Guests of the World

The #1 rule of blogging (so I've read) is: keep it short. Of course, my philosophy is that if it's short, it's probably not worth mentioning all by itself. I don't like to write unless I have something to say. Unless I don't. You understand. So I build up a lot of things until it's time to write. Except that I don't like to write about things out of order. So I've been putting off writing.

Until today!

We are guest-free until probably April or May after 6 weeks of guests in September and October (three different sets). As I've already written about the other two, it leaves me to mention the final set, Ariel's Aunt Anita and Uncle Jim. We were only a stopover in the midst of their whirlwind adventure across Europe and the Atlantic. They began on the mainland visiting four countries, then us for four days, then London, then they posted themselves to the colonies on the RMS Queen Mary II. (RMS stands for "Royal Mail Ship," and it actually carries mail back and forth between our two countries.) Their trip wasn't over then as after they arrived in NYC, they continued to play tourist in the Big Apple before finally getting back to Chicago.

You might remember that this summer I posted a tribute to my Aunt Missy. You might also recall that I referred to her as "The Best Aunt Ever." In the four days that J&A were here, Anita dropped this into the conversation no less than 3 times which left me to wonder if she coveted this title for herself. Let me take this opportunity to say that, yes, Anita, you are the Best Aunt Ever (Ariel never doubted it). This has led me to think that competition is a good thing, especially as Ariel and I have 9 aunts between us. So, yes, the title can be bought.

In a brilliant bit of planning, we took J&A to see the sights only on days when the weather was miserable. We stayed home on the beautiful days and played cards while complaining that the sun was too bright streaming through the windows. The first miserable day, we stormed Warwick castle. The weatherman claimed that the rain would clear by mid-morning. By noon it was clear -- clear that it was never going to stop raining. The day I took them to Oxford, the fog was so bad that I feared we would get to the top of St. Mary's and not be able to see any of the dreaming spires. Fortunately, the fog did clear significantly, and it made the climb worth it. Looking back on my pictures from the various visitors we've had, I noticed that we seemed to take everyone to the top of St. Mary's.



Hopefully I'll write more stuff soon. Enjoy!


Comments
EvilGM said,
16 November 2007
Chairman Mao was a pain in the butt to get up those stairs. I think he kept referring to the symbol of Western Dogma, but I’m a little rusty on my Mandarin.

All Creatures Great and Small

We have a cat. His name is Little Man, and he is a great but useless cat. He catches mice. Then he brings them to us. Sometimes he tosses them in the air and bats their little bodies around until the mouse falls under a piece of furniture where it remains until the stench brings us running to find it there. Or maybe even the mouse is still alive, and Little Man stalks it around the house until <ding!> it's nap-time! There goes the little mouse to a dark corner to hide while LM walks away. Normally, the girls and I would spot the mouse; we would catch it, and release it to the garden. But the mice have gotten out of control, and though running in terror along the baseboards is cute and pitiable, pooping behind my washing machine is not, and mouse poison had to be purchased. Check out this box. How do these mouse poison manufacturers expect to make any money? Why would I be willing to kill this adorable mouse on the front? If they really want me to buy it, they'd show the nasty nests these rodents build in your house along with the long list of inedible things that they have chewed through just to kill time (this list might include 3 schoolbags, a shin-pad (ate the rubber foam off of it), and a chenille rug). So we baited the house with cat-safe poison (in case Little Man ever broke with tradition and actually ate a mouse for once).

Before long I was sitting in the living room when I saw a little scamp dash out from behind the TV cabinet. Much hilarity ensued as we three female-folk put on our brave hunter-faces and then screamed every time the mouse made a sudden move. It was finally caught and I picked it up and tossed it out the back door. The next night my friend Cathy and her daughters were over, and I related this story, and she mocked me for being too soft to kill the mouse. Not 10 minutes passed before we all went into the kitchen and found that Little Man had brought in a live, unhurt tiny mouse that stood frozen in shock in the middle of the kitchen floor. We all hovered and remarked on how cute the little guy was and then I looked up and asked Cathy for her shoe.

