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not too wee an update 2004-07-20 Woo! I'm listening to my favorite radio station (you know the one, Mitches) for the first time in a couple of weeks and it is making me very happy. There was some radio-listening-to in the bus/van when we were on the tour, in Scotland, but it was BBC Radio One and BBC Radio Two, and I no likey. It was all the pop music that I can't stand, so getting back to the Good station is very gratifying. Before I went on my trip, I painted my toenails (black, which is my favorite toenail color right now) and the polish stayed on the whole time I was gone. I was under the impression I'd be wearing sandals more often, but I only wore them once and shouldn't have worn them then, because they were the wrong shoes for all that walking and I got a blister. Anyway, last night I removed the polish, because it was looking pretty chipped and groce, and underneath the polish, both of my big toenails have what look like bruises under them. On my right toe it's a very dark bruise, almost like a blood blister under the nail. Who knew? My toenails had hurt for awhile while I was gone, but I chalked that up to wearing my shoes tied loosely one day and doing a whole shitload of walking (thus banging my toes around in the shoes). They don't hurt anymore, so I was surprised to see the bruises and was going to repaint the toenails, to cover up the ugliness, but then didn't, so I'm walking around with bruisey toes, and it's really quite pretty. And by pretty, I mean, hideous. Toenail painting is on my to-do list tonight, for sure. Okay, the official word of my Scotland vacation is "wee", because we Americans don't use that word very much, but the Scots are all the time using it, as far as I could tell. Our tour driver, Budgie, used it a dozen times a day at least. Mostly he would say, "Now we're going to take a wee wander," and this was generally before leading us up some of the steepest hills I'd ever seen. Diana and I picked up "wee" from the first day, because we were storing our luggage at the train station in Glasgow, before tromping around for awhile, and the man asked if we wanted to "store the wee bag, as well?". The bag in question was not so wee, but we started calling it The Wee Bag anyway. After that, everything was wee, and I'm sure most of the people on our tour hated our guts for it, but I could be wrong. Brace yourselved to be "wee"d in the coming weeks, until a different good word or something shiny comes along to distract me. Oh, also I liked hearing people call candy, "sweeties". As in, "Do you want some sweeties?" I'm totally using that now, too. I want to tell you about Budgie for a minute, because he was a funny guy. On the first day, we'd been instructed to get into the van/bus, and then Budgie climbed in and surveyed us--15 women and one man--and said something like, "Almost all women....bloody hell." He did a good job showing us around and giving us interesting and amusing history lessons, and I ended up really liking him. I was a bit put off by him after the first day, because he didn't seem to like us very much (us being the whole group) but then I thought about it and decided I'd probably be the same way if I had his job, because he was in charge of entertaining a group of strangers that he wouldn't see ever again after the week was over, and also, he didn't get much in the way of free time. He seemed to warm up to us after a couple of days and I had a few decent conversations with him, and also he got to see his girlfriend after not seeing her for two weeks, and I imagine not seeing her had been contributing to his unhappy mood. He did a sort of smart thing, I thought, by telling us on the first day to just think of him as our Uncle Budgie, and this was smart because in subsequent days he could say things like, "Shut up--Uncle Budgie is talking!" Good idea to set himself up as the curmudgeonly uncle right to start with, in my opinion. Some of the people on our tour didn't like him--the two young-ish Polish women, mainly--but I think that had to do with them not understanding when he was 'taking the piss', which he did a lot. Speaking of the Polish people on our trip, there were 4--the two women who were friends, and a mother and son combo that I was calling "The Mother and Child Reunion" in my head. The mother (Marische--though I don't know if that spelling is correct) spoke no English whatsoever, but she seemed nice, and the son (Jacek) was a wonderful person because he translated almost everything for her (it would've driven me crazy to translate like that for my mom). I say almost everything, because there were times the conversations took strange turns (like the time the aggravating Australian girl started talking about prostitutes in Amsterdam--she was such an annoying person that everything she said was grating); Jacek didn't translate things like that for his mom. Oh, but there was this fantastic thing that happened with Jacek and Marische once--they were sitting right behind me and Diana on the van/bus and Marische was talking and talking to him. I was sitting there thinking what a good son he is to listen to all that talking, but I happened to glance back and he was sound asleep. That's when my head exploded --it was a beautiful thing. That's about all I have time for--need to go home now. Going to make Boy a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and I'll have popcorn cakes and cheese (no gluten) and we'll both have Greek lemon soup, because it's easy and it sounds good to me. Francisco is going to his shooty thing tonight, and he's looking forward to it because he couldn't go to any while I was in Scotland. Poor guy--he's so good to me. Love,
come over some time & see me - 2011-02-25 |
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