The pages of my day planner (it’s really a week planner) have perforated corners meant to be torn away so I can easily flip to the current week as the calendar year moves forward. Each corner bears a preprinted word from the workbook which inspired the author’s design of the planner. The first year I used this style of planner I left the rippy corners intact.

This year I’m ripping them. Only I didn’t start on time. I started this week, so I had to go back and rip all the corners from the beginning of the year through the current date. Each week has mini-workbook pages included so the grand total of little perfed corners is many more than 52. I’ve got a little pile of them on a table near my throne. I consider them during Morning Prayers.

The first one I chose at random from the stack was Overjoyed. M’eh. Not a fan. I don’t think overjoyed is a thing. Webster will tell you differently, of course, but I still disagree. I don’t think we can be over-joyed in same way we can over– other things. We can’t joy too much. Or over-feel joy. Or over-experience joy. Or over-produce joy. I think the word is bunk. I just don’t think joy can be overdone. Any abundance of joy is never too much. Any of the words used to define overjoyed should be used, and the word itself should be retired.

The next day I got this one:

Yes. Anyone who believes she is empowered to strike words from the English language on one day is going to draw this word the very next day.  I took it as a directive on that particular day and wore a crown of flowers in my hair. Around mid-morning they gave me a headache so I had to remove them; too many clips for my tender scalp to bear. You can always tell a goddess by her tender scalp. But it was still fun to start the day with the theme. Sort of like getting a fortune cookie every morning sans the cookie. Fortune scraps. Fortunate scraps. Bits. Shards. Chads. Fragments. Or just frags.

Yeah, frags. Because the frag I got today was:

Yes. Intrigue is a dandy way to start a day. I will be intrigued today. Let’s all do it. I will recognize and appreciate intrigue today. Seek it. Find it. Revel. Fondle. Marinate. I’ll be intriguing, of course; I mean, how could I can not be intriguing? It’s more or less my natural state.

Last week I wrote about trying out for weekend theater. This morning I got a message indicating my local theater is holding open auditions for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Ahem. I did say the cheesier the better, remember? Experience is not necessary. Hopefuls only have to sing 32 bars of any song from the show. Intriguing, no? I could do that. But which song? Oh, that’s easy. This one, hands down …

The cheese factor is so high I am in danger of losing my vegan status. But the intrigue is equally high. A bunch of greybearded old fogeys sing this song in the 1968 movie. The clip shown above is obviously not them but this rendition of the same song was too campy to ignore on this day of intrigue.

— Mercy