The Height of Irony?

So, recently our neighborhood went to single stream recycling. Yipee. I had 4 different bins I used for recycling; I kept only 2. One of these was a big blue plastic garbage can.

It was pretty obvious that it held recycling. Cans, bottles, plastic, cardboard. No bags. But others kept putting bags in it, and then when went to put out recycles, I'd have to pull the garbage out (ick), move it to the garbage cans, dump my recycles, then go wash my hands several times. 

I solved the problem. I wrote "recycle" on the can, with the cute little arrows. Now everyone in my household knows it's recycling!

The garbage men, however, didn't understand the message, and they recycled my can. 

Back to square one.

~~~~~

My husband sent me an email before he left work for grocery shopping: "anything you need at the store toady?"

Now, if I were truly the venemous harridan I purport, my answer should have been, "Just a dictionary for you, my typing-challenged friend."

Instead, I answered: "Since when have I been your toady?" To which he verbally replied (after I made a great deal of being quite obsequious and pandering)... do you know where that term comes from?  I didn't.

Apparently, in olden times, when charlatans roamed the earth (instead of cable television), they would hawk their cures and wares with a little help of an assistant. The assistant would eat a toad, which everyone knew was a recipe for death, and then the charlatan would heal him! So, the old word for shyster-side-kick was toad-eater. Eventually, the guy who would do anything to suck up to the guy in charge was called the toad-eater, or toady.

There's your etymology for the day. The whole conversation has made me want to go watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail - the "she's a witch" scene, if you know what I mean.

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