Hello and welcome.

If you know me or have been following my blog for very long you probably know that spring is my favorite season and it has dutifully arrived here in Michigan. (Cue: Happy dance.)

The first day of spring is also referred to as the spring equinox so I thought we would take a look at the word equinox.

Merriam Webster defines equinox as:

1: either of the two points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator intersects the ecliptic

2: either of the two times each year (as about March 21 and September 23) when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are everywhere on earth of approximately equal length

It goes on to tell us “Equinox descends from aequus, the Latin word for “equal,” and nox, the Latin word for “night”—a fitting history for a word that describes days of the year when the daytime and nighttime are equal in length. In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the first day of spring and occurs when the sun moves north across the equator. (Vernal comes from the Latin word ver, meaning “spring.”) The autumnal equinox marks the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere and occurs when the sun crosses the equator going south. In contrast, a solstice is either of the two moments in the year when the sun’s apparent path is farthest north or south from the equator.”

HAPPY SPRING My Friends!

Hello and welcome. I’m running a bit later than I hoped with our word of the week . Maybe we should just blame it on spring fever.

Our word for this week is Moment. Merriam Webster has several definitions for this word but I am only going to share the first one – the one I am going to write about. (click the link for the other definitions)

Definition of moment

1a: a minute portion or point of time : INSTANT

b: a comparatively brief period of time

Growing up I learned the importance of taking one day at a time but in recent years I’ve been learning to break those days down even more – to live in the moment. What I love about living in the moment is that it is not an exact amount of time. A moment can be a few seconds or a few minutes or even more. It can encompass whatever is happening at the time. One of the great things is that if I find myself upset, angry, frustrated or experiencing anything else that might make it a bad day it generally doesn’t last that long. I can take a moment and deal with it and move on. It doesn’t have to ruin my whole day.

On the other hand when life is good I need to remember to slow down and think about what I am experiencing. I need to realize the value of and appreciate all of the precious moments.

Today I am wishing you a day filled with beautiful moments.

Hello and thanks for stopping by for the word of the week.

This week our word is mudpuppy. According to the website Active Wild (linked below) the common mudpuppy is a large salamander found in North America. A few interesting facts about the common mudpuppy are:

1. It is also called a waterdog.
2. It lives in fresh water including ponds, streams, lakes, rivers and canals.
3. Unlike most amphibians it never loses it’s gills.
4. Upon reaching adulthood it continues to live in the water.
5. They are mostly active at night and they do not hibernate during the winter.
6. They are carnivorous and will eat just about anything they can catch including insects. larvae, worms, mollusks, small fish and their eggs, other smaller amphibians and spiders.
7. They can be preyed upon by large fish, crayfish, turtles, water snakes, and the North American river otter.

For pictures and more information check out the below article.

I have never actually seen a common mudpuppy though there is a chance that they may live in our pond.

I have however seen what we will call an uncommon mudpuppy. This uncommon mudpuppy does not have gills, and while he might visit fresh water sources he lives on land. He is very active during the day and prefers to sleep at night. He doesn’t hibernate during the winter but is most recognized (as a mudpuppy) during the spring.

He looks like this –

At times he might even be called a waterdog. 🙂

Hello and welcome.

This week I thought we would have a little fun with the word of the week so our word this week is Conundrum.

collinsdictionary.com defines Conundrum as:

1.  a riddle whose answer contains a pun

2.  any puzzling question or problem

I like the word conundrum because not only is the word fun to say (or maybe I’m just a little weird eccentric) the definition, a riddle, pun or puzzle, can be fun as well.

Here are a couple examples:

1. A poor old farmer had three roosters. One was a beautiful, robust, golden color, Buff Orpington; the second a prize winning Rhode Island Red; and the third an scrawny old leghorn.

Which one laid the golden egg?

2. If a plane crashed on the boarder of Canada and the USA where would they bury the survivors?

(answers at the end of this post)

Currently we are dealing with a bit of a conundrum in that the dog eats the cat food and the cat eats the dog food. It is a puzzling problem but we haven’t considered this too big of a problem since they do not fight over the food, none of them gotten sick, and they all seem to get enough to eat. I told my husband I will worry about it if the cat starts barking or the dog starts meowing. LOL!

Do you have a conundrum you would like to share? (go ahead make me laugh) Did you get the answer to my two examples?

Answers: 1. None of them – because roosters don’t lay eggs. 2. They wouldn’t bury survivors (those are the people who live). 🤣

Hello and welcome.

This week our word is anticipation. The Cambridge Dictionary defines Anticipation as the feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen in the near future.

I am confident that I am not alone in my eager anticipation of the arrival of spring. The blue skies and sunshine coupled with warmer temperatures have fostered these feelings, and the 10 day forecast is compelling evidence of an early spring. 🙂

To further fuel my excitement, yesterday I spotted daffodils emerging from their winter slumber. BRING ON SPRING!!!

Here’s a link for all you music lovers out there. Surely I’m not the only one who thought of this song when I said/heard the word.

Thanks for reading.