Less than 40 bits this time around

Photo by Refracted Moments

I like to read a blog by a girl named Amanda. She is a shamelessly sassy kind of girl. To give you an idea what being both shameless and sassy reads like, take a look at these small excerpts of a post she titled 82 things.

"I like for things to be symmetric. I’m glad my boobs are. My love for symmetricity (not a word but totally should be) would be slightly halted if my boobies were not."

"My husband has short legs, and I think they are so adorable."

"When I was 7, I hit a moving car with my bike. Yes, that is typed correctly. I HIT the car with MY bike. It was either hit the car, or roll down the hill and get dirty. I had priorities. They obviously did not include dirt."

As things go, her 82 were very telling of her personality in a way that is similar to how the pointillist dots of an Impressionistic painting coalesce to show you a full image.

When I finished reading, I was so enchanted with the concept that I wrote her an e-mail asking whether I might steal her idea. She told me to go ahead and this is what I was born of that exercise. In a way, my Leaping Thought Wednesdays are the adopted child of Shamelessly Sassy's 82 things.

I felt like giving it another go today. Never say I don't try and show you the full picture.

Erin and Geoff, as you guys asked for another forty, I'm aiming to please...

1. I love to dance. When single, I used to get together with my girlfriends and we'd dress pretty, get in the car, put on the kind of music we liked at full blast, and psyche ourselves for a night out while we drove to our favorite club. To us, it didn't really matter much if we found partners to dance with. Going in a pack meant we could dance amongst ourselves. Guys were never lacking however. I think that men are innately drawn to the girls who don't give a fig about flirting through their dance moves. The less you seem to care and the more you look like you are enjoying yourself, the more they pay attention. We'd always walk out tired but happy. Our dancing shoes worn thin, our feet aching and yet, with the inner batteries charged to full. It was a wonderful high.

2. When my son is in school and I'm alone in the house, I put my ipod in the sound dock and let the dancing music rip. Now that I'm a mommy and haven't set foot in a club for more years than I care to remember, this is my only way of re-capturing the feelings I would get from going out to dance.

3. I know the rudiments of Egyptian Cabaret Dancing (more plainly known as belly dancing). Took classes for a couple of months with a professional belly dancer whose physique defied description. My teacher had a large, jiggly belly and not the Shakira-like flat tummy one might have expected her to possess. Nevertheless, she was a siren once she began to work that middle of hers. From her I learned that it is not really the body but what you can do with it, that matters most.

4. At age 6 I won a dance competition. Grand prize: One dollar. Signature move: Twirling round and round in circles with one hand at my waist and the other at my forehead in a military style salute. I thought I was über cool. Obviously so did the judges or I'd not have won. I'm sure it was this and not the tears of laughter I'd engendered with my dervish-like choreography that guaranteed me the prize.

5. As a child, I was a master at capturing the goodies from piñatas at birthday parties. I had the patented Milena candy-catching technique, and it made me unbeatable. Nobody but nobody walked away from the dismembered carcass of a piñata with as much candy as I did. Two things were essential to my success. My uncanny knack for sliding under at the exact moment it was disemboweled (notice all the gory imagery - I was such a little savage) and my special maxi skirt. It was like a tent that thing. Held at the proper angle, it gave me a candy-pickup circumference which no two little grabbing hands could hope to emulate. I reigned supreme. Other professional candy hoarders would groan when they saw me arrive at parties. I was a legend. You know, I never ate the candy myself. Always gave it away. All the sexiness lay in capturing the prize, not in consuming it.

Photo by jamesnichols81

6. I like original artwork. I don't have much and what I do have isn't valuable but, if it hangs on my walls it's because it speaks to me. A friend once explained that buying art should be a visceral experience, one in which the gut had to speak for you. In other words, no gut feeling, no purchase. I still find this a reliable ruler for most of my home buys, not just the artwork I own.


7. I'm incredibly gullible. I take most everything at face value. One time, while distributing the television show produced by the organization I used to work for, I fielded a telephone call from a heavily-accented Indian gentleman. He told me that his company, which he identified as the BBC, wanted to air our program. All excited at the big fish I had inadvertently landed, because I of course took this to mean that he was representing the British Broadcasting Corporation, I consequently felt utterly deflated when he corrected me and said that no, no, he was calling from the Bombay Broadcasting Company. I had all of two seconds of feeling sorry for myself at the downgrade in my BBC's when next I heard a burst of laughter from the other end of the line. My Indian fellow had been one of my own work mates pulling my leg. I mean, really? WHO believes there is a Bombay Broadcasting Company? Apparently only me.

8. When driving at night, I love being able to look into other people's lit homes. I call this my little Match Stick Girl Complex. There is something bittersweet about being outside and catching a glimpse of the warmth within.

9. I absolute adore fairy tales. I had read A Thousand and One Nights before the age of twelve (only as an adult did I realize there was a more explicit version of the stories). Washington Irving's Tales from the Alhambra and Andrew Lang's color coded compilation of fairy, folk, myth and just about any kind of tale from all over the world. Even now, whenever I reread some of my favorite stories, I still continue to get pleasure out of them. Everyone should have a little bit of belief in fairy tales as far as I'm concerned.

10. I used to be terrified of going to the dentist. I guess it all started with a traumatic experience I had as a child. I won't recount at length how I had to be held down while several of my molars were extracted but suffice it to say that ever afterwards, I always trembled when scheduling an appointment. Nevertheless, since coming to Houston, I've put that phobia to rest. I've found a dentist who can do the most invasive procedures without causing undue hurt. Poor guy, he worries more about my pain than I do, and that makes me try to be brave for him. He always tells me I'm his most stellar patient. As palliatives go it beats novocaine, Dr. Mike's praise does.

11. I talk to characters in movies. I forget they can't hear me.

12. I talk to myself. I wish I would listen to what I say...