Tagged: puttingwordstogether

01
Sep
2026

A VERITABLE PLETHORA* OF ANALOGUES

This is the way my brain works, and the kind of thing I amuse myself with. In the car on the way home, I was suddenly thinking about the fact that there are so many words for “not straight” and I wasn’t even referring to the ones that have to do with sexual preference. Have you ever realized that? English is SO good at hoarding synonyms. This was brought on, by the way, because I was listening to Christine & The Queens song Tilted. slanted, aslant, tilted, leaning, diagonal, inclined, askew, sloping, offkilter, angled, canted, crooked, lopsided, unbalanced, warped, listing,...

16
Feb
2026

THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE A FRIEND IS TO BE ONE*

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. All the different kinds that I’ve been privileged to be a part of and those that have stayed and those that have disappeared and why. I think my delight in landing on writing a letter a month for 2026 was partly fueled by a need to reach out to friends that I feel distant from and, probably, remind them that I exist. Even if I say I don’t expect an answer or a letter back, I’d still like to think that my reaching out might awaken an answering call in people that...

19
Jan
2026

OUR WAY WITH WORDS

I’ve been thinking about language that is specific to my family. Phrases and words that we use that no one else does (or maybe a few but not the general public, if you see what I mean). The secret vocabulary that we adopt or invent that enters our conversations, maybe as a joke, and sticks. I’m not talking about baby talk, the garbled misinterpretations that small children add to their language and that slip into our adult lexicons, though those would really count as well. And I’m not talking about generational jargon that we gather as teens and young people...

17
Jan
2026

SLUGGARD WITH STYLE

Thinking about writing blog posts ought to count towards actually writing them, if what you put together in your head eventually leads to something. Or? I survived my first week back at work, but it was a close thing. I was exhausted by the end of Friday and it wasn’t even that strenuous a week, AND the monster report layout project that so stressful before the holidays was finally approved and finalized on Friday morning, so that should have been a great ending to the week. And it was. But. SO TIRED. I cannot decide who I resemble more in...

05
Nov
2025

HOPE IS THE FEELING YOU HAVE THAT THE FEELING YOU HAVE ISN’T PERMANENT*

What are you hoping for? I think about hope a lot lately. I remember watching Anne of Green Gables years ago (the Canadian one with Megan Follows, which is BRILLIANT, and which I STILL have on VHS, even though we haven’t even had a VCR since years back) and Marilla’s response to Anne saying that she was in the depths of despair and asking Marilla if she had ever been in the depths of despair, and Marilla responded, “to despair is to turn your back on God”. Which shut Anne up, I think. And even though I am no longer...

22
Oct
2025

TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPING, SLIPPING, SLIPPING, INTO THE FUTURE

My friend Chuck wrote a fascinating post yesterday about time and history and the movement of man through the ages, and he broke down what exactly AGES means. And I felt kind of ashamed, not because I didn’t know what the words meant, but because I’ve never really thought about them, in-depth. Me! Who loves language and linguistics and can spend hours delving into the fine print of dictionaries. I had never really thought about the fact that these words AREN’T actually interchangeable, although I’m certainly not alone in using them as if they were. Eons are subdivided into, in...

10
Oct
2025

IF YOU’RE HAPPY/SAD/WHATEVER, WRITE A POST

When you have things to do, maybe chores, or you are faced with a bunch of choices at once, which things do you do first? Do you choose to get the stuff you DON’T like doing out of the way first? Or do you do the things you LIKE doing before tackling the rest? And why? I tend to get the stuff I don’t like out of the way and leave the stuff I DO like for last, like a treat, almost. If I take my medicine, I get something sweet as a reward, as it were. I’ve noticed that...

03
Aug
2025

ALL OVER THE PLACE

Perhaps the secret to a good night’s sleep these days is staying up until 1 in the morning. At least that way I only get up once more in the middle of the night and am apparently able to fall asleep again quite quickly, even if my brain starts waking. That’s what we did last night because we were at a double-birthday party in Malmö and didn’t get home until after 1 am. I had a really nice time, which surprised me, because I wasn’t really looking forward to going, and I spent quite a lot of the evening talking...

10
Mar
2025

DON’T GET ME STARTED

Why is it that every time I tell someone, almost always someone who is NOT American, that I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, they just keep on trying to talk about it? Trying to get me to engage in a conversation in which they want me to explain, defend, or continuously agree or react in shock about the batshit crazy takeover of the American government right now. I DON’T FUCKING WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Because you don’t want to get me started. The whole situation enrages me and fills me with despair and disgust and disbelief. I can’t...

02
Aug
2024

AGING IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR LIVING*

Ermahgerd, it’s August! Yesterday, Debbie and Camilla took me out for the afternoon for an early birthday celebration because I’ll be gone over the weekend of my actual birthday. I left work at 12 and picked up Camilla, and then we drove out to Slättarps Gård, which was a lovely location out in the middle of absolute nowhere. There was a café/restaurant, outdoor seating in a garden bower, an art gallery, a florist, and a little boutique. We had a delicious lunch, sitting in the shade of the trees, with beautiful weather, blue skies, warm and breezy summer weather. They...

September 2026
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