Missing Silly Little Things

She has only been gone eleven days and I am already missing one of the silly little things we would do almost daily.

Our friend Lorie Malody told us about the word game Wordle and we checked it out and got hooked on playing it. We would do it separately to see who could get the correct answer in the fewest try's. We had a rule that whoever completed it first would let the other know if there was a duplicate letter(s) but that was it. No other clues or suggestions.

We were pretty competitive about it. If one of us was working on it and the other of us was in the room we would hide or cover our screens so the other could not get a peek at how we were progressing with getting the right answer. If we were not in the same room or away from each other we would text each other if/when we got the right answer. The text would indicate the number of tries and if there were duplicates so something like "3 no dups".

We were pretty dedicated and played it pretty much every day. We each had our own strategies. Jennifer would start with a variety of words. I on the other hand always start with the exact same word. I figure someday my number will come up and damn it I am not going to miss it.

Yesterday was the first day since she passed that I attempted to play the game. I completed three tries and I just gave up, it just hurt too much and besides that I only had one correct letter and that was not in the right spot. So the odds were looking like double bogey or worse.

Tonight I told myself you are going to play to the end no matter what. Today's word was MAGMA so the text would have been "5 with 2 dups". So what do I do? I text her phone just because I needed to. I know that seems crazy, but it made me feel good.

Jennifer had seen or read something about the game and that that 4 tries was average or using golf lingo par. So today I got a bogey but give me a break the word did have two duplicate letters.

Neither of us ever hit a hole in one or the jackpot and got the word on the first try. We both hit eagles several times (for non golfers that 2 under par or 2 tries). If anyone reading this has a connection at the New York Times tell them to hook a brother up and make PEARL the word of the day.

I am sure going to miss getting those texts from her or having her tell me "3 No dups".