2019 - Day 181/184 - Sunday...Monger...

It rained overnight, just about a half inch, which let me slack off on cutting grass until later in the afternoon. I have one more section of grass to cut tomorrow night when I get home from work, and that will be it, all the grass will have been cut. It is an every-two-week thing, and that is not terrible. If I wanted to go non-stop, I could get it all done in one day, probably five hours of solid grass cutting, but breaking it down into sections seems to be working just fine as well. It is cloudy outside right now, and there are mentions of more rain overnight, not a lot, just enough to be annoying. I did manage to get a couple naps in today, and we took the girls for a ride. Other than that, I did a whole lot of nothing much. The coming week will be good, busy and short. Then, watch out for the next week. This is a picture of the back of the house I took yesterday after I cut the back grass. Some of it, anyway.

Monger -- Noun. 1. broker, dealer - usually used in combination. 2. one who spreads discreditable information - usually used in combination. According to reports, the singer and actress were a couple, but the rumormongers had it wrong - the two were just good friends.

Did You Know? Peddlers (especially fish merchants) have been called mongers for more than 1,000 years. Initially, it was an honorable term, but every profession has its bad apples, and the snake-oil salesman of the bunch gave monger a bad reputation. By the middle of the 16th century, the term often implied that a merchant was dishonorable or contemptible. Monger is typically appended to another word to identify a trader of a particular type. Some combinations (such as fishmonger) suggest respectable commerce, whereas others (such as rumormonger) imply that a person is spreading information in a deceptive manner.

2019 - Day 180/185 - Saturday...Countenance...

We may live on a farm, but that does not necessarily translate that we are farmers. Case in point. When are peaches ripe on the tree? The look ripe, but they don't feel ripe. I'm afraid to cut one open because it may not be ripe, therefore it won't taste ripe, because it isn't ripe. They are hard as rocks. Are they supposed to be a little bit mushy before you pick them? And if so, how do peach farmers afford to pay someone to go around squishing peaches all day long to see if they are ripe? I really need someone to research this for me; we have LOTS of peaches out in the back on the two trees, the best performance since we have lived here, but I need to know when the peaches are ripe. Aside from spending lots of time pondering the peaches, I did have a couple naps today and cut grass in the back and the front. Tomorrow I will finish the far front and the side, as long as it does not rain. Perhaps the rain can hold off until tomorrow afternoon. Next week will be a short week, and we are expecting Joe Mac and Carolyn from Mississippi to share the Holiday with us, that will be extra fun!

Countenance -- Noun. 1. the human face. 2. favor, approval. "As he said this, Maddon's countenance was a bit less chipper than usual. He probably was just tired." Steve Greenberg, Chicago Sun-Times, August 28, 2017

Did You Know? Countenance is one of several English descendants of the Latin continere, a verb meaning "to hold together," "to hold in," or "to contain." There is documented evidence of countenance being used in English as far back as the 13th century, when it was adopted from the Anglo-French contenance, which in turn derived from the Latin continentia, meaning "restraint." A now obsolete sense of the word meant "bearing" or "demeanor"; that meaning shifted to "facial expression" and then to "an expression that offers approval." Other descendants of continere in English include contain, content, and continuous.

2019 - Day 179/186 - Friday...Nebbish...

These girls are about 13 weeks old now, and all of them survived. I expected a couple of them to croak, but they all made it without too much trouble. Not bad for a bunch of chicks that were between 1 and seven days old when we got them. One of them did try to commit suicide (I have no idea how she wedged herself into that space), but even she recovered with no ill effects. They all seem happy a clams (or chickens) in their pen, and I guess they are happy. I think the other girls were happy too, but the learning curve for free-range chickens has to be fast and furious. On a selfish note, the young plantings are much healthier with no chickens pecking them, and the porches and patios are much cleaner without having a bunch of free-ranging chickens pooping all over everything. We should start getting some egg production around September/October. We will let you know.

Nebbish -- Noun. a timid, meek, or ineffectual person. "The Tick tries to prod Arthur to work with him, even providing the nebbish with a bulletproof moth-like costume." Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe, August 24, 2017

Did You Know? "From what I read...it looks like Pa isn't anything like the nebbish Ma is always making him out to be." Sounds like poor Pa got a bum rap, at least according to Gilbert Millstein in his 1951 New York Times review of Arthur Kober's book of stories, Bella, Bella Kissed a Fella. Nebbish derives from the Yiddish nebekh, meaning "poor" or "unfortunate." As you might expect for a timid word like nebbish, the journey from Yiddish to English wasn't accomplished in a single bold leap of spelling and meaning. In its earliest English uses in the 1840s, it was spelled nebbich and used interjectionally as an expression of dismay.

2019 - Day 178/187 - Thursday...Piebald...

It was a lovely start to the day; leisurely, calm, not harried...lovely. No speeding, just taking everything as it came. I see these guys working on various railroad tracks around the area, but never got to see one up close and obstructing the forward motion of the vehicle in which I was riding. I even made it to Costco and the dentist (cleaning time) without a tremendous amount of angst. But then these is the cook top. We have been trying to get it repaired since the beginning (or maybe the middle) of April. Every time they fix one thing, they break another thing and have to order more parts. Today, they broke the glass of the cook top. And they did not turn the gas service back on. But, none of it was their fault...according to them. This time, it was caused by crumbs getting down in to the bowels of the cook top. Just to be clear, we cannot remember the last time we cooked crumbs, so I can neither confirm or deny the credibility of the repair people.

