Day One-hundred-and-twenty-two: The "word"

You'd think that picking a word for my Toastmasters meeting today would be easy for someone who used to read a dictionary for fun. In fact, I have received more than one dictionary as gifts. When I was much younger and reading a good bit of Shakespeare, I was always impressed by what I was told about him more than his actual writing, although I still enjoy his comedies. He is supposedly holds the record for an individual adding the most words to the English language. Since that time, I've always wanted to add words to the English language. Unfortunately, whenever I try to be like Shakespeare, I sound more like Bush.

Besides, individual additions to English aren't generally successful. Instead we are more likely to see cross cultural slang make it as new words. It's not my intention to "dis" any culture with this example. Besides, the oral start of these language extensions make it impossible to trace back to their individual origins.

I finally decided on vacillate. It seemed to be the most appropriate word to depict my lack of decision process to actually pick a word.

By the time I got up this morning, finished my exercises, went into the kitchen to fix breakfast, and cleaned up the kitchen so I could fix a hot breakfast, it was 10:30. So I had a grapefruit and some soy yogurt for breakfast. Then I got cleaned up and went out to get some Beano so I could eat lunch.

After my shower this morning, I noticed that I am still "squeegeeing" the shower walls. This was another of Marilyn's bathroom rules and is already one of my yet to be written topics for my Memories of Marilyn blog. I remember that one of my traveling pleasures was staying in hotels, and not having to scrape the water off the walls. Now that I could literally indulge in that pleasure every day, I am still doing so. It allows me to drip dry a little bit while I'm taking care of the walls and may really reduce hard water spotting. I certainly don't know what cleaner to use on the cultured marble in the shower I use most often. Well, there are still some days where I am too rushed to "squeegee," but they are very few in my Life after Layoff.

The wind has been blowing rather strongly all day. Under the willow tree it positively looks fall with all the leaves on the ground. Maybe my meditation is working. I look at those leaves now and see beauty where before I probably would have seen work. It's supposed to rain tonight and even more strongly Saturday night. I'll still need to water some plants tomorrow. I also needed to clean out the rain gutters but will not be doing so before this rain.

After the election, I've decided that I'm going to cancel my cable. This means that I will not have TV service, except for rented DVDs. Not only have they increased the cable cost, I'm watching far too much of it. Besides, I'll be gone for at least six weeks. I've gone without TV before, although it was years ago. Then I had a lot of company and didn't miss it at all. Now I may miss it but have too many other things I want to do to let it continue to control my Life after Layoff.