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I fall into the sleep categoroy of avoidance behavior. If I face an unwanted task, I feel drowsy. The more unwanted, unappealing, and difficult the task is, the harder a time I have keeping my eyes open. Washing windows? Practically asleep thinking about it. Cleaning the basement? I'm instantly comatose. Preparing for Christmas? Sleeping sickness.

Other people are eater/avoiders. Gosh, I'm hungry. I think I'll just have a little X or a little Y before I start my paper. Or my tax return. Or whatever it is. I'm capable of this too.

X
Y


Making a cup of coffee or tea is another tried and true avoidance behavior. You can drag that out for a good half hour.



Others are telephoners. I haven't talked to my old college roommate in months. I think I will call her now before I get going on the basement.


That brings up another category: cleaners. I have several friends who fall into this one. A good friend of mine is a high school English teacher and in the face of tremendous pressure to write dozens of college recommendations, finds he must vacuum the house over and over. Or scrub the bathroom or do laundry. This is one I do not fall into and never will.


We all know how much time we can waste on the internet. We join groups. We have to check them all to see if anyone has contacted us. We have to make the rounds, and this can take up plenty of time.

Best to take the bull by the horns, make a fresh start, no fear, don't look back, and other heartening sayings too!!!!! You know what, though? I'm feeling really drowsy.
A bientot
love,
becky

Keep your mouth shut.

Go to bed hungry.

Those are my two best tips. As far as exercise, you can do it or not. It doesn't really matter and it won't help you lose weight. I don't care what anyone says.

This is the new Miss America, Katie Stam from Indiana. What are my chances of looking like this? I'll tell you exactly what they are.

Zero.

Having said that, I don't want to let you think, dear reader, that I am a woman without hope. I could still aspire to this:

Well, ahem, cough cough, in my DREAMS I could look as good as Helen Mirren. Still, she's a bit older than I, so there's hope, right?

Anyway, exercise does nothing. Have you ever read how many calories you burn when you do certain things? 30 minutes of low-impact aerobics, at my weight and you don't think I'm telling that, do you, but anyway, picture me huffing and puffing--this burns (according to Healthstatus.com) 213 calories. Let's put that into perspective.

It's about four Oreo cookies.

I could consume that staring out the window. Hey Beck, did you know you just ate four Oreos? Uh no.

Officiating a basketball game will burn about 153 calories, only three Oreos. Officiating a basketball game? Where do they come up with these? I'm not good at telling who touched the ball last and I'm sure I'd be asked to leave. Only three Oreos too. Yeesh.
30 minutes of "social badminton" also burns about 153 calories at my weight Does that mean with a drink in your hand? It doesn't say. It takes a little bit of effort to do that, doesn't it?

Thirty minutes of billiards? 85 calories. How chintzy. The glass of chardonnay that helps propel my eagle-eye shot is more than that. And no one likes to see me tottering around a bar with a stick.


Thirty minutes of punching a punching bag? 204 calories. Back up to the full four Oreos on this, but I think you have to have a lot of aggression and/or anger to enjoy this activity, and that isn't really my thing, although ask me in a few weeks when papers come in.



Here is my best recommendation for exercise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfp8P-bwI8I
It is the Otis Redding/Carla Thomas version of "Knock on Wood."

'Cause your love is better
Than any love I know
Feels like thunder and lightnin'
The way you love me is frightenin'

If that doesn't get you revved up, dear reader, there's something wrong with you. You have my word that if you are faithful to this song and do awesome dance moves to it every day, you will sweat and increase your heartbeat and have fun. You probably won't lose weight, but so what.
I'm thinking about that first Oreo. More later.
A bientot
love,
becky

Not everyone does, you know. Very few, as a matter of fact. They deserve an extra nod of the head, even beyond whatever nods have already come their way. Here are four:
Steve Irwin put himself in danger every day. He got happier as the going got tougher. "She's a real beauty," he'd whisper, speaking of a thousand-pound crocodile that was twisting around on a small stick, trying to kill him. "Kinda cranky today," he'd comment about a spitting ten-foot-long snake, and then he'd walk into its cave again and poke something at it. Or he'd come up from behind and try to grab it, causing the thing to strike three feet up in the air and barely miss him. You sort of shook your head most of the time you were watching Irwin.

