Word Games

I am terrible at word games. In forty years of marriage I have beaten my husband once at Scrabble. I stink at Boggle and Word Twist defeats me. This failing is odd given that I am a writer and have a fair sized vocabulary at my command. But put me in competition and I go blanker than Sarah Palin upon being asked to name the members of NAFTA. Ah, that would be Nigeria, Africa, Tibet, and America…right? Huh, right? Sometimes I lose points just because I can not spell the words I do remember. It is seriously embarrassing not to know how to spell.

My daughter informed me at the Thanksgiving dinner table that the two most looked-up words in the Merriam Webster Dictionary this year were “quantum” and “solace” — I guess folks were having a hard time understanding the razor sharp dialog of the new James Bond movie. Or perhaps this is urban legend. The movie did not come out until late in the year. I don’t believe for a minute that the population has that much interest in units of measurement in space. Solace I can understand — we are all hurting from the recession and are finding solace in each of our own unique ways. Booze, comfort food, raising poi.

I have been playing Scrabble on Facebook with my buddies. They threw me a curve ball be laying down the letters for “axion” — hey, I object! There is no word “axion” I challenged. Well, dagnabbit there so is. It just happens to be a hypothetical subatomic particle or something like that. Billions of them go into making a quantum. I find solace by acknowledging that I have now added another word to my extensive repertoire. My friends cheat. They use words like Jo and nae. If we are allowed to use words from previous versions of the English language (like from Chaucer) then they sould accept my “nonce” and “smythe”.

I made up a nifty little word game to share with my Internet buddies. We are all gaga about handbags and make-up, so I suggested to try to combine words from the Crime lexicon with words from the Handbag or Make-up vocabulary. I started it out with Purloined Prada and St. Valentine’s Day Mascara. My favorite handbag entry was Knockoff. Kudos, my friends are brilliant. I suggest you try this game on your trip to Grandma’s house for the holidays.

Speaking of language, I am progressing in my Tibetan lessons. I was quite interested in learning that many  letters in Tibetan are also words. I wondered if this were unique to Tibet but yesterday I went to the Museum of Fine Arts exhibition called Assyria. There I learned that the ancient Assyrians also used an alphabet in which a letter could either be a letter or a word. That got me thinking about English. The only examples of this I could come up with are the letter “a” — it can either be the letter “a” as in “candy” or the word (article) “a” connoting singleness — and the letter “i” (also connoting singleness). Write to me if you can come up with others.

I do not feel too bad about my lack of competitive spirit in word games. No one has yet to beat me in Battleship!

Some Enchanting Evening

Tibetan Buddhist chanting is noted for the resonant deep voices of the Tibetan Chant Masters. My own lama can draw one deeply into meditation with his – it is like distant thunder rolling, a harbinger of the sound of heavy rain mesmerizing as one wakens. When the lama leads the chants my own voice is lost in the joined force of the practitioners. But last night the lama was traveling and the assembly consisted of women only. The chanting took on an entirely different and very beautiful sound. But my voice was discordant — it was low and gravely, qualities hidden at previous practices by the male chanters.

All my life I had a fair contralto voice — nothing to draw attention to but certainly very feminine. But now, no matter how I tried to raise my voice to a higher octave nothing but deep sounds came out. I knew in an instant what was happening — Parkinson’s was beginning to rob me of my voice. How long would it be before all I could do was whisper my Buddhist prayers instead of joining in the beautiful sounds of chanting? As we sat on our mats chanting I felt a level of distress far greater than I felt when first diagnosed. To lose one’s voice is to become shut off from the ease and pleasure of communication — it would bring isolation. I felt a tear on my cheek and then I heard the women chanting “and if I become sick, let me become sick and I will be happy. May this sickness purify my negative karma and the sickness of all sentient beings.”

I had often chanted this prayer but not until last night did I really understand that we must free ourselves from both hope and fear and live for the moment, letting go of suffering. Losing the sweet, high quality of my voice was giving me an opportunity. I was beginning to sound like those venerable monks, the Master Chanters, who make the most enchanting sound in the world.

Butterballs, gelatenous cannberry, squash pie, and fruitcake…

Here come the holidays — Christmas, Rohatsu, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Bonza Bottler Day! So many occasions on which to blow the diet in the spirit of there is always next year. I have started early this year thanks to Trader Joes. TJs is already stocked with Italian Panetone and German Marzipan Stollen, priced ridiculously low. It would be so very wrong not to take advantage of their largess. Yes, I know, all you food threateners, their largess will go directly to my hips and increase my largess rather dramatically between now and New Year’s Day.

But not to worry. Most holiday food is only good for one taste. Does anyone really like canned cranberry gel? I admit it does get better when wedged into a sandwich with leftover turkey and stuffing. But do you ever buy the stuff in July? I think not. And what about the concept of a pie made from a vegetable? A squash no less. No amount of mashing, evaporated milk or spice is going to change this into a pecan pie. It is just an excuse to use your pastry bags with decorator tips.

Tomorrow Nero Kitty and I are going to start cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. Spreading the event over two days is a good idea. That way you can be exhausted for two days instead of just one. We are going to prepare the candied yams (another annual squash extreme sport), potatoes au gratin (the recipe swears it is the best ever), and apple crumble. Normally the Daughter and the Husband make Thanksgiving dinner so that the Mother can rest her carcass for one day out of the year — but not so this year. Both have the flu. Having the flu guarantees they will not be able to taste anything. So why am I going to all this trouble?

When I was a kid we went to Chinatown for Thanksgiving dinner. When we moved to Virginia where they had never heard of China we went to the buffet at Seven Corners and slid our trays along the railings loading up with fried okra and fried chicken. Now that was something to give thanks for! When my family was considering moving back to the Northeast we hotly debated whether my father’s continuing employment was worth giving up the buffet.  So back to Ye Hong Guey’s for the holidays.

