The UK has been obliterated and replaced with nothing but fog! The Doctor didn’t save us!
Either that, or this globe at a fairly new installation in a Cambridge area museum probably needs to be replaced with a more robust model.
“Honey, can you find where we live on this globe?”
“Sure Mum, it’s right…HEY!”
Back in the US I shop at Goodwill a lot, especially for kids’ clothes. They grow through them so fast and boutique prices are insane, but you can get the high-quality boutique stuff for dirt cheap at Goodwill. In addition to saving money, there’s a huge environmental boon to reusing clothes instead of always buying new. Plus if you have a hard-to-fit kid like I do with Peo, having lots of brands in one place makes it more likely that something will fit. And that variety often lends itself to really great finds of rare, weird clothing and other good stuff.
Protip: if you can find inexpensive used plates at Goodwill – especially holiday-themed ones – you can use those to give out holiday cookies to teachers, colleagues, friends, etc. They’re sturdier so you won’t risk collapses as can happen with cheap, disposable trays, they look nicer, and the recipient can either reuse the plate, give it back to you if they wish (make it clear to them that they don’t have to), or regift it forward. Major environmental win, nicer presentation, everyone’s happy.
Peo and I went on a quest to get some used dishes at the charity shops here in Cambridge in November so we could use them for cookies we were going to sell for a Christmas charity bake sale. There isn’t one big umbrella organization like Goodwill running the shops; instead, you have to go to a bunch of different itty-bitty shops for different charities like the Heart Foundation, Oxfam, Cancer Charities, RSPCA, and others.
Each of these shops has its own style in terms of what they carry, and the prices can vary significantly. But what they do have in common is the rare, weird stuff, and some of them have it more than others.
We didn’t find individual dishes as readily as we’re used to with Goodwill – the shops here tend instead to sell complete sets and we didn’t need that many – so we failed on that account. But boy howdy did we find some weird stuff!
We also had one great find: a giant tub of about 100 solid wooden blocks for Robin for Christmas for only £3.50 which now double as burglar-deterrent-caltrops all over the living room floor.
And in that same store was this gem:
It barfs sauce at you. I almost bought it just to put pea soup in it and call it a Python-Exorcist crossover. Nobody expects the Spanish Expectoration. Nobody.
You have to understand, this scene in The Meaning of Life horrifies my husband to the point of him not wanting to watch the film, despite liking the rest of the film. So I took this photo mostly so I could show it to him when we got home and say, “Do you see how much I love you because I totally didn’t buy this to vomit sauce at you?”
He was duly appreciative.
Anyway, you’d think that’d be the strangest thing we saw on our charity shop journey, but you’d be wrong. See, that’s just a bit of slightly disgusting Python silliness, which is pretty much what they’re known for and thus, by extension, what England is known for. That’s right, Brits…all Americans think you’re a nation lethal to parrots and that it’s easy to catch a train from Bolton to Notlob. Totes truth. Yes.
This is also why Peo and I almost lose it every time Robin’s music teacher here brings out the coconut shells to simulate a horse.*
But moving on to the Oxfam shop, Peo and I entered a world of weirdness that even our Python-filled brains were not ready to grasp.
First we found this, and would have bought it except that Robin would have eaten the pieces on account of her having no respect for invading aliens whatsoever.
I am horribly disappointed that they didn’t rename this version OPERATE!
But that’s not really so odd. I don’t think there’s a store in this country that doesn’t have at least some kind of Doctor Who paraphernalia in it. It’s pretty much a mandatory national industry at this point.
Where it got weird was with the naked bodies.
Yes, I said naked bodies.
Because if you’re going to have a mannequin in your home, why wouldn’t you decoupage it with comics and then ensure it had hooks for hands, navel, and nipples?
So. This is a Thing.
And if you’re going to have that Thing, I guess it should have these things. For…hats? Small paintings? Teacups? Probably teacups. This is probably how you’re supposed to hang your teacups in the UK, all dainty-like.
