Word of the Day

deipnosophist \dyp-NOS-uh-fist\, noun:

Someone who is skilled in table talk.


My 7 year old Hudson proved he is a deipnosophist yesterday when he began our dinner with this topic of conversation:

"You know, I haven't gone poop all year."

It's difficult NOT to have some sort of rebuttal.

Word of the Day

re·cher·ché [ruh-shair-shey, ruh-shair-shey; Fr. ruh-sher-shey] –adjective

1. sought out with care.
2. very rare, exotic, or choice; arcane; obscure.
3. of studied refinement or elegance; precious; affected; pretentious.

Dylan ,10, is sick with the flu. As I was sitting at his bedside nursing him to health, Evangeline walks into the room with her self diagnosis.

"I know why he's sick."

"Why?" I ask, curious about the medical knowledge of a nine year old.

"He farted too much. He over farted."

Such recherche repertoire comes from her father's side of the family.

Seriously though, better get yourself a flu shot, she could be on to something.

Word of the Day

Word of the Day
perfervid \puhr-FUR-vid\, adjective:

Ardent; impassioned; marked by exaggerated or overwrought emotion.

Yesterday, I vowed to spend today in a serene state of fasting and prayer for a Buckeye victory in tonight's National Championship game. I fasted until breakfast. I'm evidently not the perfervid fan I claim to be.

In anticipation of the showdown tonight, I've been nervous and jittery all day. Or it could be the four bowls of Lucky Charms I ate yesterday. Hey, I was stocking up, I thought I was fasting.




**On a more helpful note, I found Mommy Doodles, a purveyor of craftiness and cookery in easy to understand language.

Free Rice, but not for fat Americans.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, some students recommended checking out a great website: www.freerice.com. It's a fun little vocabulary game. (Yes, an oxymoron for some). For every correct definition the rice people will donate 10 grains of rice to a third world country.

Kinda sounds like some sort of Internet scam, the way I described it. Of course, on the actual website they specifically say who they are and how the rice is donated and to whom. Besides, what kinda of scam artist would want to trick Americans into getting smarter? Unless our own government is behind this... Condaleeza...RICE.

It's the best of both worlds. Literary, sophisticated and eloquent word mongers hone their craft while the math geek inside my computer factors in the complex grain addition theory. You can easily earn a couple of thousand grains of rice in one sitting.

I, of course, glutton of Thanksgiving dinner and overall glutton, donated three thousand grains of rice to developing countries all while I stuffed my mouth with Pumpkin pie leftovers. Oh yes, I did. I don't recommend it; eating while nonchalantly affecting someones daily nutrition, or finishing off the pumpkin pie.

Both will give you heartburn.

Allergic to ?

Word of the Day
matutinal \muh-TOOT-n-uhl\, adjective:

Relating to or occurring in the morning; early.

I love the sound of this word. if you're gong to be awake before 8 a.m., you should be forced to use this word. If someone said, "I'm a matutinal person," that would give me enough time to walk away.

I have physical evidence to support my hypothesis that I am NOT capable of being a morning person. Not capable. Must work at night. I can't think or speak in the morning before 8:30 a.m. I'm worthless.

How have I made this discovery? It relates to the allergic reactions I started having awhile back. I haven't had an anaphylactic reaction since May. I adjusted some prescription meds, had no problems, so I assumed the medicine was to blame for the skin clawing, morbid swelling, nearly suffocating reaction to who knows what.

So three months go by and suddenly, I have another allergic reaction. Only this time it was the mother of all reactions. I swelled up, broke out in a weird rash, my lips were numb, I itched everywhere I had skin and I started sweating like a fat man in a construction zone. And then of course the usual, wheezing, severe abdominal cramps, what not. I looked like I dipped my head in a vat of battery acid.

When I used the epi pen, it worked for about 30 seconds before I really started getting bad. So Kevin took me to the hospital, where I was a walking freak show for the folks in the ER.

Once I'm calmed down (otherwise known as being drugged into a delicious stupor)the doctors parade out the usual questions,trying to figure out why this happens.

Nothing I ate, nothing I'm wearing, no recreational drugs, nothing out of the ordinary EXCEPT I got up early that morning to fix pancakes for breakfast. I was up before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I had not only fixed breakfast but done some laundry and was all ready for church.

The matutinal behavior was the only unaccounted for variable that day. My skillful deduction tells me that I am allergic to early mornings.

I never get up early unless there's a darn good reason for it. And it nearly cost me my life. So, based on all logical comparisons, I think I can get a doctors excuse to sleep late each and every morning.

Word of the Day:

Fecund \FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:

1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.

Now that the kids are out of school and we travel en masse, I get some strange looks and odd inquiries. Here's a list of fecund related questions I get from strangers on a weekly basis followed by my mind's retaliation:

5. Are those kids all yours?

Whoa! No ma'am, I dint see that last yung'n. Whooose d'ya spose that is?