Nature filled him up. It completed him. He really should have been one of the creatures. I wonder if he slept in that scout uniform he always wore. He loved animals not everyone would love. We all like the cute polar bear with its cubs and the sleek beautiful tiger and even plain old Rover and Fido. But Irwin loved the scalier varieties of Mother Nature, the fanged ones, the ones with very few warm and fuzzy attributes. I remember seeing him dive AT NIGHT from a flimsy canoe into brown water in search of some croc in distress. He was always moving one massive reptile from site A to site B for its own good.

Don't even think of comparing Irwin to Marlon Perkins from the old Wild Kingdom series. Marlon, who palmed off the hard stuff on his assistant Jim, was a pansy compared to Steve.

"While Jim wrestles with the vicious anaconda, I can't seem to find my contact lens."

I saw Irwin once holding onto the four legs/paws of a giant snapping turtle. It required all of his strength and he was panting as he exposed the underbelly to his wife, who was assigned some unenviable task. It could have been cutting the thing's nails; I don't remember now. But Irwin said to her, "Be really really careful." Good grief. If she were trying to do that, she never would have been with him. Good on ya, mate.

Vincent Van Gogh painted approximately 900 works in under ten years, the 300 most important in under three years. Arguably the most famous of these, Starry Night, was created while he was an inmate in a mental asylum. He was troubled. Emotional. Insecure. In his lifetime he only sold one painting. Imagine that. Any of us would think we were a failure, wouldn't we? Earlier in his life, he tried to be a preacher and was dismissed for "overzealousness." He was driven. He had the music in him. He died a suicide at 37.
Julia Child may seem an odd choice for this list, but I recently read her book, My Life in France, and found it a marvel. I feel bad now that she's dead and I never paid any attention to her TV show, which was also a marvel. Nothing was too much trouble, nothing was too much to ask in the name of la grande cuisine. JC would take the bones out of a chicken, stuff it full of truffles or some complicated concoction that took days to make, prop it up in the shape of a bird or a cathedral or a person, cover it with cheesecloth, enclose with pastry, push it through a sieve, pound it with a mallet, surround it with foie gras and miniscule strawberries in the shape of blueberries and let it sit in the oven for six hours while basting every fifteen minutes--all for a dinner party. I recently looked through one of her cookbooks and read her description of clarified butter. You thought butter was butter, didn't you, dear reader? HAH! Clarified butter is the best part, the superior rendering obtained when you melt it down and toss aside that white stuff. Being a rank peasant myself, I don't mind the white part. White part? Count me in. But I still admire my girl JC. It gives me a smile to think of her in my kitchen watching me prepare a meal. She'd have gone to her reward a lot sooner had she done that. Let's raise our chef hats to her, and they have to be high, since she was six feet two. A sante!!!!


I suppose Number 33 is a hometown "homey" choice, and Larry Bird is the only one of the four still alive. Plus I don't actually know if he still lives with passion, but he sure played with it. He dove for every ball, made every move count and treated every game like the championship game. It was thrilling to witness his career and none of us here in Boston will ever forget him. We have an old VCR tape of his life and early career and it is a Christmas Eve tradition at our house to watch it together. We are a bunch of sports saps at heart. Go, Larry! Yeah!

I have also known one or two other individuals who live with passion. I admire them greatly.

Trying to get inspired, dear reader. Trying my best.
A bientot
love,becky

OMG, dear reader. Wait till you see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYk7xYnfoiM

Wasn't it great? She is blue this year because Nicholas Sarkozy is president of the EU. That is why the stars are there as well.

Thank you. Thank you very much. The stutter stop is all my own technique.

Okay, so now I thought I would try to address some of the important issues of our day, the first one of course, and what else would it be, being Face Book.

Can I just say this? GOD.


And then what about this? GOOD GRIEF!
And WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?
And finally if I may, I'M JUMPING OFF THIS BUILDING IF PEOPLE DON'T STOP TELLING ME EVERY LITTLE THING THEY'RE DOING.

