pet peeves – My World With Words

Oh, blessings and misery. I confess, I like cooler weather. I get weary of downright cold weather, but still, I’ll take a stretch of freezing cold over an extended period of triple-digit highs almost anytime. So here it is, a week into November, and we’re still reaching the low 70s every single day.

clouds-1117584_640 — Sunny is okay, but make it sunny and cold.

I want my sweater weather! I like the feel and look of downy soft turtlenecks. I feel cozy and comforted. I like wearing ankle boots with my jeans. For whatever reason, I believe I’m stronger, more in control, with them. And all in all, what I like better, looks better.

I don’t want a sunny Thanksgiving or a balmy Christmas day. I want a nip in the air, days when I can’t forget my jacket, cold air that makes cheeks and even my nose a little red.

How we each feel about weather is a funny thing. I have friends who would never move away from the Southwest, despite the extremes down there. Others I know live in Minnesota (my home state) and while they grumble about the snow and deep freeze, they wouldn’t think of locating elsewhere. I’m in a state where we have four seasons, something I’m grateful for, although I wouldn’t mind a slightly longer fall and winter. These past couple of years those seasons have been annoyingly short.

I suppose our preferences are due in part to the priorities in our lives. If you love the outdoors, you may prefer the heat. If your favorite activities include reading, needlework or playing chess, the excuse to stay inside because of dropping temperatures may be welcome.

kitten-1102082_1280 — Awwww, let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!

Whether you find it more challenging to walk your dog in the heat, with mosquitoes dive-bombing and sweat dripping down your brow, or in the snow, with your toes going numb and the sniffles that won’t go away, is part personality, part upbringing and likely part physiology. I’m betting some of us are just better suited for the cold. Maybe it’s an extra layer of fat. I don’t pretend to know.

Regardless of the reason for my preferences or the lingering warm weather, I’m begging for a little frost overnight and ongoing temps below 60 degrees. This perpetual heat is irksome.

Photos courtesy of Pixabay

Irksome

Well, if not smart, curiously informed. Trivia is fun, if for no other reason than you feel superior to the rest of us mere mortals. It also can create pet peeves, so beware. Here are a few fun facts to get you through the week:

♦Smokey Bear fights forest fires. Not Smokey the Bear. Or Smokey da Bear.

♦A “jiffy” is 1/100 of a second. See you in a jiffy!

♦When the competition is between two people, the proper expression is “may the better man (woman) win.” When it’s between more than two people, you should say, “may the best man (woman) win.”

♦This is not a grammar rule, so teachers don’t like to hear it, but my favorite way to know when to use “it’s” versus “its” is this: “it’s” is the same as “it is.” Think of the apostrophe as replacing the “i.”

♦Back in the 70s we had “Jive Talking.” That’s not the same as when something doesn’t jibe with you. Yep, it’s “jibe,” not “jive,” for the latter expression.

♦And this is as political as I’ll get…”egghead,” a term with much the same meaning as “geek” or “nerd,” was used by Republican VP candidate Richard Nixon in the 1952 presidential campaign to pejoratively describe Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. I’ll leave it to you to compare and contrast political campaigns then and now, and I’m not doing it on this blog. But this could start some conversations for you.