Destination: Titivation

I have this longstanding habit of hearing about an author, then pursuing everything they've ever written. There were times, when I had full access to the Library of Congress, that I could request the writer's entire body of work, have the books delivered to me bound in newspaper and string, with no time constraints in their return. I would place the books in chronological order for my reading, and the norm was to have a stack of 50-something next to the bed. I can tell you, writing this in retrospect, that I never took that privilege for granted and knew how rare it was. I remember how shocked I was the day a 16th-century edition of Suetonius accidentally made it past the Rare Book Room into my hands. The Loan Division Director and I both stared at it in awe. And "no," I never set down Coke cans on the books or turned pages with Cheetoes orange fingers. An aside. Since Suetonius had been mistakenly delivered to me, bound with other books, I did take it home that night, but I opened the book wearing white cotton gloves, so the oil from my fingers wouldn't touch the pages, and I returned it promptly the next morning, wrapped in a white cotton sheet. I had the oddest sensation looking at it. It was like falling through centuries.

Often I find that a writer's skills improve over time. Sometimes not, and that is always surprising because you expect growth as part of the process. One habit I've noticed with some young writers (and some older ones that continue to preen) is that they pursue a more filigreed,whatchamacallit word; dropping it into their text, which has me running to the Webster's Unabridged that I keep on a dictionary stand in my bedroom.

Recently, I heard about a mystery writer named Ruth Rendell. Critical raves. Five stars. The best. Agatha who? Well. To quote my late mother, "Not my cup of tea." I am much more of a George Pelecanos-Dennis Lehane-Raymond Chandler-Dorothy Sayers kinda girl. In reading one of Rendell's book published in 1975, I stumbled onto the word "titivating," and headed to the Websters for it's defined meaning and learned she had used it in another sense.

Titivate: (verb) Perhaps from tidy plus vate as in renovate; to dress up (as by making small additions or alterations in attire); spruce up; smarten up.

I had to laugh about titivate because here we are, more than thirty years later, and we've gone from titivation to sprucing up to tweaking our threads. And yes, while I was online at urbandictionary.com I found this:

Molcing: The act of dressing up in a vegetable costume and fornicating with another person dressed in vegetable like attire. Being a furvert wasn't enough? Now it's got to be vegetables? I will never look at the Fruit of the Loom guys in the same way again.

"Was it good for you?"

Chum: To be on terms of intimate friendship; to share quarters: room together; chopped fish, vegetable matter, or small live fish thrown overboard to draw fish to a fishing boat.