Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Betsey. Oh, you recognize my voice? Ha ha, I get that a lot this time of year. I'm somewhat of a celebrity come the holidays. Maybe you have heard me on the radio? Why yes I AM the voice of Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey! Good job! Here, this one's just for you: "Ee-ahh, ee-ahh"
Despite how obscenely commercial Christmas is, I love every bit of it: the bright colors, the flamboyant lights, the music, the constant eating and drinking. It’s like
Night would fall on Christmas Eve, and our parents would try to hustle us to bed with the classic “Santa won’t come if you’re not asleep” threat; this is not helpful, however, when you’re a seven-year old insomniac. Instead of struggling to stay awake to see what happened, I remember actually throwing myself into a sheer panic fearing that Santa Claus would know I was awake and skip on to the next house.
In the end, it'd all go off without a hitch, and come Christmas morning we’d be up before the sun was. Partly because we were early risers in our youth, but mostly because I’d feel a presence, open my eyes, and see my sister’s eyeballs no more than one inch from my face. She’s now 21 and has yet to relinquish her role as the Christmas Day family alarm clock. Once she managed to successfully awaken her first victim (me, since my room was the closest), she then sprang into full-speed action, bouncing up and down and off the walls like a super ball. My sister is also the one person who shot into super ball mode not only opening her own presents, but when everyone else was opening theirs.
Finally, the parents, freshly showered and yet back in their pajamas for the sake of the pictures (when every opened present was followed by "ok, now hold it up" and a flash), would slowly emerge from their bedroom as if they were ethereal beings gracing us with their presence. My sister, still bouncing, would squeal “Can we go down yet?” and before we even heard an answer we would be scrambling down the stairs and sliding across tile floors until we reached the family room.
To our delight, the carrots had always been nibbled, the milk was always gone but for a few drops, and just a few crumbs were sprinkled on the plate where the cookies had once sat. Some years, Santa would leave behind one half-bitten Oreo, and we’d marvel at it as if it were the freakin’ holy grail.
So while we're no longer kids and we now know that our parents - and now we, as well - suffer through daunting credit card bills, Christmas is still Christmas. Plus, our presents are still signed "from Santa".
... by a semi-disgruntled worker
Caffeine
Between coffee, diet coke and an occasional tea, my intake of various caffeine-infused libations essentially sets the structure for each work day. For example, 11:45am means time for a 1/2-hour coffee at the bar downstairs. If it's the start of the day and you don't yet see a mug of steaming energy in my hands, don't even think about asking me to get elbow-deep in html code, repetitive price tables and commercial writing jam-packed with enthusiasm, cheesy adjectives and an obscene amount of exclamation marks.
Post-its
While I have spent a lifetime practicing the art of writing notes on my hands, post-it notes bring all sorts of joy to my life. Even when we were young'ns playing office, the best parts were easily: 1) speaker-phoning each other, 2) ignoring the phrase "no, don't touch that", and 3) rummaging through my dad's supply closet and swiping legal pads, pens and post-its. At work, post-its literally frame my computer screen and part of the wall. Plus, making bulleted lists in pretty colors gives me a false feeling of productivity.
Snacks
Here at my job, we eat our feelings. Stress, boredom, frustration... all roads lead to cookies.
Facebook
What better way to procrastinate than by compulsively clicking refresh to see who, in the past 45 seconds, a) has gotten hitched, b) has broken up, c) has popped out a few puppies, d) blacked out last weekend, e) has posted new pictures, f) has changed jobs, g) has joined facebook... and so on and so forth. It's essential that I know, since we are clearly so intimately close that I don't know first-hand.
Sense of humor
That way, when wintry days arise in which neither the heat nor the internet work (kind of important, when you work in the company's internet department), you can just say 'hey, if penguins have no need for heat or functioning technology, neither do I.' Rad.
9:25am. A middle-aged woman slowly limps her way down the sidewalk. She leans heavily on a cane with each step she takes... yet she wears 4" stiletto heels.
Spanish women's obsession with heels hits a new - and potentially dangerous - high.
With newspaper spread over the entire floor, the coffee table pushed to the side, three different knives and spoons of various sizes... we carved the best jack-o-lantern EVER. For the record, Alfonso was an excellent first-time scooper.
Despite the sad and inevitable day each year when the local Dairy Queen would close for winter, I have always loved fall and everything that it entailed. Picking out pumpkins. Leaves in deep shades of red and orange. Apple-picking and haunted hay rides at the town's orchards. Chilly walks and running from the frigid waves at the beach. Cider. Brand-new fleece jackets. Lighting the fire in the fireplace for the first time of the season. Launching ourselves, kamikaze-style and giggling, into giant piles of fallen leaves... much to the dismay of a certain dad who may or may not have just spent hours raking all the leaves in the yard into orderly piles to be bagged up and discarded.
Fall, of course, culminated in the biggest event of the season: Halloween. When I was growing up it was FANTASTIC. I think it's what led to the chocolate binges that I still succumb to from time to time... well, replace "from time to time" with "on a daily basis." I don't know until what age I trick-or-treated, but it was probably pushing that limit when adults open the door and think to themselves, "hmm, aren't we a little old for this?"
Our little pint-size posse - the Matternlets and the Walkerlets - would always meet up first for pictures at the request/ demand of our camera-toting mothers who would somehow each manage to use up three whole rolls of film on a mere six costume-clad kids. We have envelopes upon envelopes jam-packed with snapshots of smiling superheroes, angels, clowns and cats, all of us armed with our pillow cases and pumpkin buckets and with a clear mission ahead of us: sugar.
The best years were the ones in which, after the picture-taking frenzy finally wrapped up, we managed to coerce one of our dads into pulling us around from house to house, us crammed into a wagon hitched up to the back of a tractor and sticking our tongues out as we passed the neighborhood kids who had to trick-or-treat on foot, while the moms stayed behind to hold down the fort and shower the arriving princesses, monsters and devils with ooh's, ahh's and candy. To this day my mom still lives for Halloween, her jack-o-lantern lit in the front window hours in advance, a big bowl of candy waiting in the foyer and a pen and piece of paper set out to keep a tally of the number of kids who come to the door. I will bet money that she'll give me the official 2007 stats during our next phone call.
