Teeth

I brush my cats' teeth. Some people may find this pathetic. The vet assured me it's not pathetic. "If you start brushing their teeth now, you will avoid gum disease and expensive vet visits in the future." Who can argue with that? So now I brush their teeth. The pet poultry-flavored toothpaste cost $10 and I use a q-tip to brush (as directed by the veterinarian). The cats are my life.

Plant

Little 5-year old Timothy was visiting us briefly on Sunday, along with some other relatives. "Can we look at the backyard?" he asked. Sure. We put the cats in the kitchen and stomped through the bedroom, out the back door to our wonderful backyard.

"Your backyard is a dump" Timmy concluded. Oh yeah?? You try living in New York City and pay ridiculous rent and work hard and go to school and see how your garden would look. At least we have a backyard.

Dance

After half an hour on the boring elliptical machine at the gym I sought out the stretching area only to find about 70-100 people in a total dance-off inside the work out studio. It wasn't a regular dance class because people actually danced well. I decided to join in. I danced my way to the back of the room and picked a good dance spot next to an awkward looking tall white guy, bald with glasses and runners' shoes on. He'd probably come straight from the treadmill, and I probably looked really good dancing next to him.

After about a good twenty minutes or so, the music stopped briefly, and people stomped their feet, hollered and clapped their hands. I took the opportunity to ask the bald guy what was going on. "How come everyone's so good and knows all the steps and stuff??" I asked. He yelled back: "Oh, apparently it's a party for some dance choreographers!!" That's when I decided it was time for me to leave.

"They're also having an open bar after this, at the Red Bamboo or something," the bald guy continued and kept dancing next to the real dancers. What was the bald guy doing hanging out at their party? And why is there a bar in my neighborhood that I don't know about?

Falling

I took a step off the curb on Central Park West and noticed myself flying through the air - slowly, as falls always tend to happen - and landed flat on my belly out on the street. "Shiiiiiiiit..." I thought to myself as my body accelerated towards the ground.

But I caught the fall gracefully and landed as if I was doing a push-up, sort of. How awesome! I had just read in The New York Times that a push-up is "a symbol of health and wellness".

"...push-ups can provide the strength and muscle memory to reach out and break a fall. When people fall forward, they typically reach out to catch themselves, ending in a move that mimics the push-up. The hands hit the ground, the wrists and arms absorb much of the impact, and the elbows bend slightly to reduce the force...."

That's exactly how I fell! There's more:

“What so many people really need to do is develop enough strength so they can break a fall safely without hitting their head on the ground,” Dr. Ashton-Miller said. “If you can’t do a single push-up, it’s going to be difficult to resist that kind of loading on your wrists in a fall.”

Ha! Obviously I'm strong and fit enough to take that load. My fall put me in an excellent mood for the rest of the day, what an athlete! (Though, I must have hit my knee in the fall because now it's swollen and it hurts a lot and I can hardly walk, stand, or sit.)

Mail

I haven't checked the mail in probably over a month. It's a good thing Sean does, because otherwise our mailbox would be pretty full. I just don't feel like checking it. I mean, what good could possibly come out that thing? Nothing. Last I checked: credit card offers (dangerous), bank statements (never a pretty sight), reminder to see the dentist (yikes), reminder to see the eye doctor (yeah right), reminder to take the cats to the vet ($$$), bills (of course), yada, yada, yada. The whole email thing has ruined real letters. I want a real letter!

Swe

I don't get to hear or speak my native language very often, other than with my sister who moved here from SF a couple of years ago. Thank God for that. It's like we have our own secret language since practically no one understands it. And there aren't that many Swedes around in the city that we have to worry about what we say - we're safe talking trash in our mother tongue.

But whenever I do hear Swedish being spoken somewhere in the city my heart beats a little faster and I naturally listen in on the conversation. I was having breakfast at the Coffee Den in Carroll Gardens when a Swedish father walked in with his American wife and their maybe 4-year old son. "Alexander," the father said, "vi väntar där ute så att vi inte är i vägen, kom nu." And the son answered: "But I don't wanna vänta där ute!!"

Alexander probably doesn't run into many Swedish people either.