February 19, 2018 - Hit the Wall

“Gosh Karen, what did you do to your face?” Susan asked across the fruit counter at the local market.

“Jogging,” Karen answered shaking her long hair forward trying to hide her bruised and scratched face.

“It was just last fall you tore up your knee. You said you “hit the wall” because you were going for another lap and suddenly collapsed.”

“That was different. I was training for the marathon.”

“You might think all this running is healthy for you; me, I think you are simply killing yourself for nothing.  My husband says a little more bounce to the ounce is sexy,” Susan said preening with a grin.

“Your idea of sex is two helpings of Tiramisu back to back,” Karen said with an edge and they both giggled.

“Well? Tell me.”

“It was so warm last night I decided to go for a run, my first time jogging downtown since I wrecked my knee. When I passed the Italian Restaurant I turned left into the alley to cut back to Church Street, I hit the wall.”

Susan exclaimed, “See, you don’t eat enough; you push your-self too much without enough food for proper energy.”

“No, that wasn’t the issue. I didn’t know the restaurant built an addition into the alley this winter. Jogging along, I turned down the dark alley and three strides in, I hit the wall head on.”

 [This month's writing class - "Hit the Wall" was the phrase I was given.]

February 14, 2018        Writing in the margins

         I read books on the craft of writing well and currently I am reading a book by Roy Peter Clark entitled “How to write short.”  I have been trying to write short and concise for years.  I read these books so I can apply the good stuff and then produce better blogs for my readers, you.  But, I found something interesting I want to share.

         Most of my the best books I’ve ever read have my notes in the margins, along with check marks, circled words or entire sentences underlined or bracketed, and sometimes even yellow sticky notes.  I always felt criminal about what I doing to the books I own. [Must be the Catholic in me.] I do the same to the magazines I read – especially The Weekly Standard. When it arrives, I inhale it – pen in hand circling, underlining, adding question marks and exclamation points and even shouting back rebuttals down and around the margins of the page.  That weekly read sure gets my heart pounding and my mind working and my husband reports I even yell out loud!

         But, it was a surprise to me that I am actually doing something right, I am comprehending and learning the right way. Who knew?

Let me give you a few excerpts from Chapter 6 entitled: Write in the margins.

         His professor, Dr. Rene Fortin, challenged his students:

          “To be a real reader,” he said, “you’ve got to mark up 

           the page.”

“ . . . . We had spent the last twelve years of our young lives learning that books were not our property.  They belonged to the school. ‘If you write in these books,” said one high school taskmaster, ‘your parents will be required to pay for them.’

“In a single class, Dr. Fortin persuaded us that what we once thought of as vandalism – writing in books – was an indispensable tool of learning.”

“To learn the craft of short writing, begin to think of marginalia as a genre.  It will help to remember that writing in the margins is for an audience of one – the writer. The purpose is not publication but learning, thinking, analyzing, discovering, and remembering.”

          "In the GRACE NOTES at the end of the chapter, 

          the author suggests:

1.   Never read a newspaper, magazine, or book without a pen nearby.  You already “talk back” to the author and text – at least in your mind.  Get in the habit of writing those thoughts in the margins of the page. And, the author suggests when you are finished reading, do a quick review of your marginal notes.

          Lastly, the author suggests you search the Internet to discover more about “marginalia” – I suggest you do the same - Interesting.

         If you have this same habit, writing in the margins, we are kindred souls and its good for us.

February 13, 2018 – The Valentine’s Day game

         There is a cute game that can be played by anyone, anytime, or anyplace. It is fun and educational for kids too. You just need a piece of paper and pen and your brain.

The last time I played this game I was tending bar and I challenged two servers. We had time to kill waiting for customers before the lunch hour and had lots of fun.  [The boss lady didn’t catch us – wink, wink.]



How many words can you make out of the letters that are in:

Valentine’s Day

The rules:

If a letter or vowel shows up more than one time, you can use it twice.

Example: eel - there are two “e”s in Valentine’s Day, but you can’t make the word: tell as there is only one “l”.

vine   line    alien . . . got the idea?

