Word.

57 points

In Scrabble, a simple word, carefully placed, at just the right time, can win the game.

Scrabble and life are not that different really. Sometimes the simplest, clearest words are worth the most. They can mean everything. Margaret Atwood said, "a word after a word after a word is power."

True.

Just so you know, the answer is no.

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Are any of us as smart as we think we are?

Example: try to define "the."

Sally and Anne and you and I.

In the basket or the box? Careful: one answer
is much more empathetic than the other.
(source)

Although somewhat controversially used to determine autism spectrum tendencies, The Sally-Anne Test, developed in the 80s, measures children's cognitive functioning to help verify "theory of mind" and its key by-product: empathy. It determines if children can extend their thinking beyond that early egocentric childhood phase.

Sally and Anne were my first thoughts upon recently learning this word:

sonder (noun): the emotional realization inspired by the truth that all of the 7 billion people on this planet are living their own lives, each fraught with troubles and joys and ideas and dreams and darknesses similar yet different than mine or yours. 

For me, sonder is what I think I feel when I people-watch and wonder. It's what I think I feel when I ride the subway only remotely encountering and briefly interacting with strangers, silently seeing our worlds meet and part and meet and part again. It makes me feel small. It also inspires in me a longing for all the people and culture and stories and perspectives I will never live long enough to truly understand.

I love this word.

Sonder seems to me a solid reminder of how to be human. I know where Sally will look for her marble and thus I must respect all. In other words, I cannot fully know Sally or Anne or anyone but I do know the struggle itself. We are separate yet together, different yet the same.

Sometimes (word-of-the-day edition)

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Sometimes I don't have a lot of energy or drive. So I muster some and when I'm not paying attention to the challenge so much, things change.

Sometimes I want long term change and I remind myself that things won't change until I muster some long term motivation. And persevere.

Sometimes I count and recount each failure attempted but then I shake that away and muster fake courage and then I'm not faking anymore.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how many things I have to do and be and remember and become and then I recognize my ego whining and I muster enough humility to laugh at my foolish self.

Sometimes there is not enough time so I muster within me that inner reminder that I could take eight hours to do what I need to do but if I take only eighty minutes instead it will likely be fine that way too.

Sometimes life feels like this and then I realize I need to muster more patience. (If you didn't have enough patience to click that link, no worries; I muster no judgment.)

Sometimes I'm amazed what I can muster up when someone asks me for help and I am always surprised by their appreciation for my efforts because it really was less of a gift for them than it turns out to be for me.

Sometimes I must muster the beauty and softness of this musterwonderful world to counter inevitable and harsh things I will never circumvent.

Sometimes I think about people I admire, people with endurance and tenacity and determination and so I siphon someone else's mustering.

Sometimes I muster muster.

Sometimes

Sometimes I wonder who is trying to send me the message I didn't know I needed.

#ihadtolaugh
#muchneededworkplacesigns
#thisisthecaptiontomycartoonlife
#getoveryourself

Things one should never outgrow:

new toys, even ones that don't yet exist.

I discovered this new word: reverb. I love this word. Defined, reverb is to cause to rebound or echo. Now here's the part I love. You probably already know this but apparently there are a variety of machines that allow musicians to manipulate acoustic sounds and patterns to make digital echoes. They instantly create their own reverb orchestra. It's like what KT Tunstall does with her famous song. Watch her feet:

I want this machine. But not for music. For life.

Imagine the words, and phrases and conversations one could save, return to and play with. Splice together. Be surrounded by. I want a way to reverb and revisit the music of my life. My missed life. My unrecorded life. My lost memories.

Maybe someone singing to herself in the other room. Maybe guitar riffs from another. Maybe Christmas morning kids. Maybe a soft loving whisper. Maybe what turned out to be the last phone call. And especially this: my Dad's voice again.

Little Liebsters!

I like this word. (I like to imagine Heidi Klum saying it to me.) Apparently it means "beloved" or "dearest" or even "my love." I'm going to start calling my teens my little liebsters in hopes that it will make them docile.

