Irregardless of the silliness of it all. . .

Irregardless of my love of apostrophes, today I want to talk about non-words, such as irregardless. (Ah, if only I were at school teaching right this second. Gosh, the fun we would have.)

I have just had a ‘script filled for antibiotics because it is school holidays and as per standard operating procedures during school  holidays I have gone and fallen prey to a lurgy (surely that’s a non-word too?) and cosseted it along until it has turned into a lung infection. Yay me.

Anyway (or should I say irregardless?) the pharmacist’s directions state:

"Irregardless of food intake take one capsule. . ."

Oh wait, just checked the actual pack, it says “irrespective” - darn, that sheds a different light on things. Huh, why let the truth get in the way of a ‘good’ story.

Irregardless of the actual instructions I have forged ahead and investigated the use of this word. According to that well known, authoritative source Wikipedia  irregardless was first known to have appeared in print as early as 1795.

Cool.

And most dictionaries treat it as a nonstandard or incorrect. Phew, that’s what I thought too. It is of course a blend of regardless and irrespective. Furthermore it is in the lucky position of being a portmanteau word. What fun!

If one follows up on the cited references and checks the New International Webster Dictionary, or at least its on-line version, they lay the blame squarely on America: “Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century.” 

So it’s kind of fitting that if you click on the speaker and listen to the pronunciation it has a definite American flavour to it as well.

The irony, of course - should anyone still be reading - is that despite its official status as a non-word, it still has an entry in the dictionary.

Score one for irregardless.

And then an Australian linguist, Pam Peters (I mean come on really, with alliteration like that she had to become a linguist) points out “ that irregardless has become fetishized because natural examples of this word in corpora of written and spoken English are greatly outnumbered by examples where it is in fact only cited as an incorrect term.”  (Is it me, or are there simpler ways to say that?)

 

To sum up:

a/ It’s school holidays and I am sick.

b/ Irregardless is a non-word that still appears in the dictionary.

c/ Irregardless is described as a portmanteau word that has been fetishized.

d/ I have a blog and therefore don’t have to bore my friends silly with these things.

Waiting for the Upswing

After two months of putting up with a RSI’d elbow scotching any chance of rowing or yoga I was starting to feel pudgy.

This feeling was met with NO SMPATHY from my workmates coz my pudginess simply wasn’t recognized.

Ok. So suck it up, Stella. (See even that bit of alliteration makes me feel better.)

Things had started to improve:

• More work. Yay. I don’t feel so impoverished.
• Best buddies are  back in town. Yay, friends to dance with. Who love me, pudgy or not.
• Manage to row once a week. Forking out to go to the osteo helps.

 BUT- a migraine (apparently it’s a hormonal thing) had me feeling blue.

When said migraine re-appeared two weeks later, I cried “Cruel and unjust treatment.”

But figured it’d be gone in two days.

Coz it always is.

Instead: it was gone in one day. Yeehaa.

Some would say.

Instead I came down with a snotty, wheezy, cold-type situation in lieu of said migraine.

“Oh crappity crap crap!” and “Give me freakin” a break!”

On the plus side the migraine’s gone I had to cancel rowing tomorrow coz you need working lungs for that.

Instead I am ensconced on the couch watching TV. (Not pay TV, but TV nevertheless.)

OK, a little confession: I had been reading A Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield all about Buddhism and the beginning it talks about being compassionate to yourself and others. . and well. . . it may have reminded me of the last time I read it, when my husband was ill, and I was feeling all sad and lonely anyway. . . and it’s possible there may have been tears. . .

But don’t let that put you of, it’s really ONE of the BEST books I’ve ever read.

Anyway, I turned to the TV. Coz that’s what modern day America/Australia/Britain etc does.

Besides my eyes were puffy and hurt so reading was out. 

So I’m “torn” (using that word with all the sarcasm you can muster) between watching Mean Girls and Salt. 

Neither of which I can relate to.

I am not an American/possibly Russian spy. Nor am I as skinny as Angelina- we just had that pudgy discussion, remember? And no one's ever going to say:"Do you have any idea who this woman is? What she's done for this country?"

And I am not - no matter how much I lie about my age - a high school student befriended by the “cool” girls.

Although I do work in a school.

Sometimes.

Sigh.

But still, little redemption here:

Clearly tonight cries out for more Drambuie.

And, yeah, I am feeling better now. 