O.o
And if I said, “Hey, look over there, I see a Barbie mirror!” you’d assume I meant something like this:
And not this:
The zip ties on some of the legs really sell the horror, don’t you think?
Suddenly the Daleks’ strategy seems a lot less terrifying. They just want to exterminate you, not affix your still-smiling naked corpse to a vanity device.
o.O
* Waiting for the sharkreados on this one.
Do you ever see a sign or other text in passing very quickly and then your brain tries to fill in what it thought it read, only to realize a moment later that there’s no way in hell that sign/text said that?
This happens to me all the time. I asked my G+ friends what this phenomenon is called and nobody knew, so we made up our own terms. We’re the Internet. We totally get to do that.
The consensus was that the formal or clinical term should be “misparsing”, since “malapropism”, “Mondegreen”, and “paronym” are all more about speaking or hearing versus visual input gone awry.
Further, it was pointed out that if mistyping is colloquially known as a “typo” then misreading should be a “reado”, which I wanted to misread as “sharkreado” in keeping with the overall and inexplicable sharknado theme to this blog (which really ought to be a monkeynado theme but that brings up visions of the monkeyloo having a tornado in it which I’m fairly certain would use up our entire security deposit on the rental house so let’s never speak of monkeynadoes again). Therefore the consensus was that “sharkreado” ought to be the colloquial version of “misparsing”.
And further still – because if it’s possible to push things too far, this blog remains blissfully unaware of such limitations – I realized that part of my particular problem with misparsing is that my brain fills in the nerdiest possible interpretation regardless of what actual nerdery exists in the original sign/text. Therefore the syndrome that causes misparsings/sharkreadoes is FNAAH, which stands for Fucking Nerdy As All Hell.
All of this comes together thusly…if you happened to be on a bus going quickly down the street and out of the corner of your eye you saw this sign on a building:
And if you happened to have a critical case of ongoing FNAAH, you would misparse or sharkreado that sign as:
Which the Bing Klingon Translator (OMG an actual use for Bing!) assures me should be written as “tlhIngan DuSaQ Qob” or:
And then thereafter whenever you were on a bus passing that building (which would be pretty often if you take busses into the central bus terminal of Cambridge), you would picture a bunch of fully-armoured Klingons in there learning how to pirouette with bat’leths, which would be not only fucking nerdy as all hell but also fucking awesome as all everything.
England, let’s chat.
I know you’re an island nation with a rich naval history. You’ve been Queen of the seas longer than other nations have even existed. We’re all duly impressed with your historical mastery of the waves, I assure you.
But while we understand your love affair with boats, having stone boats randomly protruding from buildings is just slightly odd.
Not one, but two boats. On a building. Nowhere near the river.
Because it’d make sense to have boats decorating buildings alongside the river, especially the many boat sheds. But this building is on Hobson Street, nearly a half mile from the closest points on the river.
And it’s definitely the prow of a boat. It even has stone ropes and everything.
Maybe this building was originally boat-related. Maybe it’s just a random decoration. Maybe Weeping Angels are coming through and if we all stop watching, they’ll sail through the building and destroy us all.
The damned thing is even smiling.
Either way I’m pretty sure “sailing on the high seas” doesn’t mean “from the first storey of an apartment building on Hobson Street”.
Referencing the previous post about weather, sharknados, and bus accidents…
This morning we checked the forecast and noted that it had actually improved since last night.
Me: So when the forecast keeps getting better as you refresh, is that predicting a minnownado? Or wet hankies? A wethankienado? And they go FTPFTUPFTPFTUP on you?
Corran: As long as it’s moving away from piranhanado. Or a Ralphnado.
Me: AUUUGGGHHHH!
But upon reflection, a Ralphnado might put seatbelts on busses and fix some of the other consumer issues we’ve been having lately. Hrm…
PS: If you need nightmare fuel, go see what I found when I googled for an image for this post.
As mentioned in my last post, driving in the UK is no fun if you’re not keen on roundabouts. So you’d think the busses and trains would be easier, right?
