Speech Impediment

I have a speech impediment. I never knew it. It came as quite a shock to me when I discovered it at the ripe old age of 39, a shock to learn that I may not be so normal, so average Josephine, after all. And now my little me cowers and cringes in the recesses of my mind, waiting for the inevitable pin drop silence that we all expect when we make a vocal blunder. She whispers as I speak, "They all hear it. They are all looking at you. They are pointing their perfectly manicured fingers at you, and are laughing their crystalline laughs at your expense." Of course we all know that when we feel insecure even the most hideous of beings with teeth missing, foul breath of rotting eggs, hair greasy and unkempt, and fungus under the nails is perfect compared to our single horrible self. My particular speech impediment is not the tripping, stopping, starting, skipping impediment of the stutterer. It is not the childish, effeminate, softness of the lisper. It is not rhotacism, also called Elmer Fudd syndrome, where "rascally rabbit" becomes "wascally wabbit". Sometimes I do stammer. This is an actual speech impediment in which the speaker may have difficulty in beginning words or sentences and may be unable to express sounds, but this not the impediment that vexes me. My problem showed up when I left my country and had to learn a different language and I had to be able to roll my Rs. Lo, I cannot. When I speak Italian, instead of the beautiful trilling of the R coming from me, I hear instead the thick tongued thump as my mouth struggles to imitate the sound. It is sad. It used to be embarassing. Now, I ignore my little me and get on with it. The Italians don't really seem to mind at all.

My former father in law is Cuban and those Cubans roll their Rs too. He taught me this Cuban tongue twister to help me practice.

R con R cigarro,
R con R barril,
rápido corren los carros
cargados de azúcar al ferrocarril.

I tried it. And I decided I much prefer to listen to him say it. It sounds much better that way.

Pathetic

It is simply pathetic that I have reduced my writing to only the "fun facts" printed in our one time weekly events pamphlet at work. It seems at the times I am available to write all the great things I had wanted to say while I was standing in the shower, the ideas are gone. They have left me as if they were washed away with my final cream rinse application. I should write something down to help me remember the thought. How can I do this while I am soggy & dripping, while there is shampoo in my eyes, and soap up my nose? I need to find a way to remember just a tidbit of the thought because a tidbit would bring it springing back to me like the blade of grass that is pushed over by the dull mower blade springs back up defiantly once the mower has passed...

Elephants

Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale.

About 17% of humans are left-handed. The same is true of chimpanzees and gorillas.

Magazines

I have been craving Barnes and Noble and their HUGE magazine racks lately. Here we have a few magazines, you know the normal stuff like some craft magazines, travel magazines, sports magazines, some cooking magazines, some game magazines like Sudoku, we have Mad magazine, all the entertainment magazines, and sometimes Oprah, sometimes Rachel Ray. There is plenty to interest the young male sailor Playboy, Maxim, and probably all of the others that are out there. But when I browse our very small magazine rack at our very small bookstore I am always left wanting. Part of what I love about magazines is I am able to sample a little nibble of another's life and interests...without committing too much. What we have here is a superficial sampling. There are no literary magazines here. What? Does nobody read? What about Scifi mags, spiritual magazines, or something else for me to have as the tiniest diversion when life is slow? I don't care about fashion. I hate to shop. I don't like gadgets. I don't ride motorcycles. I could not give a rat's patooky about what the celebrities are up to. I hate politics. I don't want to know what is going on in the world (at least not all that negative stuff). Ah, to be at Barnes & Noble where I could grab a small coffee, browse all of those wonderful shiny magazines, select 3 or 4 to peruse, and then plop myself on the bench that runs parallel to the racks and lose myself in something new...different...exciting (?).

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

I am reading a very interesting book called The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Actually, interesting is not the right descriptive word for it. The story starts off with a VERY vivid description of a car accident; the driver is on cocaine, tries to take a swig of his bottle of bourbon which he drops. He leans over to pick it up, and when he looks back up he is hallucinating that some unknown enemy is shooting fiery arrows at him which causes him to swerve, lose control of his car and thus he goes over the side of the mountain. The story grabs you from there and drags you along kicking and screaming into every detail of the accident and after. I could barely put it down last night. I am dying to pick it back up again today.

My New Love

This is my new toy, the Kindle 2. I received it in the mail Tuesday. I was dying to get home and download my very first book. That choice seemed so important. Which book will take me on the maiden Voyage of my Kindle? I read the beginnings of several books on amazon.com; Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Son of the Circus by John Irving to name a few. I was also considering one of John Saul's creepy horror stories. I finally chose Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I have heard great things about the book. It seems to be written for the older teen/young adult population. What pushed my final decision was my sister asking out of the blue if I had read the book. She highly recommended it. I downloaded the book easily enough. I read it Tuesday night and off and on on Wednesday. Then last night I decided I NEEDED another book to give me some options when reading time rolls around. I chose Coraline because within the first few pages it had really gripped me. It too is a younger generation read. Both books have me hooked. As for my Kindle 2, I love it. It is easy to use and comfortable to handle. I love the built in dictionary feature (put the cursor by the word and it displays its meaning at the bottom of the page), the fact that when I have to set the book down I can turn on the read to me feature and it does. The voice doesn't sound nearly as robotic as I expected. Now I am dying to get back into the U.S. so I can try out the Whispernet feature where I can get a free sample of any book, then if I want to buy it I push a button and within 60 seconds the book is on my Kindle. How cool is that?