DNA wedding dance

"Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you, beware of friends that flatter you." Which I think means that true friends will tell you the truth and others will not. Well DNA sure doesn't tell lies. It lays it all out in black and white. I loaded my raw DNA data onto one of those sites that analyses it and sends you a report. Mine says I have a sweet tooth and a sour one. Duh! But it is quite freeing to think that I am not weak willed when faced with a dark chocolate or two, I can blame it all on my ancestry. I have two children with autism and for a long time I blamed myself for giving them the gene that makes their lives challenging. Not to mention ADHD, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and various other issues too many to mention. As parents we do hold ourselves responsible for things our children develop that are no fault of their own. Now that load of guilt is shared through the ages with all those faceless people whose genes I carry. The inability to absorb Vitamin E or B12 no matter how many leafy green vegetables I eat, is not my fault. Wahoo. It tells you if you enjoy carbohydrates, me, no. What type of muscles you have. Me, apparently very good ones. Who knew? And how empathetic you are. I had been taught that empathy for animals and the weak and afflicted was a weakness in itself. The cult of caring for oneself before others was the credo of my life for many years. But I just couldn't do it. And now I can blame my 100% empathy gene for my lack of ability to walk past an injured animal or a homeless person on the street without wanting to help them. At least I scored 100% on something in my life. I recently discovered that my compassion for others stops short at the obnoxious blowhard who is going out of their way to make others feel bad. So, maybe not 100%, and more like 98%. I side with the victim and not the attacker, always. And that urge to yell at said idiot blowhard, well, I did bite my tongue and stop myself reacting, this time. But it was a close call. It was the wrong time and place.

Have you heard about the engineers that are using slime to design the Tokyo rail system? There is a slime mold called physarum polycephalum that someone decided could help with the engineers and their design issues. The planners put a big blob of oats in the centre, where the main train hub would be and then smaller pieces of oats at all the main stations in the city. The slime was put onto the central hub and then they observed and watched. At first it looked like a typical science lab petri dish experiment. The slime slipped out in a pretty floral type pattern as you would expect. And then it refined the pattern and simplified it, pulling in the extra branches and consolidating it into a very sophisticated and efficient pattern. And it only took 26 hours. The real engineers who did the design took months and months to do the same thing. The slime pruned the areas with the least amount of traffic down and increased the branches that would be used the most to optimize the best routes. I am not advocating that we replace engineers with blobs of slime, but rather that we could use this mold in other ways. Pathways around the city? The best route to fight fires without endangering lives. Oh, okay, the fire thing would take time, so maybe not a good example. We can't wait 26 hours to know where to throw a bucket of water on a fire. We recently have had a spate of house fires in the city. Winter is like that. People place clothes too close to fireplaces and heaters in a desperate bid to dry the washing. A small spark can escape and within minutes the whole house is burnt down and life is changed for that family forever. Don't worry folks, I have a heat pump that is well out of the way of wet washing or anything combustible.

My son gets married this week and is learning a few dances to entertain us with. I have been trying to organise outfits for the ceremonies. No, I will not be participating in the dances or the entertainment, well not intentionally anyway. I could see the dresses in my head and knew exactly how to sew them. And then reality hit. I cannot get down on the floor to cut out a pattern anymore. Mainly because getting up off said floor is a mission. Not that I am really using a pattern, I am winging it. First step is to lay out the second hand sari in a delicate shade of turquoise, silver and orange. But, oh dear, I notice that the material is see through. No one wants that mental image of a large old lady in a seethrough dress floating around the reception. Off to the op shop for a Queen sized peachy coloured sheet for the lining. Now, why didn't I just go to the shops and buy something ready made? Yeah, living on a budget means I watch the pennies like a hawk and a dress I am potentially only going to wear once, doesn't compute. I would love to waltz into a shop and buy one of those beaded and beautiful billowy gems, but they don't usually have my size or my price range. So, back to the sewing machine. Yes, I did throw the project under the table in disgust at one stage, but my daughter hauled it out and resurrected it for me. It's the middle of Winter here and my filmy ex-sari was not equipped to keep out the cold, I would need a jacket or a shawl of some sort. I had bought an end of roll piece of faux fur in a gorgeous bright turquoise that hurt the eyes. My daughter had a piece of sari in a matching colour with amazing embroidery. And my shawl was born. But then imposter syndrome kicked in and I thought everyone would laugh at my efforts on the day. It absolutely paralysed me and I felt like climbing under my duvet and hibernating till after the wedding. But the mother of the groom can't do that. I told my daughter that the epitome of whether I have done the job well, was if my granddaughters liked the outfit. Not caring what others think. And luckily Miss E was impressed, so all good. The wedding has two parts and I was going to make another dress for part two, but nope, I am wearing a simple sari, worn in the usual way. And this one is red and gold. Wish me luck with the imposter. This is when I really miss my husband. He never gave me compliments to make me feel better but he would have dragged me along until I got over my nerves and basically told me to grow up and be an adult.

I'm to do one of the speeches. Sadly that is not a hardship for me. Once I start speaking, it is often difficult to get me to shut up. In New Zealand we usually end a speech with a song, but I have been advised that my singing is not up to scratch, so here is the song was I was planning on singing:

This mother says Chad has Irish eyes,

Irish eyes, Irish eyes,

This mother says Chad has Irish eyes

They go ever so blue under stormy skies

But ever so blue when others cy.

His father said he has English hair,

English hair, English hair,

Brown like the bark of an oak somewhere,

Like the bed of a lake where the hemlock grows

Like the thorn in the stem of an English rose

He's a map of the World and the ones before

One foot in sea and one on shore