Misc notes

[liv]

I had a very pleasant evening with pseudomonas yesterday. We ate in Gandhi's, which turned out to be affordable and nice and just that little bit above your basic curry house. I need to stop taking pseudomonas for granted; it's easy to fall into thinking that he's just around so I don't have to make any specific effort to see him, but of course if I think like that, I never do.

My mother has been using the same breadknife since she got married 28 years ago. It is chronically blunt and worn down too much to be sharpened any further. So I bought her a new breadknife last time I was in a department store, and she insisted on giving me a penny for it "so we don't cut our friendship". Maman is not normally a superstitious person, but this struck me as rather sweet.

Today I went to synagogue for Succot (Tabernacles). There were lots of cute children and comedy vegetables. La vie est belle (even though on the way home I managed to fall over hard in the fashion of a child who hasn't properly learnt how to control her own body yet, and have a scraped knee to prove it that would look appropriate on a six-year-old... joys of being clumsy).

Comments

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

heh. i did that a while back - wearing a floaty silk pink skirt, running back from the corner shop to the office in the afternoon after aquiring sweets, raining, slipped and fell in a rather comedy six-year-old manner. scraped knee :)

[liv]

Well, I think one might reasonably expect an adult to be at risk of falling over while running in slippery weather. But adults are supposed to be able to walk normally without falling over their own feet for no reason at all. Oh well, thanks for the scraped knee solidarity, anyway.

[jc.livejournal.com]

That knife superstition is common enough to make it into Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife#Knife_superstitions) I've been on the "paying" end for both a razor and a multitool.

[liv]

Thanks for that link. I'm just thinking that the internet must be a folklorist's dream in some ways; of course, they'd have the same problems as anyone else that there's a mix of inaccurate and true information, but since they're probably trying to study the inaccurate information and how stories change as they proliferate, they're in a better position than most.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I thought that was a Jewish superstition. Is it a general one?

[liv]

What gave you the idea that it was a Jewish thing? Where did you come across it?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

When my grandfather charged me a penny for the penknife he gave me for Chanukah when I was fourteen.

[jsposito.livejournal.com]

What is it about mothers and old bread knives? Mine has been using the same since she got married, too! Perhaps I should follow your example and make a replacement, else it's never going to get done.

(Hello, by the way -- just passing through. This is jsposito, whom you met very briefly when you were eating at Naan 'n Curry with darcydodo and a couple of other LJ'ers.)

[liv]

Hi there. I do indeed remember meeting you in Naan n Curry. *waves*

I think buying your mother a replacement knife would be a very good plan; even the most expensive are within the reasonable range of birthday presents. I know how not getting round to replacing things works, so I do have an amount of sympathy. I tend not to replace things unless they're actually broken to the point of being unusable. Presents are a good way to get round this inertia though!