Scrabbling

The past few days we have been blessed with a very short visit from our older daughter, Gillian, and her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend, Kiran, has never been to Kansas.  My oft-asked question to anyone who will listen is, "Of all the times to visit Kansas, why would anyone come in (enter: June/July/August?September.)???!

Seriously: Kansas in summertime?  It's generally hot, humid, windy, and miserable.  Downright awful.  And this weekend was forecast to be none other.  But the happy couple came, and we were thrilled to have them!

They arrived early afternoon, and soon thereafter, that Spouse o' Mine had them out on the lake on the sailboat, in some hefty breezes.  I had said I would stay behind (the heat, you know), and make an apricot tart.  Which I did. I should post the recipe here sometime this week - yes, I will.  It is an awesome recipe from a French cookbook.

They sailed, I baked.

They returned, and brought with them a bag of ice for Gillian's shin.

Sailing is never for the faint-hearted.  The sailboat capsized, Gillian did the correct routine of climbing on top of the capsize, and they righted the boat.  But...somewhere in the exercise, Gillian's shin scraped across the boat as it was righting, and when she came to shore, her leg was swollen, swollen.  Happily, Kiran is a med student, knew the drill, and they arrived home with a bag of ice.  We did the RICE thing (I can never remember the words; I only know "raise it and ice it", "face is red, raise the head, face is blue, raise the shoe", and so on.  I was a 70s lifeguard, after all.)

That evening we played that age-old game of Scattergories.  What a fun game! Get the old edition if you are in the market.

Well!  That was only Day One.  Day Two was just a simple day of tiddly-winks of sorts, and much rain and BIG thunderstorms.  A few tornadoes in the area.  Not a time to enjoy rural Kansas.

That evening after dinner, we decided to play Scrabble.  Huh.  I am something of a Scrabble nerd. Growing up, my family, all seven of us played Scrabble.  A lot.  So much so, I know the Scrabble rules by heart.  And I know the strategies.  You know: the challenges, the fakes, and so on.  We Websters were stealth in our Scrabble strategies.  And yet, we ALWAYS adhered to the RULES.

The Scrabble rules can be found on the inside of any Scrabble box.  I guess we all read them and memorized them, much like we did the Ten Commandments.  But unlike the Ten Commandments, we understood the rules stated on the Scrabble box - they were black and white to us kids.  The Ten Commandments?  Graven images, coveting animals and wives, adultery...that was something beyond my early elementary school comprehension.

But I did understand Scrabble rules!  How funny.  And unto this day, I adhere to Scrabble rules, and it rankles me when I play with people who have no clue that there are rules on the inside of the Scrabble box.  *SIGH*  It makes this game so much easier.

Case in point:  If someone has an iffy word, you have the choice to challenge said word, or to let it go.  If you challenge, the dictionary is brought forth and you all look to see if it is in the dictionary. Yes?  You lose your next turn.  No?  The offender loses his next turn.

Simple.  IT'S IN THE RULE BOOK!!  CHALLENGE, PEOPLE!!!  That's part of the strategy!

Last evening I kept referring to the rules, and I seemed to be the only one who was privy to them.  What the heck?  At the end of the game, when one person runs out of letters, then the "losers" subtract their letters from their scores, and the  winner gains those same points to his score.

Simple.  IT'S IN THE RULE BOOK!

That Spouse o' Mine was trying to tell me that we should just take all the "losing " points and multiply them by two for the winner, and forget the subtraction for the other three players.

Ughhh.  Hello?  How do we discern who was 2nd, 3rd, and 4th???  Seriously, is there no competition anymore?  I want to know where everyone ended in my game of Scrabble.

I love this game. (And chess, checkers, Scattergories, Probe (also old), and more "thinking" games.)

We ended our evening with Mango Lassis, thanks to Kiran (of Indian descent), and some garlic-stuffed olives (by me, of Oklahoma descent.)