![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Back from Illinois. It wasn't really a pleasure trip: we drove 11 hours on Friday, got out of the car, got into another car, went to the reception hall, spent 3 hours washing dishes and arranging flowers under the somewhat-scattered direction of the mother of the groom, went straight thenceforth to dinner with the father of the groom, thence to bed. Up earlyish the next morning, big breakfast, then to the reception hall again for another four or five hours of setup. Finally broke for a late lunch, then back to the cabin and got dressed quickish, then back over to the party. Party seemed to fly past; not much drinking, not a lot of eating. Fi and I sort of wound up being waitresses, since there weren't any-- someone had to pour the champagne toast, and we kinda just made sure things happened. I did some conversating, but the bride felt I was overwhelming people, so I shut my mouth and went back to work. (I guess I do domineer conversations. I guess I knew that. Kind of a bummer to have it pointed out, as I'd been attempting to find people who were sort of hanging out not really knowing anyone, and was more trying to be entertaining than really forcing myself on anyone, but of course these things are subject to interpretation, and since she knew them and I didn't, maybe that's not how they are normally in conversations?)
The party was over before 10pm. We went back to the cabins and had an entertaining after-party, with lots of beer. I seem to have drunk rather a bit, perhaps, but it didn't take me long to say OK, time for bed, whereupon I went back and passed the hell out for 6 hours.
Then up, breakfast, packing, and over to the reception hall for the last of the teardown. It took far, far longer than we'd anticipated. We had initially planned to leave very early, before breakfast, but we were too exhausted and wanted to say goodbye properly. So we started for home about six hours later than we'd figured on. Oh well.
I should mention that we stayed in some very nice cabins. The groom's hometown is in a very rural area of southern Illinois, about 1/2 hr from Decatur. The cabins were intended for hunters, fishermen, and vacationers. They were fully furnished, and lovely, and very comfortable. The kitchens had dishes and coffee makers and dishcloths and even a muffin tin. It was great to have as a home base. We stayed in a 4-bedroom with Mom and Dad in one, me and Fi in one, Baby Sister and her husband in one, and Groom's Mom and her husband in the last. And then all of Groom's buddies rented other cabins nearby. There were firepits and picnic tables and a swimming pool which we didn't use, not even drunkenly, but you know, whatever. There was also the head of a 14-point buck on the wall, and a stuffed goose in flight off the balcony. It was a bit weird. My bed had quilts decorated with moose. Why not? It's "rustic", I suppose.
Illinois itself was... well, not big on the concept of "terrain". The roads were a grid, with numbers, but irregular. We were navigating by things like the color of the road, because there really was nothing to go on. Oy.
The drive was really long. And Ohio goes on forever. That's really all I can say about that. Ohioans, you know when there's more than one lane, you're supposed to cruise in the rightmost, and pass in the leftmost, right? Apparently none of them knew that. There was some road rage.
Also Fiona has 5 hours' worth of Avenged Sevenfold. That was kind of amazing. There just kept being more! Their songs kind of all sound the same to me. She kept talking about the witty lyrics but since I can't really understand their dude when he sings, I didn't get any of them. I think maybe I'm just super old. I'll shut up now.
Unrelatedly, I am just blown away sometimes by how petty some people can be on the Internet! I've probably done this myself, it just still astonishes me. Really? Really? There's a wonderful local community on LJ, in which people post observations, sell things, buy things, swap things, ask advice, etc. Someone posted a really bitter/grumpy entry about how this town sucks and she wants to go home to Seattle; people posted a mix of flamey and sympathetic comments. She got stroppy about how people were flaming her, and I posted a rather well-thought-out, it seemed to me, comment explaining that most of us are in this community because we like it here. I only bothered replying to the post because she was a frequent commenter in the community so I felt I sort of "knew" her, otherwise I wouldn't've fed the troll. I was a bit chiding but I felt like I was actually contributing; it seemed more useful than just joining the flamers.
She wrote back, a full week later, "tl;dr" in response to my comment. I am shocked that this shocked me. So I wrote back that I hope she dies in a fucking fire. Not really regretting my lack of maturity; I gave her more leeway than I should've in the first place. But I haven't actually had any kind of flamey interaction on the Internet in so long!! I am laughing, somewhat out loud, at how shocked I was at her utter douchebaggery. Obviously she's bored and has nothing going on in her life-- she said as much-- and so was just spoiling for a flamewar to lighten the tedium-- and i admit it was kind of fun to actually snap.
