Morning, All.

Happiest Birthday to Aimee!!

It's 11:30. There's still too much gronk. Some of it should have dissipated by now.

Ozzie has a habit of trying to sneak up on me so he can stretch out on me without my noticing. Of course, he weighs over 25 pounds, he's longer than my torso when he stretches out, and he's usually purring loud enough to wake the dead, so it generally doesn't work that well.

Legion does the same thing. He'll get pushed down to the foot of the bed, where he waits on tenterhooks until he's decided I've fallen asleep (usually about 20 seconds), then he slowly creeps back up. Like I'm not going to notice 17 cat-pounds being delivered to my squidgy bits via tiny cat feet.

And on that note, the baby has given me a sloppy baby goodnight kiss and curled into his crib, so I'm going to grab the catlump and head for bed myself.

I think there are two good ways to handle dialect. One is going all-out, liek Irvine Welsh, and using phonetic spellings and colloquial word choices for everyone. The other choice is to write everyone using standard English spellings, and suggest dialect lightly, through word choice.

As Susan suggests, writing one group of characters in dialect while acting like everyone else speaks perfect English often is racist or classist. I think it should probably only be used if you're trying to show that the narrator is racist or classist, or if you're trying to show that the narrator's in a completely unfamiliar setting.

I agree that pidgins or creoles are a bit of a wildcard, and I'm not sure how they should be handled.

Normally my catlump curls up next to my head where he can be in my hair. In cooler weather, he likes to sleep on my hip or my chest. Hubby has, on more than one occasion when I can't sleep, picked up the protesting catlump and dropped him on my hip, whereupon catlump and I proceed to doze off. Koogie, said catlump, is a bony old skinnycat who barely clears ten pounds these day.

Hubs is beginning to be afraid if I get to bed first. Teddy will be asleep by my head, and Max by my feet. Often not leaving enough room for Hubs to sleep there.

Marie likes the top of the cat tower in the living room.

Anna isn't very snuggly in the summer. Although if I'm reading in bed she'll climb on my lap. I sleep on my side and sometimes I'l wake up with her perched on my side looking down at me.

In the winter she turns into a catlump.

ION, Naturalizer online is giving 50% off the sale prices. So tempting to do damage because they carry my wee size.

I KNOW!! They carry my Fred Flintstone size (rectangular) and it is one of the few stores that I can find shoes to fit me right. But, I just paid tuition and bought a plane ticket. I can't afford it right now. But, come my next paycheck?? Momma needs some new shoes.

If I was going to put my Dutch SiL on the page, I would try to capture the flavor of the way she speaks English. She will say something like "We were most happy to see the Mother on her visit." Which is a combination of translating from Dutch in her head and learning English from schoolbooks. Cleaning up the grammar on her sentences would not be accurate.

Happy happy birthday, Aimée!

I wonder if I can get a nice bendy sole that doesn't die. That would rock.

Yes, you can. I had very thin, bendy soles put on my latest pair of vintage pointy-toe buckle boots, because those sorts of boots ALWAYS have thin leather soles. They extend the life of the boots, and with the added bonus of traction!

Jilli, I just found a pair of wee pumpkin tights!