Piebald -- Adjective. 1. composed of incongruous parts. 2. of different colors, especially. spotted or blotched with black and white. "What they did find, though, were some surprise photos of a piebald deer, something few people ever get to see in the woods." Brenda Carpenter, New Hampshire Sunday News, January 3, 2016

Did You Know? To many people, the noisy black and white birds that go by the scientific name Pica pica - better known as magpies - are nothing but pests. But the Latin root that was adopted for their name isn't a linguistic nuisance. It played an important role in the development of piebald. The pie of piebald (pie is another name for magpie) derives from pica, which is Latin for "magpie." The other part of piebald comes from the word bald, which can mean "marked with white"; it can also be found in skewbald, an adjective used to describe animals marked with patches of white and any other color but black.

2019 - Day 177/188 - Wednesday...Catbird Seat...

We've got various flora blooming around the house right now. This has been a really off year for the plantings around the house. We had a really late HARD freeze, and it was after much of the plantings had already starting putting up greenery. That was really pretty disastrous, and it has been a long, slow process of recovery. Every now and then we see something that we thought we had lost, and we are happy that something survived here an there. The lilies seem to take most of the bad weather in their stride. These are blooming by the storm shelter, and there are more all around the property. The blooms do not last very long, usually a day or two, but they are prolific in their blooming. We have seen three Pride of Barbados (my faves, also known as New Mexico Birds of Paradise)) that survived, but no blooms yet. I still have some seed I saved from last year, so I may go ahead and pot some of those and see if they will come up.

Catbird Seat -- Noun. a position of great prominence or advantage. Nelson found himself sitting in the catbird seat with lucrative offers from three potential employers in front of him.

Did You Know? "In the catbird seat" was among the numerous folksy expressions that legendary baseball broadcaster Red Barber used to delight listeners. Some say that he invented the expression; others say that he dug it up from his Southern origins. But the truth may be far stranger than those rumors. In a 1942 short story titled "The Catbird Seat", James Thurber featured a character, Mrs. Barrows, who liked to use the phrase. Another character, Joey Hart, explained that Mrs. Barrows must have picked up the expression from Red Barber. To Red, according to Joey, "sitting in the catbird seat "meant "'sitting pretty,' like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him." But, according to Barber's daughter, it was only after Barber read Thurber's story that he started using "in the catbird seat" himself.

2019 - Day 176/189 - Tuesday...Breadbasket...

...and it's only Tuesday. We had a little more rain overnight, but the dogs slept through it with no issues. It started out kind of cloudy today, but it has turned out to be a pretty day. Unseasonably cool for almost July, but we have the recent rains to thank for that. My car said it was 79 degrees when I was on my way home this afternoon. We only got a teensy bit of rain on the Edge of Nowhere, but there was rain all around, as is evidenced by the picture attached to this journal entry. Today was basically a day spent in the office, except for the parts where I went to a directors meeting, during which time I participated on a conference call with another committee, and then went to a TREPAC function on the way home. I love what I do, I hope it shows!

Breadbasket -- Noun. 1. slang: stomach. 2. a major cereal-producing region. Richard grew up right in the middle of the Midwestern breadbasket, so many of his family members got their first jobs in cereal mills.

Did You Know? Breadbasket has been used as slang in English since at least the mid-1700s. (It has been used even longer to mean literally a basket for holding bread.) It can refer to the stomach as an actual digestive organ ("his breadbasket rumbled with hunger"), but these days it's more commonly applied to the general stomach area ("rested her hands on her breadbasket"). No one is quite sure of the exact origins of the use, but it's likely that there's some connection between the basket used to hold bread and the "basket" where the bread ends us after a person eats it. Breadbasket has also come to refer to an area that supplies an important amount of grain ("the breadbasket of the country").

2019 - Day 175/190 - Monday...Epithet...

Complaint Department, this is Bill, how may I help you? It's dark outside and the sun is coming out. Is it hot enough for you? I was on hold for 47 minutes. It's not morning, it's afternoon. It's not the heat, it's the stupidity. Does this dress make my butt look big? I know you close in five minutes, but I'll get there in about 30 minutes, can you wait for me? It really was not a terrible ay, it was just raining and thundering and lightning all day. Until just the last fifteen minutes. The sun is out and it is a lovely evening. In the last twenty-four hours we've had a little over 2.25" of rain, and there is supposed to be more overnight. It's totally okay with me. The girls are not particularly afraid of thunder and lightning, but they were curious. I at least hope they were curious, because since it was raining outside, there was no way in hell they would step foot off the back porch. So, we went from the bedroom to the couch. Callie was perfectly happy to sleep on the couch, the white girl was anxious, so she kept coming and going. I am hoping for a little more sleep tonight.

Epithet -- Noun. 1a. a characterizing word or phrase used in place of a name. 2a. a disparaging or abusive word or phrase. "The United States, Henry Kissinger once observed, is 'probably the only country in which the term "realist" can be used as a perjorative epithet.'" Jacob Heilbrunn, Politico, September/October 2017

Did You Know? Nowadays, epithet is usually used negatively, with the meaning "a derogatory word or phrase," but it wasn't always that way. Epithet comes to us via Latin from the Greek noun epitheton and ultimately derives from epitithenai, meaning "to put on" or "to add." In the oldest sense, an epithet is simply a descriptive word or phrase, especially one joined by fixed association to the name of someone or something (as in "Peter the Great" or the stock Homeric phrases "gray-eyed Athena" and "wine-dark sea"). Alternatively, epithets may be used in place of a name (as in "the Peacemaker" or "the Eternal"). These neutral meanings of epithet are still in use, but today the word is more often used in its negative "term of disparagement" sense.