Look of shock: "Why?!"

Me, very calmly, "I'm going to bash his little head in."

She went on to plead for the mouse's safe recovery, and as I had always intended, I set him on his way outside. There is no shame in kindness.

In addition to Little Man's great skill and gracious gifts (the mouse was still alive and unhurt because he gave it to me to play with), he also prowls the neighborhood with his buddy Halo and makes snarky comments at the other cats. Occasionally other cats come around, even a few have snuck in the cat door and eaten LM's food. There is one cat, a big brown tabby that I've often found sitting outside, that antagonizes LM to no end. Often I know the tabby is around because I can hear Little Man at the door hissing. One afternoon I walked into the kitchen to find LM sitting in the window making a horrible fuss about something outside. I looked, and sure enough, it was the tabby. The two cats were 15 feet apart and separated only by the window, so I opened the screenless window. Little Man turned and gave me a look that said, "What the freak are you doing, crazy woman!?! That cat could eat me whole!" My cowardly little kitty back up and allowed me to scare the tabby away.

So yesterday morning came dark and early as it does, and I noted to myself that Little Man had come and gone many times in the night. I know every time he returns because the moment he gets back on the bed, he plops down onto me -- the only place he'll sleep on the whole bed. So the girls and I all met in our jammies out on the landing, and I asked, "How did everyone sleep last night?" Livia groaned, but Lena answered promptly, "Terribly! I had to listen to that cat meowing all night, and then I had to listen to Little Man outside my door hissing!" I took that to mean that Lena had had a trippy night of dreams, but as if on cue, LM appeared there on the landing hissing at something downstairs, and down below I could hear a cat meowing. I went down to find the big brown tabby sitting in my dining room. When he saw me, he dashed through the kitchen and out the cat door. It was most perplexing. I scolded my cowardly cat that wouldn't even defend his own home, but would instead just hiss and then run back to his mommy. But as the day progressed, the tabby appeared a few more times in the laundry room to eat, each time dashing out when he saw me. Finally at 5:00 when I came downstairs to go pick up the girls, I could hear the incessant meowing again. I snuck down, closed the kitchen door to hinder escape, and followed the sound into the living room. There was that tabby sitting on my couch like he owned the place, meowing for no good reason. He dashed into the hall, and when he realized he was trapped, he did let me pet him, so I found he had a good healthy coat and no obvious injuries that might cause him to meow without end. I left him locked in the hall and picked up the girls. This was a terrible mistake. No, the cat didn't tear up anything or crap or spray. The mistake was letting the girls meet the cat. They spent about 15 minutes petting the cat before I let him out, by which time they had named him (Meowy) and started collecting little outfits for him to wear to tea. I tried to explain to the girls that there are many reasons why we couldn't keep the cat including, 1. the cat meows all the time, 2. the cat is our cat's arch-enemy, 3. I'm only paying for one cat to go back to America, 4. the cat just won't be quiet, 5. he probably belongs to someone else, 6. as we have intentionally kept LM small in a bonsai fashion so he will later fit in the overhead compartment, this cat is too big and would die in the cargo hold, and 7. Yo, Tabby! Shut-up already!

When LM came in that evening for the night, I shut the cat door. About every 45 minutes, I would hear a horrible ruckus as Meowy would beat against the locked door trying to get in to eat. This continued all night. This morning when I opened the front door to see the kids off, there under the shrubs was the poor tabby, locked out of his new home. Then Little Man redeemed himself and ran the cat off. I haven't seen the tabby since.

Bam!

Finally, the post about Mom and Ross' visit.

