My Sisters Farmhouse

Week 43 – Capricious - Sudden unpredictable changes in attitude or behavior; impulsive; fickle

I hear this word frequently, but I always assumed it meant something like ‘unfair’ or ‘judgemental’ – but there was also something about the word that suggested ‘unbalanced’  or ‘off kilter’ which is not far from the true meaning of the word.

Example Sentence – It would not be much of a stretch of characterize the author of this blog as often capricious.

Week 42 – Whatev…

Week 41 – Pyrrhic – I saw this word while reading a Christopher Hitchens article about Texas, education and the power mongering religious right.  Evidently, when it comes to pubic school curriculum, Texas sets the standard not just for the textbooks in it’s own schools, but also for a number of other states as well.  Many states purchase their textbooks from Texas. So when seven members of the fourteen member Texas state board of education are self-proclaimed intelligent design proponents, it is easy to see that evolution is going to be regarded with suspicion and taught as a weak malformed theory in all textbooks approved by the Texas B.O.E..  Meanwhile, the U.S continues to fall further and further behind in science and math when compared to other nations – but never mind that – let’s make sure that if kiddies don’t understand the world around them – they can just say, “god did it, because the bible told me so.”   Sounds like good science to me.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah!

Pyrrhic!

It means achieved at an excessive cost.  The word is derived from old King Pyrrhus who defeated the Romans at a heavy cost of human life.  It also means – so costly that it outweighs any benefits that might be achieved.

Example Sentence – Writing about converting from christianity to atheism on my blog has come at extremely pyrrhic personal costs.

Week 40 – Calumny – I just got a great e-mail from a man in England named ‘Feud’.

Strange factoid follows…

Ever since I became an atheist I hear from a lot more men, I can’t exactly say that I hate this.

Anyway!  ‘Feud’ wrote a wonderful letter.  So great that I made the CD sit down and read it and we both laughed when we got to this part… I also read your article on Squirrels’ brains, not really a delicacy here in London, where it’s called Landlord’s Traditional Steak and Ale Pie and fed to unsuspecting tourists. But ‘Feud’ went on to later say this… Nearly every war, every large-scale genocide, and every prejudice and calumny known to mankind has a religious root. Which is of course true… except I don’t know what calumny means.  So I looked it up and according to the Merriam Webster  it means…

1 : a misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation
2 : the act of uttering false charges or misrepresentations maliciously calculated to harm another’s reputation

Example Sentence – The local priest, in his humble robes and pious hair fringe became an expert at calumny in order to bring in the weekly quota of human kindling necessary for the inquisition.

Week 39? – Solipsism - I keep seeing this word in all these books I have been reading by Hitchens, Dawkins and Karen Armstorng.  I am far too weak and shaky to even hazard a guess on this word, other than it must have something to do with religion or the lack thereof.  So a quick search then…

And solipsism is the theory that only the self exists or can be proved to exist.  What?  I mean right now my feet are on the coffee table and from the way that the wood is pushing against my skin I can tell that the coffee table exists.  I can hear one of my sons saying ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ over and over again upstairs in the shower so it is pretty clear that he exists.  Does solipsism mean that the coffee table and my son only exist because I exist?  My existence is creating their existence?  I don’t think I am smart enough for this word.  On the other hand – the other definition of solipsism is extreme preoccupation and indulgence of one’s feelings and desires.  Now here is a definition I can understand.  Especially being a blogger.  In fact – I think maybe the word ‘blogger’ should be used as an example of the word solipsism.

Example Sentence – For a fine example of solipsism in action, consider the blogger.

Week 31 – Lachrymose – I heard Andy use this word on The Office… He said, “I feel lachrymose” and I went WHOA… What?… what did he say????

“I feel and lack remorse…”

“I feel lack remose…?”

“I feel lackremorse…?”

So I googled a few versions of the word until I finally figured out how to spell it –  LACHRYMOSE – which means given to tears or causing tears…

Example Sentence – Onions never make me lachrymose – but Iris Dement songs?…..  every single time.

Week 30 – Prescience - (Preh-she-intz) To predict or anticipate.  To know something is going to happen before it happens.  Foresight.

Example Sentence – A certain amount of prescience is a good thing to have when writing a blog, so that one can be prepared for an onslaught of negative comments.

