Spellcheck

I am not a talented person. I can't sing, draw, play an instrument, juggle, do math, decorate a room, throw a successful party or put together a stylish outfit out of the odds and ends in my closet. I do not have the ability to accessorize. I'm not crafty (nor do I want to be) or artistic. Several years ago I jumped on the scrapbooking bandwagon and despite buying all sorts of scrapbook gadgetry and going on two separate scrapbooking retreat weekend getaways, I have made a grand total of ONE scrapbooks and really have no desire to put together another one.

The one talent I DO have, aside from my great tact and diplomacy skills, is my ability to spell. I love spelling. I used to win every spelling bee/contest in school. My skills in proofreading for typos were in high demand. If someone needed to know the correct spelling of a word, they could pick up the red phone that would instantly connect them to Kelly's Spelling Hotline and I would correctly spell out the word for them and they'd be all "Thank you, Kelly's Spelling Hotline! You've saved my job!" and I'd be all "It's a gift; the least I could do is use my powers for good."

I used to work for a direct mail marketing company and once or twice a month, I'd have to sit in a little room, all alone (which was sheer torture for me at that time) and sit and do quality control on the hundreds of fliers that the company printed up and mailed out. I was just supposed to make sure the colors were right and that the ad fliers were legible and that the correct franchise codes were on the ads. However, Champion Speller that I was, I read every single flier and could not believe how many words were misspelled. And I'd go running out to the printing department screaming "STOP THE PRESSES!" while waving a handful of ads, forcing the mostly non-English speaking print crew to think there was an INS raid or something. And I'd be told that I was only supposed to make sure the ads were legible. That's it. It would drive me nuts that those ads were allowed to be delivered to millions of home with TYPOS! It was just SO wrong! I don't work there any more. And not by choice but we're not discussing my dismal employment history now are we?

Anyhoo. Spelling is my "thing." At least it USED to be. Lately, I'm reaching for the dictionary every time I try and type up another blog entry or letter or Facebook comment or post on a message board. The other day I was trying to spell a word and it just didn't look right so I reached for my handy-dandy dictionary and damned if I couldn't even find the word in my dictionary. Which when you think about it, if you don't know how to spell a word, how are you supposed to find it in the dictionary? Huh? Huh?

So. I'm getting frustrated because I can't find the word (and I don't even remember what the word was) and after pitching a fit at the stupid dictionary I realized that the word I was trying to find was spelled with a "u" instead of an "e" which is why a) I couldn't find it in the right place in the dictionary and 2) it looked wrong when I was writing/typing it out. Don't you hate it when you write/type a word out and it just doesn't look right so you look it up just to make sure and yeah, it's right but it still just looks wrong? Yeah, me too.

By the way, my expert spelling does not include punctuation, grammar and syntax. I'm always ending sentences with prepositions here, dangling participles there (and I have no idea what a dangling participle is; I just get a kick out of the term, "dangling participle." It sounds kind of naughty heh heh), using slang including Ebonics instead of the Queen's English. Makes it more fun to read, doncha think?

Oh, and you can bet I've misspelled at least ONE word in this here blog post. It's seems to be par for the course these days.