Good morning. This is your friendly blogger/online journalist trying something different because, well, I feel like it. This is a wrist shaking exercise. It's a little hard to explain. When I sit down at the piano to play something, I let my hands go limp and shake my wrists in the belief that it loosens everything up. There's never been a study to prove that this does in fact loosen up anything. More accurately, I haven't taken the time to google (or yahoo) any such study, but that isn't the point. The point is that I allow myself to believe in its loosening effect, real or imagined, so then I can play a little more playfully. That and the shaking itself feels good.
That was the improvised, wrist shaking portion of my entry. On to the canned part of my writing routine.
Last night, my family took my mom out to dinner to celebrate her Nth birthday, where N equals a number that's more dependent on my mom's mood than on any given calendar. As we drove to the restaurant, my mom told me they had installed a new garage door opener earlier in the day. She got out of the car and, with the door still open, told me the combination.
[Pause]
Have you ever had a conversation where somebody asks you to guess the answer? I don't mean your everyday I'm-thinking-of-a-number-between-one-and-a-million or the usual guess-what's-in-my-pants, but the I-was-at-the-market-this-morning-and-guess-who-I-saw game. My mom used to play that one all of the time, but we were an impatient lot, so the response would end up being, "Tell us already!"
She eventually gave up on "Guess" and now plays "Ask Me a Question". She builds up the story to a point and then asks us to prompt her for the big payoff. Unfortunately, she hasn't quite worked out the bugs yet.
[Unpause]
Mom: So, ask me why we chose those numbers for the combination.
Sis: Yeah, ask her. She wouldn't tell me earlier.
Mom: Go ahead. Ask me why.
Me: Okay.
Mom: Ask!
Me: Okay! Why?
Mom: Why.
She then shut the door. My sister fell over in her seat, laughing hysterically. I sat there for a second, unsure of what just happened and exclaimed, "But wait. That's not an answer!" She finally told us the reason after we followed her into the restaurant and convinced her that she hadn't answered the question properly.
It's for that idiosyncrasy and a whole laundry list of reasons and qualities that I love her. After dinner, we returned to my parents' place, had my mom open her presents and cards, enjoyed some of her tasty cake and concluded the celebration by watching the Olympics. Not bad for an Nth birthday.
