MUCH better, thanks, Catalan verbs, Russian and Latvian, and laundry drying.

OK folks, I am feeling much better today, and thank you everyone who sent support both off the blog and on. It all helps.

I decided to have a nap this morning as I haven't been sleeping well lately. partially because I drink pots of tea in the morning and then sometimes nap in the afternoon. I know that's how the Spanish/Catalans do it, but it wasn't working for me. Spiralling down instead, stay up later and later every night, tired, drink tea to stay awake, half nap, stay up late....SO, I had a caffeine free morning...boy, that was strange..can you say addiction? I was two of Snow White's dwarfs all rolled into one...Dopey and Snoozy...so mid morning, I faded, but I decided to check out the beds, we had made some changes recently...I had added a foam overlay to the mattress on the floor that the man and I use, the elder daughter had slats put under her mattress on the floor, and the younger daughter has a too short, sprung lattice frame kind of things, that I had never tried.

Well, Goldilocks lay down in Papa bears bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay down on elder sister's bed, but it was too cold, then she lay down on little sisters bed and it was JUST right...soft, and cushy, and had the warm warm sunshine laying over it like another blanket. Mmmmm. It was also the LAST bed I tried in my somnambulistic wanderings. Very nice. I have found the morning napping bed of choice when the sun shines. Unlike Golidlocks, I didn't break anything though.

It has finally gotten chilly here, we were down around 2 and windy which is apparently normal for here. It isn't really all that cold, but I so loathe the purple MEC winter parka that I have had for over 15 years, that it is going to have to get a whole lot colder for me to put it on. It is a great coat, but it is patched and I have grown a wee bit tired of it. Or at least it has not grown cold enough for me to appreciate it's merits.

Spent a good part of the day studying Catalan verbs, and English ones to try to fathom out the Catalan. I have come to the conclusion that verbs are like humans. Complex, transient, conditional, perfectionist, and full of tenses and moods. Look at them long enough and I get tense and moody as well. After going around and around them and trying to compare them to English verbs...do you know what a present perfect subjunctive verb looks like? I was more than a little lost. I could not make them correspond, nor could a figure out what I was telling people if I said "vaig haver anat" That would be passat anterior perifrastic. I am pretty sure it doesn't exist in English. My poor head.

Went to my Catalan class, again came out feeling like one of the dimmer bulbs in the box, although as my Catalan improves that is waning. Most of the women in the course can speak Castillian, and I am taking the class in both languages, but their Catalan is not improving as fast, since they don't need to use it as much, and I am keeping up better. Even managed to write notes to the teachers and decipher grade 5 math homework!

I asked my Catalan teacher about the verbs and she gave me some useful tips. She cannot speak English, but any light in the gloom helps. First of all, not counting subjunctive which English barely uses, Catalan has 1 present tense to English's, I believe, 5. (I study, I am studying, I have studied, I have been studying, ...) Now some of you language scholars out there are going to correct me, and you are almost certainly right...remember I am only looking at the English to try and figure out what the heck is going on in Catalan.

Past tense differs markedly however. We have 4 past tenses, I sang, I was singing, I had sung, and I had been singing. Catalan has 7, and 3 subjunctive. Guess what they spend their time talking about. Yup, it ain't now. As the husband put it, "What do you expect of a nation that peaked in the 13th century."

This should be fun.

Continuing the linguistic theme, my sister has been contacting tons of wonderful folks, and has come up with more linguistic versions of "What do you want to do?" here they are:

Ce vrei sa faci? This is the Romanian translation. Thank you Marina

Lithuanian: Ką norėtum padaryti?

Russian: Что ты хотел бы сделать?

Estonian: Mida Sa sooviksid teha?

Latvian: Ko tu vēlies darīt?

Castillian: Que quieres hacer?

Isn't cut and paste marvelous?

The great t-shirt drying experiment has begun. Today I hung out 2 dark coloured 100% cotton t-shirts, one rung as well as I could, and the other not. I also hung out 2 50/50 poly/cotton t-shirts, both white, again one wrung and one not. Finally I hung out two dry t-shirts, one 50/50, and one 100%cotton. Hey, I went to university. I know how to set up a robust experiment...that's the control group. THIS is a dry t-shirt. We'll see what happens. They were hung out at about 4:30 pm, no sun, dry air and some breeze. About 2 degrees Celsius. The race is on.