You know that Melita is feeling better, when she
a. dances while driving?
b. eats a pound of cherries on one sitting?
c. is excited to be out of the house?
d. gets her laundry room spotless?
e. all of the above
f. all of the above, except d
If you guessed "e," you are asking too much from your friend. If you guessed "f," thank you for you compassion and understanding. Laundry is not in my to-do list when I'm well, let alone when I'm just recovering. I've missed writing in my blog these past two days, but I just didn't feel like doing anything. I had to force myself out of bed to fulfill my responsibilities as a mom. Whatever I had, cold or flu, left my body weak, so I've tried to take it easy.
Today, after I fed Charlton, I got him out of his chair, and put him down on the floor. I was about to get his bath ready, when I see his face turning sour. Now, Charlton has beautiful smiles and I've taken many pictures of his smiley face, but I've always wanted to have a picture of him while crying. I'm not talking about cries that come because of hunger or tiredness or a dirty diaper. I'm talking about those adorable cries that start little by little and by which your child is trying to say "you've hurt my feelings" or "I can't believe you did that to me." It's a cry that starts with shock, sadness and then continues with anger. I call them tantrum cries. Anyways, I've been wanting to get a picture of Charlton's tantrum cry for a long time, but I'm never near the camera. So, today, when he started his cry that promised to be a tantrum cry, I immediately went to get my camera hoping I was going to click my masterpiece. The minute he sees my camera, he does this
I promise he had a totally sour face before this. The only thing I can think of is that I've totally programed my son to smile when he sees a camera! I'm glad he is a happy fellow, but I'm not giving up on the sour face picture. I'll post it as soon as I get it.
This afternoon, I had a great time reading to my boys. Toward the end of our reading time, I was reading to them this book about mischievous royalty. The boys payed attention for the first few stories,but this was a long book, so they left me and went to play. I was enjoying this book myself, so I kept reading till I finished it. I thought it was a fun and entertaining book with lots of interesting facts. I loved the illustrations and its humor. The purpose of the book was to help young audiences to not always believe any story they read, instead they should keep the Scottish essayist, Carlyle, motto "History is a Distillation of Rumors" in mind and do their own research. The title of the book is " The Raucous Royals - Test your royal wits: crack codes, solve mysteries, and deduce which royal rumors are true." Here are some interesting facts I learned from it:
- Richard III is known to be the meanest uncle in the history, being accused for killing his nephews. Did you know that the accusations were made stronger when Thomas More wrote a biography of Richard III years later after the king died? Shakespeare also labeled him as an evil villain in his play and totally destroy any good info left of the dead king. Neither men had ever met the king. Thomas More was too young when Richard died, and Shakespeare just use More's biography as a resource. Their rumors influenced generations to come that saw Richard III as evil, without any actual proof. In 1998, "a mock trial was chaired by the chief justice of the United States, the Honorable William H. Rehnquist. The chief justice found that there was not enough evidence to convict Richard and stated that the accounts of More and Shakespeare were merely "rumor on rumor." Isn't that funny and sad at the same time?!
- Queen Elizabeth knew eight languages (Greek, French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Flemish, Welsh, and English), and she liked to flirt using each one of them, at different times of course.
- "Louis XIV towered over his subjects at an amazing six feet, ten inches. Unfortunately, he was only five feet, four inches when naked. To compensate for his short stature, he wore a twelve-inch-high wig and six inch red heels. But this was one look that no one could copy. Louis decreed that only the king could wear red heels." As if any man would want to wear RED heels. The vanities of royalty, especially the short ones!
- Napoleon was a short man as we all know by the paintings that portray him. Did you know, though, that he actually measured five feet six inches, which in our times may not be tall, but not short either? The most interesting fact was also that the average height in Northern Europe in the late 18th century was five feet, four and half inches! Napoleon was taller than the average guy! (The short rumor actually started by the Brits who portrayed him as a midget in their cartoons, because of their spite. I'm sure that if Napoleon had been a Brit, he would have looked colossal in their paintings.)
- We all know that Maire Antoinette's uttering of the famous line "Let them eat cake" brought her to the guillotine. Well, the funny thing is that Marie never said those words. In 1766, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau claimed a "great princess" had heartlessly suggested the poor eat cake if they had no bread. This "great princess' couldn't have been Marie, because she was just eleven at the time and living in Austria. The rumor must have been spread by someone who wanted the royals dead for their own ambitions, and they knew how ready to be convinced the masses were, being all hungry and tired of taxes.
- Shakespeare may have liked history a lot, as shown by his many historical plays, but he didn't bother to do much research. He loved to be dramatic, and what better tools than made up facts, or gossip, as he later made up the word himself, to use in his plays. Shakespeare was the ultimate rumor spreader.
Speaking of cartoons, here is one that Gillian drew yesterday. I really like it. I better be on her good side when she draws me in her cartoons. I wouldn't want to have Napoleon's luck and be drawn as a midget. Oh, I forgot. I'm already a midget. A midget with a big personality, though. (I'm sure that's how every short person presents him/herself to the world.) Okay, enough with midget talk. Here is Gillian's pretty cartoon:
