Twenty Five Random Things
Dear Laura,
Walking past the card store I saw a montage of baby photos--babies laughing, smiling, sleeping, crying--all in black and white. It reminded me of my cousins' lumpy headed baby and it made me think of you. In truth I think of you quite often, when I see lumpy headed babies or the particularly tragic happens: my name is now in the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association handbook as Carrie Mavelock and on the name plate outside our apartment Josh and I are listed as the Movelocks--apparently the transition from cursive to print is proving to be more difficult than you might hope--and last week when I lost the fight with my red and white umbrella while waiting for the bus (I used to think that the moment an umbrella turned itself inside out was an instant of sheer hilarity; but no more! This is the problem with getting older--previously hilarious things lose their charm when they happen to you.). I think of you too when wonderful things happen: yesterday, after running against the wind for twenty five minutes, I finally crossed the Mass Ave. bridge and then ran as fast as I could with the wind at my back. I also think of you whenever I see lightweight freshman boys. And then I miss you especially.
I see that you have succumbed to the twenty five facebook things and I would say that, as usual, you triumphed. Clever and poignant, you have made me ashamed to attempt my own twenty five. I'll never be as good as Laura Martin. Julie and my sister also did twenty five-isms--Christi's were sweet, because she is my sister and has twins--Julie's were less so, because she ranted against flaky people and talked about cuddling. If I haven't heard enough of girls who love to cuddle...please. I talked to Hilary, to decide if she and I were going to do our own twenty five things or continue to be too cool for school. We are going to be too cool for school. Hilary sent me an op-ed from the Times of the "25 Random Things I Wish I Didn't Know About You," which had some bitter points about narcissism and then the promised twenty five things as collected from facebooks about the site. The highlight, which made me laugh aloud in the office, and then made Cory roll her eyes, was "I tape my thumbs to my hands and think about what it would be like to be a dinosaur." This made me think of you, and Katie, but I hoped that you would send out some barking laughter at this. I wish that we could have a visit.
On Sunday Charlotte Eccles and I had a cupcake afternoon. Remember when we dressed up like the Spice Girls for the 90s dance in Phoho? Mostly because Charlotte wanted to wear pleather and have Brody see her having fun. Remember, we were dry, your shoulder was broken, and there was a cloud of general misery over everything? The nineties are best left in the nineties. (To further affirm this, when I was senior the boys through our fire door played Chumba Wumba ad nauseum every night...)
Charlotte qualified for the Boston Marathon. She ran 3:30 at the Bay State Marathon, which I think is pretty remarkable for the used to be non running girl I knew. (You mentioned once that when you think of Charlotte running you could imagine her "loping along like an antelope, not quite sure if she's doing it right, but smiling and laughing the whole time as if it were the best thing that ever happened to her. And she would be wearing a tiara." This made me bark in laughter.) When are you running your marathon? My dad and I thought we would run in the inaugural Rockford Marathon last May. We started training in January, but it was short lived, because when my dad runs on the road he feels extreme pain in his chest and numbness in his left arm. Usually he stops running and says "it will pass," (which is what my friend Michelle used to say when she resisted the need to go to the bathroom at school), but fear of stroke kept all our races under five miles. We swept the Harvard Milk Day 2 mile in June, though. Have you any desire to come and be a bandit in April? I will if you will. All you have to do is keep going right?
Hilary has started a blog, and I think that it is really good, and apparently you blog as well. Sometimes I think this is something I will get into, except that when I think about what I would write about all I can think is how someone will be offended--probably my mother, but also my cousins' lumpy headed baby (not to mention the baby's parents)--and someone will judge my poor punctuation, my over use of hyphens and parentheses, and also the prepositions that I leave at the end of all my sentences. Someone once sent me one of those "you might be from Wisconsin if..." letters and I'm not, by the way, but I am guilty of any number of the accusations. (It reminds me that once, when I was substitute teaching for an eighth grade social studies class in Clinton, the teacher left a list of "you might be from Wisconsin if.." jokes that I could tell the class. I amused myself by reading from the list and then turning to the students and saying "oh, you guys definitely do that." One criterion was "you've ever not bought something because it was 'a little too pricey.'" I turned to the class and sneered, "haha! You're from Wisconsin and you're all cheap!" Unphased, they replied, "yeah, but what if it sometimes is too pricey?") At any rate, one of the items on the list sent to me was "you end all of your sentences with unnecessary prepositions." I do that, and now I am particularly sensitive to it--I'll get to the end of a sentence "where are you going to?" and then my brain screams with agony, so my mouth continues to blurt words: "where are you going to? (shoot!) for? (no?) why? (what?) now?" This is not awkward. It is just awful. (You mentioned akwardness in your twenty five things--remember when Charlotte used to do that thing with one hand on top of the other, with her thumbs making swimming motions, and move her hands around in the the circle or group and say "the awkward turtle is here"?) My grammar is poor, but maybe I'll start a blog.
Hope that you had a wonderful time with your smarty pants club over spring break. I would give just about anything to be in California right now.
Much love,
Carrie
p.s. On the top of my mental twenty five list is, "If I could be anything I would be a great writer, a great rower, and pretty darn good on the piano." I'm working on the next twenty four.
