Current mood:

fyckin' hot

Near-Scrabble Sighting
or... A Broadside From the Nether-Scrabble Order.

I walked out of the house this afternoon to take my daughter and the family dog home following her (their) visit (more on that anon), and a rather remarkable looking woman approached me from across the street -- the wife/mother, I presumed, of the family that I had watched move in over the past week or 10 days.

In the sweltering buzz of a late August afternoon, standing at the dead-center of our quiet residential street, we introduced ourselves to each other. Friendly neighbors. What made her remarkable? A direct gaze. A directness that was at once disarming and terribly attractive.

Nothing about her attention to me slid off to one side or the other. She was there to say hello and meet me. She was completely there.

Her T-shirt and her shoulder and I think the side of one calf were smudged with paint. We spoke about their upstairs projects, getting their new house fixed up. Regretfully, she'd had to stay in all week painting, while the nicest week of summer yet slipped by.

Her husband was in the driveway unloading his van of what were obviously musical instruments in cases, with a colleague, an older paunchy fellow with a white beard and flyaway wisps of white hair about his crown. Rather stupidly, I said, "Is your husband a musician?"

"Yes, he is," she answered. "He's just returned from a weekend Balkan music festival."

"Oh," I said. "Like... um... ukuleles?" (I'm pretty sure I was really thinking of balalaikas.)

She hesitated, forgivingly. Ukuleles were not quite right. "Well, all sorts of things..." and then rattled off a marvelous list of words, which I only realized were musical instruments when she concluded with tamboura.

I had to get out LeXpert. None but tamboura are in the English dictionary. Kaval*, duduk*, gaida*, gadoulka*, preem*[1], tamboura.... Here's a web page showing all these except for 'preem'. I may have misheard her.

After moving another of these long-necked tamboura cases, the husband came across to shake my hand as well. Salt-and-pepper hair, an open, honest face. A musician. Good neighbors.

---

[1]A web search for 'preem' turns up a petroleum company, lots of textual line-breaks of words such as preem-inent and preem-ption, and some Hollywood slang, new to me, for 'premiere': "Fans screamed for Matt Damon at the 'Bourne' preem...." I suppose that means preem will be acceptable ere long.