Once we made it to the very last house on Village Drive, a route which at the time seemed to last for hours and hours, we piled back into the wagon - our once-empty sacks and buckets now bulging with sweets - for the voyage back to our respective houses. This is when - well, in our house at least - the business part of the evening commenced.
My brother, my sister and I would each rip off our costumes and claim a separate parcel of the family room carpet, where we then conducted inventory with a surprising degree of organization and formality. This is also when we'd find out that there were really cool neighbors (the ones who handed out king-size chocolate bars) and very, VERY uncool ones (the neighborhood grinch up the street who insisted on handing out free samples of toothpaste each year).
Candy was sorted into their respective piles and rows. KitKats lined up side-by-side. Packs of Bubbalicious gum. Ring pops and Skittles. Tootsie rolls, M&M's and gummy bears. Then there was of course the designated "junk" pile, where things like Sugar Daddy's, little boxes of raisins and the annual tubes of toothpaste were quickly discarded. This was subsequently also the pile we allowed our parents to choose from.
We'd spend at least a half hour with our stern business faces on, bartering our candy and trading with each other, our energetic negotiations fueled by a steady consumption of one of everything. The family room quickly turned into a microcosm of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. One Snickers bar for 2 tootsie pops. Three bags of Skittles and one of Sour Patch kids for that king size Hershey bar. I imagine it must have been quite the eyebrow-raising spectacle for our parents.
Once the trades were complete and we began to come down from our sugar-induced highs, we'd place the candy back into our buckets, which were then placed on top of the refrigerator. However, I'm relatively certain that once we were all tucked into bed with stomach aches, sticky hands and traces of paint still on our faces, our parents would sneak our pumpkins down from their high perches... and deviate from the junk piles we so graciously gave them.
1 chocolate JellyBelly
+
1 toasted marshmallow JellyBelly
-----------------------------------------
= S'mores party in my mouth!
I understand that everyone has gripes about their boss, I really do. However, we are dealing with an extreme case here. Until you actually spend time - albeit just an hour - in our little Internet department, you will never be able to truly grasp what we're dealing with on a daily basis. Whenever I've tried to describe, I've ended up coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to really convey him as a concept. However, a coworker recently managed to do the seemingly impossible by summing things up with just a few words:
"You ask him what time it is and he tells you it's raining outside."
I was lying in bed last night thinking about how while commercial website stuff is easy as pie, sometimes I have a really hard time being creative 8 hours a day at work whenever I'm assigned to do a travel guide. I mean really... there's only so much you can do to make 13th-century history "come alive," a dusty archaeological museum seem like a "can't miss" or a Spanish language course (the one commercial page and therefore whole purpose of each 100-page guide website) sound as exciting as a wild night of debauchery on the town. I myself prefer to limit my vacation to non-educational activities like eating, drinking, snapping a few photos and being a haughty American tourist.
So somehow that led me to thinking about how I used to write stories non-stop as a child. At the time I thought I was destined for awards... that my novels would line bookstore shelves... that people would cry over the heart-breaking dramatic scenes and chuckle at my witty way of describing amusing encounters between the well-developed and devilishly attractive characters. The words flowed from my magic marker onto the construction paper like fudge onto an ice cream sundae.
Back in the care-free days of Flanders Elementary School, we even got to publish our own "books." Basically, we scribbled the stories down in our still-in-the-works chicken scratch. Some volunteer mom would type these stories up, leaving the majority of each page blank so that you could grace it not only with your literary opus, but also with your artistic talents. Then, you picked out the fabric that would be on the cover and voila! A few weeks later you had, in your hands, a published hardcover book to bring home and show off.
So then I tried to remember what stories I had written... which is when I realized that my imagination was a bit on the strange side, even at the tender age of 8. Here's the plotline of one of my childhood stories. I remember my teacher actually sat down like, hmm Betsey this isn't really your best work, are you sure you don't focus on a different story? But I published it anyway. What can I say, I was dedicated to my craft.
Basically, it starts out with a woman who, to my recollection, has no name but is in the hospital because she's pregnant. She realizes she has to go to the bathroom, so she makes it there and is doing her business when plop... the baby falls out into the toilet like a turd. I was clearly a bit confused at the time regarding certain parts of the anatomy and their corresponding functions. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes... I actually employed the word "plop."
She names her beloved newborn bundle-of-joy Diana, and after a few days they go home to embark on their lives as a family. Diana has a happy childhood, it would seem, but then one day she wakes up and her leg hurts. So her mom brings her to the hospital, where they discover she has a broken leg. So they give her a bright pink cast and she's all pumped because people get to sign it and such. Then, you turn the page....
...and the one line reads "The next day, Diana died." (I'm pretty sure this is when my teacher started raising her eyebrows.) So they have a funeral and her mom is a wreck. Then she decides to get four cats. The end.
Who smells a Nobel Prize for Literature in my future?
So I have dreams a lot when I sleep... and not of the unicorns or lottery-winning variety, either. Ironically, the earliest dream that I can remember involved my entire family getting eaten by alligators that circled in a dark pit located just inside the door to the local Cumberland Farms (ironic because they had gone in to buy Powerball tickets). I was 8.
My most consistent dream is being in a train that goes over a cliff due to a collapsed bridge. Freefalling. It's the dream I have every time I get into that "just falling asleep" stage when you randomly jump back awake.
Well, last night I had a dream that I was in the USA but trying to get back to Spain. For some reason the possibility of a plane flight didn't come into play, and yet a magical crosswalk did.
Basically, an otherwise white-striped, run-of-the-mill crosswalk in (whatever city I was in) took on the ability to transport people to other countries. All you had to do was pinpoint the exact moment at which this phenomenon would transpire, and then cross the crosswalk running at full speed... and bam! You'd end up in the destination of your choice. Kind of like Back to the Future.
