Did you know about the Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2023? It’s rizz.
As in, having what a potential partner wants: “he’s got rizz,” or “she rizzed him.” Never heard of it? Me neither. Apparently, the decision to use it as word of the year led to a spate of Google searches. Which leads me to wonder: how does it become word of the year, if no one has ever heard of, or used it?
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In the TV series I watched recently, a woman had breast cancer, and was frustrated that everyone kept bringing her banana bread. Her irritation hit home: I have, in my life, given many, many loaves of banana bread, although never specifically for a cancer diagnosis. Am I that predictable? Am I doing the wrong thing? Probably, no one wants friends giving pitying looks, oversolicitous family members hovering around, everyone saying “Tell me if there’s anything I can do.” Do we mean it? Or do we mean, is there anything I can do that won’t mess up my schedule or make me go outside my comfort zone?
I admit I may have complained a couple of times about the lack of snow this year, fully recognizing that such complaints might bring on a blizzard (yes, it seems I do have that power). It just felt wrong to see grass in December in Timmins. Well, now the snow has arrived, in an enormous dump that overwhelmed most of the city's snow removal strategies, except of course the sidewalk plow, which is the curse of our existence.
Christmas is full of anticipation and impossible expectations, whether child or adult. I remember my grandmother, aged ninety-eight, speaking about Barack Obama, poised to win his first US election. “Poor man,” she said–demonstrating, as usual, that she’d retained every marble– “how can he possibly live up to these expectations?”
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AuthorHi, I'm Karen. This space is a chance for me to get some of those notebook sessions out there: Motherhood, medicine, writers and writing, the state of the world. Non-published, sometimes non-polished, just a chance to open a discussion. Let me know what you think! Archives
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