The Ivory Carving

This is a cool illustration that I found in a book, that I thought some of you might enjoy. I know one of my future readers already knows about it though. The context is this guy and his sister are talking about why she has been cold to her dad after he remarried…

She turned away from the computer and, looking straight at me, said the strangest thing. “Connor, suppose for this Christmas I give you something very beautiful- say, a beautiful ivory carving.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said.
“This gift has been made with care and given to you to keep forever. It is intricately and deeply carved. There are no rough edges. All of it is polished, and all of it is pure ivory.”
“What would be wrong with that?”
“Nothing would be wrong with it if it came with instructions and a warning.”
“What instructions?” “That it must be oiled now and then or it will get brittle, and little pieces will break off.”
“And what’s the warning?”
“That ivory is a living organism, so it is bound to change as it ages. Ivory darkens. A day comes when you have to put this beautiful thing away. So not knowing about maintenance and aging, you put it in a drawer and close the drawer. Time goes by, and the gift giver wants to see his gift. So you take it out of the drawer, and both of you are surprised that it isn’t what it was. It doesn’t look the same. Without maintenance, delicate pieces have broken off, and some of the places where the carving was very deep have darkened to the color of a tobacco stain. You haven’t been careless; you have just never been warned about the changes that happen with time, and you haven’t been taught proper maintenance. But you know one thing- you are never going to put this gift on display again.”
Margaret and I looked at each other. “You’re talking about love, aren’t you?”

E. L. Konigsburg
Silent to the Bone

It's raining now...

this is another miscellaneous story that i wrote when it was raining really hard and Lucy was spasing out...

“It’s raining now,” I said to no one in particular. The house had been empty since early this morning, and I was beginning to wish I had someone to talk to. That brought me back to earlier this morning, when I became so hopelessly bored that I started talking to my pencils. Well, I wasn’t exactly talking to them, I was making a sort of skit. The dumber the funnier, I always say, so it was getting pretty hectic by the time I noticed about three people gaping at me. Now, over six hours later, I was missing my devoted, if not slightly amused audience. I was yanked back to the present when an excruciatingly loud clap of thunder, interrupted my reminiscing. I drummed my fingers on my extended knee, while I tried to drift back into retrospect mood once again. This time it was Max, my husky-poodle mix that woke me, when he darted under my chair, nearly knocking me over due to his failure to recognize his larger-than-average body size. It became apparent that trying to reach a state of subconsciousness was virtually impossible at this point, due to the fact that my chair had mysteriously started to vibrate, and a large puddle of drool was slowly accumulating directly under me. I resentfully rendered my throne of three hours to the terror-infested pile of fur that I had previously mistaken as a dog. You see, according to early civilization observation, a dog is supposed to be a loyal and protective friend. Staring down now at my sad excuse of a dog, with his pointy ears and curly hair, his dainty paws and steel-blue eyes now shut tightly to ward away any unwanted natural occurrence, I was reminded, once again of how much I love him. Such a visually odd looking creature had obviously been made just for me.

im not parenting!

RRRRRrrrrrggghhhhh!!! J.N. is often snotty to J.S. and M.S., and as a last resort they usually ask me to tell her to stop. of course she stops immediately. so i assumed that they were silently wanting me to ask her to be quiet sooner. my mistake i geuss. i tried telling her to stop before my help was acquired during one particularly ugly battle, and got to told to stop parenting! i wasnt even saying anything to J.S. or M.S., and they got mad at me for parenting journey! i was trying to save her some pain. she doesnt know that every word you say to macy (even just around her) makes her hate you more. aaahhhggg!

random trivia

44% of the elderly in Kentucky have no teeth

The term Luddite is based on a mythical character named Ned Ludd in George Pellew's The Life of Lord Sidmouth (1847). Ned Ludd was a Leicestershire villager of the late 1700s who, in a fit of insane rage, rushed into a stocking weaver's house and destroyed his equipment. With the onset of the Information Age, Luddite gained a broader sense describing anyone who shuns new technology.

Clans of long ago that wished to rid themselves of people without killing them used to burn the offending parties' houses down. Hence the expression "to get fired".

In 1945, a computer at Harvard malfunctioned. Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

WORDS!!!

Turophile - a connoisseur of cheese; a cheese fancier.
Troglodyte - 1. a member of a primitive people dwelling in caves. 2. a person resembling a troglodyte (as in reclusive habits or reactionary attitudes).
Triradius - (Physical Anthropol.) a Y-shaped group of ridges on the palm of the hand at the base of each finger.
Tarantism - n. - a dancing mania or malady of late medieval Europe.
Tacit - 1. understood without being openly expressed; implied. 2. silent, saying nothing. 3. unvoiced or unspoken.
Synesis - (Gram) a construction in which an expected grammatical agreement in form is replaced by an agreement in meaning.
Synechia - (Med Pathol.) any adhesion of parts of the body, as of the iris to the cornea.
Sycophant - a servile, self-seeking flatterer; fawning parasite.

the grinch says: stop talking!

The grinch has several defense tactics. anything i say that she doesnt like (which is just about everything), she has discovered easy ways to shut me up. one of her favorites is "stop talking," which translates to "shut up." I can barely even open my mouth before she says "stop talking!"; most of the time im not even talking to her. Another more common one is "your so obnoxious!" and "i really dont like you," which translate to "i hate you." shes adopted new phrases just within the last week- "you think you know everything," and "your so bossy!" it makes her sound like the little sister. i know they are all signs of weakness, but that doesn't make them hurt any less.

desensitized by the grinch

I just now realized how cold it made me to share a room with my older sister. Living in fear of making her mad everyday, has made me mean (to say the least) to my new roomate. Its confuzing to have someone who wants a relationship with you, where before, I was the one forcing the relationship onto my sister. Its going to take a lot to learn how to act normally again, instead of having a safegaurd up all the time. I must say, she is very forgiving, though.