Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming!

So the big turkey feast is behind us. The pilgrims and the pumpkins have gone back into their hiding place in the attic or garage and a new season of holiday mayhem, I mean, magic, is upon us.

So much to do! So much to see! So little time! Even less money! Black Friday! Cyber Monday! Shopping and wrapping and snacking, oh my!

That’s right my friends, it’s December, that frenzied, fantastical time of the year known as Christmas! There’s so much to love about Christmas. Who doesn’t love the corny classic movies, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and The Charlie Brown Christmas.? Or the tear-jerkers that still manage to make us laugh, Miracle on 34^th Street and my personal favorite, It’s A Wonderful Life!

It’s a time for egg nog, cranberries, and pumpkin flavored everything. It’s the only time of the year mistletoe is a welcome site and real trees are allowed into the house without the intent of using them in the fireplace. It’s time for traditions, silly hats, ugly sweaters and pajamas that are never to be worn any other time of the year. What’s not to love about Christmas?

My favorite part of the Christmas process, and it is a process that starts even before Halloween these days, is selecting just the right tree and then, putting all of my precious ornaments on it. Selecting the tree is always a team effort at my house. I plough through the glistening snow-covered forest pointing and analyzing while my husband trails along behind with the saw. What? I can’t properly analyze with a saw in my hand! Then I hold the perfect specimen while my husband hunkers down on the wet frozen ground to hack the thing off. When victory is ours, he hauls the tree to the truck while I carry the saw and cheerfully point out any potential pitfalls he might encounter along the way.

Once we get the awesome evergreen home, I hold the door while my husband finagles the twelve foot monster across the railing, around the porch swing and through the opening. You see, still a team effort. Now comes the fun part, he tilts and twists and spins the behemoth conifer whilst I stand back and say, “a little to the left,” “a little to the right.” This still requires a team effort because one person cannot do both things at the same time. Try it.

Once we are victorious with stabilizing the tree, the decorating begins. My husband insists on doing the lights and I happily oblige. After all, someone has to taste the wine to make sure it’s the appropriate vintage for the decorating ceremony. After the lights are aglow, I begin the painstaking process of choosing which spot on the tree is the perfect spot for each individual ornament. Heads up, this process can take hours so much wine is needed. It is also the only time my husband allows Christmas music to be played while he is home. (Oh my gosh, I’ve just realized that I may have married Scrooge.)

But, I digress. The actual point of this post is that I love Christmas and all of the craziness that goes along with it. I am so blessed to live in a country where I can freely enjoy such traditions and that I have a wonderfully accommodating husband who allows me to indulge in my crazy, anal-retentive holiday weirdness. For me, it’s not necessarily about what’s under the tree, but the whole process of finding the right tree and watching it sparkle every night for about thirty days. It’s an annual tradition that shall always be near and dear to my heart.

Tell me what makes Christmas special in your house.

Word of the day: Balisage

Fun fact about me: When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a truck driver when I grew up.

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The Wacky World of Words

Hello and welcome to my new adventures in blogging!

So blogging – what is that really? It’s words. And, I love words! I’m a writer and a scrabble player and a lover of cross word puzzles. Words like widget, trapezoid and extrapolate are fun. But others, like phlegm, not so much. And let’s face it, blog isn’t very attractive either.

And don’t you just hate it when you can’t quite find the right word? You can find something close, but not quite right. Sometimes I think there’s entirely too many words to choose from. But as exciting and frustrating as words are, I’m here to tell you to exercise extreme caution when using words. Words will mess you up my friends.

Some words may look right, but aren’t. Let me tell you, that can cause some really embarrassing situations. For instance, placing a new plaque on the auditorium wall is not the same as placing a new plague on the same building. They both look right, but while plaques are nice and relatively harmless, no one really wants a new plague hanging around. Just one tiny little letter changes everything.

And then there’s times when you use the correct letters, but get them in the wrong order. This too can lead to undue embarrassment. Case in point, I once sent a very professional business letter to a client asking her to come in and sing her Last Will and Testament. Now, granted, the singing of the Will might have been wonderously entertaining, but, I’m told it provides no authenticity to the document whatsoever. Apparently, it’s the actual signing of the document that makes it enforceable. Silly mistake, but somewhat awkward for me.

And then there’s those words that will trip you up because they have more than one meaning or they have similar sounds. They might sound right, but in reality, improper useage  changes the entire meaning of a sentence. A misconception is not the same as a preconception but when spoken out loud, they sound the same – sort of. And someone who sees words in reverse order has dyslexia not dyspepsia. Two very different things, and yet they kind of sound the same. Be careful.

And quite the opposite is also true. Some words are actually very much correct, but they just sound wrong. For instance if I were to ask you to remove your small lizard from the hole in my oak wine barrel, that sounds correct. But this is also correct: keep your little skink away from my bunghole. And yet that just sounds – well wrong somehow.

So, as you go forth in the world of poems and prose, business letters and weekly progress reports, use caution and choose carefully, and please remember to proof read before you hit that wonderful enter button, least you too fall victim to the wacky world of words.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you on a regular basis. Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.com and visit my website www.jansenschmidt.com.

So tell me, what improper word usage has caused you embarrassment? Don’t be bashful, it’s good to get these things off your chest once in a while.

Word of the day: Alacrity (Go look it up, but not right now. Post your comment first, then go.)

Fun fact about me: I have an extra vertebrae in my spine. (Unfortunately this does not give me superpowers, it just make me more susceptible to back problems.)

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