Or you could remember that no, that chair was last week, and this week there is an office and email and 4032 unread items in my RSS.
Sigh.
Quotation of the Day for January 5, 2008
“Because it does not take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.”
- Deqing, Shaolin monk, explaining why heroes in Western action movies (who usually succeed) are less heroic than heroes in Chinese action movies (who usually die). Quoted by Matthew Polly in his memoir American Shaolin, about studying martial arts in China.
I could pretend that’s the reason why I like kung-fu movies, but in reality I think I like them because of the Kung-Fu Mom characters, who inevitably kick some impressive ass.
I discovered accidentally, about 10 years ago, that men feel entitled to wear comfortable underwear that covers their entire ass. The whole thing.
Can you believe it? They feel entitled to comfortable underwear that covers their whole ass. Both cheeks entirely. They don’t feel they should shrink their ass – they feel the makers of underwear should provide enough fabric to serve its function. I’m just saying – that’s a different relationship than women have with our skivvies.
I prefer boxers, myself — a discovery made when I spent my first summer as a canoe tripper — but to each her own.
(h/t to Feminist Law Professors)
The existing holidays are well and good, but they’re all missing something: time in which everyone else, no matter how beloved and non-intrusive, goes away and leaves one in blessed peace and silence.
Think about it. Valentine’s Day? About being with other people. Easter? ditto, but add even more sugar. Halloween? For the hordes. Christmas? New Year’s? etc.
It’s clear the extroverts have been in control of the holiday schedule.
I hereby declare January 2 to be Introvert Day. A day each person gets to spend deliciously alone, talking to nobody and reveling in a lack of human contact. Send the kids to daycare (unless they’re introverted kids who’ll enjoy their own day of hermitude), maybe skip the shower, buy yourself some excellent chocolate, dig into the pile of library books and relax those social impulses. Go for it. (I’d say “join me!” but that rather misses the point.)
Some of us are not well suited to staying up late, so we hauled out the ginger ale and maraschino cherries and champagne flutes and celebrated New Year’s GMT* at 7pm our time. Having remote grandparents means that M has been well familiar with the concept of timezones for quite a while, so we didn’t have to clog up our celebrations with educational matters. M and the cats retired shortly thereafter.
The Veuve Cliquot made its appearance around 10:30, and we made it stretch until midnight and then conked out ourselves.
O, the excitement. But it is a fine thing to have a quiet night in our own house with an excited kid, sleepy cats, and good champagne.
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* D pointed out that this made no sense, since the actual dateline is over on the other side of the world, but we decided to ignore that little bit of logic. We’re random; that’s fine. There were fawncy drinks with cherries and that’s all that mattered.