First I should like to take a tangent and discuss things that make me feel old. When I was a kid and we learned about proper possessive nouns, the rule went that for names that ended in S, you still added apostrophe-s unless that person was extremely dead in which case you just added the apostrophe. The example given was the staff of long-dead Old Testament prophet Moses was "Moses' staff". I could remember this because I had a dog named Moses. His rawhide bone was "Moses's bone." Then my brother was born. And at some point in early high-school, the visit of Ross became "Ross' visit" instead of "Ross's visit" despite the utter coolness of three S's in a row. It normally seems that language change over hundreds of years, so does that make me hundreds of years old? Why, I remember when all of the continents were joined together.

So we had an interesting visit with my mother and brother. This was my mother's second visit and my brother's first, his plane ticket being a graduation gift from my mother for finishing university despite his best efforts to the contrary. Ariel screwed up many a good plan to tour about by going on a trip to Florence (the Italian one) right in the midst of their visit, leaving me to have to always get home in time to pick the girls up from school. But we managed.

The first day we took the great trek South, which swings us past Oxford and into the land of prehistoric man. We saw Silbury Hill and the stones of Avebury and Stonehenge as well as one of the white horses that early people carved into the chalk hills of Wiltshire. These sites attract a more tofu-eating deodorant-eschewing crowd than most, and in Avebury, Ross and I overheard the cashier in a New Age shop remark to a customer that this year had been a lean year for Crop Circles. This put my brother and me into a rather irreverent mood for the rest of the trip, including our bus journey to Salisbury.

My mother turned 50 this year. She didn't take it nearly as poorly as we had hoped, but we still tried to find ways to remind her that half a century had passed since her birth. On the trip to Salisbury, she picked up a brochure about Salisbury and was reading it without her glasses. I should note here that Mom didn't start wearing glasses to combat the effects of old age, unless she's been old since she was a child. So in this case, it wasn't some sort of vanity that caused her to squint at the page, but just run-of-the-mill laziness. Anyhow, she was reading about the Cathedral when she looked up and said matter-of-factly, "In England, they call Holy Communion 'bam.'" Now I will be the first to admit that I have never attended any type of religious service here in England other than our LDS services, so everything I know is secondhand. And I will also readily admit that I am not always on top of other churches' lingo, but "bam" sounded so foreign and well, wrong to me that I had to question her sources. She pointed out on the pamphlet under the Services Schedule where she learned this and I saw:

8am (Holy Communion)

Ross and I laughed and laughed (remember, we were still punch drunk from the Crop Circles). For the rest of the trip, whenever my mother had a "Senior Moment," Ross and I would yell, "Bam!" like Emeril Lagasse.


Our next big trip was for Ross who had said he wanted to hike. I took everybody to the Peak District, and though I knew there was no way that I'd get Mom to climb Kinder Scout (the highest Peak), we could make a good effort. Plus, the trail began (and thus ended) at a pub, so I knew all would end well. This was good, because it drizzled the whole time. Ross abused sheep on the way up, and all was going pretty well until Jacob's Ladder came into sight. This was to be our destination, but when Mom saw it, she began to have second thoughts. You see, there are no peaks in the pointy sense in the Peak District, and so technically Kinder Scout is the highest point of a boggy moorland on top of a very high plateau, and to get to the top of the plateau you have to climb Jacob's Ladder. Jacob's Ladder from a distance looks like an 150 metre tall stone waterfall. It goes almost straight up from the valley floor to the plateau. It's a lot like Jack (of beanstalk fame) climbing up the giant table leg. Mom balked at this, plus, her camera batteries were all exhausted, and if Mom can't take a picture of something, there's no use going there. Ross on the other hand had spotted a large stone outcropping at the top and he was determined to conquer Jacob's Ladder (his first name is Jacob) and pee on the rock outcropping (because he is part Labrador Retriever). Mom went back and Ross and I scurried up (Ross scurried, and I panted and rest frequently). We met a man who was coming down, and when asked how was the view, he replied bitterly, "Terrible." Actually, the view was great if you don't mind being in the cloud layer. You'll notice only a very vague silhouette of Ross on the stone outcropping (marked forevermore with his scent). We made great time back to the pub, The Old Nag's Head, where Mom was sitting warm and dry. It was here that Ross had an ale called "Well-Hung Ale" with a picture of a bull which was, um, well-hung. Duh. He claimed it was also pretty tasty too.

