Monday, July 11, 2016

What three words dot com?

The first day of my summer holiday, and I spent the morning getting a mammogram. Yay, breasts squished between two plates! I caught a glimpse of the pictures, and it didn't look as if there's anything that shouldn't be there. Fingers crossed. I am high risk because my mother and her older sister Margaret had breast cancer - not her older sister Do, I hasten to add, who at 96 has had no health issues at all, no heart problems, no cancer or arthritis or mental issues, just difficult feet and the threat of macular degeneration, which has not hit her yet because she gets injections into her eyes.

I want Do's body and mind. She says it's because when she steams broccoli, she drinks the cooking water afterward. I want Do's body and mind but without drinking broccoli water, please. Thank you. And also, if possible, no injections into the eyes.

Somehow the rest of the day vanished in bits and pieces, and now it's rosé time, the best time of day. I'm working - figuring out what my terrific editor Colin Thomas has critiqued about the memoir and how to fix it. That will be my big project for the summer. That and staking my beans, which are flailing about all over the place.

A fun thing in Sunday's Star, though barely incomprehensible - a guy has developed an algorithm (what IS an algorithm?) that locates any address on earth with three words. If you go to map.what3words.com and type in your address, you will find out your words. Mine, I kid you not, are blurts. impulses. defers. It's like a Rorschach test. In my classes, I always write Carol Shields' words on the board: BLURT BRAVELY.  I am impulsive and yet deferential - my algorithm is psychoanalytic! But when I typed in my childhood home in Halifax, it came up as cornfields.insulating.spurn. Nothing psychoanalytic there. Try it and see how close it comes to your core.

Wanted to tell you a bit - I promise, only a tiny bit - about my time with Eli. As we walked, he shouted gleefully, pointing to a car, "There's a reedub!" "A what?" I asked and followed his finger, pointing to a Volkswagen, a VW. A reedub, of course, and so it shall remain for the rest of my days. He came in while I was dressing, looked at my half-dressed body and asked, "What do people's gina's look like?" Hmmm. I decided not to take this one on and said, "You'll have to ask your mother." Coward!

When we were reading a book, I realized he didn't know the fairy tales, so we went to the library and the campaign has begun - he knows all the characters of the schlock TV show Paw Patrol and he will also know Cinderella, the Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, Sleeping Beauty and all the rest. It's a language he should speak. Glamma is on the case.

It's 6 p.m. and 25 degrees, the birds are chirping and the ice cubes are tinkling. Over and out.

3 comments:

  1. I found the dearest little finger puppets for Red Riding Hood at a fair-trade (ok, hippie, but I'm proud of that) shop and they are very useful when reading those old and beautiful tales. (Particularly via Skype, as it turns out...) But the Wild Swans, oh and Randall Jarrell's translation of Snow White, illustrated by the wondrous Nancy Ekholm Burkert -- how can a child grow up without those?

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  2. Oh, and the stories go well with rose. You know that, though.

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  3. I'll look for that Snow White. I was shocked to find out he didn't know who any of those characters are. And then, I guess, it'd be good to go through Greek myths and maybe a Bible story or two ... Paw Patrol looms large. I have my work cut out for me. Rosé will help, as always.

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