Stella-the-drunk xx

Ten Indicators That You’ve Finally Hit Old

1. The glamorous waitressing job you picked up over the holidays gives you RSI in your arm/elbow.
2. Rowing aggravates the RSI in your arm. (Well der.)
3.  Yoga is seriously bad for RSI in your arm. (Probably shouldn’t be doing a powerflow class.)
4.  Yoga gives you a funky knee. (Kinda feels like the kneecap is in the wrong place.)
5.  Six weeks later you still have RSI and a funky knee. (You assumed it’d all get better with time, because it always has. Besides, you got the glamorous waitressing job coz money was tight and so you don’t bother to go to the doctor when you probably should.)
6.  Your hip and QL starts to play up, aching at all times of the day for no good reason.
7.  You end up visiting the osteopath because nothing else gives you relief. Not even Deep Heat.
8.  You go back to the osteopath because you’re still not getting relief. And you’re sick of smelling of Deep Heat.
9.  You wake during the night due to the ache in your hip – surely it’s not time for a hip replacement yet – and end up sprawled on the floor for 20 minutes with your leg in front of you bent at the knee at right angles while you try to lean into pigeon pose and release that darn hip.
10.  You realize your QL is probably so sore because you are not exercising at all due to the strained elbow, sore knee, achey QL, and heels that feel bruised  (you think that’s down to your orthotics.)
11.  You turn into a big whingey broken ol’ thing and pessimistically wonder what you’ll injure if you go to a Spin class. You go anyway. 

(Not being able to count to ten is a big give away too.)

Stella x

Is this a man I see before me?

Goodness, of course it’s not. Don’t be so silly. Don’t tell me you thought I’d stopped blogging because I’d met some bloke, did you?

The title actually refers to Friday night and my latest exploits in town.

My best buddies were out of town for work; yes, they have the kind of job that requires them to travel. Seems like a good deal to me, who as a teacher has only ever traveled overseas to Phillip Island. For school camp. Three days, two night of fun, fun, fun with 200 adolescents who don’t want to go to sleep.

But I digress, as ever.

As my buddies were out of town I went out last Friday with a couple of other friends. I have previously been out with them in a group, had a few drinks, a few dances, chatted to a few men etc. It’s all been good.

This Friday was different though and I have been musing, as is my wont, as to why. (Actually, it’d be good if I could do less musing at times and more sleeping.) I think I have discovered why. The point of the exercise on Friday night appeared to be ONLY to check out and pick up men. And if there were no men at a particular venue –as was pronounced at one place - we needed to move on.

Now on my usual Friday night I am not averse to checking out men but it’s more of a sideline. The main business of the evening tends to be having fun with my friends. Usually that means a lot of dancing, and some drinking also, but not to excess. Well, the drinking that is, not the dancing.

And if we end up talking to men, or men talk to us - probably because we’re having such a good time – then that’s fine. Last Friday, however, was a concerted effort to hunt down hot men. Then admire them, loudly, speak to the them, if possible, and finally lament them, should they happen to pick up someone else before we’d made our move.

Then we could go somewhere else and loudly lament them on the way.

I mean really, ladies, how old are we? 22? No, we are not and I ended up abandoning them both early on in a club when they were busy talking to the bouncer; who was, apparently, hot.

I thought this was quite canny of me as they were too engaged with chatting with him to object to my leaving. Even more canny of me was to check my iPhone to see which way was which. When that didn’t help I asked the Cloak Room girl where the nearest train station was and we pinpointed it on my iPhone too, just for good measure.

Unfortunately since I was beating a hasty retreat I didn’t have time to think about the train schedule and ending up waiting 24 minutes for the next train out to the boon docks where I (still) live.   

Ask Yahoo: absence does NOT make the heart grow fonder

Oh no.

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, or read anyone else’s blog that Yahoo has blocked me from checking my emails because I cannot remember my password.

Darn. 

Fortunately I could remember and access my blog and my google password so all is not lost even if Yahoo has gone all security on me.

The problem appears to be that I am logging on from a device they do not recognize.

Hogswash. I am logging on from the same old faithful iMac I've been using for the last four or five years. (Yeah, if I get more work I just might upgrade.)

So, I eventually remembered my password successfully but then they wanted me to correctly enter the security numbers.

Managed that OK since I'm not a robot or spam or anything. 

But then I got the security answer wrong.

Apparently I am impersonating me and don’t know the name of my favourite uncle.

