Words and Pictures

A month ago we were in France. This was our second Go Ahead Tour and we had a truly memorable time.

As I did with our 2012 tour to northern Italy, I wrote a travelogue (travelblog?) of our trip on my other blog space. I included galleries of most of the photos we took, including photos of the memorable foods we ate. This was, after all, a food and wine tour.

Go Ahead features a regular blog on their site, including photos posted by travelers and Go Ahead staff members. I sent the link for my blog to the editor of that blog, who asked me to submit a food photo and a non-food photo from each destination along the route for publication on their blog.

I emailed my submissions today, and am anxiously awaiting seeing my photos in pixels on Go Ahead's site.

Define: Blog

As I was laying out my feelings in yesterday's post, I was suddenly hit with how negative my words would sound to the former boss to which they applied if he happened to google my name and found that post.

And then I thought about the conversation my friend Ypsi and I had over coffee yesterday morning. I knew she had taken a hit from some readers several weeks ago and had determined to stop blogging. I had a similar situation in the early days of my blog, maybe mid-2007, when a reader who chose to remain anonymous said something very hurtful to me. I immediately password-protected my blog and only gave the password to known friends. (I hadn't been watching my blog feed so hadn't realized that Ypsi was writing again. I had a great time last night catching up with her recent words and thoughts.)

Yes, we bloggers are separated from our readers by lightyears of cyberspace and thousands of pixels. But we still have feelings. Why would you post a comment on my blog containing words that you wouldn't dream of saying to my face? I have feelings. I—especially I—have thin skin. Try as I might to toughen it up, it's still thin and I am hurt easily by unkind words.

So when someone, say a former boss, reads that I describe him as a MegaMicroManager, am I saying unkind words? In my mind, I'm not. (And, in the reader/commenter's mind, his or her words may not be unkind.) When I describe my boss, I'm sharing my thoughts, my opinions.

If he were to read those words and find them hurtful, I would feel hurt. He's really a kind, caring man. He has been generous with both Tyler and me by providing employment when we needed it, income when we needed it. That doesn't change my feeling that he's unnecessarily micromanagerial. That's my feeling, my opinion. He doesn't agree. We've discussed it in years passed.

It's his business. He's entitled to run it as he sees fit. If I want to run a business, I can go start my own. And if I find his micromanagerial style to be egregious and out of synch with my own style of working, I can leave and go find other employment. Which I did.

But I would never want my words to be hurtful to anyone.

Frequently I say things about people where I am fully aware of their web habits. I am fairly confident that neither of my brothers nor my sister-in-law will ever read a word I write on the internet. They have lives that don't revolve around cyberspace. But, again, the things I write about them are designed to help me probe a little more deeply into my soul and to give the readers—if they care to have it—a little more insight into who this writer is.

What's the point of today's circle of words? I guess it's "speak kindly, write kindly."

Oh, yeah. And if you want to say something cruel, go get your own damned blog. Keep your meanness out of my blog.

Sometimes it may not seem so, but ever since John's illness, my personal motto has been "Kindness spoken here."

I'm a Sewist!

In a comment on Facebook today, I said I'm a "sewist." An old friend asked what a sewist is and where the term came from—she had never heard it before.

I've read it many times, as I read lots of sewing articles and blogs. No, it's not in the dictionary. I found this blog post where the writer had researched the term. The author, Ardeana Hamlin, said, "So call me seamstress, call me tailor, call me stitcher, call me needleworker, but please don’t call me 'sewist.'"

For many years I said I was an avid sewer, but that sounds like I'm a place where shit falls. And I prefer not to think of myself that way.

In the last five years of my first marriage, I made all my husband's suits. But I'm not a tailor. (In fact, after our divorce, he began having all his suits tailor-made. Hmmm.)

I do many sorts of things besides sewing seams. I don't want to be called a seamstress.

"Stitcher", to me, sounds like someone who holds a single threaded needle in her hand and runs it around and through fabric. I use both machine and hand techniques. I love doing handwork—sewing down bindings by hand with immaculate little stitches—but I don't think I'm a stitcher.

And "needleworker" sounds more like someone who does needlepoint or counted cross-stitch. I've done and enjoyed both those art/craft forms, but I don't think I'm a needleworker.