However, I missed "the moment" because the crosswalk light didn't turn green in time, and I began running frantically back and forth across the crosswalk until I had to get dragged off the street by on-lookers. The crosswalk light had turned red again, and there was oncoming traffic.
WTF?
Oh and by the way, my apologies to Alfonso but I've fallen head over heels in love with Clyde.
Collective "awwwwwwwww."
The other day, I was involved in - and by "involved" I obviously mean in the passive, "just listening while I eat" kind of way - a conversation in which I'm pretty sure the general consensus was that the workplace in the United States is more laid-back than in Spain. Something along the lines of how, in the US, it seems that employees have more dress down days or don't have to go as fancy-shmancy to work to begin with. IIIIIIII disagreed (in my head), but decided to mull the idea over in the event that my mind was severely biased or otherwise warped. Nope, still disagree.
So then yesterday I came across an article in the NY Times talking about the American obsession with work, this time regarding taking vacation (or rather lack thereof). Two lil tidbits:
Simplified a bit, it runs as follows: a nation of remarkably productive, often well-paid workers who are becoming increasingly reluctant to pause from their labors and refresh their souls — a nation whose cash-drenched corporate employers typically don’t pay for much time off (less than two weeks annually, on average), a nation whose globe-gripping federal government is the only one in the whole industrialized world not to legally require generous periods of paid kick-back-and-hang time — is a nation that’s socially screwed up, particularly in comparison with European countries like France, which orders its citizens outside to play for the entire month of August and a few other weeks spread through the year.
The most widely cited diagnoses of our allegedly harmful undervacationing can be found by searching the Internet, the same Internet that even the dwindling number of full-vacation-takers are purportedly using to elevate their stress levels by logging on from beach resorts and national parks — where, according to concerned observers, they would be better off restricting themselves to restorative, out-of-cellphone-range pursuits like brisk morning swims and sunset nature walks. That fewer of us are doing so, it’s said, is a symptom of either anxious overcompetiveness; upward-mobility addiction ; the breakdown of the family...
The article then lists the following stats:
Legally required paid annual leave around the world, by days:
France: 30
Sweden: 25
Spain: 22
Australia: 20
Germany: 20
UK: 20
Canada: 10
Japan: 10
USA: 0... ZERO... ZILCH... NADA!
I'm sorry, but I can't see how any industrialized country that can legally bind you to your cubicle every single day, all year-round and expect 150% productivity can ever be called "relaxed." In fact, one of the reasons I'm drawn to Spain in the first place is the overwhelmingly relaxed atmosphere, at least by comparison. People enjoying life, meals that last for hours, people-watching from the hundreds sidewalk cafés, Sunday strolls, staying out all night (despite my geriatric ways of late) because you can and, yes, more vacation days to let you kick back and remember that there is more to life than alarm clocks, clients, reports and pesky coworkers.
So sure, Madrid is undeniably a big, bustling city, and granted I don't have, nor am I interested in, some hot-shot corporate job... but to me the vibe is a billion times more laid-back than anything I've known. Hell, it's more laid-back than the Student Center at Holy Cross. Does New York City, Washington D.C. or even Topeka, Kansas empty out overnight for an entire month during the summer? Negative. American cities are non-stop, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Right now in Spain, however, as Spaniards are off traveling, sleeping, hanging out with family and frolicking at the beach for a month, the capital city of Spain is so quiet that at night as I'm reading with the window open I can hear the chiming of the crosswalk light from a block away.
Now I love opening up my gmail and seeing that I have an email or two just waiting to be torn into. Oh, and by "something" I mean something other than the New York Times "Today's Headlines" that I signed up for or Myspace friend requests from 17 year old boys in the Dominican Republic who I don't know. Now if that something, on the other hand, happens to be an email from Emily Pereira, well... it's pretty much guaranteed to be an entertaining read.
During our Holy Cross year in Sevilla, Emily was always the comedic relief of the 8 of us... and undeniably everyone's favorite little Portuguesa. Now in D.C., I can only imagine that she's the life of the party at the State Department, where she's " ridding the world of AIDS from my position as assistant to the ambassador." Well, I don't know how many parties are to be had when you're dealing with AIDS legislation and such all day, but... you know what I mean.
Emily and I email back and forth EXTREMELY irregularly, meaning we'll go for months at a time without a word and then bust out a string of emails trying to out-funny each other. So after not hearing from her for ohhh 5 months I get a gem of an email that, before going into the usual string of funny anecdotes and life updates, starts out with:
little miss betty, where have you been?
out in the barn, playing with the hen?
are you still in spain, you crazy nut?
wearing pointy high heels and a layered hair cut?
by,
emily pereira
Hell, any email that starts out with a poem and ends with a "you are my soul sister girl. my souuull sister" is the way straight to my heart. Well, that and maybe pie.
Aside from folks of the geriatric and/ or disabled community, who waits 5 minutes for an elevator only to get off on the first floor?
Some say that a successful career is personally rewarding. Others contend that having a gaggle of diaper-wearing screamers running around and knocking things off store shelves is the cherry on top of the sundae of life. Me? I'm a whole hell of a lot simpler- well, that and I'm a whole lot less ambitious (shrug) and a whole lot less pregnant (shudder, gag, choke). The first three things that come to MY mind when I think of life's rewards are: 1) 2 scoops of moose tracks ice cream, 2) popping open a brand-spankin'-new cannister of tennis balls and, finally, 3) a good stretch.
I'm not referring to the "Doctors recommend that you stretch for at least 15 minutes before and after exercising" type of stretching, either. That's just damage control- head out for a run sans stretch and risk destroying the perfect muscles of your lithe gams. Kind of like buying flood insurance when you don't anticipate the flooding of any nearby bodies of water. You naively bank on maintaining an incident-free streak while running the risk of flooding your basement, thereby destroying great-great-grandpa's wooden leg or anything else deemed worthy of saving but not worthy of ground floor status.
When I say stretch, I'm talking about taking multiple minutes in the morning upon waking up (after you finally shut the snooze alarm off on the 4th, 5th or 6th round of infernal beeping) to just stretch out like a cat, writhe around and contort your body in ways that, should they be spotted, would land you a quick appointment with an exorcist.
