Bits and Pieces

[firstfrost]

• Back from California, for Second Christmas (sort of like Second Breakfast, but with loot!). I am such the city mouse, compared to my sister the country mouse, running around chasing chickens in my work shoes. My nieces Amelia and Isabelle are 2.5 and 0.5, respectively; I'm no doubt contributing to Eldest Child Syndrome by finding the toddler more interesting than the pre-talking pre-crawling baby. Still, they're both still very good-natured kids. Amelia's new focus is small round things, automatically dubbed "cute". ("For most families in which the child has a potato as a pet, it's because the parents don't like animals...").
• Four out of five Art Projects done! Unfortunately, I have left the tricksiest for last.
• Lyric with Snacky Snacks last night. As is sometimes the case, I liked the actors better than the play. The faux-Japanese costumes of the frame scenes bugged me (elegant and gorgeous, but low cut and high cut sufficiently to suggest to me the aesthetics of a topless wedding dress worn with pasties), and a lot of the second act had very, um, I guess I'd call it ragged character writing (I can expand, but don't want to spoil the plot for the people who moved to later). The characters/plot didn't feel plausible to me (which was perhaps the intent, given the theme of "everyone has their own personal version of truth") - and I found the guy who had an affair with a goat a believable character, so I must not be that picky.

Comments

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Huh. I found the characters in the second act mostly more comprehensible than the characters in the first act.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was that the first act was trying to be both more archtypal and more confusing (due to the multiple versions), and I was willing to go with that; the second act seemed to be trying to be more real people, and so it bugged me more that they weren't behaving properly real-ly. :)

[desireearmfeldt]

The guy having an affair with a goat was a quite realistic character in an absurd situation.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Eldest Child Syndrome?

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

The first kid always gets more attention than the younger ones - more baby pictures, no hand-me-downs, and so on. :)

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

Son't buy the lie! That eldest child syndrome is just a myth propigated by spoiled younger children!

Heh

[twe.livejournal.com]

I certainly always had the impression that the eldest child got more restrictions. (TVs in their bedrooms? Stay up as late as you want?)

Am I really the only youngest child here?

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that. Every time I asked if I could have a dog, the response was, "No, your older brothers had a dog before you were born. We're through with that now."

[(Anonymous)]

I was eldest and I remember when I got my first piece of new clothing. I was eight.

[greyautumnrain.livejournal.com]

I would be more sympathetic of my younger sibling on the hand-me-downs issue had she not regularly gone through my closet while we were growing up, asking "Do you still wear this," or "Does this still fit you?"

On the other hand, there is one way in which I will freely admit that Margaret got a raw deal: school. She got some hand-me-down teachers who would invariably remark to my mother (and on one occasion to me) about how Margaret was not as smart as Elizabeth. Our response: Margaret is happier and better socially adjusted than Elizabeth. Still, I'm pretty darn sure it stung because Margaret is really very bright.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

We were going through old slides over Christmas, and came across a picture of me as a baby, chewing on a Mickey Mouse rattle. The rattle had been handed down from me to Jess to Erik, and then went in the box of baby toys to Jess again, to Amelia and then to Isabelle. And, in fact, it was sitting in Isabelle's little pile of chewable toys even then. :)

Hand me downs

[twe.livejournal.com]

I was the oldest, and I got hand me downs from cousins. In junior high and high school, I got them from my Mom's younger sister and sometimes from my brother (18 months my junior). Sometimes he wanted them right back, though.

Nowadays, I get hand me downs from my (younger) sister, 8 years my junior, but a couple inches taller, which is kind of ironic/amusing. :)