There were also touristy things to do closer to home, and finally we went to London. Ross actually requested the Tower Bridge and maybe an art museum so we went and made fun of the art at the Tate Modern (we also saw a lot of things we each liked), took the Tower Bridge Tour (good value in London at £6 per person), and enjoyed exceptional weather.

Lena returned from her annual school trip to the Devon coast where she had a spectacular time despite being cold and wet for the whole week. While there, she lost a tooth, and the tooth fairy found her there. This was interesting as she had lost a tooth a month earlier, and it took the tooth fairy 3 days to get it together and pay her for the thing. One of Lena's friends (who was sleeping over the night that the earlier tooth fell out) had been making disparaging comments about the tooth fairy not being real and the such, which we assumed was why the tooth fairy took so long to show up, having to make certain that Anabel the Unbeliever wasn't there. But Lena (and Anabel) returned home from the trip with her testimony of the tooth fairy reaffirmed as neither Ariel nor I knew that Lena had lost a tooth and therefore could not have been sneaking money under her pillow. Livia is about to turn 7 and she has been terribly discouraged that all of her friends have been losing their teeth, but she didn't even have any that were loose. Then out of the blue, she came home with a tooth in her pocket and a hole in her mouth. I'm fairly certain that she paid one of the boys in her class to knock out the tooth. The funny part is that when I saw it, I melodramatically declared that, "You are a woman now!" and she's taken this to heart. Whenever we deny her anything, she responds that she's a grownup now that she's lost a tooth.

I think that I've finally grown discouraged with the clunkiness of this blog software and in the near future I'm going to switch to something much lighter. If I can, I will continue to host here, but if I have to send you to an account hosted on Blogger, so be it. Ciao.

No Actual Posts Yet

I'm due to write about my mother and brother's visit, but I'm lazy. However, I did take a survey to find my perfect house design based on my personality, and it tickled me enough that I'm going to post my results here.

I haven't the foggiest idea what answer I might have given that would have resulted in both a ballroom and a Salsa, etc Room across the hall. I really like how the measurements of the garage are in light-seconds.

Your home is a Futuristic Magnate's Headquarters Your kitchen is someplace you never go, because you "have people for that." There's a Chocolatessen, which is rapidly becoming your favorite room of the house. Having one is also becoming a trend among your wealthy neighbors. Your master bedroom is the size of a small barn, with carpet thick enough to reach your ankles. Your study has hardback editions of every classic ever written, plus a special edition of Rich Dad, Poor Dad with the parts you ghost-authored highlighted. One of your garages holds your collection of ferraris, and is measured in acreage.Your home also includes a guest wing and private quarters for your servants. Your guests enjoy your collection of every console and associated game ever made. Except the Intellivision -- those controllers drive them NUTS. Outside is your hedge maze and gardens, meticulously tended by a team of world-class botanists.And, you have a pet -- a doberman pincer named "Warren".Below is a snippet of the blueprints:

Build YOUR Dream House!

Happy Days

Well, today we're at the halfway point of my in-laws' two-week visit. So far so good. The day they arrived (after many fears that they would not make their connecting flight) was my father-in-law's 69th birthday, so we put him to work.

