Apparently, she was at work and made up a word while she was talking to her coworkers.  She has a really cool job working at a plant nursery, but everyone knows that she is an English major, so it caused roughly the following discussion.

CoWorker#1: That’s not a word. You can’t say that.

BGF:  Yes, I can.  I am an English major.  When you graduate with an English degree, they give you a piece of paper that says that you are allowed to make up words.

CW#1: Really?  No way.

BGF:  No, really. I have it at home.

CW#2 (in on it): Oh yeah, I have heard of that.  I was a Communications major, but I had friends that talked about it.

CW#1:  Wow!  Will you bring the piece of paper in?

BGF:  I don’t know if I even know where it is now.  But, I will look for it.

When the BGF told me about it, she recounted with some joy that they had actually fallen for it. And, while it is not completely true that English majors are ever given written permission to make up words.  Making up words is something I have enjoyed ever since I was little when my father made up the word “mumph.”

Mumphing is what you do when you have company coming over.  If you imagine the act of shuffling papers back into a nice, neat pile and apply that action to the whole house, that is mumphing.  My father created this word as a way to talk about what we needed to do before the wonderful woman who cleaned our house every two weeks came (with 4 children spread over 14 years and two working parents, it was a requirement to have help with the general cleaning).

mumphing = straightening, but not necessarily cleaning

And, this term has followed me throughout my life, particularly into my married life. It actually makes me a little giddy when the boy looks at me and says something like “We need to mumph, right?”  I love it because the boy never had a chance to meet my dad, and it makes me think they are some how connected through language.

This word is part of our lives.  And, it always makes me feel better to know that we have a defense against quick get togethers.  You know, when you are out at the bar, and everyone decides to come over.  We know that we are safe.  We can run home and mumph!    In some weird way, it tells my typically perfectionist self that we can just make it good enough. It is actually a sign of what a high regard we hold you in when we decide to stop mumphing when you are coming over.   And, to be honest, true mumphing often includes moving piles of things that really should be put away to a room at the back of the house that you can close the door to.

However, as of Sunday, our house will officially be on the market.  Looking around right now, I am still not exactly sure how that is going to be possible, but I am determined that it will happen!  We will get there.  But, it is quite clear that the time for mumphing in this house is done for a while.  And, this is a little unnerving for me.  This is the first house the boy and I bought together.  And, so much of us is evident in all the nooks and crannies.

In fact, this whole process of opening my house up to people to come in and critique my furniture and paint color choices kinda freaks me out.  Logically, I know that I just watch too much HGTV.  Yes, people that are looking at houses say nasty things about other people’s decorating choices.  That is just what happens.  But, really they are just trying to see themselves in a new space.  They aren’t focused on the pieces of my life.  In all actuality, they are trying to see past them.

But, I can’t help to hope that this process is a quick one.  I am sending all those good thoughts into the universe.  Now, we just need the Army to tell us where we are going next!

Later in the day, one of my best good friends posted something about me on her blog, and it is actually quite a funny but embarrassing story. When I told her that I didn’t think that it was a good idea to post it, she said, “Well, there are only like two people that read our blogs anyway. Who cares!” That is when I thought more about the hubby comment. How do all those really cool women who can support themselves with advertising from their blogs do it? From what I can tell they all are already leading very cool and important lives to begin with, which is exactly why they are able to support themselves with their writing, but how do they have time to make a living, live, and write about it all.

This is the same scenario I will eventually face in academia too!  I have never really considered the fact that I could support myself with my writing, but I guess that if I do get into the amazingly cool PhD program I just applied to, I had better get used to the idea. Up until this point, I had always considered my profession teaching, which of course is really what all college professors are, but the writing part becomes a requirement in most environments in higher education. So, it was quite a shock to me to realize that in order to support myself/family someday with my writing, I have to actually get someone to read it just like all those super cool blogging women my husband was referring to.

So, my goal will be to post here more frequently in hopes that more writing couldn’t hurt in this whole process of me getting used to this idea. I am also hoping to start another blog with a friend if we can get things off the ground. And, I will give anyone interested out there the link if that comes to fruition.  All of this goes well with my word for the year too.

So to all of you loyal people with me at the beginning of this adventure “your hair looks nice today!”

So, I thought that it would interesting to report a tiny amount about the tiny story that has been making us laugh so much lately. We have a friend that has a little boy who is at the funny age. Those of you with kids or around kids know what age I am talking about. They have found words, and certain words strung together get a certain reaction from the adults around them. So, they play.

The idea of children playing with language is fascinating to me as a language lover. Well, this particular little boy has found the word “tiny.” Everything is tiny. He has tiny socks and tiny shoes and tiny shorts. And, for some reason, this has struck us as more than a tiny bit funny. We can’t stop using the word tiny! The three of us literally sat laughing about it for at least 10 tiny minutes last night. I can barely contain my tiny bursts of laughter just writing this. And, since I am at work, I can only imagine the tiny stares I would receive if the tiny giggles broke through my tiny lips. See, it’s fun! Now you try!

What I find the most fascinating by this is that this two and a half year old boy has made a tiny change in the ecolect(which I will explain in another post) of my tiny little family. So really, it seems, that the tiniest changes in our environment can have a huge effect on our language. That is a tiny thing to ponder for today!