Week 29 – Gimlet - I have long been a fan of the expression ‘the gimlet eye’ – and I figured I knew what it meant – but I wanted to be sure.  In order to find out the true meaning of the expression ‘gimlet eye’ I had to start with the definition of ‘gimlet’.  Evidently a gimlet is a small hand tool having a spiraled shank, a screw tip, and a cross handle which is used for boring holes. However!  A gimlet is also a cocktail made with vodka or gin, sweetened lime juice, and sometimes effervescent water and garnished with a slice of lime.

After I learned about the drink called a gimlet, I had to try and make it.  At a recent party with some friends, I brought the raw ingredients and my friend Kim made the drink while I took some photos of her against her will.  I hope to get that story up soon.  In the mean time… Cheers!

Oh! – and a gimlet eye is an eye that gives a penetrating, sharp, or piercing look…

Kind of like in the above photo… except completely different.

I guess a vodka gimlet does not exactly bring out the gimlet eye in me.

Week 28 – Apotheosis - (Uh-POTH-eeee-oh-sus) – I came across this word in a book I am reading right now called Paris – A Secret History by Andrew Hussey.  It is one of those books that you have to either read with a dictionary at your elbow or content yourself with guessing at what many of the big, fancy words mean.  In contrast, just today I started reading Helene Hanff’s book called Q’s Legacy which is a book written about a legendary Oxford English professor who insisted that his students state things plainly – choosing words that people understand and phrasing that is succinct rather than displaying their knowledge through cumbersome words and overwrought sentences.  I don’t think that ‘Q’ would approve of ‘Hussey’ and his multi-syllabic, obscure word choices.  Nonetheless!  I have enjoyed Hussey’s book though it has taken me a long time to get through it, whereas I will probably finish Hanff’s book on ‘Q’ by the end of the day.

Oh!

And apotheosis means to deify or to elevate to divine status.  It also means – ‘the perfect example’.

Example Sentence – Helene Hanff is the apotheosis of everything I love in a writer, her honesty, her wit and her breathtaking simplicity that so clearly comes from a thorough knowledge of great literature.

Week 27 – Crucible -(Croos – ih – bull) – I always imagined the word crucible to have a religious meaning due to having the same first syllable as the word crucify and since ‘cruc’ or ‘crux’ means ‘cross’ or ‘torture’ in Latin – you would think that I was right.  However the word, crucible – has nothing to do with religion.  Instead, it refers to an earthen pot that is used to heat metal to high degrees.  It also refers to a difficult test and to a situation in which concentrated forces meet and cause change and development to occur.

Example Sentence – Sadly, war is all too often the crucible that leads to positive change for human society.

Week 26 – Truculent - (TRUCK-you-lunt) – Truculent means the same thing as bellicose… okay? Do you understand this word now?   It also means the same thing as obstreperous.  So you probably know what it means now right?  But just in case you need a bit more information to truly understand this funny little word – it also means the same as defiant, belligerent, cross, aggressive, pugnacious, sullen, scrappy and my favorite… itching.

Example Sentence – I have to admit that after three years of blogging about my own stupid life, I was literally itching to head off into a more truculent direction.

Week 25 – Hegemony  (hehJEHmonee)- When one person, group or nation exerts a dominating influence or control over another person, group or nation. This term is most often applied to political situations, but can also describe any community situation where one faction exerts controlling influence over a larger group.

Example Sentence – Digging down deep, the blogger found the inner strength to break free of the hegemony created by certain readers of her blog.

Week 24 – Unable to add word due to crippling anxiety attacks produced by comments from angry homeschoolers

Week 23 – Bokeh (Bow – Kuh)

Oh my dear Lord in heaven save my brain from turning into cardboard from reading about what bokeh means.  Please God – I can feel it freezing up already and little bits of it are coming out of my ears in powdery freeze dried chunks.

Bokeh is a photography term and that right there is enough to send me straight into a coma.  I am sorry to tell you this, but photography techno instruction manual jargon just does not turn my crank.  Show me where the freakin’ ‘on’ button is and that is all I want to know.  But for those of you who demand more from life than just pretty pictures – bokeh is from the Japanese word ‘boke’ which means blurry or out of focus.  So any part of a photo that is intentionally out of focus to create a pretty fuzzy background is referred to as bokeh.  BUT – for those of you who haven’t turned to stone from reading this fascinating definition, Bokeh also seems to particularly refer to the blurry light blobs in the background of a photo and you can even mess with these blurry light blobs and turn them into hearts and stars and butterflies if it happens to jiggle your jigger.  Personally – my jigger turned into cement after the the second word of this definition.