Thanksgiving day not only marks the official beginning of the holiday season, it also marks when it is socially acceptable to offer guests who you wish would hurry up and leave egg nog and fruitcake. If emotional states had food definitions “passive aggressive” would be defined by these two holiday delectibles. We always buy a quart of egg nog at the grocery store and pour out an inch or so for the holiday toast. Then the carton migrates its way to the back of the fridge until February when you do your annual fridge cleaning. It is remarkable that the consistency of egg nog does not change with rancidity. It glops down the drain just as it glopped into the toasting glasses. Yum.

Now fruitcake has a bad rap — it is the subject of many jokes and much ridicule. This is hardly fair. There is a town in Texas whose whole economy depends on siblings sending each other fruitcakes. They pack them first in a corrugated paper wrapper so that the fruitcake does not ooze currents; then it is shrinkwrapped in a plastic substance discovered in Area 51; finally it is put in tins festively decorated with charming scenes of undiverse people from an age gone by. When UPS arrives at your door with the unmistakable square box that is heavy for its size, you just know that you have been fruitcaked.

My mother sent her family members fruitcakes every year. No matter that they had not spoken to each other since the University of Witchita lost to Bowling Green in 1953. Never the poor sportman, Mom sent out the peace pipe annually with love from the Texas Fruitcake Emporium. This year I will have to determine whether fruitcake is vegan. I can hardly give my new Buddhist friends a meat fruitcake. Speaking of Buddhist, since I am newly converted I must brush up on the Buddhist holiday traditions. But please note, I still am accepting Christmas gifts, homemade fudge, and sides of baby back ribs.

On to December with its rich inventory of special foods. Starting with the Candy Cane — if these things are so delicious, why then do we find them amidst our clutter drawer, stored ornaments, and adhering to the underside of the childrens’ table?

People who dress their cats and other oddballs

I enjoy Web surfing and once in awhile land on a delectible example of Man’s genius or, more often, Man’s madness. Last night I arrived on the shores of Japan at a site dedicated to the sale of clothes for cats. There were dozens of outfits to chose from, all modeled by a cat who was either extraordinarily tolerant of humiliation or was drugged up his gizmo. The glassy eyed feline sported Little Red Riding Hood apparel, Biker Kitty outfits, bathing suits, track suits, outfits for church, and several leisure suits last fashionable for humans in the 1970s.

This was a well-designed site, reflecting either a brisk business or was the hobby of a wealthy and eccentric Japanese kitty fanatic. Speaking of kitty fanatics, I showed the site to Nero Kitty who proceeded to barf violently on the oriental rug (I do not make these things up). In psychotherapy they would call vomiting on an oriental rug transference – unable to vent spleen at the real culprit (a Japanese firm), one transfers one’s literal bile to a symbolic representation — to whit, the rug. Nero Kitty is just amazingly complex.

Nero Kitty has been a bit of a pain recently. At 3:00 AM precisely he climbs in bed with me and stretches out his 14 lb bulk across my bottom and begins to slowly and rhythmically expand and retract his claws into my derrier. Initially the pain is bearable. I do a half-hearted wiggle in  hopes of dislodging the cat. This only produces a deeper digging in. I believe that the ancient oriental torture technique called “One Thousand Cuts” was implemented by tieing the victim down and then uncrating two or three Siamese kitties on the poor sod’s naked carcass. Nero’s aim is to get me up so that I will go downstairs and fill his food dish up with Friskies and replace the old water with fresh ice water (with two cubes thank you).

Alas this morning I discovered that we were out of cans of Friskies and only had dry cat chow left. I was thanked for this oversight in food management by having my in-progress bead work tail swooshed onto the hardwood floor. I was at the CVS drug store at 8:00 AM for opening, hunting for Friskies. Now being compelled to go to the CVS, I decided to make the best of the trip by wandering down the aisles. I came upon the leftover Halloween candy — 90% off. Oh yum! NOT. While candy corn on October 1st is highly desirable and compulsively delicious, on November 17th it is repulsive. Apart from the candy corn there were only two other types of candy remaining: Hershey’s kisses made to look like candy corn (so also repulsive by association) and big bags of what (I swear) looked like purple condoms.

Having safe sex on Halloween is a good idea but from the number of bags of purple condoms remaining it seems we will be having a population boom sometime in August. I studied the packaging. “Scare your friends with Tongue Phooey!” This marketing copy did not do much to enlighten me. I read on. “Purple, black, or orange — be prepared to stick it and run!” Wow! This hit a new — I dared not let my imagination take flight. Marketing condoms this way seemed irresponsible to me. While I was standing there blocking access to the 90% off candy, a couple of pretweens elbowed their way to the front and grabbed six or seven bags of the Tongue Phooeys. I was shocked and began to look around for sales help, the police, anybody. One of the children ripped open a bag and unsealed a purple Phooey from its cellophanae wrapper — and stuck his tongue into it! Then he had the audacity to stick his purple tongue out at me! The kids laughed hysterically and ran away down the aisle. Light began to dawn slowly — Linshaolin had never seen tongue disguises before. . .

In the excitement I forgot the reason I had gone to the CVS in the first place and returned home without the Friskies. Nero met me at the door with frantic stropping. But he soon sensed my guilt and backed up, hairs prickling. I did not like the look he was giving me so I tried  to appease him. “Would my sweet boy like a little treat instead of brekkies? Huh? Yes, I know you would. Mommy brought you a little toy.” Nero played with the Tongue Phooey for a good half hour before tracking me down for food.