Benched, Grilled, Pressure-Washed (illustrated)

[Editor's note. I apologize in advance for some of the photographs in this post. They are not very good photographs -- I press the button and the result is anyone's guess -- but they are essential to the post. Perhaps I should also be apologizing for the sheer number of photographs in this post. Some bloggers post many more, but there are far more than I usually include. I must have been on a roll. --RWP]

A friend of ours, Rosemary L., lived to be 94 years old. During the last 20 years of her life (the period when we knew her) she perplexed and amused her friends by celebrating her birthday every year throughout the entire month of February at multiple restaurants. So it struck me as downright Rosemaryesque when, through no fault of Mrs. Rhymeswithplague's own, her birthday celebration lasted for a whole week this year.

On the Saturday before her birthday, our older son and his wife, along with their daughter who was home for the weekend from summer session at the university, drove over from their town and took us out to eat at a local restaurant. We enjoyed it immensely; we left the place with our tummies full and a take-home box containing a piece of cheesecake. Back at our house, our son pulled a big box out of the back of his vehicle and began assembling something. It turned out to be a bench for our entrance! He had heard his mother mention a while back that she would really like us to get one. Here is the finished product along with Mrs. RWP:

A few seconds later I joined her on our new bench:

But don't look at us or the bench. Instead, notice the concrete. It will be important later in this post.

The next day, on the Sunday before Mrs. RWP's birthday, we were invited to our other son and daughter-in-law's home for a delicious home-cooked, gourmet meal.

Three days later, on Wednesday, Mrs. RWP's actual birthday, she and I went out for another birthday dinner at our favorite fake-Australian place where we enjoyed coconut shrimp, pumpernickel bread, Toowoomba salmon, and baked sweet potato. Once again we had cheesecake for dessert. This was now the third celebration. I gave Mrs. RWP a bouquet of flowers but didn't take a photograph. Our daughter and son-in-law in Alabama also had flowers delivered to our house on Wednesday afternoon:

On Saturday morning, three days after Mrs. RWP's birthday, our daughter called to tell us to eat an early, light lunch because she and our son-in-law were coming to cook dinner for us "for Mom's birthday." True to their word, they showed up with all the food and even the grill on which our son-in-law did the cooking. Unbeknownst to us, they had also invited our two sons and their wives as a further surprise. We kept adding places at the table as each couple joined the group. Much laughter took place, and a great time was had by all that day with eight of us at the dining table. As an additional surprise, the grill was left at our house as a gift to us:

So Mrs. RWP's birthday celebration turned out to be eight days long. Just like Hanukkah.

Once again, don't look at the grill. Look at the concrete.

What do you see?

I saw dirty concrete at our front entrance by the bench and I see dirty concrete on our patio by the grill. Dirty concrete, at least around here, means only one thing: it's time to do pressure washing!

So a couple of days later I hired a man to come and pressure wash our driveway (including the entrance way) and our patio. I don't have a "before" picture of the driveway but here is an "after" picture that includes the tip of my finger:

and here is an "after" picture of the patio:

We have lived in this house for 19 years and this is only the second time we have had our concrete areas pressure-wshed. Some of our neighbors do it much more frequently. Some have it done every year.

There's a word that applies to such people.

Rosemaryesque.

I’m from Big D, my, oh yes

...Big D, little a, double l, a, s.

Except that I'm not. I'm from Mansfield, a former wide spot in the road that now has 75,000 residents and is actually closer to Fort Worth in the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex than to Dallas. By the way, Fort Worth is not pronounced FORT WORTH by locals. Locals say FOTE-worth (with the accent on the first syllable, which has no discernible R) instead.

Here are some more oddities one encounters in the pronunciation of place names:

Many people who grew up in Missouri call it Missoura, many people who grew up around Cincinnati call it Cincinnata, and many people who grew up in Florida say Miama, not Miami.

It's true.

People in other parts of the U.S. may say kah-loh-RAH-doh and nuh-VAH-duh but people who live in Colorado and Nevada say kah-loh-RAD-oh and nuh-VAD-duh.

Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I lived in Boca Raton, Florida, for several years and the place is pronounced bo-ka ra-TONE, not bo-ka ra-TAHN, no matter how many times you may have heard it pronounced the second way.

The residents of the town of San Jacinto in Riverside County, California, pronounce it the Spanish way, san-hah-CHEEN-toh, but the place near Houston, Texas, where Texans remembered the Alamo and defeated Mexican General Santa Anna's army in 1836 is called sanja-SIN-ta.

Versailles may be pronounced vair-SIGH in France, but the town in Kentucky spelled the same way is ver-SALES. I kid you not.

Lima in Peru may be LEE-muh but the Lima in Ohio is pronounced LYE-muh. Similarly (or, rather, dissimilarly), Egypt's Cairo may be KYE-roh but the towns in Illinois and Georgia are both called KARE-oh, like the syrup.

We must not forget the twin curiosities of Nacogdoches, Texas, (NAK-uh-DOH-chiz) and Natchitoches, Louisiana (NAK-uh-tish).

When I tell you stuff like this I have the distinct feeling that I may have told it to you before. If I have repeated myself, chalk it up to the fact that I'm old and my memory isn't what it used to be

Don't get me started on England, which has Gloucestershire (GLAW-stir-shir), Leicestershire (LESS-ter-shir), Worcestershire (WUSS-ter-shir), St. John's Wood (SIN-jinz wood), and the Thames (TEMZ), none of which the English find the least bit odd.

In closing, when I tell you stuff like this I have the distinct feeling that I may have told it to you before. If I have repeated myself, chalk it up to the fact that I'm old and my memory isn't what it used to be.

Did I mention that I'm from Big D?

A most surprising fact, given the last few posts

English is the most widely-spoken language in the world.

According to the United Nations, there are nearly 8,000,000,000 people in the world today. They speak a total of 7,151 languages according to Ethnologue. These languages could not sound more different from one another. When God confounded the people's language at the Tower of Babel (a Judaeo-Christian story from the book of Genesis), He did a really good job of it. For example, a certain vegetable referred to in American English as eggplant is called aubergine in French and melixhan in Albanian. When people in Germany say Froeliche Weinacht, and people in Sweden say God Jul, and people in Australia say Merry Christmas, they all mean the same thing. I don't know about you but I find this fascinating.

Geographical proximity doesn't seem to matter eirher. People in New Zealand express gratitude by saying thank you, in Japan by saying arigato (ah-ree-GAH-toh), and in China by saying xèxèi ni (sheh-sheh nee).

Here are the 12 most-widely-spoken languages in the world according to Berlitz:

1. English (1,132 million speakers)
2. Mandarin Chinese (1,117 million speakers)
3. Hindi (615 million speakers)
4. Spanish (534 million speakers)
5. French (280 million speakers)
6. Arabic (274 million speakers)
7. Bengali (265 million speakers)
8. Russian (258 million speakers)
9. Portuguese (234 million speakers)
10. Indonesian (199 million speakers)
11. Urdu (170 million speakers)
12. German (132 million speakers)

If you simply can't live without knowing what the 13th most-widely-spoken language in the world is, it's Japanese (128 million speakers).

Besides those 13, many other languages have millions of speakers as well. Ethnologue has documented 7,138 other languages currently spoken on this planet. Some have only a few speakers and are nearly extinct.

Can you feature a world at some future time when English or Chinese would be nearly extinct? It is mind-boggling to contemplate.

A fine kettle of ghoti

Reader Tasker Dunham in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England and I exchanged a few words about ghoti in the previous post's comment section. I would like now to say that I was incorrect in telling him that it was George Bernard Shaw who brought it to the world's attention. Further reading on my part has revealed that ghoti pre-dated Mr. Shaw's career by a few decades, not that it matters in the least but I do try to keep my errors on a short leash as well as few and far between.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, the word 'ghoti' is merely an alternate spelling of the word 'fish'. Yes, it is, and I'll prove it. Say the 'gh' sound from enough, the 'o' from women, and the 'ti' fron nation, put them all together, and voila!, you have fish!