During high school, for example, my morning routine was: wake up, call Mark and wake him up, and then - en route to the shower - throw my upper body over the edge of the bed, my legs still sprawled up top, and then stretch out in all directions until I slid into a heap of limbs on the floor. Then, I'd stretch there too, taking advantage of the floorspace. My parents would walk by my room, find me hanging upside down off the bed and - naturally, I suppose - wonder what the frijoles their daughter was doing.
This morning, due to an early wake-up to travel across the city by 8:30am, I missed out on my morning stretch. So what did I do when I got to work? Locked myself in the bathroom and went to town.
Alfonso: (insert string of unintelligible complaints) Ugh it's too hot in Sevilla... it's an inferno! Nobody likes it here... these aren't liveable conditions. Don't you hear those birds? They're making all that noise because it's so %&@$ing hot out here... (etc.)
Betsey: (rolls eyes)
...2 minutes pass...
Betsey: Hear those birds? You know what? They're HAPPY. They're HAPPY birds who LOVE Sevilla... they're SINGING with glee, not complaining because they're hot.
... Silence...
Betsey: Oh... Ok so that's the noise of the crosswalk light... but EVEN so...
Now every person has their fair share of childhood peculiarities that they may or may not share with their friends. My dad, for example, used to play a game with his neighborhood chums back in the good ole days in which they competed to see who could hit their head the hardest on a driveway. Due to a stray pebble, he still has a literal dent in his forehead from this wholesome childhood past-time... but gosh darn it did he win.
Mine? Well other than the whole ambiguous gender issue, there was my obsession with sleeping with all my stuffed animals because a) I really did feel bad if I didn't pay equal attention to all of them and actually feared a revolt, and b) I needed to keep them protected from the mask-wearing robber who was surely on his way to climb up a ladder, in through my window and straight after my beloved stuffed critters.
Then there was my massive sticker and keychain collections, both of which I am still incapable of throwing out. Not to mention my unwavering refusals to put jelly on my peanut butter sandwiches, try new things, and eat anything white (milk, coconut, cheese, etc.). My love of turning a bike upside down and pretending it was an ice cream maker. The "Roadrunner" game I used to play with my sibling, which consisted of running around in a circle in the family room saying "meep meep" "meep meep" as we ran. Then there's my steadfast aversion towards change, as demonstrated by the puffalump show-and-tell incidents as described 2 posts ago; dressing up as a cat for 6 straight years for Halloween; requesting that my mom make me the exact same birthday cake - the one with flattened gumdrop balloons and licorice strings - 4 years in a row... trust me, the list is endless.
Anyway, the Matterns are clearly not alone. By far the best part of my week, thus far, has been learning about Joanne's favorite childhood hobby. So, without further ado, enjoy the inner workings of a young Egnatchik, as narrated via gmail chat:
me: im imagining the egnatchik household
I was just skimming my local Connecticut newspaper's headlines... and these two were literally one right after the other:
"Nutrition-Education Programs Fail in Obesity Fight" -- About the government funding of programs and initiatives to promote healthy eating.
directly followed by...
"Only in America: Nation Celebrates a New Eating Champion" -- About the new champion of the annual Coney Island hotdog-eating contest. He ate 66 hotdogs, bun included, in 12 minutes.
My first favorite television show was David the Gnome, which I watched each day before scrambling off to Mike Walker's driveway in hopes of arriving at his mailbox before him and subsequently ensuring my spot in the front row on the bus (nerd alert) en route to a stimulating afternoon of kindergarten.
The memory of enjoying the adventures of David and his pint-size posse goes hand-in-hand with the memory of my childhood babysitter/ honorary grandmother Phoebe, who would lay out a delicious daily spread of chicken nuggets arranged in a circle around a squirt of ketchup, hogdogs finely chopped into quartered slices ALSO symmetrically arranged around a squirt of ketchup, de-crusted peanut butter sandwiches sans jelly, or waffles cut perfectly along the lines. Who knew such an anal 5 year old could blossom into such an indifferent 24 year old whose life motto is "meh, whatever."
Tangent: Another fun kindergarten tidbit is that I would bring the exact same thing in each day for
"show-and-tell": my beloved Christmas mouse puffalump (see photo). The game involved a format in which the show-and-teller gave hints to his or her fellow kidlets, who then tried to guess what the mystery object was. My turn usually ended with someone muttering "ughhh the puffalump again?" and yet I - clearly living in a world of one - would get giddy with content over the success of my hints as if it were the first time. Only now do I feel mildly dim-witted for this. Hey, hindsight's 20-20, right?
Punky Brewster is another classic, partly because she was essentially my twin and partly because Brandon was a carbon copy of my golden retriever Winston, aka "Winnie." Plus, the gal's fashion sense was way ahead of her time. Around the same time I was enthralled by Small Wonder, in which it turns out that a cookie-cutter middle class family has a robot daughter who wears the same lacy frock every day. Yes, a frock. While other kids had scraped knees, Vicky experienced the occasional short circuit. I think it was when her parents opened up her back revealing her circuit box that I deemed it a masterpiece.
And then... there was MacGyver: the crush of my childhood. Dreeeeeamboat, toot toot. In my pre-pubescent eyes, he could do no wrong. His voluminous locks styled effortlessly into the most glorious mullet to grace the small screen, his hip acid-wash jeans tapering down just so behind the tongues of his rockin' high-tops, and his discrete way with t
he ladies had me completely smitten. Plus, his quick wit and resourcefulness in moments of crisis totally blew the shipwrecked professor (also dreamy in his own right) of Gilligan's Island fame and his coconut telephone totally out of the water-- pun 100% intended.
Luckily, they air hours of MacGyver re-runs every morning and afternoon in Spain. Not so luckily, I made the mistake of switching the language into English- now an option with a few of the tv channels. As an enamoured young'n, I never quite came to realize that he was great at action but terrrrrrible at dialogue. In a world of awful dub jobs, you know it's bad when the cheesy Spanish voice they give to American tv show characters is better than the real thing.
