Weekend Words

I. What am I thirsty for? Bread!

Since I'm unemployed it shouldn't factor, but Saturday morning still gives me a happy 'n' free vibe.
I'm going to carve a lino-print after I blog, then walk around the lake and stop at the park commissary, Bread & Pickle, for a grilled cheese sandwich made with fat Texas toast.
B&P is only open another week--the park buildings close when temps drop below freezing.

(Nights are getting cold, but daytime temperatures are unseasonably warm. Or is it unseasonable? Maybe this pleasant weather is the new norm.)

Must be Bread Treat Week for me. First there was challah; then yesterday I sat outside and had a croissant and oat-milk latte at Black Walnut, the bakery where Marz used to work.

II. Dog Date

Yesterday I also met with new dog/house–sitting clients.
The owners, a retired man and woman, know bink & Maura from their neighborhood.
Their dog was a rescue from down South (there's a pet-rescue pipeline to northern states). He looks like a Basenji, a dog that can be difficult, but he's a mellow eleven––and a charmer.
I'm glad. Dog sitting is so much more work than cat sitting, it helps if the dog is someone I genuinely like. (I generally like dogs, but they vary a lot.)

I liked the dog owners too. The man is a retired prof of English, and he murmured that he also taught some film studies. Movies!
He has a large DVD collection and all the movie-streaming services, including Criterion, so the dog and I have a date in a few weeks to spend the weekend on the couch, watching movies.

We all liked one another, and the couple also invited me to their post–presidential election gathering the Saturday after Election Day--to celebrate, or mourn... Heaven help us!

I wouldn't have even considered dog-sitting again except I should start working for money. I've barely started looked for a job yet.
From the nonprofit job site this morning:
"Receptionist– Bilingual Speaking Ukrainian and Somali Preferred".

There were a few years when I was writing/editing at home when I house-sat often enough it was a small but decent source of income.
I'd liked cobbling together small jobs like that...
Might/could do that again? (Like, if I keep up printmaking, maybe I'd try selling at craft fairs next summer... as a way to pay for ink & paper!)

III. Work is not a job.

I want a not-terribly-involving job that leaves me energy for my life. I don't want to take care of people, like when I've worked in nursing homes (or the high school). It's too socially and emotionally draining.

I think I will apply at Target.
You know them? They're a national retailer headquartered here; their big-box stores carry general merchandise--clothes and small appliances--and groceries too. And lots of holiday stuff, so they hire seasonal staff at this time of year.
They're corporate, but I hear they're decent employers and good corporate citizens, so far as that goes.

We'll see...

Printmaking is making me really happy. It's a perfect mix for me of art + publishing. I'm loving carving letters.

It's funny to me, it's so unnecessary--for about 500 years now--but people want to make their own letters.
Maura, for instance, is part of an active calligraphy community here, the Colleagues of Calligraphy. They were partly behind the creation of the hand–lettered & illuminated Saint John's Bible.

ABOVE: "Genealogy of Jesus," Donald Jackson, 2002, The Saint John’s Bible, Saint John’s University, Minnesota. "The DNA double helix is stamped in gold on the menorah, emphasizing the humanity of Jesus, the incarnation."

People like to make marks. I think it's a mistake that the high school where I worked (and I assume other public schools here) pushes computers much, much more than handwriting.
Well.
Not my circus.

Speaking of work, after a week of making videos about aging, I haven't made any more.
I didn't realize this would be the case, but talking on camera for ten minutes about realizing that I want to grow old differently than my mother was KEY for me.
I did the work I felt called to do, for the moment anyway.
I was tempted to enter into crafting the youtube channel more, but it was going to be work. Big work. I have work that calls me more loudly.

IV. How many letter combinations and words?

I'm going to carve marks right now. Not sure what I'll write out today. Twenty-six letters, almost endless combinations...
Not endless, of course.
I looked it up:
"The number of combinations that are possible with 26 letters, with no repetition, is 67,108,863."
(Is that right? Other answers got into how to do the math, and I got totally lost. But anyway, there is an answer, and it's not infinity.)

And how many words in English?
It depends!

"There are twelve different words spelled 'post'...; they all have different parts of speech or derivations.
Should these twelve be considered one word for the purposes of our reckoning?"

"Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged ... includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, includes a similar number."
Via Merriam Webster

A 2016 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, has found that by the age of twenty, a native English speaking American knows 42 thousand dictionary words. --via Science Daily

(I wonder if there's a way to count how many different words a blogger has used? Anyone know?)

I hope everyone has a good weekend!