h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'There is/are.../ There was/were...' are dummy subjects. We use them to say something exists. So you're question was 'Are photos going to exist?' Absolutely nothing to do with here really, which does confuse students so, especially as 'exists' is way above their vocab levels when we try and teach them that structure. If patterns help you then I'd think something like: '_my_ pen, _your_ pen, _his_ pen, _her_ pen, _their_ pen' to keep them separated.

And nobody will trust that explanation with 'you're' question instead of 'your'...

I like to think I've got the balance right with not being too overprotective. My girls are fiesty and independent and they've spent time in a "progressive" school. Sunshine already has multiple piercings. She's well into double figures including 5 in one ear. She's stretching one in each of her ears and currently has 8mm rivets in them.

What pushed me over the edge was finding out that she's has some more done where I really don't think "nice" girls have piercings (apologies to any "nice" girls here) spending money that family, including pensioners, have given her for birthday and pocket money because they know she wants driving lessons and should be saving for university. Then she got drunk and showed people the latest modifications, then she wrote all about it on a website. That's how I found out. Yesterday she had the cheek to ask me for train money to go and hang around with other people who also appear to have too much time on their hands. That was it!

So, post exams, she has to make serious efforts to earn her own money over the summer and save as much as she can. Until then she's not going anywhere and I will find her jobs to do. Hampshire's not so far away T, so I'll send her round! She'll be in the States mid July on a school trip so anyone in Baltimore or NY can line up some jobs too. My garden looks wonderful and the car gleams inside and out.

Single parent=double the worry.

Me being the tattoo'd and pierced mom that I am, D and I have already had discussions about them. She's only 8, and already she's decided that she doesn't want to get her ears pierced until she's at least 10 (I'm pushing for 12), and she doesn't want a tattoo ever, because as she put it, it hurts. I offered to dye her hair pink, and she just looked at me like I was off my rocker. I figured that would be the end of it, but then she said she didn't want pink hair, she wants blue. So it looks like this week we are dying her hair blue. I think it will be cute.

Quick question: What are loon pants?

http://www.tullpress.com/t14sept01.htm

Mowing news. I managed to operate both mowers and the weed whacker without a single fire.

We've done clothing disasters. What clothes did you have that you thought made you look terrific/foxy/sexy/soooooooooooooo cool?

I remember a dress I wore one New Year's Eve that I was absolutely stunning in. It had an empire bodice with a deep v neck and cap sleeves made out of lavender handmade lace over a black satin sheath with a side slit up to ...ahem. I had satin pumps dyed to match the lavender lace and wore my mother's amethysts. (Her birthstone)

Ahhh now I understand. I'd never heard about the concept of a dummy object before. It's strange how you never understand the concept of the grammar of your own language until you start learning other languages. Or ask a forgiener, that's embarrassing.

I don't think that lots of piercings and tattoos aren't associated with being 'bad' kids any more. In fact they are more fasionable on nice middle class children, none of the girls at school who got pregnant/arrested/married at 16/ sent prison had any, or at least not the really odd ones, just eyebrows ears noses and tounges, and some lip ones. In fact it was all the university bound ones who got lots/odd piercings, the others rebeled in less visable ways (getting pregnant/arrested/married at 16/sent to prison).

I knew they'd become too mainstream when I saw a tatoo on a surgeon, and a (male) consultant with a nose and ear piercings. I really have no desire to stick metal through myself, looks painful to me.

Except on my course visable piercings tend to scare little old ladies, so they're against the medical school dress code. That means that we either get nipples, or more *ahem* intimate things done - and as soon as we qualify get visable piercings.

What's odd is now that it's relatively easy for queers to have kids those of us that want them are starting to expect that we'll have them, as straights have for ages. So now as I have mentioned before we're starting to discover a concept of a shelf.

Which is why I'm currently lamenting the fact that I'm single at the age where I've imagined that I'd be starting a family.

You see I've found that growing up on benifits has been a very valuable life experience, however I've noticed that children of doctors don't tend have such a life experience. So the plan, when I was 19 and not single, was to have children in my final year, live on benifits for that year. Due to the anomolies of the benifit system, my parter could technically be a single parent in the eyes of the DSS.

Then they could still grow up staying they came from a council estate, whenever they were being interviewed by a lefty who hated the middle classes (like I am when I get to torture medical school applicants on the interview panel!).

Admittely this was a stupid plan that I made when I was 19.

Admittedly this is a shallow and relatively comfortable pit of despair, as I've got out of it by making myself a cup of hot chocolate and remembering that I'm going to see Elton John live at the NEC tomorrow.

[GDZ]

I'm a tattooed mum myself and I've spent my whole life around bikers. I've tolerated all the other piercings up until this point. I just think with the latest ones she's been very silly with her body, very reckless with other people's money and also needs a reminder not to expect that she can take and take. The underage binge drinking I'd ignore, except that it's all part of the story posted on the net so I feel I have the right to lecture her about that too. Don't forget, I spend 100% of my time with this age group and have done for many years.

Moonlight has dyed long black hair. Very, very raven black. It looks stunning. We never managed to get a blue to take.

