Res ipsa loquitur

mergatrude - Top five things you have overheard

Oh, a most excellent prompt.

5. The first time I remember overhearing something and writing it down was in high school Latin class in about 1981. Our text was about a naval battle, and the word it used for 'ships' was 'puppes,' so my classmate Janet gamely offered, "... to overwhelm the sinking puppies," and someone else put in, "Arf arf gargle arf arf."

4. On Halloween on my college campus, in the weariest voice imaginable: "Bill. It's been a long day. I've had a lot to drink. I'm dressed as a bee."

3. In the parking lot of a Dunkin' Donuts in Peoria, Illinois, guy to his dog, in a singsong voice: "Dogs don't eat eclairs! No they don't!" (This -- melody and all -- has entered our family language.)

2. In a meeting: "We'll throw you under the bus! Feet first, so you can see yourself getting crushed!"

1. Kidlet at about four: "Sometimes I think about thinking. I think: 'Well! I think I'll think.'"



Leave me a comment to add a prompt to the calendar. The current list is below the cut.


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Wow, one of these has a reference to Thanksgiving in it! I had no idea it had been so long since I did one of these. The world continues to be quotable, though.

Kidlet: "I just said something genius, didn't I? It's hard to tell sometimes."

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Cleaned out half the garage today, including removing twelve 40-pound bags of landscaping rock left over from a project that happened fifteen years ago. It's like homeowners' amnesia. You haven't forgotten that this stuff is there, exactly; you've just forgotten that it has anything to do with you.

Also mowed the lawn. I really don't think that any week ought to have both snow flurries and lawn-mowing in it.

Here's the latest set of overheards.

"I put it in some perfectly sensible place. Drat. Foiled again by my past self overestimating my present self's intelligence." -- kidlet

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And in apology for never posting any fannish content ever, this is what I'm working on now:

Item. There's nothing strange in a good-looking fellow having a lot of sex with a lot of different women, none of whom he introduces to his flatmate.

Note: For christ's sake, this is Sherlock Holmes we're talking about.

I am not pleased. I've lost a notebook that had about a third of my current wip in it, along with sundry assorted other things that I don't even remember what they are. I very much fear that this means I will have to clean dusty places.

Anyhow. Here, have some kidlet-heavy overheards.

Kidlet: "I thought you were going to let me have the house to myself today! Put your shoes on and leave! Shoo! Shoo and be shod!"

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Home again; Mom's home and recovering well; I did not bite anyone in the airport, but it was a near thing.

Randomness from the journey:

- I took the 5:30 a.m. flight out, which I don't think I would do again, though it certainly got me to my destination plenty early. When I got up in the dark, I discovered that the kidlet had written a line from an Oysterband traveling song and taped it to the back door.

- There was a pretty young woman in the Chicago airport who was wearing a red flower behind her ear, a short skirt with an equestrian print, a crinoline, and flats with silver buckles. She looked fantastic.

- I detest rolling carry-ons. They slow everything down -- when you want to enter or leave a plane, you have to wait for people to cram them into the overhead bin; when you want to run through the airport (because 48 minutes between flights is not long enough in an airport as big as O'Hare), you can't get around them because they take up so much space. I packed six days' worth of stuff in one shoulder bag. Of course, that may be the reason why I'm so sick of these three T-shirts I could scream.

- I had forgotten that folks down home don't press buttons, they mash them. It made me giggle every time.

- We went to a medical-supply place to get Mom a leg lifter. I walked up to the cashier and said, "We're looking --" and she shouted, "No!" and then laughed and said, "Sorry, sorry, just being silly. I was just feeling negative for a moment." And I shook my head and went on, but now I wish I'd asked her: You work at a medical-supply place. Were you thinking most of your customers are looking for more unpleasant surprises in their day?!

- I felt the East Coast earthquake, but I was so sleep-deprived that all I could think was, "Am I dizzy? am I hallucinating?"

I have a bad habit of making a new post without answering most of the comments on the previous post. Also of making a new post that doesn't have any smut in it. Sorry.

"I don't think it was a bad movie, exactly. It's trying to be nonlinear."
"Life is nonlinear. That's why we like to go to the movies every now and then."

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First, here's a song that really ought to have a slash story written about it -- preferably by someone who, unlike me, actually knows something about Ireland and England:

Elvis Costello and the Chieftains, Any King's Shilling.

You're a fine one, oh yes you are.
You're a fine one, just like me.
And we're friends, now, wouldn't you say?
We've been friends, now, haven't we?
Stay at home tonight if you know what's good for you.
I can't say more. It would be telling.
But if you don't, what will become of you
Just isn't worth any king's shilling.
Please don't put your silly head
In that British soldier's hat ...

Plus some collected overheards and overseens:

I used to be with it. Then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it and what's it seems scary and weird. -- commenter on Consumerist.com (aynatonal points out that this is a Simpsons quote)

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Mostly just because I'm lonesome and want some company.

The White Sheep: She totally brought me into her voodoo crazy-lady world!

The White Sheep: This place is like a soap opera. The Old and the Senseless.

Me: It's a cruel world.
Kidlet: Which one?


Things you never expect to hear come out of your mouth: "Of course not. No one means for Harry Potter to wind up in the toilet."

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Friend to kidlet: "I've seen your closet. It's a pit of death."

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Tomorrow morning it's off to North Carolina to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary! (Sometimes the thing that amazes me the most is that my mother was married in August, in the South, before air-conditioning, in a long-sleeved satin dress. After that ordeal, the marriage itself must be a breeze.)

I'll be back in a couple of weeks, and I'll probably be bringing fiction (I have a Hancock story almost ready for beta, and other things percolating happily in my brain), and meanwhile I leave you with the fruits of a couple of weeks of eavesdropping:

"I figured out what I want to do in life."
"What?"
"Retire."

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