Yearly Archives: 2007

Family matters, Flotsam / Jetsam

Je parle français (un peu)

Last night I dreamed that I was hanging out in the pro shop at a golf course, and a distraught young man rushed up to me, desperate for help. He needed me to translate a phrase into French for him, so he could have it engraved on a bracelet for his one true love.

Now, I took French for a few years in high school and college. I can still read a little bit of French, and I could probably ask for food, water and a bathroom should I ever find myself stranded in France. I didn’t have any exemplary language skills in my dream, either. But I did successfully translated the lovestruck young man’s declaration. I typed my French translation into the Altavista translator this morning, just to see whether I really had spelled out what the man wanted to say.

And indeed, “Je t’aime comme mon pied gauche” does mean “I love you like my left foot.”

Flotsam / Jetsam

Wings

I was sort of wrong about the wasps’ nest outside our window. I thought it was the beginnings of a nest of the nasty sort of wasps. The maintenance guy, though, tells me that it was a mud daubers’ nest, and he assured me that mud daubers don’t sting. (But they are a type of wasp! So I was a little bit right!) He flicked the nest of the windowsill with his finger. I felt mildly silly.

After solving the nest-on-the-window problem, we uncovered a mystery.

Marsha had cut down another winged invader just before the maintenance guy arrived. I showed the carcass to him, and it apparently wasn’t a mud dauber. Nor was it a hornet. It looked wasp-like to me, but it didn’t appear to have a stinger. Not that I looked very closely. Whatever it was, I don’t like these flying nuisances buzzing around in the house. But the only nest visible was the mud daubers’, so the maintenance guy left without looking into it further.

Which leaves only Marsha to defend us. That’s not a comforting thought.

Domestic Blitz, Flotsam / Jetsam

Rain, insect invasions and sewing

  1. I’ve been hearing distant thunder all afternoon. The storm finally made its way here, and it’s a good one. It’s raining so hard, the trees across the river are hazy. Poppy has been napping for almost two hours now. That’s usually her limit, but with the rain falling on the metal roof, she might be down for another half hour or so.
  2. There’s a wasps’ nest outside one of our windows, and the little beasts have been slowly infiltrating the apartment. Marsha T. Cat has done a valiant job dispatching them — she’s on the prowl as we speak — but I still think I’m going to have maintenance take care of the nest.
  3. I read over the sewing machine manual today and was left quite overwhelmed. So I looked up basic sewing classes in the area. If one of them fits into Rockford’s schedule (so he can be home with Pi), I think I’ll sign up for one.