An interesting thing to note about my shower room faucet

I was just in the shower room cleaning my contact lenses, and I noticed that the cold tap was a funny color, so I bent to examine it, and the ring around it is not a regular blue color, but is more of a pleasant indigo color. And I’m not sure what is meant by this. Is it meant to convey that the water that comes out of this tap is deeply, deeply cold? That the water has moved beyond mere regular coldness into a transcendent manner of being cold that is only improved upon by the taps that have violet rings around them? Maybe the British have classes of cold water taps, and the darker your ring-around-the-faucet is, the better your water is. Or, or the colder the cold-water-delivery-elves can guarantee that your water will be.

OR - why should we blame it on the Brits anyway? - maybe this is God’s way of telling me, Go ahead, Jenny, just go right ahead and give your baby the lovely name that you want to give it.

Yeah. That’s probably what it is. So there, naysayers! GOD agrees with me!

Another thing I tooootally don’t get

Steve sent me a link to a YouTube video of these women who are pitching a conservative political satire TV show (I’m not linking to it here because I watched two videos of it and it made me want to die because it was totally not even remotely funny, and seriously, it’s way easy to make me laugh), and these were the comments that were on the page:

no2hillaryc (4 days ago)
I think I’m in love. These women are brilliant, beautiful and have brains in their heads
tessgoesblonde (4 days ago)
Love this
colourin (4 days ago)
What I’m really saying is, for this to be funny, you have to make it cleverer. Give the audience some credit, let them work rather than just throwing obvious stuff at them, they can handle it. It’s a sign of respect for them and they will respect you for it, no matter what the message behind your humour is.
racecardrivez (4 days ago)
Great looking redhead. Yum.
TraditionalAmerican (1 day ago)
Keep up the good work.
tvengr4047 (1 day ago)
Looking forward to the next episode! All of you, keep up the great work!
newadam (1 day ago)
I’d fuk ‘um
jackdboston (22 hours ago)
This is hilarious! What do we have to do to get this on TV? When will conservatives have a program we can finally watch?

Okay. Right. Plainly moderating their comments, because I promise you it’s not hilarious. Also I checked it out on metafilter, and yes, they are moderating comments and letting only nice stuff in. Okay, but here’s the thing. They don’t let in, You are really not funny at all but actually pretty lame, but they let in, I’d fuk ‘um? Seriously? Is this the message they reeeeeally want to put across?

Okay, here’s what I don’t get about The Wizard of Oz

So Dorothy drops a house on the Wicked Witch, and everyone has a big celebration, and Glinda’s all, Dee dee dee dee dee, isn’t everything merry, and then comes the other Wicked Witch, and Glinda’s like, Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you, there’s another wicked witch and now she hates you forever. Why doesn’t Glinda grab Dorothy the minute she gets there with the bubble and say, “Run away! Do the yellow brick road see the Wizard thing and we will handle the inevitable fallout that has resulted from this twister business!” and then just blame the Munchkins because (as she says) the Wicked Witch has no power in Munchkinland. Why doesn’t she do that?

And then the other thing, right? There’s these shoes that the Wicked Witch really extra super wants, and Glinda gives them straight to Dorothy right in front of the Wicked Witch so there won’t be any confusion about what happened to them? And then the Wicked Witch leaves in a big puff of smoke and Glinda says to Dorothy, I’m afraid you’ve made rather a bad enemy of the Wicked Witch.

If that had been me, I’d've been like, Look, BITCH. I’d've been like, I made a bad enemy of the Wicked Witch, I made a bad enemy? It wasn’t the one of us who has ever been here before and has any notion about the Wicked Witch whatsoever? It wasn’t the one who STOLE HER SISTER’S SHOES and put them on MY feet without, can I just say, even ASKING me about it? I’d've probably teamed up with the Wicked Witch and destroyed all of Oz with a mighty red smoky terror, just to get back at Glinda for being such a twittery twit.

They have magical libraries here

No, they seriously do. I’m so not even kidding. Steve took me to the Colchester library yesterday and I got a library card so that I could check out a child’s book to cheer me up, and you know how they check out books there, DO YOU KNOW? It’s magic. You do it all yourself. You press a button and swipe your card and then you put your books in a pile on the wooden scale thing, and the machine magically knows what books you have! It’s true! Because it’s magic! It pulls it up on the little computer screen, and it’s all like, Blah blah blah, these two books are now checked out to you, or whatever it says. AND it prints out a little receipt telling you what you’ve taken out and when it’s due, which seems like a tiny bit of a waste of paper but who cares? It’s magic! Magical magic! The Colchester library is magical!

