(no subject)
Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 08:29 pmThe trouble with sleeping past 11 is that I can't roll over and go back to sleep as I can do if I wake at 9. Yes, well. Life is rough.
Of course I also woke out of a frustration dream of trying to get three babies back to daycare, at night, in a triple stroller, through the University College (UofT version) campus, gone suddenly baroque with steps that aren't there and narrow gas lit passages, also with steps, that lyingly promised to take me up to Hoskins and Trinity College (again, UofT version: universities in the Brit-sphere have no innovation with respect to either names or architecture.) Could gave done without that, especially as my Christmas Eve dream was a charming cosy murder mystery. I believe the white-haired Miss Marple-ish sleuth was in fact the murderer.
Weather is mild but grey and dank, and is supposed to rain all week, which is par for the Dead Days but also dispiriting. We may see some sun on Saturday. I went out today since the PoP was only 56% and got misted on. Tony Korean restaurant was fairly full, even at 3 in the afternoon, but the Koreans make the most of their holidays. When they get them, because the big supermarket and greengrocers were open. Bought celery for future turkey salads but was so full from egg and beef donburi that I skipped dinner.
Of course I also woke out of a frustration dream of trying to get three babies back to daycare, at night, in a triple stroller, through the University College (UofT version) campus, gone suddenly baroque with steps that aren't there and narrow gas lit passages, also with steps, that lyingly promised to take me up to Hoskins and Trinity College (again, UofT version: universities in the Brit-sphere have no innovation with respect to either names or architecture.) Could gave done without that, especially as my Christmas Eve dream was a charming cosy murder mystery. I believe the white-haired Miss Marple-ish sleuth was in fact the murderer.
Weather is mild but grey and dank, and is supposed to rain all week, which is par for the Dead Days but also dispiriting. We may see some sun on Saturday. I went out today since the PoP was only 56% and got misted on. Tony Korean restaurant was fairly full, even at 3 in the afternoon, but the Koreans make the most of their holidays. When they get them, because the big supermarket and greengrocers were open. Bought celery for future turkey salads but was so full from egg and beef donburi that I skipped dinner.
To get xmas music out of my head I went looking for that Kenyan song from many years back Mama nipeleke kwa baba (Mama, take me to my father.) Then started googling around to find what the swahili means and discovered that nipeleke is a very useful phrase for things like 'take me to a hospital' (hospitalini)- I mean, should you find yourself sick in east Africa some time. They also tell you how to say please, which I can't remember because there's no catchy tune to teach me tafadhali. So then I had to look at Duolingo for swahili which starts you with pronouns: mimi (I), yeye (he, she), sisi (we), wao (they), and wewe (you, sing). Oh. Years ago a roommate told me how to say The elephant is about to step on you in Swahili. Tembo is elephant and wewe is you but my memory of the verb, after 40 years, must have become corrupted, because I remember it as 'na piga' but you can't prove it by any Swahili verb chart. And after googling a bit about verbs in Swahili, I once again resigned myself never to learn that language. Verb prefixes for both subject and tense? No way. Might as well learn Basque if you're going that route.
Honestly, why do people think Japanese is a hard language? Yeah, there's causatives and passives and passive causatives, but they're quite regular. Presumably if you hear the Swahili version of I am going, you are going, he is going often enough, the sound sticks in your head as easily as, well, 'I am going' etc. (or wasuresaseru). But life is too short at this point.
