(Un)wordy Progress

About five years back, my mom sent me an email which said '...The comp has been going into beatific raptures of blue again...' among other things. I remember having to look up both 'beatific' and 'raptures'..basically I had to look up almost every 'big' word she used back then (the days of the GRE word list could provide but temporary relief from this phenomenon). I look up fewer words she uses now..yet the frequency is not low and certainly not 0..how will I ever catch up with that fiction-hungry monster? :)