How many words can you come up with?

“Get read – set – go.”



Challenge someone you love to see how they think and how many words they can come up with.  Sometimes it is more fun to put a time limit on it.

It is a great time-buster when at work when you need to kill a few minutes or when you are waiting for your Valentine’s lunch date and they are late. Makes a great ice breaker at a party.

Decades ago, I found this little game in a ladies’ magazine while waiting for my hair stylist.  During that haircut, my hair stylist and I called out words to each other. It was such fun. This little challenge game can be can verbal, written, or even long distance.

I dust the game off every year and challenge myself or someone else.  For many years I challenged my Mom when we were corresponding via letters – until sadly a few years back she was so frail she couldn’t see to write and her hands were so crippled with arthritis that she could hardly hold a pen. 

But, for many years I would send my Mom a letter the end of January and challenge her with this game and every year she would oblige me with a separate sheet inserted in my next letter with her listing of words made from Valentine’s Day. 

Sometimes I’d call and check on her to see if she was working on the challenge and sometimes she would be ahead of me in word count and then I’d have to go back to my ‘little grey cells’. Some years we were neck to neck in word count and some years she left me in the dust. When she sent me her list I’d get a glimmer of how her mind worked and then the next year I’d be a stronger challenger.

If you like this little game, you’ve a chance to do it all over again next month with the phrase:

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

February 12, 2018 – “That’s cheating,” she said.

         I distinctly remember she asked me if I would be having “homemade” mashed potatoes before she accepted the invitation.  I understood that question to infer she felt boxed instant potatoes were YUCK and I agree.

         “Yes, real mashed potatoes,” I said, and then she gladly accepted my invitation.

***

She called out to me from the dining room as she noticed how I was making the mashed potatoes for the Thanksgiving dinner,

“That’s cheating!”

Her remark caught me off guard when I started my hand mixer, but I merely raised an eyebrow and carried on, as the British do. I was making enough potatoes to serve six people generously realizing that men have hollow legs to fill with second helpings. I had already used my old-fashioned, looped wire hand masher first and now the noise of my hand mixer had drawn her fiery comment.

         I was under the pressure of getting all my hot food out on the buffet at the same time. It is all about timing and I am rather good at it, if I don’t say so myself. I am personally turned off by lukewarm or cold food that should be served scalding hot. [That is one reason I don’t like going to restaurants - sometimes the plate is hotter than the food.]

         “Those are whipped potatoes,” my guest states as she sidles up close for inspection as my hand mixer is blending in the butter.

“That’s I how I was taught,” I reply and continue on my quest to perfection.

         She was too close for my comfort and I finally said,

“Out of the kitchen - go sit down.”

Luckily, she hadn’t seen me add the heavy cream, or she would have had a conniption or possibly correct me again advising me they were now creamed potatoes.

         Later, cleaning up that night, I mulled the situation over. What would she have said if she saw me with the potato ricer? 

***

         In this house mashed potatoes are delegated to the high holidays – Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas and maybe 3 or 4 more times during the year. 

But, coming off this cold/flu I was hungry and in the mood for “soul food” and that called for mashed potatoes. Tonight I made old-fashioned mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus, and hamburger steaks.

         As I am admiring the way the potatoes were smooth and had just the right amount of salt and pepper, and butter I am still thinking about how I supposedly cheated.

         The next time, I will do skin-on baby potatoes that are first steamed;  then you press each individually with the bottom of a glass until they are about ½ inch thick.  Lastly, you gently sauté them in herbs and butter on both sides and serve them.   

         I wonder what she would call those - I’d call them delicious!

February 11, 2018 – “Come-to-Jesus meeting”

I was in the middle of mundane housework with my brain on autopilot when the above phrase popped into my head, and made me smile.

         A dear friend, God rest her soul, had a way with words and phrases.  She was the consummate joke teller at her place of work.  She told jokes, she collected jokes, and she was wonderful entertainment.  Being my neighbor, she’d stroll over after work often to tell me her joke of the day.  It was always a great hoot or laugh.  However, the above phrase came about when her then young daughter had been caught red handed doing something wrong.  I was visiting my friend when she received a phone call from her mother who told her something her daughter had done.

