Tough love

This morning I found the following jewel in my email:

"I know I am going to get a zero, although I wanted to get my topic reviewed if possible. I will turn in a hard copy in class on Monday."

No signature, no reference to a specific class, this was it.

Fortunately for this particular student, I read a lot of Miss Marple mysteries when I was a kid, and that combined with my students' habits to assume I know every single one of them, their schedule, their life stories, as well as their personal idiosyncrasies ("you know I hate gmail!"), means that my power of induction are unsurpassed. Hence, based on his unique last name (which was actually part of his email address - excuse me while I pick myself off the floor), his reference to a class on Monday (which reduces the possible number of classes down to three), as well as his use of the phrase "my topic", made it very easy for me to determine that he was talking about the "write a paragraph about the topic you would like to research this semester" assignment that was due last week.

Admittedly, I admire this student's desire to receive feedback. He obviously realizes that without proper feedback, he'll have no idea whether the topic he's about to work with for the next thirteen weeks is any good or not. Although realistically he would have found out next week when he needed to turn in six peer-reviewed articles on said topic, and he might have received a terse, "don't think this topic is do-able in this time frame" or a "great topic!" note on his work, I can understand his desire to be on top of his stuff.

So that leaves me with the $64,000 question: Why did said student not turn in his work on time? I looked at his topic, and the one-sentence topic could not have taken more than about a second of his precious time. Unless he was in the hospital or in prison, there is  no reason why he could have not sent this email a week earlier. Even if he was off campus remembering the death of his beloved guinnea pig Mr. Twinkles, or helping his best friend's cousin's girlfriend move across the state, WiFi is pretty much omnipresent, and thus the topic could have been sent, on time, with the click of a button.

Unless, of course, unless said student is not as academically inclined as he'd like me to believe.
Hm.
Now there's a thought.

So, after four-and-a-half-years of dealing with late work, dead guinneapigs, moving cousins, broken parole, tough judges, and mysterious illnesses, all of which have led to me losing sleep, losing time with my family, and spending way too much energy trying to fix students' problems or mistakes, this is my standard answer to such requests:

"Good morning (student name),

Thank you for your email. Although I appreciate you turning in a topic, I set deadlines so I have time to grade everyone's work. Work turned in after the deadline will thus not be graded.

Thank you,

Dr. D"

Yes, there's not a lot of carebear-stare-unicorns-rainbows-flowers-candy-land about that response, but you know what, it's midterms, I'm swamped, and you're a grown-up.
So just deal.

Bij een gebrek aan winter

Gisteren onderweg naar huis zag ik de eerste narcissen in de berm opkomen. En ik zou zweren dat ik, terwijl ik achter mijn bureau zit, toch heel duidelijk grote rode knoppen aan de boom voor de bibliotheek zie. Nu wil ik niet lastig doen hoor, maar het is hier ook pas 8 Februari, net als in de rest van de wereld. En volgens mij bevind Georgia zich nog steeds op het noordelijk halfrond. En toch lijken we ongeveer twee weken van het begin van de lente verwijderd te zijn. En voordat alle arme Hollanders die al weken creperen van de kou nu gaan roepen dat dit ge-wel-dig is, dat is het dus niet.

Een paar jaar terug hadden we namelijk ook zo'n afwezige winter. Zo eentje waarbij het twee keer 's nachts vroor, en dat was het dan. Waarbij eind Maart alle bomen alweer vol met grote, groene bladeren zaten. Het was mooi hoor. En warm, dat ook. En het rook heerlijk, zeker. Maar twee maanden later kwamen we om in de kakkerlakken, muggen, rode mieren, wespen, en allerlei andere gemuteerde versies van vliegend ongedierte. Het was een gevecht zonder einde, waarbij de invallende winter uiteindelijk tot een staakt-het-vuren heeft geleid.

Ik zeg gevecht, maar het was eerder een complete nucleaire oorlog, want insecten in de VS zijn precies zoals de rest van het land: Groot. De kakkerlakken zijn het formaat van je duim, de muggen laten plekken achter de grootte van een poffertje, en een gemiddelde wesp ziet eruit als een vliegende hamster. Toen ik gisteren dus zag dat de "fire ant" hopen tegen de veranda aan, die we vorig jaar zo draconisch uitgeroeid hadden, alweer een langzame "comeback" aan het maken waren, voelde ik het al weer aankomen. Het wordt weer zo'n heerlijk "buggy summer". Zo eentje waarbij je maar beter niet kan ademhalen met je mond open als je buiten bent.

