Old And Young - I Must Be Middle-Aged

Word of the Post
Today's word is: antimacassar
/an*ti*muh*kas"er/ noun
Coined in 1852 from anti (as if you didn't know this means against) and macassar oil which is imported hair tonic from Sulawesi. I don't know where that is, but OK. These were cloth (often a lace doily) used to protect chairs and sofa fabrics from people leaning their oily heads against them.
I found this definition at the Online Etymology Dictionary, and confirmed it on Dictionary.com.

I heard this word used on a Password Plus rerun while watching the Game Show Network. Oh, my days are exciting! The guy who used it as a clue (he was hoping his partner would answer "doily") was the host of Match Game, Gene Rayburn. The host of this episode, Tom Kennedy, knew what he was talking about, but the word judges did not. They were trying to check that he hadn't said two words. I had to check three different sites, looking through the Thesaurus links, to find this.

So, the annoying little pieces of material that fall off the arms and in between the cushions on your Lay Z Boy have an actual name. I suppose I am too young to know these things. Grams crochets beautiful blankets, and I think she could easily do antimacassars too.
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Fantastical memories and ethereal mush cloud my dreams lately. I have people who have never met, in places that are unlikely, colliding in situations that should never happen, all happily playing havoc on my tired mind at night. Unfortunately, this means that I do not sleep well. After the long weekend, I needed the sleep that has been missing.

This morning, however, I was sleeping so well, I had a wonderful dream. It hurt to wake up, I was enjoying myself so. I tried to go back to sleep to recapture parts of it. No success. I woke again feeling a sense of loss, an incompleteness of the thought. It took almost an hour to get back to what day and time it was. I give you, a day late and a brain short, this list I started on Thursday, but I didn't finish it until today.

Tardy Thursday Thirteen

Reasons To Feel Young

1. Watching the babies learn new things.
2. Listening to the Aunts talk.
3. Contemplating how old I am not.
4. Being asked for marital advice.
5. Realizing that I have very little advice to offer.
6. Realizing how much time I have yet to go.
(Isn't old always at least 10 years older than you currently are?)
7. Being called a baby by my OLD friends.
(I am not naming names here, Jan.)
8. Watching Grams walk with a walker.
9. Seeing the houses that my family have built.
(actual houses, not the homes.)
10. Finding archaic words or songs that I didn't know before.
11. Remembering that I could not have invented telephones, computers or space travel.
(I do believe I could have invented the toilet, though.)
12. Seeing how busy my schedule is.
13. Getting to travel without kids.

I hope you are feeling young today!