"Such a regal young fellow. It is amazing to see the quick progression of development in this breed. One can only imagine the deep bark of this gentle giant. You lips are so full and lushious. Massive kisses and ear rubs to you sweet baby."
One of my go-to stops as I do my morning internet rounds (and therefore postpone doing any actual "work" until after the coffee hits) is The Daily Puppy, a website that each day features a different plucky little pooch.
On my google homepage (yes, another pre-caffeination, pro-procrastination creation), I have Daily Puppy well above world news, weather and (gasp!) even celebrity gossip. Frankly, those pudgy little chow-chows, puggles, labs and shih-tzus have a much better impact on my a.m. attitude towards life than tuberculosis outbreaks, plane crashes and even the Hollywood trainwrecks' latest stints in rehab.
Well I'm certainly not the only one frequenting the Daily Puppy (www.dailypuppy.com, if you want to aww along with me), but I'll bet I'm one of the most normal of the crew. Visitors can browse through each puppy's pictures, award 1 through 11 virtual biscuits and leave comments. Now I love the little tail-wagging fur-balls, but sometimes I can't help but think that the real creatures are some of the people who leave comments. I can picture them sitting in their home, a living shrine to their ankle-biting Yorkie, dedicating their lives to painting their dogs' toe nails, maxing out their credit cards on designer doggie rain coats and abusing the utilization of the baby voice. For instance:
During the second year of my illustrious - illustrious in this context translating to frequent hangovers, constant procrastination and the rediscovery of Lucky Charms - academic career at Holy Cross, I was faced with a decision. No, not deciding whether or not to go to Spain the following year, but rather deciding which of my remaining core requirements I would fill and which ones I would put off until senior year.
Deciding to ignore icky-icky science for as long as humanly possible, I decided that I would suck it up and get my philosophy requirement out of the way. I would eventually fill that remaining math/science requirement during my final semester with a riveting class commonly referred to as Physics for Dummies. The geology class, better known as "Rocks for Jocks," had - much to my chagrin - been cancelled the previous year with the retirement of its 964-year old professor.
Now I'm not exactly into the whole "what is life, why do we exist" spiel, so when perusing the catalogue for possible philosophy courses, I narrowed in on a class called Logic & Language. I figured it would be something like the logical study of language and therefore devoid of all that far-fetched philosophical bull-poo. I was half right, but that's a story for another day. Let's just put it this way. I never "did" office hours. Never! And yet I was in that professor's office at least 8 times that semester with a look on my face which I believe communicated to him what I was feeling: "What the FRIJOLES are you talking about?"
The professor of the class was German, and whenever he spoke I couldn't help but think of him as one of the jolly animatronic oompah boys in the Bavarian Christmas Village at the Yankee Candle Company in Massachusetts (exactly 2 people will know what I'm talking about). Sure, he'd often launch into a lesson speaking and scribbling on the board in his mother tongue. Sure, sometimes we had no idea what the guy was saying or how to spell any of the philosopher names that he spat out because his accent was so thick that everything just sounded like spoken marbles. However, when it came to conjunctions, the guy was a veritable fiend.
I have never in my life heard anybody else who so often integrates "ergo," "hitherto," "notwithstanding" and "thenceforth" into conversations- even when I'd run into him outside of class and he'd chat about his son's soccer (or "sog-haahhh") game. The pride and joy of his mental bank of conjunctions was, without a doubt, "insofar as." I quickly took to keeping a tally at the top my page of notes (I remember once counting over 65), something I've done since middle school whenever I've picked up on teachers' habits- an entertaining tactic to get through class without falling asleep. However, I often had to stop, as the class material had such an incredible knack for being boring that I would become delirious, nearly erupting into laughing fits every time he said it.
I often contemplated my professor's dominance of the conjunction; I couldn't help but picture the miniature red-cheeked version of my professor as a child in the Bavarian Alps reciting lists of conjunctions in knee socks and lederhosen, a beer stein in one hand and a fork loaded up with kraut in the other. Oh, and then Heidi and Peter showed up and they ran off to frolic with the goats.
Fat, in most contexts, brings to mind images of obese swimsuit-clad women at theme parks, colossal men scratching their asses and plump 9 year olds named Marshall who thrive on a steady diet of Ruffles, Hershey bars and Big Macs.
Hell, as we all know, is the final hang-out for the world's so-called "bad boys," not to mention the cozy subterranean abode of Lucifer himself. A land with no exit door, but with an abundance of bubbling magma, nursing home thieves and politicians. Now that my imagination's running wild, I can't help but wonder if hell has monasteries for "wayward" priests. Hmm.
So Fat Hell would be what? A fiery abyss ruled by a tubby lord of darkness with chocolate constantly smeared in the corners of his mouth? No, no, no! Fat Hell may seem - to the untrained imagination - the epitome of unappealing destinations. However, the negatives cancel each other out, making Fat Hell a paradisaical land. It's pure mathematics, folks.
Comparable in many ways to Willy Wonka's clandestine factory of widespread literary and cinematic acclaim, Fat Hell is a magical place to which my friend Joanne and I frequently refer. No Oompa-Loompas though; frankly, they creep me out with their Gregorian-like chanting and orange hues acquired from extensive fake-baking sessions in the melanoma booths.
Despite its reference to Hell, Fat Hell is not yet a part of popular culture and it's definitely not used as a fist-waving threat in any recognized religion. However, plans are tenatively in the works for the creation of a non-suicidal, non-comet-chasing but sugar-loving and hyperactive cult in which adoring members bow down and lay offerings of Cadbury mini-eggs at the feet of chocolate effigies of their wise leader: me.
Anyway, Fat Hell is a positive place. If I walk into a room at 9:00 in the morning and Joanne is elbow deep in apple pie, I simply acknowledge what we both know: she's going to fat hell. Then we laugh maniacally and she hands me a fork. If Joanne condemns me to Fat Hell just for the heck of it, we toast to my impending doom by running out to buy pair of pastries. After all, being condemned to Fat Hell is, when it comes down to it, the equivalent of being exiled to an island in the Caribbean with swaying palm trees, crystalline waters and a tan daquiri-fetching cabana boy named Diego.