         Down went the phone with a crash as she said, “When she gets home we are going to have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ meeting,” then immediately grabbed her cigarette pouch and lit one up.

         Of course, my interest was piqued, but the scene was usual for my friend, a single Mom with an unruly daughter.  Part of me felt my friend would have given up smoking earlier if it hadn’t been for the stress of raising her daughter.

         This was the first time I heard that phrase, come-to-Jesus meeting, and it wouldn’t be the last time.  It is a perfect phrase for the situation when you want to toss up your hands and scream, yet you decide to have that heart to heart talk with your child to re-address a problem.

         Another time this friend’s car broke down two days in a row with the same problem that was supposedly fixed by the garage on day one.  She had a ‘come-to-Jesus meeting’ with the garage mechanic over that one, too.

         She may have been Baptist, but she was using this phrase to mean the moment one has to face the facts or come to terms with reality, get serious and put your foot down. I understood it completely and I never think of using it myself which is a shame because it is a great phrase.

         This friend also had another great phrase she used often in the summer time:

“Sweating like a whore in church.”

         When I heard her use the phrase, “Bless her little heart,” which she said with an edge, I knew we were both on the same wavelength when viewing humanity.

Trust me, she didn’t talk like a hick that often as she would use a word here or there or a stand-alone expression to get a point across.  Yet, my friend put on a thick Southern twang when I had any Yankee visitors in town in order to get laughs. After my Mom met her, she called her a ‘hoot’ of a good friend.

I have fond memories of some of her other favorite phrases:

“Pitch a hissy fit”

“Fixin to”

“Hankerin”

“As fat as a tick”

I’ll leave you now with one of my favorites which you’ll find in a future blog:

“Over-the-shoulder boulder holder”

Until then, I borrow another southern phrase  

from another southern friend,

I hope you are in high cotton  till then.

        

        

February 10, 2018 – The pot calling the kettle black

         It all started with my husband thinking I was a miserable grouch.  I am a miserable grouch when I have a cold or the flu and I am still dealing with being miserable and I know I am a grouch when I am miserable.  But, he is no better getting over this ‘togetherness-in-all-things’ which includes the cold/flu that we both have. 

No, I will correct that.  The husband had it seven days while I was caring for him, including all the hand sanitizers and bleaching down the counter tops, etc., and I got worn down and I caught it.  Then we both had it and he might be over it, but I am not.

         Something set me off while I was reading in the living room and he was watching yet another true murder mystery show.  He adores Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda, and I have to admit Kenda is the best because Kenda has a great verbal commentary during the incident, chase, and finally getting his man or woman as the case may be.  But, the similar show was droll and I wanted to see the breaking news and we had a few words.

         “Curmudgeon,” I said as loudly as I could with this sore throat.

         “Mudgeon?” he asked.

         “Curmudgeon,” I repeated.

         “What’s that? Where are you getting these hundred-dollar words?”

         I smiled, then trotted to my writing office and grabbed my dictionary.  The word curmudgeon sort of popped out of my head and I hadn’t used it in a long time, in fact I wondered if I had ever used it verbally before. It is strictly a word you see in print.  I remembered a few years back while waiting at a doctor’s office, the phrase in that article was, “. . . I think I’ve become a curmudgeon.”  I knew immediately what the writer was saying because the writer had described how I felt at the moment, being so sick and having to wait to see the doctor.

         Fuzzy headed from this cold/flu, I looked it up to see if I was on point.  Oh my, the print seems so small now in my 1984 printed dictionary.  I had to flip back and forth to find it, eventually at the very bottom of the page.

         Curmudgeon, noun – A cantankerous person.

         I put the dictionary in front of him and pointed to it for him to read.

         “Well, you are no different,” he remarked.

         “Like the pot calling the kettle black,” I answered.

         Later he asked, “What would you like me to call you?”

         “Tenacious.”

