New, improved:

Cordelia, now with more "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html

*snickerbounce*

rainstorm13, minakochan, you two, of all people, should know! I am fairly sure that I told both of you at some point!

Hee.

And E, Yakky, boojum, well duh. I think that a couple things were filtered and not marked as filtered, back around New Year's.

Names

votania was born, and was named the wrong thing by her mother.

From what she says, she's been looking for a name that fit ever since she was old enough to call herself by a name. She found a name that fit, and has gone by it, and, back when I first was getting to know her, got it legally changed. That's the only name I've ever known her by.

Unfortunately, her mother still called her by her legal name, or a diminutive thereof, despite her having preferred her own name ever since she found it. This drove her bats.

This changed, one day.

I have sleep issues. I need my sleep, and I ferociously guard the sleep of those I love. So when votania's mother called one day while she was finally getting the sleep that she needed (job, school, kid = no sleep), which happened to be while I was also taking a nap.

When I am jolted out of sleep, I wake up cross and groggy. The phone jolted me out of a much-needed nap. "Is [diminutive] there?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

My knee-jerk response, since I knew no one by that name, was, "Who?"

And then, of course, her mother got all pissy with me, thinking that I'd done this on purpose.

I got pissy right back, and told her that her insistence on calling her daughter by the diminutive of the name that she had never chosen, didn't like, and wasn't her, was rude and inexcuseable; where I came from, if someone was issued a birth-name that was not them, it was a mark of respect to them to call them by the name-form that they chose, and I did not tolerate people who did not respect my friends, and furthermore, your DAUGHTER was ASLEEP, so GOODBYE!



votania came wandering out of her room at about this point, as the ringing, and the subsequent yelling, had disturbed her rest. Ooops.

I was convinced to apologize for the tone of my correction. votania's mother started calling her "my daughter"/"my darling daughter" rather than use any name.

Some time later, at a family gathering, where Great-Aunt was making unhappy noise about votania's name change, I heard my exact words from votania's mother's mouth about respect for name changes. I recognized it, as I'd borrowed it from Uhura's Song....

---

From http://www.webster.com:

Main Entry: ²diminutive
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1 : indicating small size and sometimes the state or quality of being familiarly known, lovable, pitiable, or contemptible -- used of affixes (as -ette, -kin, -ling) and of words formed with them (as kitchenette, manikin, duckling), of clipped forms (as Jim), and of altered forms (as Peggy); compare AUGMENTATIVE

Names (further)

votania's mother goes by a clipped form of her name, and dislikes the long form.

votania's grandmother, her mother's mother, addresses gave votania's mother by the long form of her name, and gave her an apron with the long form of her name on it for a holiday.

votania's mother suddenly Understood, then, and has called votania by her legal name-of-choice ever since.

Ahhh, water and laundry.

Put the laundry in to wash. Got in our swim gear, went, put it in to dry, swam.

Little Fayoumis is not to be allowed beyond the four-foot mark without floaties on until he demonstrates his proficiency in swimming. On pain of grounding from the pool, videogames, and movies. He gave me a fucking heart attack.

Oy.

But, other than that, we had fun. He is getting his face underwater, with FatherSir's fun "Hum, and bubbles will come out your nose!" technique.

Bees

Tried to explain the concept of killer bees to Little Fayoumis today, in the "why you should not squish bees" lecture.

"If you squish a bee, and it's a certain kind of bee, its body will have a chemical, and its brothers and sisters will smell the chemical and know their brother is in trouble, and then they will all get mad and come to sting the bad guy who hurt their brother. And that would be at least two hundred bees. All coming to sting you."

Huh.

Fun style change, there.

http://status.livejournal.org/

At 11:45 pm EST on Tuesday, May 27th, Admin jproulx writes :
Your journal may display in a generic style for a short time while we make a few changes. You have not lost any of your customizations or settings.

We're aware that the site is having difficulty on and off today, and we're carefully watching the servers to handle problems as they arise. We apologize sincerely for the difficulty this week; we're updating the site's backend code to make the site faster and more reliable, but it's taking a little more tweaking than we'd expected. Thank you for your patience, and things should return to normal soon.

Wherein I sabotage the efficiency of the US military

Once upon a time, I was having a rather heated cyber-affair with my good old friend Dave-from-fencing, now evolved into the form of Dave-in-Germany.

To tease him, my webcam and I conspired to distract him.

Please note that while I am, to all appearances, naked in this photo, also note that I am only visible shoulders and upwards. I was, in fact, wearing a towel.

If it raises my hair three months later, it's probably good.

Perhaps my mother was right.

Reruns:

"MYF keyeboard IS so YFU0XU0RD"