Say What?

This week at work, I came across material relating to zebra mussels. And as I said it out loud, I thought, "This would make a great curse phrase!" You know the type of thing--you forget to buy milk when you are at the store. "Zebra mussels!" You stub your toe. "Zebra mussels!" Someone tells you something absurd. "Oh, zebra mussels." It just rolls off the tongue. And, it is so much catchier than *$!@**#.

It takes a lot of creativity and higher level thinking to come up with witty comebacks to situations that call for words of the four-letter variety. I had a student once, a 4th grader, who favored "Stupid ketchup." You can make that a very expressive phrase. Much more expressive than drat or darn, because you have more to work with, which gives you longer to get the right intonation in there.

A roommate and dear friend invented the phrase, "Peahonker." This alternative to names like idiot, dolt, moron, numbskull, silly billy, etc. also has a certain ring to it. It has the added benefit of adding an element of absurd to any conversation, and it is really hard to be angry or upset when you hear the word peahonker. One of my co-workers, a wonderful lady in the young grandma phase of life, loved the word, but kept forgetting it (admit it, it would be hard to remember if you didn't hear it several times a day in your apartment). She would come up to me and ask, "What was that word again?" "Peahonker?" "Yes!"

There are so many fun and ridiculous sounding words that it is a pity to get stuck in the rut of the usuals. And we could invent so many more! If you need help, I recommend spending time with a 3-4 year old. I once had a name calling contest with my (at the time) three year old nephew. His favorite put down went something along the lines of "You are a spicy hot flamingo eating an ice cream truck." How do you respond to that?

So, be creative. Peruse the dictionary, be creative, keep your ears open, and spend time with some kids. You will soon have a brilliantly witty repertoire of comebacks that will liven any discussion, you malarkical mass of miscible rutabega you.

Zebra Mussels!

Rain, Rain

Today was a wonderful day for rain. The walk from building to car was enough to wash your clothes. It was a perfect day for puddle hopping. Or singing in the rain. Or both. A day for taking a nice long walk in the rain just for the sheer wild nonsense of it all.

Of course, the down side was a flooded hallway outside of my apartment. And a couple of traffic lights going out. But, you know, it's the price you pay for a beautiful deluge.

Happily Ever After, or Why We Love Cinderella

I will confess, I did get sucked into the royal wedding a little bit. In my defense, it was after the fact. A friend mentioned she had watched it and that the hats alone made it worth it, so of course, I had to check out the hats. And then I was just intrigued by the event and the attention it was getting, and I spent some time (and by time, I'm talking an hour or two). I looked at pictures from the wedding, particularly photos of the happy couple, trying to dissect the global fascination with the wedding of these two people that most of the planet will never know personally.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think what fascinated me about the royal wedding was less the prince/princess aspect and more the happiness aspect. I don't know William or Kate, but from what I have been able to find out about them, they are good, decent people, and they deserve to be happy. Which is not that different from the rest of the world. Most of us are good, decent people who deserve to be happy. I think that is what makes weddings so wonderful, is the potential for happily ever after.

Just to clarify, by happily ever after I do not mean that life is going to be perfect or easy just because a person is married, or that we can't be happy without it. I'm a very single woman, and I have had a happy life. And I know marriage is a challenge. Honestly, "happily" may not be the best word to describe what we mean. But marriage is a different kind of happily ever after, and it's a beautiful one. Also, happily ever after isn't just meant for now. It's meant for beyond this life, and that's a pretty amazing and wonderful thing. I think we all have an intuitive desire for that happily ever after that Heavenly Father has planned for us, and so we love weddings because of that potential. But the more I examined the royal wedding, the more I kept seeing a family, watching someone they loved move forward in a good thing. At the heart of it, the wedding was a very universal event, something we can all relate too. It was just on a bigger stage.

The other thing I discovered is that there is just something cool about the United Kingdom and royalty. I admit, I kind of wish I had a coat of arms. I'm not sure why we have such a fascination with kings and queens, especially since so many of them haven't been very noble. I'm still not sure what it is that is so enticing about royalty, but I couldn't help wishing I was part of it somehow. And then I realized, duh, I am. My ancestry is English, Irish, Scottish, Danish, and German. I had ancestors, and some not that distant, that came from these countries, and so that is my heritage. This has inspired me to learn more about those countries and get to know the history of those countries, because they are part of my history.

So you see, I really haven't become a casualty of the giddy girliness of royal weddingdom. I've been studying family history. Not a bad outcome for a Cinderellaesque story.