Nothing compelling came to mind when I thought about letter T, so let's have a List Post ofSome T Things
1. Tomorrow
2. Tables
3. Towels
4. Tardy
5. T Adjectives
Here is the Chat Part:
1. Tomorrow. I'm more than a little bit annoyed that, when I hear this word, instead of thinking of the moody and fatalistic speech by Macbeth, I instead hear in my head the plucky and annoyingly obvious sentiment of Broadway Annie. Consider the absurd difference:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-VS.-
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow
You're only a day away!
Personal Mission: Memorize again the Macbeth speech and recite it daily. I know the cats will love it.
2. Tables. How I wish I could eliminate coffee tables (aka Repositories Of Junk) from my life and the lives of others. They are also Obstacles To Efficient Vacuuming. Actually, it is astonishing how many Tables I have that I truly don't use. My dining room table is decorative and sentimental only. It belonged to my grandmother, and it holds a collection of antique books, empty bottles of favourite wines, and candlesticks. I have also a decorative book stand Table that looks as if it is made from books; a completely useless breakfront console Table under our fake Vermeer that holds leather-bound books and knickknacks; and two more small occasional Tables in the dining room that hold, yes, more beautiful old books and other Preciouses. We have a lovely custom kitchen table, but it is rarely used since Rick and I eat simple dinners together in the living room. I would also eliminate, out in the wild, Picnic Tables, which are not only ugly, but also ridiculously inefficient and stupid. And uncomfortable. And dangerous. And encourage outdoor eating, and we all know how I feel about that. What the hell kind of person attaches the chair to the Table? On both sides? With no backrest? And makes them out of wood and leaves them outdoors so that they purposefully develop splinters? Honestly, they are the worst. Want to eat on a teeter-totter? Picnic Tables are for you.
Personal Mission: Streamline my Table Situation. Holy crap. I sound like a Table Hoarder.
3. Towels. Pretty soon, Towels are going to be heirloom items like art and silver settings and fine china. This is not only because Towels are ridiculously expensive, but because they are also so stupidly thick and plush that they will be around for generations. It is as if you are using someone's velvet portieres or Oriental rug with which to dry off. And heaven help you if you wrap one around your hair and head, turban-style, after washing your hair. The massive, crushing weight will either unbalance you or give you a migraine. I don't require much from a Towel: dry me with soft efficiency and, if necessary, stay wrapped around me--briefly--if need be whilst I brush my teeth. I still have one of my bath Towels from college (1979-1981) that I use for my hair.
Personal Mission: Have a Golden Anniversary Party for my Hair Towel. I will invite the matching Hand Towel, which resides with Jared and Sam.
4. Tardy. I have not used this adjective meaning "late" once since retiring from teaching. It is one of those Teacher-Specific Terms that have fallen from my lexicon. I do not miss it. It is retired, too, along with Semester, Grades, Attendance, Extra Credit and a few others.
Personal Mission: Never resurrect these terms.
5. T Adjectives. How much do we love The Interwebs? I came across an entire page of Adjectives Starting With T, and here are some wonderful ones I especially like:
tabby
tacit
talky
tarry
tertiary
tiresome
tawdry
temerarious
tenebrous
terse
thorny
tumescent
turgid
tedious
Personal Mission: Use more varied adjectives. I am getting lazy.
Can't wait to hear your Thoughts on any or all of these T's. Or if I've inspired you to go on your own Personal Missions. Your Turn To Chat now, in Comments.
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I admire your desire to relearn Macbeth's speech. My mother used to quote parts of it, often when blowing out the candles on the dinner table: "Out, out, brief candle!"
ReplyDeleteNot a fan of coffee tables, either. We have one in our living room, but that's enough. Side tables make more sense to me.
Towels are so thick that some of them when folded in half will not fit on the towel rack in our guest bathroom. It annoys me to no end. I like to layer them on the towel rack, so that things look swanky. But cannot do that with today's gigantic towels.
Tardy is not a word in my vocabulary, but I can see how + why it's fallen out of favor with you.
I wish you well with your goal of adding more adjectives into your life. 'Tis admirable.
Ally Bean--Good for your mother! Now I feel as if I'm not quoting enough Shakespeare in my day-to-day life. Yet another Personal Mission for me.