Week 22 – Hyperbole (High – PER – Bowl – Lee)

Translation – Hyper – Lots and lots… Bole – uh… well this is not a word really, but when you put it all together you get lots and lots of exaggeration… extravagant exaggeration… exaggeration that is not meant to be taken literally because it is only for effect and everyone knows it.

Example Sentence - To spice up her blog, she often threw in a bit of hyperbole stating that she had fake show-cats, her brother-in-law was an oracle and her constitution was as weak and shaky as a ninety year old invalid on life support.

WAIT! That last bit is not hyperbole at all! It is true! One hundred percent TRUE! Very Weak… Very Shaky…

Week 21 - Whatever…

Week 20 – Anachronism

The only context I ever really hear this word and think that I might understand it is in regard to the ‘Society for Creative Anachoronisms’ – or the folks who dress up like knights and ladies during King Arthur’s round table and go around eating turkey legs and having sword fights and wearing wreaths of flowers on their heads. I heartily respect these people and earnestly believe that they know more about the secrets to having fun than most other people on the planet. As this is my only experience with the word, I suppose I thought that anachronism meant ‘play acting’ or ‘grown-ups who like to pretend’ or ‘the people with an unusual amount of velveteen in their street-wear’. In reality anachronism means an error in chronology… something that is chronologically out of place…one from a former age that is incongruous with the present.

Example sentence - The buxom barmaid heaved a beerstein to the battered bard on the stage as his jester’s hat and his striped tights were ananchronism enough to make her bust a corset button.

Week 19 – Rochambeau (ro-sham-bo)

I went to a church meeting tonight, and one of the people at the meeting threw out this word ‘rochambeau’ and I said, “What does that mean?” and this person said, “rock, paper, scissors.” So I promptly wrote RSB on my hand so that I could remember to look it up when I got home.

What I thought I would find after a hasty bit of google searching, was that rochambeau was basically the french equivalent for the three words, ‘rock, paper and scissors.” But that is not the case at all. The French play rock, paper, scissors, but they do not call it rochambeau. They call it “pierre feuille ciseaux” or “chifoumi”. The word ‘rochambeau’ comes from an American Civil War General named Rochambeau who was a little unusual in his methods of deciding disagreements among his troops. Frisbee golf players popularized the term ‘rochambeau’ to mean to use ‘rock. paper, scissors to determine who goes first in the game. The deeply disturbing cartoon, SouthPark gave the expresssion a make-over in an episode and used it to mean a method of making decisions involving two kids kicking each other in the ‘groin area’ until one kid either passes out, dies, or surrenders. At this point, the ‘winner’ gets to make the decision.

Example Sentence – A quick game of rochambeau often decided whose turn it was to have the ipod as one brother was left hunched over and screaming in pain, while the other danced away to the music playing in his head.

Week 18 – Caveat (Cah Vee Ot)

I tend to hear this word in legal contexts – or coming from the mouths of legal types – so I always assumed it has something to do a contract or a dispute. I always thought caveat meant ‘an exception’ as in – the mother told her kids they could have all the brownies they wanted with the caveat that they had made their beds that morning.

In reality, a caveat is more of a warning to prevent a person from certain acts or practices and it is also a further explanation to prevent misinterpretation. For legal types, a caveat is the suspension of a proceeding until the opposition has a hearing. So caveat means to wait… to warn… and to further explain.

Example sentence – The mother set a plate of warm brownies on the table much to the delight of her children with the caveat that beds would be made or that bottoms would also be warmed.

Week 17 – Desultory

The Country Doctor suggested this week’s word of the week. I asked him what his best guess was as to what the word might mean.

CD – What are you doing?

Me – I am typing word of the week.

CD – I really don’t want to be word of the week.

Me – Too bad. Now what do you think desultory means.

CD – It’s de SULT ory.

Me – Well… I say DEsultory.

CD – I think it means disappointing… What does it really mean?

Me – Well… according to the Merriam Webster it means…

1 : marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose
2 : not connected with the main subject
3 : disappointing in progress, performance, or quality

Me – Can you give me an example sentence?

CD – Right now?

Me – Yes… right now…

CD – Um… how about… I couldn’t eat these bland scrambled eggs without desultory pepper… get it dee salt or dee pepper

Me – You are hilarious.