Um.
Okay to be fair, we all went to London for the first trip – meaning Corran was there to help with the girls – and it went fine. But the first time I took Peo and Robin to London on my own, our experience was slightly different.
Peo and I thought things were going well because we got there early and scored the rare seats with room for a stroller beside them. This is important because it means I don’t have to take Robin out and wrestle her for about an hour as she tries to wriggle towards FREEDOM and LICKING ALL THE TRAIN THINGS. So there we were, comfy in our awesome seats, when they started announcing ever-increasing electrical problems with the train. It ended up dying completely, so they transferred everyone from that train to another train that was already full. Further, the first train had no stops between Cambridge and Kings Cross, whereas the new one did.
Because there were no seats, I ended up sitting in the door area with Robin in her stroller over me. As in, my legs were under the stroller and I was effectively pinned there. The other half of the door bay was taken by a guy with a bike, so there was no room to move. Then at the stops, assholes who had been seated comfortably actually swore at me for being in the way, even as I tipped the stroller further onto myself to let them get by. Oh, and there are other doors on the car, so they could have bloody well gone down the car to the other door if it was such a big problem for them.
All of this meant we got to London an hour later than planned, which meant by the time we got to the Natural History Museum the line was up and down the block. We waited nearly half an hour to get in, and then decided not to wait in the estimated hour-plus line to see the dinosaurs. I convinced Peo to skip that line since we’d be going back when school was in (and we have been back since but the dinosaurs are “on holiday”, which is museum code for “OMFG we have to refurbish the dinosaur room after it was mangled all summer by people who lined up for over an hour and then acted like pent-up twerps once they saw the giant things that could have eaten them”).
Anyway, we did some other fun stuff at the museum and then headed home. Our train tickets are off-peak so we either have to make the 4:14 pm train back to Cambridge or wait until 7:14, so we headed back to the Tube with plenty of time to spare. However, it seems that rush hour on the Tube started in 1067 (shortly after William the Conqueror was crowned but in plenty of time to handle the rat traffic needed for the Black Death), because even at 3 pm the thing was jammed full.
Aha, but there were two seats available in those Priority Seats – you know, the ones for people like me who are dealing with a baby and have an actual disabled foot – so I sent Peo to get one and as I was about to sit in the other a woman actually jumped around me to block me and sit beside my own kid, so I had to stand with the stroller.
When an elderly lady got on a couple of stops later I had Peo get up to let her sit (again, this was the Priority Seating area) because nobody else offered a seat, including the spry young men who’d hopped off and on with ease and were joking loudly with each other further down the row. I’ve since been told this is normal in London and our continued experiences bear it out.
Then at King’s Cross we elected to not take the long Cambridge train that was boarding as we arrived, because we figured it’d be full, slow, and the 4:14 direct one would be better anyway. But the 4:14 didn’t list its platform until minutes before leaving, at which point so many people ran for it that they opened the gates and didn’t even check tickets because there was very real danger of a press.
We got a seat by the doors so I could have Robin in her stroller in the door area but still sit somewhat comfortably, so that was lucky. Luckier still was that we weren’t in the car that they mentioned on an announcement that had a “chemical spill” and “was projected to be rather uncomfortable for the duration of the journey” and they were recommending “passengers in that car find elsewhere to sit if possible and if not, we’re sorry for your impending discomfort.” O.o
Then we got on the bus back in Cambridge, and about a third of the way home some idiot pedestrian or cyclist leapt out from the sidewalk in front of the bus, so the bus had to come to a halt sudden enough that everyone on board went flying. Robin’s stroller went over sideways and crashed into the aisle, Peo landed on the floor, I crashed into the bar in front of me. My wrist swelled up and really hurt overnight but recovered by the next day, and I found random bruises on my legs later as well. Robin was fine, but Peo’s knees hurt.