All that said, I'm pleased to present the Fat Hell Recipe of the Month.
Fat Hell Recipe of the Month
Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Sandwich
Ingredients:
2 slices of bread (alternate possibility and Betsey favorite: 2 graham crackers)
Skippy Superchunk Peanut Butter, 2 tablespoons or to taste
Betty Crocker "Rich & Creamy" Chocolate Frosting, 2 tablespoons or to taste
Directions:
Create. Enjoy.
I spent the night in the city park. Sure, it's not a five-star hotel resort, and sure, the nights in the park are cold and boy are they dark... but the park affords us hours of tranquil peace in which we can dream about what life could have been, should fortune have only chosen a different path for us.
We - that is, us lowly guys - aren't picky when it comes to sleeping accommodations. Essentially we just settle in for the evening wherever we wind up once the sun goes down. Next to the swings, underneath the slide, inside the sandbox... wherever, really. Considering where some of us wind up, the park is like the country club of us ill-fated nobodies. The silence goes undisturbed- well, aside from the occasional prostitute that click-clacks by in her 5-inch platform heels in search of clientele. As long as they don't inadvertently step on us (the heels on those duds can inflict quite the blinding degree of pain), we coexist quite peacefully with society's godforsaken outcasts. Prostitutes, beggars, drug dealers, runaway teens...and us. We all have a common bond... a thread that unites us: people look down upon us. They forget us. We are, in every sense of the word, anonymous.
As the city's forgotten ones, we spend all day being walked on, kicked through the streets, thrown into puddles. For the love of God, if I had to tally up the number of times a sweater-wearing Yorkshire terrier has lifted its leg to shower me with its morning bowl of filtered water... well let's just say I don't have the fingers and toes to count that high. It's humiliating.
Today, I spent earliest moments of the morning enduring the kicking rage of a couple of ratty-haired school children whose parents, accompanying them to school while chattering away on their expensive cell phones, have clearly failed to provide an adequate upbringing. What ever happened to love and respect towards all of God's creations? Do you know what it's like to be kicked down the street, wind up in a puddle and lie there shocked and appalled as nobody says a word? Let's just say it's not an ego-booster.
Feeling particularly dejected following the morning's incident, I was presented with the unique opportunity - the opportunity we all wait and hope for - to even the score against the world's so-called "blessed" ones. It was going to be a victory for all of us... a symbolic event that would give us hope and change the future. Images flashed through my mind of me - little ole me - appearing in the history books, the encyclopedias, the classroom posters. They would interview me in Time Magazine about my inspiring rags to riches story, and I'd speak eloquently about the French Revolution, Rosa Parks' quest for equality through simple acts and my dream of eradicating social stratification around the globe.
I saw her coming nearly a block away. She was absolutely stunning. I hated her confident stride, her elegant air and her designer busines suit. I conveniently got in her way. Well, that is, I conveniently got in the way of one of her expensive European stiletto heels. She tripped and fell to her knees. She looked down at me and scowled before glancing around and smiling awkwardly at those who caught her in her fall from grace. I had done it! I was already envisioning my agenda booked solid with speaking engagements, commencement addresses, invitations to black-tie dinners...
But then, she stood up brushing herself off and laughing, commenting to the onlookers about how silly it was of her to have worn her brand new shoes without getting used to them first. Young women who had paused mid-step when they caught the flailing arms out of the corners of their eyes were now sharing a laugh... but they weren't laughing at her, they were chuckling and sympathizing with her!
"Oh why that happened to me just yesterday!"
"You know how us women are with our shoes..."
"Where DID you get those shoes? They're adorable."
No, this couldn't be!!! The young woman flipped her hair, caught her reflection in the store window, and smiled - her chin up and her shoulders back - before continuing along her way... leaving me there, forgotten and defeated, in the middle of the sidewalk.
Such is the frustrated life of a pebble.
Survey: 70 Quirks about me:
1. What are your initials?
EMM... although good ole cousin Bill likes to point out that they're also BM. Whatever dude, his are BO.
2. What is your favorite thing to wear?
an eyepatch. yarrr
3. Last thing you ate?
apple
5. I say Shotgun, you say?
nuh uh I already called it
6. last person you hugged?
lucky, lucky person
7. Does anyone you know wanna date you?
well i certainly hope so
8. Has anyone ever bought you flowers?
yes
9. Name something you like physically about yourself.
toss up between my abs of steel and my rockin ass
10. The last place you went out to dinner to?
kebab!
11. Who is your best friend?
mark j guarraia.. 19 years and going
12.Why are you still up?
namely because they might not take it well if i just passed out on the keyboard
13. Who/What made you angry today?
nobody yet... it's just a matter of time though...
14. What was the last injury you've had?
cut on thumb? does that even count?
15. Do you have any tattoos?
aside from the "naughty" scribed on my ass, nope
16. Favorite type of Food?
potatoes (chips, fries, mashed, baked...)
17. Favorite holidays:
thanksgiving... the only holiday dedicated solely to the art of unbuttoning one's pants and eating oneself into a food coma
18. Do you download music:
yes. arrest me
19. Do you care if your socks are dirty?
well if there's an option between dirty socks and clean ones, i'll take the clean ones...
20. Is your hair clean?
pshhh personal hygiene is overrated... but society says i have to shower, so i do
21. Would you date the person who posted this?
haha
22. Has anyone ever sang or played for you personally?
i think i would laugh... the "hold it in, hold it in... EXPLODE" kind of laugh
24. Do you like Bush?
in either context of the question, no
25. Do you like to swim?
i don't know if i'd define my water activities as "swim" but i like to bob around... particularly if it involves a giant inflatable alligator or something...
