Language has always fascinated me, in both written and spoken forms. I love listening to people with accents different from mine, and especially people who are native English speakers from a different part of the world than me. When Erin and I spent two weeks traveling around Great Britain in 1998, one of our favorite pastimes was comparing vocabularies with the people we were visiting (“That jumper looks really smart on you.” “Smart!? How can a sweater look smart?” “I just mean it looks good, it looks lovely. Why, how would you say it?” “We’d say it looks sharp.” “Sharp!? How can a jumper look sharp?” etc.)

My friend Jill posted a short video of herself on her blog Jill Will Run, reading a list of words and answering some questions with regional-specific answers. She saw it done first at Healthy Tipping Point. I thought it was a really fun idea, so I made a video of my own. I can do that, now that we have electricity in our house again, after a snowstorm knocked out our power Wednesday night (along with thousands of other people in the DC metro) and we were without power for 47 hours. I’m wallowing in the luxury of having electricity again, and being able to do things like make videos and upload them to the internet.

Just for background, I was born and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. When I was 21, I married Troy and moved to San Diego. Since then, I’ve lived in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Tempe, Arizona; Southern Maryland; San Diego again; and the Washington, DC, metro area. I tend to pick up accents and regional expressions wherever I live. By the time we left Ottawa, I was saying “eh?” at the end of a lot of sentences, and then I picked up “y’all” when we lived in Virginia Beach. Someone listening to me during that time would have been very confused about where I was from.

bethany actually sounds like this – the accent vlog from bethany actually on Vimeo.

Wow. Watching this video, I was struck with how much I really do resemble my brother, not just in looks but in facial expressions and speech patterns. Also, I can see more clearly how much Annalie looks like me when I watch videos of myself. Weird.

Anyway! Here’s the list of words:

Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

And here are the questions:

• What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
• What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
• What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
• What do you call gym shoes?
• What do you say to address a group of people?
• What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
• What do you call your grandparents?
• What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
• What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
• What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

Do you have a special name for rain falling while the sun is shining? I don’t know a term for that, but I do have a rain term that as far as I know is specific to my family: when it’s raining so hard that the drops of rain are creating circular ripples and then bouncing back up, my family calls that raining ballerinas, because if you squint it kind of looks like a ballerina with a tutu. I think my brother or I called it that years ago, and it just stuck for some reason.

Feel free to play along. If you do, please let me know in the comments where you post your videos so I can watch them! If you don’t feel like making a video, just tell me about a weird regionalism of yours.

Outside my window there are multicolored Christmas lights making our yard festive and glowy.

I am thinking about how unfair it is that I am dealing with my third cold in six weeks. Boo.

I am thankful for Emergen-c, Puffs Plus, and the fact that I’m not pregnant anymore…my mom being here to help us out and letting me take as many naps as I need…Annalie’s graceful acceptance of and enthusiasm for life with a little sister.

I am wearing black cropped yoga pants and a black nightgown with little pink stars scattered all over it. And a sleeping baby.

I am remembering that despite my complaining and procrastinating, I actually like making and sending out Christmas photo cards.

I am going to bed as soon as I finish this post. Really.

I am currently reading nothing. Which is crazy! I’m always reading something, and I have a stack of good books waiting to be read. I lost the ability to concentrate on reading anything longer than a blog post at some point during my pregnancy, and instead took to doing Sudoku puzzles. I’m almost done with the 200-puzzle book I bought in September, and after that I’ll start in on the pile of books. Either the Bryson or the Winchester will be first.

I am hoping that tomorrow we can get some Christmas cooking and crafting done. I’m not expecting to get much of either one done, mind you. But some would be nice.

On my mind: how much longer will it be before Elliora smiles? Annalie smiled at eight weeks old exactly, but she was born four weeks early so with her corrected age, she smiled at four weeks. If Elliora follows in her sister’s footsteps, then she’ll start smiling in two or three weeks.

Noticing that Elliora looks more like me than Annalie does.

