Monthly Archives: May 2011

…sick mommy vs sick daddy

Alternatively, sick woman vs sick man.

Yes.  Go ahead and roll your eyes for this is yet another post about the superiority and strength of the weaker sex – the woman. You know, those of us who behave irrationally because our hormones make us act like a rabid dog.  The woman.  The crier.

Here is a picture of my daily existence:

Ouch. That fucking hurts!

For those of you not overly familiar with all things spine related, this is a basic x-ray of my spine.  Or what is left of my spine.  Each day is a joyous exercise in spasms, sciatica and mind-crushing pain.  I’m truly fortunate that I am currently able to postpone the inevitable ALIF surgery.  While I may feel older than dirt, I’m a little too young for such drastic measures.

On a good day, I have back pain.  On a not-so-good day, I have the back pain and whatever ailment is ravaging my body.  Be it a cold, dengue fever, malaria, sinusitis, ears that won’t work or a really angry menstrual cycle, I’m left to manage it.  Sometimes, I get to do all of this while my husband is travelling, leaving me to care for the Milkfaced toddler by my bad self.  Quite the conundrum when your orthopaedic surgeon strongly advises against lifting anything heavier than five pounds.

This is really hard work when you’re suffering from the above *and* you are stuck dragging around that cross and having a crown of thorns poking your scalp.  Alas, I am woman.  I will do.  Then I will spend your money out of spite and frustration.

Men, on the other hand, take an entirely different approach to illness.  THE WORLD GRINDS TO A FUCKING HALT.  A hangnail may require an amputation.  A runny nose and a fever requires hospitalization in a plastic bubble with an IV.  A stomach bug – oh just get the fuck out of the way.  The man is vomiting, for fuck’s sake.  Food is coming out of the wrong orifice!!!  This is a horrible fate and means death must be near (let’s completely overlook the first trimester of pregnancy when all the mommy does is spew).

Dock falls ill two or three times a year.  Most of the time it’s a nasty cold or a headache (hey – I never said I was easy to live with). Unfortunately for all of Raleigh, this time he has the pukes.  Milky and I have both had the pukes this week so it’s a safe assumption that he caught whatever bug we had been hosting and that he hasn’t been poisoned by some decaying morsel that he would sooner eat than throw out.

A sick Dock is a marginally useless Dock.  I have seen this throughout the years but nothing quite like seeing a pancake in the sink. I presume that my husband was far too weak to make the three steps to the garbage bin and press down on the lever that opens the lid. Profuse vomiting can render the strongest man to the feeblest 90 year old woman.

This post isn’t meant as an indictment.  Dock is genuinely ill and I do feel (somewhat) horribly for him.  My intent is to paint a picture of the male patient and how poorly they handle being sick.  The Earth needs to freeze in its orbit until male feels better.  It’s just the way it’s supposed to be.

Back at the ranch, the woman with the deteriorating spine will somehow manage to get the laundry done, shower and unclog the kitchen sink (I don’t believe that is pancake related).  Then she will manage to wrestle herself onto the sofa, cross, crown of thorns and all and ponder the injustices of the world.

Not everyone is a winner, you know…

Author’s Note: This is something I wrote a little under a year ago. It was originally posted as a note on Facebook and then as a post on my personal blog.

One of my former English-teaching jobs involved working with small children. They were very little (most under the age of five) so the job primarily consisted of playing games and singing songs in English. Like any job there were good and bad things about it. The kids were mostly very sweet and cute. However, I had a colleague who drove me nuts. We used to play these little games with the kids and naturally there would be one winner, which is the point of playing any game, right?

Despite this universal truth, she would always smile at them and say, “That’s okay. Everyone’s a winner!” This always bothered me because there was in fact only one winner. He won because he was the best. Saying that everyone’s a winner totally diminishes the achievement of the kid who actually won the game. It’s unrealistic, dishonest and unfair, and it sets kids up for disappointment later on in life.

