Dan Antion

I’m Out of Veggibles

socs-badge-2015Let’s get the fine print out of the way first. Miss Linda (no, that’s not how I’m satisfying the challenge, although, technically, it does count) decided to come back from Japan with a vengeance.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “miss.”  Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

I like the way Linda says: “Have fun!” “The floor is littered with broken glass, have fun!” “It snowed last night and the car has four bald tires, have fun!” “Your mother is coming for dinner. I going out and you’re out of beer, have fun!” Surprisingly, when I saw this, I thought that I would have fun. I thought of a whole bunch of ‘miss’ words and those voices in my head were off and streaming. Of course, most of my ‘miss’ words turned out to be ‘mis’ words. Like mistake(s), which I kept making. Misdirect, misinform, miscue and mislead all were lacking that necessary second S. Necessary has two Ss, where I don’t usually expect them. I usually spell it with two Cs and shake my head as Word corrects me again. I’m guessing that Word is shaking its virtual head and thinking “how many times do I have to fix this?”

As we speak, well, I write and you read, Word is trying to fix my title. To which I say:

No, Word, that isn’t a misspelled word. It’s a well-understood word in this house, and it refers to the gummy vitamins that I take every day. Yes, gummies. That’s how I like my vitamins, in gummy form. My wife had been buying and trying (as in trying to get me to take) vitamins for years. For quite some time, I just flat out refused. Vitamins either tasted like chalk or smelled like cat food of were too big to swallow or made me throw up. I could take them with food, but that meant ending a good meal with a lousy taste. I tried, I really did. In fact, it was during one valiant attempt that I misspoke and called them by their new name:

“Hon, where do you keep my veggibles?”

I don’t know why, and I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. I do know that we had a good laugh and the word has been veggibles ever since.

Late last year, I suggested that if she would buy me gummy veggibles, that I would take them. She refused. Gummies are for children. Then she found adult male gummies. She caved. Better, I guess to have a healthy husband who acts like a child than a husband you have to take care of because he’s always getting sick.

Two of these, each and every day.
These are like candy. I could eat the whole bottle.

I know that veggibles is a mistake, but I want to call it a malapropism. It’s like gummies, I just want to use the word. I’m not sure if veggible sounds enough like vitamin to be considered a malapropism. I know that it isn’t included in the book I received for my birthday: “Going to Hell in a Henbasket” I asked for that book after reading Sammy’s blog series about it. I miss Sammy. She’s still around, but she seems to have taken an extended vacation from blogging. Maybe talking about her will coax her back out into print.

Malapropism
I’m not sure if I’m close enough to “similar-sounding” but I like this word, so…

Anyway, back to misspeaking. Veggibles isn’t the only made-up / messed-up word we have around here, and it isn’t the only time aliens trained in the English language would be at a disadvantage when eavesdropping on my wife and me.

Just the other day, we had this little conversation:

“What would you like me to do with the leftover turkey?”

“Do you have the stuff to make the stuff I like?”

“I don’t know if I do.”

The stuff I wanted her to make is a turkey and noodle casserole that I simply love. The stuff that she makes it with is Cream of Celery soup. She didn’t actually have any of that soup, but she said that she had celery and cream, and some other vegetables and vegetable broth, so she could make cream of celery soup.

That was a bit of a mind-bender for me. She had the stuff to make the stuff to make the stuff I like.

Make the stuff?

That’s like making air or making water. You can’t make basic ingredients. That’s like making numbers before doing math. I use that as an example because in some programming languages, numbers are part of a class of immutable objects. They exist, but you can’t mess with them. You can add 1 + 2 to get 3, but you can’t redefine the plus operation, the way 1 gets added to 2, so as to have it work out to be 1 + 2 = 4.

It may not come as a surprise to you to learn that I spent most of my computer programming career working with a language that would let me do that. If I wanted to, I could redefine the ‘+’ operator. I never did, but I liked the fact that I could.

Living with me might be a challenge for my lovely editor, but it’s not mission impossible, she’s got the necessary stuff.

65 comments

  5. Another entertaining post, Dan. I happen to love the turkey noodle thingy too. I really don’t know about the stuff inside and since we didn’t have it this year I think I now have enough information to ask the question. Good for you on the vitamins. The nice thing about gummies you can enjoy them all day. -)

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  6. That’s what I love about family. They know what the “stuff” is, even without being any more verbal and vague than that.
    :-)
    Great post. Love the humour and you made my head hurt there for a while, but that’s because I am bad with numbers. Better with words, thus my participation in this blogging thing and in SoCS.

