The Importance of Words: Author Thoughts

Having a large vocabulary is important, especially if you want to be a writer. Although my vocabulary is no where close to where I want it to be, I do know a lot of words that aren't used by most people on a day-to-day basis. These words seemingly flow out of my fingers while I'm typing. Words like eminence, consternation, corpulent, vehement, bolstered, vendetta, utmost, and immensely pepper the pages of my stories, keeping repetitiveness at bay.

My mind also works fairly fast while coming up with the definition to a word while playing a game. Take Blurt! for instance. In Blurt! someone reads a question such as "What is an event that comes once a year called?" and the first person to blurt out the answer ("Annual!") gets a point. We played it last night and it was incredibly enjoyable.

So, in writing and games I have a good grasp the English language, but then comes this thing called speaking. I'm not sure about where you live, but in our household and at my job it's a common and important part of life.

Yesterday my mom said she was thinking of writing a book about having a daughter who was an author. That was after I tried to explain what I'd been doing and I said something to the effect of:
"I spent an hour getting some cleanness done." Then I stopped and shook my head, confused because the words had not come out the correct way. Another time a few months ago I was explaining to a friend that if she needed another jacket she could use one of mine, but instead the words came out in an interesting manner. "If you need more jacketed, I have some in the closest." Hum... Real descriptive and impressive.
You probably can't tell from this picture, but I'm sitting here blogging and watching it snow. Oh, beautiful snow!Then there are words in my vocabulary that I can figure out how to spell and I know their meaning, but I have no clue how to pronounce them. 
Or words that I use correctly in a sentence but if someone asked me to define it I would give them a wild-eyed look as I conduct an internet search on my phone. 
Then of course come the words that I think I know the right meaning, but after I write them down I start doubting myself. Take conduct for example. As soon as I wrote that my brain sent out a soft warning bell and said Check that out, please. So, I looked it up and according to the second definition in my dictionary it does indeed fit my sentence. 
Often times when I'm writing (or even speaking) I can think of a vague definition to what I'm trying to communicate, but the "perfect" word isn't coming to mind. That's why I think of a thesaurus as one of my most important tools. I use a thesaurus all. the. time. In fact, this is probably one of the first posts in months that I haven't used a thesaurus, and that's because I wanted to see what words I could come up with unassisted. 
One of my biggest nemeses when it comes to English words is trying to spell them. They're downright difficult at times. It's as if they gathered together and cackled uproariously as each word chose how it would be spelled and how many "rules" it would break. Not cool. 
I could go on, but I'll be late for my non-writing job if I do, so I guess I'll end with each of you imagining a board meeting of ornery words drinking iced tea and munching on nuts as they write their names in the dictionary. 
* * *What about you? What is your biggest strength in the English language? What about your biggest weakness?