Photos of phoreignness

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't realize when I took them that these photos have this theme, but they really do, don't they?

I have taken some pictures with my new phone's camera (which, just as comradexavier says, has bad resolution and focus) and am going to inflict them upon you now.

This is the first picture I took and then the first one I tried to e-mail to myself, just to see if it worked. It is of the British currency I had when I came back to the States. That's almost £7, it seems. I showed the money to my parents when I got home and they examined it in an obvious state of wonderment at something so strange, and both separately told me "You'll have to hang on to that, as a souvenir!" Well, I'm not in the habit of just tossing money away, so I didn't know why they thought I had to be told to keep it (I didn't even get around to taking it out of my purse for a few days or weeks, until I realized that its presence there was going to confuse me), but I never really thought of it as a souvenir, either. But then, they say the same things whenever I get mail with British stamps on it.

My grandpa makes (well, made) things out of wood as a hobby. He saw something like this somewhere, in some tacky gift shop or something. He's made some cool things based on designs of overpriced tourist junk—in my room I have a little canoe and a paddle, which hangs from a strand of yarn that my grandma crocheted for it; that's what I wanted for my birthday one year—but this is just a little toilet decoration to hang on one's bathroom wall and use to hold an extra roll of toilet paper. This one, of course, is color-coordinated with my mother's bathroom. Dig the lace. I once took the TP from this thing when the roll in use had run out at an inopportune moment for me (handily, the lacy decorative toilet happens to be within arm's reach when one is sitting on the actual toilet), and put it on the toilet-paper-roll holder. I was later chastised for this. Apparently I was supposed to get a new roll from under the sink and leave that one there, because it is decoration.

This is a picture of a picture of my family. For the last year or two, whenever she heard that I was coming back from school or England or wherever I'd been, the only thing my mom talked about more often than making me go to the dentist was getting a family picture taken. I personally think family pictures are silly, and think that involving my mom in the process can be excruciating. Because of her, my obligatory "senior pictures" were ugly, stupid, and the cause of me actually crying in front of her before we left because I was so tense and unhappy in this situation. This time was much easier; the worst thing that happened was that my mother flew around the house like a bat out of hell (screeching like one, as well). She couldn't wear the top she wanted and that meant that she had to wear this other one and that meant I couldn't wear the sweater I was told to wear, because it also had stripes and two striped things in the same picture would be unthinkable!, naturally, but I really had nothing else I could wear, as so many of my sweaters look absurdly big on my now-slightly-smaller body, but there was nothing else Mom could wear that didn't make her look like A Barn Wall (I swear one of the reasons she's so eager to get this new picture taken is so she can hide, burn, or at least never look again at the otherwise-most-recent family portrait, in which she is wearing a dress that she, upon seeing the pictures, said made her look fat—well, not fat, not "big" or "heavy" or the other words she normally uses for this, no, she said she looked like "a barn wall"; she always says that about that picture, and of course she has never worn that dress since). Of course it all got straightened out in the end and everything was perfectly fine. But I look at this picture now and see four calm, smiling faces and think only of the turmoil that got us there.

Comments

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

How on earth did you manage to reach adulthood, Holly?

I once took the TP from this thing when the roll in use had run out at an inopportune moment for me (handily, the lacy decorative toilet happens to be within arm's reach when one is sitting on the actual toilet), and put it on the toilet-paper-roll holder. I was later chastised for this. Apparently I was supposed to get a new roll from under the sink and leave that one there, because it is decoration.

It's stuff like this that would have caused me to do something drastic and subsequently, land in jail or something. LOL!

Your mom must be really frustrating to live with sometimes, but your stories about her never cease to amuse. I hope it's a good thing that some people who read you are amused.

[cosmolinguist]

My mom is really frustrating ... but the most frustrating thing about her is that she's actually great and really does mean well all the time. And it's better for me to tell the silly stories than to be too harsh. How did I manage to reach adulthood? That's easy: some would say I have not done that yet!

But really, I think it's because I know my family are cartoons. Sometimes the sense of humor isn't just a nice side benefit, it's the essential thing. It's all that keeps some of us us from murdering our relatives, I think. :-)

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

They all mean well, and that's what can make them so hard to live with sometimes.

I'm glad you sent that other link. I'd read it when you posted it, but had forgotten about it. It's an excellent piece on your family, and based on what I've read about them, can see why Andrew thought it reminded him of your zany bunch.

I wish I'd had a better sense of humor toward my own family while growing up. It would have helped a great deal, but as things were, all I wanted to do was escape in any manner possible.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Your mother has a *toilet roll* as *decoration* and yet you expect me to meet her and not have my head explode?

[cosmolinguist]

I don't care if your head explodes, you just have to convince her, just this once, that you are nice and good. I know you aren't, so you'll have to practice ahead of time. Because if you're okay and normal the first time, she'll think of you more favorably after that, and so all further encounters will be less painful for you and me. Trust me on this.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but... *toilet roll* as a *decoration*?!!

[cosmolinguist]

I know. I really do. But at least you can't say you weren't warned.