Grow the Grammar Nerds

Ugh, I forgot that I was going to blog about this and now I’m not going to be able to remember the exact wording. This morning, on NPR, dude said, “blah blah blah grow the economy.” And I keep hearing this use of “grow” that just sounds nails on chalkboard wrong to me, but I’m hearing it so often that I’m wondering if I’m just wrong.

Let’s take this sentence, which sounds wrong to me:

Obama will grow the economy through taxing the shit out of you. Ha ha ha, conservatives.”

Or this:

Economists hope the additional jobs will help grow the economy.

I would write those sentences as “Obama will help the economy grow by taxing the shit out of you.” and “Economists hope the additional jobs will help to grow the economy.”

I think something like “The farmer will grow corn this summer” is fine. But “The farmer will grow his household income by adding corn to his crops” absolutely does not. I also would think that “The farmer fed his kids cheese in order to grow healthy bones” is fine but “The farmer will grow his kids by feeding them cheese” sounds wrong.

Weigh in here, people. Do you think this is just a regional variation in use of grow or are these fuckers misusing it?

It could be a regional thing. I mean, I think that you can go towards the door even by walking backwards and I can’t break myself of it, even though I know it’s more correct to go toward and backward. But man, it grates on me.

My Nashville Wish

While watching this Jacob Jones video I was reminded that there’s not really any way to share what’s best about Nashville with tourists. I mean, unless we just assign everyone tourist-sitting duties like we do jury duty. You go to the airport, pick up your tourists, see what they have in mind for doing while they’re here, and then take them along with you to other shit.

I mean, I don’t like to leave my house and, in the past month, some dudes played a balalaika in my back yard, I got to hear an impromptu, stripped-down Anchor Thieves show, and I sat on NM’s porch after eating her delicious greens while a Cajun dude told me stories about his Grandpa and warned me off of eating nutria.

Imagine if a tourist got assigned to, say, Jacob Jones?

I don’t know. I just think that what makes Nashville special to me is not what there is to do here, but the awesome people who come to do it.

The Hot Cold

Aside from the usual stress of a full family visit, I’ve been weirdly sick. It’s either a really mild flu or some psychosomatic nonsense that won’t go away. The flu-like symptoms include joint aches and feeling kind of nauseous. The weird, but also kind of flu-like symptom is that I am both too hot and too cold. All the fucking time. I can only be mildly comfortable if I am sitting right under the air conditioning vent in a lot of clothes. Though, last night, I finally slept pretty well having a shit-ton of blankets draped over my legs and one arm. And I have a headache. And I feel like I’m constantly sweating but just on my back. And I’m tired. The hot-coldness of it feels, frankly, kind of like when you get a sunburn, but I’m not sunburnt.

I am mildly unhappy at this turn of events. However, it’s very mild. It just means I’m going to bed at nine like an old lady and would, if I could, sleep until eight. I still am walking the dog and doing family shit.

So, yesterday, I had lunch with my brother and the mother of his next child. She’s fine. Not just in the “the bar has been set so low” sense, but in the regular sense–I like her. She’s very young, but she seems to have a good head on her shoulders and, I don’t know, I kind of feel like she likes my brother, but isn’t expecting him to continue to come through, which may be the right attitude to have.

My mom and I were discussing my dad’s family and the kind of Godfather dynamic that sometimes gets brought into play–there has to be someone all-powerful who doles out advice and leads the family and gets the family’s adoration/fear. And it’s weird because this is one of the things I really like about my living Uncle B., that even though he obviously enjoys being a bigshot, he doesn’t take it too seriously, it doesn’t mean that much to him. Or I guess what I mean is that he knows it’s kind of a made-up thing, which not everyone is going to recognize. You can only be a bigshot if people know you’re a bigshot. And you can’t declare yourself kind of a big deal. Though others in my dad’s family have tried.

But I was glad she brought that up because I was, then, less gobsmacked at lunch with my brother, who is more heavily counting on there being money from potentially dead relatives than a person ought to. And I get that part of it is that he’s really, really broke. And that’s his lottery dream. But I tried to explain to him that, even if my Grandma has as much money as he thinks she does, right now, there’s no guarantee that she will just straight up and die, when the time comes (though I pray that’s how she goes) and lingering in the hospital can burn through a person’s savings quickly.

So, he says he told my sister-in-law that she should just think of the money my parents give her (don’t get me started) as “his” money coming from him (doubly don’t get me started) and she shouldn’t get used to it because, when I’m in charge (yes, that I is me, not him), he can tell me to cut her off and I will because I hate her. And I do. The only thing she has going for her, as far as I’m concerned, is that my nephew loves her and I hope he never realizes how terrible she is. Though, considering everyone had to have a talk with him about her impersonating him on Facebook in order to act like an asshole toward people who won’t friend her or have her blocked, I assume the seeds have been planted.

Anyway, what I cannot help but pick at, in that whole fucked up scenario, is this idea that there will come a day when I’m just the money faucet which my brother can just turn on and off at will. Never mind that there is no massive amount of money coming. Never mind that my mom’s mom is alive and 93, which means that we need to be prepared for my mom, at least, to motherfucking need her own money for the next thirty years.

I am never giving my brother money. Let alone my sister-in-law. If there is money from my parents, it will quickly be split three ways and everyone can waste it how they see fit. But hell no to this idea that I’m just going to inherit it all (and let me remind you, there is no “all”) and then be the free money fountain for the family, with there being some power in being in the position of telling me to whom to grant all my money.

What the fuck kind of fucked up dynamic is that? I mean, it’s bad enough that we’ve played out for generations this stupid patriarchy where the parents trickle down support to the kids for the parents’ whole lives, but this idea that our parents will die and I’ll just step up to be the mommy?

It doesn’t even make me mad. It utterly befuddles me. Why would anyone think that I would want to do that? If I wanted to be a mom, I would have had my own children. If I had the means and wanted to provide for family members, I’d sock money away to help with the nephews’ college (and I suppose now the niece’s). The idea that I would want to continue this fucked up fucked upness that my parents do?

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.