Neologisms

I’ve wanted some new words to describe things. ChatGPT is good for that, but I helped it along:

1 ) I need a word for the sort of weird hand waves people do in front of faucets with automatic sensors to get them to turn on: sink chi. For the automatic soap dispenser: clean chi. For the automatic towel dispenser or those blow dry options: dry chi.

2) While eating an orange with your hands, you have to make a choice sometimes between either breaking it up into smaller pieces and getting your hands all sticky or stuffing huge pieces in your mouth and squirting juice out while trying to eat it: The Pulp Paradox.

3) So you have a backpack with a waist strap. If you’re not wearing the backpack or haven’t attached them, the straps will always grabble every where, right? And when you can’t get the bag into whatever you want to store it in because the straps stick out all the time, maybe that’s buckleblight? or strapflop?

4) Last one: you’re absolutely exhausted until you actually lie down in bed, when you are suddenly wide awake. Horizontal Insomnia – A condition triggered specifically by lying down.

In other news, I might have aided and abetted my partner making a new friend. We were at the climbing gym and there was this not too friendly couple climbing next to us. It happens. Some people are arrogant.

I climbed a route and I could hear someone huffing and puffing on a route next to me, didn’t really pay attention to who it was but saw that he was really, really trying to do the route without falling or giving up. He made it, so when he got down, I congratulated him. It was the aloof guy and he gave me the biggest smile! We chatted then, and I realized he was just super shy.

We ran into him climbing outside last weekend (the world’s mad. It’s December; we should not be climbing outside in a t-shirt this time of year but anywho) he’s really very nice and has a ton in common with my partner. He’s retired and since my partner is retiring soon, it might be a good climbing partnership. So that made me happy.

The other thing that made me really happy was for our Christmas get-together, I managed a decently adapted entertainment for my partner’s grandkids, who are 3 and 3 1/2. I put up a string around trees in the forest about knee height. Every about every two three meters I tied a red ribbon to the string and that meant there were three chocolates (in the shape of little lady bugs) to dig for in the leaves. At the end, the girls had to go under a fallen tree trunk and then climb up on it, and there were more chocolates on the tree trunk. It was just perfect. They both could count up to three, but not much higher. The route wasn’t too long or too short. I was happy because it could easily have been too hard or too easy, but the older one got the concept on her own and and the slightly younger one needed some help to stay concentrated but it worked. It was fun and we even had a few moments of sunshine.