In the kitchen there are way too many bags of chips and boxes of holiday cookies. My mom just discovered the wonder of Utz brand chips (they’re an East-coast thing, not available in the Midwest) and I am a sucker for Trader Joe’s Candy-Cane Joe-Joes and Pfeffernuesse.

Around the house it’s definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Stockings are up, Christmas cards are hung on the mantel, the tree is up and half-decorated and there’s a big pile of wrapped presents underneath it.

One of my favorite things: Did I mention the Trader Joe’s Pfeffernuesse? Also, TJ’s holiday peppermint coffee.

From my photo archive: this photo of Annalie & Auntie Erin was taken in December 2006, almost exactly four years ago. Annalie was 2 1/2 here, and we were eating dinner at Spaghetti Works in the Old Market in Omaha. I loved that Rock Star shirt Erin gave her. Ooh! I bet we still have it in a bin of Annalie’s outgrown clothes somewhere, and now Elliora will get to wear it. Yay!

Outside my window It’s raining hard. We have a tarp spread out on the deck because the window right under the deck was leaking when it rained hard the other day, and…to make a long story short, it was our stopgap solution to keep the window from leaking again before it gets fixed. So far it’s working, and as a bonus the rain sounds lovely hitting the tarp.

I am thinking about Veronica Mars. Troy and I have been working our way through all three seasons on Netflix Instant for the past few weeks, and we both find that when we watch a couple of episodes in an evening we spend the next day or two thinking about the characters and whatever the current mystery is. We’ve both even dreamed about the show a couple of times. I’ve developed a whole new respect for Kristen Bell, have fallen more in love with Enrico Colantoni (whom I already loved forever for his role as Mathesar in Galaxy Quest), and have decided I might watch the cancelled series Moonlight, even though it’s about vampires, just so I can see Jason Dohring act some more.

I am thankful for how well homeschooling is going. I didn’t expect it to go badly, but I was a bit apprehensive about our first year of sitting down and actually doing lessons from a curriculum. I wasn’t sure how Annalie would do with her first taste of formal schooling…which is really hilarious because if you were to watch us during a typical school day, we are anything but formal. Anyway, things have been going great. Of course there have been bumps in the road and some moments of frustration, but I can deal with those, no problem. I’ve found myself very thankful for my years of experience as a classroom aide, tutor, camp counselor, etc. And Annalie has told me almost every day how much she loves homeschooling.

I am wearing cropped jeans, because I have temporarily misplaced my regular maternity jeans, a turquoise t-shirt, and black flip-flops. I am not wearing my wedding ring these days, which makes me kind of sad. But only a couple more months and I’ll be able to wear it again.

I am remembering that today is my nephew Leo’s 5th birthday! Happy birthday, Leo!

I am going to the post office later today, to mail some thank-you notes and a couple of surprise packages. Also to the grocery store because we’re almost entirely out of cereal.

I am currently reading Naked Heat, which is a book ostensibly authored by a fictional character from the TV show Castle. So far it’s just as good as the first Nikki Heat book, Heat Wave. And both books are as good as or better than an episode of Castle. Love it.

I am hoping that this baby will be born between November 26th and December 3rd.

On my mind: uh…sudoku? I’ve been doing lots of sudokus lately.

Noticing that I seem to be incapable of drinking a whole cup of coffee without reheating it at least twice.

In the kitchen there is a full cookie jar and leftover homemade pizza in the fridge.

Around the house are lots of things that need cleaning up, organizing, straightening, or put away. I’ve sort of fallen off the housework bandwagon lately. I think it’s at least partly due to my newfound hobby of figuring out ways to pick things up off the floor without bending over. Mostly I just ask Annalie help me.

One of my favorite things is how recently, Annalie declares that almost every day is a pajama day. Right now she’s wearing flannel PJ pants with rainbows and monkeys on them.

From my photo archive: this photo of Annalie was taken in January 2007, when she was a little more than 2 1/2 years old. I love the look of concentration on her face.