So, I’m trying to lose weight. Maybe thin does feel better than anything tastes, but since I’ve never been thin, I’ll have to take someone else’s word for it. I’ve joined a gym. All thanks for that goes to my DIL Katie. She has also become my workout buddy. Have I lost any weight? No, but I feel better. (General muscle soreness discounted.) It helps a great deal to have someone in my corner with the same goal, i.e. helping me lose weight.

My youngest daughter is also trying to lose a few (15) pounds before prom, so she works out with us. She already found the perfect dress. It is beautiful, but I can’t share pics anywhere because the boyfriend hasn’t seen it yet.

Let me add here that he spoils her rotten. Even knowing she’s trying to lose weight, when she asked him to take her to her favorite fast food restaurant, he didn’t hesitate. He bought her a burger, fries and soda. I told her she didn’t have to eat fried stuff when she went there, that they have other options. My wonderful husband said, “Her favorite fast food restaurant has good salads. You could have gotten one of them.”

I don’t know if she heard it somewhere else and applied it to the conversation at hand, or if she made it up on the spot, but she held up a perfectly golden french fry and said, “Going to my favorite fast food restaurant for a salad is like going to the hooker on the corner for a hug.” Perhaps it is. I know I don’t head to any restaurant with the intention of eating a salad.

Let me add an especially grateful “Thank you.” to Kyle Dahlem for teaching me to love learning new words.

Your words for the week are:

1. aegis: support or backing of a specific organization or person
2. fatuous: silly, foolish, inane, asinine, pointless
3. garrulous: excessively chatty especially when expounding on trivial matters
   1. I think we all know someone who simply must add everything they know to every conversation. Sometimes, I’m the guilty party.
   2. This is only here because I know you don’t put a 1. if you don’t put a 2.
4. prate: to talk foolishly or tediously about something (I think prate and prattle sound sillier or funnier than garrulous. But, both sound quite boring.)
5. perspicuous: to explain clearly without distraction, to make easily understood, a closely related word is limpid. A close cousin is perspicacity which means to have a ready insight into and understanding of things, keen.

Have an awesome and productive week.

Isaiah 40:31

Blessings,

Lorelei

Yes, I think I’ll continue with five words for the week for you.  I also think that this year I’ll try to make my blogs about Lessons I’ve Learned. I think the world is more than ready to teach us if we are ready to learn. I was reminded of just how ready the world is this weekend when I was hiking with my husband.

We’d been to The Farm to visit my mother. Please note my use of upper case letters. The Farm refers to the tiny portion of NW Oklahoma where I was raised. Mom is 81 and tires easily. We took a walk so she could nap. We hiked to The Pond. Again, more capital letters are used to denote a special place. I’m 58 years-old. We built that pond when I was a 2nd grader. Yes, it is a special place. It is about a half mile as the crow flies from the house to the pond, but I’m not a crow. It was a tiny adventure.

On our walk through the pasture to the pond, we did not encounter any cattle.  While this isn’t normal, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. We did notice that cattle had been on the same trails recently.  As we walked across skinny little dams that delineate ponds either full and dry, up and down hills, and up and down more hills, I noticed a few things.

1. It seems that there are always more uphills than down.
2. The cattle leave behind more (How do I say this in a genteel way?) plops on the uphill portions than the downhill ones.
   1. Yes, I hear your voice. The uphill and the downhill slopes are the same slopes; the difference is the direction you’re heading at the moment.
   2. Yes, but I was raised on this farm, remember?
3. So, why more plop on the uphills?  Well, I’m glad you asked that. It seems that when we have to expend more effort to accomplish things–we must let go of the (pardon my vulgarity) crap that weights us down. When life is hard, we have to let go of crap and just move on.

There is our lesson from the farm. Let go of crap and get on to better things and places!

Blessings

Isaiah 40:31

Lorelei

Your words for the week are:

1. macabre: horrible, horrific, gruesome, awful, gory, dreadful, disturbing
2. melancholy: lasting and pervasive sadness. A couple of dictionaries I consulted called it Black Bile.
3. blowsy: this usually refers to a red-faced, coarse or untidy woman
4. execrable: extremely bad or unpleasant, in Late Middle English it usually involved a curse.
5. hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence (I think we all know one or two of these people.) Perhaps I’ll do one of this year’s “Lessons From” on someone with this personality flaw.

🙂