4. How do you do it?

Do? Do what? Life? What are my alternatives? I do it crazily, hectically, lovingly, grumpily, beautifully, gratefully, sometimes heavily medicated but otherwise joyfully. How would you do it?

3. You know how that happens, don't you?

Dagnabit, if I could just figger how this keeps happnin' I might be able to stop it, like a leaky faucet, just plug it right up.

2. Are they from the same father?

Do I look like I have separate litters?

And the top most ridiculously asked question...

1. Are you done yet?

Done? Done what? The answer to #3? What's it to you? Do you really want to know the answer?

Dibs? Dibs!

It all started with my mother’s yard sale. She and my dad have decided to downsize, which means parting with enough home décor to furnish a small country. My mother lives to decorate. She is the knick knack queen. She’s made decorations out of things that most people would consider small appliances. There are cows in designer suits, bears with dresses, candles wrapped in flowers, French writing on walls, wine glasses wrapped in sparkly stuff. You name, she’s given it a make over. Because she practices decoration diversity, style classification is sketchy, at best. Because of its Midwestern regional connotations, ‘knick knack’ works well. ‘What-not’ sounds like tools and spools of thread and ‘bric-a-brac’ sounds like ceramic frogs and mug holders.

If I said ‘bagatelle’ or ‘furbelow,’ those sound more exotic, right? Or, how about this- if my husband Kevin came home and said, “Honey I found the perfect bagatelle for you today,” I would think, wow, he must have bought me a Faberge egg or something. If, however, he came home and said, “Honey, I bought you some flummery, today, I would have to assume he’d been shopping at the medical supply store again. The same goes for ‘kickshaw’ and ‘gewgaw’. (I’m serious, look at a thesaurus).

Anyway, my mom was making a list of items that we, the kids wanted to keep. On the list my sister-in-law had written DIBS. D-I-B-S. What does this word that sounds like a burp, possibly mean? And why has it risen to international significance, much like the universal sign for, “I need the Heimlich maneuver.”

Dibs is nothing more than the grown up version of “Mine!” Yet, it’s an acceptable form of litigation!

Isn’t that what most of life boils down to, who has first dibs? Leftover pizza? Dibs! Grandma’s antiques? Dibs! Child custody? Dibs! The Alamo? Dibs! Israel and Palestine? Dibs!

This past Sunday, I was sitting in a church we were visiting, trying to wrap my head around what the pastor was explaining as he was baptizing an infant. He said the baptism sacrament is not intended to wash away sins. It was intended to signify that child as being a child of a believer. The parents were dedicating the child to God, to be raised in the teaching of this specific church. So what does it boil down to?? I swear to you, all I could think about was DIBS!

It’s a weird tradition when you stop and consider the meaning that one odd sounding word has on our culture. It’s almost as funny as saying you’re having a yard sale because you’ve collected a lot of gimcrack.

Word of the Day

Word of the Day

lumpen \LUHM-puhn; LUM-puhn\, adjective;
plural lumpen, also lumpens:

1. Of or relating to dispossessed and displaced individuals, especially those who have lost social status.
2. Common; vulgar.
3. A member of the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum.



Example: In prison, Paris Hilton must have taken some thumpin' from some lumpen.

For Women Only 2

Not so favorite Word of the Day

delectation \dee-lek-TAY-shun\, noun:

Great pleasure; delight, enjoyment.

If you look at the pronunciation of this word, it sounds remarkably like lactation. Lactation, at least for me, is not a great pleasure, delight or enjoyment. And when you're a lactating mom with twins, everything is double. EVERYTHING. And eventually a lot lower.

How can it be enjoyable to walk around with two large napkins stuffed into your bra, just in case you spring a leak? Who wants to wear a bra with a trap door? That whole lactation, nursing bra thing is like a homeopathic solution to birth control. Forget Lybrel, hold on to your nursing bra.

No, I won't be using this word.

It might go right into the same category as the S---M word.

Word of the Day

My favorite word for today:


Nonpareil \non-puh-REL\, adjective:

1. Having no equal; peerless.
2. Something of unequaled excellence; a peerless thing or person.
3. A flat disk of chocolate covered with beads of colored sugar

Perfection and chocolaty, sugary candy in the same definition? Clearly this is a woman's doing.

Word of the Day

termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun

1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew.

Clearly this word is the etyomological hallucination of a petty man.

Or...it might possibly describe the personality of a certain woman coming down from a Little Debbie induced sugar high.

Just saying...

I Love Words (and brownies)

I found this great word on dictionary.com. I think it should be used more often in the general population.

idee fixe \ee-day-FEEKS\, noun:
An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession.

For example: Smelling the freshly baked brownies presented a huge temptation for me and became an idee fixe that could not be satiated until I had eaten the entire pan.

True story.