I love working with all sorts of fabrics. I love the whole process, from choosing the pattern to pairing it with the perfect fabric to struggling to determine the proper fit for a new pattern to sewing on the buttons and tying the final knot in the thread. I love wearing the new garment out to dinner the night after I finish it. I love seeing my granddaughter pull her favorite grandma-sewn nightgown out of her drawer and crawling into bed wearing it. I love hanging the new curtains or pleated shades at a window in my lovingly decorated home. And I love cleaning out my stash to share with other like-minded people. I am a sewist. We are sewists.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the things I routinely thank my mother for is signing me up for a Singer sewing class out on West Colonial Drive a thousand years ago (well, 1963). She enjoyed sewing and wisely wanted to pass that on to me. I'm so glad.

So don't call me any of those terms that Ardeana Hamlin prefers. Bully for her, but call me a sewist.

Inspiration and Coming Back

I've missed posting to this blog, but life has just been roiling with other things — singing, a new piano gig, work, and the vandalism problem (which appears to have abated - knock wood!).

Blog post topics are starting to percolate in my brain, and I attribute that partly to having joined the gym around the corner and making myself regularly attend a cardio class. I hate every minute of it, and have to remind myself that it's supposed to be fun. I know it's good for me—required for my aging body. But I really.really.really don't enjoy it.

All that aside, I'll be back here in a day or two.

In the interim, please read the inspirational writing of my cyber/fiber friend, Lynne Farrow. She writes at LynneFarrow.com.

I so respect the work Lynne is doing and am in awe of her energy. I believe you will enjoy her thought-provoking writing as much as I do.

See you soon.

2011 - in Words

There's a Facebook gadget called "Year in Status". The program will (allegedly) look at your status updates over the past year and pull out the most frequently used words, making them into a "cloud map" sort of image.

The past year held challenges galore for me, so I thought it would be interesting to see how my status updates mapped out into the image.

Alas, it appears all the program did was to look at my five most recent status updates and throw some of those words into the mix. And that really had nothing.at.all to do with what my year was like.

So I just went into Photoshop and pondered the past year.

Here's how the year mapped out, in my mind.

At the center of my world is this wonderful relationship I have with the Jazzman. He lights up every corner of my world. Second to him are my grandchildren, who hold my heart in their sweet little hands. My singing with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus rounds out the center of my world. (And I mustn't forget my kitties, who keep me company every day.)

Continuing to explore this cloud:

• Travel - a fabulous trip to Ireland and our yearly 4th of July at Lake Erie.


• Work - many enjoyable hours keeping the Covelli Panera website up-to-date.


• Activities - hours spent knitting, sewing, beading, and other works-with-hands.


• Social Life - we have an astounding group of friends; some combination of these wonderful people have dinner together almost every Saturday night.

Hanging over and dimming the beauty of the year (these words are shown in a deep gray, upside down and backwards, to diminish their power over my life:

• Mother's Broken Hip - many hours and many miles behind the wheel; every second or third week driving to Asheville all summer long


• Vandals - Rocks - Broken Windows - three times during December, my living room windows were broken by vandal(s) throwing rocks. My sense of peace and security has been shattered. It's once of the worst incidents of my life.


• Loss of Income - my client base decreased and my income seriously dropped, leaving me worried about how I was going to pay my bills for several months out of the year. At age 61, I felt this was not a place I should have landed, and it caused much despair. I was able to toss some balls in the air and catch them adroitly, so things actually came out better than they were before. But there were many, many days when my financial stress level was through the roof.

And over it all, a heart. Next week will be two years since the Jazzman and I met. I have never known 365 continuous days—much less 730 continuous days— of comfort and contentment and love and acceptance and support. He is a miracle in my life, and my heart overflows with joy for our life together.

That's my year.

Out of the Mouths . . .

Yesterday I took the g'babes to school—just helpin' out. On the way, Ridley told me she's getting an iPod Touch. Boston started telling me about the conversation Ridley had with her mother about allocation of a check she had received for Christmas. Ridley interrupted Boston and said, "No, that's not the money." He retorted, "I was just telling Grandma the whole conversation." She said, "Oh," and paused for a beat before saying, "Carry on."

