another thought of the day.. what can i say, i'm a thinker

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?

thought of the day

Who wears corduroys when its 95º outside?

silliness

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: 1... Betsey: 0

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...

Childhood "Things"

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

Joanne: haha

did i ever tell you about my hobby

me: hmm im not sure?

5:05 PM Joanne: from the time i was born til about 14 i used to buy huge 11 by 17 size sheets of construction paper

and cut it up in to the tiniest pieces ever

5:06 PM me: HHAHAHAHAHAA

Joanne: and store them in the plastic boxes my dad had to hold slides

me: the pieces of paper???

Joanne: yup

me: o my god

amazing

Joanne: i wasnt allowed to throw confetti

but

i was allowed to make it

me: you sure had enough of it

hahahahaha

o my

thats awesome

Joanne: my mom threw it out when i slept i´m sure

me: heeh

5:07 PM Joanne: cuz she always seemed to have a new empty box for me

i also liked to tape things

not grabar

sino scotch

which is fitting, since i have a future in cutting and pasting

me: :)

Joanne: not just things that were ripped

not even taping things together

just cutting a piece and strategically placing in on a piece of paper

5:09 PM me: hahahaahahahaha

this is the best part of my week right here

Joanne: just another reason for you to love me

5:10 PM oh yes,

the confetti boxes needed to be taped

because i didnt want any pieces to fall out

5:11 PM me: naturally

only in america... oink oink

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.

childhood crush

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 the 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.