This is perplexing as I only had one uncle. . . 

So then they blocked me for 24 hours. 

Plan B - I went back and asked them to send me a new password to another account. 

I only hope that I can remember how to get into that account as I never, ever use it. To remain anonymous I have not linked my blog or associated emails to my regular email account. Otherwise somehow they figure out you're the same person and all of a sudden - especially if you are on Facebook,  which I'm not - everything is linked and any anonymity is just blown right out of the water.

(How very Big Brother of them.)

Yes, indeed, I have been thwarted by my own cleverness.

Stella The Anonymous xx

She's ba-a-a-a-ck! And still an apostrophe Nazi.

I have been feeling guilty, of late. Yes, guilty because I have just left my blog withering in the ether. (Ooh, I like that. I do have a way with words, don't I?)

I attended a talk by an author recently which I enjoyed immensely, even though I hadn't read any of this books. I am attempting to remedy that now. I wish I had a book in me to write.

Meanwhile, back on topic.

So while I was there I picked up one of the Centre's booklet listing all the interesting writing courses they offer. "Gosh, these look great. I must do some. I do miss writing," I mused to myself.  " You idiot, Stella. You have a perfectly good blog so go back to using it."

And.

Ta-dum! Here I am.

The bad news though is I am here just to have a whinge, it's a punctuation thing. There is a new Aussie film out, good for us. What bothers me, quite a lot, is the poor use of punctuation in the promotional poster that insists on appearing on my yahoo homepage.

Annoyingly I cannot capture the image but the poster heading is:

Goddess

Theres one in all of us

And if you click on the image, even if you don't, there's a short clip promoting the video.

This irritates me beyond all rational reason. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because if they're prepared to spend all that money promoting the film they might bother to employ someone to proofread their advertisements. 

Or maybe employ an ad agency that has basic literacy skills.

Just sayin' . . . 

Interestingly, on all other versions of the poster they have fixed this. Needless to say I am far too annoyed to even consider going to see this film. 

Stella xx

And a merry dysfunctional Christmas to you!

This Christmas is turning out much better than the last three. The first one, three months after I lost my husband, was fairly sucky as you can imagine. This year, here it is Christmas Day and I haven’t felt sad at all or even cried.

The major reason for this I imagine would be the new friends I’ve made - the majority of who are Canadian – and lots of opportunities to go out and socialize. I’ve also kept busy rowing and am lucky enough to be rowing every single Sunday before and after Christmas and New Years.

So onto this year’s dysfunctional family Christmas:

My divorced parents - neither has remarried - are both coming to Christmas at my house. The bizarreness of this is only apparent when you realize that for several years they didn’t even speak to each other and we celebrated two Christmases, one with each parent.

When I say “we” I mean my sister and I. She’s not married and I’m now widowed. She’s currently – well, actually for a long time now – a drug addict who still abuses dope, she has done everything other drug over the years too. This hasn’t done her brain any favours and she now has mental issues.

As a consequence she’s moved out into the country and doesn’t want to see my father. She did text me this year to wish me Merry Christmas but last year I didn’t hear from her at all. (It is very hard to have any sort of sane relationship with an addict. Has been for years.)

So much for the heavy stuff, now for the planning stuff. You’d think that with a mere THREE people the planning would go smoothly. Not so much.

There are three of us, and one of us (not me) is on a diet, despite this we have three desserts. Everyone brought a dessert. Not that any of us actually cooked dessert but we’ve all turned up with dessert.

My father and I had decided a roast pork would be the go, that’s our favourite. When I invited my mother she hinted at her preference for turkey because it’s “slimming”- Dad and I both laughed at that and over ruled her, we’re having pork.

So Dad turns up this morning with some turkey to roast for my mum. Unfortunately it is still frozen and needs to cook longer and at a different temperature to the pork, and in water. This means we can’t roast vegetables in the dish. Nevertheless I persevered and threw everything in the oven.

Except everything didn’t fit in the oven. There wasn’t enough room for all the vegetables. So Dad has taken the turkey home, he lives 4.5 minutes from my place, and will roast the turkey in his oven.

Assuming this all works and everything eventually cooks, which I ‘spose will happen, we will end up with:

• Roast pork
• Roast turkey
• Minced pies
• Christmas pudding
• AND a chocolate pudding. 

For three of us, and one of us is on a diet. 

Oh well. Happy dysfunctional Christmas!!!