*sings a little magic ditty*

I can't handle anything this complicated

BAH. I went into the bathroom today, and the light was turned on. Instead of off! It’s always turned off! And then when I enter the bathroom I turn the light ON! That is the pattern! DEVIANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

It’s very confusing because my brain says: Here we are in a particular room. It is customary to change the light situation when we enter this room. Why don’t you reach up your hand and turn on the light so that we can see what is going on here? Here is the little pull-string. Pull it. AAAAAAAAA WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WHY IS IT DARK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT

Stupid brain. Telling me all the wrong things. Hmph.

(I am procrastinating on another paper. Can you tell?)

Hmph. Why am I in England when there are cousins at home?

So I missed Thanksgiving with my family. Whatever. Here are the babies I did not see, in age order:

1. Joseph
2. Ryleigh
3. Emma (born on my birthday!)
4. Catherine
5. Kaitlyn

About these latter two babies I am not sure of spelling because nobody has informed me. (My family is nice but not very good at communicating; for instance, I did not know that Robyn had gotten a job at Semolina’s, and most of my extended family did not know that I was in England. And really, it’s just a coincidence that anybody let me know that my cousin Stacey was pregnant, because usually my sisters and I find out weeks later when Aunt Becky comes over and mentions it and we’re all like WHAT? SOMEBODY IS PREGNANT? YOU MEAN MORE BABIES? WOO-HOO! and my parents are like, Oh, we told you that! but actually they never did.)

Can I just repeat that? Stacey is pregnant! I mean, you can’t tell really, but I promise, she’s pregnant. Babies! Babies! Babies! How I love ‘em!


At Stacey’s wedding she was very beautiful and the fountain overflowed before she came down and we mopped it up with a lot of towels, and we were promised pictures of this phenomenon but have never beheld any.

I have lots of cousins and I did not see any of them. Robyn took some pictures, which is why this picture of Becca Lee with a mustache is captured on film:


I was going to crop that one more, but I couldn’t bear to because out the window you can see Uncle Don taking a picture of someone else, and Uncle Don is funny. He is also very relieved because the new babies (at least Ryleigh and Kaitlyn) like to have their pictures taken, and Ryleigh poses cutely for the camera. He looks forward to a new generation of camera-loving children, because me and my cousins were absolutely dreadful about having our pictures taken. We would shriek MR CAMERA MAN and run away very fast and hide. I will do my level best to teach my new baby cousins that cameras are joyous friendly things and having one’s picture taken is the best possible good they can hope for in their young lives.

Here is Emma with her mum (my cousin Nichole). She is cute and she was born on my birthday, and I like the name Emma.


And here is my Uncle Wayne with one of his three grandchildren. When his first grandchild was born, Uncle Wayne became the most besotted grandfather ever, which was funny because Uncle Wayne is hardcore, he doesn’t mess around, he cleans rifles when his daughters bring round boyfriends and offers to come break kneecaps of people who haven’t been behaving right towards his nieces. Now there are three grandchildren, and it is my suspicion that Uncle Wayne’s whole brain might just explode with glee.


That is baby Kaitlyn. Uncle Wayne is tickling her, and when Robyn sent me this picture it was so cute I didn’t know what to say.


Robyn got fewer pictures of baby Catherine, I think because baby Catherine stayed inside and hung out with Mom Reiners, so this one is not as clear, but here is baby Catherine, and she is a dear little chubby thing.


And here is my mum with baby Kaitlyn. From what I have heard, my mother was an enormous baby hog. Apparently she would seize babies from everybody who had a baby and then run away outside like a greedy, greedy woman and keep the babies all to herself. Here she is outside with a baby whom–let’s face it–she has probably snatched from a weeping Mom Reiners.


And these two pictures I have saved for last because they are my most favorites of the ones Robyn took, and I think I’m just going to use them as my desktop wallpaper on alternate months for the rest of my life.


Aunt Becky is as happy as a clam because she has not one, not two, but THREEEEEEE babies to cuddle! (Okay, Joseph is not a baby, as you can tell from his extremely cute–er, I mean grown-up–belt. He did, however, just recently notice that baby Catherine is missing something, and he was totally horrified apparently: WHERE IS HER PENIS?)