Example Sentence from the Country Doctor’s Wife - The woman delighted in tormenting her husband by meandering through Target in a long and winding desultory manner.

Week 16 – Doi Derrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Week 15 – Derrrrrrrrrrrr

Week 14 – Impecunious

I heard this word recently when I was watching ‘Becoming Jane’ which stars that pale dark haired actress with the large grin that so reminds me of a girl I knew when I was growing up whose name was Desiree’. Desiree, was one of those girls that could do everything well. She was really smart and completely untroubled by sticky math problems. She danced around on toe shoes as if they were a natural extension of her feet. She always had great ideas for pretend games like this one game called ‘Junk Yard Kitties’ that we played on her trampoline. She had a trampoline. I did not have a trampoline. She had long blond curly hair and her mother let her wear those little clippies to hold her bangs back. I had stick straight, hair-colored hair that had a tendency to spring up in all the wrong places and my mother would never let me wear little clippies because she thought they were tacky. Desiree’ was also really, really funny. It was the fact that she was so funny that made the rest of her endless perfection tolerable. Then she moved away, and I missed her for a long, long time.

But Desiree’ doesn’t have anything to do with the word impecunious, except that Desiree’ reminds me of that actress that played Jane Austen in Becoming Jane. At one point in the movie, Jane is summoned to the drawing room of the rich old lady of the manor and told that even though she is not really up to snuff, she had better hurry up and accept the proposal of the rich old lady’s nephew because Jane’s father was impecunious.

Jane retorts, “My father is most certainly not impecunious!”

The rich old lady says, “Ah but Jane… he most certainly is.”

And then Jane has to decide whether or not to marry the rich old lady’s nephew and save her family from impecunity, or run off with the man she really loves.

I won’t tell you what happens, but it is a pretty good film and impecunious means penniless… or poor… or not really worthy of marrying the rich old lady’s nephew. Personally, if I were Jane, I would have made do with the guy that was heir to the fabulous English manor, but that is just me.

Example sentence –

Though impecunious, the bright young thing hid her lack in yards and yards of second hand satin, worn and threadbare from years of use, yet in the soft candlelight neither the satin nor the girl was dimmed.

Week 13 – Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr………

I reserve the right to use the word derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….. for my word o’ the week under the following circumstances.

1. I write a both a lengthy and fabulous definition for the word impecunious, fail to save it before I glance over to a new page, and it disappears forever.

2. I suffer from a bout of one of the following… dropsy, pleurisy, chilblains, overriding grogginess, nap time, melancholy, malaise, paranoia, or an insufferable bad hair day.

3. I get sick of myself and sick of my blog (see #2).

4. I get sick of the entire blogosphere.

5. I am not speaking to the Country Doctor.

6. My children have caused me to have a brain aneurysm.

7. Leave me alone I’m Watching A Movie!

8. Leave me alone I’m Reading a Book!

9. Just plain old LEAVE ME ALONE!

10. Word o’ the Week will return next week if I FEEL LIKE IT!

Example Sentence -

Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

Week 12 – Pathos

The Country Doctor used the word ‘pathos’ in a sentence today and I said, “Hey! That would be a great word for ‘word o’ the week!’

He said, “Yeah… especially since I really don’t know what it means.”

In general, pathos seems to refer to suffering, but it also means ‘to experience’.

The goal of any artist worth their salt, is to generate pathos in their audience. The good artist wants their audience to experience an emotion via their work of art be it a play, a book, a painting, a sculpture, or a finely chiseled piece of toast. The artist wants to move people, and arouse their pathos.

Pathos also refers to sympathetic pity.

Example Sentence:

Attempting to summon their mother’s pathos, the four children looked at her with pleading eyes and sweaty brows, their lips cottony dry and artistically cracked, as they weakly gestured towards the sno-cone stand.

Week 11 – Doodle Sack

I think that after the past few weeks of relentless insanity, my brain has turned into a doodle sack. And yet., if my brain was really a doodle sack, this would be the final proof that I am a crazy person because A doodle sack is an old English word meaning bagpipe. My brain may be a quivering pile of gelatin these days, but it is certainly not a bagpipe.

Example Sentence:

The young celt, clad in kilt and tam o’shanter played upon his doodle sack until his neighbors were forced to call the cops.

Does anyone else think that it seems like there is really only one bagpipe song?