En toen het lokale nieuws aankondigde dat de kans op bosbranden vertienvoudigd was vanwege de overmatig snelle groei van klein gewas, en het enorme gebrek aan regen, kon ik mijn lol helemaal niet meer op. Een sigaret, een vonk van een vrachtwagen, en dan is de apocalypse echt daar.

Dus.
Ik wil graag nog een paar weken winter. Met wat nachtvorst, temperaturen rond het vriespunt, misschien zelfs wat neerslag. Genoeg om al die nare vliegende en kruipende mutanten naar de eeuwige mierenhopen te sturen, en er voor te zorgen dat het platteland hier niet in een soort zuid-Frankrijk-maar-dan-zonder-strand-en-lavendel veranderd.
Bij voorbaat hartelijk dank

The bear claw

Today I want to talk to you about stress relief. More specifically, the things you do to get rid of stress.

Back in the day, before I had a job that takes up 80 hours every week and all of my youth with it, I used to clean when I got stressed out. I know, it makes little sense, but there you have it. People could always tell when I was busy at work, because the entire house would shine "like the top of the Chrysler building" (to paraphrase Ms. Hannigan from "Annie"). When I was finishing up my dissertation, you could pretty much eat off my baseboards. Then, when I moved here and that didn't do the trick anymore, I added running. And bicycling. Nothing to clear your head like a long, sweat-filled, slightly painful workout session.  And then, when I had ran and biked so much I was doing triathlons, adventure races, and half marathons as though they were little more than a trip to the mall, that too just wasn't enough anymore. And what did I do next?

Did I start taking yoga? Or perhaps took a meditation class? Or did I, lord-have-mercy, address the cause of my stress head on instead of finding yet another way around that?

Well, of course I didn't. I live in the south, what do you expect? We don't do yoga, and we definitely do not meditate. The bible doesn't mention those things, which means God sure didn't put His stamp of approval on it, and so unless you live in that worldly, heathen-filled, Philistine town also known as Atlanta, you will not find anything like that down here thankyouverymuch. Of course, I don't need to mention that "addressing something head on" is a phrase invented by those lesser-mannered Yankees, and thus an absolute no-no in the south, where we prefer to simmer and stew, while pretending everything is JUST FINE!

So what is a semi-southern gal to do? Well, she can start on a whole host of activities to distract her, including forming a new bible study (I think my status as a non-fundamentalist pretty much preempts that one), homeschooling her children (someone would die, y'all), cooking (that's husband dear's Area of Responsibility), quilting (uhm..did I mention I don't know how to sew on a button?), or baking.

Hm. Baking.

I'm not sure how this happened, but I'm finally beginning to understand why southern women love to bake. It's probably as soothing as an intensive yoga class, as relaxing as addressing the cause of the stress (but without any sort of confrontation), and tasty to boot. As you all know, I started baking when we moved down here, so I could meet the annual "bake something for your neighbors at Christmas" standard, but no more than that. Then two weeks ago, I decided to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch (from! scratch!), and last Sunday, when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed, I caught myself saying, "I am so stressed out, I think I need to bake something." To top it all off, last night, after meeting some friends at Panera Bead and having one of their almond-filled bear claws, I decided that that was going to be my next baking project: the bear claw.

I believe I have found my next set of stress relieving activities: baking. After all,  why talk about stuff if you can just bake it all away? *


*No worries, I will still be cleaning AND running AND biking AND swimming...there will not be a "how I became obese like all those other Georgians" blog anytime soon. Although I suppose then I could join Weight Watchers, another incredibly popular stress-relieving activity here in the south. And start dieting and exercising, which I'm sure will do wonders for my stress. Oh. Wait.....

Our mailbox or how to listen

You may remember me talking about the mailbox at our new house a few years ago. Although it's just a plain white mailbox, it sits inside a fancy brick column at the end of our driveway, with a palm tree on one side, and a pretty purple-flowered bush on the other. The whole contraption looks so beautiful, that I at times have forgotten we even own a mailbox ("oh, look at that little set-up by the street, the tree, the flowers, the bricks, so beautiful). Well, lately we've been having suspected mailbox issues.

