It’s Only Words

(Photo credit: Jason-Morrison)

I’m not ignoring you.  I haven’t visited your blogs or replied to your comments because I was out all day yesterday; last night; and right now.  I will catch up soon, once I’ve recovered from the shock of being out of the house two days in a row.

In the meantime, here’s a task for you:

Spud and I were chatting last night and he said ‘you bodicly’ instead of ‘you bodily’.  We decided that it sounds like a real word, and ought to be a real word. 

Here is the correct spelling:

EUBODICLY

Now we have to decide what it means.  Any suggestions?  I told Spud that my readers won’t let me down.  No pressure.

Joke 342

Rodney and Wilma are woken at three o’clock one Saturday morning by a loud pounding on the door.  Rodney gets up and goes to the door where he sees a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain.

“Give us a push,” says the stranger.

“No way!” says Rodney, “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”  He slams the door and returns to bed.

“Who was that?” asks Wilma.

“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.

“Did you help him?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s three o’clock in the morning, it’s pouring with rain, and he shouldn’t be driving, anyway.”

Wilma says, “Don’t you remember about three months ago when we broke down and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him; besides, there’s no one on the roads at this time of night.”

Rodney knows when he’s beaten.  He dresses and goes out into the rain. He calls out in the dark, “Hello! Are you still there?”

“Yes,” replies the drunk.

“Do you still need a push?” calls Rodney.

“Yes, please,” is the reply.

“Where are you?” asks Rodney.

“Over here, on the swing.”

Quote…Unquote

I’m at an all-day workshop today, so here’s a reblog from two years ago.

The following quotes are from my clippings notebook:

Dilbert quotes, from an old Sky TV magazine:

• Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days you are the statue
• Last night I lay in bed looking up at the sky and stars and I thought to myself, ‘Where the heck is the ceiling?’
• You’re slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter
• Never argue with an idiot.  They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience
• Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

This next one is from Hagar the Horrible. It’s not that funny but it struck a chord with me because I read it when the Hub was travelling sub-Saharan Africa for weeks at a time and I was trying to think of reasons why that might be a good thing:

Helga: (Sigh) Being the wife of a traveling man is a trade-off…He gets to visit the great cities of Europe for three weeks…and I get a clean house for three weeks!

Only, the house was never clean for three weeks because I always re-arranged the furniture when he was away and it would take days at a time to do each room and the house would be upside down.  He would come back and be walking into things and getting into the wrong side of the bed for ages afterwards.  Served him right for leaving me alone with a baby and bad telly.

An old favourite from Hi And Lois. I can’t remember the characters’ names but it doesn’t really matter:

Mum (enters room where children are watching television): This program is awfully violent.

Boy: It’s just an animated cartoon, Mom, made up of thousands of drawings.  The  characters aren’t real so nobody gets hurt!

(Mum leaves)

Boy: That’s what I call my “Disney Defense.”

 Some Peanuts quotes:

• Sally: I think I’ve discovered the secret of life – you just hang around until you get used to it.
• Charlie Brown: Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
• Charlie Brown again: Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, “Why me?”  Then a voice answers, “Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.”

My personal favourite, unattributed:

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.

Joke 341

My husband uses a kitchen implement to shred garlic and parmesan cheese, both of which I hate.

It really is the grater of two evils.

‘Thank You’ Doesn’t Even Begin To Cover It

Image via Wikipedia

I had a bit of a moan on Saturday.  I wasn’t looking for help.  You guys are amazing, though: help you offered, in the form of advice, moral support and cash.

In fact, several people offered cash.  Thank you.  Such ordinary words don’t express the depth of my gratitude, so here are some extraordinary words:

Extraordinary-Exceptional-Fantastic-Marvellous-Incredible-Unimaginable.

You know who you are.  I’d like to tell everyone who you are but you offered it privately, so I will respect that.

I am going to share the name of one person, however.  I asked her permission and she granted it only because she wanted to tell the story of why she made the offer.  It is a story worth reading, and I hope you will extend your generosity by going on over to take a look.  Tell her Tilly sent you.

The donor is Kiwidutch.  She reads my blog from time to time, but rarely comments.  That’s okay: all lurkers are welcome here (I’ll take my stats however I can get them).

On Saturday, she sent me an email, some of which I reproduce here:

Dear Tilly,  I read your post about Spud’s school trip and would like to pay the down-payment he needs.  Why?…Please see Number 46 on my 101 tasks 🙂  … it’s about walking the walk and not just talking the talk.  🙂  […] … payment for me would be for him to get busy immediately with fundraising plans […] and for him to remember to “pay it forward” one day whenever he can.