My original FB complaint last summer was that everyone was sending everyone else hibiscuseseses. That at least has stopped. Now they send obscure little things that seem to imply private jokes, which ordinarily you'd think I would enjoy analyzing, but I don't.
JAMES WILSON SENT MARSHA SMITH A RECORDING OF E. FARNSWORTH PARSLEY'S "I WANNA CLIP YOUR HERBS."
Huh?
Or they send inane New Agey platitudes.
JAMES WILSON SENDS KARMIC GOOD WILL AND PEACE TO MARSHA SMITH AND ALSO THE CURRENT TRAVEL SCHEDULE OF HIS WIFE.
ELIZABETH SCHMIDT SENDS PEACE AND KARMIC GOOD WILL TO THE UPS DELIVERY GUY ON HER STREET, OR POSSIBLY IT'S THE FEDEX GUY. THE ONE WITH THE GOATEE.
MARSHA THOMPSON SENDS LOVE AND KARMIC GOOD WILL TO ALL HER BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE HUMAN COMMUNITY EXCEPT HER ASSHOLE BOYFRIEND.

There are quizes you can take, such as Which Care Bear Are You? I am not kidding. I don't want to take that one, because I don't want to scare anybody--YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE, MY LITTLE PRETTY AND I'LL EAT YOU IF YOUR MOTHER TURNS HER BACK. I LIVE IN THE ZOO WHERE THEY DO WHAT I TELL THEM AND THERE ARE PLENTY OF BEAR WHORES AND COCAINE. Wait, I'm getting confused with other quizes, such as Which Diva Are You or Which Broadway Star? I am clearly Patty Lupone and Sara Brightman, just without the talent.
Who's going to check anyway?
The choices for posting seem to be:
1) profound and somewhat ambiguous statement such as BECKY MOTEW IS THINKING THINGS OVER.
2) very specific and mundane detail such as BECKY MOTEW WILL BUY TOILET PAPER TODAY OR KNOW THE REASON WHY.
3) announcing friendship: BECKY MOTEW AND JOHNNY DEPP ARE NOW FRIENDS.
4) announcing change in friendship: BECKY MOTEW AND JOHNNY DEPP ARE NOW A LITTLE MORE THAN FRIENDS.
5) announcing anything at all about relationships: BECKY MOTEW IS NOW UNDER A RESTRAINING ORDER BY THE LAH-DEE-DAH MR. DEPP AND SENDS HIM EVIL KARMA.



You also have to remember that every single one of your "friends" can see what you post. Do you really want to send pulsating karmic good will to someone with your friends' kids watching? Yikes. And speaking of that, I'm about to go on a FB purge. One of the friends I have, and I don't know how I got him, recently posted that he had invited two other female "friends" to share his "lollipop." Yuck. Of course I only have 50 friends (posting under a different name) and I hate to go under that number. So I might have to keep this guy for a while.

Until I find a replacement.


Surely they won't come up with anything worse, right? Although can you say "twitter"?
A bientot
love,
becky

p.s. Another thing that's Pissing Me Off is the weather. I'm sitting here ready to go for my walk and I DON'T WANNA!!!

Pick the outerwear of your choice, dear reader. Oh, you're so right. Everything is black, I'm afraid. That's because I can't buy anything else. I'm unable. Excuse me while I take the Michelin Man parka for myself. Also black. We are going to be so chic.






Now out the door. Put your hat on. The Globe said it was 22 today, but it feels warmer, doesn't it? I'm something of a twisted optimist at times. Watch your step. I don't shovel the driveway too well and my plow guy is a little sketchy. Cute, though.





There's my mailbox. I wonder if the post office is going to bitch at me about shoveling that out too. It's always something, isn't it?








Now we're at the end of my street. Look up there. See those two benches? You can sit on them and pretend you're at some kind of Shinto temple. I have sat there before with a friend, on warmer days of course. You feel like you're looking at somebody's grave. That marker tells how the church that used to stand here is now in Old Sominex Village.
Come on, don't be like that.

