My mom: weirder by the day

My mom's current Ireland excursion seems to be doing odd things to her brain. She's discovered texting, so my sister and I are now getting random messages that are probably costing us a fortune - I have no texting plan on my phone so no doubt each random burble from mom's brain is costing me $78 plus a special International Ocean Crossing Fee.

Her most recent email to me was titled "Hey Girl," and asked about my "gorgeous neck," expressions which she has never before used in her life (nor is my neck particularly gorgeous, although the jaunty scar I am currently forming at least has entertaining possibilities). She also informed me that one of my uncles in the Philippines, who just underwent hip replacement surgery, "has his old hip joint in the fridge in his hospital room," but frankly, that's nothing unusual in my family. Mom was very disappointed that I didn't ask the doctors to save my disc in a baggie for me, like a malformed goldfish. I still remember the thrill of getting my tonsils back after my surgery to remove them when I was about nine. They sat on my bookshelf for about a week until I realized they probably weren't going to last for much longer.

Anyway, mom's other recent email, to my sister, had the subject line "not a dicky bird," which is obviously some Irish code we must crack. It's possible Oliver is holding her hostage. For what, I'm not sure, but it perhaps revolves around better plumbing, because my mom doesn't consider what is currently installed in his house adequate at all.

Actually, all I can think is that Oliver must really love her, because by her own admission she complains about the filth and dirt in Dublin every time they go into the city. I'd have strangled her long before now.

In other news, I just finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and adored every minute of it. It's not what you might call a cheerful read, but it's lovely and wonderful and so honest, and I'm glad I finally got around to picking it up.

English and how she is spoken

Dorothy L. Sayers includes this very james_nicollesque comment to Barbara Reynolds, who had finished up with an Italian dictionary and was now working on an English-Italian one:

"Ha, ha! Now you really have got a language to deal with! No pale, correct, pure-blooded aristocrat, but a great gorging, guzzling, base-begot, promiscuous, roaring, dishevelled trollop of a language, that will assimilate anything, go to bed with anybody, and can't tell you which of ten drunken sailors is her father. We're used to her ways, but what sort of appearance she must present to respectable foreigners I often tremble to think."

(letter written 5 September, 1956, from the fourth volume of Sayers' letters)