CarpeBanana

I finally feel I have arrived in cyberspace. Yes, folks, I got one of those exciting offers to help out a foreigner in need by fronting money and then I will be set for life.

I am at a bit of loss to understand why the writer met the Nigerian president of something in Kansas (all I know is Dorothy) and how the writer’s English is so bad if he has an oil company in Kansas with a grammatically OK website ~ but the website does have a feeling of false front to it, as even I could build it in less than an evening.

But the guy’s English is great. Indulge me a minute while I clip some snippets: I am really happy, seeing a fellow citizen will be part of this great opportunity that will flourish the lives of our retirements; I believe you will understand my point of view, when you might have finished reading the paragraphs below  and I like to be imperative and pragmatic in all my dealings.

Well, in the interests of being imperative and pragmatic, I am not sending the cash. Hope that will not unflourish the lives of my retirements.

Miss Language kindly snapped this photo for me:

She knows me well.

First semester in college brought a World Religions course. Let me explain my general learning style (I suspect there is a name for it somewhere).  I kind of get a feel for the material, for the philosophy that undergirds it, for the people that espouse it, for the kind of language they use. Then instead of memorizing a bunch of facts, I just put myself into their mindset and make it up. It works great on things like essay answers in philosophy courses, not so well on a history test where they actually expect you to know particular names and dates, and not at all on geography tests.

So. Back to World Religions. Here I was studying the tenets of Indian religion and trying to wrap my Calvinist brains around the desire for nirvana, which seems like a kind of cloudy nothingness, and trying to learn the vocabulary while eating dinner. The vocabulary included Moksha (defined here by Wikipedia as  liberation from samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth and all of the suffering and limitation of worldly existence. In Hindu philosophy, it is seen as a transcendence of phenomenal being, a state of higher consciousness, in which matter, energy, time, space, causation (karma) and the other features of empirical reality are understood as  maya. Liberation is to Indian religions as salvation is to Christianity.)

At this point in my thinking, a garbanzo bean rolled off my roomie’s salad. She commented that it committed suicide. I stomped on it and screamed, “Moksha!” to encourage it on its way to nirvana.

I wonder if the driver of the car is seeking release from the limitations of worldly existence. Or just lost.

I dreamed we were at the new visitor center in Colonial Williamsburg. Seems they made an odd decision and did not go Colonial with the theme for it, but, in fact, the main stairwell there was designed by M. C. Escher.

I saw it wrong and realized I was wrong as I found myself on the bottom side of stairs a few steps from the landing. I grabbed on to the rail and would not let go (remember my dislike of Suddenness) and could not figure out where to put my feet to get back to the landing.

Along came a helpful man with a hymnal and offered to sing me an Easter cantata while we waiting for a CW employee to come and help me out. “No,” I told him, “Sing Psalm 98A instead.”

“That’s the best one,” he agreed, and was still on the first stanza when I figured out where to put my feet and got back to the landing.

I woke up at that point, but I expect I’ll stick to the elevator from now on.

Devastatingly Handsome is not, and never has been, an observant man. Although this leads to a bit of frustration when I do something like actually clean or decorate or rearrange furniture or take care about my outfit, that is more than offset by the plus-side: I do not have to worry about him having a “wandering eye” in regards to other women. His eye is caught by things like news of the stock market or a new brick-work pattern so I have few concerns.

However, it did seem a bit much after church yesterday. We were chatting with friends when DH looked at me, stared at my eyelids, and mumbled, “… you have… something…”

I went to check and it was my make-up. Apparently he has not previously noticed it and thought “something” happened.

~ sigh ~

Glad he noticed.

And on a different note, this photo at engrish.com caught my eye.

I do not like surprises. I like to know what to expect. The only sort of surprise I like is when something turns out to be better than I expected, or less trouble than I feared, but I don’t really like a change in what sort of thing I expected. So now I know why I caution the Bananalets to stay away from the rail. Suddenness may happen.

Tonight we had company here. Apparently Miss Dog Lover decided it was time for them to leave. She looked at her watch and announced, “Oh, look. It’s nine forty-four. And thirty-three seconds.” Then, “and thirty-five seconds.”

For some reason, everyone left and I put Miss Dog Lover to bed.

Think she has a future in diplomacy? Neither do I.

We think we may have discovered a new and underworked informal fallacy and it has been getting a good workout around here. We are calling it the N~~~ F~~~~ fallacy, and if you know who N~~~ F~~~~ is, good for you.

N~~~ F~~~~ was a camper in Devastatingly Handsome’s cabin a couple years ago. He had a favorite black T-shirt. At least we assume it is his favorite because he never took it off from arrival Monday till late Thursday when Devastatingly instructed him to shower and change his shirt.

(This is where the fallacy comes in.) N~~~ F~~~~ replied, “What do you mean? There is nothing wrong with this shirt. It was fine on Monday, no one complained on Tuesday, no problems yesterday, and now all of a sudden you think something is wrong with it?”

* note to interested image searchers ~ do not type “dirty shirt” into the search box. You do not get a smelly image but something even nastier than a shirt that’s been worn by a boy for 4 days at camp. And that is why there is no image to accompany this entry.*

I get daily e-mails with crock pot recipes from some sort of alternative health care thingy. My favorites are the ones that start with an ad for a diet book with this header:

You Don’t Have to Be Fat and Miserable

“No,” I always think, “you can also be thin and miserable.” Anyone who has been raised knowing the Westminster standards knows that. Question 17: Into what estate did the fall bring mankind? Answer: The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.

And then you get to the good stuff, in question 20: Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? Answer: God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.

And that does not even mention the common grace we all get, too, exemplified in this photo: 

Our attendance at the new Prince Caspian movie was part of a birthday feast. Miss Language was volunteered to make our theme centerpiece. Here is the battle scene as re-created on our dinner table:

and on the sideboard, Susan took a shot at the soldiers who had hog-tied the D.L.F.:

and Caspian and Miraz found themselves locked in combat in the frosting of a triple chocolate cake:

the battle continued undaunted even when surrounded by flames:

For posterity, two random Bananalet quotes. Miss Dance ~ “Cake is the world to me.” Miss Dog Lover ~ “Don’t you think Edmund looks a lot like himself?” (still not sure just what that one means.)

My brain is just continuously itchy, coming up with things to wonder about. Maybe you can help me with one of these current wonderings. I’ll be forever grateful, or at least till I get another itch and forget about these ones.

Itch #1 I was using the blender and got to thinking about those Vita-Mix things and the over-the-top ads you get for them about how they revolutionize your life (an aside: if they didn’t go round and round, how could they do their job? I thought that was what revolution is all about?) and wondering if they really do revolutionize your life or if in fact any product does. So, in case I’ve lost you, the itch here is: can I think of any product that has vastly improved my life, that I could write up a fantastic blurb for? I think I would have to say no. The closest I can come is when Devastatingly Handsome bought us an electric pencil sharpener (Miss Dog Lover has a real thing for sharp pencils. She sharpens about every two words.) but then the stupid thing died after less than a school year. I want perseverance in life style improvement. Is there any product that has made your life so wonderful you would not want to live without it?

Itch #2 Miss Dog Lover has been waiting (patiently) for a dog (patiently) while Devastatingly gets certain house and yard projects done (did I mention she’s been waiting, checking her watch and sighing audibly for quite a few months now) and the other day she said, “I can’t wait till I get my dog and can take showers with her.”

Now, I am a dog novice. But, the itch here, obviously is, can you really do that? is any dog on earth willing to tolerate daily showers? and I suspect having its hair braided or styled as I am sure she is also planning on. Somehow it just seems wrong to me.

Itch #3 This itch is related to the hymns like “What Can Wash Away My Sin” and “Jesus Paid It All.” They talk about blood washing away the stains of sin. So, natch I started wondering if blood really can be used as a cleaning agent rather than as we usually think of, the ultimate nasty staining agent. I mean, blood carries oxygen, right? and that stuff like Oxi-clean or peroxide is souped up on plenty of oxygen, right (anyone else humming a few bars of Love is Like Oxygen here?) . So, it occurs to me that maybe the staining part comes down through the father’s blood and if so, conceivably Christ’s blood may have been different than ours and actually would physically remove stains and so should Adam’s and Eve’s, pre-fall, (of course I guess there were no stains then). I just know I get a mental image of SuperTide every time we sing one of these.

Today is a drizzly grey Spring (yes, spring, you Australian readers) day and so Devastatingly Handsome and I took some of the Bananalets to a combination floral/garden/crafts show.

Miss Dog Lover decided she simply had to have a certain ring. We reasoned with her about how easy it would be to make one herself (and keep her allowance intact) but she was not interested. By the time she got to the front of the paying line, she thought maybe making one sounded like a good idea. So back we went to the bin, where she held on to it, tried on a few dozen others, and decided to buy it after all. After about 20 minutes of flip-flopping, she owned the ring.

Before we were out of the building, she wanted to return it. We said that was a no-go and pointed out that she did not even have a receipt, and that now, in any case, we could use hers as a pattern to make our own in all different colors. At that point, she came out with words of wisdom: “Greed makes you buy things you don’t want.”

If she has learned that lesson for two dollars plus tax, it was a bargain.

The next thing out of her mouth was: “I fell in love with a ring. What an experience.”

LOL

Then, we asked Devastatingly Handsome to stop by the grocery store for some lettuce. He walked it up to the register, handed it to the clerk, and announced the coding for her (from memory: the man even knows our congregation’s license plate numbers by heart): “4076.”

“No,” she says, “it’s 4075.”

“What?” he says, “it’s always been 4076.”

Turns out the green leaf lettuce was mislabelled as red. Imagine that. No one takes pride in their work any more.