Day 171: Go on a Tjörney and Eat Rice

This is completely silly but it makes me so happy and pleased with myself that I have to share it. I made up a new word today. Yes, a new word and that word is Tjörney. It's kind of like journey, only much, much better, though you likely will not find it in Webster's dictionary. I probably need to give you a little background to explain why this new, made-up word has me grinning from ear to ear.

Tjörn, which is an actual place, is an island off of the west coast of Sweden near Gothenburg. My husband grew up in this area and his family spent several summers renting cottages on the island of Tjörn before finally purchasing property and building a cottage of their own. Tjörn is a wonderful, magical place. Just a mere hour's drive from the bustling city, and we find ourselves in a completely, different world. Green pastures and craggy cliffs stretch for kilometers (or miles) to meet the North sea, and all of our troubles and worries simply melt away.

I am not really even sure how I came up with the word but I was sitting at my desk at work this morning daydreaming about our journey to the west coast tomorrow and "Tjörney"just popped into my head. I kind of liked it. It had a certain ring to it and I immediately thought of all of the happy times we've spent on Tjörn at my husband's family's summer cottage.

Making up words is not a common practice but I feel I have to share another story about a made up word, or phrase, that a friend and I came up with when I lived in Los Angeles. We met working at the same restaurant and instantly became best friends. We were very silly together and always had fun and one day we just started saying “gin cow” to one another. I don’t even know where it came from but we would say it to one another before shifts at the restaurant. We decided that it meant “make a lot of money” or “good luck”. Either way we felt that it helped. And it made us laugh so that was a perk. We figured it probably meant something else in Chinese so we didn’t say it too loud for fear that we might be offending someone. 

This was, of course, before the age of Internet and Google and we never even thought to look up the real meaning. Until today. I decided after coming up with Tjörney that maybe it was time to see what “gin cow” really meant. Funny enough, it is Thai and it means “eat rice”. I guess put into context it means to eat or have a meal but the word “gin”means “eat” and the word “cow” means “rice”. I find it particularly amusing that we were telling one another to “eat rice” before heading off to work in an upscale, Mexican restaurant.

So the moral of today’s fortune cookie is that I will go on a Tjörney and eat rice in the near future. It is pretty accurate. You know, those fortune cookies are generally spot on.