DeleteI'm so glad that I'm not the only one with the Towel Situation. Honestly, I feel like I'm using a bath mat when I use some of the towels lately.
Kudos on the word Swanky. I get a huge kick out of it when it's used well, and you nailed it. Nice!
I think people fall into the coffee table trap because they think it will be handy to put food/drinks whilst consuming snacks and such.
ReplyDeleteWe have two leather ottoman-type things from Pottery Barn that can be placed together to make a longer "table." But, they are 1)portable and 2)have storage inside so we have turned them into side tables for our couches. Thus, the area in between the couch and television is completely open! But it also makes sense because of the way our front door is, as well. We don't have much of an entryway, so easier to walk into the house.
As for towels, I still have some from my childhood that are going strong. Sort of horrid 70's colors, but they work! They are nowhere as thick as the new ones, though. And yes, I use them for my hair!
Nance, you need to come to California and eat outside! It is lovely! We have relaxing patios with lights and beautiful old trees, and bugs are really at a minimum.
I also loathe picnic tables, they are awkward to get in and out of unless you are sitting on the end. There is a hipster sandwich place not too far from here that is sort of expensive (but good) but if you have a larger party, you have no choice but to sit on picnic benches. Boo! I am paying too much money to sit on a picnic bench, you bastards! Tacky!
Gina--It's so true; I also think it's a Tradition Thing as well. I am constantly snarking at Sam and Jared about using ours for a footstool when they are here. Ours is currently full of mail detritus because Rick opens all of it and just leaves it there.
DeleteOur front door opens right smack into our living room. We have a teensy little Cape Cod-esque bungalow, and there is no entryway, period. Once you're in, you're part of things. Boom! Welcome to the Dept. There's my fake Vermeer with the Useless Table! To your left is all the Comfy Furniture.
I buy cheapo towels at...MY GROCERY STORE AND EMPORIUM. They are usually closeout discontinued merch from Target or other places like that. And they are not so plushy. Your childhood towels are invited to my college towels' Golden Anniversary Party. Definitely.
Gina, you are a Wonderful Interweb Friend, but I will not eat outdoors with you. NEO, believe it or not, has a huge Patio Culture. HUGE. The moment the first thaw happens in April, tons of restaurants open their patios. They are mostly beautiful and charming. I HEAR. I will have drinks and nibblies outdoors on my own porch and patio both here and at the lake, and I am happy to do so with you in Cali. But I will pass on a full meal. Always. Our forefathers and foremothers worked hard at Civilization in order to put roofs over our heads. I will respect that, honor that, and proudly eat, sleep, and live indoors. AMERICA! ;-)
Aren't picnic tables the worst things ever? No one can get in or out of them with any semblance of grace or dignity. Tacky is the perfect word for any Eating Establishment which has the nerve to serve upscale food or charge upscale prices and then expect its patrons to sit at roadside rest stop furniture. Hideous.
A most amusing and, um, thought-provoking post. First, towels. The YD, whose (oh help) 49th birthday was yesterday asked for towels for her gift. I went to a large emporium and bought enough large towels (she likes bath sheets) to fill two of the biggest gift bags I have ever found. Fluff plus, and mamoth sizes. JG hates these things and I have to scout around and find him small ones. Not easy. But the YD assures me I will now have lots of dog towels as all her old ones are rags. She LIKES the big ones.
ReplyDeleteTables. Side tables are actually useful. I have one big one in the living room because I need space to store all the games and big books. I have it on castors so that I can roll it out of the way. And MY husband leaves all the mail on the kitchen counter.
Temerarious is now added to my learning list. I also love tumultuous and have a soft spot for T verbs such as titillate. My spell checker has underlined both of these. Wha...? Ah, two 'l's. Can't figure why it is whining about the first one.
I have lots of bits of Shakespeare rattling round in my otherwise unfurnished brain. Quote them, too. Drives the grandkid nuts.
Mary G--Thank you! I used to like the bath sheets, too, but not anymore. They are just too big and take forever to dry. Rick and I hang our towels and use them more than once like Good Environmentally Conscious Citizens. Thanks for the reminder about Dog Towels. I need to ask Sam and Jared if they need any for Zydrunas. We have a few they can take. (Someday, it may again rain in NEO.)
