Early morning devotions …
All My Pets are Named Peeve
This is my dog Jett
It’s true. Mostly. I have a cute little puppy named Jett. That’s short for his registered foo-foo name of Jett Sun’s Joie de Vie Song. Pretentious, pompous, and hard to spell. His registered name reads Jett Sun’s Joie de Vie Song. Joie de Vie is a French phrase meaning Joy of Life.
But I digress.
But all other pets are named Peeve. I was asked to list them once not so long ago but ran out of time and space.
I don’t claim to have an all-time top favorite peeve; about the time I decide to name it as such, another one comes along and pushes it out of place.
For instance, anyone who melts food in Tupperware in the microwave really gets my goat––my goat named Peeve. For a long time that one took home the Blue Ribbon; and a close second was the disappearing lid. Like socks gobbled by the washer, where do lids go? I suspect the washing machine or the garbage bin. There’s a possibility they are in cahoots.
For years these were the only true peeves I thought I owned. Then I encountered my first Costco parking lot. Ugly plastic dishes move aside, parking lots are numeral uno. Peeves shape-shift.
I suppose ye ol’ grammar complaints of the misuse of you’re/ your and the improper use of there/their/there are common peeves, but the most annoying to me is the mispronunciation of important said as impordant. Highly educated people say it all the time. I don’t even enunciate the first t clearly; I just kind of skip it. But I never say the t as d. I don’t know why it bothers me; it just does. Grammar peeves are not just for grammar tyrants.
I know someone who has a peeve named Litrally. I tell her how I interpreted her message litrally and she replies how impordant it is to not do so.
It’s possible that I grate the nerves of listeners when I Oklahoma-fy the washing machine. I never wash the clothes. I warsh the filthy critters.
Other peeves include but not necessarily in order of importance:
Wobbly table legs.
Having to listen to a public one-sided phone conversation. Most people talk extra loud too. UGH!
People who talk in slow-mo.
People who talk in warp-speed. (Yes, call me Goldy Locks).
Slow internet.
People who stare at my face while I talk then ask me to answer a question that I had just explained.
People come to visit you and spend the entire time texting or scrolling through social media.
Speech givers who promise to make a point but go down a gazillion rabbit holes and never return.
People in proximity that sneeze without covering the mouth. YUCK!
Kissing sounds. (shudder)
People who keep walking behind my car while I am backing out of a parking space, sounding off alarms.
People who walk down the middle of parking lot drive space.
When the spacing feature bugs out on my word processor program.
People who have more than 14 pet peeves. They are grumpy gills.
God Weeps
Nascent, emergent, and
fledgling,
Little being
Cut down by the sword of man.
No pitter patter,
No blossoming,
No breath to give life,
To mark the dawn of day,
Cut down by the sword of man.
God weeps.
A Chansonette
Here begins this chansonette.
This may be higgledy-piggledy,
A verse prone to rejectamenta,
A bit of flapdoodle-doo,
With lots of squiggle-diggle-ty.
I nearly spewed my mawkish tea,
While expanding my vocabulary,
The word-of-the-day’s speciality,
This assignment is now
quite ready to go, you see?
yet I have mispronounced thee.
Please forgive.
Most of this piece
does not rhyme.
But if I can do it,
I will find and make
the thyme
for this silly little
chansonette.
Please forgive.
MS PGothic
MS PGothic- I think I love you
I have got to say
When I see you naked
On the sheet so bare
My heart-rate rushes
Oh stop!
No, don’t stop.
Should I bold you?
Highlight you?
Underline you?
Make you blue?
No, there’s something special
‘bout ebony and ivory.
I will celebrate life with you
Ah, heck! You are so much more
I will live; and live
My life thru you.
Should I bold you?
Highlight you?
Underline you?
Make you blue?
No, there’s something special
‘bout ebony and ivory.
On a sheet so bare.
The Factotum’s Procrustean Bed
Years ago, I had purchased an audio lecture course for word nerds via Audible. I quit listening for reasons I don’t remember, but it’s most likely a new semester had begun. Now that I am a certified university graduate, I decided to form a new habit of learning one new word each week in 2022.
I do love words; yes, I am a nerd. I just don’t know enough of them to make me sound like a pretentious, and pompous windbag, yet I am willing to learn how to be one. Just kidding. I love how one skilled in language use can string words together, forming into an exquisite and rare-jeweled necklace adorning the page. Like how a blob of paint upon a canvas can be pushed, pulled, and squished around to form an abstract or still life. Or how a musical note layered one upon another can become an enchanting melody transporting me to a third or fourth dimension.
