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.