I’ve been thinking Thursday: Baby, it’s cold outside

December 13, 2018December 11, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

Seems like lots of people are up in arms about this Christmas song this year. I heard even the composers daughter has felt compelled to defend her father. How sad is that? Defending her dead father because of the way people now choose to view a song written in 1944.

It’s been suggested the song was actually written by Loesser to sing with his wife, Lynn Garland, at their housewarming party in New York City at the Navarro Hotel, to indicate to guests that it was time to leave.

It’s been viewed as a critique of drinking alcohol.

Other have suggested over the years it was a critique of a society which shunned women who spent the night willingly with their boyfriend or fiances.

And really, the lyrics can be read many ways.

In the study of history, we talk about something called temporal chauvinism. That’s where you judge the people of the past by the standards of today. A simple example is people used to bathe weekly at best, frequently once a month or less. By today’s standards, ewwww. But that was a norm then.

So when I look at the lyrics to this song, and I think 1944, I hear a woman who actually wants to stay but is afraid of what society will say about her if she does what she wants. She’s looking for any excuse to stay. And the man, a problem solver, is giving her many options to choose from.

Think of the privilege we women now enjoy that we can interpret the lyrics as something bad because spending the night with a man is a choice we can freely make.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: The Tube

December 6, 2018December 3, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

In the last pages of one my of favorite Agatha Christie books, The Secret of Chimneys, one of my favorite A.C. characters, Anthony Cade, says “My belief in the Brotherhood of man died the day I arrived in London last week, when I observed the people standing in a Tube train resolutely refuse to move up and make room for those who entered.”

We took the tube a lot in London. It gets you around quite quickly and the schedule is so functional, 2, 3, 4, four minutes for the next train beats standing in the rain for 25 waiting on a bus. LOL.

It was often crowded but only once did I have to force people to move so there would be room for the kiddo and I.

More importantly, I watched as three perfect strangers extended their hands to keep a man from falling over backwards and landing on the floor, and he was going down hard.

The Brotherhood of man is not dead. It just needs to be reminded every once in a while that we are all part of the same Brotherhood.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Media

November 29, 2018November 27, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 10 Comments

I only took my kindle to London, not my laptop. Why does that matter? It kind of plays a crucial role in this story. See Amazon makes everything “smart.” For example when I wanted to shop Old Navy’s online Black Friday sale, I couldn’t. I was in the UK and wanting to ship to a US address. Error, Error, danger, danger. Whatevs. I didn’t really need new clothes anyway.

But while we were gone the North Sentinel Island situation occurred. My first glimmer was posts on FB, by people I know. Their commentary was bizarre. Talking about how we’d being going to war now and Trump would use this as a means to stop immigration. I kept trying to click on the news article links to figure out what the bleep they were talking about, but….smart kindle. I kept getting denial errors, you are not in this zone.

Eventually BBC 4 filled me in. But in the mean time I had to wonder.

Which made me think about people who get all their news scrolling on FB. Is this what they think is going on in the world? Holy crap. No wonder everyone is so afraid all the time and thinking the worst of everyone else.

And second thought line was, is that really what people got out of that situation. Yikes. We were clearly not reading the same news. Makes me want to stop reading all American news outlets.

What do you think? If you read both American and European news outlets, do you think America spins everything to be tragic and traumatic and salacious?

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Turkey

November 22, 2018November 16, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone in the US of A. We’re not particularly united these days as a people or as a Nation but that is way more than I am prepared to tackle on this blog.

Instead I want to discuss something more serious. Turkey. Why do we insist upon eating Turkey for Thanksgiving?

It it the most boring meat on the planet. Why do you think you have to have stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce to go with it? Turkey is the white bread of meat. No taste of it’s own. And really, I have NEVER had a turkey that wasn’t dry. Granted they don’t all grow in your mouth like my grandmother’s did but still…

What are we even celebrating? Oooh, food. Most of us don’t need a banquet of food to stave off starvation. We need a banquet of diet before we keel over under our extra poundage.

This year I am boycotting Thanksgiving. In fact, I am going back to where it all started to begin a thorough investigation into the insanity that is this so called holiday.

