All my fans are gonna be very interested in my experience with this mumbo jumbo of the moment
Are you freaking kidding me?! Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock are getting divorced?? Didn't they just get done having their, like, 7th wedding last week?
My inquisitive neighbor, who is herself not a fastidious housecleaner, just came over, looked at my kitchen, and asked, "Did you have a party?" You know it's time to clean up when....
Elliot, age 7, who has been playing Frosty the Snowman on the piano for weeks and weeks, who loves this song, who has it memorized, plays it for everyone, does not complain about practicing the piano because he gets to play Frosty the Snowman, and who is going to perform it at the mall on Saturday for all the festive shoppers to hear, has just announced that he no longer wants to play Frosty the Snowman, because it is too babyish. I am flabbergasted sometimes at this motherhood thing.
Did I mention that I think Cub/Boy Scouts is a major bureaucracy? I just went to the Scout shop to get a Bobcat badge for the newest member of our den. To become a Bobcat takes your average 8-year-old about 4 minutes to accomplish. He has to learn the Scout motto, handshake, uniform, etc. It is not hard. To purchase the little $1.40 badge, so the scout's mom can have it hanging over her head for months and months that she needs to sew the badge on her son's uniform, I had to fill out paperwork saying that this scout had "advanced" in rank. Probably the man hours involved in filing the proper paperwork exceed the actual time to earn the badge tenfold. I am flabbergasted sometimes by this scouting thing (although the actual job of working with the boys is easy and fun).
My inquisitive neighbor, who is herself not a fastidious housecleaner, just came over, looked at my kitchen, and asked, "Did you have a party?" You know it's time to clean up when....
Elliot, age 7, who has been playing Frosty the Snowman on the piano for weeks and weeks, who loves this song, who has it memorized, plays it for everyone, does not complain about practicing the piano because he gets to play Frosty the Snowman, and who is going to perform it at the mall on Saturday for all the festive shoppers to hear, has just announced that he no longer wants to play Frosty the Snowman, because it is too babyish. I am flabbergasted sometimes at this motherhood thing.
Did I mention that I think Cub/Boy Scouts is a major bureaucracy? I just went to the Scout shop to get a Bobcat badge for the newest member of our den. To become a Bobcat takes your average 8-year-old about 4 minutes to accomplish. He has to learn the Scout motto, handshake, uniform, etc. It is not hard. To purchase the little $1.40 badge, so the scout's mom can have it hanging over her head for months and months that she needs to sew the badge on her son's uniform, I had to fill out paperwork saying that this scout had "advanced" in rank. Probably the man hours involved in filing the proper paperwork exceed the actual time to earn the badge tenfold. I am flabbergasted sometimes by this scouting thing (although the actual job of working with the boys is easy and fun).
Comments
It must always be "party time" at our house!
I'm hoping they discontinue the scouting program before Henry turns 8. Do you think its realistic?
I must be having a hard year with Nels. Boys, easy, and fun do not fit together in the same sentance for me right now.
I even called my BFF when she was at her grandmothers funeral (I didn't know she was AT the funeral at the time) to tell her that Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter Apple. These things need to be shared.
I dread scouts. DREAD.
"Flabbergasted," by the way, is far from being a new word. It's been around since the late 1700s in its current form. The second part of the word, "gast," is probably from the Middle English word "gasten," meaning "to terrify," which also gave us "aghast." "Gasten" itself comes from the Old English word "gast," or "spirit," which also gives us "ghastly" and "ghost." So there we have the "surprise" part of "flabbergast."
The "flabber" part is the puzzle. Most likely, it's related to "flabby," which itself is a variant of "flappy." (Yes, to say someone is "flabby" is to say that they "flap" when they move, which is enough to send anyone to the gym.) But "flap" can also mean excitement or a disturbance ("The flap over the Royal Family"), so this is where the guesswork comes in. "Flabbergasted" may have originally meant being so surprised that one "flabbed" -- trembled like Jell-O. Or it could have referred to the cause of the uproar -- the "flap" at which one was "aghast," or "flabbergasted."
The unlikely marriage of the two linguistic traditions resulted from clashes between Germanic Barbarians with Roman legionaries striving for dominance of, what would become, the southern whale trade. Originally, the term referred to the condition of a spermaceti whale that, after moldering in the water for weeks, developed impressive pockets of “gasstritti” beneath its layers of flubbervend. The whale was said to have been “aflabbergast” at the instant the pressure in the gasstritti pockets overcame the elasticity of the flubbervend, resulting in the whale’s unsightly (and smelly) explosion.
Thus, you can see how it came into modern use.
The proper term is "Etymologist".
Perhaps the "moldering" error was my own. I should more properly have stated that whale carcasses, moored to the whaling vessels after being harpooned, moldered in the water for weeks.
Nice blog.
And may you be friends.