Funny Brits

I should be ashamed of this, but while perusing today's news, the headline "Riddle of the Czech Beauty Without a Belly Button" caught my eye. I clicked, I read, and the article wasn't as interesting as I thought.

But then what delighted me was reading the comments at the end of the article. These Brits are rather amusing, for the most part.

Take Riv from High Wycombe:

"I too was short-changed a navel at birth; although to this day I have no idea why. I suspect being born three months premature via caesarean section may have meant the tissue was pliable enough to gently set into a mild indentation. Any doctors out there who can confirm? I used to tell people I was grown in a vat... Still, no belly-button fluff."

"A vat." Funny stuff. Or Darren Jalland, from Larbert, Scotland:

"I lost my belly button after abdominal surgery five years ago. I've found it very useful on training session icebreakers when we are asked for an unusual fact about ourselves, although I often have to prove it."

Some comments were educational, telling about all sorts of procedures people have had which resulted in the loss of their belly button or other famous people who are sans navel.

Others were a bit gross. Conor from Dublin:

"My dogs have no belly buttons, because their mothers gently chewed the wound from the umbilical chord, and licked them while they were healing. She continued doing so until there was virtually no scar from birth."

But Bill Hunt's comment made me yell "WHAT?" after I read it, which is saying a lot. I'm a pretty mild-mannered person.

"Sixty years ago I was house-surgeon to a London surgeon, a real Lancelot Spratt character. He thought the umbilicus was a nasty dirty place and when operating on anyone's abdomen he would, without permission or consultation, cut it out. My job was to invent some story to tell the patient why it had been necessary. How times have changed."

Is it just me?

Or are the word verification things when you post comments getting easier?

For some reason, it seems like they were a lot more difficult to decipher back a while ago. Every time I came face to face with one of them, it used to really freak me out, thinking that if I messed up only one letter Blogger was going to identify me as a bot or something and shut down my computer.

But maybe others have struggled like me and called Blogger to complain. Either that or I have mastered word verification discernment and now they seem like a piece of cake. What do you think?

On Broadway

So the before and after pics of our apartment aren't ready yet. The afters are proving to be rather elusive, but I'll be sure to post them once everything's in its place. To tide you over, I thought I would at least post some pictures of our cute building, which happens to be situated on Broadway Boulevard in Glendale. (I can't TELL you how long I've been waiting to use this title. Such a geek...)

Here's the building from one angle. (FYI, I stood in the parking lot of the Montessori school/Korean church that's next door to take this picture.)

And here it is from another. I know it's hard to see because of all of the trees, but they make things look pretty. Our door is straight ahead in the middle.

And here's our front door. Or, rather, our only door. I LOVE the pink-blossomed tree that frames the doorway. Isn't it beautiful? It makes me happy every time I walk in and out of our door. This picture also shows you more of the garden/courtyard area in the front, which is home to a lemon tree (cool) and a very tame squirrel.

I also like that I get to see palm trees around the city (they're still sort of exotic to me) and signs like this painted on the sidewalk:

You know you've moved further South when...

...extra mild salsa is nowhere to be found.

Call me a pansy, but I like to taste the vegetables rather than the hot when I eat salsa. So I usually buy extra mild. The store I was at had mild, so I bought that. But I thought it telling that extra mild wasn't even an option.

Shouting

Ever since Anna was young, since like 5 months ago, we've always had fun teaching her different emotions. A favorite post from June featured her expressing a few on command. (Gotta love being a parent.)

And a few weeks ago, we had some more fun that happened to involve sidewalk chalk. I drew the faces and, when my back was turned, Anna added the "vocal illustrations," I guess you could say. Or the orange and pink lines spewing forth from their mouths. I love how random yet deliberate they seem to be. She must be gifted.

Opposites can be deceiving...

(... and appearances attract? Interesting...)

Trevor and I often joke about how we're a picture-perfect example of opposites attracting. He's very outgoing and I'm more reserved. He's skinny and I'm . . . rounder. I'm neat, he's messy. The list could go on, but you get the idea.

So you might not find it surprising to learn that the ways we squeeze the toothpaste are also opposite. But what's interesting is that the ways we do it strangely don't seem to fit our personality types — and thus the title of this post. Trevor neurotically squeezes from the end (and gets angry when I don't), and I like to casually squeeze from the middle.

I think it's more efficient and nearly effortless to squeeze from the middle several days in a row and then take a minute every week or two to squeeze the toothpaste up to the top. He purports that you can squeeze from the bottom in one simple motion just like you can from the middle and then that way there's always toothpaste at the top, but that's a load of trash. It's so not as easy. It's awkward, if anything.

A female friend of mine sides with me, so I'm left wondering — is the age-old debate a gender thing? Is it a matter of coordination? Or are Trevor and I still just opposites in a crazy, messed-up way?

Thoughts?