It used to be when a child did poorly in school her parents would go straight to her and say, “These grades are terrible!” Nowadays, when a child does poorly in school her parents go straight to her teacher and say, “These grades are terrible!”

Not that there aren’t any bad teachers. Of course there are, just as there are bad examples from every profession. However, I wonder if it ever occurred to the parents that maybe their kid is just a bad student. I know a thing or two about being a bad student because I used to be one. Then again, I had very low self-esteem, so when I got bad grades I assumed it was because I (and not my teacher) was useless. No amount of attempted bribery or bolstering of my nonexistent self-esteem was going to improve my performance in school.

Then one day I realized that I’d better get off my ass and get some decent grades, so that’s what I did. At first I did it mainly to keep my parents from yelling at me, but after a while I figured out that I was actually a good student and I did it for me.

While I strongly believe in encouraging young people to do the best they can, I also believe that it’s ultimately up to them. They choose whether to do well or bad in school, and while we can encourage or even intimidate, their performance in school is their responsibility. The young people of today aren’t being taught self-reliance and accountability. Many of them are little narcissists who have been led to believe they are “special” and therefore entitled to “the best.”

However, we seem to have forgotten to tell them about having to work really hard in order to get it, about taking charge of their own lives, about having to get it themselves if they really want it, and about them not being entitled to anything.

Remember that if everyone is a winner that means that everyone is also a loser.

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WOTD: needs

Today’s word is one of those words that has multiple linguistic functions.

It could be an adverb that is defined as, “of necessity, usually preceded by the word must.”

For example: “It must needs be so.” Which to me sounds very Shakespearean or even biblical.

It could also be a transitive verb, which is a verb that requires both a subject and an object:

“She needs money.”

Or indeed, it could be a plural noun described as what is required or needed:

“What are the needs of third world countries?”

Okay, that’s enough boring grammar stuff. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the “(Your first name here) needs…” game, and some of you might have done yours and posted it on Facebook. The instructions are very simple. All you need to do is go to Google or any search engine of your choice and type in your first name plus the word “needs” in the search field. Then press enter and write down the first ten hits you get, no matter how weird or stupid they are.

I’ll go first:

1. Gwen NEEDS to sign! (Sign what, I’m not really sure but it’s REALLY important that I sign it.)

2. Gwen needs to get Palin back on topic. (As long as it’s Michael Palin.)

3. Gwen needs to step down. (Difficult as I have a phobia of walking down stairs.)

4. Gwen needs no helmet…Ba! (For I am invulnerable…)

5. Gwen needs 5 man strat run. (Um…actually I need a nerd to explain this one as it’s related to WoW.)

6. Gwen needs to fire herself as her stylist. (If I do then does this mean I’ll have to pay unemployment benefits to myself?)

7. Gwen needs a doctor. (Preferably a rich well-built single doctor.)

8. Gwen needs an apartment. (I’m house broken. Can’t say the same for my 25 cats.)

9. Gwen needs to chill out a little. (Yeah, right. Chill this out, bitches!)

10. Gwen needs a hero. (He’s gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast, and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight…)

WOTD: cinnamon, according to the Urban Dictionary

I love the Urban Dictionary. I fucking love it. Type in even the most mundane word you can think of and it will produce several surprising “definitions” you never would have thought of in a million years. I typed in the word cinnamon because I was looking at the furry lump lying on the bed that’s named Cinnamon. There’s no way this word is going to be in there, I thought. Boy, was I wrong.

There are actually seven definitions for the word cinnamon. The first one is my favorite:

1. Cinnamon is something difficult to say when drunk.

These are also difficult to say when drunk:
Thanks, but I don’t want to have sex.
Good evening, officer. Isn’t it lovely out tonight?
Nope, no more beer for me….

Cinnanannomm …..Cinomon …Ciniman …uhhh!i give up, gimme another beer!

I also really love the third definition:

3. The equivalent to a ginger, just more attractive and usually has a soul. Commonly found in the North Eastern part of the United States and Western Canada. Freckles are prominent and usually in large numbers. Some cinnamons are found wearing obscene clothing, beware. Large families are usually together in one area of the country of this breed.