I am also inspired by a long-time friend, a genuine Einstein level of genius who has a vocabulary the size of a real, hard copy, 8” thick Webster’s dictionary: The self-proclaimed and humble Master of None (https://rongiesecke.com/?s=giesecke). In my opinion, you are master of the English vocabulary, whose use of language I admire. (And yes, 8-inch-thick dictionaries really exist. My mother owned one yet was most often used in our family as a toddler’s booster seat at the table.)
But I digress.
After rediscovering and listening to the introductory chapter of the course, I remembered what had attracted me to the lectures; the technique of teaching was finally a process that I could remember a word’s meaning far beyond that of knowing long enough for a test and promptly flushing.
Therefore, what and when I write here is something I cannot take credit for––another’s idea yet put into my own words. That credit belongs solely on the instructor, Kevin Flanigan, PH.D., West Chester University of Pennsylvania. The title of the audio course and the accompanying eBook in PDF format is “Building a Better Vocabulary.”
His method involves 1) defining the word 2) using the word in context 3) breaking down the morphology and/or etymology 4) making connection: the new with what you already know 5) chunking or learning by groups of similar words. Words that are very often used together are collocates and aids memory by learning synonyms that can be connected in meaning.
I have four new words saved to memory: factotum, procrustean, circumspect, and factitious. Following in the footsteps of Prof. Flanigan, I explain my two favorite words from the first four weeks of 2022. These I will remember 50 years from now. (Ask me then.)
Factotum
1. Definition: a factotum is a person who performs many kinds of tasks, or a general servant; a jack-of-all trades.
2. Context: Modern society would not typically use the word factotum to describe a butler, girl- Friday, or a go-fer, but in fact, that is precise meaning of a factotum––one who performs many different types of tasks.
3. Morphology: Latin; fac, make, do + totum; all, of the whole.
Etymology: first used in the 1500s, Martin Luther used factotum in his commentary on Galatians in 1535. (Merriam -Webster dictionary app.)
4. Making connection: take the new word and connect it to what is already known. We know that mothers are nursemaids, cooks, housecleaners, laundresses, chauffeurs, bookkeepers and more. Picture your mother and now you can make a connection of the new word factotum. Moms do a little bit of everything.
5. Chunking: category of words that mean servant, jack-of all-trades, man/girl Friday, personal assistant, or a handyman/woman.
Procrustean
1. Definition: Tending to produce conformity by violent or arbitrary means. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it means to enforce uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality.
2. Context: Many U.S leaders have instituted mandates they equate with constitutional law and enforce by tyrannical means of denying basic human rights such prescription drugs, loss of employment, or denying people to be in public places without proof of receiving a particular injection. Many people view these as being placed on the procrustean bed of leadership by coercing individuals to comply, regardless of personal belief or health status, with the specious argument of keeping every citizen “safe.”
3. Morphology: Procrustean is an adjective derived from Greek mythology of a robber named Procrustes who was known to force victims to lie on a bed and made them fit or by chopping off limbs. Etymology: first known recorded use c.1640s; Procrustes+an (Dictionary.com).
4. Connection: The authoritarian ruler often metes out punishments to young children with procrustean methods such as spanking with a willow tree branch. My personal connection is a memory of an angry mother chasing me around the yard while my calves stung with each strike of a willow branch and an involuntary corresponding yelp. I envision a weeping willow tree and see Procrustes.
5. Chunking with words that mean ruthless, tyrannical conformity, unmerciful, inexorable.
I’m excited to think that by this time next year, I will have 52+ new words to insert into my writing. I suppose at the year’s end that the next challenge is to see how many new words I can use in one blog and be coherent.
Futility
Futile Efforts
I am trying to write a poem
But not having much luck
Fruitless time spent pondering
And a lot of time spent wandering
Through Webster’s Dictionary
Along side Roget’s Thesaurus.
This journey leaves me knowing
I know nothing much at all.
These lines reflect desperation
I’m sure this will not pass
For many a poet gone before
Prolific writers and so much more
Shakespeare, Frost and Yeats,
T.S. Eliot makes me feel an idiot.
Words penned with eloquence
Profound my weak intelligence.
This journey leaves me knowing
I know nothing much at all.
Nothing much at all.
