Les mots du jour [words of the day]

Pleonasm. Not to be confused with neoplasm. Although both are related to having too much of something. I got a call right about lunchtime from one of my co-workers, who was at a Toastmasters meeting and needed a quick chat with the walking thesaurus [that would be me]. I had never heard of a pleonasm, although it seems that I’ve committed beaucoups of them in my long and wordy life. Dictionary.com came to my rescue, and hers.

I forgot to ask her if she had to use the word in her talk.

And now for something that might seem to be a change of topic, but isn’t. Entirely.

One of Brother Sushi’s sterling qualities is his ability to tell me that I might be wrong without making me livid. An excellent quality in any friend, and all the more delightful when that friend is male. We were meandering from one parking lot to the next, on the night of our monthly dinner some months ago, in search of a restaurant without a 45-minute wait.

I’d been delayed in picking him up after I left the office because LittleBit was having a first date with a guy she’d liked for quite awhile, and I remembered what the kitchen sink had looked like when I’d left in the morning. So instead of driving straight to Brother Sushi’s house as I normally would, I came home and we speed-cleaned the kitchen and tidied the living room.

My mom had done a similar thing for me shortly after I joined the church, when the guy *I* liked called for an impromptu picnic and I had no food in the house and no car and no way to get to the store before he got there. Mom threw some sandwiches together and a couple of apples while I whipped up a batch of brownies. So in helping LittleBit, I rolled that good-karma wheel a notch or two forward.

Where was I?

Driving between one restaurant and another, I used the word “perambulate”, which I felt was a pretty good description of what we were doing: ambling about, except for the fact that we were not on foot. He said, “I don’t think that word means what you think it does.” And instead of getting my seat belt in a twist, I said something like, “OK, tell me more.” And he told me that it meant to patrol the perimeter of an area, in the sense of securing it.

I had a little time at my desk a few days later [translation: I needed to look busy for a few minutes], so I did some sleuthing at dictionary.com. Turns out that we were both right. I was not crazy for having the mental image of strolling around, with or without a perambulator [same root], and he was not wrong about the patrolling aspect.

I love being right. There are things that I love even more, such as chocolate and naps and knitting on the couch listening to a good clean podcast, but being right is pretty far up on the list. And I need to work on that. I remember something one of our church leaders said, several years ago: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be loved?”

In all honesty, I want both. And over the long haul, I think the Savior is the only one who’s managed that, and certainly not during His earthly life. So why should I expect it in mine?

I am more than halfway down the leg of Middlest’s second sock, and I have just about used up the last of the first ball of yarn. I will probably polish that off today. Possibly before work. The sock will be getting some culture tonight. We are meeting up at the Kimbell Museum for their exhibition of early Christian art, at half price, and then I am most devoutly hoping for food afterward, or at least dessert. Both of the Good Brothers will be there, so there will be excellent conversation and possibly some flirting, and I was delighted to see while reading the posts for our dinner group that another brother who interests me, has joined the group if not tonight’s excursion.

Can you hear me grinning, from where you sit? I have one minute to throw on my clothes, grab my bags, and head out the door. And leftover chicken fried steak waiting for my lunch. This is shaping up to be a very Good Friday, indeed!