In the meantime, I humbly thank both Life of Riles and Less than Perfect for cranking their spotlights over to my blog. I too would like to shine some light on my favourite blogs so simply look right, scroll down and find my blogroll. They're my little liebsters too but they don't usually back-talk me. If you'd like me to be more specific, I offer three blogs that intrigued me today.
1. Nostomaniac ~quirky times nine and she loves calculator watches.
2. Semi-Coherent Thoughts ~a bit of a micro-blogger; self-described social commentator.
3. Munk Davis ~I like the way he thinks too much.

Settle.

Sits. Stills. Stares. All verbs.

Settle: to calm, relieve, relax, quiet, soothe, still.

There's always so much life swirling around with work and family and projects and commitments and so on.

I wait for life to settle. And I love it when it does. Like these last few days.

And then I realized something. Settle is a verb. I keep waiting for things to settle but then I remember: it's me. I have to settle them. I have to settle myself.

"Creep in our ears soft stillness." ~Shakespeare

Zoetic (Random Chalker Edition)

Thanks random sidewalk chalk kid. I needed that.
Maybe you need a reminder too?

Zoetic

Image from here.

Zoetic. I stumbled upon this word seeking the perfect adjective to describe that sensation when the sun feels like a blanket instead of a stare. Like it did today.

Zoetic. So poetic. The word apparently derives from science, from biology in particular: "pertaining to life."

It's a cell. The "smallest unit of life classified as a living thing" is zoetic. Any type of cell really. Any composition. Like bacteria. Or the soft hair of a newborn. Or the seed hidden, protected and waiting inside the pine tree's cone. It's potential. It's life.

Yet sometimes life, numbed by fatigue, can feel anything but alive.

But today made me pay attention to the zoetic.

Isn't it surprising what makes us feel most alive? It can be something as simple as the much-longed for life-sustaining sunlight on a belated spring day. Or even the opposite.

I think I was nine years old and my heart banged around in my chest like a rabbit trying to escape its cage. That day, along with my cousins and my friend Edwina (who really was my family too), we were fishing at Tobin Lake. Standing on a summer day in still water up to our waists, we weren't going to catch anything there. We were really only pretending. Our parents were on the beach, chatting, relaxing. I think Edwina let go of her fishing rod and started splashing us. We dodged her but remained where we were. Her splashing seemed half-hearted, silly but not really playful. Somehow strange. I remember thinking, she looks drunk like my Uncle Murray does when he wants to dance with my Mom. And then her head went under like being wiped off the counter top. I also remember thinking I should be doing something but what was I supposed to do with my fishing rod? My Dad told me never to let go of my fishing rod. Surfacing, Edwina coughed and laughed and spit and flapped and then I wondered if she had caught a fish. Or if she was becoming a fish? Some woozy mermaid. I turned to look at my parents. No one was coming. I felt blood rush to my head. I looked around. Stricken, my cousin Laurel stared back. Her eyes told me Edwina was drowning. Finally someone yelled and Edwina's father sauntered into the water. I still don't know what took him so long.

A juvenile diabetic, Edwina was having a seizure. The first of many which I would witness several times over the next decade.

And watching her struggle that day, I had never really felt more alive.

Zoetic. Paralyzed and watching near loss of life is oddly zoetic. I understand why now. I think I do. I think fear makes our cells rage. Adrenalin surges. Survival starts throwing punches. And the struggle, our own or others' reminds us to grasp the zoetic. And hold on. And live. Instead of just exist.

Those kinds of hands.

hands-on (adjective) involving active participation; applied as opposed to theoretical:

My 14-year-old son takes on Eric Clapton's (!!!) Tears in Heaven.

(I apologize for the dishwasher noise in the background. I'm an idiot.)

These are my son's hands. His hands are like my Dads. Not so much in the way they look but in all they seem to be able to do. I always longed for strong hands that could build what my Dad could, fix what my Dad could, create what my Dad could. Some people just have those kinds of hands. Like my son (it skipped a generation I guess). Although my son and I are different this way, I made sure my kids love the Arts. So even my Dad couldn't do this.

Happy Hogmanay! Huh?

I'm a proud Scot. Some examples:
~ As a child I was in awe of my mother's grandparents (Sidney & Maggie Row, immigrants) even though I could not figure out what they were saying during their little bickering sessions but somehow (perhaps because of this) I can now do a fantastic Scottish accent. (I love randomly broguing the phrase SCOTLAND YARD!)
~ On special occassions, my son and I proudly don our clan tartan neckties.
~ I love Craig Ferguson and the bagpipes more than my children (some days).
~ I almost bought a kilt when I was in Nova Scotia a few summers ago but (stereotype intact) I was too cheap.
~I actually own Scottish Strongman trading cards purchased at a highland games competition in Antigonish.
~And here's the kicker: I got married on Hogmanay! (And yeah, some people chose to, or as I like to call it, were forced to wear plaid.)