         “Why?”

         “That was the word that little Brit used for my server password at the law firm in Spartanburg.”

         He only raised his eyebrows a bit.  He didn’t know the story.



         Back then, pre-Internet connection – we had one server for 12 gals in the office.  For some reason the pint-sized British gal who was in charge of the computer system had to come up with individual passwords for all users. These were secret to her until months later.  One was “Queen” for the Queen Bee Deborah, [her exact personality]; another was “Merry” for Mary who had a nice disposition.  Most of the rest were also alliterative. Since this Brit, and I [don’t tell me I am being rude, she called us Yanks which makes it tit-for-tat territory] had locked heads more than once. I eventually won out when she came up with “Tenacious Teri” unknown to me at the time of her creation. 

         She and a few of her allies at the office thought it was highly amusing behind my back since it was one of the many that were rude.

         However, one day the Brit was out sick and I was basically shut down at my computer until someone re-set or re-booted my computer. [This is back in the late 1990s with servers and mainframes that simply didn’t have enough memory.]  They called in an outside vendor, computer technician, who didn’t know the passwords until management started asking around the office.

         When one of the allies was discussing my situation with management, unknown that I was within hearing range, she listed off several of the passwords before she came to mine, so that it would possibly “soften the rudeness” of it.

         When the computer technician came to my station I asked, “What is my password?”

         He hesitated at first and then gave me a clue, “They sort of all rhyme, yours starts with “T”.

         “Tenacious Teri?”

         He was taken aback a moment that I had guessed it.

         “Fits me perfectly, I am tenacious just like a terrier,” I said adding, “strong-willed, persistent, determined, insistent, steadfast.” 

Soon, the word got out around the office about the Brits’ divisive passwords for each of the office staff and more than one person asked me if I felt insulted. 

“No, it’s actually a compliment.”

I’d locked horns with the Brit on more than a few occasions and had won more battles than she had.  I wasn’t naïve, I knew who was friend or foe in that environment.  In fact, I flaunted it in her face when I had to deal with her in the future. I would use my tenacious tag and her eyes would glitter dangerously which only proved to me that she was a foe.

         I’m sure my husband will forget curmudgeon but I expect I will be hearing tenacious in the future when we have these little domestic skirmishes.

        

        

        

February 9, 2018 – Heart motifs

         You can’t stop me from loving hearts.  Every single greeting card I have given my husband over the 40+ years has his name embellished in the middle of a hand-sketched heart. 

I only make heart shaped meat loaf – no other kind. [Blog: September 29, 2016.]

One of my Christmas traditions is heart shaped waffles for Christmas morning. [Blog: December 25, 2016.]

I stenciled my heart motif kitchen at Trojan Lane with French blue hearts once around the room at chair rail height in order to highlight the heart ring lace I had found for the kitchen window and the back door window.  I’ve collected heart shaped everything from measuring cups to mixing bowls, and heart shaped decanters.  My Mom and I were always on a quest for anything that I could adorn my house which included a heart shape anything.

I even begged my Daddy to make me some heart shaped curtain tiebacks, which he did.  Later he followed them up with a pair of handmade wooden country hearts to hold a pair of candlesticks.  Then when he made a pair of nesting wooden footstools for me as a Christmas gift,  he cut out a heart design in the legs. [You do know I will never toss those footstools out for as long as I live – now don’t you?]

Those heart earrings, that heart shaped pin, that heart shaped bauble necklace, the heart crystal bowls, the heart embellished vases, and the last heart motif item my Mom gave me, the heart embroidered table runner.  Oh my - I am surrounded by hearts and I simply love it.

The heart motif is everywhere in my house, I never tire of it.  And, since February is the best month to put the hearts on display for Valentine’s Day, I am digging everything out if it is put away yet many items stay out year round.  The heart shape is classic and fits into any décor.

Maybe I will make some heart shaped cookies for no reason at all or I will cut out sandwiches with my heart shaped cookie cutters.  Which reminds me of a little lunch picnic I did years ago on Valentine’s Day for a dear friend.