Has the penny dropped yet? I’m on vaca. In London. My list is less ambitious than the average Thanksgiving dinner.

London Symphony Orchestra, Mousetrap in West End, Harry Potter Studio Tour, proper high tea, Churchill’s war rooms, British Museum, that underground roman museum of ruins, the name escapes me right now (keeping the kiddo happy). Anything else we get done will be gravy. So to speak.

Cheers mates!

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Belt Test Update

November 15, 2018November 9, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted about my kiddo being an awesome human during his belt test and how he thought he would get marked down for helping several people rather than maintaining attention.

Results came back. He passed.

So technically he was eligible for the weapons class but he still had to get approval from sensei that he was meeting the other requirements.

He got it. Started weapons class the next week. Really good class taught by the black belt who has scored every one of his tests. Familiarity helps the kiddo adjust easier, so a familiar teacher makes for a positive class start. As I watch the class I realize not only is he lowest belt in the class, he is the only one at that level. Hrm….

Spring forward 24 hours to new belt awards.

It’s a really boring process. Call up kid by name. Bow to sensei, bow to sempi, take off belt, get new belt put on, bow to sensei, bow to sempi, bow to audience. Audience claps. Repeat.

When they call up the kiddo the sempi breaks the process to talk about what an amazing job the kiddo did on the belt test. He didn’t do that for any of the other belts awarded (12 or so).

Say what?

I think the kiddo only got into weapons because he helped the other kids on the belt test.

Makes a mom proud.

Side note: they were learning drops. he was sparring with a girl. Anyway, he was so stinking careful with her, she just kept backing out of the hold. I asked him about it later and he was like, “Mom, she’s half my size. I didn’t want to break her.” LOL Oh the things he’s learning about adapting in the world when you’re going to be six foot seven like your Dad.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Mean

November 8, 2018November 7, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 10 Comments

We all have our private peccadilloes we don’t share with people no matter how open we may seem. I am no different. For a few months now I’ve been doing DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I won’t go in to all the reasons this came about. This is just the ground work for the story to come.

We’re doing a module on Interpersonal Effectiveness.

Yes, everything has snazzy name. This module could have been called “how not to be a dick and how to not accept dickish behavior from others.”

When I am talking to someone 75-80% of my brain is fully focused on them and the remainder is stringently editing all the things that come to mind to say. I agreed, as part of Interpersonal Effectiveness, to stop doing that for a week. To listen 100% in the moment to what the other person was saying and then to use the standard 3 seconds social pause to plan my reply.

Twice this week I was told I was mean.

Yup.

This leads me to consider other ways in which my brain works. Sure I can write 48K words in 6 days. My brain is that fast. All I have to do is put in the hours.

Then it needs to be stringently edited for a year before it’s ready for human consumption. LOL

Why should I treat talking any differently?

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Good Parenting?

November 1, 2018October 26, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 5 Comments

Have you ever noticed right about the time you’re ready to send your child off to a military style boarding school they suddenly pull some amazing miracles out of their ass?

Seriously, in the midst of a heinous day of the kiddo acting like an extra from a zombie apocalypse movie (just replace “brains” with “irritate mum”), he suddenly pulls off a stunner of a twist.

He’s at his karate belt test. He’s sparing with a girl who’s his own level, they test based on belt type, so she should know everything he does. They’re the pair sparring closest to the mom zone. I can hear him coaching her. “You have to apply enough pressure to keep my elbow straight.” “They’re looking for you to do three taps to my arm before you punch my ribs.”

Warms my heart.

Then it goes on.

They’re doing kata. Now at their level, a black belt demonstrates the kata so they can follow along. But if they want a higher score (ie they want in to the coveted weapons class), they have to perform without a black belt leading. One boy volunteers to go alone. The sensei asks if anyone else wants to go with him or if he’ll have to be all by himself? The kiddo jumps up and says he’ll do it so the kid doesn’t have to be alone.

Oh, just wait….

When they finished kata they are supposed to stand at attention until everyone else finishes and they are dismissed. No problem this first go. But then a large group of kids get up to do kata without a black belt and mine goes again. He finishes and stands at attention. Everyone else finishes except one girl. She is clearly lost. Kiddo starts kata from the very next move she needs and she follows him to the end.