The following day, we went to Wales. Let me remind those of you who might have forgotten that I am not very physically fit. I do not play sports, I do not run (unless chased), I even get nauseated watching other people engage in physical exertion. However, I do enjoy a good hike. So, whenever anyone leaves the planning of vacations to me, I seek out places where I can walk at a lovely pace and see glorious things (or at least not-ugly things). So when Ariel suggested that we take the Wolfer-Johnsons (Johnson being Ariel's step-father's surname) to Wales, I first looked for a nice place to hike. I picked a short circular walk of only 4 miles that wasn't too strenuous that went along cliffs and though meadows of wildflowers. The weather was glorious and the hike was more of a gentle stroll, but we weren't 2 miles in before the whole of our adventuring party started to whine. I expect Lena and Livia to whine, but we just rebut them with the reminder that they have hiked more than 5 miles on mountain goat trails in the Sierra Nevadas (the Spanish ones). But the grownups were no better. My mother-in-law Tracey repeated muttered the phrase "forced march." Norm complained of chest pains. Now Ariel and I are prayerful people (Ariel is prayerful and I make us plural people). Norm has a history of heart issues, and we pray each time that Norm and Tracy come to visit that Norm will have no incidents on our watch. On the trail, when I heard Norm's quiet complaint, I myself nearly had a heart attack. Maybe I had carelessly killed my father-in-law. But he recovered, we made it to our car, and o the last few miles to our B&B in Fishguard.

I like to say "Fishguard" because it's funny. It's a ferry port to southern Ireland and a charming little Welsh village. It's greatest claim to fame is that there was the site of the last invasion of Britain. Hastings tries to make that claim, what with their William the Conqueror and all, but in 1797, a 70-year-old American led a French force of 1400 against England, hoping to land in Bristol, but getting washed up to Wales. A Portuguese trading vessel had just delivered a shipment of whiskey, and many of the French found this while looting. The hero of the day was a woman named Jemima Nicholas who, when she heard of the invasion, took her pitchfork and rounded up 12 invaders, dropped them into the local jail, and then gathered the women to go round up more. The French saw the women's traditional red cloaks and thought they were British soldiers (Redcoats), and surrendered. Quelle surprise.

We could have hiked again, but I was shouted down. We next went to St David's, Wales' smallest city. It's only a city because there is a cathedral there (which is what makes it a city). Also were the ruins of the Bishop's Palace. The Bishop did all right by himself. Then during the civil war, Cromwell's men looted the building and stole the lead from the roof. The palace fell into disrepair.

Needing something to make up for torturing my in-laws the day before, we went to the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust near the town of Miza Llinelli. There we were able to see lots of obscure wildfowl such as swans, ducks, and robins. We also had to chance to take canoe trips through the marsh where Ariel and I learned an important lesson: canoing is not good for one's marriage. I can't count the number of times that we crashed into the marsh grass. It didn't help that Lena had the map and was giving directions -- that led to dead ends. We had a great time. (Lena had such a good time, she remained smiling in the picture despite the fact that when I turned around to take it, I bashed her in the head with my oar.)

As Ariel has reported, Lena was baptised Saturday. It was so lovely. I had made both of her dresses -- the white one she was baptised in and a green one she changed into. Livia provided a musical number and sang "When I am Baptised." Afterwards, we went out to eat at a Chinese buffet about which someone had told us. We walked right past it into the center of Banbury where we stumbled upon a Town Crier competition. Lena was congratulated by a lady-town crier. Sunday evening we had a party with about 50 people to celebrate Lena's big step.

School starts tomorrow. Hallelujah.

Spread a little cheer

I just want to take a moment to express publicly that my Aunt Missy is by far my most favourite aunt, if not possibly my favourite relative altogether. As we were daily collecting packages from the post office for Lena's birthday, a giant and heavy parcel arrived for me. Inside were two sparkly eyeliners that I admired on my aunt and cousin during their visit and TWO 6-packs of Cheerwine. Cheerwine, for you ignorant Yankees, is carbonated cherry-flavoured Robitussin. It is best served with fried chicken and deviled eggs.

