Poorly Legumes

Recently I went upstairs to where my teenage daughter was lounging on her bed talking to friends on MSN in a very strange language and handed her a bowl of profiteroles dripping in chocolate sauce.

She responded with: "Ooh! Profiteroles! Sick bean!"

If anyone could explain the last two words, I would be extremely grateful. And yes, I did ask said daughter, but she couldn't help.

Google Mood Ring (Green): Steady, stable, no emotional turmoil

Touch Me and I'll Run Away

A week ago my daughter's boyfriend bought her a new laptop. In theory, it's better than my desktop and also cost more. Twice as much RAM, multi-core ... but the in-built graphics STINK. Anything more than a teeny-weeny picture and it gets so hot and bothered I could brown toast on the heat coming out of it.

However, that isn't the point. Said daughter has gone away for a couple of weeks and didn't need to take the laptop, so I thought I'd try it out. Well, talk about a palaver. What on earth is that touchpad thing that pretends it's a mouse? No way could I control it. The arrow was going all over the screen and half the time my finger was at the bottom of the pad before the arrow got anywhere near halfway down the screen. I almost threw the thing out of the window. It took me ten minutes to close all the programs that opened automatically. Would have taken less than ten seconds on my desktop.

I never did like the idea of laptops anyway (can think of better things to have resting on my knee), but now I am totally convinced ... computers belong on a desk.

Google Mood Ring (Green):Steady, stable, no emotional turmoil

A Hermit Lost in the Crowd

Being a hermit is all very well if one lives alone or with other hermits. It becomes a huge problem, however, when one shares one's home with a teenage daugher who is so extrovert she makes Madonna look like a shy, retiring wallflower.

Whenever she arrives home from school I hear her voice as she walks up the path. Either she's talking to someone on her mobile, or to someone walking next to her. Today it was the latter. Often it is both. Sometimes it is both and then the landline rings and she has to carry-on three conversations. Four, when I start moaning at her and five if you include her greeting the cat. She manages it so well it's worrying.

I went to a presentation event recently at a club both my still-at-home-when-will-they-grow-up-and-bugger-off offspring attend, as my son was receiving some sort of award. The second we arrived there were teenagers swarming round my daughter and she was exchanging kisses on the cheek and "Mwaahs" with them all. I had no idea she knew so many people and I began to seriously wonder where I'd gone wrong in my parenting.

Of course, I know where it all comes from. She takes after my mother. Mummy Dear was heavily into amateur dramatics and singing and generally being in the limelight (now it's just the latter because she's almost eighty-one and a bit past it) and my daughter intends studying singing, drama and dance from September onwards. I have a niece who studied drama and dance, too.

It has just occurred to me that I have five children and not one of them is hermit-like. They're all extroverts and each one is more extrovert than the preceding one. Whatever did I do wrong? Couldn't I have had just one offspring who could have kept me company when I'm hiding behind the sofa avoiding visitors? What did I do to deserve FIVE who always rush to answer the damn door???

My eldest son is a Libran and lives to socialise. While he was still living with me, a day rarely went by without him saying "Mum, why don't you ever go out? How can you not want to go out? Why do you stay inside all the time?". He just didn't get it, poor boy. He thought "Because I don't want to go out" or "Because I like staying in" or even "Because I hate going out" were euphemisms for "I have no friends. Nobody loves me. I am a worthless, useless nobody". At best he was convinced I had agoraphobia.

My youngest son is Libran too and talks to everybody who will listen. When we go out shopping, it takes forever because he keeps stopping to talk to people I've never seen before in my life. All ages too, from toddler through to I'm-not-long-for-this-world. I have no idea how he knows these people, he's only eleven for heaven's sake and he's barely lived in this town for half his life.

As for my middle son, he has the same birthday as my youngest daughter, so I don't really need to say anymore about him. He talks to people on the phone all day for a living and spends his spare time posing in front of mirrors topless and flexing his muscles, stopping only to take yet another picture of himself to post on the Internet with one of various captions that all mean "OMG, I'm GORGEOUS".

My eldest granddaughter is about as extrovert as anyone can get, she's worse than my afore-mentioned youngest daughter and she's got a way to go yet before she becomes a teenager. But, her elder brother, my grandson ... now, I have pinned all my hopes on that one. He's definitely in training for hermitness, in spite of having two parents who probably don't even know what the word hermit means (one of them being my eldest daughter, who is so extrovert she farts at strangers). Perhaps he should come and live with me before it's too late ...

Slightly later ... Ha-ha. I switched on my Last.fm and guess what came onto my personal radio station? "Take Your Mama Out" by the Scissor Sisters. I forgot to mention that my brood are psychic, too. Nice one kiddos, but guess what? It ain't gonna work!!!

