Sunday 14 March 2010

Happy Mother's' Day

I think it's safe to say this here since I'm pretty sure my mum doesn't read my blog: Mothers Day bugs me. For one thing I never know if there should be an apostrophe, or where it should go if there is one. It's hard being a pedantic perfectionist when you were taught no grammar whatsoever at school.

Anyway, I never bother about Fathers Day since my dad couldn't actually care less. I'm sure he regards the whole business as a lot of commercial nonsense, and a waste of perfectly good trees into the bargain. My mum, on the other hand, tends to get a little upset if we neglect to acknowledge the day. After all, she goes to the effort of sending something to her mother, so there should be some recompense. My continuing state of poverty means that I baulk at spending upwards of thirty pounds on a handful of flowers that will be dead within a week, but luckily my mum happened to mention that, now that she no longer works closely with people, she doesn't get book recommendations, and the quality of her reading has plummeted. "Ah-ha!" I thought, "something I can help with". Librarygirl to the rescue! Not only do a couple of paperbacks cost considerably less than that short-lived bunch of flora, but I look like a wonderfully thoughtful daughter, who actually listened and responded. A quick trip to Amazon to ship off copies of The Enchantress of Florence and The Little Stranger, and I've done my duty. Literary flowers are so much better than literal ones anyway.

On a side note, my maternal grandmother actually got in a snit last year because she got a bunch of flowers from each of her daughters. Three bunches of flowers! At the same time! How awful. Apparently they should have consulted with one another beforehand to ensure a range of gifts. If I ever become that hard to please, just suffocate me with carnations.

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