Vocabullyishness R

Don't feel bad if you don't know the meaning of vocabullyishness. I'd tell you to look it up, but you won't find it there. Why not? Because I coined it.

Ya see, I'm sitting at work catching up on Maureen Dowd's columns in the New York Times, when to my great vexation, I stumbled upon an unfamiliar item in the lexicon - solipsism. I moved on to her next column, and there it was again, solipsism. What is the meaning of this curious word, I pondered, that it would be felicitous in two sequential columns? Extreme egocentrism. No, I'm not talking about my mother right now. It's the definition.

Do you ever discern that some writers take pleasure in bestowing words they cognize no one will comprehend? To the ambit of being loquacious? Me too. I deem this praxis to be an impudent essay to cause us sycophants to feel middling.

In other words - vocabullyishness.

My Little Rockies Players

Every spring, the temperature begins to rise, snow gives way to rain, and tulips begin to emerge from the thawing earth. With it come the sounds of spring (and I don't mean the birds). It's the yelling at children to get their cleats and water bottles and bat bags. It's the calls from parents asking if practice is cancelled due to weather (a secret hope of all parents). It's the whining of kids that their coach isn't putting them at first base, pitcher, catcher, or whatever position it is that they want. It's my mother bitching that she thinks my husband is forcing the kids to play. It's more yelling at the kids to finish their homework before practice. Yes. It's baseball season. And as you may have guessed from my tone, it is the bane of my existence (that and my mother).

But in this day and age of video games, they are being active you say. I know. It teaches teamwork and camaraderie. Yeah. Sportsmanship. Blah, blah, blah. What's important here is that I have to get three kids to three different places at the same time practically every day. Sure I have a spouse, but the kids still outnumber us. My mother solved this problem by not letting my sisters and I participate in sports. There are selfish moments, like when Everybody Loves Raymond is on tv, that I consider just that. But I am reminded that I have Tivo. I don't want to be a martyr, but, hey, if the shoe fits!

Really, it's not all bad. I get to fancy myself a photographer, take thousands of pictures of the team and at the end of the season, spend hundreds of hours figuring out how to make a slide show for them.

Below is my first creation. I can't figure out how to get the music to play here, so you'll have to take my word that it has it (Centerfield by John Fogerty and Time of Your Life by Greenday)





And now - football season...

Granny Say Whah?

My mother called my 14-year old son a "bastard." In a joking manner, you ask? No.

You might wonder how a 74-year old woman would think it appropriate to insult her eldest grandchild in this manner. Excellent question. After much thought and deliberation, I don't know. Yet, it brings back fond memories of her referring to my sisters and I (in public) as "the three bitches." All the more annoying since only one out of three of us is really a bitch! (Try to guess which one.)

As you can imagine, it doesn't sit well with Mama Bear when someone messes with her cubs! So, the next time Granny's meanness resurfaces, I will tell my husband to swing her over the pool again, only this time, let go.