It started about two weeks ago, when one evening I happened to look out the front window, and noticed a pick-up truck, lights off, sitting by our mailbox. As I love to narrate my life, I turned to husband-dear, and said, "There's a pick-up truck sitting by our mailbox."
"What?"
"There's a truck sitting out by our mailbox."
"Oh."Husband-dear was obviously not as intrigued as I was by this entire phenomenon.
A few moments later I peeked out again, "It's still sitting there. That's it. I'm going out there."
Now I did have husband-dear's attention, "You're going to do what?"
But I'd already opened the front door, and just as I stepped out on the front porch, the truck, lights still off, drove away.
"They drove away" I reported to my husband, who was shaking his head, "Let's say they were up to no good, what would you have done?"
"I don't know, asked them to go do it somewhere else."
"Because that would have worked, how?" husband-dear was still shaking his head, "You can't just go outside and talk to possible criminals, dear."
"Sure you can, I mean, they drove off, didn't they?"
"You need a gun."
"No I don't. I need a gun like I need a hole on my head."
"If you're going to go outside in the dark and address a possibly dangerous situation, you need a gun."
"No, I don't. I am very much of capable of scaring people off without a gun."

Anyway, needless to say, there are still no guns in our house, and we didn't see the truck again. But the idea of someone messing with our mailbox kept nagging at the back of my mind. After all, that's OUR stuff, thankyouverymuch. US mailboxes, unlike their Dutch counterparts, can't be locked, and so anyone could technically take your mail. Although American mailboxes are considered federal property, as indicated by oh-so-scary"property of the US government" stamp on the front of the box, and mail theft is treated on a par with an armed robbery, I'm fairly certain that that does little to scare away potential postal thieves. In my opinion, all it does it scare your neighbors into leaving notices about parties on your front porch, make you too freaked out to close a neighbor's box if the mail carrier accidentally left it hanging open, and very little else.

But I digress.

Now I don't know what it is about our mailbox, but this morning it was once again the center of someone's attention. It was barely 7am, I had just gotten up, and was reveling in the fact that I would not have to drive to work today, when the dogs just about lost their heads barking at something outside. I turned towards the front window, where I thought I saw someone on our driveway. When I opened the front door, the person was flying down our street, into a neighbor's yard.
My first thought was, I should chase after him. My second thought was, I'm in my house shoes, jammies, and wearing a robe, and that's probably not happening. My third thought was, it's probably one of the high school kids who needs to catch the bus and just realized he left something at home. And I went and made myself some tea.

Once caffeinated, I realized that the high school bus had left half an hour earlier, and that that kid looked way too old to ride the elementary school bus which was leaving in ten minutes. Hm. Maybe I'm not American enough yet, but even the thought of him possibly stealing our mail could not really get me worked up. I know most Americans have a coronary at the thought of someone stealing their mail, and the best I could do was get irritated at the thought of having to call our mortgage company and our water company and asking them to please send their bills again. Other than that, my main thought was something like, hey good luck reading those Dutch letters, have fun with our birthday cards, oh, and while you're at it, would you mind paying our electric bill? Thanks.

Husband-dear, however, disagreed. When I told him what had happened, and asked him if he'd left any outgoing mail in the mailbox, he told me I should probably call the sheriff's department.
"Why? I was thinking we should just install a webcam upstairs and keep tabs of what's going on that way, if anything."
"Well, because what if someone was robbed or raped down the street this morning?"
"Then we would move RIGHT NOW."
"Yes, but before we'd move, you'd call the sheriff's office."
"And get a webcam."
"Sure, dear."

So I did. And that's where the second part of this blog's title come in. You know how I complain about how my students don't listen? Well, apparently it's part of a wider epidemic, as my conversation with the Sheriff's office front desk went something like this:
"Hi, I'd like to report some suspicious person hovering around my mailbox earlier this morning."
"Ma'am, you need to hang up right now and call 911."
"No, the person isn't there anymore, it happened earlier this morning. At around seven."
"Oh, OK. Well, let me transfer you."
"Sheriff's office investigations."
"Hi, I'd like to report a suspicious person hanging around our mailbox earlier this morning around seven."
"I can't transfer you to 911, but you need to call them right now."
"No, he's left, it happened earlier this morning."

Really, people?