I was taken aback.  Here is what amounts to a stranger, offering my child the help he needs.  My instinct was to say ‘no’, if I’m honest, because I wasn’t asking for help in my post and it didn’t seem right to accept.  Then I realised that it wasn’t up to me: Kiwidutch was offering to help Spud, so he had to decide.  He asked for time to sleep on it; he doesn’t rush into things.  He likes to weigh up the pros and cons before making a decision.

He decided not to accept the offer.  Once the initial obstacle of no choice was removed by Kiwidutch, he looked at what it would really mean: a great trip, doing some good, learning about himself and the world, against GCSEs in summer, all his spare time spent in preparation and fundraising.  As much as he wants the trip, he wants a future more.  He has been privileged to receive an excellent education; the only way he can repay that is to do his absolute best in the exams, to show that it was not wasted on him.

Oh, and he doesn’t want to have to stop buying PS3 games (let poor children build their own walls; COD 17 will be out soon).

While I was astounded at Kiwidutch’s offer, what appealed to me was her request that Spud pay it forward.  Over the years we have told him that we expect him to donate to his school when he is earning, so that other children like him will be helped.  What Kiwidutch really offered Spud was not money, but options: more than money, we want him to pay that forward.

Thank you, Kiwidutch and all of you.  Not just for the offers, the advice and the support; but for showing me that the world is a better place than I believed it to be. 

Related articles

• Pay It Forward (slummytoyummymummy.wordpress.com)
• Woman pays it forward to couple who helped homeless vet (abclocal.go.com)
• Paying it Forward (ponderingpastorswife.wordpress.com)
• Paying it forward (dderbydave.wordpress.com)
• Pay it Forward (oftasteanddiscernment.wordpress.com)
• http://kiwidutch.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/new-619/

Joke 340

Thanks to Vivinfrance for this one.

Five Tips For Women

1. It is important that a man helps you around the house and has a job.

2. It is important that a man makes you laugh.

3. It is important to find a man you can count on and who doesn’t lie to you.

4. It is important that a man loves you and spoils you.

5. It is important that these four men don’t know each other.

Facts, Because What Else Is There?

Or, I can’t think of anything to write about so here’s something from my email inbox sent to me by people who preferred emailing when they should be working but at least they’ve got a job so this is all sourness on my part.

Image via Wikipedia

• In the 1400s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have ‘the rule of thumb’.  The Hub tried it on me once, hence ‘the rule of sore bum.’
• The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the U.S. Treasury.  It’s anyone’s guess which is worth more.
• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• Tom Sawyer was the first novel to be written on a typewriter.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987, 654,321, proving once and for all that mathematicians have no sex life.
• If you were to spell out numbers, you would have to go to one thousand before you reached the letter A.  My earlier comment refers.

You know you are living in 2012 when:

• You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
• You call your family from your car in your drive to ask them to help bring in the groceries.
• You have a list of fifteen phone numbers to reach your family of three.
• You email the person who works at the next desk.
• When you get up in the morning, you go online before making your first cup of tea.
• You don’t stay in touch with friends and family because you don’t have their email addresses.
• If you leave the house without your mobile, which you didn’t have for the first 20/30/60 years of life, you panic.

One more fact for you:

• Don’t buy your Kindle books from eBay, otherwise you might find yourself reading, as I did, instead of the line He put his head in his hands, this gem: He put his head in his anus.

Related articles

• What Happened To The Cocaine In Coca-Cola? (businessinsider.com)
• Why we should replace our school computers with typewriters (philsayer.wordpress.com)

Joke 339

Three couples were having tea one day.  The conversation was somewhat desultory so one of the men, trying to get a laugh, said to his wife, “Pass the honey, honey!”  The others laughed.

A moment later, the second man said, “Pass the sugar, sugar!” This got a bigger laugh, so the third man decided to join in the fun.

He waited for the perfect opportunity, cleared his throat and then confidently said, “Pass the tea, bag!”

Joke 338

Thanks to Granny1947 for this one.

Two friends are fishing near a bridge.  They notice a hearse and a procession of cars go over the bridge.

One of the men stands up, takes off his cap and bows his head. When the cars have passed he puts his cap back on, sits down and carries on fishing.

His mate turns to him and says, “Dave, that’s one of the nicest, most respectful things I’ve ever seen.”

Dave replies, “Well, we were married for nearly 20 years.”    

Repair In Haste; Repent At Leisure

Image via Wikipedia

I am easy made queasy: watching people vomit on tv, or even brush their teeth – all that disgusting foam; it’s why I threw away my electric toothbrush – turns my stomach.  I had been married six years before I was able to scrape off a dinner plate with my eyes open (once a baby takes over, disgusting becomes a habit).