DeleteRick knows better than to leave stuff on MY kitchen counters where it might interfere with food preparations. Priorities, you know.
My spell checker underlines/undermines me all the time. Since I create new compound words with great frequency, I ignore it much of the time. It shows a remarkable lack of depth in its SAT-level vocabulary, however; it does underline many advanced words that I know are correct.
Continue entertaining the grandchild with your random, lofty quotations. She needs to hear The Language, at the very least. I worry with regularity that Shakespeare will disappear from the classrooms soon, and with Americans legitimizing morons like DTrump and others, people like you and me need to be Oases Of True Smartiness in a Desert Of Ignorance.
one big coffee table. Drat.
ReplyDeleteMary G--Sigh. Ditto.
DeleteMy father quoted Shakespeare often. “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him well, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest.” This spoken whilst examining a couple of spare rib bones before tossing them into the garbage. (My father was a man of infinite jest.) My mother was less well-versed, though I seem to remember her once saying “Out, damn’d spot” during a spate of hand-washing stains out of dirty clothes. As for me... the line that most often comes to mind would be “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Now why would that be? lol.
ReplyDeleteTables: Got a few. I need the coffee in front of the sofa. It’s where I toss papers as I grade them. And stack them into piles.
Towels: Yes! Give me a thin towel any day. And the head-wrapping towel for after you wash your hair: must be thin and must be *the right size*.
Tardy: Used that one a lot when I taught high school. Still sadly in my vocabulary.
T adjectives: I like the word “twee.” Picked it up from my British flatmates. I was trying to think of some more T adjectives but decided to have some haiku fun instead:
THE “T” PERSON
A tiresome twit
Whose tactlesss, tawdry tantrums
Bode tenebrous times
O.K. I am now all “teed” out.
Ortizzle--Shakespeare comes out frequently, and many times the speakers don't even know that they are quoting him. It's surprising how many common phrases have their origin in his Works. I remember teaching Julius Caesar for years and years, and my sophomores would be astonished at the number of lines they recognized.
DeleteBack in my Paper Grading Days (or Daze), I used to toss and stack on the couch. The coffee table was already full of magazines, coasters, mail, remotes, etc. Still is. Sigh.
Twee--Never have used that. I guess I use "precious" instead.
Thank you for the haiku. I need to get back to a Haiku Post soon. (It cannot be the end of The T person soon enough. Why is America so dreadfully stupid?)
fe de erratas: the coffee *TABLE*.... (although I also need the coffee there as well. and sometimes the wine.) (and, unfortunately, some of the papers *do* get tossed into the coffee.)
ReplyDeleteOrtizzle--I assumed you were just using the adjective since you had already specified the heading TABLES. I didn't see it as an error. Bless your heart; it is only the Comments section. I am not taking off points. XXOO
DeleteThis is embarrassing, but I just saw another blatant error: the first line of my haiku has 4 syllables, not 5, according to the dictionary syllable division for the word "tiresome." I counted it as 3 syllables. Oh, well. That is likely because I was trying to avoid the Texas pronunciation of tiresome: TAR-sum. :-)
ReplyDeleteWell, where I'm from (NC), it IS three syllables: Tie-er-some :)
DeleteOrtizzle and Bug--As a Creative Writing II teacher (the Poetry Course), I would have knocked a point off for that first line. Ortizzle is correct: dialectical pronunciation of the word (which is also tie-er-sum in NEO) is immaterial. My students and I had Battles Royale about this all the time, especially with regard to the word FIRE. It is ONE SYLLABLE. They, with their NEO or West Virginian accented speech, insisted it was TWO--fie-yer. Sigh.
DeleteI simply told them that The Mighty Dictionary has the Final And Official Word at all times. Holy crap, did those things get a workout, especially during Sonnet week. And the velocity of their sighs kept the room well-ventilated.
Haha. So my haiku will now have to be “Such a tiresome twit...”. Or, you can deduct the point from the Leaderboard: 99, lol!
