I answered the Mommy Bloggers questionnaire. My answers are under Anne and for reasons I can’t understand they do not appear to have featured my responses first. I blame the Sarcastic Journalist who replied also and, rats, she is funny.
Certainties
Her (provocatively sticking her hands in her gravy): What would Mother Borgia say?*
Me (exasperated): Well she’s not likely to say much, honey, given that she’s been dead for a number of years.
Him: Are you going to explain about death to her?
Me: I think she already understands a bit.
Him: Really?
Me: It’s just that she doesn’t regard it as very final; Snow White, Jesus and Molly Malone are the only people she’s come across who’ve died.
*For reasons far too dull to go into, this nun who taught my mother at school, sets the standard for proper eating habits in our family. Usually, in this context she would say “use your cutleryâ€. Yes, of course, there was a saint Borgia, those poisoners were very well connected.
“Words are the Daughters of Earth…Things are the Sons of Heavenâ€
Snap
Me: Stop pulling that elastic or it will snap and hurt you.
Her: Like a puppy that hasn’t been trained?
Me: Same word, different context.
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Ball
Her: Daddy bought a ball?
Me: Yes, in the supermarket.
Her: A ball??
Me: Yes.
Her: Where, where is the ball?
Me: It’s in the hall.
Her: A ball for dancing? A swirl of colour and a swell of music?
Me: Oh no, sorry sweetheart, a ball for bouncing and throwing.
Her: Ah, same word, different context.
And re the title, yes, we’re having a Samuel Johnson week, is there a problem with that?
Random Numbers
“I recollect nothing that passed this day, except Johnson’s quickness, who, when Dr. Beattie observed, as something remarkable which had happened to him, that he had chanced to see both No. 1, and No. 1000, of the hackney-coaches, the first and the last; ‘Why, Sir, (said Johnson,) there is an equal chance for one’s seeing those two numbers as any other two.’â€Â From Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Not a particularly relevant quote but I’ve been waiting to use it for a long time.  Humour me. Yesterday I had the 50,000th visitor to my blog since, just over two years ago, Locotes very decently explained to me how to install the site meter thingy. If memory serves me, he entitled his mail “Advice for a raving egomaniac”.
No smirking please, 50,000 may not be a lot of visitors for some of you lot but I am delighted with myself. It confirms my growing suspicion that not absolutely everyone reading my blog has been forced to do so by me. I have a wide circle of acquaintance and many relations but I think 50,000, even allowing for repeat visits (and, obviously, my constant checking for comments), covers more than those. Of course, there are all the people who are looking for waffles who end up here.  Sorry about that people. I imagine that the person from Tokyo looking for baby Dior probably didn’t stay long either. A lot of people looking for information on “suicidal bunnies†seem to be directed here. If you’re here for suicidal bunnies, I appreciate your difficulty, I couldn’t find anything on Amazon either. I suggest you may wish to email Hodder and complain. Or you could stay here. It’s delightful, 50,000 visitors can’t be wrong.
While we’re looking at user stats, can I say what a kick I get out of the world map that the site meter people give you and I see little dots all over the globe reading my blog (or looking for waffle recipes, as appropriate)?  I love the fact that someone from Anchorage used to regularly read this blog.  Please come back lurker from Anchorage, and don’t be unnerved that I know you are there, this is all my visit counter tells me; I cannot track you down and send you scary things in the post
So thank you gentle readers, for reading, it is great to know you are out there. And thank you kind commenters for commenting, it is lovely to get comments. Any of the rest of you like to delurk?  I’d like that and, as you know, I presume, it’s all about me, me, me the raving egomaniac.
Linguistic Diversity
Me:Â I saw you playing with Fernanda; was it a bit hard since she only speaks Spanish?
Her:Â I speak Spanish.
Me: I see.
Her: But we spoke Polish. Fernanda and me speak Polish.
Me: Really?
Her: Yes, I speak a lot of languages. I speak French and English and Irish and Spanish and Polish and German and Greek and Dutch and Flemish and Italian and Tagalog and Flatten.
Me: Flatten?
Her: Yes, Flatten.
Me: Latin?
Her: Yes, Flatten.
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Later
Princess is frantically waving her hands in the air.
Me: What’s wrong sweetheart?
Her: There’s a fly and I’m afraid it’s going to pique the bejaysus out of me.
That’s English and French and Irish all in the same sentence.
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Later Still.
Princess holds out to me a freebie book of Dutch fairytales we have been given in the chemist with our prescription (the chemist guessed our linguistic group and missed): Read it to me while I do a poo. [I love this job].
Me: But I hardly speak any Dutch, sweetheart.
Her: Read it to me in English.
Me: But it’s in Dutch.
Her: But Daddy read it in French.
Me: But Daddy is able to translate fairy tales from Dutch to French on the hoof but I am not because I don’t really speak any Dutch.
Pause.
Her: I speak Dutch.
Me: OK, but you can’t read.
Her: You read it to me in Dutch.
Me: Er was eens een weduwe die twee docters had…
Her: Keep going.
Me: Are you enjoying this?
Her: Yes, I speak Dutch.
She gets her stubborn streak from her father.
Unhappy Cultural Differences arose
Mr. Waffle met a smorgasbord of international colleagues for coffee the other day.
Male Spanish colleague: So I have this Finnish woman working for me and she said to me “My co-worker Giovanni is sexually harassing meâ€. I asked what he was doing and she replied “Every morning he says ‘ciao bella’ to me; and he also says my legs look nice when I’m wearing a skirtâ€.
Female Italian colleague: But that’s appalling, he was just being a normal Italian man.
Mr. Waffle: So what did you do?
Male Spanish colleague: Well, I talked to Giovanni and told him to stop complimenting her on her legs and then I asked her to stop wearing such short skirts.
Female English colleague: That’s right, blame the victim.
Male French colleague: But that’s appalling.
Female English colleague smiles warmly at him.
Male French colleague: Seeing women in short skirts is one of the great joys of Summer.
Mr. Waffle had a break from all that today though and he brought the Princess in to show her round my office and we lunched together and then he took her off and then when I came home, I played with the kiddies while he put the finishing touches to dinner. I have tasted 1950s fatherhood and I like it.