Everyone in my family, it seems, likes word games and even inventing new words and expressions.

Family lore has it that my paternal grandmother and her sisters lived in a house on the corner in Dvinsk, Latvia. This was before coming to the US in 1922. They would watch from a large picture window and invent funny nicknames for the folks who passed by. I think this was just for fun and not mean-spirited. Grandma Rae also would invent or use expressions such as "Baba Yachna" for a particulary unbecoming housecoat that an older woman might wear. Someone with bad table manners eating too quickly would be "from Hunger Land." She referred to cockroaches, wildlife native to NY apartment buildings as "crock-a-vitches." Dad thought she knew that this was a malapropism, but maybe liked making fun of people from Krakow. Who knows?

Last summer, my niece Hanna, nephew-in-law Jason, and great-niece Yvette were visiting for about a week. We went to the "stumpery" that is, the Victorian-inspired fern garden, at the Rhododenron Species Garden in Federal Way. Hanna thought this was a funny name so she coined the expression, a "shlumpery," a place where you can go looking and feeling really shlumpy but since shlumpiness love company, you could hang out with fellow shlumpers.

Jason came up with a contest to see who could invent names for tourist attractions that no one would want to go to - anti-tourist traps. For example, Mosquito heaven camping grounds, or the Salmonella Seafood restaurant. What about the Belly Acres Sleep-away Camp for children? I really got to like this idea of opposite attractions.

I love to create floral arrangements at home but there comes a time when it looks like Miss Haversham from Great Expectations selected the flowers. What about the Leadfoot School of Ballet? Dr. Frankenstein's Plastic Surgery. The "Who Listens?" school of therapy. I think I will stop here but you get the idea. Oh, what about going to the painting exhibit by Jason Pollack, Jackson Pollack's less-talented cousin?