Often

George walked into the office this week carrying a year old cable bill. I couldn't understand what he was asking me. All I could do was tell him that the bill was a year old. He came back about fifteen minutes later with an up to date phone bill. I looked at it and saw that not only was he up to date on payment but he had a $9 credit on his account. I told him this, and he seemed just as confused as when he came in in the first place. He left shaking his head. I have no idea what that was all about.
Bobbie is paranoid. She'd said and done things before that should have clued me in, but it really occurred to me this week just how paranoid she is. I think I probably mentioned this last summer, but one of the first things Bobbie ever told me was about "that Mexican over there in the trailer park dressin' in women's clothes and lookin' in my window." I know I mentioned how she had rolled up paper and stuffed it in her peephole. She's afraid people are spying on her through it. This week she came to me and went off on one of her long multiply tangential rants about everything under the sun, but in the midst of all the nonsense, I noticed her again focusing on the idea that people are wanting to look in on her through her bedroom window.
Aw-fun or Awf-tun? It grates on me when people abuse the English language, but I should admit a dialectical bias when I decide who I believe to be correct. Naturally, everyone from Colorado is right. So lately, I've been noticing every time I hear someone pronounce "often" sans the "t" sound. I don't do this. The "t" is in the word so it should be pronounced. There is no such thing as a silent "t" in this type of construction. But then Anna tells me that in voice lessons she was instructed to sing "often" without the "t" sound. I thought to myself, "self, how can educated people instruct their students to abuse the English language so?" But, I reasoned, this is the same voice teacher who pronounces "larynx" as "lair-in-ix." I tried to forget about it, but I couldn't escape people saying "awfun." So I looked it up, and to my surprise, the preferred pronunciation in the dictionary is "aw-fun." How could this be?!?! This is wrong! I did more reading. It turns out that the "t" was lost sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries as speakers got lazy. The lazy intellectuals of the 17th century decided that was alright by them so "aw-fun" became standard. When people in the 19th rediscovered the concept of spelling, they also rediscovered the "t" in "often." I suppose that it makes sense then for classically trained singers to sing "aw-fun" because that's how the composers of those songs heard it, but any pedant who tries to tell me that "awf-tun" is incorrect will get a swift kick in the balls.
Apparently Darbie hardly sleeps at night. She looks half dead each time she comes into the office so I've taken to asking her when she went to bed. Most nights as it turns out, she doesn't go to bed until three or four in the morning, and she has to get up at five to make the bus. I guess she does most of her sleeping on the bus ride to and from school.
Two more toilet paper rolls can be chalked up to Daisy's casualty list.
Our car has started to really idle funny this week. I took it to Autozone so they could get the computer readout from the car. It turns out that we have a bad O2 sensor. For those of you unfamiliar with an O2 sensor, it monitors the amount of oxygen in the exhaust system of the car and determines from this information what the mix of fuel and air should be in the engine. With the sensor out, the mix in the engine is off and ta-da, a sputtering engine. Hopefully, I can take it in on Monday.
I'm hungry.
Daisy has a nasty looking scabbed over spot on her neck, under her chin. I think we're going to have to stick her in a "cone of shame" until it heals.
Yesterday was tax day. Boo.
On Wednesday, Jennings County was filled with excitement over the arrival of the "Girls Gone Wild" bus in North Vernon. Facebook was filled with all sorts of commentary on the subject. Status updates ranged from fears that certain people's own mothers might end up on video to those wondering if they were doing a special series of "Meth-heads Gone Wild" to those who were tempted to buy this particular video just to see of they graduated with anyone on it. The general consensus was that North Vernon was about the stupidest place for the bus to go and expect to find attractive girls willing to expose themselves. My personal theory is that they are going for the corruption of mid-western goody two-shoes farm girls angle after spending so long on the beaches of California and Florida.
People who read this blog: Some random person from Brazil.
Since the only thing I know about Brazil is that it is full of transvestites, I can only assume that our visitor was a tranny. I have to wonder then what a transvestite might have found of interest in our blog. The imagination runs wild.