A man whose hobby is collecting sentences

There are two reasons why I like reading blogs, more precisely, blogs written by English native speakers. Not only do they give me the opportunity to discover so many details of their lives, their moods, ups and downs etc. everyone knows what I am talking about, but they also offer me the way how to express all those things. I consider blogs the best English textbook. They are very helpful to improve my English.

Each time I read a blog I come across an interesting sentence that includes some new word or grammar. I copy it and translate into my language. Then I try and translate this translation back into English original, so that I have to think not only about all the words but about all grammar rules as well.

You may be surprised by the number of sentences I have collected and translated within five years – more then 10 000. They are all stored in my small palmtop which is able to choose randomly any of them - first my Czech translation without having the chance to see the English version. It appears only after translating into English and pushing a button.

I always strive to pick up a sentence that can “live” by itself, that sort of stretches the imagination, includes some emotions or tensions, is funny or sad etc. Here you are some examples from the last weekend, this time mostly about relationships, or better, about loneliness:

desolation = I came home to an empty house and tried to make warm with a fake christmas tree. This example illustrates the desolation of a lonely woman's life.

We lost our power about on Tuesday night. I am afraid of the dark, so I pulled the covers over my head and tried to sleep. When I got up the power was back on, so I jumped up and made a pot of coffee, and then it went out again.

I had to get out the Coleman stove and cooked my lunch sitting at the dining room table. There is just something about cooking on the camp stove that makes it taste so much better.

tip over = Wednesday was our recycle day so all the bins were out, many tipped over and there is paper, cardboard, etc. all over the place now.

I have an older brother and an older sister. All three of us have been divorced. My parents have been together for more than 40 years, first marriage.

I am by no means unattractive: I am a busty, skinny blonde. Why do I keep attracting men afraid of sex? Will I ever find a good man to have any kind of “normal” sex life with?

I met him last night at dinner. He's been living in London for the last 12 years and has come back to NZ to live. I'd never met him but we really clicked. Like seriously good chemistry between us.

Some wise person once said something like "never do business with your own family". Yeah well, it's hard to turn your own family down. You feel obligated or something. Well I finally got pissed enough this morning that I fired my own brother. He drives me nuts.

We will never marry. He is going through a divorce and I've been divorced twice, so it's not something we're considering.

I'm still a little surprised when I feel loneliness when people leave me. Tonight, as people left, it was on the tip of my tongue to say, wait, don't leave. I went back to the kitchen to finish some dishes, and I think that it would have been nice just to have someone sit there with me even in silence. I don't want to be in this house alone.

let sleeping dogs lie = She has started to email me. After all these years. Should I reply, or let sleeping dogs lie? - I wouldn't reply. It's never good to stir up the dust once it's settled.

When I am in the mood I open my palmtop and try and translate. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I wonder why English is so tricky.