Week 10 – Querulous

I love words that actually sound like what they mean. Of course, I am never quite sure exactly what most of the words that I choose for this section actually mean. I usually have a vague, misguided and often completely wrong idea of the definition, so that querulous, though it sounds like it means trembly, slack jawed and weak kneed, could actually mean stoic, stern, and unbending. In reality however, querulous means, habitually complaining, fretful and whining. Which is just exactly what it should mean according to how it sounds… don’t you think?

Example sentence:

As soon as the mother was out of site, the old cook grabbed the querulous eight year old by the back of his shirt, sat him down hard upon the kitchen counter and told him that if he ever wanted to eat her chocolate cupcakes again, he would take his endless snivelling and snot-nosed whining and shove them into the depths of the incinerator, never to be heard from again.

Week 9 – Blanch

During my recent adventures in making spinach preserves, I was forced to blanch, which caused me to blanch whilst I blanched. There are seemingly thousands of cooking terms and phrases that are and forever will be a foreign language to me. I have never been able to find a clear explanation of exactly what the phrase ’scald the milk’ means. Then there are the more mysterious terms like ‘parboil’, macerate’, ‘poach’, and ‘fold in’. Actually, I understand what ‘fold in’ means, I just can’t do it. My ‘folding-in’ looks just like my ’stirring’ does and my ‘poaching’ looks just like scrambled eggs.

But back to Blanch – a word with multiple meanings…

1. To remove the color.

2. To turn something white.

3. To boil food for less than a minute in order to brighten the color of food, remove the skin or stop the enzymatic action.

4. To bleach

5. To make ashen or pale.

6. To scald or parboil… oh good grief!

Parboil – to boil until partially cooked

Scald – To heat milk just below the boiling point until tiny bubbles appear around the edge of the pan; to dip certain foods briefly into boiling water (see Blanch).

Example rhyming sentence:

Blanche blanched as the cookbook instructed…blanch beets… parboil meats… scald the milk… prior to eats… she hurled the cookbook at the wall when… she saw that she must now fold-in.

Week 8 – Existentialism

Oh dear! This is a tough one! I have always wondered what exactly existentialism meant. You see this word thrown hither and yon in all sorts of situations and I really have no idea what exactly it is, so after about twenty minutes of on-line research, I will see if I can break it down so as to be able to appear the expert at future backyard barbecues and cocktail parties…

1. It is a philosophy of life predominantly associated with philosophers with impossible names like Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

2. Some existentialists are atheists and some are not.

3. It centers on free will.

4. It seems to derive from the idea that you create your own existence. This is the tricky part. Existentialism says that societal rules, religious doctrine, governmental laws are all completely arbitrary… or pretend… or make-believe The real rules are defined entirely by the consequences of a person’s choices. You can see how there would be some overlap between these two seemingly opposing ideas… for instance sexual intercourse with utter abandon in all it’s various permutations might seem like fun at first, but it quickly decays into pain, disease, unwanted children, and heartbreak. Therefore it would seem that a religious doctrine that criminalizes sex outside of marriage is really an existential idea based on experience and consequences. What? Huh? Where am I? Why am I talking to my computer?

5. I think that what existentialists are really getting at is that a lot of societal rules, be they religious, governmental or otherwise, are completely silly and only an idiot would accept them without a bit of critical thinking on whether or not they truly have any value.

6. Also that everyone is in charge of their own destiny. People are not puppets of some larger force.

7. You can see how existentialism has really shaped the American outlook on life, that being personal freedom, the right to pursue happiness, the belief in the self-made man, rising from the ashes, pulling yourself up from your bootstraps…

8. At least that used to be the American ideal. Now Americans are all hapless victims of some sort of merciless outside force (alcohol, fast food, cigarettes, sunshine, welfare, food stamps, antidepressants, lower back pain, hair that won’t lie flat, large hands, grew up in a split level, middle child, red hair, dislikes fish, misogyny, flat chested, uni-brow, crooked teeth, cheap beer, doting parents, general weakness, overriding shakiness…) and must sue someone to make their dreams come true.

I found this list and thought it helped… a little...

I still have no idea what existentialism is. The next time it comes up in a conversation I am just going to say, “Oh you mean Kierkegaard and Nietzsche!” and then quickly bounce away on a cloud of impressive philosopher name dropping.

Week 7 – A Boney Simmitch

A boney simmitch is a very simple meal made by placing one slice of baloney between two slices of bread. Some people might refer to this meal as a baloney sandwich, but in our house it is called a boney simmitch because this is what Jack, my youngest son called it when he was still securely wrapped inside of adorable toddlerhood.

