Blue-Footed Musings

Part of trying to make a NYT-worthy crossword puzzle is taming the word list that came with the computer program. A crossword puzzle, like any other creative endeavor, should be a reflection of its creator. Some people may be OK with unpleasant words in their puzzles, but not me. So I’ve been removing terms such as “rickets,” “rinderpest,” and “ringworm” from the list, and replacing them with ones such as “Ramones,” “red oak,” and “run-ons.”

It’s a simple idea, but a time-consuming process. Every time I think I’m making headway, the program puts a bunch of undesirable words into the grid just to prove me wrong. Yesterday it was “estrus” and “ovulation.” Today it was “Nazi.” Ugh.

Well, those words are gone now, and the list is finally starting to work better. Tomorrow I hope to finalize the grid that I’ve been fiddling with. Then I’ll be able to start writing the clues–the next big challenge!

• I still haven’t kicked the habit of writing context-free notes that float around for months, years even. Sometimes I do remember what they’re about, though. Recently I found one that said “Flaming purple star witch or purple louseweed,” and I remember why I wrote that down. My husband doesn’t quite share my love of wildflowers, and he couldn’t remember (or deliberately chose to forget) the name of purple loosestrife. He joked that it must be called “flaming purple star witch” or “purple louseweed.” Those are pretty good names actually, and I nominate him for the position of “Super Wizard Flower Namer.”
• Livia, after being told to eat her chickpeas and stop complaining about it, said, “I’m going to complain until the day I die. My last words will be ‘I hate chickpeas!'”
• Marshall, disgusted with his mom for watching so many Hallmark movies, complained that they’re all named the same: “Christmas Love,” “Love at Christmas,” etc. He’s not entirely wrong. What he doesn’t yet realize is that the movies themselves are all pretty much the same, so it makes sense that they all have the same name!

The subtleties of spelling and pronunciation in French can be difficult. For example, it took me a while to realize that “au-dessous” and “au-dessus” are not the same. They are in fact opposite (one means “below” and the other “above”). They look so similar that it’s easy to miss the single-letter difference. This pair of words strikes me as particularly difficult, because from the perspective of an American English speaker, the two are pronounced the same. In our language, we don’t have that nasal sound that distinguishes “dessus” from “dessous,” so to us they are both “dessoo.” Soooooo tricky.

I’m working on getting the nasal sound down, as well as the guttural R. Personally, I won’t be able to call myself fluent unless I master those sounds, though I do take consolation in the fact that most websites on the subject say, “Don’t worry if you can’t pronounce the language perfectly. It’s just part of your accent.” My old French teacher always used to say that I had “un joli accent américain” (a pretty American accent), which is, of course, better than an ugly American accent, and better than insisting on speaking English while in a French-speaking place. So, if a “pretty American accent” is the best I can ever do, I guess can live with that. But I’d still rather learn to speak French perfectly, because I’m a perfectionist, and that’s just the way it is.

It may sound silly, but I feel more like myself since I started studying French again. Maybe it’s because of that fascination I had for it as a child. It’s something that’s been with me always, and something that I worked hard on during many years of my schooling. Then I simply dropped it. Once school was over, I had no easy way to continue my studies or any strong motivation to do so. I always thought I’d return to it someday, but without an actual deadline or a reason to take it up again, I didn’t. I allowed a whole aspect of my personality to wither up and nearly die.

It’s natural, I suppose. Over the course of our lives we have to let some dreams die. We grow up, and we grow out of things. That’s all fine and necessary. I just wonder if perhaps I should have been more careful about which dreams I let go of. Maybe some of them were the wrong ones.

As a child, I loved the sound of the French language. I begged my mother to teach me simple French phrases and how to say the alphabet in French (I remember writing the alphabet down like this: ah, bay, say, day, eh, eff, zhay, . . . ). I still love the sound of the language, even as I struggle to understand it. Among my favorite words learned over the last few months are “la libellule” (dragonfly), “le hululement” (hooting), and “mordre” (to bite).

• I am sick again. It must be a holiday. (Ha-ha. Almost. Valentine’s is just around the corner.)
• I have been playing around with Crossword Compiler, a program for constructing and editing crosswords. The ultimate goal is to get a crossword published in The New York Times. But I also downloaded the WordPress plug-in and figured out how to publish a crossword here on the blog (see previous post). The blog stuff was easy. Too bad creating an NYT-worthy puzzle is so hard.

• My husband bought a ton of books for the kids. Like we don’t have enough books. There are books everywhere. The books are taking over the house. Soon, like in an episode of Hoarders, we will have to give over this house to our stuff and buy a second home for us to live in.
• Some days my body seems to actively hate me, and some days the feeling is mutual.