After the final book in the Bride Quartet by Nora Roberts, due out 11/2
Indulgence in Death by J. D. Robb, due out 11/2
Living Nightmare by Shannon K. Butcher, due out 11/2
Ghost Story by Jim Butcher, due out 3/29/11
All links are for the Barnes & Noble pages for the respective books.
¹All books expected in 2011 and beyond go to the authors' web sites, usually the specific book pages.
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