November 28, 2011

• mediocre

  Last night’s popcorn is swept up.  Second load of laundry is washing.  Mr. Fred the Piano Tuner is downstairs banging around in an unmelodious way.  The littles are eating chips and carrots while they watch him.  He is one of the tallest men I have ever seen.  He wears those old black rubbers that my dad used to wear.  I didn’t notice them when he came, but I did notice when we got downstairs that he had left his shoes on and I thought, “How bold of a Canadian professional to enter our house with his shoes on on a wet day.  Then I went to the porch and saw his rubbers.  And I know you didn’t need to know that piece of information.

   

  I’m hoping to address lots of Christmas letter envelopes today. 

   

  When I don’t like my last blog post I always feel in a rush to cover it up with a new one.  But I can’t seem to quite wrap up the one I’m working on:  Dreams, Whims, and Reality.  Maybe soon.

   

  So today for fun I’m going to talk about spelling and grammar.

   

  I always loved spelling in school.  It was a breeze.  If I got anything wrong on a test it was a huge deal to me.  Probably worthy of tears.  (Yes, I was that kind of a student. L)

  I was also very fond of our Pathway Publishers vocabulary workbooks.  I tried to see how many words & meanings I could get right without ever using the dictionary.  Most of my class hated our 8^th grade Abeka grammar book, but I secretly adored it. 

   

  Yes I’ve always loved words.

   

  But the older I get the more I realize I don’t know.  And when I try to write, I get really hung up on grammatical issues.

   

  I’m embarrassed with how often someone uses a word that I don’t know the meaning of.

   

  Recently Dan & I had an argument about the proper use of ‘who’ and ‘whom’.  The children even got involved.  I googled all kinds of things and came up realizing that I was in the wrong.  And I still don’t know if I know the rule and could follow it properly every time.

   

  So while the improper use of

  “your” and “you’re”

  and“then” and “than”

  and misuse of the three forms of “there”

  and incorrectly used “it’s” or “its”

  and “Yeah” used for hurray instead of yes

  make me cringe inwardly,

  I get stuck on placement of the e’s and a’s in “separate” and “desperate”(and those letters shouldn’t have apostrophes with them because they’re not in ownership of anything, right?!)

  And “weird” still throws me for a silly loop, though I think I have it down pat again right now.

   

   I’m also ashamed at how the old books that I plowed through when I was 15 that I actually enjoyed once I got into them are just BeYoND my foggy mother mind lately.  I admit that I read them to prove that I was smart, but now it’s easier to read blogs and I don’t care about proving to anyone that I’m smart.  Because they’d soon find out otherwise.

   

  And you know, something like being a good speller really has little to do with intelligence.  I have a brother in law who reads and writes incredible stuff about history and studies Greek.  And dear Steve is a deplorable speller. 

   

  So I don’t judge someone who misuses words like I used to, even though I might flinch inside.  Because I might be the next one who/whom/that someone laughs at.  And I recently read an old post of mine in which I used the word “pardoxes”.  How hideous.

   

  What words do you get hung up on?  I only scratched the surface of mine, but that’s as far as I can think at the moment.  And the dryer just buzzed.

  “It turns out we are not exceptional.  Along with most people we live and die in mediocrity.”  -Gregory A. Boyd-

  I hate coming up with blog post titles.  They always sound cheesy or ill fitting. No matter what.

  edit:  While I’m harping on things of this nature, may I just say that I can overlook spelling and grammar mistakes, but my pet peeve is quotes posted on places like Facebook with no credit given to their original creator.  I read and think, “Did this person actually come up with this or not?”  This is different than me using one of Lisa Troyer or Dorcas Smucker’s witticisms without remembering that it’s theirs because I liked it so much that it became my own.   :)

  And my sister just informed me that on a recent post I used ‘flare’ instead of ‘flair’.  More hideousness.  I will not rest till I have edited that one.

  • 11:45 pm
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