Missy has always been my favourite aunt. I don't know if this is because she is the closest to my mother of her three sisters, or because she's just an all around groovy person. When I was a child I knew that Missy and (now ex-) husband Tim were designated to be my guardians should anything happen to my parents, and as a result I harboured a morbid fantasy that my parents would die (quickly and painlessly, I'm sure) in a car wreck. I didn't want to kill my parents, I just wanted to live with my fun aunt and uncle. Looking back, a lot of their "funness" then might be attributed to being childless and that my uncle was embezzling money from the bank at which he worked, but 18 years of raising my cousin Taylor and now being married to an upstanding citizen has not diminished Missy's cool-factor at all.

So, thank you, Missy, for being the Best Aunt Ever!

Comments:
N8 said,
3 September 2007 at 1:40 pm · Edit
Hmm… childless people are more fun? I can get behind that. ;)

Seventy Seven-Sided Sapphires

Well, Dad and a few others may not care about Harry Potter, but I officially finished my HP:DH* picture this morning. Technically, I finished it a week ago, but I was at that time using a Warner Brothers-copyrighted image of Harry, and that wouldn't fly if I wanted to post the finished image, so I had to stake out the real Harry Potter and get a candid photo. Fortunately for me, he lives in Brackley, just down the road, and goes to church with us. (Who knew that Harry Potter was LDS?)

Little factoids about the picture: In Book 6, Voldemort comments that making 7 horcruxes ("horcruces" for you Latin purists) would be best since 7 is such a powerful number. Therefore, there are 70 seven-sided sapphires on the diadem, and the issue of the Daily Prophet is "vol. 7." Harry Potter is played by James Cowey, serious HP fan. The text above the headline reads "The Seven Horcruxes (horcruces?) by JBWolfer. July 2007. Copyrighted. Do not steal." The diary is modeled on the HP book. The Hufflepuff Cup should have a third badger on the back, just peeking up, but I felt that it's little claws cluttered things up. Thank you to Ariel who pointed out that the locket should be gold and not silver. Nagini (the snake) is smaller than would be expected (she's been known to swallow people whole), but then it has to be assumed that she's a magical snake and can shrink down to fit into my picture since Voldemort carries her on his shoulders. Written as an afterthought in my own sloppy handwriting across the diadem is the Ravenclaw motto "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." The whole thing was an excuse to make the diadem which turned out to be my least favourite thing in the picture. I will never paint metal again. Never ever ever. No, you can't make me. Livia believed that I should draw a tongue on the snake because "all snakes have their tongues hanging out." I thought it was too cliché.

This brings me to Livia the art critic. The other day, just exercising my computer, I did this little picture of a Camel Boy. I based it on a real picture, but I didn't trace it or anything, just looked at the photo for reference. Lena was all impressed and commented, "Wow, Mommy, you're a real artist," to which Livia immediately responded, "That's not art, that's just copying." Now, I don't consider myself a "real artist" by a long-shot, but that's not because I like to use references. However, the opinion of my 6-year-old had a lasting impact on me, so when I did the "Seven Horcruxes," I made a point to make each item from my head. I studied photos of badgers and boa constrictors, various metals in various situations, but not a single item is a copy of something else (okay, the diary/book isn't very original). I was redeemed when Livia came back and saw me working on the diadem, and asked me if I was going to order one from the Internet. She had assumed that she was looking at a photo, and when I told her smugly that not only did I draw it but that I had made it up completely without copying, she replied evenly, "Impressive," and then walked off, disappointed that I wouldn't be buying her one for her dress-up box.

Today it's 82 degrees with a light breeze. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be 65 and rain. Summer finally arrived.

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Comments:
EvilGM said,
5 August 2007 at 8:56 pm ·
I thought that Jenny did a smashing job on the picture. The real indication of her merit on this is when she presented a copy of the picture to James, who modeled as Harry. He was ecstatic and said that he really loved it. He was mightily impressed that Jenny did it all by hand, as was I. I’ve never had much of an interest in pursuing art, but know talent when I see it. Job well done.

EvilGM said,
26 August 2007 at 9:18 am ·
I was able to print out the graphic at work on a large plotter printer and it looks magnificent. Good job working the colors. Great to see it come to life in big print.