One of my friends was working in customer service at the time and I was in the “required sabbatical mode – I promise to write a blog about that situation sometime”. I was reduced to nothing but a “corporate wife” keeping the home fires burning, the white shirts starched and pressed, and being the delightful hostess with the most-ess behind the executive husband.  However, that got rather boring after a while since I had always held a full time job until then.

I had to find excuses to keep myself busy as I had already read every single gardening book that every library in the county housed.  One of my friends lamented that Valentine’s day was stuck in the middle of the week. The branch office she was assigned to that Valentine’s week was in such a poor location the “let’s do lunch” at a nearby restaurant or diner was simply out of the question.

Noting her disappointment, I jumped into action and said, “I’ll bring us a Valentine’s picnic,” which delighted her and delighted me as well.  I remember I had been to that out-of-the-way branch location with another friend, we’ll call her friend B.  Since I was rather new to the area, I wasn’t exactly sure I could find my way back there again.  Unknown to friend A, friend B, drove me out one evening a few days before the event to make certain I wouldn’t get lost and friend B lamented that she was sort of jealous about the whole thing.  [I filed that sentiment away for later.]

I created a Valentine’s picnic lunch, which included ham sandwiches cut out in heart shapes.  I took the package of ham, placed the large heart cookie cutter on the center of the entire package of Danish ham and cut through all the layers. [I used up the rest of the ham diced up in omelets.]  I did the same for the bread – no crust – just matching heart shaped bread.  I spread some lovely French mustard on the bread and assembled the heart-shaped sandwiches. Boy, they were a big hit when I took them out of the makeshift picnic basket.  I can’t remember what else I made for the picnic, but it was a great day and made for a great memory and also big-time jealously by friend B.

A few years later, I did a “replay” of the heart-shaped ham sandwiches for friend B and a friend of hers who became a new friend for me. [She had just become a realtor and came out of the gate selling houses like gangbusters and made the million-dollar club within 6 months.]  I remember that time I added a thin layer of alfalfa sprouts to the heart ham sandwiches, and for dessert I cut heart shaped brownies. They were more than delighted about their picnic lunch. 

Yes, heart motifs are wonderful in all forms, even edible forms.

I think I will spring the heart-shaped sandwiches on my unsuspecting husband this year – what better way to celebrate a Wednesday, Valentine’s Day?

February 8, 2018 – My funny Valentine

         Waking yesterday to a remembered wisp of Frank Sinatra crooning “My funny Valentine” running through my brain, I dragged myself up by the bootstraps as I am still dealing with this cold/flu.  I decided first thing I better finish decorating the house with my Valentine stuff before I miss the holiday completely.  I consider it a “HIGH HOLIDAY”.  Who can’t enjoy LOVE in one form or another?

         I scrounged around and found the 4-inch tall heart shaped glass bottle tipped on its side now filled with red food coloring laced water. My Mom sent this heart shaped maple syrup bottle to me years ago.  It was two gifts in one, maple syrup now and she knew her daughter would keep it forever.  One of those ‘perfect’ gifts you get from a loved one.

Next, I dug for the three giant [15-inch width and breath] red felt, lace cut-out hearts that don’t fit in any drawer in this house. I have to stack them in a special place in the back closet every year and then have to remember where I stashed them.  I just now taped them to the front glass storm door.  They are bright and gay and the sun coming through the lace cut-out creates a delightful  shadow design on the interior French green door.  Another example of two delights instead of one.

Another treasure is a valentine Nutcracker who holds a gold fishnet bag filled with little wooden hearts which we found years ago.  I remember I begged my husband for this when I saw it in a ‘fancy items’ catalog.  He acquiesced and we admire it anew each year.  The nutcracker is at attention on the mantel keeping watch over everything.

Next I pulled out the 6-inch red velvet heart shaped pillow embroidered with “Heart to Heart” in white reminding us of the “Hart to Hart” TV show we enjoyed in years past tossed into a recycled, frosted glass vase that has a row of hearts encircling the rim.  My Mom found the vase at the Once loved, Once Treasured shop [fancy rummage] at her church.  Again, another one of those ‘perfect’ gifts that lasts forever and can be used in all sorts of ways.

