undefined

nice purple-y thing I got from Cataromance for Learning Charity. I am happy. I'd be happier if I could recall how to play with the Summer Devon webpage, but we can't have everything.


Now about curmudgeon. I called my oldest friend** a curmudgeon and she flew into a huff. Not because she disagreed but that's a label for a man.

Neither of us could think of the right name for a woman. I see a curmudgeon as gruff and sarcastic and (this is probably not a true in any dictionary, but it's in my definition) intelligent. Think of the reclusive writer in that Field of Dreams movie. I can barely remember the movie (I liked the book better), but I know James Earl Jones played a curmudgeon.

Biddy? No, that's a fluffy headed old critter.
Bitch? Not necessarily an earned role. You can be a bitch from about 12 on. You can't be a curmudgeon in your twenties. You can be one on training until you're in your late fifties. Or at least 15 years older than I am at any given time.

So that's the reason. I've liked the names you all have provided, but they don't have the same uumph as curmudgeon. I'm SOL, is all. My friend'll have to put up with the word.

_____________

** Oldest in several senses. She's no spring chicken and she was the third person to meet me. Five minutes after I was born, my father dragged her to the hospital nursery. "See that baby?" My father pointed at me. "Isn't she beautiful?"

My friend looked at the squalling red frog that was me and she knew then that parenthood did something horrible to a person's brains. She never had kids.