Anyway, the important-sounding man in "investigations" told me he would "notify patrol", which I take to mean that some poor officer in a car is going to get a call that goes something like, "Yeah, some lady called about someone hanging around her mailbox. Just FYI.", and patrol saying, "Oh crap, like I have nothing better to do", and then asking, "What's the address?" and the man having to admit that he forgot to ask (as he did).

So my plan was to go out and buy a webcam. No guns, no police, just a webcam to see what's going on.  If nothing else, we can use it to keep an eye on our puppies while we're at work.

Repression and Jesus

"How are you?"
"I'm fine, how about yourself?"

"How are you doing?"
"Well, how are you?"

What did the four Americans who just exchanged those four brief sentences just do? Did they inquire after one another's emotional status? Did they want to know how you were really, truly feeling on the inside? No. They just said hi. Only they used about 3.5 words on average instead of one.

For all those Dutch people who have used this quintessential American greeting as proof that Americans really are extremely superficial, I will say it one more time: They aren't.
Really.
They just prefer to really truly completely acknowledge you when they see you, and "hi!" just isn't going to do that. So instead they ask you how you are, which just sounds a little more involved than "hi" or "hey". It doesn't mean that all Americans are fakes or superficial. All you could possibly conclude from these exchanges is that they're wordy, and you know, to each their own.

I've had this conversation with friends from not only Holland, but also Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK on a variety of occasions. And whenever I explain that it's just the American way of saying hello, most people will quickly venture into the "Well, OK, but Americans are a lot more superficial (Dutch), positive (German), introverted (Scandinavian), happy (UK) than we are." The bottom line I get from all nationalities is that Americans appear less likely to share their (especially negative) emotions than a lot of Europeans.
Take that, Americans.
Obviously, taking the Dutch and their almost endearing bluntness ("I don't know what you did with your hair, but I liked the old cut way better") as a standard is hardly fair, but even if we were to use the definitely stiff-upper lipped British as the yard stick, I'm beginning to think that all these people are on to something. I mean, at least British people use a well-known code to express their negative feelings, i.e., they may not say something absolutely sucks, but when a Brit calls something "interesting", you know you're in trouble. 

Now when I say they're on to something, I'm not siding with all these painfully honest Dutch people in claiming that all Americans are superficial. First of all, with 300 million Americans, generalization is not just impossible, it's downright ludicrous. Second, I think the Dutch need to do some serious navel-gazing themselves, and write a paper entitled, "The twenty ways in which always being honest is NOT a good life policy". And third, well, there is no third, other than that as a half-Dutch half-American, I think we should all just be nice to each other.

Anyway, the reason I'm starting to believe that America, and the south in particular, could work on acknowledging negative emotions a little better is actually directly related to two experiences I had only recently. The first one occurred at church. As you may remember, we attend the base chapel, and are close friends with one of the chaplains. A few Sundays ago, he started his sermon off on a very promising note. He related how when he and his bagger at the commissary were making small talk on the way to his car, the bagger answered the obligatory "how are you" with a "not really well.". As anyone familiar with the south knows, that sent everyone's eyebrows (including mine) into the stratosphere. Here in the south you pretty much need to be bleeding from the throat in a Friday the 13th type of way before you admit you're not fine. The chaplain tapped into that sentiment, and wondered aloud what could be wrong with someone that they would admit to not being fine. At that point, I got really excited: Where we finally going to address the problems with always pretending everything was fine? With telling people you were "blessed" while you really felt like you were so overwhelmed you might explode at any moment?
No. Of course not.
Much to my surprise, the message from that Sunday was this, "When you know that Jesus died for your sins, how can you ever not be fine?"

Uhm.
What?
Now don't get me wrong, I think the whole notion of Jesus dying for your sins, grace, redemption, yadda yadda yadda is spectacularly awesome. I do. But does that preclude me from ever being not fine? Does that mean I can't ever be sad? Or lonely? Or just freaking pissed off? Apparently so. Jesus' blood took care of all of that. His blood shed for you means that you have no reason, ever again, to worry, or feel depressed. I wonder if his blood can drive me to work when I'm too tired to keep my eyes open too.

But I chalked it up to an overzealous chaplain, who possibly meant to say that with Jesus you can overcome all those things, but in his fervor, got caught up in the whole "sacrifice for you" thing, and I moved on.