Despite all this, there's something I must confess. Someday when I finally travel to Scotland, it will all make sense but as of right now, this Canadian does not understand Hogmanay. What the hell is going on?

Craig Ferguson has an intriguing definition for Scotland's New Year's Eve celebrations. Hogmanay (noun): "a time when people who can inspire awe in the Irish for the amount of alcohol they can drink decide to ramp it up a notch."

It sounds like a pretty big deal. So I did some typically pea-brained research. I hope one of my readers out there can shed some much-needed light on this topic but until then, apparently this is what's possibly happening in Scotland right now:

1. (no surprise) people are wearing kilts (with long johns I hope);
2. (no surprise) people are getting rowdy and shit-faced drunk (just like here in Canada or the US or well okay, most of Earth);
3. (surprise) people are throwing around balls of fire? (see photo borrowed from Life magazine online);
4. (surprise) people are giving gifts or at least bringing food to parties (ceilidhs)? Thanks to Laoch, I am told these usually involve fist-fights. Uh, why give someone a bloody-nose if they brought you a present/bundt cake?
5. (surprise) a tall dark-haired dude must be the first one to enter your home after midnight? (I believe this tradition is referred to as first-footing? And I'm guessing my wife would choose Jake Gyllenhaal.)
6. (no surprise) people listen to great music and sing Old Lang Syne at midnight. (Robbie Burns may be the bomb dot com but can anyone possibly remember those lyrics? It's like a misheard lyrics wet-dream.)
7. (surprise) people burn other shit too? Seriously, a Viking ship? I think Ewan McGregor might be involved. (Is there no security or what?)
8. (no surprise) people have to kiss pigs (I suspect this is how women all over the world describe New Year's Eve.)
9. (surprise) people fling haggis and/or curling rocks at politicians (I totally made this one up but it sounds reasonable to me.)

Whatever it is they're doing, I only have one more thing to say: I'm jealous.

Weird Word-of-the-Day

Har (interjection): expresses the sound of laughter, with a [delightfully] sarcastic connotation.

You might be thinking that I forgot to double the har. Nope. I prefer one. I do indeed appreciate this word's sarcastic-ness but I enjoy it more for its disconcerting nature, especially when using it just once. Doubling the word sends a fairly clear message: "I find what you say to be harmlessly amusing but silly." However, the single har implies something different, something more difficult to interpret.
That's why I've decided a single har is the perfect comeback for my teens. It flummoxes them. Momentarily perplexed, it knocks them off balance, makes them jittery. (Yeah. My parenting goals are likely not chapter titles in parenting guru handbooks. But whatev.) This technique might even be the dazzle camouflage of the war that my wife and I are currently fighting known as raising teens. An example follows.

Teendaughter: Just so you know, I volunteered to be the designated driver after the party tonight at [insert name of teen-with-too-much-freedom here]...

Pulsing Forehead Vein (this is what I named the voice inside my head in these types of situations): When did she ask for the vehicle? When did she ask to go to the party? Where is this party? Who is chaperoning this party? What sorts of frat-boy teen wannabes will be at this party? Where is my taser? Oh hell no...

Teendaughter: (ignoring my pulsing forehead vein) and drive everyone home...

Pulsing Forehead Vein: With our one-and-only family vehicle? The same one I'm sort-of partial to no one barfing in?! The same one you never, ever offer to put gas in? Oh hell no...

Teendaughter: (bubbly) But because it will take a lot of time to drive everyone home I will need a later curfew.

Me: (one eyebrow raised, high intensity eye contact engaged) Har.

Teendaughter: (confused silence as she eyes me curiously and realizes the conversation is not going to continue according to her happy-go-lucky-out-the-door-before-anyone-can-say-no plan) MOOOOOOOOOM!

Yup. I love this word.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

Lyrical (adjective): characterized by or expressing spontaneous, direct feeling.