Okay. Are you ready for this much cuteness? I’m really not sure that you are. Because this is mighty cute. Here is my uncle Karl with baby Kaitlyn, and it is the cutest picture of a baby ever.


I told you! Didn't I tell you? Did I say I had the cutest baby picture ever? Wasn't I TOTALLY RIGHT?

Edit: I have the names all sorted now, unless my Mumsy is mistaken. I’m glad baby Catherine is not Kathryn because then she would be very much like Kaitlyn. I commend my cousin Stephanie for choosing the best spelling of a very pretty name for her dear little baby. I should never have trusted Robyn’s spelling of Kathryn; she also spelt Kaitlyn Katelynn because she has a friend called Katelynn. I don’t know why that didn’t clue me in that Robyn is not to be trusted.

Registration, and the Sims

I went round to the Health Centre to register today, and I waited for ages and ages and finally it was my turn and I started to go into the room of the next available doctor, but he gave me a very discouraging look and said, Let me finish a few things first! because I must have known that one was to wait before entering although every single person who had gone before me had not waited and I had no reason to suppose that waiting was in any way necessary, bother them. He looked proper fussy, too. But while I was waiting a very nice lady asked me to come into her office because it was now available, and so I did not have to go chat with the fussy bearded gentleman who–for all we know!–could actually have been Satan in disguise.

But the nurse was very sweet and she was delighted by my accurate knowledge of my vaccination dates. She said, “You are the first–very first–person who has come in with all of their proper vaccination dates.” I explained that it was not I but my mother, and she looked at me with great contentment and said, “Well, you must tell her that I love her!”

(Quite rightly.)

Last night I discovered that Lovely Flatmate Trish is a Sims addict! Like I once was! We had a merry chat about the fun games we used to play with our Sims, like the one where Mortimer would hit on his daughter Cassandra in my truly and inexplicably bizarre Goth family, and the one where we would talk to our real-life siblings in Simlish BECAUSE WE COULD (”Deesh vrow is vrenijay! An een robitushnash ana eestoffagan–jeetow nani!”), and the one where we would make a whole family of mean people who were so tidy that they clapped their wee Sim hands every time they flushed the toilet and then eventually we got sick of everyone fighting all the time and walled them up in individual brick enclosures with no toilet and no shower (and did that ever piss them off, those evil tidy Sim bastards!) and no food and no bed so they cried all the time and wet themselves and had no place to sleep and nothing to eat and nobody to talk to and then eventually they just died. (Yeah, that was a good one.)

Apparently Trish’s mum was always fussing at Trish and her sister for wasting all their time with a stupid game, but then one evening they told her to try it and the next morning she was still at it. Apparently she loves making more and more and more babies (she must be mad; I hated having the stupid babies–it was grand when it was all clapping siblings and daffodils, but NOBODY SLEPT and then everyone died and then the social worker came and took that poor baby away from us). Apparently she gets very cross if, and I quote, the mum and dad make woo-woo and don’t have a baby.

So I’ll just leave you with that thought.

…and helping old ladies across the street / Even if they didn’t wanna go

In Tesco I did a Good Deed, which was to retrieve a shopping list that had fallen on the floor and give it back to the old lady who had dropped it. She said, “Oh! Oh my! Thank you! That’s my shopping list. How very kind. You’re a good gel.”

Old people in England love me. I suspect it is because English people don’t like the elderly (but I do!).

Ha, ha, ha. I’m a good gel.

To be in England now that Thanksgiving's here

I went into the kitchen this morning and said Happy Thanksgiving to my flatmates, and after a while Sarah said that she and Trish had been talking about Thanksgiving and me, and Trish had said, “Should we give her a card that says ‘Thanks’? Is that what they do?”

What I am thankful for

Bourbon creams, because they are
a) chocolate
b) tasty
c) cheap
d) not to Steve’s taste so I have them all to myself

the fact that my flatmates are nice and relatively sane

the fact that my family are coming to see me in a little over a month

libraries, which prevent me from buying books all the time every day in vast quantities

calzones, which make enough food for two meals

cheese (yum!)

being able to eat peanuts (although of course I would rather be with you and be peanut-deprived, Robyn, my angel)

the existence of Pirates of the Caribbean. Thank you, Gore Verbinski (I always want to write Gore Vidal).

my upcoming Mental Health Day

the Democrats’ gaining control of Congress