Woe Is Me!

Last year, when Dave and I were living in Baltimore, my dad had business in DC. My mom went out with him and I stayed with them. We spent 3 days there and had a BLAAAST! While my dad and Dave worked their little tails off, my mom and I played our little tails off!! We explored Alexandria, we devoured the Smithsonian (referring to all of the museums, but we also devoured the incredible flat bread pizza with goat cheese at the cafeteria in the National Gallery of Art!), we had pedicures and Bruegger's Bagels, and shopped like crazy.

Well, my parents are back in DC again, and alas, I am not. I am crushed to be missing out. And obviously my mom's not having hardly any fun without me ;). I tried to explain to Dave what it is I'm missing out on. I said, "Imagine you got to go on an amazing hunting trip last year. There were lots of big coyotes and you killed lots of them and there were rabbits all over that you could shoot, or even just kick if you wanted to. And elk and mountain lions and bears and buffalo! And free 4 wheelers! And this year you didn't get to go. And everyone else went and told you it was amazing." He was like, "Wow. That would be pretty sucky." He mostly just laughed at me :).

And so DC, just know I miss you. And mom, I miss you lots and lots. And pedicures, I miss you very much as well.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waist!

Yes, I know it's "waste," not "waist."
It was intentional.
That's one darling little flaw
about my husband that I love so much.
I giggle every time I get a text from him
saying something like
"It was such a waist."
He always mixes up the spelling.

On a similar note, while reading today,
I learned I was saying incorrectly
two different idiomatic expressions
(common phrases that aren't necessarily
to be taken literally):
"TOE the line,"
(apparently a very commonly misspelled phrase)
and "One FELL swoop."
For whatever reason, I thought they were
"TOW the line"
(having something to do with towing, as in pulling??),
and "One FOWL swoop"
(referring to something of a bird-like nature?
I don't know...).
In case you care
( I know I'm the only one that does...),
"Toe the line"
is referring to putting your toes on the line
before a race, and
"one fell swoop"
is referring to chopping down
(or "felling") trees.

I'm grateful that I have such a love of reading
because I know these are not the first two phrases
I was mistaken about.
I was something like 16 or so when I found out that
"making ends MEET"
wasn't "making ends MEAT,"
having something to do with food--
like feeding your family.

There are so many sayings that we use
on a regular basis
that can easily be misused
since most of the time we don't know
exactly where the reference came from.
My dad told me not too long ago
where the expression
"the whole nine yards"
came from.
Apparently a machine gun bullet belt
is nine yards long,
so saying to fire "the whole nine yards"
meant all of it.

I'm such a "word nerd"
that I'm probably the only person
interested in the least by this stuff.
But I love the English language.
I love to read it and study it
and continue to learn about it.
After all,
a mind is a terrible thing to waist!! ;)

**xoxo Love you babe**