Here’s a screenshot of texts to Corran to indicate what kind of day we were having at that point:
Then as we were close to home the bus stopped and some folks wanted to get on with two large strollers. I had the stroller spot, and there was a disabled old man in the other accessible spot. I stood up and said to the driver that we were getting off at the next stop anyway so I’d let those other folks have my stroller spot, and I stood in the aisle. And the buggers who got on were snippy about it and didn’t even say thanks. Nice.
Then as I whinged about all of this on G+ that evening, Robin tried to crawl into the fireplace and I complained that she didn’t even have any floo powder and thus was hardly any help at all.
Peo’s blog version of this transportation nightmare is here and contains an appropriate number of exclamation marks given her age and the issues at hand. Pre-teens use exclamation marks, adults like me just swear our fucking heads off.
Anyway, the next time we went to London everything went so much more smoothly that I kept thinking I was merely accumulating negative transportation karmic points and something terrible would happen any second, leading to this text exchange with Corran:
1) I am a professional writer and can totally spell “deinonychus” and “sharknado”. Really. Yes. 2) “Shatknado” is either really smelly or boldly goes where no Shatknado has gone before. Or both. OMG I never noticed the poop joke in Trek’s tagline until just now. I feel like I missed out on a crucial part of childhood. 3) I know it’s not just me suffering from the baby nails.
I was planning to go to London again today but slept poorly so I’ve put it off to another day. Instead, Peo and I popped out to do some errands and as we walked I updated her on the forecast. I said, “You know how last night when we looked at the weather it said 60% rain chance on Sunday when we’re in Huntingdon? Well when I looked a couple of hours later, it was only 20%, but the Friday rain had increased to 80%. And I said to Daddy that I was afraid to refresh because it was changing so fast, it might get worse.”
Peo asked, “So did you refresh?”
“Yeah, and then Daddy and I laughed because then it changed to predicting thunderstorms for Friday! We agreed we should stop or else it’d update to a SHARKNADO!”
The rare Giant Amoeba Shark descends upon London. Someone call The Doctor. Wait, no, I’m sure London has him on speed-dial.
Then Peo sighed, “I wish I really could see a sharknado.”
I said, “I’ll find the trailer for you when Robin’s napping.”
“Wait – it was a movie?!”
“Yeah, and a really bad one. It’s pretty much only famous because it was such a lame idea, that a tornado would suck up sharks and somehow they’d magically stay alive and fly around eating people.”
Contains about as much plausible science as Shark Week.
“OH MY GOD LAND SHARK!” Peo said with a laugh, mostly because we are proper nerd parents who long ago taught her about land sharks. “I thought it was just a tornado made of sharks.”
“No, it’s sharks in a tornado.”
“That’s so much worse,” Peo said. “I still wish I could see one, though.”
“No you don’t. It’d be pretty gory.”
“So we’d just stay inside?”
Yes, oh child of mine. In the event of flying land sharks randomly eating people on the streets of London, we shall stay inside. Mostly because they also probably don’t give up their seats on the Tube.
Here you go, Robin. You’re never too young to learn about the impending doom of flying sharks or British rail.
Let’s go on a magical journey of imagination, shall we?
Imagine you’re a mom to an eight year old and a one year old, and you’re going to go from the USA to England for a year where you’ll be homeschooling the eight year old at myriad museums and historical sites while trying to prevent the one year old from licking the displays. You need to pack up everything you own – and did I mention you and your husband are both hopeless packrats? – from your Austin, TX home into storage, and you’re behind because the eight year old hasn’t been getting her own packing done and the one year old has decided sleep is for the weak.
Now imagine it’s the day of the flight to England. You haven’t packed everything, the air conditioning has been going out most of this week in 41°C/105°F weather, and you’re in the position of deciding what stuff you love enough to make it in the last car run to the storage unit or to be shoved into the garden shed before rushing to the airport. You’ve had less than two hours sleep per night for a week and most of that has been on a broken, lopsided air mattress beside the baby’s crib. Oh, and all of the dust you’ve kicked up has necessitated being on allergy meds that knock you out so you’re completely loopy and you’ve upped the ante to declare that lungs are for the weak.