DeleteI am very sensitive to syllable division because it is critical in Spanish for determining if a word requires an accent mark, and also for where it should be placed, depending on hiatos, diptongos, etc. Not forgetting poetry, which is a total nightmare when you get into syllable counting and sinalefa (which completely destroys the strong/weak vowel argument).
My heritage speaker students are the worst, and most of them refuse to study and learn the rules for accent marks so they can write correctly; they just sprinkle accent marks around wherever they think they might look nice. *sigh* I refuse to give up, however.
I have two actual Hair Towels. Really, they're head wraps, with buttons so I can fasten them onto my head. The first time I saw one I was rapturous because I was SO tired of towels falling off of my head.
ReplyDeleteOur living room is too small to have a table in front of the couch, but I don't know what we'd do without the little table between our two recliners. In fact, I'd like it to be a bit larger. The only extraneous table we have is an old manicure table from my grandmother's beauty shop. It's kind of in the way in the bedroom, but I can't bear to part with it. Yet.
Bug--But how do you then perform The Twist, so as to get the water out of your hair? I have long hair and need to be able to twist it into the towel. And those buttons might irritate the hell out of me up there over my head. But you do you. I am so glad you love your Buttony Headwrap.
DeleteI hear you on the Sentimental thing. That makes it hard to part with stuff. Rick is a Sentimental Stuff Hoarder, and so are the boys, to a certain extent. I am less so. But there are some things, like my grandma's bigass dining room table and chairs, that I can't let go of. Yet.
Can you use it in an outdoor/garage area as a potting table? Or is it too precious for that, even?
**yikes. not using "precious" in any sarcastic or snarky way.**
DeleteI've been thinking about putting that table out on the patio because I often wish I had a table by the back door, but it's Pinky's table for when she's in the house for the winter. What to do, what to do... I'm putting a picture of it on my blog so you can see it.
DeleteI was also going to do a hair towel photo shoot, but I haven't gotten around to that. Back when my hair was longer I wasn't able to do the twist quite as well as with a regular towel - but I thought the trade-off of the towel actually staying ON MY HEAD was worth it. I could never get our big bath towels to stay put.
Ortizzle, three syllables in eastern Ontario too. And I also messed up coffee table in my comment by omitting 'coffee'.
ReplyDeleteBug, I have one of those head wraps and adore it.
Nance, I also admit to quoting from the King James Bible. That weirds the whole family out. (Shut up, spellchecker. Yes, I know weird is not a verb.)
Oh well.
Mary G--Thank goodness we have spellchecker to argue with now and again. It keeps us feisty.
DeleteIf I have ever quoted from the KJB, I would not have known it. We recovering Roman Catholics are not a Bible-based religion. Anything Bibley that I say is probably a scrap from teaching about the Puritans or something from the early Brit literature. Or perhaps a piece of Benjamin Franklin's "wisdom". He stole tons of stuff from the Bible, among other sources, and passed it off as his own. ;-)
And, honestly, I don't eyeball everyone's Comments for correctness. I'm just here for the Chatting, which is always lovely.
We have a nice new table in our backyard, and I kind of like it for breakfast, tea, and the paper, though more in concept than in actually remembering to go outside and enjoy it. It's hot here now, and the cool morning air is refreshing. But I can get a similar experience by opening the windows and letting the cool air inside. If only I could creep with the downstairs windows open, but I cannot...too afraid of burglars/murderers/bad guys. And if you read 'In Cold Blood", you'll know that where you live doesn't really factor in to that fear.
ReplyDeleteI adore Shakespeare, though I don't quote much other than "Beware the Ides of March", or "ALL ARE PUNISHED!" Well, maybe when I'm cooking, I might pull out, "Oh Happy Dagger"...
*sleep* with the windows open...
DeleteJ@jj--We've had a very unseasonably hot summer also. Annoying, since I do not like to have the air conditioning running nonstop. I prefer having windows open and fresh (free!) air. For the longest time, years ago, I used to take my morning paper and coffee out on the deck in the summer. I forget why that stopped. Now, my "paper" is entirely the e-edition, so I read it on my laptop, and certainly the cats would pester me unendingly.
DeleteOoooh, I also love "All are punish-ed", and I am glad you reminded me of it. Back it goes into the rotation.