26. Have you ever gone white-water rafting?
scares me
27. Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you?
it's spain. it's what old men do
29. Have you met a real redneck?
middlebury, vermont... a town with two bars and fame for being the birthplace of john deere. enough said
30. How is the weather right now?
sunny... it's no match for this fabulous fluorescent lighting though... SIGH
31. What are you listening to right now?
billy joel- downeaster alexa .... NEW ENGLAND REPRESENTTTT
32. What is your current favorite song?
?
33. What was the last movie you watched?
umm... the perfume... or at least the 2/3 of it that i tolerated
34. Do you wear contacts?
20/20 baby!
35. Where was the last place you went besides your house?
work?
36. What are you afraid of?
1. drowning... back seat of a two-door car going off a bridge... does this not bother ANYONE ELSE?
2. birds... i swear those damn pigeons are plotting world domination... i see unbridled wrath in their beady little eyes...
37. How many piercings have you had?
5... we're down to 4 though
38. How many pets do you have?
4
39. What's one thing you've learned this year?
that a spanish term for "camel toe" translates to "deaf mute," because you can read her lips...
40. What do you usually order from Starbucks?
no clue
42. Have you ever fired a gun:
only ones that squirts water
43. Are you missing someone?:
lots of someones
44. Favorite TV show?
arrested development, scrubs, how i met your mother...
45. Do you have an iPod?:
yeah
46. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celeb?
according to those celebrity look-alike photo analyzer thingees, my closest match was lucy liu. fyi, SHE'S CHINESE.
47. Do you have a celeb crush?
of course
48. Who would you like to see right now?
my daaaaaaaaadddyyyyyyy
49. Favorite movie of all time?
little mermaid... OBVI
50. Are you loved?
hope so!
51. Have you ever been caught doing something you weren't suppose to?
who hasn't?
52. Favorite flower?
daffodil perhaps?
53. Butter, plain, or salted popcorn?
butter & salt... if i'm gonna buy popcorn at the movie theater, it had DAMN well promise to give me a heart attack
54. What Magazines are you reading?
i'll spring for an InStyle from time to time... namely when they come with free stuff
55. What's your favorite pair of jeans?
i have 2, and they're from the same place.
56. Has anyone you were really close to passed away recently?
the last was my beloved beta fish, jesus
57. What was the funnest thing you've done in the past 24 hours?
power-walked to work listening to Ace of Base. i know... awesome
58. What's something that really bugs you?
people that can't spell / write; the woman in my office who constantly smokes even though she's 8 months pregnant
59. Do you like Michael Jackson?
his old school music rocks... the fact that he named his son blanket, however, does not
60. What are you wearing right now?
a smirk
61. What's your favorite smell?
just after it rains; the ocean; banana bread in the oven; orange blossoms; fresh cucumber candle from Yankee Candle Company; new tennis balls; fruit markets
62. Favorite baseball team?
red sox!!! who wants to go this summer???
63. Favorite cereal?
lucky charms! i've come a long way since age 6...
65. What's the longest time you've gone without sleep?
3 days in college.... ahhh, holy cross: where your best hasn't been good enough since 1843
66. Last time you went bowling?
when i was home for xmas... wild night in SE CT...
67. Where is the weirdest place you have slept?
well when i was a kid i spent years either sleeping inside my closet or underneath my parents' bed...
68. Who was your last phone call?
BERRRRRRRRRRRRNICE
69. Last time you were at work?
now... and now... annnnd now...
70. What's the closest orange object to you?
close call... either orange juice or an Enforex brochure...
Despite my mother's worries that I had succumbed to the dark world of eating disorders last year, there are few things I lurve more than food. I attributed the unintentional but welcome weight loss to a combination of a) full-day hangovers (which has led me to very nearly swear off heavy drinking) during which I can't eat, and b) power-walking to class, a high-speed daily endeavor not all that different from slalom skiing (just replace the red and blue flags with slow-moving Spanish señoras wrapped head-to-toe in thousands of dollars worth of animal fur). Due to my affinity for waking up late and procrastination in general, I did in 10 minutes what my roommates did in 20 in order to get to school before the spit-flying festivities of Teresa Bordón's riveting 9 a.m. linguistics class commenced.
Digression over. The fondness (understatement) of food - particularly those foods involving high levels of sugar, deep fried potatoes and/ or scoopable lactic products- is genetic to the noble Mattern lineage. It was passed down to me by my dad, Jim "why get 1 cinnamon roll when you can get 2" Mattern, much in the way that other families pass down antique pocket watches or china dishes brought over on the proverbial boat from the homeland. When it comes to edible goodies, the admirable self-control of my mom - Bernie "who wants to split a cookie" Kaiser - clearly has little or no presence in my gene pool.
This brings me to the random encounter of the day.
On my way to work this morning, I decided some mini-donuts would make a delicious companion to my multiple morning cups o' joe. For a fleeting moment (something more or less equal to the speed of light), I contemplated stopping into the fruit market to grab an apple or some other farm-grown product of nutritive value. However, in a mental boxing match of less than one round, fresh produce quickly lost out to the sugar-fused brawn of bite size chocolate-covered rings of dough.
As I cheerfully walk out, donuts in hand, a homeless guy approaches me. To ask for money? No. To ask for donuts? No. To tell me he's Jesus re-risen from the dead? Not even! The comment was essentially the following: "Be careful... pretty girls who eat too much turn out not so pretty."
Don't worry though, the Dr. Phil tough love approach doesn't work well on me.
I was totally that girl at one point. Yes, the one walking around snapping hundreds of pictures, thinking that - in the long run - the pictures that my artistically-inclined eye elected to take would do justice to a 14th century cathedral or a winding, cobblestone street. Hell, I took 400 pictures during Holy Week in Sevilla. Do I ever look at any of them? Rarely. Looking back, I think about 5 pictures to document the week would have sufficed. Frankly, unless I'm on the hunt for a new picture for my computer background, I generally skip right through entire chunks of albums - yes, even my own - until I get to the much more interesting pictures of people... namely the ones in which I look pretty. I kid, I kid..
