stark contrast 101

because i am running out of shallow things to do, i've taken it upon myself to post a Christmas wish on facebook every day. so far, i've listed:

1. A photoshoppable life.
2. The demeanor of a Top Chef Master, the creativity of an Iron Chef, the grace of a So You Think You Can Dance frontrunner, the looks of America's Next Top Model, the humor of Conan and Ellen, and the generosity of Oprah (and maybe a cure for my addiction to cable TV).
3. Roddick's serve, Djokovic's forehand, Federer's backhand, and Rafa's hand ... in mine.
4. 3D glasses that fit Asian noses better so I don't have to watch entire movies holding up plastic glasses and feeling like a poorly disguised guest at a masquerade ball.
5. A memory that holds on to every smile, lets go of every tear and retains every single password.
6. The absence of war, the end of injustice, the death of violence and the cancellation of TV shows with scantily clad gyrating girls and disrespectful or overpaid hosts.

tomorrow, i'm going to wish something for or about juancho and martina, two good reasons why i look forward to weekends.

aside from being the usual child-saturated weekend, this last visit was a good reflection of how juancho and martina are two distinct individuals. let's just say that if you wanted to know how rain forms, you would ask juancho, and if you wanted someone to dance in the rain with you, you would ask martina (who, depending on her mood, would either willingly dance wildly with you or look at you with disdain and say 'yuck.')

we all ended up on my bed because i was torn between wanting to nap some more and wanting to play with them. i said they had to nap too and, naturally, martina wanted a bedtime story. this time, however, i was given a break and they decided they would tell their own stories (that was a lie. there was a long and heated debate between the two: martina wanted me to tell a story and juancho wanted to tell his own. in the interest of world peace and my poor eardrums, i ruled that they would tell one bedtime story each.)

juancho's story was well constructed and surprisingly pretty funny, as far as made-up bedtime stories go (mine aren't as coherent, but i blame martina for supplying the plots). it was about a fat ant that grew too big and couldn't enter his home so the other ants had to dig him a bigger hole. i forget why, but a bigger creature wanted to enter too so they had to make an even bigger hole. and it went on and on.

martina would have none of juancho's long-winded story and kept trying to end his tale (which i was genuinely enjoying, fyi) by interrupting with 'and they lived happily ever after. theeee end! my turn, my turn!'

so juancho's story was quite disjointed at times, because it sounded like this:

juanch: so they pushed and pushed but the fat ant was stuck ...
martina: and they lived happily ever after. theeee end! my turn, my turn!

unfortunately for martina, juancho was quite determined to end his story (hooray for me). then it was finally martina's turn.

martina started hers with 'once upon a time, there was a girl ... and the girl's name was ... (and i swear she really paused for effect):

alvin and the chipmunks!'

it was a fantastic and hurried story with a tower, a smidgen of conflict and maybe half a moral lesson, which i have yet to decipher. and of course, her little story ended with 'and they lived happily ever after. theeee end.'

naptime was cancelled.