Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Can I taste that for you?...and other RANDOM TUESDAY THOUGHTS



Does this describe a puppy or a baby?

She keeps her people up at night.
She makes cute sounds and sometimes yelps loudly.
She often needs comforting.
She is fun and cuddly.
She is soft.
She puts everything in their mouth.
She crawls around on the ground.
She depends on us for food and often the food looks revolting.
She is fun to play with.
She gets attention from complete strangers.
She has her own small bed.
She is always happy to see us.
She is the favorite subject matter for photographs.
She chews on our furniture and shoes.
She goes everywhere we go.
She is entertained by small things.
She is perfectly content to play in the yard with nothing but a big stick.
I feel guilty when I’m not with her.

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Aussie Weirdness of the week: I went to a small cafĂ© and ordered a sandwich that I saw in the deli case. The woman behind the counter asked, “Do you want me to taste it for you?” I was very confused by this and asked her to repeat herself. “Do you want me to taste it for you?” she said again.
I stood silently as I tried to process her words. Would she politely grab a bit of the sandwich or just have a go at a large bite?
Certainly I had missed the real context and because I was curious and almost daring her to take a bite out of my sandwich, I found myself nodding and saying, “Yes, absolutely, please do.”
I watched intently as she pulled my sandwich out of the deli case and whisked it away to the back room. Hmmmmm. What sneaky business was going on?
She came back out without my sandwich and proceeded to wait on other customers. I stood at the deli case staring intently at the open doorframe that lead to the back room where my sandwich had disappeared. About 5 minutes later, the counter lady ventured back into the mystery room and reappeared with my sandwich. It was beautiful, all brown and TOASTED.

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More on Aussie pronunciation:
I’ve taken to saying to-mah-to for tomato and wah-ter for water. It saves me having to repeat myself.
I was in a patient’s room that seemed to lack power outlets. I asked the nursing staff for the outlet and I got a blank stare. Finally someone came in to help me and when I showed her the cord, she said, “Oh, you want a power point.” Go figure. I’m still learning.
The Aussie pronunciation of the letter H is “HAYtch”.

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My coworker Paige and I bought a lottery ticket together. The lotto here is at a record 100 million dollars. Now we are fantasizing about all the things we are going to do with the money. I think we would make very good rich people. We’ll know tonight. Wish us luck.

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Madden has 5 teeth now. They are in no particular order. There are 2 on top but nowhere near each other and there are three teeth spaced out across the bottom of her mouth. Every time one comes in, it is a couple days of torture for her and for us. She is quite miserable and whines and cries and sometimes even spikes a fever. So we are counting…5 down, only 15 more teeth to go…

*****
Tomkat update: They arrived in Melbourne today but have chosen to live at the penthouse above the casino building rather than at the mansion next to us. Bad choice if you ask me. Apparently the penthouse is owned by a fellow scientologist though. They still aren’t very far from us but unfortunately for Madden and Suri; they aren’t two doors down like we planned.

*******
Let’s talk about Grand Forks, North Dakota for a moment. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve been thinking about it lately. You see, it’s winter here which means just like the Midwest of the US, it’s dark from 4:45 PM until 8:00 AM. But that’s where the comparison stops. You see, I used to travel a lot with my job and they always sent me to exciting destinations like Duluth, MN, Rapid City, SD, Mason City, IA, and good old Grand Forks, ND. They sent me to Grand Forks A LOT in the winter – the cold, frigid, bleak, icey, people-die-out-there-kind-of-weather-conditions, winter. And what’s more is that I always got stuck there. Being snowed in and missing those little teeny tiny planes home plagued me. I was there one time in late December and I thought I’d have to stay for Christmas. Nothing was flying out. It was 30 degrees below zero and my rental car elicited a high pitched screech every time it started. I had no scraper and would sit in my car with the heater on full blast for 20 minutes just to clear the ICE off the windscreen. As I drove down the road I remember thinking that choosing to live there must be pure insanity.

That brings me back to Melbourne – you see, people around me have been complaining about the cold. People, its winter and the grass is green! There are flowers blooming and leaves are still hanging from trees. We can stand outside for an hour without a coat and have zero risk of hypothermia. No one owns a mad bomber hat or ugly orange hunting gloves three sizes too big. Sorel boots have no market here.

This is Australia. People wear cute coats one layer thicker than a spring trench. My hat doesn't even cover my ears and I’ve never seen anyone wearing mittens. Let's save the complaining for the 114 degree heat in the summer when it's actually justified. This stuff just isn't really winter.

*****
This morning I was running very late and had no time to shower, let alone eat breakfast. As I darted out the door, Eric handed me a bag and said it was breakfast for the road. In it was a banana and some mango juice. Since he had nothing to put the mango juice into that wouldn’t spill, he made use of one of Madden’s sippy cups. It was brilliant. It may have looked bizarre to anyone driving close to me, but I definitely feel that sipping mango juice out of brightly colored baby sippy cup enhanced my morning mood.

9 comments:

Susanica said...

Toast! OMG Beth. That's the funniest thing I've read in ages. Thanks. I needed that! -Monica

Keely said...

If you win that lottery, I bet Suri will be suddenly much more accessible ;)

And bwahhahhahahah! At the tasting. Love the Aussie accent.

Jenni said...

cheers to you for agreeing to the "tasting." I think I'd be too chicken.

Unknown said...

oh my gosh i had such a laugh about the "taste, toast" line!

i'm originally from england, so different sayings were the bane of my existence when we first came to canada. words like "fetch", for example, brought giggles from all my school mates.

i repay the mockery now, by constantly having a chuckle at my boyfriend's expense because he's from newfoundland...which has a language all of its own. they call bicycles "pedal bikes".

not kidding.

talk about stating the obvious.

andy:)

Liz Mays said...

I found myself trying to say everything you were writing here in an Australian accent. It didn't go so well.

AKS said...

You are so incredibly brave to say yes to having a complete stranger taste your sandwich!!! I'm glad it was toasted instead. How could you really trust someone else tasting something for you? It may taste good to them, but they may like Marmite. Do you have that in Australia? I remember people eating it in England while I watched, absolutely repulsed. Ahhhhhhhhh - how your winter sounds lovely. I will think about it when putting on 4 layers each morning just to run to my car. As for right now, though, our Minnesota summer with average highs in the 70s will do just fine.
Good news - the reconversion process has started on the house! We wandered through your house with our contractor a few weeks ago to figure out exactly what and how we should do things. It comes in handy to have a mirror house next door. We can't wait for you to see it (and hopefully it will be way more complete than it is right now)... Love and miss you!

Ann said...

I so look forward to "RANDOME TUESDAY THOUGHTS"! They make me smile!

Danielle said...

EXACTLY! It is NOT COLD people! I chuckle daily at the people shivering, wearing scarves covering their faces..HA!
I just opened my door and smelled a wood-buring fire and it made me think of "real winter" but then I realized it is only 50 degress outside, sigh.....

Laura said...

Haha-- Well guess what, I knew they were saying toast!

I still don't know what people are saying 25% of the time-- but that's down from about 50% two years ago.