Please Allow Me to Ramble

Ever since I started having babies, I think about names a lot.  I notice them more, you know.  Like Sarah, for instance.  My sister-in-law is named Sarah, and that’s a lovely name, and in our school there were a few Sarahs, and that was fine.  There weren’t any other Amelias, but my best friend was named Keely, and there were two of those.  But then, Sarah (Tony’s sister – she just had a new baby, so if you like reading about new babies and want to know what life as an American in Japan is like, check out their blog) married Andy, and Andy’s brother also married a Sarah!  What are the odds?  So now they have to identify by middle names.  And now, I don’t think you hear the name Sarah very much for little girls.  I do know a baby named Sarah, and it sounds refreshing and sweet on a baby. 

 

A little like my name, as a baby, sounded old-fashioned and interesting.  Now, Amelia is very popular (number 1 girl name in Great Britain!), so I think that imparts a different meaning on it – you know, it’s not so exclusive anymore and sounds more modern, I guess?  But today I met another Amelia and at first I was all, “hey, there aren’t many Amelia’s our age!  This is cool!”  And then I realized that she was EASILY ten years younger than I am.  How’s that for a slap in the face (for both of us)?  I guess I still think of myself as younger, but no, I am solidly in my thirties now and I should probably get used to it, especially because the girl (the other Amelia) gave me the most horrified look.  I quickly backslid with some nonsense, “Oh, I mean, older than little!  You know, there are a lot of little girls named Amelia, but not very many adults… When I was growing up, there weren’t any!”  I should have just shut up after the first faux pas, clearly.

 

It makes me wonder if certain names will ever come back into style.  Like, our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ names (William, Catherine, Madeleine, etc) are popular now, but not EVERYBODY’S grandparents’ names are popular.  My grandmothers were named Thelma and Lorna.  I have a feeling those names are never coming back.  What about Tiffany?  That just smacks of the late seventies/early eighties to me, even though it is a perfectly pretty name and I know some very nice Tiffanys.  It will be interesting to see what styles of names our children like.

 

I met this other, new, older (but not as old as me) Amelia today at the mall, where I was actually shopping, rather than visiting the Children’s Museum or attending Baby Boot Camp classes (which are inside now that it is raining all the time).  Tony stepped out of the shower this morning and asked me to pick up some Dude Lotion for his face, so I took it as license to buy myself new lotion as well.  I enjoy scented lotion, especially since I haven’t purchased perfume since before Charles was conceived (babies and perfume don’t mix.  For that matter, pregnancy and perfume don’t mix, either), but I rarely find time to go into a store where many fancy bottles of scented lotion are arranged precariously in towers juuuuuust within reach of a toddler’s grasp.  So today I did, and now I won’t just smell like breakfast every morning.

 

Breakfast… if only I weren’t so groggy around breakfast time, I would create more exciting dishes.  This is why brunch was invented: to give us time to wake up before cooking an extravagant, delicious meal (that, and as a complement to bloody marys and mimosas).  But today I whipped up something I used to make in college all the time: scones.  This morning, it was pumpkin scones, to be exact.  They’re so easy!  Not like Pinterest makes them out to be!  I swear, Pinterest is going to turn us all into neurotic cooks who fear that we’ll never make anything good again!  What did I do?  I put some Bisquick in a bowl, added a couple scoops of pureed pumpking right from the can, some cinnamon and sugar, some milk, and mixed it all up.  Baked it at 425 for 10 minutes.  Smelled great and tasted better.