Ye Ol’ Switcheroo
The Relentless Search For Balance
Twenty Minutes to Eleven
My most recent post of eons ago, I wrote of my journey that began in the early months of 2020 of developing new habits; tasks performed daily in increments of 20 minutes each day. I slapped the tongue-in-cheek title “How I Changed the World,” due to a rousing motivational speech by Naval Admiral William H. McRaven. Prior to viewing the speech, I had read the book 5 Things Successful People Do Before 8 a.m. by Terri Savelle Foy. Needless to say, this proved to be fodder to cancel my couch potato life and strive to accomplish a few goals. But never before 8 a.m. It is not for lack of trying: I am, after all, a retiree!
It doesn’t really have to be 5 things; it can be as many or few as habits one wants to form. The commonality between the most successful ones, according to Mrs. Foy, choose exercise, meditation or prayer, and reading in 20 minute increments. This is referred to as the golden hour. (I noticed there is no mention of where coffee places, first or after, but I place it first and foremost!) I chose to include the habits of writing and tracking things I am grateful for each day.
But I made changes to that schedule in 2021. As stated in my previous post, I learned of forming habits in shorter time frames. I assume this for people who like to brag about the tally of mini habits they keep each day. Based upon that theory, I made a decision to reduce the minimum time to 11 minutes. It was an arbitrary number pulled from the thin, gray air of winter––the January doldrums.
I began my new system thinking I had relieved myself from some imaginary and self-imposed burden. (I am slowly realizing that I have a time-management problem.)
Yet something I had not accounted for began to manifest the very first day. Chalk it up to the Middle-Child Syndrome. Yep, the drive to achieve beyond that of an older brother and a younger sister in order to get NOTICED. Allow me to digress.
Growing up, it was futile to try to outdo my brother; hard as I may hindsight has revealed I was only kicking against the pricks, as Apostle Paul was fond of saying. Being the baby, almost literally, my sister was the “cute one” as she so dutifully reminded anyone is earshot. I guess Mom and Dad (God rest their souls) thought so too. I was reminded every Christmas when brother got something shiny and new like a red bike, sister got a pretty pink blanket while mine was diaper yellow color, or a 3-foot-tall deaf and dumb doll. I was not the I-want-a fake-baby-kind of little girl. My imagination spectrum did run in the vein of making plastic babies come alive, no matter how tall or short.
So what was going on with to 20 to 11 switcheroo? One should be overjoyed to know time commitments down from 20 minutes to 11 minutes to be freeing. The problem is pure and simple; the old it’s not good enough mindset. The backstory (a semi-fancy word meaning to digress) is that my childhood report card grades were always honor roll worthy. If I got a B+, Dad always ––and I mean every stinking time––asked why it wasn’t an A. If an A-, why not an A, if an A, why not an A+? The memo was loud and clear: my work was never good enough. I’m sure my father was completely unaware of the silent message transmitted. I think his motivation came from a place that didn’t want me to get “too big for my britches” as these types of things were often said. He wasn’t my loudest cheerleader. But again, I digress.
For me, the simple solution of extending time beyond those 11 minutes never seem to quite work out. I tried that a few times and went to the far-beyond side like into the evening. Ok, that’s pure hyperbole. You go too far, a complaint I have heard a few times. It has been a frustrating and vicious cycle of searching for balance.
It wasn’t but two days into the new time that I realized 11 minutes of exercise isn’t going to profit the body much, so that I did relent and returned to 20-minute sessions. The dirty little secret is that I really don’t exercise every day: usually 4 days of the week. SHHHH!
Reading and writing sessions were difficult to adapt because when the timer sounded, I was just getting to the meat of the story––time to quit. Torn between patting myself on the back and that inner monologue “this isn’t good enough” created major tension. Why is that stupid, self-incriminating voice in my head?
Guilt and self-condemnation because I did not carry out each task for 20 minutes? Unbelievable. Who sets the bar? Oh, yes that’s right: I did. Who lowered the bar? Hmm, let me think. 11 minutes wasn’t good enough with or without self-permission. Does this perception relate back to that not-quite-good enough, middle-child syndrome? Or is this phenom much more sinister? Probably. I suspect I am not the only one to deal with this, and why therapists are making lots of money. And I realize I may have unconsciously passed this onto the next generation. Sorry, kids!
I went back to YouTube and viewed the original motivational speeches that inspired me to buy the book about 5 habits, etc. I have my tube settings set to auto play the next video and low and behold! It is titled “Goal Setting: 11 minutes that can change your life.” Fed up with it all, I chose not to watch that one but feel free.
Go figure.
