People who CVS are bad-grammaring

There have always been those types who, unable to put themselves to the trouble of finding the right word to use and fitting it into the right context, simply grab onto the handiest approximation of what they intend to convey and slap a good-sounding ending onto it.

Pretending to turn a noun into a verb by appending a suffix to it - for instance, pretending to turn a noun into a verb by suffixing it - is a common and long-standing trick. I know this, of course. Language has been evolving for eons, and eventually the modified word passes into accepted usage. I mean, nobody bothers to police the non-verb-ity (nounity? nouniness?) of microwave or contact any more.

But nowhere has this trend been so starkly egregious as in the recent wave of CVS enthusiasts. 'Had fun CVSing!' or 'Good trip CVSing!' is their motto, without bothering to analyse what precisely it is they did at CVS. Was it, indeed, shopping? Well, then, why not say so, to wit, 'I've been shopping at CVS!'? I know, I know, it takes up so many more syllables that way! 'I've been CVSing!' they declare, with all the pithiness of the good bargain-hunters they are. It stands to reason that those people who are careful with their money would be likewise conservative of extra syllables.

What if we started applying this funny little grammar freehand to jolly well any area of life? The results could save us thousands of wasted breaths a year:

'I'm fooding!' vs. the cumbersome 'I'm eating food.'
'He's bathrooming' vs. 'He's using the bathroom' or even 'He's in the bathroom.' (Because, of course, in our world, no one would ever broach this topic in the first person.)
'I was carring' vs. 'I was riding in/driving/washing the car.' (See how deliciously sloppy and unspecific the first instance is? No need to waste time pinpointing the exact nature of the activity.)
'I'm typing text' vs. 'I'm texting'? Oooh, slippery slope.

The six quirks quiz

Thanks to Queen of Carrots, I get to come up with six unspectacular quirks to share. I do believe that memes were invented solely to pull uninspired bloggers out of writing slumps. And I had to ponder long and hard to come up with at least one that didn't involve language. (I mean, that would have been dreadfully lame, if quite accurate: 1) I don't like it when people misuse apostrophes; 2) It grates on me when people mangle turns of phrase, i.e. step foot inside or making due, etc. Unspectacular in the extreme.)

1) The title of this post makes me think of what the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the world's trickiest tongue-twister, to wit: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

2) Whenever we sing Amazing Grace, I quietly murmur (quietly, so as not to disrupt the mood of reverence), in the last stanza, 'We've no fewer days to sing God's praise...' I can't help it. I just can't bring myself to sing bad grammar. And it works, too, because there are two notes on that word anyway. Why didn't they just write it the right way to begin with??

3) I never tried to play the innocent naive sheltered homeschool debutante, but I'm on ongoing alert to discover just how incomprehensive my education in the seamier side of the ways of the world really was. Michael is frequently put to the task of having to tactfully tell me what, in colloquial language, I just said. Only recently did I learn that the phrase 'knocked up' somehow means, of all things, 'pregnant,' and not, as I had always employed it to mean, knocked about, as in, well-versed in the school of hard knocks, my-head-is-bloody-but-unbowed, that sort of thing. Pity. Apparently the English language is a veritable minefield of double entendres and low-class allusions. Figuratively speaking, mind you.

4) I wax very sarcastic when people misuse the word 'literally,' apparently mistaking it for just another adverb, interchangeable with 'really' and 'like, totally.' ('It literally fell into our laps!' they gush. 'Really?' I inquire, craning my head upwards to look and, possibly, take cover. 'That's amazing!')

5) I have never dyed my hair, but I have boxes upon boxes of hair dye stashed away in my closet should occasion require it. Just a couple of weeks ago I bought a set of fake French manicure nails. I keep staring at them, wondering if I dare try them on.

6) Ten years ago, when I moved across the country, all my worldly goods consisted of a bed, a dresser, and four boxes of stuff. Five years ago, when I was preparing to get married, all my worldly goods consisted of a bed, a dresser, a closetful of stuff, three bookshelves of books, one bookshelf of knick-knacks and other junk, and a hopechest. At least it all fit into one room. Today, my stuff sprawls to fill an entire house. Granted, Michael contributed some stuff and we got a lot of loot at wedding and baby showers, but my oh my where did all this stuff come from? Why doesn't money multiply that readily?

