Beetles and tomb statues

Posted on by Vegangirl

I just want to squee a little. A book that I’ve loved for years and years has finally been made into a tv series. It’s a Swedish book, but it seems it’s been translated into English. However, the title. I’m not even sure it’s allowed here on WordPress. The author’s name is Maria Gripe. She’s a famous Swedish children’s book writer.

The story is set in the 1970’s and the 18th century. It’s very mysterious and philosophical. There’s a sort of beetle, that the ancient Egyptian scarab is a depiction of. It is deeply involved in the plot. So is a tomb statue from Ancient Egypt. The main characters are three kids and an awesome vicar.

There’s an old almost forgotten mansion that may be haunted, a mysterious coughing man and a set of coincidences – or are they coincidences?

I love the innocence of the time (1970’s), the beautiful, sleepy little village and the charming kids. Also the awesome vicar.

I hope it’s exported. You should see it.

WordPress Blog Themes – ew

Posted on by Vegangirl

I have tried to look in on my old wordpress blogs, before most likely abandoning them. Because of reasons, as they say on Tumblr. 

It seems my old themes have expired. 😦 So I tried to find replacements. Ha. If they were mostly bland and boring in the past they’re even more so these days. 

So, really, why no color? Come on. Life is bad enough as it is, without blog themes and (don’t get me started) fashion, being this colorless. 

I guess I might as well give up on blogging, at least on wordpress. Sob. It seems this is the end of a very long love affair.

Again, I’ll still be lurking, and possibly commenting once in a blue moon, but I’ll probably never post again.

I’ll mostly abandon Dreamwidth too, most likely, sadly enough, but not because of the themes. More like the lack of audience. Then again, not quite that, but something like it. I might keep one of my three accounts, ironically my first one and the one with, as far as I know, no followers at all. Maybe. It’s a shame though. From the time I discovered Dreamwidth, when you couldn’t just sign up if you wanted to, and from the time I had to give up Livejournal, I’ve always loved it so much. 

Strangely enough, no one from elsewhere on the web, like book sites, were willing to visit my Dreamwidth review journal. I still don’t understand why. It’s set to Public. Anyone can read and comment. Like with every other blog site. Life’s mysteries.

That put me in my place…

Posted on by Vegangirl

My daughter who is seven, is a budding gamer. Really good at it actually. My sister is the family’s computer, phone and internet expert. My daughter, let’s call her Pepper, loves sharing her hobby with her aunt. She was gushing to me about her aunt ‘Minwynn’ being the best at all this. So I said, you know mommy is good at some things too. In this case I thought languages, since though I’m far from a linguist, I am fluent in three languages and know my way around three others, four if you count Latin. Pepper smiled and said: yeah, mommy, you’re great at getting me stuff from the fridge.

Yeah, I’m great at waiting on the kids. Sigh.

Actually, the kids are showing a great deal of interest in languages. For instance, they seem to be almost fluent in English from watching youtube. Pepper also loves, visually, Asian languages. The script. My son, ‘Salt’ too, but he also seems to love Spanish. So I told him mommy knows some Spanish. From school. Well, he has this way of barking out a no sounding like a grown man, though normally he sounds more like a child several years younger than seven. Such a sweet little voice. But this time he silenced me with his harsh no. No, mommy, Spanish is mine.

Ok, Boomer?

Posted on by Vegangirl

I think I just had my first Ok, Boomer moment with my six-year-old daughter. Even though I’m not a boomer. She, by the way, belongs to generation Alpha.

She has turned out to be a real gamer which also means that she’s learning English. She has all these games and she wants to buy virtual stuff for real money. It’s led to a few conflicts, but basically I find it hard to deny her anything.

So I mentioned Open Sim which is an open source 3D world. There you can ask your aunt to make you anything you like for free, I said. You can even learn to build things yourself. She ignored me so I said it again.

She turned and faced me with a rather condescending look and said yes. Dismissing me. So, I guess I’m officially an old bore.

Awkward meeting

Posted on by Vegangirl

I read something online about whether anyone has said something inappropriate about one’s child. That made me remember an incident when my son was about two and a half. He’s six now.

It was the year of the great heatwave. My family and I were in our cabin in the woods. We don’t have a washing machine so we returned to the house we lived in then once in a while. Our (second) cousin P got in touch wanting to meet us – my sister and I – since he had moved to a town not far from where we lived. We decided to meet in the small town close to our house. There’s an Italian gelateria there, in the park, which is kind of cool. So we met there.

My sister went to get a bottle of mineral water, and no doubt a sorbet or two. Our cousin P had brought his friend and future wife, M. It was really awkward because it was obvious that she didn’t like us.

She stared at my son and exclaimed: But he’s cute! The implication, being, no doubt, how can an ugly person like you give birth to such a pretty child?

And she was only getting started.

Next she remarked on how dark brown his eyes were. Actually, they’re hazel, so not really that dark. Again, there seemed to be an undertone. This time something like ’I’ll bet you’ve been involved with an (insert racist term). Nope. Sorry to disappoint. That’s not how I got my son.

Then she wanted to leave. After something like thirty or forty minutes. So off they went. I guess it doesn’t surprise anyone that we don’t like her either. But we do like P so we were really happy for him when he met M.

My son and I, recently, out for a walk