Sorry. I didn't mean to lecture, but I think I did.

[MTG]

I'll go look at Marv's pics in a minute; right now, I'd like to show you a couple of mine at http://www.asterlil.com/orb.htm .

Some of you might remember when I took some moonrise pictures and we got into a discussion about an anomaly we spotted. The lens has been properly cleaned since that time. It's the same house as the last picture, except I was standing in back of it then.

I can also guarantee that no water fell on my lens, or, more properly, on the UV filter that protects it. These shots were in the middle of a group I took. The second one is included because there was only a gap of several seconds between it and the first one, so physical conditions can't have changed that dramatically inside or on the camera.

There is a point where decoration spills over into self-mutilation, but I have no idea where that point is.

What bugged me most about the stepson, (apart from the destruction of property), was that he simply would not get a job and work.

He was and still is happy to leach off his father. I am sorry, if you want to call your own shots, you pay your own bills.



Foxy clothing? A dark green peticoat of my grandmother's that I wore with a short black velvet jacket one summer at uni. I pulled every single time...!

B

That's anomolous, Lil.

B

The point where decoration spills over into self-mutilation? That's the place we're at now. Actually I've decided that since it was her dad's money (and his pensioner mother's ) and on his computer that she posted the whole thing to a website, then that makes it his problem too.

"if you want to call your own shots, you pay your own bills"
That's why I hauled her round all ye shoppes in ye village and tomorrow we go to town.

It pleases me no end that both my daughters hate needles with a capital H and have no desire for tatoos or additional piercings other than the standard set of one in each ear lobe.

The nicest clothes I've ever worn were those you saw me in at the Celery's ball.

Oh, and I thought that was a bouncing hail stone until you pointed out that the air was still with no precipitation, Lil.

Lil, it looks like a ball to me, being kicked across the picture.

Ooohps sorry I forgot! Whatever I say about myself as a teenager I was at least paying my own bills. Well my sixth form grant went on the morgage, and when I was working full time during the summer holidays, I was paying sixty pounds a week keep - which also went on the morgage. I know it doesn't seem much now, but as I was earning two pounds fifty an hour it was a hell of a lot to me then! I was only taking home eighty pounds a week after tax, and I was going to university at the end of the summer, and would have liked to have saved some up. And sometimes I earnt less because I was working at a theme park and we got sent home if it rained. So I can understand why they didn't object to me spending the remaining twenty pounds on underage drinking. Actually they did object when my hair went from shoulder length to the length it is now. But I think I just refused to give them that weeks keep and threatened to move it with my girlfriend.

I would have loved to have worked part time during sixth form but couldn't because as soon as I started work we'd have lost thirty pounds a week of benifits, and I couldn't get a job that paid more than that- I really tried! I'm sorry but I just didn't see the point of working all day and only keeping five pounds for myself, I know I'd have saved the taxpayer thirty pounds a week, but I think that studying and volentry work was a better use of time.

Actually simply refusing to work is what bugs me most about my father. I found out recently that my (86 year old) grandparents are paying my Dads morgage because they seem to think that he'll get sucidal if he doesn't. Which puts me in a bit of a dilmea when I graduate. I don't want to subside my Dad when he's simply refusing to produce any work that's commerically viable. But I know that when I start work I can hardly let my grandparents contine to pay his morgage. Still I'm not going to. I think my parents need to realise that they aren't going to get subsidesed for ever and grow up a bit. His current money making plan is to sell his old car as an 'installation' to a gallery because he can't afford to have it scrapped.

I do appreciate that I had a fantastic upbringing, and they did a lot for me, but they also caused a lot of problems when they had a message separation, reconcillation and separation in my teens. Hell I couldn't sleep the night before my English GCSE exam because they were having a drunken argument admittedly I wouldn't have slept anyway, because I was nervous and I got an A*.

I hope I'm not being a stroppy early twentyager. But I'll graduate with a lot more debt that I would do if I'd just had parents who were able to lent me a hundred quid at the end of term and give me somewhere to live in the holidays. There's been times when I would have loved to be able to ring up my parents and cry because I couldn't work out how I was going to manage to pay the bills, but I've always either worked when I really didn't have the time, or asked the bank manager for money. And property being what it is my priority is to get a place of my own first, I have to say most people my age seem to have parents who can act as garentors, or give them a bit towards the deposit, so I expect I'll be paying a higher intrest rate when than others.

I'm being a brat aren't I? I'm just being utterly selfish. I know all this resolve will go when I go home and realise exactly how little money they are living on.

z, if it's any consolation, my dad blew a little more than a million in less than 10 years, and is now bankrupt and wants me to pay him back the 1500 bucks he gave me when I got my degree.

I don't think so.

Anywho, loon pants apparently=hiphugger bellbottoms. Yikes, in lime green?!

Clothes wise, my best outfit is the one I'm wearing for my friend Jen's wedding, but as far as drop dead sexy? What I wore last night. A flirty skirt from the Gap in shades of brown/reds, with a long sleeved Issac Mizrahi shirt that has what I would call a Napoleonic neckline...just above the *ahem* ...J seemed to like it, anyway. And I felt drop dead sexy in it.