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    • Thanks. Sorry about the math but, every now and then I try to engage the techies in the audience since that’s where I still make my living. But seriously, would math be easier if you could Chang the rules?

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  7. I’m terribly sorry, Dan. I was enjoying your post, but then once you said that your wife made the cream of celery soup herself, I forgot everything else you’d written. I’m very much a “from scratch” type of girl. I have heart palpitations when I see how many things are premade or come in a box (boxed brownie mix — how is that even a thing??). So when I hear about someone making something themselves like this? Just warms my heart. If Mrs. A had her own blog, I would read it.

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    • It’s ok Wendy. I know whose fan club you’re in. When our daughter was growing up and the Mrs was baking, it was mostly from scratch. And, it was usually good scratch stuff :)

      This “soup” was do good, I think it replaced the other stuff forever. Next year it will be “can you make that stuff you used to make the stuff I like!” She’ll understand:)

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  8. Dan, do you have a recipe to make scratch from stuff ? the stuff you are talking about almost makes me want to think about gardening stuff. you know where we recycle the scratch made from stuff and it comes out pretty stuff. not pretty stuffed like a turkey. more stuffed pretty like a peacock. maybe even better than a peacock with more pretty stuff. now what goes in a cipe before it is re-ed ?

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  10. Since gummies are my favorite kind of candies (with licorice) I don’t blame you for trying to skip the real veggies with them. Since I don’t like vitamins but love veggies, I’m fine. I feel for your wife, though, since my own husband is not a veggie man either. Fun post, Dan.

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  11. Well you know I love fun with language!
    Years ago, a woman at a party told me about all this hidden oil in processed foods and although I wasn’t buying a lot of the products, my top offenders were pudding in a plastic cup and cream o’ soups. Yeah, so I don’t buy that stuff anymore. I’ve no doubt that the stuff your wife made to make the stuff to make the stuff you like tasted a whole lot better!
    I came up with ‘mis’ words, too. Then I just got sad, because miss goes more with “miss my daughter” and “miss my mother.” Ugh.

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  12. LOL! The “stuff” conversation and thoughts about your wife actually making “the stuff” were hilarious.
    We have a few malapropism’s in our family too.

    Daughter only takes vitamins in gummy form.
    My spell checker probably needs a holiday. :) I always spell occasion with two s’s instead of two c’s. You would think at some point I’d remember that I always mess that up, but I haven’t. :)

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  14. Dan, always an entertaining post. Whatever you write has a humorous flare, even if sometimes it’s a learning experience. Gummies for Men! (spellcheck put in Dummies). Stuff and thingies are household words around here! Wonderful your wife is a stuff scratch maker! And you understand one another! That’s what good stuff is made of! Have a great weekend. Chryssa

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    • Thanks Chryssa. My daughter worries that she won’t be able to tell if/when we get senile, but it works for now. Thanks for the comment about humor. I try to work it in where I can. I think you can be serious and still entertain (not that I was trying to be serious today).

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  18. My kids take “gummies” made by a company called Juice Plus. JP takes vegetables and somehow dehydrate them, put them into a paste with some natural sweetener. I love these, Dan! I have been an “adult” user/taker of the FDA approved nutritional supplement. I swallow one which has over 25 fruits and one which has over 25 vegetables in it. But when given a choice, I probably would eat my gummies instead of swallowing. So, in other words, I understand.
    As far as cooking, I used to make homemade all the time as a mother and wife. I have taught my kids how to make a cream sauce. But I purchase my clam chowder, cream of mudhroom, onion or celery out of cans these days. :)

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    • My wife always made from scratch when our daughter was growing up. Now it’s just the two of us. This was so good though, I may ask for it again :)

      Thanks for the comment. Go gummy!

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  19. Oh, my grandchildren also chew their gummies. I do have one of three children who like me takes adult version of vitamins. Lol just add this to my last message, I am sure it seems silly to clarify my thoughts, Dan. Something just makes me explain a lot. :)

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  20. I think you MISSED your calling, Dan!! Hehehehe You should be a comedian. Honestly, I’m still breaking up over this post, laughing as I write this … *swear* … oops, just making so many errors in spelling due to laughing so hard. LOL You and your gummies. Honestly! How old are you anyway? The way you write especially these types of conversations, you know the stuff of what I like stuff, cracks me up! And you just keep getting better! Thank YOU for the belly laughs!! Man! You are just SO funny!!! <3

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    • Thank you Amy. I’m so glad you enjoyed this. I love the SoCS challenges. I like writing like this, just going wherever my head takes me and no looking back. But, don’t be picking on my gummies. They taste great, and I going to go with “they;re good for me” so it’s all good :)

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  21. LOL LOL Good stuff, Dan. And I’m not talking about the stuff to make the stuff, although that stuff (aka casserole) sounds mighty tasty. I love your newborn malaprop and knowing you received that fun book AND hoping you’ll write some more fun malaprop posts.

