words words words

These last few days have been filled with grossness and bad icky feelings way deep down, mostly of a nature directly attributable to being female and potentially fecund. I won't apologize because God. It's not like it's my fault.

But after copious amounts of red wine and peanut m&ms (the only sure cure I know of, short of herbaceous inhalants, which aren't really my thing), I am on the mend. During that period of time, I also had to complete a copyediting test for a Major Publishing House, which was actually a welcome distraction. I do love thumbing through dictionaries. the things you find! In the space of three hours, I came across a Truth Table, Quine, stubbornness, the two small North Atlantic Islands known as Saint-Pierre and Miquellon, the questionable difference between egoism and egotism, and oh! oh! samovar! samovar! will I ever tire of saying samovar!

Right now I'm listening to our favorite community radio station, which is playing Bob Dylan song after Bob Dylan song, and I just keep wishing it were John Prine song after John Prine song. I could Own My Own Auditory Life, put on my own damn Prine cds, or even call the very friendly dj and make a few pointed requests, but you know. how it is. when you just want to be vaguely grumpy. and dissatisfied. and also ungrammatical. with all of your sentence fragments. already.

And aren't dictionaries great for how they bring the shyest words and phrases out of obscurity, to the bright lights of the top of the page, simply as an accident of fate -- entirely dependent on where the page-break happens, how long each preceding entry happens to be, our seemingly arbitrary custom of pages of a uniform 11-inch length...all of this random eventuality gives us page headings that include phallus and phenacaine, Tamil and tankard,feudality and fibromylagia, arborist and arenavirus. This last, I regret to report, is not a communicable disease made prevalent by live performances of 80's hair bands. dammitalltohell.