Amaryllis sillyramA

Little M spotted this in Oregon last time we went down. It’s a part of a sign for a water heater company? I think? To her, and now forever to us, it’s KING MARSHMALLOW!

My dad’s mother, Mama. Say it like this: Meh-maw. She would have been 113 this year. She did live to be 97. She was amazing.
Pictured here with two of my sisters and me.

My beautiful Granny. Turns out, she’d like to be called Mama Sones. Most people call her that. But we were raised calling her Granny, and at my age it is hard to make those kinds of changes.
Pictured here with Little M.

Happy ladies!

My mom and my big sister and me. Also featuring: The trivet! The black pot! The bob!

My mom and Little M.
All clean.

Wee Big M, and my lovely mother-in-law, Gail.

Gail with little C.

Great Gram with Little M, just a few weeks after she was born. A lovely pair.

Happy Mother’s Day to all!

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Looking at this post tonight — I just love these pictures — my eye keeps going to all the hands, of the moms and of the babies. Just beautiful.

Well it is time for a new palindrome!

As some have noticed, I have fallen out of the habit of observing the first of the month by putting up a new palindrome.

An aside: nowadays, the first of the month means one thing: little M gets to have new toenail polish! To me, she does seem a bit young for polish — she’s four — but I decided a toenail polishing session once a month would be okay. She’ll be ten before we go to fingernails. Or at least that’s the plan for now. Lately we’ve been using a pink sparkly glow-in-the-dark polish for her, and a dark sky blue shade for me. We both love our fancy toenails.

Ahem! So! Palindrome! The current palindrome laxity was brought to my attention once again by the lovely Lisa, in regard to the CRABS etc. post from a few days ago. She was thinking I might be doing a crab-related palindrome. I thought that was a fine idea, but did not know of any. Googled “crab palindrome” and what do you know! Not only is there an excellent actual crab-related palindrome, short-n-sweet and also alcohol-related (win win!) but it turns out that there is also a more profound connection between palindromes and crabs. See (from Wikipedia):

The word “palindrome” was coined from Greek roots palin (πάλιν; “again”) and dromos (δρóμος; “way, direction”) by English writer Ben Jonson in the 17th century. The actual Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινικὴ επιγραφή; crab inscription), or simply karkinoi (καρκίνοι; crabs), alluding to the backward movement of crabs, like an inscription that can be read backwards.

How about that? And: in some contexts, crab actually means palindrome, or palindromous. (Palindromedary?) For instance, a crab canon is a palindromous piece of music. And Crab Canon is also the name of a palindromous section in Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. And there is the Crab Carillon, a sculpture in San Diego made of 488 chimes; when struck by passing pedestrians the chimes play a palindromic song.

Crab palindrome indeed! Thank you, Lisa!

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For the record: This month’s palindrome: BAR CRAB
And last month’s: RACE CAR
And the one before that: !HARRUH HURRAH! I think? Or was it Hurrah harruh? And were those exclamation points there? I really should write these things down.

When we go to the Oregon coast to visit family, we are often lucky enough to be treated to a feast of dungeness crab. We were there recently, and oh my, it was good. I think I have the best family-in-law in the world.

My lovely mother-in-law, G, comes from the DC area and grew up eating some kind of small crabs. Blue crabs? Apparently a person can eat more than a few in a sitting. When she moved out to the west coast, she made the seafood counter guy’s eyebrows go up when he asked her how many dungeness crabs she wanted per person and she said “Five or six.” Haha! Although hmmm, I could probably eat that many I love them so much. It would just take me all night to do it.