Now the rules are that I am supposed to tag six other people for the meme, but I always like to leave these things open (no pressure and all that, plus I can never keep track of who's already done it.) So it's a self-tagging meme. If you want to play, jump in and join the fun.

I am not cut out for this

We've been battling sickness here for some time, and it's usually been low-grade enough to overlook. Between runny noses for the girls and a sore throat for me, I haven't yet declared it to be a full-fledged cold. Michael, however, succumbed in grand style a couple of weeks ago. He doesn't get sick often, but when he does he does it completely. He was sick over the weekend, and ended up staying home from church as well as from work the next couple of days.

So I got the girls up, fed, and dressed on my own, which I do every day, but this time it felt overwhelming. We drove to church alone, and I got them checked into class by myself and went to Sunday school on my own. I had to unpack the stroller on my own, collect the tired girls after class, and keep them happy on the drive home.

I kept thinking how glad I am not to be a single mom, and feeling slightly ashamed of being so overwhelmed and tired by just a few days of running things on my own, when so many people do this every day of their lives. Military wives do it for months at a time. I admire these people so much, and I'm so glad I have a strong, (mostly) healthy husband to tag-team with.

I was feeling all full of contentment and gratitude when Michael got better, and resolved to be more thankful than ever for my life, now that I'd learned to appreciate how good I really had it. Enter these last two weeks.

Michael has had computer training for work several days last week and this, necessitating a longer drive and late nights (a couple of nights he just stopped off at the office afterwards to catch up on work and the girls never saw him at all that day).

Ever doing my part to save on gasoline costs, I coaxed Michael to take the car so I wouldn't be tempted to run out on frivolous errands. Yesterday I still had a scratchy throat, so I decided to stay home from choir, too. We would stay home this week, make our home our castle, clean up from top to bottom, and learn contentment in our circumstances. Which is a noble resolve, but I was never one to flourish in solitude, far from the madding crowd. The days have been long, and Saturday will come not a moment too soon.

Happy Mother's Day to you, too

Now don't think I'm taking umbrage at all those well-meaning good wishes, but Mother's Day is another one of those heavily marketed Hallmark holidays that I just don't buy into. I certainly do believe in honouring one's mother, but I think it should consist of the same common courtesy and respect that motivates one all year long, and not be reserved for one glorious hurrah a year.

This aversion to all the fuss and feathers may have something to do with the fact that my 'love language' (cleverly hidden in quotation marks so you won't sneer at me if you don't buy into the Five Love Language philosophy either) doesn't lean toward the giving of gifts, and certainly doesn't go anywhere remotely near the giving of overpriced, mass-produced, unoriginal cards and flowers. If I liked expensive, trite, generic cards for my birthday, then I'd probably enjoy getting them for Mother's Day, too.

I don't know why everyone pretends to think it's such a nice treat for husband and children to take Momma out to eat for Mother's Day. Most Americans eat out a lot anyway, so why should it be any big deal? And anyone can spend money - eating out requires no forethought, no sacrifice, no effort. The real treat would be to fix Mother Dear a meal at home, and clean up afterwards.

Finally, I have no earthly idea why so many blessed people - whom I am most emphatically NOT the mother of - wished me a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday. Isn't that something you say to your mother?

There, I've got that off my mind, and can rest easy until next month, when I'll have to get on my soapbox again and explain why I am not spending any money on Father's Day.

A little learning

Jane is prodigiously proud of her rapidly expanding vocabulary and cognitive skills, and never misses a chance to trot them out.

Yesterday, when she walked by, I remarked, 'Hi, big girl!'

Jane grinned and replied, 'Hi, medium woman!'

Then she turned to Ella and said, 'Hi, little baby!'

She paused. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Then she looked at me. 'Where's big man?'

Three years ago today

Five years ago today

Dangerous cheapness

It's been growing on me lately, as our cost of living has gone down while our standard of living seems to be going up, that free stuff has a sinister side effect. It seems like the perfect win-win situation, the ultimate symbiotic relationship between manufacturer, retailer, and consumer (and can a symbiotic relationship even go three ways? -or is it strictly a two-party deal?): the producer gets name recognition and product awareness, the retailer gets business, the consumer gets free (or cheap) stuff.