After the test is over, the kiddo tells me “I’m probably going to get marked down for not maintaining attention but it was worth it to help her.”

Well, damn. Perhaps humanity is not lost.

No military school for him this week I guess.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Supportive

October 18, 2018October 15, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

I try to only be positive about my hubs in public. It’s one of those things I think is important to the health of your marriage. Praise in public, critique in private.

I’ve occasionally deviated from this. Once, fed up with his leaving his oatmeal bowl on the counter with oatmeal in it until it dried into a crusty nastiness of epic proportions, I wrote a post about secondary characters. Giving them a life of their own, rather than leaving them to serve the main character. One of my examples was about a time traveling journalist who kept leaving his oatmeal bowl for his wife to clean. LOL

But today I want to talk about one of those ways, he is amazing.

I can not spell. And despite teaching writing, compositional and creative, at the coop, my use of grammar is fractured to say the least. But the hubs…oh man….the hubs…

When I was working on my bachelors and the hubs was getting his masters, we both had to take this lame ass writing exam. Two parts, 75 multiple choice and then an essay. Timed. Essay was scored on a scale of 1-12.

The scoring was weird though. The better you did on the multiple choice the less well you had to do on the essay to pass, which got you into 100W, required by all majors on campus. Then there was a pass plus which got you out of 100W. And of course fail.

The hubs got a perfect score on the multiple choice, which was all grammar and sentence structure, but scored so low on the essay he had to take 100W.

I got the lowest passing score possible on the multiple choice, but scored so high on the essay I qualified to waive 100W.

Why do I tell this story? Because my husband painstakingly edits my novels, multiple times. Sure I could pay someone to do this for me, but they wouldn’t know when they came across an error, what I really meant. And he always does. He knows when I write a long string of gobble-gook that I meant to say something profound and will ask, then tell me where to put the commas or suggest alternate arrangements that make the significance clear. You can’t pay for that.

And why does he do this? Certainly not because he has too much time on his hands and nothing to do. bwahahaha

He does it cause he supports my writing and he shows it by giving me the help I need to make it happen.

Sorry ladies, no brothers. LOL.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: False Imprisonment

October 11, 2018October 12, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I am steaming mad right now. I was just falsely imprisoned.

Definition:

False imprisonment occurs when a person is restricted in their personal movement within any area without justification or consent. Actual physical restraint is not necessary for false imprisonment to occur.

So I go to pick the kid up from a local park program. On my way in I see they are setting up for a cross country thing. Ok, whatevs.

I pick up the kid and start driving along the single road that gets you out of the park. The only exit.

Where I am stopped by some guy in a large group of people who informs me that the kids are running so I can’t drive.

I remind him they aren’t supposed to be running on the road.

“Oh but they need to cross it, twice. You’ll have to wait until the race is over.”

WTF? This long line of cars, now, has to wait several hours for your cross country meet to be over because runners who are no where in sight have to cross the road at some point, twice?

I just about lost my shit. I should have called the police, false imprisonment being a felony and all, but instead I got a parks employee who reminded said jerk that the cross country race contract specifically prohibited them from stopping cars on the road unless there were actual runners in sight.

Again I ask WTF?

Is humanity so single mindedly focused on their own desires they have lost the ability to act like a human?

I was pondering this on the drive home as I watched 6 or 7 cars refuse to a let a car in that had turned onto the road and was stuck in the suicide lane.

And yes, I let the guy in. He waved thank you.

No need to thank me man, just a flipping human over here.

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Popular?

September 20, 2018September 19, 2018 ~ tahenryauthoress ~ Leave a comment

Coop started this week. I was a bit worried about it’s health and welfare this past August but as usual it’s pulled itself together, opened the doors, and welcomed a new gaggle of folks.

I’m teaching two classes this year. Variations on what I like to teach each year : history and writing. It’s what I do. It’s what I know. Every year I have around 6 students per class. I get the occasional drop in and sometimes a student leaves but generally, 6 per class. I like it that way.

I have 15 in Creative Writing and 14 in History.

Say what?

I was talking to another mom as we picked our kids up from another home school location where they take classes, and she was like “I’m so glad we registered early, you got really popular this year.”