Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s Comments (group member since Sep 20, 2013)

Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s comments from the Net Work Book Club group.

"Chastened." Now there's an interesting word. To look at it, you'd think it meant "to be made chaste" as in "virginal." However, it actually means "to be restrained due to reproof or punishment."
I found myself using the phrase (in writing), "Much chastened, I returned to my work."
I know it comes from the French word "chatir" which means "to punish" but it almost sounds like it could return your virginity to you, don't it!

I very seldom have nightmares, these days. Maybe we grow out of them as we get older and realise that being afraid of things doesn't actually achieve much. I do occasionally have "stupid" dreams where things are so odd that you wake up thinking, "Now--what?"

"If that ball comes in this yard, boys--It's Mine!"

Good news, I've started remembering my dreams. Several years ago I had a couple of TIAs and stopped dreaming. I've always had extremely vivid, detailed dreams--rather like going to the movies! Often I was not even a character in my own dreams, and I seldom dream of people and places I know IRL. Dreams I had decades ago have stayed with me in great detail.

For years now, if I dreamed at all, I have forgotten my dreams the moment I woke up, and felt robbed. Most people don't understand the importance to me of my "dream life", but I also realise that when I remember my dreams I wake up rested and in a positive frame of mind. Of recent months I would be aware that I had been dreaming, but not what about--so frustrating!

For the last week or so, though, I have seen "the movie"...it faded gradually over the half-hour or so after waking, but it's there, and it's detailed, and I'm back to my old standards of either being in the dream, but not being "me" (different person/situation) or simply watching the movie.
So encouraging.

"You young'uns go on and play over yander!!"

One of those country-gal words leaped out of my mouth this morning, the kind I haven't used since I was twelve. Something was said and I was responding with sarcasm, and I heard myself say,
"Oh whoopti-diddly-dee!"

Well, yes, there is that. But in many romances of the HQ type, the situation is just nonsensical from the git-go. I read one where the heroine was overheard saying goodbye to a person and trying to encourage them in their problem, and the hero jumped to the conclusion she was having an affair! Did he confront her? Noooo. He just treated her like dirt and set up situations to "catch" her for the next hundred pages.

It's the assumption that a man will manipulate a woman for weeks and then when she finds out, she will give him the wedding-smile and fall into his arms like a mountain of silk, that I can't stand.

A friend of mine in highschool also fed exclusively on books of this type and the Danielle Steele sort as well. I always wondered if it gave her unrealistic expectations of marriage. I remember screaming with laughter at some of the Harlequins--particularly Leopard in the Snow and others by Anne Mather and Essie Summers. Reading them aloud made us aware of how hysterical they were! Summers came out with immortal lines like: "Their eyes met as she reached for the roast." And the heroine of Leopard in the Snow seemed to be so short of breath she couldn't finish a sentence: "But Dominic--I...How can you...I never thought..." LOL

That was how I cured my mother of thinking they were "dirty books." I read Beyond the Foothills aloud to her once when she was laid up ill in bed. She laughed till the tears ran down her face, in all the "wrong" places! I remember even being allowed to join the Harlequin Book Club that sent you 5 books a month, for a year or so. When my dad was laid up recovering from surgery after I had left home, he apparently read them all!!

Oh Groovy that takes me back! When I was a kid, my mother said that Harlequins especially were "dirty books" and only trailer trash read them! My first encounter up close was when my wild-child much older sister was brought back to our hometown a la Prodigal Son (except he came home willingly, she was brought). She fed on a steady diet of all kinds of RO-mance...and a lot of the non-Harlequins were basically mommy porn! Harlequins at that time were bland as you say. I could basically recite the formula: Girl runs away from home for whatever reason, often because she's wealthy and wants to be "loved for herself". Meets boy, hates boy, fights with boy over some silly misunderstanding that could be cleared up with one question and one straight answer, but which carries on for about one hundred pages. Boy thinks girl is an idiot but he is so attracted he can't help manipulating her emotions for the whole book, pretending to hate her but really in love. (!!) Finally it all gets straightened out in a big scene, and all that happens is a kiss or two until they are man and wife. Curtain.

"You've Got Mail" is a classic example. If you want to har-har over my review of one of the first Harlequins I actually read, here is a much-later review: The Bride Price

Isn't it sad when you revisit a movie or book that you loved so much in the past and find that you don't enjoy it at all! Not necessarily something you loved as a kid, because yeah, we all grow up, but say a decade or so ago, and then you see/read it again and you think--"What did I like about this?"

Groovy wrote: "They're probably getting it mixed up with the word 'toiling'."

Well that's a thought! I thought maybe they meant "fishing" through their junk to see what they could find...so "trawling" would also fit.

They are deffo best straight out of the oven of course!
As for the eclipse, the newspapers etc here haven't said a word about it so I guess not. Not that they pay any attention, in my city. I remember several years back, there was a partial eclipse, and people sitting on the bus were like, "What a dark, ugly day it is" but no one remembered about the eclipse--except me, and I kept my mouth shut. Oh, and the doomsday cults who annouced "the end of the world" that day--which is still here.

Got this in a text this morning. Remember the old "I before E except after C" rule?

"I before E except when your foreign neighbour Keith receives eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.
Weird."

It's from the French, Drôle, meaning funny or strange or amusing. Usually used in a sarcastic way in English, which is where MrB got confused. People say "oh how droll" when they mean it isn't, these days.

Cats are just plain loopy as their natural state, MrB. There's no "going" about it. If you left her with someone else while you were away she's also probably engaging in payback.

I am better, spent yesterday in bed with a cold. Had things I wanted to do but decided I'd better rest or I'd be really ill. Colds always go straight to my chest. At least my nose didn't swell up!

People who confuse "trawl" with "troll." Trawling is a fishing technique. Trolling is being obnoxious online. I get tired of reading about how someone was "trolling through their patterns looking for..."

Yes, well--that's rather the point. What my mother used to call "diarrhea of the lip and constipation of the brain."

She was a graphic old gal, my mum.

We have a word in Spanish for people who pontificate on and on and on, basically not embarassed at sound of their own voice:
Verborrhea.

I could give you some very cogent French profanity to use...LOL But yes, I've seen some one and two-star reviews lately and then the review talks about how good the book is, and you're left like, ???? So if they just one-star and don't even leave a review, I just ignore them.

Be my guest!