I will not, however, be joining the comments section on cheezburger or anything like that. Screw that. It's not actually that interesting. I think I've had my dose for this year or decade or so.
But speaking of laughing out loud (do you like my segue?) someone today, I forget who and I apologize, linked to Postcards From Yo Momma, and I whiled away nearly 3 hours that I could've spent napping reading it, and laughing so loud I had to keep explaining what was so funny to the rest of the house. What's funniest about it, of course, is how there's this nearly-universal constant of battiness from mothers. I can't think of a word that sums it up better than 'batty'. It reminded me a great deal of my own mother's correspondence to me-- I think there's very much a written form of motherese, for adults, that has this universally-recognizable register, so informal and so assumptive and so absolutely hilarious when viewed objectively. It's not anything to do with the phonetics or even the vocabulary so much as with the unique angles of the subject matter, and the informal nature of the communication. One definite aspect I noticed a lot, and notice in my own mother's communications with me, is very abrupt and unsignaled changes of subject, a very stream-of-consciousness kind of efficiency where the communicant doesn't bother with any extra words that would normally be used to make sure your reader actually, you know, follows you. (It's not needed! A mother just knows! Apparently.) She just writes precisely the ideas she needs to communicate, with no bothering with manners, transitions, or fuss about inter-relatedness; it's just assumed the reader will follow along with the implied intention rather than needing anything explained.
There's a kind of aspect of keeping the child informed of things to keep up the level of intimacy a mother feels her child ought to have, perhaps? I don't know.
It all makes me wish I hadn't lost my email archives about 6 years ago; there would've been a wonderful example in it. A long time ago, while Fiona was still at home (or possibly one summer when she was home from college and I was still away, so maybe 8 years ago or so), there was an incident where a rat was trapped in the wall, and gnawed its way out next to a light fixture while Fiona was in the room; she summoned our father, who responded by beating the creature to death with the cleaning rod from one of the rifles in the next room. (It was a large rat; the cat ran away when he saw it.) After beating the rodent to death, Dad threw it out the kitchen door, and the next morning my mother sent me a cheerful email about it that concluded with the observation that as she typed this, a crow had come and was taking the rat away-- it's the cycle of life!
It was a perfect example of this type of astonishing Mom-email.
She may even have signed off with some sort of self-care admonishment, like "Get a job! love mom."
So sad that I do not have it anymore.
There's a slim chance I posted it to Livejournal, if I had one yet, but I wouldn't begin to have the patience to go searching.
I sort of want to explore this more, what this mom-language thing means, but I just can't focus enough at the moment. Still and all. The site wasn't that funny (of course they have a book deal. The only people with book deals anymore are the ones who keep weird, weird blogs) but the themes were so entertaining, and yes, some of the submissions were screamingly hilarious.
God bless the Internet, I guess.
The party was over before 10pm. We went back to the cabins and had an entertaining after-party, with lots of beer. I seem to have drunk rather a bit, perhaps, but it didn't take me long to say OK, time for bed, whereupon I went back and passed the hell out for 6 hours.
Then up, breakfast, packing, and over to the reception hall for the last of the teardown. It took far, far longer than we'd anticipated. We had initially planned to leave very early, before breakfast, but we were too exhausted and wanted to say goodbye properly. So we started for home about six hours later than we'd figured on. Oh well.
I should mention that we stayed in some very nice cabins. The groom's hometown is in a very rural area of southern Illinois, about 1/2 hr from Decatur. The cabins were intended for hunters, fishermen, and vacationers. They were fully furnished, and lovely, and very comfortable. The kitchens had dishes and coffee makers and dishcloths and even a muffin tin. It was great to have as a home base. We stayed in a 4-bedroom with Mom and Dad in one, me and Fi in one, Baby Sister and her husband in one, and Groom's Mom and her husband in the last. And then all of Groom's buddies rented other cabins nearby. There were firepits and picnic tables and a swimming pool which we didn't use, not even drunkenly, but you know, whatever. There was also the head of a 14-point buck on the wall, and a stuffed goose in flight off the balcony. It was a bit weird. My bed had quilts decorated with moose. Why not? It's "rustic", I suppose.
Illinois itself was... well, not big on the concept of "terrain". The roads were a grid, with numbers, but irregular. We were navigating by things like the color of the road, because there really was nothing to go on. Oy.
The drive was really long. And Ohio goes on forever. That's really all I can say about that. Ohioans, you know when there's more than one lane, you're supposed to cruise in the rightmost, and pass in the leftmost, right? Apparently none of them knew that. There was some road rage.