Next subject.

Have you ever noticed how many different ways in English the syllable 'ough' can be pronounced? By my count, there are eight:

• uff (enough rough, tough, slough)
• ooh (through)
• oh (though, dough)
• ow (bough, plough, drought)
• aw (thought, bought, ought, wrought)
• awf (cough)
• ock (lough)
• up (hiccough)

As I may have said somewhere recently, it's a wonder anyone who speaks English can spell anything correctly. Let me add a corollary to that. It's a wonder anyone who reads English can pronounce anything correctly.

It is, indeed, a fine kettle of ghoti.

Things I do that might be construed as OCD

...even though I definitely do not, repeat, do NOT have OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), at least I have never been diagnosed with OCD nor has anyone ever suggested that I have OCD even though he or she may have thought it in the privacy of his or her own home. After doing a great deal of reading in preparation for this post I may or may not have OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder), which is a different kettle of fish altogether. Here's my list:

When emptying the dishwasher, I silently count the number of dinner plates, salad plates, saucers, glasses, cups, each type of silverware (knives, dinner forks, salad forks, teaspoons, tablespoons). Furthermore, I take each category one at a time, counting as I go, and always remove them and put them away in the same sequence.

Because doesn't everybody?

When picking up the mail, I count the number of steps from the front door to the curbside mailbox, and back. When carrying out the trash, I count the number of steps from the back door to the trash bins, and back. I do not count steps when walking Abby, though, because she walks erratically, wandering here and there as she likes. Instead of walking in a straight line she stops abruptly to sniff or listen or stare, goes to the right or to the left, circles back again, darts after a rabbit, rolls in the grass, and does other things the members of the canine world find fascinating.

When taking men's shirts from the dryer and putting them on hangers, I button buttons 1, 3, 5, and 7 only. I leave buttons 2, 4, and 6 unbuttoned.

At the risk of repeating myself, doesn't everybody?

Were you even aware that men's shirts have seven buttons? Here's a news flash: women's shirts do not.

When I still worked in an office, I would arrange pens and pencils in parallel at a jaunty angle on my desk.

When I read blogs, I read them in alphabetic order.

I'm sure I could think of other things I do, but you probably think I am strange enough already.

What OCD-type quirks do you have that are suitable for sharing on a G-rated blog?

It’s a wonder anyone who speaks English can spell anything correctly

In some languages -- Albanian and Armenian, for instance -- once a person learns the alphabet he or she can spell every word in the language correctly because each letter has one and only one sound. Not so in English. There are many ways to spell a sound in English.

Here are a few examples out of thousands that cause people learning English as a second language to shake their heads in bewilderment:

• Words with Long I sound: bite, bight, byte, blight, bright, fight, flight, fright, height, kite, knight, light, mite, might, night, plight, quite, rite, right, site, sight, slight, spite, sprite, tight, white, wight, write, wright
  
  
• Words with Long A sound: ate, bate, bait, crate, date, eight, fate, fete, freight, gate, gait, grate, great, hate, late, mate, pate, plate, prate, rate, sate, slate, state, strait, straight, trait, wait, weight
  
  
• More words with Long A sound: bay, bray, cay, clay, claim, day, dray, epee, fey, flay, fray, gay, gray, grey, hay, hey, jay, lay, lei, may, nay, neigh, pay, play, pray, prey, quay, ray, say, shay, slay, sleigh, spray, stay, stray, strain, sway, tray, train, trey, vain, vein, way, weigh, yea
  
  
• Words with Long E sound: bee, brie, clean, fee, flee, flea, free, gee, glee, glean, he, key, knee, lea, me, peek, peak, plea, see, sea, she, tee, tea, three, tree, wee
  
  
• Words with Long O sound: beau, blow, crow, dough, dote, faux, float, flow, foe, fro, go, goat, gloat, glow, groat, grow, grown, ho, hoe, joe, know, lo, low, moat, mote, mow, no, roe, row, sew, so, sow, show, shoat, slow, snow, stow, tableau, though, throat, throw, toe, tow, whoa, woe
  
