Danish wisdom
To look
is to
learn,
if you
listen
carefully.
—PER ARNOLDI
Welcome to my humble hodgepodge of humour columns, quotes, tips, snippets, musings and ramblings. Ready? If so, get comfy and make yourself at home!
My family is in some ways, hugely, and appallingly (as many families are), dysfunctional. But one of the more positive traits that almost all of my immediate family members seem to share is a well developed, albeit quirky, sense of humour. Now is this something we were born with? Or something we learned, and then applied as a coping tool, or defence mechanism? No matter. I seem to have come by it honestly, as shown by the following e-mail sent to me by my eldest brother.
I'm a female INFJ (Sybil) Scanner (Water) Tiger Scorpio. Snort.
Okay, I admit to deleting five of the list items that I didn't particularly like from the e-mail I received below, but thought I'd share the rest of them. The funny part though is that I can ALREADY relate to quite a few of them, and I'm not that old. Honestly. It also reminded me of the piece I wrote called You Know You've Been Unemployed Too Long When… which was pretty funny in my opinion, however unlikely it may seem given the topic. And at least one other person must have thought so too as they had copied part of it from my old website and put it on theirs a couple of years back. It was the first time someone had pilfered some of my writing (but they were nice enough to provide a link, which I can't do for the list below as it appeared in my inbox sans source), and frankly, I was quite flattered. Hmmm, maybe I'll resurrect it here sometime. So,
"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." —GOETHE
Stifling. Oppressive. Crushing. Tiresome. Our political regime, you ask? Well, maybe that too, but no, I was actually referring to the weather. Yes, no doubt you're already quite weary of my whiny wallowing-in-weather woes, and I promise to TRY not to refer to it again this season, but if you will, please indulge me one more time.
"The fates guide those who go willingly; those who do not, they drag." —SENECA
I almost always have to edit my posts. Not the short quotation ones of course, or the ones based on a photo (and why do I sometimes think of them as cheater entries when it's MY blog?), well, sometimes those too, but not too often. No, it's the longer ones that get me into trouble. And it's not as if I don't carefully check and recheck before I hit the publish button. Or that the grammar police in Word doesn't reprimand me every step of the way when initially writing the post. No, even though I have deemed the entry ready to go, as soon as I publish it I see all sorts of things. What, what's that comma doing there? Or more likely, WHY isn't there a comma there? Hey, I don't think I like that particular word or phrase after all! Yikes, that doesn't sound right—better change the order of those two words. And it's the latter (faulty word order) that happens most frequently (even in this entry), which I then conveniently blame on the fact that English isn't my native tongue. But can I really use that as an excuse when I was so young? I mean, I turned eight upon my arrival in Canada, so it's not as if I didn't pick up the English language quickly enough. In fact, all my siblings did, and the eldest was already fifteen. I concocted a nice little theory years ago that the grammar structure of my native language, Dutch, was already firmly imprinted on my brain (why does the word "imprinted" always bring to mind that cute image of ducklings following some other species member as if it were their mother?) by the time I ended up in Canada, but somehow that probably doesn't wash. Sigh. Oh well, it's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
"Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humour, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much." —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
FIVE LESSONS
A while back country dweller talked about the things he most enjoyed not doing. Now I'm not sure if it was a formal meme, but I'm going to officially tag myself (I'm it!) and follow his lead. I liked his list, and many of his items would be on mine as well, but I'm going to concentrate on the one thing I most enjoy not doing that he neglected to mention. (I'm assuming that he enjoys not doing this one thing either, although of course I could be completely wrong.) Care to take a stab at what it is? Nope, that's not it. No, not that either. Give up?