Some days, some weeks, I have no energy and have to will myself to do even the simplest of things. Usually I spend a few hours each day working on trivia questions for my weekly Jeo-Party game night. But not this week. Between being busy, preoccupied, and lacking motivation and energy, I essentially put together all three rounds of Jeo-Party in one day, yesterday. Just like on Monday, I could have easily cancelled Jeo-Party, and relied upon the other games we have managed to find that work via zoom without any prep work. But I did it. I came up with fairly decent and entertaining trivia questions and led a delightful evening with my friends. Maybe this is progress? Maybe I am fighting against my own internal cancel culture? Even this morning, I really didn't want to sit down and write this blog, but here I am, actually doing it. Maybe this is what's like to actually fight my depression, fighting back with delight and simple life accomplishments? The temptation to sit on the couch and play video games all day is still super tempting (and tbh I will definitely be doing that most of the day), but before I give into that temptation, I am getting stuff done. I did the dishes, made my husband french toast for breakfast (and OMG the house smells so delightfully good now), and am writing this blog. Simple things, little things, but things nonetheless.
I was particularly delighted with my favorite category yesterday: "Ribald for Her Pleasure." As I mentioned previously, my husband came up with that line after I went on a dictionary rabbit hole of words and found "ribald" which means "marked by coarseness or lewdness : crude, offensive." I decided the category would be Before and Afters featuring the word "head" ... hehehe ... which can be taken to be crude and lewd, but is really just a normal word with hundreds of definitions and lots of appearances in pop culture (Talking Heads, Dead Heads, Head and Shoulders, to name a few) and combining them into before and afters was super delightful, like "Over My Head Over Heels", combining Over My Head (which I thought was just an idiom but a google search reminded me that it is a sing by The Fray) and Head Over Heels (which again I thought was just an idiom but discovered it's also a movie by Freddie Prinze Jr that apparently one my friends just loves even though it is only rated 10% on rotten tomatoes. I had never even heard of the movie, so I will be watching it soon with that friend, so it may or may not appear in a future blog depending on if I end up liking it or not 😄). I had so much fun putting that category together, and I delight in the delight I was able to share with my friends.
Another category I loved putting together was "Homophonies" (which my friends now pronounce as huh-MOFF-fuh-nees or more hilariously HO-MOP-HONEYS) inspired by the NPR radio show, Says You. I have found dozens of homophones in sets of 3, and basically all I do is copy and paste their definitions from the OED and have my friends guess. My favorite definition of the evening was: "Equivalent to the product of two and four; one more than seven, or two less than ten" which is the actual definition of "eight". It's a give away, I know, but paired with ait and ate, it was tricky. (Ait is a small island, btw).
And perhaps the most delightful moment was when my husband and I were going through the trivia and editing the game, and discovered that because of my midwestern accent, one of the sets of 3 homophones are definitely not homophones when my husband says them, but definitely ARE homophones when I say them. The words? Parish, pear-ish, and perish. (Also, tbh, pear-ish is not an actual word. That's what makes it super tricky.) It's the same problem I have with the names Aaron and Erin. My A's and E's sound exactly the same, but when my husband, or especially his mom, says them, they do sound completely different. Accents are fascinating. And during Jeo-Party, one friend recommended a YouTube video series about accents that I am very much looking forward to watching (and if they are as delightful as I imagine they will be, I am sure they will appear in a future blog).
With delight,
♥Jamie
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