    I miss being present with you and all my blogging buddies, believe me. I honestly don’t know if/when I’ll be back. It’s the disconnect of the computer that is my stumbling block. I thoroughly love handwriting essays in my notebooks and immersing myself in collages, tangles and painting and photography on my walks. But when it comes to the mechanics of getting any of it into computerized blogging form, it becomes ‘work’ that I dread. I guess I’m more of a dinosaur than I realized and have morped back to more high touch and less high tech. But I AM staying in touch with my favorites because you are part of my life now 💞

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    • Thanks Sammy. It’s so good to see you in my inbox. I asked for that book after you wrote your series, but then I forgot. When I got it on my birthday, I said: “Oh, this is so cool. One of my blog buddies mentioned this book.” Then my wife and daughter looked at each other and shook their heads.

      Maybe you should start a new trend of posting photographs of your written entries. Old school meets the new frontier.

      Either way, if I don’t hear from you in some form, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

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  22. Funny how I also thought I knew so many “miss” words only to realize they are almost all one “s” less. Then I remembered a word I first came across in high school. “Missive”. Used by a classmate in a letter to his girlfriend. ” . . . as I sit ensconced here under these opulent roofs jotting this loving missive . . .” That’s what he wrote, word for word. I remember.
    There was consensus among boy schools those days that girls were impressed by hard vocabulary, abstruse words. So boys would search the dictionary for the rarest words and apply them in their letters. Most of the times, however, the words were poorly applied. I remember one boy named Joseph who wrote: “I feel grandiloquent when I think of you.”
    I could not contain my laughter! The Grammar teacher later heard about it and joked about it at the general assembly. He explained the meaning of “grandiloquent” and said that a person could not really “feel” grandiloquent, especially in a romantic sense. The whole school just burst out with side-splitting laughter.
    I still do not know whether those girls were ever impressed at all. The ones that wrote back used to be very poor in grammar. Mixing tenses, omitting prepositions or using the wrong ones, etc. But, I was told, the best thing was that they wrote back.

    I did make some pocket money, though, helping guys with their letters. Once they realized I could do it well, even excellently, they swarmed me. And I charged them for it.

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    • That’s funny that you had a side business helping guys try to impress women. I’m not sure what impresses women today. If it’s good grammar, I’m in trouble.

      Thanks for the comment Peter. I always enjoy seeing you pop up in my comments.

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  23. I was thinking about replying directly to something you wrote here, Dan. Like the Word thing. I hate how our devices try to correct us all the time. You’d think, being an editor, I’d like it, and sure, it prevents some particularly bad errors at times. But it encourages laziness. (Why learn anything? My phone will save me.) And it makes errors itself! For example, autocorrect will insist on putting “it’s” even when I want to say “its”. Come on! “It’s” is not the possessive form! It always means “it is.”

    But as Arlo Guthrie once said in “Alice’s Restaurant”, that’s not what I came to talk about today.

    Besides, the whole idea is SoC, right? Well, it’s overcast out as I write this. Might rain. And here I am without an umbrella. You know why that keeps happening? Because I use them! They’re nice and dry, all folded up, waiting in my work bag or car. Then comes the rain. Ha! Ready! I use the thing … and now it’s wet. I set it out to dry. Can’t be indoors, of course, or any place handy or useful. Oh, no. It’s wet! So you put it on the back porch or a garage. And the next time you need it, well. There it is. Too bad you’re far away.

    Hmm. That wasn’t all that fun. You’re right about Linda!

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  24. A very entertaining post, Dan. It wasn’t really that much torture, was it? ;) This week’s prompt might be easier. :P
    I love stories about the little “family” words we all have. I think we all have them, don’t we? I would hope so. :)

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  25. I believe this comment should’ve com early, but all December I was stuck with work. So I am reading all your posts in a one shot. I never really heard of such a thing in the market in India, but I believe Indians would stick to eating vegetables than such products. I’ve known many Indians who prefer pure Indian food compared to American or European cuisines because we believe our food provides a complete range of nutrients. Have you ever tried any Indian food item before?

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    • It’s good to see you back Sharukh! I have tried Indian food, or what some restaurants around here offer as Indian food. I liked some items and I didn’t care for others. We don’t have a restaurant near us, so I don’t have it often.

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