And, a little white fuzzy bear with a red heart shaped embroidered nose and no eyes simply holding a red glitzy heart, which says it all - Love is blind.

Also, the little costume jewelry gold heart that I took off a piece of clothing when I was disposing of Mom’s things last fall. It is sitting on the vanity waiting for me to pin on today’s outfit in sweet memory of her.

         But, the crown jewel of my Valentines on display is the 1997 Valentine’s Day card from my husband.  It is a Hallmark popup Eiffel Tower card with the verse:

“As long as we’re together, we’re in the City of Love.”

It popped up that year and I never could figure out how to unpop it and fold it down.  Off-season, it camps out in the china cabinet and I drag it out every February.  The winter before we had just visited Paris and I never got my picture in front of the Eiffel tower; this was to make up for that flagrant oversight. I remember my husband remarked how outrageous the cost of the cards were that year.  He sure got his money’s worth with this card – it’s now 20 years old!

Here is my Happy Valentine’s to you!

         Just in case you haven’t heard Frank Sinatra’s “My Funny Valentine” lately, visit him at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Are-c0BLyIg

The first verse of My Funny Valentine

My funny Valentine

Sweet comic Valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable,

Unphotographable

Yet, you’re my favorite work of art.

February 6, 2018 – Kissing Dutch Couple Statues

         The spring garden catalogs in the daily mail haven’t let up a single bit these last several days during my crash landing in bed with the flu/cold.  In between locating something hot to drink to stay hydrated and grabbing another box of tissues, I sort the incoming mail into piles of bills and catalogs.  I am just now getting to the garden catalogs.

         Kissing Dutch Couple statutes are back and being touted as iconic cuteness - how marvelous! Part of me wants to crawl into the photo closet and dig out a picture of the cement Dutch kissies [what I called them] when we lived in Delaware.  Part of me says mental memories are easier on the knees than digging in old dusty photo albums packed away.  The latter thought won the argument.

         At the time, we were living in Seaford, Delaware, which is widely known for the E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co., chemical plant started back in 1939.  I must admit, I don’t know if DuPont Company still exists under that name or another, but it was a perfect example of a “company town” or “mill town” that employed more DuPont workers than any other employer.  My husband was employed elsewhere in the area, but when the DuPont employees received increases in wages, all commodities in town went up – milk, bread, gas, etc.  A bitter pill to swallow if you were not a DuPont employee as your wages didn’t keep up with the cost of living.

         The area was steeped in history and it was a step back in time for us when we moved there.  More importantly, a step back in time for me, as a woman, personally. I had to supply a copy of our marriage certificate to the insurance company in order to get insurance on our home and autos because I was one of those ‘modern women’ who decided to keep her maiden name when she married. I had to prove we were married and not just living together.  I also could not get the electricity, natural gas, and the telephone turned on or the accounts even opened as I was a mere woman and only the “husbands” were allowed to do that, which struck me odd.  Every previous corporate move, as his corporate wife, I’d turned utilities on and off without my husband in attendance.  I was forced to make that embarrassing phone call to my husband at his place of work to tell him I had failed at such a simplistic corporate wife duty as turning on the electric. He had to leave work and come to the electric company office as well as trot around with me to the natural gas office and even the telephone office.  

Another archaic throwback was even more shocking to me.  I tried to open a new savings account at a bank with a cashier’s check [proceeds from our closed savings account from another state] and I was not allowed to open the account because I hadn’t yet obtained a job in the area.  I was cited some sort of strange rule that you must be employed in the state before you can deposit money in a bank.  Yet, my husband had a job here? I immediately wondered, so they don’t want anyone to “retire here?” 

I’d suddenly been reduced to a second class citizen due to my gender by just crossing the state line? You can bet we didn’t bank with that particular lender, but again, my husband had to accompany me to the bank in order to open up a simple joint checking and joint savings account.  There was no such thing as me setting it up and my husband dropping by to sign a signature card like we had done many times in the past in other states.