I did mention previously that I would report on a goal for 2021 to form the habit of eating dinner at the table, just like the old days. That lasted about 7 days. Why? Because the OLD habit was so ingrained in my mind that the pure comfort of the Lazy Boy Reclining love-seat proved too powerful that I just plain forgot. Try again in 2022.
After working through the many drafts of this piece, I have come to the conclusion that maybe less IS more. Maybe it’s true I am my own best psychiatrist. And maybe, just maybe, it is better to do and develop habits NO MATTER if 20 minutes, 11 minutes or 5 minutes. Some famous film character once said “Do or do not. There is no try.”
Admiral McRaven’s Rousing speech:
How I Changed the World
In the fall months of 2019, I decided I would change a habit from NOT making my bed any day ever to making my bed every single day. I’m proud to announce that I have successfully made my bed every single day for more than entire year.
In January of 2020, I read that a famous admiral, William H. McRaven addressed the 2014 graduating class of the University of Texas of Austin. He said, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” I felt pretty good knowing I was on the forward path to be top-notch world changer. Although I really did not believe I could change THE world, I figured I would change MY world.
Then came March 2020. As it turns out, THE world did change as I continued my newly formed habit. I don’t like the world anymore. This situation has left me with a couple questions that nag: If I stop, will the world go back to the way we were? Or what would happen if we all made our bed every day?
Joking aside, that one small task led to me forming and completing other habits just as McRaven said it would. Making my bed every day led to me composing a list of five things more that I try to complete every day. I confess that I have not been quite as faithful to complete everything every day as my bed-making habit. (Sunday’s are filled with so many activities that I gave myself permission to take the day off.) The five things include:
- Pray or meditate for 20 minutes.
- Write down 20 things I am thankful for.
- Read for 20 minutes.
- Write for 20 minutes.
- Exercise for 20 minutes.
Having read 20 minutes almost every day since the middle of January of 2020, I have read 16 books to date. That amazes me. In addition, I have two more books that I am currently reading: One for my regular 20-minute session, and one Kindle book that I call my “bus stop” reading –– reading while waiting for the school bus to arrive with a grandchild.
My daughter sent me another link to a great inspirational talk on YouTube in which it talks about setting realistic goals by decreasing the time allotment. Let’s face it; life gets in way of accomplishing many of our to-do list simply because we set unrealistic expectations.
Whenever I have an overwhelming task that needs doing, such as decluttering a room, I use this method by setting a timer for 20 minutes. That goal works for me. When the 20 minutes expires it’s an awesome feeling to know I can walk away guilt free until next time.
My problem is that “next time” might not happen for months. Yikes.
At this point, I am faced with the decision of continuing this for the next year. I am fairly certain that I will, but I may employ the mini habit goals in 2021. Mostly because I was only about 90% successful in meeting the 20-minute goal every single day, six days a week.
Despite how I managed to change the world, I will continue making my bed every day, even in motel rooms. I am considering upping the game by forming two more habits in the coming weeks. One being no more pajama days, except on Mondays. I wish I could blame excessive use of pajamas on CoVid19 only, but that would be dishonest.
The second habit I would like to develop is to eat dinner at the dining table rather than mindlessly gobble while on the recliner and watching TV, except on Sundays and any day of the week that ends with d-a-y. Just kidding.
As I write, I am realizing that had my 20-minute writing sessions been with continuity, instead broken up with different things, like “dear diary” entries, I could have that book in the making complete! Geez, some people are slower than a slug. I’ll get back to you next year on how that works out.
3 Suppositions and a Conclusion
1. I am created in the image of God.
- Genesis 1: 26; “And God said. Let us make man in our image….”
- Genesis 1:27; So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” KJV
2. A dream begins with an image.
- The American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.) defines the transitive verb form of the word dream as “to conceive of or imagine.”
- The intransitive verb form of the word dream is “to have a deep aspiration.”
3. I was formed in my momma’s womb by ADONAI.
- Psalms 139:13b “You [God] knit me together in my mother’s womb.” TLV
- Isaiah 49: 5a “So now says ADONAI, who formed me from the womb….” TLV
- Jeremiah 1: 4 and 5a “The word of ADONAI came to me saying: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you….”
Conclusion:
Dreams, in the sense of having deep aspirations, begin with an image or a vision. Dreams such as these require hard work and dedication to manifest into reality: There is no magic bean to produce Jack’s beanstalk.
Therefore, because I am made in the image of God, that dream conceived and imagined, and aspired to by God’s forming of my body in my mother’s womb, I can safely conclude that I am a dream come true!
theRagingSpoon 