Mara Redeems her Blog-worthiness
She brought mango salsa and chips. I made my specialty: rye crisp crackers with melted cheese, pesto, and red peppers. Just picked raspberries and blueberries got passed around. It was the first time ten year old Kyla played with us. She’s in the family business, after all, and also writes haiku. Coloring in a coloring book in-between turns, she held up her part of the bargain. Especially when she dropped an X on the board and wrote OX and FOX in one play.
It was an unusual game from the start, with me putting down the first word: LOOFA. After Mara played “Qat” – one of the few “Q words” that doesn’t need a U – I said, “Q’s are getting to be like Amazon females. Who needs males or Q’s? We can reproduce without them now.”
Joe was in the kitchen making his lunch when Mara noted how he bent his knees and salted his plate of food with style. She wondered if stooping while salting makes food taste better. “He always has to stoop down for me (being over a foot shorter than him) but I don’t know how it applies to salting.
My favorite word of the game was Althea, played by me on a triple word score. Turns out it’s not just a woman’s name and a Grateful Dead song, but also any flower in the mallow family.
By the end of the game the only words we could play were guttural sounds: YAR (pirate talk) … UH … ER … It was down to the wire. Mara worked it hard and went out first, beating me by just four points.
I weighted Mara and Kyla down with cucumbers (they grow overnight) before they left, and, because they had made the Scrabble house call, I handpicked them some dill to go with the cucumbers. Kyla likes summer squash and rye crisp crackers dipped in green jasmine iced tea.
Post note: The blog title comes from Mara’s complaint after reading THIS post, where I mentioned we played Scrabble but either talked about stuff too personal or nothing blog worthy happened, so nothing got recorded or posted. She protested and pleaded (see photo), “But, I want to be blogworthy!” So this time I scribbled and snapped.
July 22nd, 2008 10:33 am
Now I could learn new vocabulary playing Scrabble with the pros! You have inspired me to pull ours out for an evening challenge!
July 22nd, 2008 2:34 pm
I actually played two games that day. One earlier not with Mara. Today I’m recovering!
July 22nd, 2008 3:38 pm
Someday, I’m going to stop there on my way north and play a game with you!
July 22nd, 2008 5:14 pm
You both are Crackerjack Scrabblers…My word! It has been so many years since I played Scabble. I think I mentioned to you a long time ago that my mother had one of the very first Scrabble sets ever made…They were still testing it and called on different people to “try it out” with their family’s. I know that set would be worth a lot of money today, but I have no isea what happened to it.
July 22nd, 2008 5:29 pm
So good to hear from you, Naomi. That is so interesting about your mom. I learned a lot about those early games from the book “Word Freak.” Scrabble was invented by an out of work architect during the Depression named Alfred Butts. Here’s what I found via a google:
“Butts called his game ‘Lexiko’ and there was no board. That came later as the game changed its name to ‘It’ and then to ‘Criss-Cross’. Butts made a few sets to sell to friends but it went unnoticed until 1948 when James Brunot thought it might have commercial possibilities. He and his wife began making the game in their home in Newtown, Connecticut. They settled on the name SCRABBLE.”
The Brunots only sold 2,000 sets in their first year and sales remained sluggish until 1952 when the owner of Macy’s store, who had played the game while on vacation, told the toy department to stock it. Other toy shops followed suit and the rest, as they say, is history.
The New York firm of Selchow & Righter, who were making the boards for the Brunots, bought the rights to the whole game in 1953. In Britain, the rights are owned by J. W. Spear and Sons.
July 23rd, 2008 9:19 am
Good history on scrabble.
I really like this post and came a day late to read it. Mara likes to be blogworthy because it is fun to see yourself in your entries.
Do you ever play boggle anymore? xo
July 23rd, 2008 9:26 am
Occasionally I play Boggle, but I like Scrabble best. I love the whole possibilities of starting a game. It give me a social context and a break from being online.
July 24th, 2008 12:42 am
fun post! wish we had some of those cucumbers. ours don’t even have a bloom yet! summer started very late here, like july 1st!
althea is also called rose of sharon. when i lived in georgia we had them in abundance. i love the purple ones the most.