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Others in the office were talking about nicknames today. It got me to thinking…

A nickname is a name of an entity or thing that is not its proper name. It may either substitute or be added to the proper name. It may be a familiar or truncated form of the proper name, such as Angie – for Angela.

I’m also called Ang a lot. I guess that would be a nickname for a nickname. I don’t know. In school I was called “Big Ang.” Looking at me now you would think it is because I am big… I wasn’t then, though. They called me that because I was very small.

My husband called me AJ until we got married and I was no longer an AJ, and my Granny Tate always called me Hannie.

My little brother, Blake, is better known as Possum, and my older brother, Rodney, is either Hot Rod or Cougar.

Briar and Brad are #1 and #2, my niece, Kylie, is Booger, and Jarah is Tiger or JJ. My nephew Drake is Big D, and Grace, my other niece, is Gracie. I think nicknames are supposed to be shorter than the original name, so I’m not sure what happened there.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I’ve shared some of mine … feel free to share yours, too!

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At times while getting ready for work in the mornings, I will turn to my eight-year-old niece, Jarah, to ask how something looks - my hair, makeup, clothes, etc. She never fails to tell me how “great” everything looks.

I know that I don’t always – or ever, for that matter – look great, but I have trusted her not to let me leave the house looking like a fool. My hair is the last thing I fix, or don’t fix in my case. I’m a wash, comb and go girl. The other day, I took a towel off my head and quickly towel dried my hair. It was standing up everywhere.

I looked at Jarah and asked about my hair, I told her I was trying a new style. She quickly told me it looked “great.” Thinking I’d call her bluff, we headed out the door. Halfway to school, I couldn’t take it any more, I asked Jarah if she was really going to let me go to work with my hair uncombed.

She again assured me how good it looked. I keep a brush in my car, and was able to tame my wild tresses before entering The TD building.

This morning, I thought my hair looked about normal, and was ready to leave the house only to have Jarah tell me how horrible it looked. I didn’t even ask her opinion this time.

I didn’t have time to do anything to fix it, so I walked around all day with my horrible hair.

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Aside from occasionally forgetting that my family has moved and driving to our old house, we have settled in quite nicely. All the boxes have disappeared and everything has its place.

As a child, we lived in the “country,” and I hated it. As an adult, I love it.

We had a housewarming party a couple of weeks ago. Lots of our family and friends came and shared refreshments and visited with us. We had a great time.

We also had a opossum that visited our house for about three weeks. He would eat dog food and then go about his business. I have pictures of the animal on my cell phone and watched for it every night. My husband, however, has put an end to these visits. We have lots of other critters to take its place, though.

Briar and Brad seem to really like the new house. They have friends who live nearby, and they have been spending a lot of time at our house. We also have a bigger yard, so they have been spending more time outside.

Everything is still new to us, but it seems as if we made a good move.

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