Where do these kids get their vocabulary? They crack me up on a regular basis!

What Do You Do - Well?

Yes, I know the old saying, "If it weren't hard, they wouldn't have to pay me." But I'd like to get through one day feeling like I know what I'm doing for the entire day.

I work in a dynamic environment, and things—clients, what those clients want displayed on their Web sites—change on a daily basis. That means the worker—um, me—must be able to adapt. Instantly.

I'm 60 years old. My "instant" is your "just a minute". Multiply that by the number of minutes in a day, and you get a good portion of the day where I'm feeling incompetent, incapable, or just plain dumb. It feels horrible.

I try not to succumb to those feelings, but sometimes I just want to sit and sob. Or stick my head in the toilet and flush.

I try to devise strategies to turn down the volume of the you're-stupid voice in my head. Sometimes it works; sometimes not.

Yesterday I sat here trying to remember what I do well. I remember writing and editing and proofreading and indexing. I did all of those well. But it's been a while since I had a job where I did those on a regular basis. It's been three years. Three years of banging my head against a wall on a regular basis. Ouch!

My challenge is to find ways to reincorporate those things I do well into my monthly (or weekly, or daily) life.

What do you do well? How do you make it a regular part of your life? Are you lucky enough to do it for pay?!

Writing for a Living

I've been blogging now for a month short of four years. It all started when I met a man I instantly thought was wonderful and who later turned out to be not so. I wanted to document the travails of dating when one is old over 50. This blog has turned into so much more than that.

All along, I've blogged for the sheer wonder of sharing words, sharing thoughts. I've blogged for the love of words, and seen my writing improve as a result. There was never any pay, except when someone said to me, "I love what you wrote today!"

I never had hundreds of daily readers. I think the most I had was 45 or so, when The Gardener told every woman he knew about being featured in my blog. (Now there was a man with too many women and too little time!) Nowadays I average just over 30 hits. I know the identity of about half of them. There's a whole contingent in North Carolina who read regularly and I don't have a clue how they found me or who started passing my URL around.

<Random Thought On>
Is that the on-the-bathroom-wall-with-magic-marker of the future? Will we write URLs instead of "Sally loves Bobby"?
<Random Thought Off>

I recently started a second blog. It's still lying in its crib, but as it learns to walk, it will contain posts about Youngstown, maybe some posts about our clients, posts about writing and Web stuff. It will not contain personal stuff—the stories I love to write about my grandchildren and children and cats and the development of this wonder-of-a-relationship with the Jazzman. Just the professional stuff, so when someone offering a freelance job wants to see writing samples, I can point out that content.

But still, there's no pay for that.

But (she said, grinning), last night I got my first task assignment from the new boss to write a blog post. Yea! Me, a blogger for pay!

Can I say, "I have arrived"?

Questions to Determine Compatibility

I wrote earlier about the questions one must ask when deciding to form a relationship at a later stage in life. It's hard to know what to ask and even harder to know what the acceptable answers are. Up with what will you put?

The other night I realized there was a question I hadn't asked, and the fervency of the answer—at least the implicit answer demonstrated by body language—was somewhere between shocking and laughable.

Here's the question: Are you competitive?

Tyler introduced me to the "Words With Friends" iPhone app, which is a pseudo-Scrabble game, as similar as it can be to Scrabble without violating intellectual property laws. I sent the Jazzman an invitation and, by jove, he signed up. He has moments throughout his workday when he can relax, and it's been fun for me to have this ongoing game with him.

But the other night we came close to our first fight. I had about three letters left, all vowels, and I wasn't quitting until I had played every letter I could play. Resign? No way, José. We were actually sitting next to each other, playing back and forth. "Just resign," he said. "Unh uh," I countered.
"We're not done." The banter continued back and forth until I finally bribed him. "I can only resign when it's my turn. You play one more word and when it comes back to me I'll resign."

Of course, he won. Of course, as soon as that game was over, we started another game. How fun to be with someone who will play real games with me, not mind games.

<Aside On>
I have two other regular WWF partners, Tyler and my friend, Tani. I lost to Tyler last night by only four points, the closest we've ever been in a Scrabble game. He's relentless as a gamer. Tani and I play much more slowly—about a word every two days. She's chasing a toddler and can only play when he goes down for his nap!