Now imagine you’re on the flight – which at least is direct since you paid an extra $300 per person to not have to transfer through Newark, NJ in the middle of the night with a baby – and while everyone else has gone to sleep, including the baby, you can’t sleep because your brain is madly going through what you left at home for the cleaners to throw out and you’re wondering just how much you can suck up to your friend with whom you left a key to cram some more stuff into the shed for you.
Now imagine you get to Heathrow, your husband gets the rental car, you all pile in, and you’re driving through the countryside trying to spot the castles and other romantic buildings you’re sure England must be stuffed with because that’s how it looks in all of the brochures, but mostly you just see a highway that is freaking you out because it’s on the wrong side of the road. You drift off a bit, but your brain is still wondering if it was worth it to sacrifice the vacuum back in Austin, not because it was a particularly great vacuum but it will cost a few hundred dollars to replace and the budget is already blown by the discovery of more mold in the front hall closet despite the $4000 you spent two years ago supposedly fixing the mold problem for good. So even though you drift off, you’re not really sleeping so much as experimenting with fun new ways to get neck cramps.
Now imagine you finally get to the Cambridge house you’re renting – which you’ve only seen in a couple of photos from an ad listing – and the landlord is showing you around, speaking what seems like a thousand words a minute because you’re utterly shattered from fatigue and stress and he doesn’t even have the decency to be closed-captioned like all the British people are when you watch Downton Abbey, and the baby is running shrieking through the house because THERE ARE SO MANY NEW THINGS TO LICK, and there’s something about putting salt and rinse aid into the dishwasher and the eight year old is stomping on the loud floor and the car is parked illegally outside and then you turn and see this:
The toilet sees you too.
And you want to ask about the monkey toilet, because it’s a god-damned monkey toilet and there are just so many questions, but you can’t because you have to run after the one year old and the landlord is going upstairs to talk about the weird electric shower and you haven’t slept and you have strange rashes popping up all over your body from all of the stress but there’s a god-damned monkey toilet.
So you go off and do some shopping so the baby has a safe place to sleep and there’s some basic food in the house but every time you come back into the house and go to the kitchen you have to pass the door that leads to the god-damned monkey toilet.
Then the eight year old announces, “I LIKE TO PEE IN THE MONKEY’S FACE.”
And in that instant you know deep in your heart – in that certain way that bypasses all neurological space because your neurons aren’t really functioning properly anymore anyway – that one day there will be a knock at the door and it will be Jane Goodall come to beat the living crap out of you.
So, naturally, you post that to the internet.
Thankfully, none of your friends bother to point out that Jane Goodall works with apes, not monkeys, because then you’d have to punch them (your friends, not the apes or monkeys, because apes and monkeys are really fucking strong and you don’t want to pick a fight with them, especially when you already know at some point you’re going to be answering for the part of the monkey toilet that has the hole blasted through the monkey face which you’ll be punching with your ass for the next year) because you can’t name an actual monkey researcher and besides, Jane Goodall is sweet and adorable so the idea of her maniacally wielding a machete through your house because of a toilet you didn’t even choose is awesome.
Plus, your friends are too busy to be pedantic at you about specific fields of research because they’re laughing at your exhausted rambling and sending you private messages about visiting you so you they too can rack up points in the coming Ultimate Zombie Dian Fossey Death Match between hordes of primates coming to wreak vengeance upon you for daring to shit through a monkey face toilet seat use the monkey loo.
Meanwhile as the first few days of your England adventure pass, you still can’t sleep because you keep mentally going through the Austin house wondering what you’ve lost, sending your poor friend driving down all the way from Pfucking Pflugerville to rescue items for you, and you keep finding the weirdest shit everywhere in this country you always thought of as an ancestral motherland, so somewhere amidst the fear and the fury and the fucking monkey toilet you announce, “I AM GOING TO START A NEW BLOG AND NAME IT AFTER THE LOO.”
And suddenly, it all makes sense. So here it is.