Tolltag trouble served on new plates

The Buick is sporting new plates these days, and I'm trying to learn my new number. After seven years with a license that lent itself to mnemonic devices about Ali Baba's thieves and a memorable year in my junior high career, the new plates read like Eisenhower Administration Scooby DooSpeak. Dogpiled on that, I got an e-newsletter from the North Texas Tollway Authority with a list of common violations for tolltag users. It slowly sunk into my brain that I might be in trouble. Since I'd had to replace my plates, I'd spent two holiday months picking up and dropping off sons at DFW airport reached by driving the George H. W. Bush Tollway.

YOUR TOLLTAG HAS TO MATCH THE REGISTERED LICENSE PLATE EACH & EVERY TIME YOU DRIVE THROUGH A TOLLBOOTH:

1. Don't use your tolltag while driving a rental car.
2. Check your tolltag account online at least as often as you change your furnace filter or replace your toothbrush.
3. Update license plate info.
4. Update credit card info.
5. Update if you buy a new car. Oh, yeah. That'll be the day.

Tolltags are very useful for those of us with post-elementary school P.E. class traumas due to our inability to throw coins into tollbaskets. We have serious eye-hand coordination issues in stressful timed-response situations like dodge ball and red rover. With a tolltag velcroed to the windshield we can avoid most episodes of turnpike anxiety syndrome.

This new pickle in the works made me want to sell the Buick. By that I mean "to vomit", according to various slang dictionaries. I was glad to resolve it inexpensively and quickly online.

Gnarly troll houses

gnarly adj 1. very good, excellent; COOL. ("That trick on your skateboard was gnarly!") 2. used to describe something that looks painful or dangerous. ("That was a gnarly car wreck.") 3. gross, disgusting. ("Check out that gnarly old homeless dude.")
Online Slang Dictionary

gnarly Original from 70's surfspeak - to describe waves that are violently breaking without the form that would render them more rideable. Can also describe less than ideal females.

"I'm bailing on this session-waves are too gnarly"
"I had to ditch her friend, she was lookin' gnarly"

UrbanDictionary.com

gnarl - "contort, twist," 1814, a back-formation from gnarled, which appears only in Shakespeare ("Measure for Measure," 1603) but was picked up 19c. by romantic poets and brought into currency. It is probably a variant of M.E. knar "knot in wood" (1382), originally "a rock, a stone," of uncertain origin. Gnarly first attested 1829; picked up 1970s as surfer slang to describe a dangerous wave; it had spread in teen slang by 1980s, where it meant both "excellent" and "disgusting."
Online Etymology Dictionary

My favorite dictionary is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language that my Uncle Milt and Aunt Margie gave me for high school graduation in 1973. Its red binding is really showing the wear, and sometimes it is a bit out-dated, but the thumbnail illustrations are still intriguing, and the page lay-out has enough white space to keep it visually restful. The entries invite browsing, and send me off on see also references to other words for perusing. To a word-lover, it is a ten-minute vacation, the equivalent of a power nap or hot shower.

I have a friend who reads phonebooks, and finds the same intrigue, edification, and relaxation. Other friends browse cookbooks. To each her own reference book.

American Heritage indicates that gnarl can mean to snarl or growl, as well as a protruding knot on a tree. Gnarled can mean misshapen, "crabbed in temperment", or "rugged in appearance".

How are you doing, darling? You seem somewhat crabbed in temperment....

It's so nice of you to ask, honey. I'm having difficulty refraining from browsing gnash, gneiss, and gnu, and thence to wildebeest or schist. I am worried that I might be gnathic, and maybe related to a jaw.

We are making quite delightful troll houses. They resemble tree stumps. I will get some photogs on the Itty Bitty Art Projects blog soon. We did papier mache with Ross Art Paste and covered our houses in crumpled and torn brown paper bags for a tree bark texture. [This is going better than the year we made the rock'n'roll trolls on stage at the Fairyland Bandstand complete with teeny tiny disco balls.]



Papier mache always brings out both the "excellent; cool" and "disgusting" comments. This time the soggy, sagging forms will also fit the contorted, twisted, misshapen connotations of "gnarly".



One of these summers we will finally create chia trolls. The time frame limitations have yet to be surmounted. I want to make clay trolls, dry them, fire them, and still have time to sprout the grass seed hair...It just doesn't work in two weeks.

Going to climb the rope ladder into my treehouse now for some reading time. I will lower a bucket for provisions and bug repellent.