One Feisty Blog

Background pictures courtesy of Laila

Friday, April 28, 2006

Hee hee: Top 8 Baby Names I'd Use If My Last Name Was Green

Re: My last post. I said all that to say this...

My maiden name is Frost. My parents could have named my brother Jack, but they are wise people and decided to choose sanity over humor. They could have given me any number of names that would have been appropriate for the marquee of an adult theater: Crystal, September, Summer, Autumn. My grandpa even suggested they name me Early. I think he was kidding, but you never know.

I would never, never chose a cutesy theme for my (theoretical) children's names. But I have an overactive sense of humor and too much time on my hands. I have to confess that if my last name was Green, or even Greene (as it might have been if I'd gotten along with my first college boyfriend a little better), I would be mightily tempted to choose names from this list.

1.) Forrest

2.) Hunter

3.) Kelly

4.) Sage

5. ) Teal

6.) Jade

7.) Olive

8.) Emerald

Did I forget any other choices?

P.S. Since I posted this so close (time, not proximity) to the one before it, feel free to post in the "What's in a Name?" post, too. I'm not a stickler for that "once a new post is up, the old one is closed to comments" blog etiquette. Or should that be "bletiquette"? Just think, someone probably named their daughter Bletiquette last week.

What's in a Name?

Names are an obsession of mine. I started keeping lists of names I liked when I was a tween. (Thank goodness I didn't have a baby to name back then--the poor thing would have had a name that even a soap opera character would have been ashamed to claim.) Our parents made an effort to give Ty and me names that a) were relatively uncommon without being weird, and b) meant something positive. Ty's name means "judged by God to be saved" (or to be lucky, according to his recent studies). My name means "queen of happiness." I haven't always liked my name--heck, I tried to get everyone to call me Jill for a few weeks when I was about 9 years old. But I've always been glad that my parents blessed me with a name that has such a positive meaning. Even though I get teased about it when people find out my middle name is Gae, I am proud that my middle name is a variation of my mother's name and I know Ty is proud that his middle name is a variation of Dad's name. I think it's a lovely connection to someone I love and admire, and I hope to make it a tradition by giving my (theoretical) children names that incorporate Steve's and my names in some way. (I also think it's kind of sweet in a "aw, we were meant to be together" kind of way that my first name means "queen" and Steve's first name means "crown.")

Sometimes I wish that I wasn't so obsessed with the meanings of names. If it didn't matter to me what a name meant, I would have a much longer list of names to pick from when/if we're blessed with children. As it is, I will never be able to bring myself to use some of my favorite names because they have negative meanings--for instance, I always wanted to name my daughter Cecilia and call her Cecily, but I discovered that the name means "blind." I had to take it off my list because I couldn't bear to give a baby a name that had such a negative connotation. Bummer.

Since names are important to me, I could never bring myself to name a child something just because it was cute. Rhyming, matching, obvious themes, and other cutesy stuff is out. This means that all names starting with the letter "K" are out because our last name starts with K and I think (no offense to others who think or are named otherwise) that alliteration in first and last names is just too cute for my personal taste. (Also, two K initials is too close to three K initials, and I'm trying to stay as far away from that connection as possible.) Sadly, one of my coworkers has the exact opposite opinion when it comes to naming his kids. Their first names all start with "G." Their last name starts with a "G." Their names are all vaguely British or Irish, which doesn't bother me by itself, but in concert with the GG thing, starts to bug with the cuteness overdose. They did alright with most of the names, but they just had twin boys and they'd evidently run out of steam. Here is a list of their children:

Gillian Cait (twin)
Gwyneth Rose (twin)
Grayson Hyland
Griffin Orion (twin)
Guiness Finn (twin)

Some of those are very nice names. But did you catch that last one? Yep, he's named after beer. But it's spelled wrong. So he'll be teased till the day he dies about being an alcoholic, and he'll be driven to drink because no one will ever spell his name right. I think they should set up a therapy fund along with his college fund. If only they'd asked me, I could have given them a veritable plethora of G names that would have been better than Guiness. Gabriel or Gareth (both of which have lovely meanings)? Gavin, Garrison, Grady, Garrett, Geoffrey, or Gregory? None of those were better options than Guiness? Geez! (Pun intended.)