Wanna play with me? Download the app and add me—I'm jaycie622.
<Aside Off>

You're probably wondering if I'm competitive. Somewhat, but I do keep telling myself it's only a game. I'm the kind of grandma who always lets the grandkids win. I like to win, but in Scrabble I'd rather have an elegant word than a high score. Kinda boring, I know.

Regional Idiosyncracies

I have been struck by many language idiosyncrasies since moving to Ohio. Things like "pop" were not new to me, as I've had an Ohio-born daughter-in-law for twelve years, and she regularly uses that word instead of my "soda." However, living here brings to ear many more phrases that are totally foreign to me.

One I noticed in the workplace very early on after moving here was the eliding of "to be". "That text needs proofed." "That car needs washed." "That bill needs passed." It would drive me crazy. Now that my grandson is in third grade, I hear him making this mistake. And I correct him. If he says, "My fingernails need cut", I gently repeat "My fingernails need cutting," or "My fingernails need to be cut."

Alas, two nights ago, suffering from a day-long headache, I turned to the Jazzman, directing him to the knot on the left side of my neck, and said, "My neck needs rubbed." Argh! How did this happen? Someone who pays loads of attention to her speaking and writing mannerisms has begun, after a two-year residence, to speak like an Ohioan.

A more obscure term came to my ears and eyes twice within a 24-hour period over the weekend. On Friday, my colleague posted on Facebook that he had installed a "man door." Huh? Who knew doors had genders? Then on Saturday afternoon, the Jazzman asked me who had installed the light over my man door. Really?! There are a lot of places you could go with the phrase, "my man door!"

Okay, so if you're reading from afar and wondering what on earth a "man door" is, think about your garage. You have a door that cars drive through, and a door that people walk through. The door that people walk through is a "man door." (I'm reminded of old-time IBM, when an employee ID number was called a "man number".) In our more politically-correct day and age, it probably should be a people door. Some call it a utility door. But to Loren and the Jazzman (and, evidently, many other Ohioans), it's a "man door."

Now here's your test for the day: What's a "devil strip?" That's another regional speech idiosyncrasy that I never heard before moving here. I've got two of them that need lots of attention. So what are they? (Here's the answer.)

Knock, Knock

Happy April Fool's Day

I am particularly partial to jokes with a musical twist. I'll share several with you today.

The first is particularly sophomoric. My daddy would tell it in the operating room, and I remember my high school boyfriend's sister complaining after hearing it when she was a student nurse making her circulation through my daddy's operating room.

There was this guy who got three kittens. He named the first "Fluffy" because he was the fluffiest. He named the second "Sleepy" because he was the sleepiest. And he named the third "Liberace" because he was the pianist. (Peeingest—get it?")

That joke never failed to make me laugh. I guess that tells you how rigidly we were raised in the South if someone found that to be a risqué joke!

I learned my next favorite musical joke when I was about 18, and it remains on my top five list of told and retold jokes.

Knock, Knock.
Who's there?
Sam and Janet.
Sam and Janet who?
Sam and Janet Evening (sung to the tune of "Some Enchanted Evening")

Love that joke!!

There's another one about Roy Rogers, wearing his fabulous, expensive new cowboy boots, hopping on Trigger and riding out through the desert where a puma runs up and grabs his new boots off his feet and runs off. Roy continues riding through the desert trying to find the puma so he can get his boots back. The punch line is "Pardon ie, Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?", sung to the tune of Chattanooga Choo Choo. The musical aspect tickles me, but there's also the length of the joke. It's one of those you can just drag on and on by throwing in more and more details, thus making the punch line completely unexpected.

There's another my DC singer ex-IBMer friend Rob likes to tell about C, E-flat, and G walking into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, "I'm sorry, we don't serve minors." That joke can also be extended with more musical twists by changing the names of the notes who walk in. Major, minor, augmented, diminished. Love it!

The book I'm reading, and not really enjoying, gave me one more musical joke.

A guy is alone for Christmas, so he goes to a diner to treat himself to a little Christmas breakfast. He orders the Eggs Benedict. A little while later, the waiter brings his meal in a hubcap. He looks at it and says, "Hey man, what's with the hubcap?" And the waiter replies, "There's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise."

