Me: Michael, stop turning off all the lights. I don’t want to be fumbling around in the dark whenever I go into the hall.
Him: Electricity is very expensive.
Me: I know, I pay the bills.
Him: We will all be paying the bills.
Michael
A Hairpin
When I was little, if I was a bit too smart, my father’s relatives would call me a hairpin. I’m not sure whether that is unique to Cork or unique to them. It came to my mind when I discovered that the Princess has made a complete list of all of her Halloween loot which she is carefully checking against the remaining items every morning. No unauthorised mini malteaser packs for me.
In other hairpiness, consider this.
Me: Would you like a grape?
Michael: No, you know I don’t like grapes.
Herself: It’s hard for Mum to remember because we spend far more time every day with school and the childminder combined than we do with her.
And this example of metahairpiness.
Her: NabloPoMo is so hard.
Me: Why do you say that?
Her: I have to keep thinking of witty things to say so that you can write about them.
I await the teenage years with interest.
They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait
So we ran mass today. The woman from the parish council who normally does it was off in Siena on holidays. We had the intro (me), the prayers of the faithful (all the children) and the second reading (Herself).
She read beautifully. As she was reading, “There must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself..”, I was whispering to her father, “She’s so good at this, she really is superb at reading aloud much better than anyone else.” So very much taking the message of the reading to heart, then.
They all did fine for their prayers of the faithful but after delivering his, Michael went to the back of the altar where he appeared to believe he was invisible and began rotating in circles.
But what, you ask of my couple of lines of introduction, well, I went into the sacristy and told the parish priest that I would be doing the introduction. “Fine, fine,” said he. When mass actually started, I was surprised to see that someone else entirely was saying mass but I assumed that the parish priest had passed on the message. I went up to the altar and stood at the lectern opposite the priest. The elderly priest opened mass with a welcome. Then he pressed on completely ignoring me. I stood there opening my mouth like a landed fish and failing to get a word in edgeways. Eventually I slunk off the altar without saying anything still completely unnoticed by the priest who was well into his stride at this point. Why do these things always happen to me? Predictably, the children thought it was hilarious
A Momentus Day
My parents are celebrating their 47th wedding anniversary.
Daniel and Michael are 9.
Also, the internet tells me, George Clooney got married and Google is 16. It’s just non-stop this whole 27 September thing.
It’s also the feast day of the Brussels region. I can stop any time.
Updated to add: very belated birthday posts for Daniel and Michael finally done.
Very Green
We went to Clara Lara fun park on Monday. Rain notwithstanding, the children had a good time. Very many of the other families in the park had northern accents and I assume that they had made their way out of Northern Ireland for a holiday during the July marching season.
For no reason that I can tell, other than, perhaps, the subliminal impact of all the northern accents, Michael attracted the amused attention of other diners by saying loudly at lunch, “When oh when are they going to give us back Northern Ireland?” At least Daniel didn’t say, “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.” This is his usual automatic reaction to any mention of the North [reasons unknown – suspect school] but possibly my outraged hushing of Michael made him decide to hold back.
Some briefing may be required before we go to Belfast to see the Titanic exhibition.
Overheard
Michael: Dan, ma man, what’s up?
Daniel: Nuttin’ just chillin’.
The Americans have a lot to answer for.