I make sure I never criticize a name to the parents, children, sundry relatives or other interested parties--especially after the ink is dry on the birth certificate (unless it's a celebrity, then it's fair game and I'm honor-bound to pounce on it). It's a sensitive subject, and I wouldn't want other people to be rude about a name I chose for my child, so I try to be nice about their choices no matter what. Besides, I'm not against unusual names as long as they're pretty and have positive connotations. I recognize that most people just want a name that sounds nice and that I'm a bit of a weirdo for caring so much about meanings and traditions. But I do sometimes wish someone would call me, their friendly neighborhood name expert, before they go around naming their kid for an alcoholic beverage or a physical disability.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Freedom!

Mom gave me a cute silver ring on Sunday for Easter--it was a teensy bit too small, but I figured I might be retaining water (with all the salt I eat, that's usually a fair assumption) and it might fit better later. On Thursday evening, I absentmindedly put the ring on the middle finger of my right hand. It slid on just fine, so I thought nothing of it. Dun dun dunnnnn....

I'm sure my astute readers have already figured out where this is going.

Yeah, on Thursday night as I was laying in bed I realized that the ring was a little uncomfortable (it has a pretty wide band). I decided to take it off before going to sleep. Heh. Right. I pulled on the not-so-cute-anymore ring. I wiggled it around, I twisted it. Nothing. I held my finger under cold water. Nope. Slathered on some slippery soap. Nuh uh. By that time, my finger was so swollen that the only thing I could do was give it a rest and try again the next day. Trying to sleep with a finger that's throbbing as a direct result of one's own stupidity is not as fun as it sounds.

On Friday, we pulled out all the stops. First I iced my finger for a good half hour, hoping that whatever residual swelling I had would go down. Then we wrapped the biggest part of my finger in packing tape, hoping to push enough blood out of the way to get the ring off. Yeah, that didn't work so well. Then we tried using shrink wrap--if you're not familiar with Ty's fondness for shrink wrap, you don't know him very well. That didn't work either, and it hurt like Texas when he tried to tear the shrink wrap off the roll. More ice--this time for pain relief, not finger shrinkage.

By Sunday, I had given up. Cutting back on the salt didn't work...not because it didn't make my fingers shrink but because I'm physically incapable of cutting back on salt. (I'm like that scary hot lady/hairy freak creature on that one old school Star Trek episode where she goes around killing red shirts for the salt in their blood. Evidently salt is just as vital to my survival as oxygen--and much tastier.) Yep, I'd pretty much resigned myself to wearing this now-repulsively-ugly ring till I died or my finger fell off, whichever came first. It wasn't so tight that it caused discoloration or anything--any discoloration was a direct result of the abuse I'd been inflicting upon it. So I have a couple of dents on my finger where the edges of the ring dug in...I can live with that. The blood supply seemed relatively uncompromised, so I was pretty sure I'd get used to it in time. I stopped messing with it and obsessing over it and just got on with my life.

Then today (Tuesday) I was in my boss's office whining about my ring predicament and I decided to show her just how tight the little sucker was. Guess what came off with a minimum of twisting and tugging? No, not my finger. The ring! YAY!

Although, in retrospect, I'm a little (illogically) miffed that my "look how tight this ring is" demonstration did ye olde crash and burn. It was sort of like getting an IT guy to come look at your computer because it keeps freezing up on you, but when he comes to check the stupid thing, it works like a champ--you're glad it works, but it's still kind of irritating. I bet if I'd tried to show Audra how tight my ring was on Friday it would have come off then. But then I wouldn't have had all that fun over the weekend.