Sure, pictures are fun to flip through when you feel like getting nostalgic for past experiences. I LOVE looking at pictures from college, for example. Then again, pictures taken at college are 100% necessary- without them, all those fuzzy Friday and Saturday (and Tuesday and Thursday and occasional Wednesday) nights would remain mysterious and forgotten. "Hmm I don't recall doing a kegstand. Why was I in a headlock? Aha that must be where my cell phone is! Oh, so THAT'S why my leg is sporting a bruise the size of Texas. Oh no, did I REALLY wear a trucker hat? Hey wait a minute... I don't smoke! So THAT'S where my pants are. Why am I playing the air guitar on top of the beer pong table?" The 68 long-arm photos (that you SWEAR you didn't take) that magically made their way on your camera served as guides to help piece together an evening's events and fill in the myriad blank moments.
Pictures are also good for - in cases like mine - keeping in touch with people who are far away. But hell, if I only see you twice a year, in the interim I sure as hell don't want to see pictures of a building you saw during your recent business trip to Minneapolis. I'm really only interested in if you got fat since I last saw you. Joke! I want to see you out frollicking through the streets of Manhattan, riding a mechanical bull at the Liquor Store bar in Boston, canoodling with your girlfriend/ boyfriend/ baby-daddy who I haven't met yet, looking all gussied up for your cousin's wedding, etc.
Back to tourism. The thing that kills, kills, KILLS (exaggeration rocks) me is seeing tourists so intent on snapping "the perfect picture" that they miss out on practically everything that lies beyond the limits of the tiny camera window that they have their eyeball constantly plastered to. The desired monument comes into view and BAM- they scramble frantically from one side of a building to another, switch from vertical to horizontal shots, zoom in and zoom out. They don't just sit back and take it all in- the view, the atmosphere, the people, the simple idea that they are looking at something that has been around since before America was even discovered. To contemplate the fact that Segovia's Roman aqueduct has not a single ounce of mortar holding the stones together or that Granada's incredible Alhambra palaces were built prior the existence of Spain as a single, unified entity.
Nowadays you can't walk through a cathedral or read the inscription on a monument without walking straight into someone's picture. It's like a touristic game of minesweeper... First step- clear. Second step- clear. Third step- shit, that entire group of golden agers is about to launch their fanny packs at me. THEN people get pissed at you because you inadvertantly "ruined" a group picture that they roped some poor, unsuspecting victim into taking with 8 different digital cameras. This is the digital age people- share your photos! That's half the benefit of digital photography!
Once they leave a monument, those same tourists then walk through beautiful medieval streets that wind through old buildings en route to the next stop listed on the travel guide itinerary. But, they miss the so-called "little things" along the way because they spend that walk flipping through the pictures they just took. And it's sad. The draw of European destinations is without a doubt the atmosphere. Everything is steeped in history and a world away from the modernity of American cityscapes. But too many people miss those experiences because of their quest to get the most "oohs" and "ahhs" from people back home to whom they show their photo albums.
In the end, what really makes a trip are the experiences you have while the camera is stowed in its carrying case. Memories - the visual, true-to-proportion image complemented by its accompanying feelings, sounds, smells and tastes - are far more detailed and true to reality than a photoshopped picture. A fantastic dinner, getting tipsy off a bottle of wine, kicking back in a plaza and people-watching, that dog in front of you that peed on every lamp post in sight along the way. Your mind automatically remembers these things - or at least mine does - because it knows when the camera isn't being used. So replace a few of those digital photos with mental snapshots while you sightsee... and for the love of God, fanny packs are so 1992. Let's not abuse the concept of utility over fashion...
So I don't think it comes as any surprise that I enjoy writing. I do. I enjoyed writing the slew of application essays for college and grad school... and I think I even wrote a few extra just for kicks. However, I have long lived under the impression that making any sort of living as a writer would be beyond my capabilities. Hell, I may write decently well, but there are people out there who weave together verbs and adjectives in ways that stomp mine out like a cigarette butt in the pavement.
At the current moment, I am in fact making a living writing (well, I guess it depends on one's concept of "making a living"). I spend my 40 hours a week writing Spanish city guides, content for the company's four million websites, monthly newsletters, etc. Overall, I enjoy it. What throws you off, however, is when people who write like SHIT are being paid the same as you. You, meanwhile, will spend a half-hour reworking a sentence and racking your brain for witty expressions so that the text is at least vaguely interesting for the reader. What angers you is when not only do they write like a mentally challenged elementary school child, but you have to go through 100 pages of their text rearranging sentence structures and correcting their interpretation of basic grammar and spelling.
We currently have a freelance writer who writes some of the less important city guides. She claims to be British and a native English-speaker. Yes, England... the birthplace of the English language. My take is that she's about as British as the Dell customer service operators who claim to be Americans named Tom and Barbara, even though their unintelligible English gives away the fact that they've never traveled outside of India.
While this girl uses ultra-British and therefore inherently heinous expressions like, "If you have a hankering for..." which I promptly delete and replace, her comprehension of basic grammar and writing tactics that we learn before we hit puberty is deplorable. I have told my boss more than once that this "Anna" is either lazy, on drugs or just plain stupid. He has yet to act accordingly... in fact, he's rather pleased with her. Apparently the French know more about the English language that an English-speaker. Therefore, I continue to roll my eyes, grit my teeth and correct all of her guides.
While I was, for awhile, depressed at the fact that she probably gets paid about what I do, I have recently come to the following conclusion. Basically, if this girl can get continuously paid to write 100 page city guides, hell I could easily get paid to write entire novels. I'm not saying that I'd necessarily get a lucrative two-novel deal from Random House. However, I'd bet that my literary masterpieces could at least be sold at supermarket check-out lines with other $2.99 novels, right there amongst the book covers with long-haired and open-shirted Fabio-esque studs riding on white stallions, their tanned pecks grasped from behind by their recently-rescued, flowing-haired, untied-bodice-wearing lovers.
I may be coming across as overly self-righteous and haughty. Worry not! I have tangible proof. To be able to laugh about it - and to break up the hours of boredom and desperation - I began keeping track of some of Anna's treasures. Riveting text, really. My personal favorites are numbers 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 18, and 21
