Sorry About the Impromptu Sabbatical

Like how I employed two more words for our list there? Guess which ones they are.

To make up for my extended absence, I am offering the following two posts to fill the aching void that I carelessly created in your fragile souls. Far be it from me to continue to allow the threat of irreparable harm to your flailing spirits. It's a Saturday night. Luke is at Boy Scout camp for the weekend; Katy is at a sleepover; and Mike is out of the continent. I should be out with girlfriends tonight watching the Sex and the City movie, and maybe later getting free drinks at a bar when we make up a story that we're having a combination divorce/bachelorette party without ever telling who the lucky/unlucky girls are. I honestly have never tried this idea, but I have no doubt that it would serve its intended purpose quite well. But what am I doing on this Saturday night? Reveling in my solitude. Doing what I want to do most. Enjoying a glass of wine and writing without interruption. Do I need to get a life? Nope. This is my life. So sit back and relax because you are in for a treat the likes of which you probably have not seen since Nightmare on Elm Street.

First, here are some more words for you to chew on or spit out:

eschew, colloquy, excoriate (those are recent suggestions from my friend Chris --much more acceptable than his usual prissy offerings),

scofflaw, dilettante, peccadillo, quandary, wombat, wallaby, pandemonium, nebulous, paltry, pablum, hyoid, clavicle, patella, scapula, spatula, bellicose, obsequious,--

obsequious reminds me of a very special song from Steve Martin's Let's Get Small. He calls it Grandmother's Song. I've mentioned it here before. It is just so heartfelt and poignant, especially in these stressful times. I could just offer you a link to these lyrics and let you know that you can actually download this song from iTunes, but in my effort to both improve your life as well as contribute to the betterment of the universe as a whole, I am reprinting most of the lyrics right here:

Be courteous, kind and forgiving, Be gentle and peaceful each day, Be warm and human and grateful, And have a good thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike, Be witty and happy and wise, Be honest and love all your neighbors, Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant.

Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus, Be dull, and boring, and omnipresent, Criticize things you don't know about, Be oblong and have your knees removed.

Be tasteless, rude, and offensive, Live in a swamp and be three dimensional, Put a live chicken in your underwear, Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

I know, it's silly. And it did seem a lot funnier back when I was doing more drugs than I do now. My favorite line of course is "Criticize things you don't know about." I certainly never do that, but I know a lot of people who do.

Here are a few of my favorite Spanish words which are pretty much an integral part of San Antonio parlance: cojones, loco, mijo, mija, and corazon. There are a bunch more, but most of them can be found on any good Mexican restaurant menu. (That reminds me, I think I'll have a margarita.) In this town where every other radio station is either Spanish or Tejano, I cannot escape earshot of the word corazon. Trust me, in this town you are destined to hear that word somewhere. Either at a restaurant, a car repair shop, a convenience store, when the hotel cleaning people come around, or most likely, at a construction site. I am doubly cursed because when I'm in the car and not out in public where I am subjected to other people's preferences, I can change the station from the steering wheel, so I'm constantly looking for the next good song. Even though the radio is set to go only to my favorite stations, somehow corazon still hits me, one way or another, at least once a day. They sure like to sing about their hearts. I guess we gringos do too.

Stay tuned for my next post about how I almost killed our dog. I can laugh about it now.