The above, unnecessary hurdles in moving to a new area for my husband’s new corporate job, tarnished our opinions of quaint, old-world,  Seaford, Delaware, and the area for several months.

         Sorry - I digressed a bit – but when I am reminded of Seaford, Delaware, whether it is a crab cake recipe, the sailboats we owned, friends, or the rich local history, I first remember the rough start of our settling in and not the fabulous memories of the time spent there during our colorful corporate life.

Back to the Kissing Dutch Couple Statutes:  We had settled in and as usual, we invited my parents down for a little visit/vacation.  We turned my Mom and Dad into world travelers visiting us at all the places we landed during our many corporate moves.

Showing my parents around the Delmarva area, I pointed out Dutch Kissing statues in people’s gardens or near their front doors or mailboxes.  I thought they were darling, [a phrase I picked up living in Delaware] and of course, my Mom agreed.  I had yet to find where you could buy them.  During their visit, we discovered the area was predominantly settled by the Dutch in Lewes, Delaware, [the first town in the state] in 1787, so we assumed the reason behind so many little Dutch boy and Dutch girl lawn ornaments.

Surprisingly, my husband and Dad found a source, and we drove out to a cement lawn ornament place.  Each flat-sided cement Dutch girl or Dutch boy was molded around a 36-inch rebar. Daddy opened his wallet and gladly paid for a set as our ‘house warming gift.’  It made me deliriously happy.

Both Dad and my husband complained they were heavy and awkward to pick up and carry, but the pair of “kissies” as we all called them, were stowed in the trunk safely for their ride home. I remember they were a challenge to paint, which I did to my satisfaction. Then, getting them set into the garden for everyone to admire was another challenge due to 15-inches of rebar protruding from the bottoms. You had to dig a hole for each as well as find a way to keep them upright in the extremely sandy soil of the Delmarva shore area.

         When friends visited us, they commented on them and I’d always say, “Daddy bought us the kissies.”  They were a delightful bit of whimsy.



         Nowadays, they make them light weight out of resin, 3-D not flat, and already painted – simply darling - I think as I fold down the page to mark for future reference.

         Yes, maybe I do need to add a bit of new whimsy in my garden this year.

February 4, 2018 – A latest trending word - pissant

         I have crawled out of my cold/flu cave and have wandered out to my computer.  I am not over it yet, but I am trying to get back to the land of the living.  Of course, my mailbox is full of emails.  Most of them are ‘self-generated’ by my signing up for things –  a perfect example is the Word of the Day I mentioned last month.

         I thought checking those would be an easy way to get back into the swing of using my brain cells to think, and it clearly was.  During my flipping through the words of the day, I happened to notice on a sidebar to the right called TRENDING NOW  with the following list of words:

redaction

spurious

malfeasance

pissant

furlough

[invitation] SEE ALL

         This is interesting because it indicates a rise in lookups when the word is used in recent media.  Lookups rose 3100% on spurious; lookups rose 115,000% on pissant.  WOW, the 115,000% number caught my attention because I was already familiar with the word.  I learned it as a youth. 

         I found this trending now tab fascinating as “Brady takes umbrage with ‘pissant’ comment”.  That is Brady, as in Tom Brady of the New England Patriots.  We happen to have the Super Bowl today, [and the Patriots are my team] so of course, I clicked on it.  I didn’t have any doubt what it meant, I just was curious how it came about that it was one of the trending words. I understand it started by Alex Reimer the radio personality calling Brady’s daughter, “an annoying little pissant” and then Brady shouting back  “You’re a d_____ little pissant”. 

An old fashioned tit-for-tat name calling!

The word, pissant, is sort of like another noun, sycophant. It pops up in those heated discussions for-or-against you, yours, or your enemies.  It becomes etched in your brain and you can’t wait to use it again in your touché in an argument.

I’ve had my amusement for the day and simply wanted to share with you a great little go-to tab to kill time, or spice up your conversation with others. 

Try it, you might like it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/see-all