Get it? "There's no place like home for the holidays."

Okay, I guess you gotta be a musician with a sick sense of humor to enjoy these.

Ridley, almost seven years old, said se was going to play an April Fool's joke on her daddy by telling him it was a day off from work. I told her that wouldn't work for someone who worked for himself. I don't think she got it. Ah, the innocence of youth.

And now that I've told you the joke from the book I'm reading, I can finally delete it from my iPhone without finishing it. The luxury of age is not having to slog through a book just because you bought it!

Feel free to comment back here with your favorite joke. Or just enjoy the silliness going on all around you today.

(Thanks to Rob for e-mailing me the corrections to today's post.)

Trying It On for Size

Words. I'm talking about words.

The Jazzman and I haven't settled into pet names or phone conversation sign offs for each other yet. It's funny and awkward, to experiment with words in a new relationship to see what fits.

I've always been a pushover for guys who call me Babe. I guess it has a 60s feel to it, and takes me back to being a teenager. Likewise, anyone who calls me Crews or Crewser elicits a smile. (My younger son called me Crews last weekend, and I laughed out loud.)

The Southern Belle tends to Honey and Darlin' and Sweetheart. He's become my beau in Facebook references, 'cause boyfriend just doesn't seem to fit, and when you speak "Friend", people can't hear the capital F.

I like "Good night, Dear", as it has a warm, soft sound to my ear, but it doesn't seem to roll off my tongue.

I've been hearing coworkers say "Love you. Bye." to their loved ones for two years now and feeling jealous every time I heard it. But, likewise, that doesn't roll off my tongue. Or the Jazzman's.

Saying "love you" or "love ya" or "I love you" doesn't yet come automatically. So when you hear it, you know it's well thought out and real. Genuine. Sincere.

Actually, I'll take real, genuine, and sincere over glib any day of the week.

What do you call your honey?

Mental Floss

Almost since day one of this blog, people have been asking why I blog. The blog's first title is long forgotten (Crewsin' Arizona? Or was that the heading on my website home page?), but the subtitle was "So Many Men, So Little Time." I began the blog when I was cycling through a lot of short-term relationships, and dealing with the frustrations and heartaches of dating-over-50.

About 16 months after I started the blog, its focus totally changed as my son and daughter-in-law decided to move back to Youngstown, and I was forced to deal with the loss of my family. For many months in Tucson, I had babysat two or three nights a week, and hosted the grandbabes for a sleepover at least once a month. When my four-year engagement was broken, my family was my lifeline. Our Sunday night family dinners became the perfect way to end the weekend and start the new week.

Their move was devastating to me, and my sadness consumed me. Writing about it constituted, for me, therapy without the therapist. The exercise of forming my thoughts into pixelated words helped me learn how to live without them, until we all agreed that my best life (and, I hope, theirs) was for me to be nearby and continue my support role in their life.

The blog's focus then changed, along with its name. I asked readers for input, and from all the suggestions, chose "Amazing Adventures: Tales from a Mid-Life Renaissance." Friends had long been encouraging me to write about my life—about the adoption and the music and the marriages and the circuitous path. In leaving Tucson, I had, once again, started over from scratch with my life, taking on a new and foreign geography, leaving behind friendships developed over the previous seven years. Changing, at age 57.5, everything.

The blog gave me continuity. Tucson friends who loved and missed me read my writing every day to keep me in their lives. New friends and acquaintances began reading, to get to know me better. And post topics would swirl through my head daily. Documenting them enabled me to bring peace to my busy brain, reeling from all the upheaval.

When I go back to the early posts in 2006 and contrast them to recent posts, I am thrilled with how much my writing has improved. My facility with words is freer now, with the search for the perfect word being both challenging and rewarding, a most enjoyable game. I have grown as a writer, through the simple act of writing.

But the timing is also interesting. I find that when I write late at night, I'm too tired to craft clever sentences. But when I write upon arrival at the office, after forming the entire post in my head while driving, the act of writing tends to jumpstart my creativity for the rest of the day. The technical words I write, following after the creativity session, flow more freely and feel less pedantic, less tedious and routine.