    

     Even though most songs contain lyrics, not all songs are lyrical. One of my favourite sayings goes, "music is what feelings sound like." I really do love any genre of music but my number one criteria is this: does the song feel sincere? I guess I long for lyrical lyrics. What are your top five favourite lyrics?

1. "And the landslide brought me down." Stevie Nicks
2. "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." Walt Whitman
3. "Lunatic fringe, I know you're out there." Red Rider
4. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" The Beatles
5. "Manah manah (doo doo dah doo doo) manah manah (doo doo dah doo) manah manah...." The Muppets

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

schmaltz (noun): "excessive sentimentalism, nostalgia, fond memories." Apparently derived from the Yiddish word smalts meaning "melted fat." Uh, what?! Anyway...

     I'm feeling schmaltzy tonight looking at my school photo from Grade 9 circa 1980s. Look at me! How did I not know what a chick-magnet I was? Okay, maybe not a chick-magnet but at least chick bait? Or maybe a dangling carrot? (Yeah I know. Quit with the metaphors. It's getting awkward.)

     Check out my feathered hair. And count them: three unfastened buttons, intended (I guess) to show off my manly chesthairlessness. The eyes (and the open shirt) say confident but the slightly skewed mouth says facade-hiding-my-geekness-about-to-crack. 

     Here's what I remember thinking about then:

1. Christie Rudy.

2. How did Kate Stagman get away with a book report on a book that doesn't exist?!

3. Dodgeball sort-of freaks me out.
4. Why isn't Suzanne Somers on Three's Company anymore?

5. Christie Rudy.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday (The Bitter Sunday Version)

     Yeah I know. It's not Wednesday. I'm just having a bitter Sunday moment. It happens sometimes (the weekend is almost over). Anyway, the word is inane (adjective): lacking meaning, significance, or a point.
     For example, I don't like those useless igoogle fish. It's creepy the way they swim toward your mouse begging for food. They're anemic. And sad. And starving. And what's cute about that? Someone feed those damn things. Seriously, how long can a guy watch starving fish and call it entertainment?! Yeesh.
     Hey. Maybe there's an app for this? A piranah app perhaps? (fiendish smile) Suddenly I'm better, not bitter.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

mouse potato (noun): a person characterized by excessive and sustained computer time-wasting. May or may not include physical symptoms such as bleary eyes, soar neck/back and man-boobs; tends to live in hermit-like hovels where snack debris crumbs are commonly found inside keyboards; will bite if told to go to bed or work. (Yeesh. I better go to bed now.)

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

     Inbetweenies (noun): young people, especially teens, who interact, (some might argue even exist?) in the "nearly now," a.k.a. that social network stream or "time zone" in between texts, facebook updates, tweets, instant messages, etc. See my teenaged son and daughter.
     It simultaneously fascinates and worries me.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

      My wife just surprised me with this chocolate bar like two seconds ago. I like her. Therefore, today's weird word-of-the-day is chocoiste....

     After wasting a significant amount of time researching this word, I could not locate its definition. So, I'll make my own.

     To me is sounds like a Fa-rench noun. Fa-rench for someone who hoardes chocolate deep within the Louvre so at night he can surface and walk the parquet floors to write sweet cryptic messages for his long-missing lover but mostly for Dan Brown to research and write preposterous yet annoyingly absorbing books about. 

     Okay. Sugar high. Gotta go.

Weird Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

In honour of a little discussion I had with my bank today, today's weird word is "amortization." Apparently this word refers to the "process by which your loan principal decreases over the life of your loan." Like with a mortgage. Well...
I experienced some amortization fun-and-games today. Somehow, my last mortgage payment was magically paid despite no evidence of an automatic deduction from my account which is how my mortgage has been paid for the last ten years. Hmm. Could it be a mistake perhaps, especially considering that my bank just switched to a new computer system? Hmm.
Despite nothing deducted from my account, bank staff repeatedly assured me that my mortgage payment has been made. Thoughts in my head during this conversation: Um, by who then? Did Oprah give away random mortgage payments on her show today? Am I like your one millionth customer?
Here's the kicker: I can't prove I didn't make my payment. Talking to a bank about an error they made is like talking to people who work in airports (or maybe Lindsay Lohan I bet). One thing I am sure of though: when the bank discovers their mistake only one person will be responsible: me.