Pretending to Farm

“Tomorrow is another day.”

Yesterday, my day began with an endlessly screaming toddler and two dentist appointments for the teenaged wonder twins. This was our first visit to this particular dentist (David the Husband and Jessica had gone before us) and the waiting room was plush. No hard stackable seating lined the walls, begging for an impromptu game of musical chairs. Instead, we were greeted by an overstuffed sofa and cushy arm chairs, all full of numerous toss pillows beguiling a 2 ½ year old toddler with an arm like Randy Johnson to fulfill their moniker. Within minutes of being there, the Zoom teeth whitening display was broken and the waiting room looked like, well like my house. (I had to fill out paperwork and stupidly entrusted his care to the not-so-wonder-after-all twins.)

There were good things that resulted from this omnipresent chaos that is my life. David the Teenager has no cavities (Robert has one broken tooth only needing a filling to repair) and SR Jessica was being pampered at the Carefree Spa with a 45 minute sugar and spice scrub followed by an hour long massage, our birthday gift to her. The knowledge that she was being thus Tasha-ed (Backyardigans reference, you have to watch it) made my experience bearable.

Other than a short nap, Pint continued his demon mood all day, putting a damper on any festive birthday plans and forcing Jessica to escape the madness which is our lives in an effort to enjoy the rest of her day. I hope she succeeded, poor thing. She seemed let down and who could blame her. 18 is a huge milestone with expectations galore, many of which were not met. What’s a trying-desperately-to-keep-her-little-girl-with-her-for-the-summer mom to do? Nothing apparently as she heads back to San Diego today. Sob and sigh.

I did receive an email from Grammar Girl, a highlight of my day, that and the cat pin I am getting from Sara at Barking Biscuit but that’s another post. I probably should have listed Grammar Girl’s podcast in my favorites but, as I said, I was limiting myself to three. She and Mr. Manners (I listen to both) each run a podcast out of the QD Now network; and during each show, she answers grammar questions and offers examples of wrong and right ways to state things in a grammatically correct manner.

I had written her with an ongoing puzzle of mine, whether or not it is correct to end a sentence with a preposition. To avoid doing so, I find myself constructing stilted sentences in my writing and resenting the dismal results.

Below is her reply, no more for which-es to avoid the dreaded dangling preposition. I heart Grammar Girl.

Hi Lauren,

Here's a sentence that shouldn't end with a preposition:

Where is Claire at?

Here's a sentence that is fine with a preposition at the end:

What did I step on?

The important thing is that prepositions need objects. The quick and dirty tip is if you can leave the preposition off the end of the sentence without changing the meaning, then you should leave it off.

Thanks for listening!

Mignon

Now if I can only figure out the proper placement of a period when using parentheses.

As GG says, that’s all for now. And as Scarlett O’Hara says, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Thanks for reading, my friends.

This One's for Karen

First a quick anatomy lesson gleaned from googling for approximately five minutes (my reasoning behind this will become clear at post’s end):

The human brain is divided into four main lobes, the frontal, parietal, occipital, and, finally, the temporal lobe, the lobe that I would like to concentrate upon today. According to current scientific research, the temporal lobe is responsible for emotional responses, hearing, speech, and memory. It is very important in processing the way we understand language and is therefore responsible for a big part of our ability or lack thereof to spell words.

Now I have always been a stickler when it comes to spelling words correctly. I have also held the right-or-wrong belief that a person is born with the ability to naturally spell words the right way or the misfortune to be eliminated in the bee’s first round. (Although I fall into the former category, I am still bitter over my second grade spelling bee final round loss. The word was handkerchief; I left out the “d.” I blame everyone who spoke that word to me before that date and have pronounced it differently and properly ever since.)

In today’s age of Microsoft Word and the spell-check which accompanies it, I find it downright lazy, asinine, ridiculous, and puzzling how any typed document can contain misspelled words. That is, with the exception of the transposed from/form, the bane of my husband’s document writing existence. I assume “professional” sign makers, in the course of a day’s work, utilize some similar widget which performs the spell-check function and, therefore, should have no excuse for misspelling signage words. Yet, I come across them constantly, almost every time I venture away from the farm and even in teachers’ announcements that have been sent home with my children. It never ceases to amaze/disgust me.

Last week, I discovered the king of misspelled professional signs. The level of sheer bemusement I received from the irony this square on sticks contains astonishes me to no end. I realize this exposes me as the incredible geek that I am but it was just too good to keep to myself.

All Hail the King::

Has Anyone Seen My Modifier?

I have a recurring nightmare.  In it, I have made ridiculously flagrant grammatical errors in my writing and all you people are laughing at me behind my back.  It could happen.  Maybe it already has.  In fact just the other day, when writing “The Buck Twenty Five Woman,” I said “did you hear about the woman who awoke one morning to find someone had cleaned her house and then called the police?”  Now, I noticed my mistake that evening.  I honestly cannot believe it took me as long as it did, must have been something I drank.  In the manner written, the same lady who cleaned the house called the police.  In English 101, this is called a misplaced modifier.   Next thing you know, I will be dangling participles and splitting infinitives.  I have failed you all.

Have you read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss?  An excerpt:

A panda walks into a café.  He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit.  The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door.  “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda.  Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to

China

.  Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Obviously, punctuation matters greatly.  I cannot adequately express my admiration for Lynne Truss.  As someone who has spent too many hours of my life finding spelling and grammatical errors on road signs, managerial postings, and unfortunately even teachers’ notes, I feel a connection with this fellow stickler.  Today, I vow, instead of wallowing in my shame, and as penance, to pull out my tattered edition of Strunk and White’s, The Elements of Style and to put all future modifiers in their proper place.  It’s the least I can do; plus I need some sleep.