3 posts tagged “family”
Ever since the crime-scene investigation of our assualted and violated car while we were away on vacation, my dad has decided and carried out his swift plan of pre-emptive warfare on any and all petty thiefs and grand burglars. Today, Craig the Bell South Guy was in our home (and in my room) for five hours installing motion sensors to monitor any suspicious activity. This means a few new things I must resign myself to--
1. Strange beeps everytime someone walks into the house. The network, whom I have dubbed Hal because it's only too appropriate, has not yet had an episode in the few hours it has charged itself with our care, but don't blame me if one day it shoots out lasors at the Mormons coming around and preaching the Word of Financial Duties to God.
2. There are cameras all around the house INCLUDING ONE IN MY BEDROOM. Of course, my father insists that they are simply motion detectors that can notify us should a window be smashed in à la our poor Buick, but THEY LOOK JUST LIKE CAMERAS. What has stopped the government from making a deal with Bell South to keep tabs on innocent families? For goodness' sake, IT'S ABOVE MY BED. IT CAN WATCH ME SLEEP AND IT'S WATCHING ME RIGHT NOW TYPING THIS ON MY COMPUTER. Telescreen, anyone? Hal is smirking, I have no doubt, as my father continues to gaze at it fondly and caress his cricket bat just in case. (He doesn't have a cricket bat, but I prefer the imagery to those of his beaten old golf clubs).
3. I'm still not convinced it can do anything other than emit a fierce beeping noise at intruders. All the theif needs is a glass cutter (for my bathroom window, undoubtedly the most vulnerable spot in the house) with which he will create a tiny hole UNSEEN BY THE TELESCREEN/MOTION DETECTORS and reaching in with his leptodactylous, dexterious hands he will unlock and open the window, leap to the floor with catlike grace, slither into my room, KILL ME, continue upstairs and find... oh wait, that's right. WE HAVE NOTHING VALUABLE IN THE HOUSE. Except for some antiques that I doubt he would be willing to carry. Anyway, when I mentioned this OBVIOUS FLAW in the entire programming, my father just looked bemused for a second, most likely pondering why I have such a morbid imagination. Then he shrugged and was probably going to make a joke about how the sound of me gurgling on my life's blood from the throat slice would probably alert the monitor above my bed, but Craig chose that moment to walk in.
But it's okay. I'm leaving in a week. But I might just begin sleeping under my bed.
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And now for something completely different--
What's your morning beverage of choice? Coffee, tea, juice? Homemade or store-bought?
My tea addiction has never been stronger, and recently I've succumbed to the numbingly strong taste of Shamrock Irish Breakfast Tea. Of course, I'm a simple soul who relies on the tried-and-true Earl Grey most of the time, however.
(A small disclaimer of sorts: in my current state of extreme wariness, I feel I cannot be held responsible for egregious misspellings or any other destructions to the English language).
Being as I have a brother aged just slightly over nineteen months, it is natural that I spend much of my summer vacation babysitting for no money. Generally he is rather easily amused, especially in the game of "Where is Alex?" This game consists of somehow covering his head with such devices as hands, pillow cases or blankets (to name a few of the things he loves to locate and destroy). It never ceases to amuse him, and I admit myself amused as well, jealously watching as he believes simply because of the fact that his eyes cannot see me, he is effectively hidden as I pretend to be startled every time that he reveals himself to me--assuming, of course, that his amusement is infantile glee at tricking me rather than a condescending scoff at my thinking he actually believes he is hidden. Still, I often wish disappearing were a simple case of covering my eyes.
I am going to the beach on Saturday, and I will doubtless return just as pale as before, but for a slight red tint to my cheeks and shoulders.
There is a town in Georgia called Between. I know this because I drove through it yesterday: it lies halfway between Monroe and Loganville (hence the clever name), the former of which was host to a family reunion I guiltily felt I should attend. I think the very fact that a town is named Between because of its geographic relevance to two other slightly-to-rather-large towns is not only amusing, but automatically qualifies it for Best Named Place Ever Award, the only other town ever to have received this prestigious award being the fictional Nowhere Land mentioned in the Beatles song. I think in the hazy ephemeral world of musical notes floating around the atmosphere, Nowhere Man's Nowhere Land is right next to Between, Georgia, and the nonexistant train connecting the two places carries no passengers except for the conductor, who still manages to methodically work his way from carriage to carriage, searching for tickets to punch.
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Speaking of family, which I wasn't actually before except to briefly mention the painful reunion I attended wherein I knew exactly four people (my mother, my brother and my grandparents), I learned the other day something quite terrifying about my geneology. My father has always been obsessed with mapping his family history. He has traced possible relations to William Wallace (okay, but who isn't related to him?), someone on the Mayflower, and of course a distant relationship to a major American corporation that shares our name yet gives us none of the money. My father often bemoans my mother's family's lack of consideration to their jumbled heritage, which includes not only all the British isles and all of western Europe, but some Swedes thrown in for good measure. But I digress--the startling revelation was that all this while I naively assumed that when my father said I was part-French, it meant that my relatives sat about in a cafe one day in Paris with a glass of wine (or absinthe) thinking, "Zees America soundz ohkay" (please note the generic French accent I worked so very hard to replicate in order to generate a more authentic tone to my rambling). And then they came over, and eventually it was my destiny to be born, or it was probably more like contingency as Sartre would have us believe. But actually--
My French relatives came from French Guiana. That's in South America. That's an entire continent of the world I have always just thought of as slightly to the south of me, quite interesting but really, what? Ignoring for a moment that by process of elimination my ancestors were (probably) terrible slave owners who later actually settled in New Orleans from whence a branch of my family spawned, it still leaves my mind reeling over the fact that with a simple ambiguity of words and some semantics twisted about, I am part-Guianean.