These days, Jack is not wrapped inside of adorable toddlerhood. Instead he is a feisty, seven year old, freckly faced, boss, bossy, bossy pants, but if he asked me to make him a boney simmitch I would drop everything and do it right away.

Example sentence: ‘Mom… mom… mom… MOM… MOM will you make me a boney simmitch?’

Week 6 – Verklempt

I have seen this word in many places and have never really known for sure what it meant. It seems to refer to a deep personal discomfort, similar to how I felt from the age of twelve until about fifteen.

One definition I found referred to verklempt as being ‘overcome with emotion… or clenched’. I don’t understand how these two things can exist at the same time. In my mind, you are either overcome with emotion, or you are clenched. For instance, I am often overcome with emotion while the Country Doctor is usually clenched, and trust me, we are not responding to whatever the situation is, in remotely the same way. Strangely, as I look back at myself during the ages of twelve to fifteen, I was often overcome with emotion and when I was not, I was usually clenched. Therefore, I seem to have been right in my guess about what this word meant. It means deep personal discomfort. It means you don’t know how to respond, so you just feel weird instead.

Example sentence:

Discovering that she was once again overlooked by the judges of the KU Crimson Girl Dance Squad, the young girl, verklempt and suddenly blotchy, focused on the back wall of the gym and tried to remember how to walk normally towards the red and blue painted door.

I was going to choose ‘boilerplate’ for my word this week, but as I was looking up various definitions of ‘boilerplate’ I ran across the word ‘hackneyed’ and WHOA!… such a much better word.

Week 5 - Hackneyed - lacking in freshness and originality… trite… stereotyped… cliche… boilerplate...

Example sentence : Say what you will about her, the girl that suffered from compulsive blogging syndrome, her strange strangeness, her odd oddities, her freakish freakazoid tendencies, just please don’t accuse her of being hackneyed!

Week 4 – Gestalt.

I use this word a lot, but I am not at all sure that I use it correctly. To me gestalt means sensing where something should be based on the things that surround it. For instance, if I am in a strange town trying to find an interesting place to eat lunch, I might first locate the older part of town… or the central downtown… thereby avoiding the strip malls on the edge of town entirely because… blech.

However, when I looked this word up in the on-line Merriam Webster it said something like… a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to blah blah blah blah…

I couldn’t make heads of tails out of the actual definition.

Besides, I like mine better.

Example sentence: In order to maintain their sanity, the women furtively snuck away from their families and fled to the nearby town where they discovered a fabulous luncheonette by noting the ever increasing presence of old brick streets, thereby putting to use their uncanny sense of gestalt.

I imagine that my use of the word is wrong, but I intend to continue to use it this way. I’m too old to change now.

Week 3a – Crassulent (because portent is kinda weak). Pronounced crash you lent

The Country Doctor chose this word. It is a term meaning ‘morbidly obese’ that has fallen into obscurity.

Example sentence: The crassulent cocker spaniel heaved himself off the leather divan and fell into a thundering heap at the paws of the show cat who taunted the dog mercilessly until his eyes grew heavy with sleep, a few moments later.

Week 3b – Portent

An omen… a sign… something foreshadowed or ’seen’ by a prophet… a sage… AN ORACLE!

Example sentence: The Oracle Known as Steve often delivered his fateful portents to the huddled masses, beer in one hand… spatula in the the other… while standing beside his Weber grill.

Week 2 – Boddering

This is a word that my youngest son, Jack uses so frequently that it has become a regular part of our household lexicon. I often hear him saying, “MOM! Calder is boddering me!” or “Mom! MOM!! MOM!!! Drew is boddering me again!

I am not really sure exactly what ‘boddering’ is, but it is clearly distressing, possibly painful, and must be stopped at once for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

Example sentence: Stop boddering me!

Week 1 – Chilblains

In my mind I always assumed that this was some sort of fever that struck the young and tender after wandering heartbroken amidst the gnarled woods.

It would appear it is more of an red, pulsating, ulcerated lesion usually occurring on the feet and hands. Even if your lover comes back to you, a quick recovery is unlikely.

Example sentence: Sierra Witherbon’s shattered heart was further aggravated by the impending doom that hung in the air, the cooks insistence on blanched beets, and the aching, oozing, chilblains on her feet, from which she could find no relief.