distracted

i was endeavoring to be a good student and do the required reading for tomorrow's lecture, but i couldn't stop laughing! as soon as i tried to focus on the words, i would just start laughing all over again. and the strangest thing is, i was alone in the livingroom. no one was making me laugh. just imagine: me sitting in the middle of the sofa, by myself, with a pillow and book in my lap laughing all alone. my mother--bless her courage--went so far as to ask me why i was laughing. i almost said "for no reason" but said instead "i'm just remembering".

i don't know what it is, but sometimes laughter just wells up. this evening, it was because i was remembering very odd bits of things that were funny. one of the manager's at my old job was a very happy person. she got along with everyone and laughed frequently. compared to her, i was an old woman--she was that energetic and quirky. she once washed her feet in the bathroom because she couldn't stand switching from shoes to sandals without washing her feet first. what i was remembering, however, was the one time i made her laugh and i mean, truly laugh. we were sitting in the office--cutting out intouch forms, i think--when i imitated a woman on a talk show who was offended that people were criticizing her for getting breast implants. it began with the "don't be hatin'...". now, i have already mentioned that she laughed pretty much on a regular basis, but she practically exploded into this strange goat-bleeting type laugh! i was so startled that i began to laugh too. she was laughing so hard, that she was doubled over, and all the time her laugh was completely new, the aforementioned bleeting-like-a-hyper-goat laugh! just remembering the look on her face and the sound of her bleeting was enough to make me loose my focus while trying to read and laugh at the memory.

then, just as quickly, i remembered the first time my sister randomly shouted, "Alfonso!" and then just as randomly shouted "Eureka!" she said she got it from a video she watched freshman year in her english class with Sr. Marie. the woman, presumably Eureka, calls her husband Alfonso because something terrible has happened and her husband shouts her name in return because...i never found out why, maybe he thought it was her fault? so now, at random intervals i would shout "Alfonso!" and she would shout "Eureka!" and we'd both dissolve into mad laughter.

mingled with this memory is another memory of my sister shouting randomly. she loves the movie "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet", the one with claire danes and leonardo dicaprio. in that movie, juliet's father bellows down the stairs, "Julietta!" except he pronounces it "hulietta".

lol, my sister does a lot of random shouting. come to think of it, so do i...

so, now that it is 10:30, i think i should at least try to redeem myself and do some study questions.

memo to me:
1. do not forget to go to voice tomorrow at 12:30
2. do not forget about surprise birthday party at 7:00 on sunday
3. do not forget to stop by the bookstore at 6:00 on thursday
4. do not forget to do discovery task #5 and subsequent journals

this weekend is going to be a nightmare. i hope i survive...