Until husband-dear had to do a resiliency training. A what? Yes, a resiliency training. The Air Force, and our base in particular, has really been struggling with suicides, attempted suicides, and an increase in PTSD. In response, the Air Force has not only upped its prevention programs, but it's also created yet another mandatory training. It's what the Air Force does. There's diversity training, sexual harassment prevention training, when don't ask don't tell was repealed, there was training about how to not discriminate/offend people who are of a previously not-approved sexual orientation, and now there's resiliency training.
So husband-dear emailed me the slides, and OMG-my-head-almost-exploded-you're-not-going-to-believe-this, what did they say about how to deal with negative emotions such as sadness or depression? How does the Air Force want its members to deal with that?
You are to repress them.
Yes, if you're in the Air Force and you feel bad, just pretend it's not there.
And why, you ask? Well, apparently, negative feelings spiral you down into more negative feelings.

No?! Really?

So here's the solution for all those suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety, whathaveyou, just repress everything and you will be fine. Please don't talk about it, or share it with your family, your wingman or your chaplain. Well, I suppose you can talk to your chaplain, as he will just tell you that you have no reason to be sad since Jesus died for you, and how cool! is! that!

It's enough to make me wonder if Barney Stinson has been given an advisory position within the Air Force, "Whenever I'm sad, I stop being sad, and start being awesome again."

How to sound southern. Or just country.

If you're anything like me, you really like to blend in, and you will do just about anything to not stand out in a crowd. At least not on first sight. I think it's fairly obvious to once someone has gotten my basic information, that I'm very little like most southern women. There's the whole working step-mom thing for one, not to mention that penchant for bleeding tree-hugging political tendencies, or that tendency to prefer tennis to Nascar, martinis to beer, and things like that. But anyway, I digress.

My point is that I at least like to appear as though I'm just like you, and please! be! my! friend! And one important part of blending in is how you sound. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that in a country where no one really cares what you dress like, your voice, your accent, and your vocabulary are what most people will use to assess where you're from, what you do, and a whole host of other socio-economic characteristics.

So for the past four years and some change, I've made a detailed study of southern speech. Now southern speech itself is not new to me. Before moving to Georgia, I lived in Texas, where the flat vowels quickly became part of my accent. But before Texas, I also spent some time in New England (not to mention an inordinate amount of time at American schools overseas, where the accent can be best equated to a blend of mid-Atlantic and New Englander anyway), and let me tell you, that has been almost impossible to shake. Although I did quickly lose the "wicked", when people in Texas would look at me like I had just lost my mind whenever I would say something was "wicked good" (really good), or "wicked hot" (really hot), I seem to have an especially hard time losing the northern lack of lilt to my voice.

Here in the south, women especially love to phrase every single sentence as though it is a question, i.e., their sentences might start on a middle "C", but they'll pretty much always end on a B-flat or somewhere around there. When you've lived in the north, like I have, you've actually learned to lower the tone in  your voice as you speak, to the point of it almost becoming gravelly (which lately, apparently, has become a trend among younger women). No matter how hard I try, I just cannot get myself to raise my voice any higher than an "E" at best. It doesn't help that I'm an alto, was taught to project my voice by lowering it, and have always my deep voice to compensate for my lack in height.

And this inability to raise my voice has been causing problems lately. As I've mentioned before, I have a real knack of adapting local vernacular. I've even noticed that, lately, instead of saying "What?" or "Excuse me?" when I can't understand someone, I say "Do-what?" (another southern-ism), and that "doo-hickey" has become one of my favorite words (as in, "Give me that doo-hickey over there, that, uhm..uhm..pen! Yes, that pen"). However, when you combine that with a voice lower than any southern woman would use, what are you left with?
Country.

I'm not making this up now (see, another southern turn of phrase - oh God, now I'm starting to write like them too), even the kids and husband-dear have been poking fun at me for sounding country. Now I'll get right back at husband-dear by telling him that at least I don't say "The washer's broke" when I mean it's broken (as opposed to suffering from a negative cash flow), but he then rattles off an entire list of things I say that only country folk say (doohickey, that there, do-what, y'all), and I'm done, you know?