Differences between the two are skin tones, which are usually a shade darker than most gingers and the cinnamons are more aesthetically pleasing,

“Yo man, did you see that slamming ginger over there with her tits hanging out?!”

“Yeah I did man but that’s no ginger! It’s a cinnamon! You don’t find banging gingers anywhere these days!”

Apparently, cinnamon also means roughly same thing as cherry (not the sexual meaning):

4.excellent, very good
Dude, you’re [sic]Jedi cloak is so cinnamon. I wish I had one.

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Cinnamon the cat approves of this post.

Stay tuned…

WOTD: as hot/cold/dumb/nervous/useless as…

I have a fondness for those colorful metaphors that are often Southern American in origin. In fact at one point I was even thinking of compiling a book of them, but there are countless pages on the internet that list them. Some of my favorites include:

As nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
As dumb as a bag of rocks. (I use this one often to describe my cat.)
As useless as tits on a bull.

Of course there are hundreds more, and some of them have been around so long the original meaning has become obscured over time. Thusly:

He’d gripe with a ham under each arm.
He’s so windy he could blow up an onion sack.
He’s tighter than a flea’s ass over a rain barrel.

See what I mean? Each one of those produces a rather bewildered “huh?”

“Thick as a whale omelette.” is something I heard the Prince Regent character say in the Blackadder III series. I like it but most Americans don’t know that “thick” is British slang for stupid.

One I made up and use when I’m about to depart is “Well, I’m off like a whore’s panties.”

Bye for now…

These Allergies!

These allergies! These allergies!
All I do is sneeze and sneeze.
And cough and itch and loudly wheeze.
For some relief I’m begging, please!

I’ve seen the doctor and received,
Some medicine and I believed,
That very soon I’d feel relieved.
Alas, I think I’ve been deceived.

These pills don’t seem to do a thing.
My eyes and nose are still running.
I’m still coughing and still sneezing,
Still itching and still wheezing.

They make me feel so drowsy,
That I’m stumbling and clumsy.
But I’m so stoned and woozy
That forget I’m feeling lousy.

So, for some relief I’m begging, please!
From these allergies! These allergies!
All I do is cough and wheeze,
And…
Wait..I feel another sneeze.

WOTD: pundit, and other loaned words…

The English language is one of the largest languages in the world. Not only is it one of the most commonly learned languages both as a first and second language, it also has an extraordinarily large amount of words. One of the reasons for this is the amount of loaned words (aka loanwords) from other languages. The word smörgåsbord (discussed in a previous post) is an example of a word borrowed from the Swedish language. According to the Oxford Dictionaries website:

The Second Edition of the 20-volume  Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

That adds up to over 230,000 words, which is huge compared to the number of words in, say, the Swedish language. (Estimated to be around 40,000) Learning English, particularly as a second language, is a monumental undertaking.

Other words loaned from Swedish include: moped, ombudsman, gauntlet and tungsten.

One might be surprised to learn that the word pundit is loaned from the Hindi language. While we think of a pundit as a kind of pompous talking head on the Fox network, the original Hindi word pandit means “learned scholar or priest.” Bill O’Reilly is good example of a pundit, although I don’t think he’s particularly scholarly nor very priestly.

Here are a few other loanwords of interest:

From Arabic: admiral, alcohol, coffee, guitar, lemon, magazine, sofa

From Chinese: ketchup

From Czech: robot, pistol

From Dutch: bazooka, aloof, bluff, coleslaw, cookie, golf, landscape

From French: abandon, bastard, and calorie to name a few. There are approximately 80,000 words of French origin in the English language due to a minor incident that occurred in the year 1066 near the town of Hastings.

From Hebrew: behemoth, canister, jubilee.

From Italian: balcony, figurine

From Turkish: balaclava, lackey, vampire

From Welsh: flummery (the pudding, that is)

Of course there are many (ten of thousands) more, but I think this is a good sample.

Bye for now.