I've often encouraged people who like to write to begin a blog. It's not a matter of what you have to give to the cyberworld. It's not about how many readers you'll have. It's about how you'll grow, how your thoughts will develop, how your brain will activate more completely for listening to all the words flying around inside your head.

And, for me, it's also kinda nice that my friends know me better, despite the pace of our lives and the difficulty of making time for each other. Many long e-mail conversations begin just out of someone reading something that was irresistible to them. For me, my work in this venue is rewarding.

It's My Mind I Miss the Most

Hi. My name is Jan, and I'm post-menopausal.

I thank the pharmaceutical gods for the little patch I change twice a week that gives me a shred of memory. I'm reminded of the charitable work I did in Tucson, playing the piano weekly for an Alzheimer's respite program. These sweet little old men and women loved to hear me play tunes from the 30s and 40s and old show tunes. Those tunes spoke to an area of their brains that still worked. One sweet little lady would call out, "Play 'Tea for Two'." I'd play it, then play something else. And she'd call out again, "Play 'Tea for Two'." It would have been humorous if it wasn't such a painful illustration of the ravages of Alzheimer's.

I'm traveling Thursday evening to Asheville to visit my 96yo mother. My brothers and sister-in-law and I split the task of visiting, one of us going every six weeks. This gives Mother something to look forward to, something to brag about to the ladies she eats with daily. She lives to eat and sleep, so I make sure to have audiobooks for the trip and knitting projects for the visit.

(Let me insert here that this woman's mind is pretty darned sharp for someone who will be 97 in May. Her children are grateful to the powers-that-be for her mental acuity!)

I have an Audible.com subscription, but my long daily commute has caused me to use up all my annual credits. Rather than spend real money on more books, I'm going to look back at the library of books I've bought over the past four years and choose a couple to listen to again. This is not a problem, as my estrogen-starved brain can't remember the details of half the books I've "read" anyway!

I really do love long drives as a great opportunity to feast on words, whether that's catching up on NPR podcasts or drawing inspiration from creative authors.

What's your favorite recent read?


(I loved the title of the image I pulled for this post: sparsely populated skull!)

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm still reeling from the shock of selling my two Tucson houses at below-market prices. I work hard at keeping things together, and have no one to blame but myself for choices made at different points in my life.

That said, this poem captured my sense of humor, and I wanted to share it with you for Valentine's Day—which was, by the way, the most enjoyable Valentine's Day I have experienced in many years.

The poem is printed in {Risking Everything}: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden. I learned of this compilation from my sewing and creativity mentors, Diane Ericson and Marcy Tilton.

Enjoy!

I Take Master Card
(Charge Your Love to Me)
Nikki Giovanni

I've heard all the stories
'bout how you don't deserve me
'cause I'm so strong and beautiful and wonderful and you could
never live up to what you know I should have but I just want to let you know:

I take Master Card

You can love me as much as your heart can stand
then put the rest on
account and pay the interest
each month until we get this settled

You see we modern women do comprehend
that we deserve a whole lot more
than what is normally being offered but we are trying
to get aligned with the modern world

So baby you can love me all
you like 'cause you're pre-approved
and you don't have to sign on
the bottom line

Charge it up
'til we just can't take no more
it's the modern way

I take Master Card
to see your Visa
and I deal with a Discovery but I don't want any American
Express 'cause like the Pointer Sisters say: I need a slow hand.

—from Nikki Giovanni's Love Poems. Copyright 1968, 1997 by Nikki Giovanni

---

Oh, since I'm so enjoying having romance in my life again, let me give you one more:

The Greatest Love
Anna Swir

She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
"You have hair like pearls."

Her children say:
"Old fool."

—Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
from Talking to My Body. Copyright 1996 by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan.

Too Sacred to be Uttered

I love words! I love sorting through, in my mind, all the words at my fingertips to find just the right word to express my thoughts or feelings. I love finding a new word, one I've never heard before, that pithily says several things with one or two syllables.

I've long been formulating a post to elucidate for you my favorite words. Yesterday I added a new word to that list.

PianoLady e-mailed me about yesterday's Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, which she enjoyed. I listened this morning and agreed, so share it with you now.

The Ineffable

Enjoy!

(BTW, "Too sacred to be uttered" is one of the definitions of "ineffable". Just in case you wondered.)