But ponder a little while (and I am willing to ponder anything late enough at night) and it becomes apparent how the ready availability of free stuff can erode morale. It's a known fact, of course, that we prize highly that which costs us dearly. Scarcity, or even the appearance of scarcity, causes us to hoard resources, while abundance encourages us to live it up. And even my efficient nature is struggling against the impulse to grow callous and lax in the face of apparent plenty. It's becoming harder and harder to wrestle with extracting the last few dregs of toothpaste from the tube when there are two dozen fresh tubes in the drawer, and last week I tossed out half a spoiled loaf of bread with far less gnashing of teeth than would have occurred if it hadn't been free to begin with.

There are a couple of reasons why I still won't give in and be a totally wasteful consumer. For one, I'm not sure how long this spate of feasting will last - I keep thinking that the deals must dry up sooner or later - and I don't want to have gotten too comfortable at an unsustainably high standard of living when reality sets in again. For another - well, I still don't like wasting things, even if wasting free stuff hurts me less. That's just my personality, and quite possibly those feelings would erode entirely given enough time - many people seem to have no qualms about tossing away things which cost them little effort to acquire.

I wonder whether this is an attitude that we're seeing challenged and shaken up by the recent climb in grocery prices. Perhaps American consumers were getting too spoiled by low prices of
cheap goods, and that had a lot to do with the wasteful consumerist mentality that ran so rampant. So is this rise in gasoline and milk prices really a blessing in disguise? An unwanted lesson in character development?

I've also been re-thinking a lot of my opinions on the importance of maintaining a low cost for goods and services. Well, my evolving opinion on Wal-mart is a post for another day, but in short, I've come to see the value of high-priced, quality merchandise. As Ma Ingalls would say, 'Enough is as good as a feast.' All other things being equal, and in a free market where the end price is a natural result of supply and demand, why shouldn't it be just as good to spend a given amount of money on fewer but higher-quality food items that will all get eaten, as to spend the same amount on far more stuff half of which ends up going to waste?

(I had to toss in the remark about the free market as an expression of my irritation at the ongoing farm subsidies, which make corn syrup so cheap to produce and hence so readily available. So now cheap and deadly high-fructose corn syrup is in everything, but it's an artificial construct, because it really wouldn't be that cheap otherwise.)

Oh boy

The ever-wise and all-knowing Pearls, having solved the problems of modern marriage with their previous best-seller, now turn their attention to another troubling matter: the case of the rebellious teenager. How can you be sure that your children will not jump ship 'as soon as they think they can survive without the family—some as young as sixteen years old'? Buy this book to find out.

(I'm guessing that this book doesn't have the answers for those unfortunate parents whose kids jump ship under the age of sixteen - bummer. Maybe you'll have to wait for the sequel on that one.)

Me was homeschooled

67

It's not just thinking of all the countries, it's getting them spelled right. If I hadn't worried about capital letters, I probably could have done more. Not to mention all the time I wasted trying 'THE Bahamas' and 'THE Philippines.'

Love and war

An interesting conversation last week touched on a long-standing debate I've had in my mind, and the issue is still unresolved. But first, a bit of background.

You may remember Michael's brother Eric, who got married last June. He had a month with his bride before being shipped off to Iraq for several months. He returned in February, and we found out last week that they are newly expecting. Great happiness and all that.

When we shared the good news with friends, it led to a discussion on marriage in wartime - specifically, what would you do if the love of your life was about to be shipped off to war?

On the one hand, waiting might sound prudent because you will have the chance to test your love for each other. You don't have to get trapped in limbo between feeling single and married. Being separated for such a length of time would put an incredible stress on the first year of marriage.

On the other hand, it might seem better to get married and have at least what time you can together. This line of thinking prevailed quite a bit in WWII.

Then someone mentioned a further point. Suppose you did get married, and the love of your life did in fact die. Would it affect your future eligibility to be a young heartbroken widow, as opposed to a young heartbroken fiancee?

And then we fell into further speculation. Suppose you did decide to get married first. Would you try to get pregnant before he leaves? On the one hand, if you're fairly certain of his safety, you might decide to wait, so as not to have him miss the child's arrival. On the other hand, if there's a significant chance that he will die, you might want to have a tangible reminder of him - pass on the family name, and all that - some bright hope to comfort you through the grief and loss. On the other hand again, much as you might want a reason to go on living, single motherhood is really hard - wouldn't a framed photograph do nearly as well?

I've very glad I've never had to face those tough choices. I'm grateful that Eric is home safe and sound, but now my young cousin Angela, who got married last Thanksgiving, is in much the same situation. Nothing I can do about it but pray for the collective safety of our brave troops over there.

Sticker shock

When we were in Holland, we felt the pinch of the falling dollar, especially as everything seemed more expensive than it should be to begin with. My brother calculated that gasoline, at 1.52 Euro/liter, worked out to about $9/gallon. Now, of course the Dutch can just bicycle everywhere, and many of them do. The towns are very small, and the way the streets are laid out, on the same cobblestone grid from the Middle Ages, it's faster to get anywhere by foot or by pedal than by car. Moreover people routinely bike to work, up to 20-mile commutes. So perhaps they don't feel the high price of gasoline as keenly as we do.

The groceries, however, there is no getting around. Did I mention that things are smaller in Holland? The portions are smaller, the refrigerators are smaller, and the egg cartons are smaller. (Standard size is six eggs; large is ten eggs; you can't buy a carton of a dozen eggs anywhere.) Everything is on the metric system, which is handy for calculating the price per liter or gram, but you're still stuck not knowing how many lbs. of potatoes you're buying.

Fortunately we had brought most of our groceries with us - dried beans, packs of tuna fish my family smuggled past customs (apparently you're not supposed to take meat into the country, but having lugged provisions across the Atlantic, they were not about to jettison their precious cargo, so it came in undeclared), canned fruits and vegetables, TVP, rice, noodles, and assorted oddments. We frequented the grocery store for our daily bread, the potatoes (which are government-subsidised and hence fairly cheap), and the occasional half-kilogram of butter and liter of milk for coffee.

It was with relief that I anticipated the return to American prices, only to discover that these had shot up alarmingly in our absence. Gasoline has topped $3/gallon, and by a very wide margin indeed. Therefore I am making a concerted effort to stay at home these days.

You've heard that Holland is a small country...

Back at last

Our impressions of Holland are much the same as they were last time - impractical plumbing, small spaces, friendly people, wonderful food - so we needn't go into all that again. Possibly the most memorable part of the whole trip for me was coming down with a horrific cold the day after we arrived and fighting with said cold the whole blighted trip, thus rendering all my memories overshadowed by a fog of sneezing and sniffling which left me wondering why on earth people ever took snuff so as to do this to themselves on purpose.

We're getting back on track now. Jane and Ella are still waking up rather early in the mornings, which is probably good for us all. Oh, but it's good to be back!

JAMBOG, Phase II

(See here for rules.) (See here for Phase I.)

Scenario #3: You're imprisoned in an old castle dungeon. Guards stand outside your cell. A moat surrounds the castle. How do you escape?

Katy shivered in the cold darkness of the old castle dungeon. Dressed only in her pyjamas, she rued the day that she had come begging to the gates of Castle Bruster. 'Only a little scoop of ice cream,' she had implored, but the merciless Baron had thrown her into the dungeon rather than part with one scrap of his lavish medieval feast.

Presently Katy took heart. Surely she might contrive a way of escape. She scanned her cell for inspiration, and noticed, to her surprise, a cup of coke sitting on the bars in the window. An idea struck her with blinding force, but she quickly recovered, and called for the guard:

'Oh! Guard!' Katy called out, trying to think of a plausible excuse. The guard unlocked the cell door and came in to see what was the matter, and Katy quickly threw the cup of very flat coke into his eyes. He staggered and tripped, and in a trice Katy seized the keys, swung the great door to, and locked it behind the guard.

Quickly she ran down the flagstone hallway, looking for a way out. Just as she reached a larger passage, she heard a clamour of loud shouts and footsteps. Katy looked about her for a hiding place, but there was none. At the last minute, she seized the large, silver globe of a light from the hall lampstand. When the patrol of guards came around the corner, they saw what appeared to be a gypsy sitting on the floor, waving her hands mysteriously over a magic ball.

'Come! Look ye into my crystal ball and see what your futures shall hold!' Katy intoned.

'That ain't crystal - that be silver,' protested one of the guards, licking his ice-cream cone, for they had just come from the medieval feast.

'Well, come look into its silver depths, and see how crystal clear your future shall become!' Katy replied. Interested, the guards all peered downward. Katy set the ball spinning at the guards, who dropped their ice cream cones, slipped, and went down like ninepins. Katy darted around them and rushed up a stone passage.

She found herself in the castle kitchen, where the roaring fire sent out a cheerful glow. There were cod sizzling on a pan over the fire, sending out deliciously tempting smells. But Katy had other fish to fry. She spotted a huge colander of alfalfa sprouts which the cook had left out, and an idea flashed into her head. Gathering up bundles in her arms, she ran up to the highest turret and arranged the sprouts into a rough semblance of a bird's nest, which she curled up in the middle of.

