7 Quick Takes 40: All That Glitters is Not Silver...

1. Many, many moons ago, for some inexplicable reason, my eldest daughter loved to swing brooms around. One day she swung it in the direction of an antique family vase, and the inevitable happened. The delicate, etched glass was broken beyond repair. We would have consigned the whole vase to the dustbin, except that the base was a heavy lump of silver. So, with a vague idea that we would detach and sell it, we packed the broken vase into an old shoebox, put it into the sideboard cupboard, and... promptly forgot about it.
Fast forward fifteen or so years, and behold, we have a baby with an infallible radar for broken glass. Having mastered the art of opening the kitchen cupboards, he turned his talents to cupboards with latches. Again, in one of those twenty-second lapses of supervision, he got into the sideboard. Faced with china galore, which obviously wasn't antique, he went for the box because something we were hiding from him must be worth investigating. Thankfully, my radar for toddler trouble is getting rehoned, because I rescued him and the vase in time. My husband finally decided to do something about it, and set to work detaching the lump of silver, which turned out to be:

A lump of plaster encased in silver about as thick as tin foil. So, maybe a dollar's worth in there. And we still haven't thrown that away. But I suppose it says something about greed, or thriftiness. Or laziness...

2. Although David Bowie was a fixture of my childhood, I found the hysterical reactions to his death this January rather incomprehensible. Yet this weekend, when I learned that Terry Jones of Monty Python fame has a rare form of dementia that is robbing him of speech, I was terribly upset. Monty Python's Flying Circus is almost completely responsible for my warped sense of humour; I went to Cambridge, the Pythons' stomping ground; the house I shared with friends there was affectionately dubbed "Castle Anthrax". That someone whose life has been words should be bereft of them seems a cruel irony.
And then, reading on, I also learned about his private life, which is, shall we say, much, much less than admirable, and I had the strange experience of being devastated and disappointed all at the the same time.
Another clear moral: Don't make an idol of anyone. Even Eric Idle.

3. Behold the instruction manual that came with my husband's newly purchased, refurbished strimmer:

Six hundred and fifty pages in twenty-six languages, intended for the EU market. Which can only lead to the reflection that Brexit may have its upside ;)

4. Why is it, that, after more than twenty years of being married to a mathematician, my recurring anxiety dream is still being back at school and not being prepared for my maths class?
I think my husband would say this, too, has a moral: it's my subconscious telling me to give him more attention.

5. My original thoughts for  #5 went: Attention Mother Nature: September in the northern hemisphere is meant to be the "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness", NOT the mid-nineties (high thirties). Yes, I complain too much. I have an extreme intolerance to heat. Ten minutes in the sun and I am red and perspiring. Half an hour and I have to lie down :( WHY am I still in Mississippi? Perhaps I am really dead and this is actually Purgatory. And so on, until I am curled up in a ball of sweaty hysteria...

6. Then, a few days after venting, I woke up to fifty degrees. Which was a physical relief, but brought about the usual shoe problem. When the girls were younger, every year, as it got to the turn of the season, I would think, "I must buy them new summer/winter formal shoes." And then, bang, the weather always turned on a Sunday morning and they had no suitable shoes for church. This past year, I've been collecting good pairs of baby shoes from thrift stores and clothes swaps so I'd be prepared. And... they're all too big or too small.

7. The main reason we needed shoes was because FINALLY, at sixteen months, the baby has decided that walking is worthwhile. My first reaction was, "He looks like a drunken Charlie Chaplin." My second was, "And his sisters won't have a clue what I mean by that."

Moral: I'm old, no moral.

For more quick takes with fewer fake morals, hop on over to This Ain't the Lyceum.