Words that suck.

Once a month, I have the honor (privilege, utmost joy, anticipatory glee) of four hours of art with five fabulous women.  Our evenings have been dubbed Luna Night, as we hold our summits on or around the full moon.  It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite things in the universe.

We are a diverse group who, without even trying, simply connected.  It's a rare subject that is taboo with the Luna Crew.  It's a given that I will drive home with cheeks that hurt from laughing and a brain full of ideas to pound out on the keyboard.

That's when I thank the stars for Evernote, a snappy little app that allows me to temporarily dump my thoughts into a vault, thus reducing the number of expletives that flow from my mouth when I have forgotten yet another good idea.  On the way home from Luna Night, I babble away into my talk to text and marvel as my words are magically transcribed onto a cyber notebook for lock down until I am ready to write.  Evernote: my little helper, and highly recommended for the "over 40 everyone has sucked my brain cells dry" set.

I'm sure there are women out there whose Evernote is loaded with reminders such as: "Call Bitsy from the Junior League about the Spring Fling" or "Look for Swan's Down flour to make that cake Another Pinner says is genius".  My Evernote, however is streamlined into: write this, hear this, see this, and do this.  I have no patience for cupcakes and The Lunas are my own personal Junior League and in all honesty lately the "to-do" that is peck-peck-pecking at my brain is "go write something".  So, in honor of Evernote and the downward spiral of the Luna's last conversation; let's visit: Words I Despise. 

Have you ever noticed that you have an aversion to certain words?  As the Luna Crew huddled around Moe's fireplace at our last meeting, someone mentioned the word Hubby, then laughed as I cringed.  "What's wrong with Hubby?" I was asked.  And as I stared blankly into the fire, I realized I couldn't even come up with a rational reason.  I just plain hate the word. 

I am pretty sure Facebook sealed the deal for me.  Posts like "Ooooh, love my Hubby, he just ran a bubble bath for baby Everdeenkatniss.  How precious is that?" make me want to barf in technicolor.  People think they're jacking it to hipster level by saying "The Hubs", but that term makes the bile rise for me too.  The only person on Earth I allow to say "Hubby" around me is Nana, and that is only because she has dementia and I love her and she can say whatever she wants.  Please, everyone except Nana, can we just say husband?

Moist. Do I even have to explain? What a vile word.  Anything that can describe a cake and your underpants at the same time is wrong on every level.  The End. Which leads me to:

Panties. Ick ick ick.  I am 100% certain a man invented the word panties.  I am 95% sure he was a pedophile.  When a 60 something year old woman asked me to "help her off with her panties so she could make a potty" I practically peed my own scrubs.  Underpants.  So. Much. Better.  Utilitarian. Practical.  Wear them or not, your call, just don't say panties to me if we are going to take them off and...

Make Love. What is wrong with me?  Isn't that supposed to be a beautiful thing? Yet when I hear the term "make love" all I can think of is being 8 years old and drawing fifty sloppy hearts over a picture of my parents for Valentine's Day.  I titled it:  Make Lots of Love on Valentine's Day.  I could not for the life of me understand why it disappeared from the refrigerator door, never to be seen again.  Scarred for life, I prefer the down and dirty term that starts with F. 

And if I am going to get down and dirty, I refuse to do it with my "soul mate".  Now there's a term coined by a desperate woman if I ever heard one.  In the immortal words of Carrie Bradshaw "I don't know if I even believe in soul mates".  Husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, lover - all encompassing, solid words.  No soul mates allowed in bed taking off my panties and making love to me, please.

Hey!  Let's hit up the Pinterest Pinheads for my next one, which is actually a two-fer. "Upcycle" and "Repurposed".  The red wiggly line underneath these words as I edit is shivering in word-correct fervor, desperate to remind me that THESE ARE NOT REAL WORDS! And I could not agree more.  Throw those two in the compost bin along with the always inane "Mani-Pedi" with your "Bestie".  All I visualize there is a couple washed up giddy cheerleaders annoying the hell out of me while I try to have sixty minutes of peace and a cute set of toes. Have we become so lazy that we cannot even take the time to enunciate an entire word?  I fear we have.  And a nation of grammatically lazy children are coming up fast on our heels. To me, that's a tragedy.

Time to shut it down.  I know there are more words and phrases out there just waiting their turn to make my list, and the play we got from Moist Panty Cakes on Luna Night was well worth the nails on a blackboard effect in my head.  The moral of the story, for me anyway, ended up being "Don't have a Big Hairy Gazebo over Moist Panty Cakes".  But that's another story. 

Long live the Lunas, kicking Junior League Ass from coast to coast.  You girls are my soul mates  besties the bomb.