Oh, Noella

My mother Noella (named because she shares a birthday with Jesus) is, for lack of a better word, a hoot. Everyone who meets her loves her, fears her, and is enlightened by her all at the same time. I could go on all day about her, but I wanted to pay a quick homage to one of my favorite things about my mother, and that is her special vocabulary. It is partly caused by her upbringing in Canada, but mostly just because she's just so damned cute. Some are mispronunciations, some are substitutions, and some are just plain wrong. Please know that I am laughing WITH my mother in this blog, not at her!

Some of my favorites:

Theater = thee-AY-ter
Hysterical = High-STER-ical
Oregano = or-ah-GAN-oh
Mechanic = ga-RAGE (sort of rhymes with harass)
Beer = ranges from beerrrrrrrrr (strong Canadian) to bee-ah (strong Boston)
Salt and pepper = salt and pecker
Cunning = pronounced correctly, but used synonymously with "cute", i.e. "Oh, that baby is so cunning!"
Pina Colada = Penis Colata

The other night at dinner she was reading aloud from the back of a bottle of red wine. Her description was as follows:

"Mellow flavor with undercurrents of cherry and a hint of anus." hmm...I'm guessing the ingredient was anise, but we'll chalk that up to a fantastic slip of the tongue.