Memos to self

Life is too short to clean the underside of frying pans and saucepans.

You can never have too many vases.

You can never have too many scarves.

You can never have too many earings.

Tell my daughter that the back scratcher she bought me for last birthday is just about the best present I’ve ever had.

Read War and Peace again now I have a Kindle and don’t have to balance the book on my knees.

Learn how to tell one cockatoo from another.

Do my Italian lessons daily.

Don’t call computers, IPads and the like, machines; my big grandson really hates that.

Tell my daughter and son that when the time comes, my tombstone has to say that I once sliced 20 Kilos of onions for a charity barbeque.

And speaking of when the time comes, in my second life I will come back six inches taller, have shoulders which can hold a bag strap (mine slope downwards), be very musical and have a cheaper hobby – patchworking is very expensive. On the issue of not being musical in this life, there’s a saying which fits me perfectly: “Swans sing before they die. T’were no bad thing, should certain persons die before they sing.”

Never again sail on a boat skippered by my spouse.

Never again sail on anything smaller than an ocean liner.

(Speaking of expensive hobbies, my spouse has had a succession of boats. As the old definition goes: “Boats; a hole surrounded by water into which you throw money.”)

Never play percussion for a performance of Ravel’s Bolero (unlikely but it’s important to make the point. I’ve been told the percussion refrain is repeated 169 times).

Lose weight. Lose a great deal of weight.

Find out where flies go in winter.

Stop worrying that my grandchildren know more than me, at least concerning technology. When it comes to language and literature, I’m still the queen.

Learn the second verse of Advance Australia Fair.

Remember not to put flowering plants on the balcony table. They get eaten by the cockatoos.

Remember not to put out my hand with seeds in it to the cockatoos. You’d think three very nasty nips would have taught me a lesson.

Find out why my computer calls me Zena, which is my middle name, instead of Susan.

 

 

Quotation for the week, from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Groucho Marx: One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas I’ll never know.