Full Boot

Published by

Clarissa

January 9, 2023

People laugh at my packed car boot. But what can I do if I have to carry enough wardrobe for every 20-degree jump in temperature in either direction we experience throughout the day?

Today, for example, I started out in a fur coat because it was cold even by my standards. Now I’m in a leather jacket. I won’t be home until 6 pm because I’m taking Klara to her art lesson, and by that time we can go all the way to a cotton wrap or more in the direction of a cable-knit sweater. Or who knows, maybe back to the fur coat.

Everybody was looking at me like I was a circus freak when I showed up outside at noon in a fur coat. Like it’s my fault they all slept in and didn’t know it was below freezing when I woke up. Thankfully, the car holds half of my outerwear wardrobe, and I can change.

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14 responses to “Full Boot”

Anonymous

January 9, 2023

As a UK expat, I just like that you call it the boot 🙂

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 9, 2023
  
  I grew up with British vocabulary, so I still say pram, flat, jab for a vaccine shot, marmalade, and car boot until somebody corrects me.
  
  What are we even supposed to call it in the US? My mind is a blank right now.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    January 9, 2023
    
    ” even supposed to call it in the US? ”
    
    In the US it’s a ‘trunk’ and you’re really assimilating…. many people in Poland don’t believe me when I tell them that some Americans keep extra clothes in their car (among other things).
    Polish people used to keep nothing at all in their cars (from when car theft was a major concern). Car stealing gangs barely exist now but old habits die hard….
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 9, 2023
      
      Trunk! Exactly! I keep clothes and the terrible American invention of “snacks” in there because kids demand them no matter what you do.
      
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  2. Pen
    
    January 9, 2023
    
    Wait—I thought marmalade was a specific kind of preserve, completely separate from jelly or jam (which are themselves two different things).
    
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    1. cliff arroyo
      
      January 10, 2023
      
      “marmalade ”
      
      yes, marmalade is basically from oranges (and other citrus?)
      
      jam – has bits of skin/seeds
      
      jelly – strained and smooth (IINM in the UK jelly was often called ‘jello’) which leads to jelly often being mistranslated into Polish as ‘galaretka’ but I digress….
      
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      1. cliff arroyo
        
        January 10, 2023
        
        ” jelly was often called ‘jello’”
        
        correction: It’s the other way around, in the UK sometimes jello was referrred to as ‘jelly’..
        
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methylethyl

January 9, 2023

We keep spare kid-clothes in the car. Saved our bacon in many situations– not just temperature swings, but also… diaper failures, unscheduled stops at the bayshore (mud!), and not that long ago, my eldest, in a game of tug-of-war with about six other boys, got himself dragged through dog poop in his church clothes! It is good to have spares. And also a plastic bag to sequester contaminated clothing until you can get it home and wash it!

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Post Alley Crackpot

January 10, 2023

Just move to Florida.

DeSantis wants to turn the New College of Florida into something resembling Hillsdale.

The woke bullshit that’s driven enrolment down below the thousand level is being pushed out hard.

NCF was going to be merged into the rest of the Florida university system and dealt with that way, but apparently DeSantis likes the idea of reforming it into a university with a classical education focus.

You spend so much time in Fort Myers that you probably have no idea whether you’d like Sarasota, and so: yes, probably, and you can also get many of the things you like in Tampa.

Also: UK “jam” = US “jelly” usually, but the UK adds “spreads” to make this a bit more confusing.

UK “spreads” = US “preserves” usually, although the spreads can be things that US people wouldn’t consider spreading and may not involve fruit at all.

UK “fruit gel” = UK “jelly” = US & UK “fruit gelatin(e)” = US “Jello” (trade name) usually, although this could get complicated with explaining such things as “wine gums” (not made of wine) and “jelly babies” (which are more solid than Americans might expect).

And then there’s Marmite, a “spread” that probably draws its name from “marmite à conserves”, which Americans (and North Americans in general) are either surprised they like or completely unsurprised that they don’t.

Back when I cooked vegetarian for various health-related reasons, Marmite often saved me the bother of finding vegetable bouillon cubes for making dishes that were meant to seem beefy. A little bit of the stuff would make such horrors as Gardenburgers palatable to meat eaters.

Marmite crisps, Marmite cashews, and even Marmite rice cakes have an audience in America, it’s just that nearly all of that audience likes stout beer.

This is by no means any kind of coincidence.

In Florida, the Marmite sits on the shelf at Publix because it’s now $11 for a 250 gram tub of it, which when you’re used to the slightly smaller squeezy tubs being priced around £2 puts potential buyers into a bit of price shock.

So be warned in advance if you happen to like the stuff. 🙂

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 10, 2023
  
  I don’t get marmite. I tried but it’s horrid.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  January 10, 2023
  
  I have now read a whole article about this storm in a teacup:
  
  https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-college-of-florida-students-call-out-ron-desantis-and-christopher-rufo-takeover
  
  It looks like nothing whatsoever happened, giving rise to a ridiculous hullabaloo where people can’t even describe what they are upset about.
  
  In the meantime, I’m spending the first two days of the semester trying to figure out a solution to a covert austerity measure that left almost half of our students without textbooks. Bit these are not rich kids who can afford to go out surfing so nobody gives a crap.
  
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3. methylethyl
  
  January 10, 2023
  
  I had a friend who went to New College. I thought it was folded into USF twenty years ago. It was always a tiny bleeding-edge hippie liberal experimental college (sort of vaguely run by the students, democratically), there’s no way it wasn’t completely run into the ground by woke (which is never good for enrollment), and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taken over for another small collegiate experiment, such as an attempt at state-run classical.
  
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4. Post Alley Crackpot
  
  January 12, 2023
  
  “It was always a tiny bleeding-edge hippie liberal experimental college …”
  
  Washington State’s Evergreen, Florida’s New College, same thing, same kinds of people.
  
  “… there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taken over for another small collegiate experiment, such as an attempt at state-run classical …”
  
  Yes, precisely. The enrolment is now at a sub-thousand level, which means that it’s not a sustainable going concern anyway, and so it has to change now in order to gain relevance at a minimum.
  
  Which is why I’ve mentioned this to Clarissa.
  
  Maybe in these early stages they are still working out how this will work out, but at some later stage, they will need people who are good at implementation.
  
  So maybe this is how Clarissa can get out of a state that for an entire decade has had no net job creation outside government.
  
  Also, yes, nothing has happened so far as they’re getting the new regime in place to effect a change in the structure, which is of course why those who would lose out because of its success are the first in the grievances queue.
  
  That thing they can’t describe is how their grievances are built upon nothing.
  
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  1. methylethyl
    
    January 12, 2023
    
    If they switch to classical, I wonder if they’ll still have students collecting their diplomas naked…
    
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