Also Fiona has 5 hours' worth of Avenged Sevenfold. That was kind of amazing. There just kept being more! Their songs kind of all sound the same to me. She kept talking about the witty lyrics but since I can't really understand their dude when he sings, I didn't get any of them. I think maybe I'm just super old. I'll shut up now.
Unrelatedly, I am just blown away sometimes by how petty some people can be on the Internet! I've probably done this myself, it just still astonishes me. Really? Really? There's a wonderful local community on LJ, in which people post observations, sell things, buy things, swap things, ask advice, etc. Someone posted a really bitter/grumpy entry about how this town sucks and she wants to go home to Seattle; people posted a mix of flamey and sympathetic comments. She got stroppy about how people were flaming her, and I posted a rather well-thought-out, it seemed to me, comment explaining that most of us are in this community because we like it here. I only bothered replying to the post because she was a frequent commenter in the community so I felt I sort of "knew" her, otherwise I wouldn't've fed the troll. I was a bit chiding but I felt like I was actually contributing; it seemed more useful than just joining the flamers.
She wrote back, a full week later, "tl;dr" in response to my comment. I am shocked that this shocked me. So I wrote back that I hope she dies in a fucking fire. Not really regretting my lack of maturity; I gave her more leeway than I should've in the first place. But I haven't actually had any kind of flamey interaction on the Internet in so long!! I am laughing, somewhat out loud, at how shocked I was at her utter douchebaggery. Obviously she's bored and has nothing going on in her life-- she said as much-- and so was just spoiling for a flamewar to lighten the tedium-- and i admit it was kind of fun to actually snap.
I will not, however, be joining the comments section on cheezburger or anything like that. Screw that. It's not actually that interesting. I think I've had my dose for this year or decade or so.
But speaking of laughing out loud (do you like my segue?) someone today, I forget who and I apologize, linked to Postcards From Yo Momma, and I whiled away nearly 3 hours that I could've spent napping reading it, and laughing so loud I had to keep explaining what was so funny to the rest of the house. What's funniest about it, of course, is how there's this nearly-universal constant of battiness from mothers. I can't think of a word that sums it up better than 'batty'. It reminded me a great deal of my own mother's correspondence to me-- I think there's very much a written form of motherese, for adults, that has this universally-recognizable register, so informal and so assumptive and so absolutely hilarious when viewed objectively. It's not anything to do with the phonetics or even the vocabulary so much as with the unique angles of the subject matter, and the informal nature of the communication. One definite aspect I noticed a lot, and notice in my own mother's communications with me, is very abrupt and unsignaled changes of subject, a very stream-of-consciousness kind of efficiency where the communicant doesn't bother with any extra words that would normally be used to make sure your reader actually, you know, follows you. (It's not needed! A mother just knows! Apparently.) She just writes precisely the ideas she needs to communicate, with no bothering with manners, transitions, or fuss about inter-relatedness; it's just assumed the reader will follow along with the implied intention rather than needing anything explained.
There's a kind of aspect of keeping the child informed of things to keep up the level of intimacy a mother feels her child ought to have, perhaps? I don't know.
It all makes me wish I hadn't lost my email archives about 6 years ago; there would've been a wonderful example in it. A long time ago, while Fiona was still at home (or possibly one summer when she was home from college and I was still away, so maybe 8 years ago or so), there was an incident where a rat was trapped in the wall, and gnawed its way out next to a light fixture while Fiona was in the room; she summoned our father, who responded by beating the creature to death with the cleaning rod from one of the rifles in the next room. (It was a large rat; the cat ran away when he saw it.) After beating the rodent to death, Dad threw it out the kitchen door, and the next morning my mother sent me a cheerful email about it that concluded with the observation that as she typed this, a crow had come and was taking the rat away-- it's the cycle of life!
It was a perfect example of this type of astonishing Mom-email.
She may even have signed off with some sort of self-care admonishment, like "Get a job! love mom."
So sad that I do not have it anymore.
There's a slim chance I posted it to Livejournal, if I had one yet, but I wouldn't begin to have the patience to go searching.
I sort of want to explore this more, what this mom-language thing means, but I just can't focus enough at the moment. Still and all. The site wasn't that funny (of course they have a book deal. The only people with book deals anymore are the ones who keep weird, weird blogs) but the themes were so entertaining, and yes, some of the submissions were screamingly hilarious.
God bless the Internet, I guess.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-24 06:57 am (UTC)