Walking past the card store I saw a montage of baby photos--babies laughing, smiling, sleeping, crying--all in black and white. It reminded me of my cousins' lumpy headed baby and it made me think of you. In truth I think of you quite often, when I see lumpy headed babies or the particularly tragic happens: my name is now in the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association handbook as Carrie Mavelock and on the name plate outside our apartment Josh and I are listed as the Movelocks--apparently the transition from cursive to print is proving to be more difficult than you might hope--and last week when I lost the fight with my red and white umbrella while waiting for the bus (I used to think that the moment an umbrella turned itself inside out was an instant of sheer hilarity; but no more! This is the problem with getting older--previously hilarious things lose their charm when they happen to you.). I think of you too when wonderful things happen: yesterday, after running against the wind for twenty five minutes, I finally crossed the Mass Ave. bridge and then ran as fast as I could with the wind at my back. I also think of you whenever I see lightweight freshman boys. And then I miss you especially.
I see that you have succumbed to the twenty five facebook things and I would say that, as usual, you triumphed. Clever and poignant, you have made me ashamed to attempt my own twenty five. I'll never be as good as Laura Martin. Julie and my sister also did twenty five-isms--Christi's were sweet, because she is my sister and has twins--Julie's were less so, because she ranted against flaky people and talked about cuddling. If I haven't heard enough of girls who love to cuddle...please. I talked to Hilary, to decide if she and I were going to do our own twenty five things or continue to be too cool for school. We are going to be too cool for school. Hilary sent me an op-ed from the Times of the "25 Random Things I Wish I Didn't Know About You," which had some bitter points about narcissism and then the promised twenty five things as collected from facebooks about the site. The highlight, which made me laugh aloud in the office, and then made Cory roll her eyes, was "I tape my thumbs to my hands and think about what it would be like to be a dinosaur." This made me think of you, and Katie, but I hoped that you would send out some barking laughter at this. I wish that we could have a visit.
On Sunday Charlotte Eccles and I had a cupcake afternoon. Remember when we dressed up like the Spice Girls for the 90s dance in Phoho? Mostly because Charlotte wanted to wear pleather and have Brody see her having fun. Remember, we were dry, your shoulder was broken, and there was a cloud of general misery over everything? The nineties are best left in the nineties. (To further affirm this, when I was senior the boys through our fire door played Chumba Wumba ad nauseum every night...)
Charlotte qualified for the Boston Marathon. She ran 3:30 at the Bay State Marathon, which I think is pretty remarkable for the used to be non running girl I knew. (You mentioned once that when you think of Charlotte running you could imagine her "loping along like an antelope, not quite sure if she's doing it right, but smiling and laughing the whole time as if it were the best thing that ever happened to her. And she would be wearing a tiara." This made me bark in laughter.) When are you running your marathon? My dad and I thought we would run in the inaugural Rockford Marathon last May. We started training in January, but it was short lived, because when my dad runs on the road he feels extreme pain in his chest and numbness in his left arm. Usually he stops running and says "it will pass," (which is what my friend Michelle used to say when she resisted the need to go to the bathroom at school), but fear of stroke kept all our races under five miles. We swept the Harvard Milk Day 2 mile in June, though. Have you any desire to come and be a bandit in April? I will if you will. All you have to do is keep going right?
Hilary has started a blog, and I think that it is really good, and apparently you blog as well. Sometimes I think this is something I will get into, except that when I think about what I would write about all I can think is how someone will be offended--probably my mother, but also my cousins' lumpy headed baby (not to mention the baby's parents)--and someone will judge my poor punctuation, my over use of hyphens and parentheses, and also the prepositions that I leave at the end of all my sentences. Someone once sent me one of those "you might be from Wisconsin if..." letters and I'm not, by the way, but I am guilty of any number of the accusations. (It reminds me that once, when I was substitute teaching for an eighth grade social studies class in Clinton, the teacher left a list of "you might be from Wisconsin if.." jokes that I could tell the class. I amused myself by reading from the list and then turning to the students and saying "oh, you guys definitely do that." One criterion was "you've ever not bought something because it was 'a little too pricey.'" I turned to the class and sneered, "haha! You're from Wisconsin and you're all cheap!" Unphased, they replied, "yeah, but what if it sometimes is too pricey?") At any rate, one of the items on the list sent to me was "you end all of your sentences with unnecessary prepositions." I do that, and now I am particularly sensitive to it--I'll get to the end of a sentence "where are you going to?" and then my brain screams with agony, so my mouth continues to blurt words: "where are you going to? (shoot!) for? (no?) why? (what?) now?" This is not awkward. It is just awful. (You mentioned akwardness in your twenty five things--remember when Charlotte used to do that thing with one hand on top of the other, with her thumbs making swimming motions, and move her hands around in the the circle or group and say "the awkward turtle is here"?) My grammar is poor, but maybe I'll start a blog.
Hope that you had a wonderful time with your smarty pants club over spring break. I would give just about anything to be in California right now.
Much love,
Carrie
p.s. On the top of my mental twenty five list is, "If I could be anything I would be a great writer, a great rower, and pretty darn good on the piano." I'm working on the next twenty four.
Comments
Post a Comment