I'm slightly bizarre.

If I can't immediately think of the word I want to use, I will link other words together to get my point across.

For example: I wanted to say VCR - couldn't locate those initials in my brain so instead I said sideways movie toaster. I wanted to tell my husband that his snoring woke me up but when I couldn't locate snoring I told him he was sleep growling all night.

This same subject came up another time and again snoring was hiding, so I told him he had been blowing bugles through his nose.

Apparently my brain allows me to use these crazy phrases only once.

Others I've said are:

Fake air maker - Air-conditioner
Car Couch -Back seat of the car
Teleputer - computer
Tall cold shoes - Boots
Plastic Torch - Bic lighter

For someone who loves words as much as I do, it amazes me that I often have trouble locating the word I want to say when I'm speaking. But this minor disablity or tic has an upside. I am a whiz at crossword puzzles. I adore the New York Times Sunday puzzle and am pretty darn fast at finishing it, a talent I've acquired, perhaps, to make up for my can't-think-of-the-word syndrome.


I've heard about long distance runners getting in a zone and almost losing sense of time and space as their feet move, seemingly, without their will.

I get in a crossword puzzle solving zone. I'll look at the puzzle and see no answers and then I'm off and running. Answers just flow out of my pencil as if someone else is writing them down.
It is quite a high when it happens.

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I love Sunday mornings.

Only freshly ground coffee on this day. We pull out the electic juicer and the hand crank ice crusher for goblets of frosty fresh orange juice. Bird feeder filled with seed, I wait for my visitors: juncos and house sparrows, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers, black capped chicadees and tufted tit mice.

Morning music like Elgar's violin concerto and a lit candle at the table...heaven.

Sunday is not an egg day.

So we have croissants or bagels, cherry pastries or big fat cinnamon doughnuts. Cloth napkins and my favorite blue willow cup with the big handle that's easy to pick up.

I'm an Owl married to a Lark so often my husband has to wait for the bakery to open the doors so he can buy our treats - it's not unusual to have a doughnut so fresh it is still warm when he walks through the door.

But, it is not the croissant or bagel or doughnut that I am most happy to see him bring home; it is the weighty Times, still smelling of ink or warm paper or whatever it smells like, that is my greatest joy.

The cover of the magazine section is so shiny it collects fingerprints. The photography inside usually spectacular! And best of all it contains my beloved crossword puzzle.

Some women may long for Jimmy Choo shoes, or Coach bags, but give me my Times crossword puzzle and I'm happy. I adjust the lead in my mechanical pencil, and away I go filling in blanks as fast as I can.

Sometimes I think the reason I can solve the Sunday puzzle relatively quickly is because of all the words I still have just sitting on the tip on my tongue.