So now I don't know what to do. Obviously, I'd rather not sound country, since I'm really not country (as in, I don't know the difference between a bull and a steer, or even if there is a difference, and wouldn't know how to shoot a deer/skin a rabbit/grow my own crops if my life depended on it. Really. I'd probably die of starvation within three weeks). But what are my options? I would start to imitate my students and sound more southern-urban, if that wouldn't be absolutely ridiculous for a white Dutch-born woman who is starting to slowly push middle age. I could hang out with my non-southern colleagues, and start talking like I'm from Chicago or Michigan. But there's only like two of them, and I'm pretty sure it would look awkward if I suddenly became their new best friend. I could, I suppose, work on retrieving that Dutch accent I must have had at some point twenty-five years ago or so. Or, I could just watch lots and lots of Taxi reruns, and embrace my inner New Yorker.

Hm. That might not be a bad idea. Let's try that for a while.

Now get outta my face, I gotta lunch to make, 'kay?

(Too much inner New Yorker?)

So Perfect

Eigenlijk wilde ik als titel van dit blog de "echte" titel van het gelijknamige liedje van P!nk gebruiken, maar gezien de toch wat tedere ziel van veel van mijn NederAmerikaanse lezers (waaronder die van mijzelf), kon ik dat niet over mijn hart verkrijgen. Dus u zult het zonder het geweldige "f-word" moeten doen.

Maar goed, mijn punt is dat dat dus de reden is waarom ik de laatste tijd wat minder blog; ik ben namelijk druk bezig om proberen perfect te zijn. En dan heb je natuurlijk geen tijd meer voor blogs, en andere dingen die niet superproductief, supergezond, of supereducatief zijn. Dat begrijpt u vast wel.

Persoonlijk vind ik dat mijn hele, lichtelijk absurde, streven naar pefectie toch wel het beste samengevat wordt in een app die ik laatst gedownload heb: de MyFitnessPal. Ik kan het iedereen die behoefte heeft aan een personal trainer en dietist met Amerikaanse vriendelijkheid maar Duits niet-aflatend oog voor detail en punktlichtheid van harte aanraden.
Zo moet je, bij het installeren van de app, je lengte, gewicht, en fitness doel opgeven (afvallen, aankomen, op gewicht blijven). Je kan dit niet overslaan, en mag het zelfs in ponden of in kilo's doen, maar invullen zul je, want "it helps us to better help you achieve your goal". Had ik al gezegd dat het echt een vriendelijk doch onverbiddelijke app is?
De app biedt je dan de mogelijkheid om per dag precies aan te geven wat je eet ("grape tomatoes. Indicate serving size: 1, 2, 3, 4,..." u begrijpt het, daar is het oog voor detail), en vertelt je precies wat voor een voedingswaarden daarin zit (kopje koffie met Truvia: 30 calorieen, 1 kiwi: 90 calorieen, een rijstewafel, 45 calorieen). En dan kun je natuurlijk ook bijhouden wat je die dag aan sport hebt gedaan, ook weer tot op pijnlijk detail (bicycling: mountain biking, cyclo-cross, bicycling, stationary bike; effort: 10-12mph, 12-24mph, etc.), en dan berekent de app hoeveel calorieen je daarmee verbrandt hebt. En zo krijg je dan aan het einde van de dag een prachtige pie-chart met daarin hoeveel procent van je dieet die dag uit carbs, protein, suiker, etc. bestond, en hoeveel calorieen je netto over of onder je streefaantal zit. 
Om het geheel nog leuker te maken, kan je, a la Facebook, via MyFitnessPal ook "friends" worden met je real-life vriendjes en vriendinnetjes, die dan via allerlei updates op de hoogte gehouden worden van jouw fitness, "Kay has just burned 350 calories running a 6mph pace for 30 minutes" en je dagelijkse vooruitgang, "Kay has completed her daily food intake diary and is under her daily calorie intake". De echte diehards kunnen deze updates dan ook meteen publiceren op hun Facebook paginas of Twitter feeds. Sociale controle via de sociale media; wat wil een mens nog meer.

U begrijpt dat dit dat dus het echt een app voor mij is (nummertjes! sport! pie charts!). Hoe kan ik er voor zorgen dat ik nog productiever en gezonder leef, zodat ik op mijn 120e (met wallen tot op mijn, dan vast versleten, knieeen) de oudste vrouw ben die de New York Marathon loopt?

Pfftt.

Eigenlijk wil ik gewoon met een zak chips op de bank naar een film kijken, maar ja, daar is dan weer geen app voor. Jammer hoor.