“Small stroke.” I guess the size does matter in this instance. Mother has had a “small stroke” and is now in a “home.” Quotation marks, or as my Commonwealth Country friends would say, inverted commas, are remarkably handy. Denoting the slightest bit of prevarication they hint at, give a clue that, subtly indicate that, what is being said is not what is being meant, that there’s more, and sometimes less, to the words than their dictionary definition.

Kind of like “alternative” facts. The alternative to a fact is a lie, a misrepresentation, a “not-fact.”

Some other day I’ll explore the difference between truth and fact, and lie and myth. Not today however.

Fact:  I have to clean Mother’s house to get it ready to sell.

Fact:  cleaning a mother’s house to sell used to take place only after a mother’s death.

Fact:  Mother is not dead.

Fact: Something is “amiss.”

“Amiss:” difficult, sad, sometimes gut-wrenching, somehow wrong.

I do like quotation marks.

Well, happy year of the rooster!

If my new dental hygienist wasn’t six feet tall, blond, green eyed, had shoulders broader than mine, a last name with nine letters (three of which are vowels), and was called Petrushka, she could pass for my former dental hygienist May Ling who is Chinese.

Their teeth cleaning styles are as different as their physiques.

May Ling is subtle and gentle as she cleans and polishes, all wrists and fingers, making cooing sounds like a dove as she works.

‘trushka is all shoulders and elbows with judgmental grunts and “tsks” during her scraping and digging task. From where I was sitting it looked like what a large pot of borscht might see as it was being stirred … or maybe what a ditch sees while being dug.

The ultimate outcome of their ministrations is the same: clean, shiny teeth.

Both are first generation in this country, families fleeing oppressive Communist regimes in the 1970s. My family has been on this continent since the reign of King Charles the First, we helped throw off the shackles in 1776.

Both May Ling and Petrushka judge the world from the perspective of the open mouths of strangers … the fizzy soda drinkers, coffee or tea drinkers, cigarette smokers, the flossing and not-flossing. I inherited the stereotypical English gene for bad teeth. It isn’t all my fault.

Cultures clashing, histories rubbing shoulders … roosters have no teeth.

Well, boy-howdy, would you look at this. I not only re-discovered that I have a blog, I managed to reset my password. Now if I could just remember writing the second entry, did I write that? Did anybody actually read it? I think it’s rather good, so if I did write it, good on me. If I didn’t, thank you to whoever did!

Why did I stop writing? Now I remember: there was an article that said blogging was going the way of the dodo … in Mauritius they use the dodo on their money … never been to Mauritius but someone I know has been.

“Dodo” is a strange word to say, and even stranger to write. An article, in a social media platform, said blogging was passé. (This thing knows enough to automatically put accents on French words, cool.) Well, okay, blogging is passé, so call me passé. Most of my cultural references end at whenever the last full original cast Star Trek movie came out and a lot has happened since then so while blogging may be passé it’s new to me! And I think I’ll just keep right on doing it.

Goddam kids, get off my lawn!