Within a very few minutes, the giant rocs circling the castle caught sight of her and came swooping down. One of them clutched her in its talons, whisked her across the moat, and set her down gently in safety. And thereupon was she at liberty to continue her quest for free ice cream.

Fashion Tirade

Of course there's no such thing as objective fashion, because what we inherently find attractive is inevitably going to be coloured by the pervading fads and trends that have shaped our cultural awareness. But it is slightly frustrating to me to be so completely unable to find a decisive answer on what specific looks actually look the nicest, without regard to what sleight-of-hand they're trying to accomplish.

The driving force behind most fashion 'looks' seems to be mainly concerned with creating the illusion of tallness and thinness. Vertical lines (not stripes! Because that would be too obvious!) are supposed to lengthen and slim the figure. Skirts that stop just above the knee are supposed to make the legs look longer, as opposed to the drab, mid-calf length, which makes the legs look dumpy. Boot-cut jeans balance the legs, making the thighs look narrower in context. Skinny jeans give a slimming line and make the legs look longer.

I have yet to read a useful piece of advice on which look actually looks the nicest for its own sake. Since I am pretty happy with my shape, I really don't feel compelled to resort to optical illusions in my wardrobe; I'd much rather not waste time agonising over whether a particular style causes me to look - even if ever so slightly - like something I am not.

This annoyance of mine carries over to the perpetual articles in magazines and what-have-you, where we're regaled with Tips For Disguising Figure Flaws and Ten Easy Ways To Look Up To Five Pounds Slimmer. My thought is, rather than waste all that time and energy and effort studying these principles, buying new clothes, tanning, etc., why not just go ahead and lose the five pounds? I mean, if it's a legitimate figure flaw that needs to be fixed, then fix it. Otherwise, stop worrying about it.

Redbox rocks!

A few weeks ago I gave Redbox a try for the first time. I'd read about it online and heard great things about it, but when I finally got around to trying it out, I was less than impressed. The 'free' code I'd been proffered didn't work, and the customer service rep with whom I spoke seemed ambivalent about solving the problem for me and even suggested that the code malfunction might be a common problem. I wrote a very thorough email to customer support, listing my perturbations and suspecting them of pulling a bait-and-switch by deliberately offering free goods/services which were merely designed to lure new customers in.

Customer service responded in fine style. I received a very courteous and apologetic response, explaining that the glitch with the code was a temporary issue, that Redbox really is in the habit of offering absolutely free rentals, and giving me two free codes on the spot as a goodwill gesture. Their reputation properly restored, I gave them another chance, and now commence to sing their praises. Both codes worked like a charm, and I became hooked.

Redbox, in case you haven't heard of it, is like a vending machine of new release DVDs located in various popular locations such as Wal-marts and McDonalds. Check their website to find one near you. The cost is usually $1 a day, but there are so many free codes emerging that you can pretty much get one for free any time you want.

It works for Redbox, because if you are late returning your DVD, you get charged $1. Still, that's not much for a movie rental (and hey, last I checked, Blockbuster was charging $4.29 for new releases!) So far we have always been prompt about returning our movies on time, and the location is very convenient. We are definitely fans.

Reflections

Ten years ago this year I left Oregon.

My oldest younger brother, now twenty, was ten when we left. That means that he's spent half his life in Oregon and half in Virginia. The others, still younger, have spent most of their lives in Virginia. For some of them, Oregon - my childhood home and all my growing-up memories - is but a distant memory.

The children I used to babysit are now old enough to babysit my children.

And here's the real kicker: as of next month, I will have lived as long in Georgia as I ever lived in Virginia!!

Oh, and while we're at it...

Since we're going back to Holland next month, I thought it high time to post these neat pictures of European-style lights (that, and the winter games are on):

JAMBOG time!

(See here for a list of rules.)

A Drink
From Days To Come
"We checked in with the hostess and sat at the bar to drink a Coke and enjoy the cigarette smoke while we waited. Scott was talking about something at work and I was sitting in the bar stool leaning on the bar and sipping my Coke ..."

A Light
From Focht Tales

A Food
From The Real Food Revolution
"I tell my kids that we're going to have bird's nests for lunch."

Something Cold
Need I say more?