Advertisement text:
“You could WIN an amazing Romantic Valentines Rugby Weekend for 2 to Paris!”
Leaving aside the difficulties with random capitalisation and the apostrophe, is there anyone else out there who thinks that the words rugby and romantic are not natural bedfellows?
It’s that time of year. From a trick I got from Nicholas one year, I am going to put up the first sentence from the first post for every month of 2009. Because I can.
January 2009
Did you miss me? [Back after Christmas]
February 2009
Him: I have a meeting at 5, so I may not be home until after the children have gone to bed. [A funny story without the punchline. There may be some disadvantages to this technique]
March 2009
The Princess, at her request, started ballet classes before Christmas. [Which she then gave up]
April 2009
The Princess and I had a day off together last Friday. [I am clearly a good mother to one of my children]
May 2009
I was at mass with my mother in Cork last week. [And a good daughter too]
June 2009
The weather was spectacular this weekend. [Fascinating]
July 2009
Still no sign of doggy. [Anguish]
August 2009
The Princess and I graced Cork briefly over the weekend. [Definitely a good mother to one of my children]
September 2009
I am very fond of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s books which provide delightful rhymes for the children and plenty of pictorial interest for the parents who end up reading and re-reading. [Now so]
October 2009
The Irish people will be voting again on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow. [YES, they voted YES.]
November 2009
Really, why would I do this again? [This would be NaBloPoMo]
December 2009
I am on leave today and occupying myself with domestic administration. [Another fascinating opening line]
New year’s resolution: Make opening lines more interesting.
And a happy new year to you, gentle reader. Please stick with me, I intend to make my opening lines more interesting.
Lesley has a post about how we all start using our mothers’ catch phrases: she lists six of her mother’s which she uses. Here are six of my mother’s that I use and, should you feel inspired to give six of your mother’s in your own blog (or in the comments, if you haven’t got one, surely you have), I will have started a meme (stolen from Lesley, but never mind).
So here we go:
1. You would drive a horse from his oats.
2. You never lost it [this is negative, trust me].
3. What you’re told, when you’re told.
4. Tidy and you’ll find.
5. What can’t be cured must be endured.
6. The best is the enemy of the good.
Thus far I have, however, successfully avoided:
1. Quarrel implies fault on both sides [so annoying this one] and
2. You can but you may not.
Jordana’s daughter in the frozen north made a joke as they were putting her to bed the other night. This struck me because the Princess told me exactly the same joke at the same time. I blame Hannah Montana.
I see from my archives that I began this blog on the 10 December 2003 – six full years ago. When I started, I was an unemployed new mother living in another country. I began with the admirable intention of keeping my family up to date with their relatives abroad. Yet now that they see me with far greater regularity, I am still hard at it. It’s a mystery. I always say in these anniversary post that it was the brilliance of Angela at Fluid Pudding which inspired me to begin. Not quite sure what inspires me to continue other than my role as keeper of the family archive which, you can tell, I take very seriously. I see another belgianwaffle is doing a much better job of working out why he bothers.
In a shameless attempt to get a reaction from my audience, can I tell you that I am hoping for some happy anniversaries in the comments section. Actually, you probably are why I bother. No pressure now.
1. Cats
During the time when the cat was weeing in the hall (which now seems to have passed, or do I indulge optimism too far?), I went to my friend the internet and asked how do you persuade your cat to wee outside. I opened up a world of controversy. Many Americans, it appears, never let their cats outside at all. This is just the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life. It’s helicopter parenting gone mad. Outdoor cats (i.e. cats who are let out the door without a leash) don’t live as long. Your indoor cat can be kept happy by playing with it all the time. I particularly enjoyed reading about the compromise cat cage where you let your cat out the back garden in an enclosure. Come on, tell me you don’t think this is very odd.
2. Philantrophy
I heard an American on the radio arguing for the merits of a charity gift card for Christmas. He listed the benefits as follows: 1. The charity benefits. 2. The donor feels good. 3. The recipient gets to feel like a rich person. This last one is not very convincing in this jurisdication. The culture of philantrophy so deeply ingrained in our American cousins is, alas, not present here. I think if you wanted to make an Irish man feel like a rich person, you would probably need to give him money rather than give money away on his behalf.