Saturday 12 April 2008

Verbiage

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe has tagged me for a 'six word memoir', which has caused me some interesting pondering. I do like a good word, but describing yourself in just six of the little critters? Once I'd started thinking of good words I couldn't get them out of my head although they weren't appropriate at all. Breviary, wombat, treacle and jam - I really can't see any way to get them truthfully into my biography, although they are *so* satisfying to say. In the end I had to go down the compound 'Dogophile-Vegan-Nurse' pathway, and here's what I came up with:

1. cat-ophile-veggie-storian
2. tall
3. loyal
4. geographically-challenged
5. curly
6. really-tremendously-enthusiastic!!!

1 and 6 are probably fairly obvious from my blog. 2 and 5 even more so when you meet me; in fact they're family traits more generally. I was reflecting on the vagaries of having curly hair just this week when once again I returned from the hairdresser sporting some sort of unfortunate fluffy lampshade on my head. Sigh. All of us grown up Sisses have curly hair, though Eco Sis is a dinkier version. One of our Israeli uncles sent us a nice family photo of him and his brood recently in height order. It looked like a perfectly normal photo - until you realised that Israeli Uncle is 6 foot 4 and he was only in the middle of the shot! 4. is a more unique defining characteristic - in fact I think that Kiwi Sis got my spatial awareness genes as she always knows where she is whereas I can get lost truly anywhere. I have only once been able to identify which way was north (which The Scientist can somehow do magically almost anywhere) and that was when we were standing on the south coast in Brighton. 3 was a toss-up between loyal and kind, but since as I said in an earlier post, my loyalty to our cats means that I will now cheerfully throw water over any other neighbourhood cat, I went for the former.

On the latter topic, our friend Paul just sent us this link. It's a cat-cam which your moggie wears on its collar, and which takes a photo of wherever it is every two minutes. Can you imagine a more fun thing?! I would love to know where our cats go when they're out and about. I was amused that the cat featured on the site spends some time lurking under cars as that seems to be one of the pook's favourite places (judging by the oil stains he comes back sporting). He evidently found a good one during the rain last week as he came back looking like some sort of badger, with a big black mark all down his back. Actually, an anti-badger, since he's a white cat.

So, thank you for the tag, Johanna - I had a lot of fun thinking up my six words! I'm supposed to be passing it on to six more people, but I haven't been blogging long enough to know that many other bloggers personally. So, I will leave it as an open challenge to anyone reading this - do post a comment to share what you come up with. I asked The Scientist, but he only got as far as Scientist. I suppose they don't use that many words, do they? As inspiration, I will leave you with Munchkin Gramps's favourite Hebrew word, which is 'tachtanim'. It means underpants, so I suspect it won't be featuring in his memoir.

4 comments:

LisaRene said...

This was a fun post to read. It's interesting how in blogging we gradually gather little bits of information about each other which (at least for me) are combined like puzzle pieces.

Your comment about loyal vs kind and tossing water on the neighbor cat made me laugh out loud :)

Johanna GGG said...

thank you, thank you, thank you - what an entertaining post! Aren't words fun! (the fun is more important than passing on the tag)

I loved your first word - now this tag would be very useful if we started to create some meaningful words we could use.

And I will have to check out that cat cam - we often wonder where zinc goes esp when she gets very dirty - she too is a white cat but sometimes we have to ask who is the grey cat coming home instead of our lovely white cat!

Ilana said...

I was just telling some other medics yesterday about how you picked me up from primary school about 15 years ago and neither of us knew how to get home!

Will can also miraculously find hiking trails in the midst of roads, vineyards and people's gardens... and they really are trails!

LisaRene said...

Hi Lysy,

Wilson and I are enjoying a cocktail (read 4) and I'm reading him your blog as I too have been tagged for describing myself in 6 words. We are looking for clarification on the "ophile" aspect of your cat-ophile-veggie-storian. We have connected it to your "dogophile" friend but "ophile" is not in the dictionary and my imagination is at a loss. Are your referring to the ohelia from Hamlet?

Love how smart you are, hope it rubs off on me!