Paranoia and other pleasant things

No respekt

*Still working on the translations with Julia, still writing for the SUPER SECRET project. I have a few good stories from work that just beg to be written but they’ll have to wait a little more.*

Let me introduce what I’ll say here by admitting that I’m a bad singer. I’ve kinda known it from the 4th grade, when my teacher was looking for good voices for the class chorus, and everybody had to sing a portion from a song. I got to the end of the first line when she gasped and said “Ok, Ada, that’ll be enough.”

A good ten years after that I’ve heard my voice on tape and I had to admit she was right. While I sense the rhythm and can detect a false note sung by somebody else from ten kilometers, I utterly and completely suck at reproducing correctly the simplest tune. As I never intended to become the next Maria Callas (or Britney Spears, for that matter), it didn’t bother me much. Until now.

Here we were today, Timi and me, the li’l chipmunk nested comfortably in my arms while I was browsing the ‘net. She just had a language development spurt, her pronunciation becoming a lot clearer than a few days ago. So we’re naming everything to her until exhaustion, point to whatever we’re looking at in our magazines (she now knows precisely how an Athlon Brisbane CPU should look like, and can tell the mascara from the lip gloss ) and listen to kiddie song mp3s until they autoplay (on repeat, thank you very much) in our brains at random times. You haven’t lived until you’ve hummed “If I’d be a cat, I’d catch 100 mice” at 7 AM, I tell ya.

Anyway, back to me and Timi. The Mese Ovi (Kindergarten Tales) are playing, and a particularly catchy tune about a few freezing geese starts. Since I was feeling all cheery and full of joy, I bursted into song. My kid looked at me, sang for a short while along with yours truly and then … and then ..

… and then she looked at me again, with an expression reserved for when she’ll be much older and angsty and I totally won’t understand anything of what’s happening to her …

… and with a martyr’s resigned sigh, she put her little palm on my mouth, efficiently silencing me.

Posted under: chestii