HEY! Quit thinking those thoughts. New England has its own beauty, okay? Just because we don't have palm trees and sandy beaches and warm temps doesn't mean we don't have merit and worth and value. And a good personality.

Now we're turning onto a more main road. They don't always plow so you can walk easily. I should have told you to wear boots. Sorry about that.
Maybe we'll have a nice snack when we're finished.

NO!!! Get your mind out of the gutter!!

I wonder who those people are up there. It could be my two friends, a husband and wife who live nearby. But that looks like two men to me. Oops, nope, it was a man and a woman and we'll just hang back a little farther. Don't want to tell her we doubted her womanhood.

CUT IT OUT!! I'm serious!!!

Here's one of my favorite horses. Some of them wear jackets and some of them don't. All the horses like me and walk over to check me out as I go by.
I would bring a carrot or an apple, but just my luck one of them would bite the shit out of my hand and there I'd be in the ER trying to explain myself again. No thanks.




Come on, come on, we're almost up Heartbreak Hill. You can do it.
There are two vicious snarling dogs that come running out here, but they stop at the perimeter of their property, so don't worry. One of them wears the most pansy-ass pink plaid coverup you ever saw. "YOU SISSY!" I like to yell at him. I suppose he could kill me.

Don't say anything as we go by this place. It's owned by a notorious local family and I don't want to say their name. Everything they own is falling down, including this old windmill. I like them because they make my place look good.




Okay, this is the halfway point. We made it. We still look chic.











Puff puff. I thought you were in better shape than this.








I am determined to lose this glove. I tried to lose it in Paris on the metro. I drop it whenever I go out. Its days are numbered.

Hey wait. Where are you going?


WAIT FOR ME!!!
love,
becky

Hi. Hey. How ARE you? Here, let me wipe that smudge off your face. No wonder I can't read you, hahaha. That's a joke.

Well, of course it's a joke. Don't get testy. Don't get your numbers out of order. I know I'm a little taciturn when you usually see me--standing on you naked, trying to keep one foot on and one foot off is challenging at six in the morning, okay? Not that I begrudge it. Just calm down.

I'm not going to hit you. That is so insulting to me when you cower like that. That was not a kick I gave you last week--I was merely moving you into a better position. I think we're close enough for that, don't you? All right, all right, I won't ask. Geesh, you are moody.

We need to talk. I don't think you're being fair. Your heart is very cold.

I've been good mostly. Well, okay, yes I was in Paris. Yes, I know. There could have been one or two times when I strayed.

But it meant nothing. You have to believe me.

Yes, I know there were other times too. But I'm telling you they were all meaningless. My heart was always here. With you.




Yes, yes, okay, I'm guilty. Is that what you want me to say? What have you got, a photographic memory?

And yes, that's right, I did go to the movies Saturday night. Might I remind you the last time I had popcorn at the movies was probably in the Sean Connery era of James Bond. Who's he? I'll tell you who he is--only the most handsome -- well, you asked, didn't you? No, I'm not trying to change the subject. I wouldn't do that. Yes, I did have a large popcorn. I brought my own water, though. Did you ever think of that? How easy would it have been to slug down a huge Pepsi? Pretty easy, but no. I was thinking of you.

What is it you're trying to say? Spit it out.

Oh, that? You're so funny. That was a bag of miniature chocolate bars that I bought at WalMart to put in my suitcase for Paris. Well, for traveling. It's good sometimes to have a little pick-me-up in the hotel, you know? Yes, yes, I know I've never taken you anywhere.
GEESH, YOU'RE SUCH A FREAKING NAG, NO WONDER.
Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry.
Why don't I throw the bag out now that I'm home? I paid eight bucks for it. It seems wrong to do that. Yeah, yeah. One or two. Yes, most days. Oh yes, that day--I guess I had ten or twelve. You got me.
Okay, look. I guess you have a point. I guess I have made some mistakes. But I'm starting again, and this time I will NOT STRAY. You will be so proud of me. It will be like the old days. Okay? Can I leave you here now? I'm going downstairs to throw out that candy and fix my lunch.

A bientot
love,
becky