Nonagenarian

… is the Word of the Week*.

As an adjective, it refers to being 90 years old (or, a bit confusingly to me, the dictionary says “90 to 99”). Like, maybe, “Say, I’ll try some of that nonagenarian Scotch!”

As a noun, it is a particular person who happens to be that age.  For example, “The nonagenarian in Ward 2 knocked up that redheaded nurse.”

I was gone all weekend to visit my aunt who was celebrating her 90th birthday… that’s Nine-Zero years.  Not as spry as I’d like to have seen her, she was nonetheless in fairly good health and feisty.  Had a great visit with cousins and cousin-lettes as well.  Seeing my aunt at 90 (with her two remaining siblings not too many years behind her), made me examine how much time is… or could be… left in my life.

I’ve sometimes joked that I’ll be living to at least 125. The key, of course, is actually “living” while I get to 125.  I don’t want to be that caricature of an old person who sits in a chair at the retirement home, quietly drooling while waiting impatiently for the end to come.

Nope… I want to be the George Burns type, living aggressively and out front right until the day the Grim Reaper comes for me.  I want to be one of those old folks you see in the commercials wearing their Depends while climbing the Matterhorn or diving the Marianna Trench or jeep riding the Outback.  I’ll be the crotchety, but lovable old codger who is accused of knocking up the cute nurse.  I’ll be the sneaky old bastard who organizes the rest of the retirement home residents to raid the kitchen at 3 am in the morning to eat all the ice cream and cookies.  I want to get outside every day to run, walk, bike (pedal power), bike (Harley Hog), and more. Yeah, great plans… but you have to have goals.

Here’s hoping all of you can one day proudly and happily bear the title of nonagenarian.

…and that’s your Word of the Week…

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*Yeah, i know i’ve been slacking off on doing my Word of the Week.  Once things settle [long laughter ending in breathless gasping], i’m going to try and get back to that.

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Crissum

…and that’s the word of the day.

GnuKid spent one whole semester at university as a biology major. But I never ran into this one… I guess if I’d actually made it to a zoology class, I may have learned this word.

Yep, crissum is a zoological term and it is defined as the feathers or area surrounding a bird’s cloacal opening.

We’ll get back to “crissum” in a moment.

Guess we have two words of the day as I had to look up the definition of “cloacal”. The easy definition is that it is the bird’s hoo-hoo. But that’s too simplistic… be glad you’re not a bird. The biology of a bird is such that – brace yourself – its genital AND intestinal AND urinary tracts all converge and come out of… or into as the case may be… one opening—the cloaca.

If I may editorialize at this point… Ewww.

Reminds me of the joke about the design of women – – –

A bunch of engineers are sitting around at a party, discussing the nature of the God, and who designed women.

The mechanical engineer states that God must also be a mechanical engineer because “if you look at all the pulleys and levers that drive the body, how the tendons and muscles and bones all work together, well, it’s just amazing.”

The chemical engineer says that no, God has to be a chemical engineer because “if you look at all the chemical processes that drive the body, how the hormones and the brain and the glands and everything else all interact, well, it’s just astounding.”

The electrical engineer says that no, God has to be an electrical engineer because “if you look at the circuitry of the body, how the thousands upon millions of nerve cells transmit signals from one part to another, well, it boggles the mind.”

The civil engineer speaks up last of all and says, no, God is definitely a civil engineer, because “only a civil engineer would run a sewer next to a playground. “

[pa-dum-dump]

But anyway…

What caught my eye about ‘crissum’ is the derivation. From the Latin, crissare, which means—

…to move the buttocks during intercourse…

Hmmm… Ummm… The ancient Romans needed a name for that? Okay.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just sit here and wallow in some great mental imagery of feminine crissare until it’s time to write another post…