At the Baylis B&B a gong is sounded for dinner. A gong! I love it. Back in the day when I had all six of my rugrats running around, I could have used a gong or at the very least a dinner bell. As it was, I simply had my lungs. My dad had his piercing whistle - which could probably be heard in neighboring states. That whistle is one of the things I regret not being able to do. It got the job done.Oliver says, when they're getting out of a cocktail party early that the advantage of being a doctor is always being able to drum up an emergency. I like to call that an "exit strategy". You know what they say "Failure to prepare, is preparing to stick out a boring party until the bitter end." The Founding Bettys have an awesome mom that totally fell on the boring party sword and faked a heart attack. We ♥ you, mom.
Daphne calls the Seymours 'Mother-in-law' and 'Father-in-law'. Not by their Christian names or by an affectionate title. Weird? What do you call your in-laws?
When married, her name will be Celine Seymour. Yikes. Try saying it three times fast. The
name Celine only brings to mind Celine Dion. Not. A. Fan. Sorry. Seymour - from the deep, dark, hidden recesses of my mind I managed to dredge up Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors.Father's sole job is selling liquor and Mother's sole job at the B & B is doing flowers. Celine is turning out rooms, attaching drainpipes, painting, gardening, escorting people to their rooms, helping cook meals, setting tables, etc, etc, etc...I'm not sure how old Celine's parents are supposed to be, but gosh, couldn't they help out a wee bit more? Discuss.
I had a friend whose mother would call the kids from the neighborhood to come into dinner with a very loud: Here, pig, pig, pig! Suuuuuuu--eeeeeee!
ReplyDeleteI use a large black cast iron chuckwagon triangle--the kids have three minutes to make it to the back door or they lose backyard/neighborhood wandering privileges. For the 3rd floor playroom I installed a wireless remote doorbell (I'm not making this up) for which I push the button from the first floor kitchen--still a three-minute limit.
ReplyDeleteAwesome. Awesome. Awesome, Betty JoDee. Can I send my kids to your house?
ReplyDeleteMy mother's theory was that you call your in-laws what your spouse calls them. Mom vs. Mum, etc. I never needed that approach -- when I married Betty Henry, I'd known Thomas and Anne for nearly 30 years by those names. (In other families, the honorific "Cousin" would have preceded their given names, but we didn't do that in my family, at least not on my mother's side. My father's brother was "Uncle Dan," but my mother's sisters were all "aunt"less.)
ReplyDeleteAnd poor Betty Ross's dad died in 1982, and by the time I met his mum, she was pretty out of it with Parkinsons and general decline from old age. She's never known who I was.