All because she asked . . .
. . . and now I won't be able to sleep tonight because the words came tumbling out . . .
creek:
1. What I want to say is that sound my joints make--particularly my knee joints--when I go up and down the stairs.
2a. But really it's that place at the top of the hill behind my Grandpa Rex's house in Randolph just before the run-down old barn and corral, where the grass and willows grew and where we used to spend entire summers tossing down sticks, grass, debris--our innocent and tanned bodies--just to watch them float, or over which we would lay atop the old worn, a-plank-or-two-shy wooden bridge watching our youth float away while the warm summer sun baked the memories into our sweat-silken skin.
2b. Also that place I love up at South Fork Park where I could waste away an entire afternoon without regret while lying by the banks contemplating the soothing sound the water makes as it tumbles across the rocks and over and around itself as if it is both in a hurry to reach someplace wonderful but also quite happy to take its sweet time to get there, determined to enjoy the journey along the way.
orange:
1. (o-rrange) That thing you do with sounds when you can't help but take an ordinary word and try to turn it into something punny.
2a. The color just after yellow and barely before red in every brilliant Utah sunset.
2b. The best flavor I could imagine in the middle of a Utah winter on one of those rare trips to California when the timing is just right and the sweet juice of tree-ripened citrus wakes up my soul with the remembrance of sunshine.
*nauseous:
1. Having a constant need to gnaw on something--crackers, steak, ice, etc.--in hopes of relieving oneself of one's nausea.
2. ~ness: That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when your kid, your spouse, your best friend--or someone else you love truly, madly, deeply--comes to you with a shaved-off shin, a broken heart, a wayward child, a painful problem for which you know there is no answer, or a confession that will send you into a tailspin of grief and make you want to curl up in a ball and throw up because you know this is something you can't kiss better, put a band-aid over, hug away or fix.
server:
1. You may ask any of the half-my-age computer geeks (whom I love) with whom I work and they will tell you that I (self-referred to as "the village idiot") truly have no idea.
2. What it really is is a another word for woman, daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend. The need to serve is woven into the very fiber of our beings. So ingrained it's indistinguishable from ourselves at the cellular level. I know we, each one of us, will die doing it. We cannot help ourselves. We can only help each other.
I tag the following:
waitingforwednesday
geo
skewedview
b.
(And of course anyone else who wants to play...)
Your words are as follows:
serendipitous
precipitate
wallflower
patina
(* from MW, regarding the great nauseous vs. nauseated debate:
Function: adjective
1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING
2 : affected with nausea or disgust
- nau·seous·ly adverb
- nau·seous·ness noun
usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2.)
creek:
1. What I want to say is that sound my joints make--particularly my knee joints--when I go up and down the stairs.
2a. But really it's that place at the top of the hill behind my Grandpa Rex's house in Randolph just before the run-down old barn and corral, where the grass and willows grew and where we used to spend entire summers tossing down sticks, grass, debris--our innocent and tanned bodies--just to watch them float, or over which we would lay atop the old worn, a-plank-or-two-shy wooden bridge watching our youth float away while the warm summer sun baked the memories into our sweat-silken skin.
2b. Also that place I love up at South Fork Park where I could waste away an entire afternoon without regret while lying by the banks contemplating the soothing sound the water makes as it tumbles across the rocks and over and around itself as if it is both in a hurry to reach someplace wonderful but also quite happy to take its sweet time to get there, determined to enjoy the journey along the way.
orange:
1. (o-rrange) That thing you do with sounds when you can't help but take an ordinary word and try to turn it into something punny.
2a. The color just after yellow and barely before red in every brilliant Utah sunset.
2b. The best flavor I could imagine in the middle of a Utah winter on one of those rare trips to California when the timing is just right and the sweet juice of tree-ripened citrus wakes up my soul with the remembrance of sunshine.
*nauseous:
1. Having a constant need to gnaw on something--crackers, steak, ice, etc.--in hopes of relieving oneself of one's nausea.
2. ~ness: That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when your kid, your spouse, your best friend--or someone else you love truly, madly, deeply--comes to you with a shaved-off shin, a broken heart, a wayward child, a painful problem for which you know there is no answer, or a confession that will send you into a tailspin of grief and make you want to curl up in a ball and throw up because you know this is something you can't kiss better, put a band-aid over, hug away or fix.
server:
1. You may ask any of the half-my-age computer geeks (whom I love) with whom I work and they will tell you that I (self-referred to as "the village idiot") truly have no idea.
2. What it really is is a another word for woman, daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend. The need to serve is woven into the very fiber of our beings. So ingrained it's indistinguishable from ourselves at the cellular level. I know we, each one of us, will die doing it. We cannot help ourselves. We can only help each other.
I tag the following:
waitingforwednesday
geo
skewedview
b.
(And of course anyone else who wants to play...)
Your words are as follows:
serendipitous
precipitate
wallflower
patina
(* from MW, regarding the great nauseous vs. nauseated debate:
Function: adjective
1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING
2 : affected with nausea or disgust
- nau·seous·ly adverb
- nau·seous·ness noun
usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2.)
Comments
P.S. Tell Johnny I said hello! He's so cute.
And, dear friend, I love your writing. Everything, everytime.
Thanks so much for the invite!
How'd your last day go?
glo: I haven't been called cruel for quite some time now. I'm finding it rather delicious. Want to play???
I wonder why water figures so much into our earliest memories? For my family, it was the irrigation that would flood the north lawn on a regular basis. We would sit on the swings and make the water arc with our toes as we swung through it. I still remember how my feet would feel after running barefoot through the cold water over the grass.
Melody: I've been building a "damn" myself for several days. Just ask c.w. how I love that word.
c.w.: Maybe I'm just tired and don't get it, but how come Johnny Depp is now a she? And how does her wife, Vanessa Paradis, feel about this? What does this mean for the future of pirating?
Geo: I can't wait to see what you come up with. And what's this about Johnny? It's pretty sad that someone whose job is to search Google all day is working too long and too hard to keep au courant with all the important news.
I have to think really hard about the lay/lie thing too. I'm glad I'm not the only English major for whom it's not second nature.
just found your cool site. i hope you change your mind about a hiatus! You've got lots to offer! If you like word games, you might like mine. Come and visit some time.