  
• More words with Long I sound: aisle, buy, by, bye, cry, die, dye, dry, eye, fie, fly, fry, guise, guy, high, I, isle, lie, lye, my, nigh, pi, pie, ply, pry, rye, shy, sigh, sly, spy, spry, sty, tie, try, vie, why, wry
  
  
• Words with Short U sound: buff, bluff, cuff, chuff, duff, enough, fluff, guff, gruff, huff, muff, puff, rough, snuff, stuff, tough
  
  
• Words with "Aw" sound: awe, aught, bought, brought, caught, cough, dawn, doff, fawn, fought, fraught, lawn, nought, off, ought, sauce, sought, taut, taught, thought, trough, wrought
  
  
• Words with Long "oo" sound: boo, blew, blue, brew, broom, bruise, clue, crew, cruise, do, dew, due, few, flew, flue, fuse, gloom, goo, glue, grew, hew, hue, igloo, loo, lieu, moo, mew, new, queue, revue, review, room, rue, sue, slough, slew, stew, strew, to, too, two, through, threw, true, view, woo, you
  
  
• Words with "Ow" sound: aloud, bough, bow, brow, chow, cloud, cow, clown, down, drown, frau, frown, gown, how, loud, now, plow, plough, prow, proud, row, sow, town, vow, wow, zowie
  
  

I could go on but your eyes would glaze over, if they haven't already glazed over.

Don't despair, however. You could be trying to learn Mandarin Chinese, which doesn't have an alphabet. It has more than 100,000 characters instead.

How’s that again? plus rhyming foods

Do you know what a malapropism is? According to Wikipedia, it is "the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance." In my own words, a malapropism occurs when a person uses a word in a spoken or written sentence that is almost the right word, but wrong. The term can be traced to a character, Mrs. Malaprop, in The Rivals, a play written in 1775 by Richard Sheridan.

Here are some malapropisms I have either heard with my own two ears or been told by someone else who heard it with his or her (notice that I do not say their) own two ears. All of the following are actual instances from real life. There is not a made-up malapropism in the lot.

At a Christian concert, my son was playing saxophone in the band for a female singer fairly well known in Christian circles when she urged the college-aged audience to get up out of their chairs and give Jesus a standing ovulation.

A 94-year-old friend, Rosemary L., asked our mutual friend Sharon S. to take her to the mall because she wanted to get a manicure and a pedophile.

A friend of mine wrote on Facebook during Holy Week this year, "Let us be reminded Jesus died on that cross but He arose on the third day and now sets on the right hand of the Father, making intersections for us."

Those are all hilarious. The following, which all occurred during the last two weeks, are more mundane:

"The objection of this game is to..."

"This song really resignated with me"

"In these stories there is a concurring theme"

"Silence is an omission of guilt"

The words for which these people were searching but didn't quite find were ovation, pedicure, intercession, object, resonate, recurring, and admission. People make this type of mistake so frequently that it has practically become an epidemic. There was a time when I would have corrected them all but I don't do that any more. I just commit them to memory. Maybe I have become part of the problem.

Way back in 1967 I heard Blanche D., a woman in Poughkeepsie, New York, say "Before I spend that kind of money on a cruise I want to know what it would curtail". She meant entail, of course, and my hobby of listening for malapropisms was launched.

Enough about malapropisms. Here's a game we can all play.

A few nights ago on Wheel Of Fortune, in a category called Rhyming Foods, the puzzle turned out to be "chickpeas and cheddar cheese". Host Pat Sajak, quick wit at the ready, wisecracked that it was much better than his suggestion, "edamame and hard salami". He set me to thinking about other foods that rhyme and I came up with these:

• collard greens and garbanzo beans
  
• chocolate cake and sirloin steak
  
• leg of lamb and strawberry jam
  
• rigatoni and sliced baloney
  
• étouffée and crème brûlée
  
• shish kabob and corn on the cob
• beanie weenie and veal scallopini

What rhyming foods can you think of?

I leave you with a photograph of actress Louisa Lane Drew as Mrs. Malaprop in an 1895 production of The Rivals: