interesting.

A couple of things stand out from today.

I was introduced to a man this afternoon and when I tried to shake his hand, he told me that he doesn’t shake hands with ladies. I quickly put the offending hand out of sight within my pocket but didn’t mind so much because it was cold outside and my pocket was warm.

But I still wondered why he doesn’t shake hands with ladies.

And I still think the word ladies is a funny one.

It always, without fail, makes me think of the time when I was in the Nutcracker with two of my best friends in the world, Erin and Christine. I was maybe thirteen years old, had finished the performance, and was standing in the lobby when a man wandered up to all three of us. He took a good long look at us as if to confirm to himself that we were indeed three of the hundred or so dancers he had just seen on stage, and said, Interesting performance…ladies…We did our best to thank him with a straight face, but as soon as he walked away we just lost it.

Because first: ladies. He said it. And goodness, but we were girls. We STILL feel like girls. And if given the choice between being called ladies or girls, I’ll choose the latter, I think. But also, who goes up to some little ballerina bunhead kids and tells them that their performance is interesting?

Interesting.

The stock market dipping on most Wednesdays, that’s interesting. Or the fact that Martin guitars are built in Pennsylvania–interesting, again.

But girls, dancing in tutus in a classic Christmas ballet?

How about beautiful?
Or moving?
Or lovely?

Oh well, at least it made for a funny quote.

And okay, so maybe that was just one thing that stood out from today…Now, wait–there’s two more that I will mention really quick:

• a spider crawled out from inside the butter dish after I had already used the butter. I don’t particularly want to think of the ramifications that could mean for me. I hope I didn’t eat any spider eggs. I hope I don’t style my hair into a beehive and then a nest of black widow spiders moves in, as the urban legend goes. Fingers crossed.
• I played a game called Farkle for the first time tonight. It involved six dice and some really fun people. The best part of the game is that there were these little bears that were on one side of the dice. It made me happy every time I saw one. But I couldn’t quite understand the game. Apparently the bears were good, but you didn’t want to take all the bears if you could roll again. This went against my natural instinct to just gather up every good thing that presents itself to you and keep it close. Although, if the bears were real, I would not have been trying to gather them up, so there’s that. But like I said, I didn’t really get the game, not even by the time we finished and unbelievably, I won. Yep, I won at the game of Farkle. Next up? Winning at the game of life…