Emptying a plughole is beyond me; the Hub has to do it.   In the kitchen, at least.  Because a strange thing happened when we became poor – I could not afford to visit the hairdresser ergo my hair grew ergo the bath plughole frequently becomes blocked.  I know how horrible it is to take hair out of a plughole but the Hub’s CFS/ME means that sometimes he is just not able to do the job and I can only take so many showers with scum floating around my ankles: I had to swallow my distaste and man up.

The Hub keeps a sharp knife in the bathroom and I learned to operate it with my eyes closed, and to mop up the hair with a bit of toilet paper.  In fact, I have learned to do it with my eyes open.  Like Samson, all along, my strength was in my hair.

My hair is strong these days: in recent weeks, even cutting it out every day has not unblocked the plughole; there is too much hair underneath, in the outlet pipe.  I asked the Hub several hundred times to do something but he is unwell and I didn’t want to nag, so yesterday I set to with the essential bathroom tool – the earbud.  I prodded and poked, stabbed and yanked, wielded and wefted, but nothing.  That old and stubborn hair refused to be set free.

Then I noticed…the plughole was attached to the outlet pipe by a screw.  I can unscrew a screw; I know the difference between a flathead and Phillips screwdriver (are you impressed?); I could see a flathead screwdriver was needed and the Hub keeps just such a tool in the bathroom (I’m afraid to ask why).  It was a simple matter to unscrew the plughole screw and remove the – thunk!  What was that?

That was the outlet pipe coming away from the plughole and taking up residency in another room, far away.  As far away as me from a tv screen showing an after-drinking session.  Erm, oops… was my first response.  My second response was to call the Hub, in the smallest voice I could manage, begging him not to yell at me and to fix my massive-but-I-wanted-to-save-you-a-job-mistake.

The Hub is my hero.  He dragged his pain-filled body upstairs, fixed the bath, removed the hair gunk, banned me from all future unscrewing without his permission in triplicate and carved into my ear, and didn’t yell at me.  He did tell me off about using earbuds near plugholes, however: did you know that they can fall through the gaps and block the outlet pipes so that Hubs might have to take the whole thing apart again?  The Hub is such a know-it-all.

I’ll misquote Danny Driscoll from Only Fools & Horses to state the handyman position as it stands in the Tilly Bud household from now on: when it comes to repairs, the Hub does the thinking; I don’t.

Joke 337

An English professor wrote the words, “Woman without her man is nothing” on the blackboard and directed her students to punctuate it correctly.

The male students wrote: “Woman, without her man, is nothing.”

The female students wrote: “Woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Look At The Pretty Pictures!

I am subscribed to NASA’s website and they sent this pic yesterday:

Aren’t they pretty?  They are called buckyballs.  I have no idea what they are or what they do, despite this explanation (there’s a reason I only subscribe to NASA, rather than work for them):

Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon atoms arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

I am sharing the information because I like the picture and the name.  ‘Buckyballs’ sound like such fun, er, things. 

A great name is vital.  Consider what came in the previous day’s email:

Looks good, doesn’t it?  It is an image of the fastest wind from stellar-mass black hole.  It is so beautiful, it should have a romantic name, like Angel’s Breath from Angel’s Mouth, or something.  So what do the scientists at NASA call it?  I’ll let them speak for themselves:

The stellar-mass black hole powering this super wind is known as IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short.

Gotta love those catchy nicknames.

Joke 336

This is from Will & Guy’s joke site.

One night Rodney was driving home along a road he knew well.  When he reached the Stop sign he slowed down but did not actually come to a halt, whereupon a police officer pulled Rodney’s car over.

‘What difference does it make,’ said Rodney, ‘slow down or stop?’

‘I will give you a demonstration,’ said the officer, and he began to beat Rodney with his truncheon. ‘Now, would you like me to slow down – or stop?’

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

Searching for some pics to fit the theme, I came across three from around the same period – about 1983 – all taken from the same angle, looking down, though not from a great height.

The Hub, when he was just the Boyfriend. I was standing on the stoep.

The Hub used to get me to model for him.

Perhaps I should have posted this one on Valentine's Day.

It’s hard to believe we were ever that young – or that slender.

Joke 335

A man took his wife to see the doctor.

“My wife thinks she’s a chicken,”  he said.

The doctor replied, “That’s terrible. How long has she been like that?”

“Three years.”

The doctor was appalled.  “Three years! Why didn’t you bring her to see me sooner?”

“We needed the eggs.”