Google Mood Ring (Blue): Comfortable, breezy, at rest, lovable

Bohemian Humbugs

Well, I seem to have disappeared again, at least from this blog. People keep sending me messages enquiring as to my whereabouts. I did think of replying in some sort of alien language, pretending I was a creature from another planet who had abducted me, but decided against it. Eccentric is one thing, totally insane is quite another.

What have I been doing since I was last here? Well, for one thing I became a Queen. No, I tell you straight, I am the Queen of Bohemia. It won't mean anything to you unless you are on SL and also on TE, but if you are, you'll now be going "OMG no, not HER". Yeah, it's ME!!! Don't you just love it. I am starting a new TE blog, for those who aren't sitting there going "Huh? What's she on about NOW?".

So, it's just over a month until Christmas and as usual I haven't bought a single thing, not even a card. I would rather not do, either. Total waste of money and I hate all that commercialism. It's almost reached the time when I will have to start saying "Bah, Humbug!" a lot. It's not that I don't like giving people things, I actually get a lot of pleasure out of it, it's just that I don't like been told when I have to do it. Shouldn't need a special day for it.

I'm a year older now in chronological terms than I was when I last penned an entry, so I am allowed to be that bit grumpier, so I may start saying "Bah, Humbug!" slightly earlier this year. I may even start today. BAH, HUMBUG!!!

Google Mood Ring (Black):Tensed, stressed, working too hard

I Should Have Been an Elephant

Well, it's been a while. Quite a few silly things have happened to me since my last entry, but I can't remember any of them now. Maybe they will come to me.

I do remember something relating to the last entry, although it wasn't anything silly. Just me forgetting about the no-smoking ban in cafes and having to traipse down the street carrying a plastic cup full of coffee so I could sit in the park at the end of the road. This particular cafe used to always be full, but on that occasion it was practically empty. I had to go by the law court on the way to the park and there were several police persons and a couple of lawyers outside smoking away, although that has always been the case as smoking has been banned in there for a while. Just struck me as rather amusing at the time.

I can't think of anything else to say, so I'm going.

Google Mood Ring (Dark Blue):Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance

Light-Up and Cough-Up

Well, today's the day. Yes, from today a certain section of people in the UK are being mercilessly victimised and forced to live like smelly, parasitic entities from a lower spiritual plane. In other words, today is the day that smokers can no longer smoke in public places. I didn't even know about this until my 10-year-old son told me about it a week or so ago.

There's more to it than that and most of it makes no sense. I haven't even bothered to check-up on it, all I know is that it sounds totally stupid and is all based on whether or not the smoking is taking place in a home or a place of business. If it's a home, it's allowed, which means (and this is a good one) that if your home is also your place of business, you can't smoke in it. Yes, you heard right, you can't smoke in the privacy of your own home. Doesn't even matter if you live alone and have no other workers to contaminate with your revolting vapours, you still can't do it. Like hell you can't. I am seriousy considering starting a home business purely on principle.

Smoking is now banned in pubs, but not in hotels. This is because a pub is a public place, but a hotel is classed as a home. This means, of course, that the hotel bars will fill-up and the hotel owners will increase their profits to the detriment of the pub owners. I may be wrong, but I would say that there is a larger majority of smokers in pubs than there are in the country generally, so there's a fair bit of profit to be lost there. Smokers can go outside pubs to smoke, but they can only smoke in shelters with one side and a roof or something, 'cos if they have three sides (or something) they'll be public places. This presumably also means that if they just have a roof, they're homes. So, all we need to do is knock our walls down and we can work and amoke in our homes to our lungs' content.

And lorry drivers can't smoke in their cabs. Since when was a lorry driver's cab a public place? Bearing in mind that they spend a lot of time sleeping in them, I'd have thought they were more homes than business premises. But of course, they're working in them too, so that explains that. Not very logically, but the entire thing is totally illogical.

The punishment for lighting-up is that the naughty smoker has to pay a £50 fine if they're caught. The council will be employing officers to sneak around looking for errant smokers and I bet every single one of them is one of those evangelical ex-smoking types. You know the sort I mean. The most unfair aspect of it is that the person who owns the premises the smoker is smoking on (such as a pub owner) will be fined £2,500. A slight difference there. I would strongly suggest that no pub owners go to the toilet or anything, just in case the entire pub lights-up in their absence.

I don't want to talk about this anymore, it's boring me silly. Go to this link to read a much funnier and far more informative blog post about this topic. Before I go, though, read the title of this post again, because I think it's rather clever. Cough-up has two meanings, you see. Get it? Good. Have to keep you on your toes.

Google Mood Ring (Dark Blue): Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance