Diagnoses and chronic illness

I don't know why I was being private about this. I have been quite self-disclosing on this blog. On Friday, I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. After a lifetime of chronic joint pain that waxes and wanes, bouts with all sorts of unexplained and mysterious ailments and illnesses, I have finally been diagnosed with something. And this time, as opposed to other times, it all makes sense. There is no doubt.

Though it's not a fun diagnosis, it's a progressive disease after all, it's something of a relief to have a name and an explanation for what's "wrong with me." Not knowing has been maddening. Of course, especially since I'm a woman, my health issues have been seen by many as hysterical, crazy, exaggerated, non-existent, cover stories for wanting painkillers, hypochondria, plays for attention, a symptom of borderline personality disorder, manifestations of repressed sexual abuse, you name it (and I haven't named it all).

Unfortunately, a lifetime of being told all of the above becomes internalized, and so it is with some relief that I finally know that it isn't all in my head. Quite frankly, it's been hard to understand why I have ever thought it was all in my head when I walked with a cane at the age of 18, wake up some mornings with my hands swollen up or am unable to sit up without support for nearly an hour, have one foot with nerve damage, one eye with a blind spot from an optic nerve hemorrhage, have seen x-rays of deteriorated joints in my neck, back, knees, hands, and feet. . .the list goes on (and on).

Yes, sometimes I get upset, sometimes I cry, sometimes I feel hopeless. Most of the time I do not. Most of the time I enjoy myself more than I think the average person does. Some of the time I am depressed. And I have been extremely depressed, and yes, hospitalized for it.

Y'know, waking up in screaming pain out of the blue is pretty hard on a person. Knowing that it's real and not being able to do a damned thing about it is frustrating, especially when I want to jump out of bed and get to work. In an odd way, just being crazy just might be easier. If I was "just crazy", it could go away! Some days I can't do some very simple things, and not knowing how long that will last is scary. People who know me are numb to being all that sympathetic, it's tiring for them, and I can understand that, even if it doesn't feel good. I'm not saying this to complain; I'm just saying how it is.

Why am I writing this? It's not just for me. It's for all the people who have chronic health problems. Most of us try very hard to be cheerful, uncomplaining, and stoic.

I used to have a good friend, who passed away, who was much sicker than I. Everyone thought she was so happy-go-lucky, upbeat, a near perfect picture of a sick person who "acted normal." She suffered greatly, and in silence. When we got together, we'd have a great time. We'd play dumb card games, and complain at length, sometimes for hours. We knew it was good to complain, and we'd laugh as we did so, something that others could not understand. We also knew complaining meant very little but relieved a lot and annoyed other people quite a bit. She was better at keeping her mouth shut amongst the healthy than I am. She had also learned to only ask for help from other "non-healthy" people and professionals. Doing so was hard on her, and I don't think anyone knew that. She had a lot of fear, and that was another thing most people did not know.

A big thing that contributed to her death, if not the thing, was not knowing whether a new symptom meant anything or not, and not wanting to yet again inconvenience anyone. She thought she might need to go to the hospital, but the person she asked didn't really want to go just then, so she waited, thinking "perhaps" it wasn't such a big deal. That night, she died. At her funeral, this was never mentioned. In fact, I'm not sure anyone has talked about this out in the open. I'm writing it now, because I've always been sad and angry about what happened, and because I understand it so very well. She couldn't get there on her own. She second-guessed that anything unusual was happening. She figured she probably feel better in the morning, and if not, go to the doctor. She didn't make it. This is the truth, the unspoken truth, about my friend's death. She didn't have to die that night.

It's interesting how chronically ill people have to be so perfectly well-behaved about their problems to be acceptable to the well. The epithet "he never complained" is considered a big compliment. Many of those people who "never complained" did a hell of a lot of complaining, but to strangers. And even those who are complainers, like myself, don't complain most of the time. Those time, other people figure we're fine when we simply are not. The days I enjoyed kayaking this summer? Every single time I went out, I struggled with pain. Did I enjoy myself? Absolutely.

I'm glad I have a diagnosis now, but in the end, it isn't going to change things all that much. I'll still have to deal with my health problems, and the truth is I'm pretty good at dealing with them. And sometimes I'm not. Just like anyone. So, tonight, I've had my say. I'm not sure what my point was, but I got some stuff off my chest. I'm sure there will be some sort of fallout from this, but fuck it. And yeah, I cursed. It's a rarity on this blog, isn't it?

Image note: One option is to turn being ill into performance art, a la (R.I.P) Bob Flanagan. But, his pain journals reveal that he suffered more than his public persona let on.

And lastly, just to be clear, I am not suffering. I am "just" allowing myself to be honest, which in this arena, I think I have been holding back from doing fully. And still, I am holding back some. . .

Another fun disaster

I don't know why I'm awake. Earlier today, at work, I was so tired, I tripped over something (twice) and fell down. Here it is, at 10:09pm, and I'm blogging.

Ah well. There's just not enough time in the day to do everything. I'm keenly aware, more to the point, that there's not enough time in an entire life to do everything. I probably will crash and burn sometime, though it sure felt like it was this afternoon, when I was bleary-eyed and falling to the floor. Second winds sure are something!

I just finished another fun disaster of a handspun (above). It's a thick and thin coiled yarn. It's simply a mess; completely overspun. If I take the skein off the niddy-noddy (that wooden object it's on, for those of you who don't know the lingo), it curls up up itself to the point of reducing in size by about half. Is it usable? Probably, for yet another funky hat or bag. "Funky" is an aesthetic that's great for problematic fiber.

I must remind myself that I'm learning. I may know how to spin perfect looking fine fibers, but as far as "art yarn" goes, I'm a rank beginner. I learned a lot spinning this skein. I didn't quite understand the principle of it until I was about a yard away from finishing it up. Truth is, I've never even seen this type of yarn in person. I've only seen photographs (and they are lovely). I do wonder, in spite of the loveliness of a good thick and thin coiled yarn - what is it good for? I mean, what can one actually knit from it? It seems as if it's best use is a decorative wall hanging. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the structure of it and want to be able to spin a good skein (or 100) of the stuff.

By the way, I'm not obsessed with purple, green, and yellow. I just happened to get some very inexpensive halfway decent fiber that was dyed those colors. I've now used them up. Phew! Now I can move on to some new colors. The stuff is not soft, either. I'm glad to see the end of it, but grateful that it gave itself quite willingly to cheap practice without guilt. I'm saving the good stuff for when I know what I'm doing.

Unsuccesful, but fun

I overworked and overthought this skein of yarn in an attempt to push my limits. But hey, it was a great learning experience.

I suspect that even though I think it's unsuccessful, it would knit up into an interesting object, maybe a funky bag. It's not soft; the wool I used was a matted bunch of fat singles that I combed out. I spun a wool/silk thread into one ply of the yarn, which was a mistake. For one thing, it was green, and the yarn was already green enough (the flash brings out the other colors too well). To make up for that, I tied the purple raw silk into the whole thing at intervals. That was a lot of work, and put my new wheel to the test.

I'm going to pull back some and not aim for the most out-there yarns quite just yet. I also want to make softer yarn, though some of the materials I'm working with defy me to do so. I love a challenge. More to come!

And since I've posted this on Facebook, I'll put it here, too: There will be prizes for anyone who comes up with a great suggestion for the name of my yarn biz (though you may be thinking "how could she even be thinking of selling already?!") Well, I thrive on having goals. FYI: Contenders so far are: Muttonhead Yarns, Scenic Turnout (which could encompass anything I make), and Effyarn.

I'm lousy at naming things and I need your help

The above is self-explanatory. But, for the sake of interest, here's how bad I am at naming things: I've opened dictionaries at random and used name generators on line to name pets. My parents made fun of my pet-naming prowess. Suggestions for orange cats were "Peachy" or simply "Orange." Tabbys? "Tabby." I didn't name my sheep, 'cause I didn't want to think of them as pets (though one sheep was called "Muttonhead" due to it's uselessness).

So, I need your help. I'm planning on putting up a website that features my new handspun yarns. Every name I can come up with is awful. Here's some keywords that might be useful: handspun, art, upcycle, recycle, Freedom (where I live), fiber, fun, one of a kind (important one, that), Maine, color, play. I thought of Freedom Oaks as a name (oak being "one of a kind") but that sounds like a housing development. See? I'm really bad at naming things. I wish the letter "F" wasn't so loaded or I'd call it Fyarn, for Freedom, Fun, and Fiber. There is already a JKnits company. Hey, maybe Fyarn isn't bad. Oh, I need help!

I also am planning on self-publishing my lace workshop as a book. I've thought of "Holey Knit!" A book called "Lace Knitting: A Workshop" was published 30 years ago. Keywords for this one are swatch, lace, learning, fun, knitting, workshop in a book. . .you get the idea. What will the book look like? It will be a small, spiral-bound book with a photo of a swatch on the left page, and a chart with both typeface and written notes (so it looks like a fun knitter's notebook) on the right page. Maybe "Lace Knitter's Notebook" is a good name?

Thanks for your help!

Photo note: Websafe sent me this scan of my fingerless mitt. It's got more accurate colors than the photo I took. I'm going to be ripping out the thumb section because I don't like the striping, nor do I like the bind-off. That, too, will go. Sheesh! I've got too many projects in the works. Spinning, book-making, knitting, trying to keep the woodstove going, and I'm still in my pajamas at 1:14 in the afternoon. I bought them yesterday and they are too cozy to take off, but still. Why did I tell you that? It's too much information, and an embarrassment to boot.

And the results are in

 

My friend Websafe showed me how to scan three dimensional objects. So, here are my first two skeins of upcycled/recycled handspun. The khaki and grey one is from the fibers in the previous post. Afterwards, I made the purple skein, but I was so tired by then that I forgot to take a photo.

How is upcycling different than recycling? Hmmm. I suppose recycling is using something that would otherwise be thrown out. I did that by using fiber bits from the ends of knitted objects and combing them out. Upcycling is using materials that would otherwise be used for different things. There is some white silk in the purple yarn that was from a perfectly good skein of plain white silk. I un-spun it, combed the heck out of it with a dog comb, and put bits of it into the purple fiber. The purple fiber is from pieces of slightly felted roving that I combed out, so I suppose it is upcycled, too. There's a bit of sari silk in there. Is that recycled or upcycled? I have no idea.

Fiber frenzy

I love fiber. No, I love fiber. I just spun up and knit some intentionally lumpy, bumpy, and possibly even ugly yarn and I adored every second of it. The feel of the stuff in my hands, the colors, (may I say the feel of it in my hands a second time?), the feel of the stuff in my hands, the smell (if there's any), the transformation of almost nothing into something, the rhythm of treadling a spinning wheel and the rhythm of knitting. . .ach! No words can do justice to the pleasure I derive from fiber-related activities.

I've heard painters speak of paint this way. I am a good painter, but I've never loved the smell of paint, or turpentine, or the feel of a brush in my hands, or charcoal on my fingers. All the good artists I know love the tools and the materials they use, but even as I am facile, even accomplished, as an artist, I've never loved any of it the way I love fiber.

I'm a re-born spinner. I was an expert almost twenty years ago, an expert in the ways of spinning on old wheels, and spinning in old ways. This was not very creative. I loved doing it, but there was no thrill of discovery. There was satisfaction; spinning flax into perfect thread that I'd weave on an 19th century loom was wonderful. But, no, there was no exhilaration.

Back then, I eschewed the "art yarns." I saw them as technically sloppy and useless. I had no use for color for many years of my life.

Now, what's above is not crazy colorful (though I'm working on many things that are). The reason I'm posting this image is that just that this pillow top full of fluff made me very happy. It started out as a piece of garbage-y felting wool which could have easily been thrown away. I pulled it apart with a dog comb and discovered that it was as soft as a cloud. I'll spin up a little bit of yarn with it and present it another day. I also liked the photograph; it looks like there's haze in the air. I used a finger to block some of the flash and that is the result.

Did I mention how much I love fiber?

Crafty days

What have I been up to? First, half of a pair of fingerless mitts (and the back half of my cat):




Next, a long sampler for my (unfortunately canceled)lace knitting class. Here's the pointy end:



Here's the non-pointy end, where the stitches are fairly simple:



And, lastly, here's the entire thing, which you can see in detail (only slightly blurry) if you click on it:



The purpose of this knitting is not aesthetic. It is for learning. It is what any lace knitter would have done before books were readily accessible to all. Knitting this was so much fun, even for an old-hand like me. I remembered how exciting I find creating holes in knitting! With this sampler of only 12 different patterns, there's enough information for a lifetime of making up patterns. Some of the samplers that are still in existence from the late 19th century are nearly 20 feet in length. I could have kept on going, but I've got other things to do.

I also spun up three bobbins of slubby thick and thin yarn, which needs to be dyed, and then plied with another yarn in order to be presentable.

I almost forgot that I made over 100 yo-yos to sew onto an old Army bag which has gorgeous weathered leather buckles and whatnot on it. How will it come out? I don't know. It's an adventure, so stay tuned.



I thought I hadn't been that creative or busy, since I've not been feeling well. This shows how one's perceptions can be completely inaccurate.

Your breasts do not belong to you

If you'd like breasts that are, say, size 36DD (such as Pamela Anderson, above), you can just pull out a credit card, plunk some cash on a counter, take a deep breath of whatever it is they knock you out with, and voila - you can now get yerself into Juggs magazine or whatever big-boobed fantasy you want. Pamela may not actually have boobs big enough for a rag like that one, so if you want more than she's got (which would not be unreasonable according to our society), you can ask for bigger. Now, on the other hand, if you would like a flat chest and you were born a woman, you need to see a psychiatrist at least three times to determine that you have gender identity disorder. It's not enough to say "I'd prefer to have small breasts or no breasts, thank you very much." No, you have to be a man-trapped-in-a-woman's-body. Otherwise, you are quite obviously crazy.

I was surprised to learn this.

I thought the right to choose was only about abortion. How foolish of me.

I've wanted breast reduction surgery ever since I knew it was possible. I spoke to a doctor about when I was in my 20's and he said I had a bra size that "every woman wants." That was the end of the discussion, especially since he was chuckling out loud at the foolishness of my not seeing how good I had it.

Being skinny helped matters throughout the years, but the only way I can maintain skinniness is by not eating, and that's a strategy that I haven't been able to tolerate for many years now. I like food. Anorexia wasn't very much fun.

But, as usual, I'm getting off track.

I'm appalled by the notion that one has to be analyzed by so-called experts in order to modify one's body to one's own liking. I can understand being alarmed by someone who would like to cut off one of their legs (and there are such people), but given the fact that 1 in 100 women in America elect to enlarge their breasts (yep, that's right) with such freedom (and encouragement, I might add), I see the "fact" that not wanting to be big-breasted (or breasted at all) is considered a pathological state as evidence that womens' breasts are not really ours. They belong to the public sphere. They belong to the tyranny of what heterosexual men deem normal and right. The only "normal" reason for not liking one's boobs is that one is not really a woman. Normal woman want D-cup breasts and if they don't, they should seek therapy.

I know I'm not going to get a lobby group behind this issue. It's not as important as the right to choose to end a pregnancy. But, it does tell me that feminism, while coming a long way, still has a long way to go, and unfortunately, hasn't many people left who are pissed off enough to care to carry any torches.

As to photo of Ms. Anderson, I wonder how many of you think she looks "normal."

Y'know, I may find her "abnormal" looking, but I allow her the right to look any way she wants. I'm sick of the emphasis on normalizing everything and everyone. People also have the right to be "abnormal", strange, eccentric, different, and not like the proverbial girl or boy next door.

Reality check

How many more people will have to die as a consequence of 9/11? In the name of 3000, revenge must be exacted.

I wondered out loud to a friend this evening, after the President's speech, on how many people have died since 9/11 because they didn't have adequate health care. I couldn't get that answer quickly, but in 2008 alone, it is estimated that 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died because they lacked health insurance. Here more here.

When will we get our priorities straight?

Blood boiling over post (the beginning of a long series, I suspect)

Caveat: To anyone offended by foul language, do not read this. I started to self-censor, but quit. Sometimes cursing is necessary.

I just watched a few minutes of the Victoria's Secret "Fashion" Show on tv. It made me almost physically ill. Dick asked "What are they selling?" I answered "the stuff that's on the commercials." My first answer, unspoken, was that they were selling sex, but I realized that sex was only the come-on.

How many girls and women are made miserable by these beauty standards and the presentation of females who are, quite frankly, freaks of nature (and plastic surgery)? How normal is it to be nearly six feet tall and have a body that looks pre-pubescent everywhere except the bustline? I know I once had some statistics about the answer to that question on this blog somewhere. . .

Watching these girls (and yes, they are girls) prance, strut, wiggle their asses and blow kisses to the audience (and who the hell is in the audience?), teeter on eight inch heels, pull their tops off to reveal their ooh-so-secret bras, act as if they have some great power (as if). . .sheesh, I'm all worked up with anger. No, really, I'm not joking. I'm enraged.

I also think of my father, who loves these spectacles. This is what he think women should look like. If he were with me, he'd be poking me in the ribs as if I was a co-conspirator and telling me how much every man truly wants that.

Last week I mentioned to someone how my father told me I better cultivate an interesting personality because I wasn't an attractive female. At the age of 14 or so, I believed him. Now I see one of the few photographs of me as a young woman and see that I was actually quite beautiful. Here's what I thought: I'm so ugly I can't look people in the eye. I wish I could wear a bag over my head. I wish I could have surgery. The only reason anyone is attracted to me is that men will screw anything with a pulse. And, thankfully, I also occasionally thought "fuck you."

On this show tonight, they showed girls who had competed to become a Victoria's Secret model. They went to a kind of boot camp. One man examined a girl's ass like he was looking at cattle. "What do you like about your body?" he asked her. She said she basically liked everything. Now, that's unusual in our society. He grinned and said she was in for a rude awakening. It wasn't good enough. We saw her sweat it out in the boot camp, practically crying, as he yelled "I can't feel it!" He inspected her ass again to see if it looked any better. I have no idea what he was looking for. Perhaps humiliation was all he wanted from this poor girl who deigned to have some self-esteem.

I'm sure it's a rush to be so gorgeous and feel so powerful at such a young age as these models. I feel sad for them thinking of how it will feel when they become faded and they no longer hold the male gaze. Girls do hold enormous power over men when they are young. Even I, a girl supposedly too ugly to do so, enjoyed playing with that power when I was young even as I also hated it. I hated talking to men who stared at my breasts instead of looking me in the eye. I hated the catcalls on the street. But when they stopped, I must admit I felt a sense of loss, and then I felt ashamed of myself for feeling that.

You'd think, perhaps, that I hated the idea of sexual attraction from what I'm writing. No, I do not. Of course we are attracted to each other. Staring at beauty is no crime. So, as is my way, this post is confused. What bothers me is the incredibly small and nearly unattainable beauty standard, which I've railed against over and over and over again.

And to be clear, I'm not even against pornography. Again, what bothers me is illustrated by this incident: Once, I was dating a man who had a big stack of Penthouse magazines in his bedroom. I told him I disliked them. He thought that was ridiculous. How could I dislike them? I was so sex-positive. I threw a bunch on the bed and opened them at random. "See how they all look alike?" I said. Oh no. He didn't see that. He countered with the fact that some of them were black, Asian, Latino, had black hair, blonde hair. . .they were diverse! No. They were not. They all had the same bodies. They could be the same woman, photoshopped (and it would save Penthouse a lot of money if they did that). "So, you're against soft-core porn?" he asked. The answer was no. I would have preferred that he had hard-core porn. At least there, for some reason, there is more diversity. The lesbian magazine "On Our Backs" has had women of all shapes, sizes, and ages (and hair styles) having real fun and being truly sexual, not just "sexy."*

I could rant all night, but I'll stop here. There's been a lot on my mind recently, too much to reign in. My lack of posts has been because of that, not because I've run out of ideas. I just don't know how to pull it all together. To hell with my muddled thinking. I shall post in spite of it.

Image note: Ardhanarishvara-the unity of Shakti and Shiva, male and female energy.

Gorgeous. Poor Ardhanari would be ashamed to have a body like that in this society.

*I've been informed that the print magazine is no longer being published, but the example still stands. Sad to hear it's over and done with.

Prison

Dick and I were in Providence for the weekend. On Saturday night, after eating perhaps the best salad I've ever had*, I headed back to the hotel room to relax. I'd strolled around the small city for over six hours in the pouring rain and just wanted to knit.

I also wanted to watch cable TV, since we only get three stations here at home. I was looking forward to something on the food or travel channel, but no, the upscale hotel may have had a robe (but not one for each of us), but it only had the basic cable stations. I could have watched porn for who-knows-how-much, but frankly, knitting and porn just don't go together.

Nonetheless, I still had an urge to watch television, and so I surfed for a bit until I stumbled upon a show that was both truly revolting and highly thought provoking - "Lockup." This show is supposedly a "documentary" on MSNBC (see the webpage). Yes, it does document life in America's roughest prisons, but its style is more like "Cops" than anything of substance. Apparently, Americans get a kick out of watching "extractions", the often violent removal of an uncooperative inmate from their cell.

The show was interesting to be sure. A visit to Alaska's maximum security prison was of particular note. The level of prisoner violence there is markedly less than average. After watching three episodes of this show back-to-back, I could see why Spring Creek was different. A good deal of thought was put into more than punishment at this penitentiary. Inmates under 23 are separated from the general population and they can attend high school full time. The guards seem almost laid back; they don't see the inmates as "animals", nor do they treat them that way, and so, of course, violence is lessened.

Why is it that the obvious is overlooked? How can anyone think that it's sensible to put violent and/or mentally ill people in small cells and hold them there without anything to do for 23 hours a day? Unfortunately, our society cares much more for revenge and punishment than rehabilitation. Rehabilitation, to many people, seems like a reward. Many years back, a study showed that education was the single most useful tool to prevent recidivism. Of course it is. Otherwise, incarceration is only a breeding ground for resentment, rage, making new criminal contacts and learning new criminal skills. But no, more education for inmates didn't get a lot of people excited. The only excited people were the ones who yelled loudly about the need to punish people for their crimes. One point I agreed with - that there could be incentive in going to jail for the poor. But, for me, this brought up a few good points that my bleeding liberal heart pounced on. In jail, one gets "three hots and a cot", health care, and possibly some education. Why shouldn't all of these things be rights for all citizens?

Well, with our insane incarceration rate going up all the time, maybe it will be. As of year-end 2007, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation, or on parole, with 2.3 million of those actually incarcerated. Is this our fallback health care plan? Ah, America. . .the country of incredibly mixed-up priorities.

So, this is what I'm thinking about right now. It's better than going back to sleep, which I've been fighting with wanting to do since I woke up. My depression is still going strong, but without much emotion. It's certainly odd. I have no real desire to do anything. I have an interesting spinning project on my mind and when I was in Providence I was planning it while walking in the rain. Yet, the spinning wheel sits idle. I suppose that being a semi-passive observer or reader is about my speed, and thank goodness that it's semi-passive. I watch, read, analyze, and (sometimes) write. When visiting Rhode Island School of Design, I scribbled some notes for an entry about drawing vs. photography, but I can't find them. So, in spite of wanting to pull the covers over my head and sleep, my mind is pretty lively. Maybe, just
maybe, I'm not depressed. Maybe I just need sleep. It's certainly a possibility.

*What an all-over-the-map post, to say the least. Here's what I ate: House cured duck breast, served over fresh arugula with Bosc pears, steamed red and gold beets, and tossed in a honey horseradish-vinaigrette, garnished with pecorino cheese and toasted pignoli nuts. It made me want to go out and find an inspiring cookbook.

Photo note: In contrast, here's some prison food. I'm sorry I'm subjecting you to it, whatever it is. I can see how this could set off some people, though if one is homeless, it might look like manna from heaven. How lucky I am that I was able to eat at Providence's Parkside Rotisserie.

Ketchup vs. mustard

Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "What the Dog Saw", is a collection of previously published articles from the New Yorker. I'm looking forward to reading it. I like Gladwell. He's been described as a dilettante (both negatively and positively), and says he's interested in pretty much everything. I like his writing, enjoy reading about him, and am mildly jealous. Mr. Gladwell is successful and I am a tremendous underachiever. I'm sure he'd have something to say about why that is. Well, he did, actually, in his last book "Outliers", but I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.

Enough prefacing. I hear one of the chapters in the new book is about why there are so many varieties of mustard while ketchup is just ketchup. For some reason, the question of ketchup vs. mustard variety captures my imagination. Let's see if I come up with anything resembling what Gladwell did (and without a lick of research).

First let me say that I don't like ketchup. I did when I was a young child. I have strong memories of eating hot dogs with ketchup on them. For some reason, a number of these memories involve eating in the restaurant at the Museum of Natural History. There's nothing more to it than that - no memory of dripping ketchup on my clothes or teasing, no, just eating a hot dog with ketchup on it. That's all.

Oddly, I do remember thinking that eating a hot dog with ketchup was the stuff of a kid's diet. Adults ate their frankfurters with mustard and sometimes sauerkraut. At some point, I did, too. I left the ketchup in the dustbin of childhood. This may have coincided with the opening of the Zum Zum restaurants in New York, where they served all sorts of wursts besides the ubiquitious American hot dog, had buns flecked with caraway seeds, and delicious German potato salad. They did not serve ketchup.

I associate ketchup with childhood, bad taste, bad-for-you food, and the sad announcement made during the Reagan administration that ketchup could be considered a daily vegetable serving for the poor (and that's another sort of bad taste).

Besides putting ketchup on a hot dog, what else is it for? French fries and eggs. The idea of putting ketchup on eggs makes me slightly nauseated. For whatever reason, when I picture it, I also picture a cigarette butt on the same plate and bleary mornings in diners after staying up all night. No wonder there's some nausea involved. As to the french fries, I developed a penchant for eating them with mayonnaise a long time ago, a truly artery hardening habit, but one that I find much tastier than that wretched ketchup.

I really do not like ketchup. It's too red. It's too sweet. It doesn't taste like anything real.

When I think of mustard, I imagine many possibilities. Ketchup? The iconic Heinz bottle pops immediately to mind. That glass bottle is a wonderful piece of design, good enough to put on a kitchen table for no other reason than decoration. The other image that arises is one of a young child in a high chair, bib and face smeared with catsup.

There's the problem (besides the too red stuff lacking in real taste). Catsup is for little kids.

I'm sure many a good chef has come up with excellent catsup. Good advertising, high-end packaging and positioning could probably send catsup sales soaring. Now that Gladwell has written about it, unless he's proven that it's impossible to break through decades of the stuff having a bad rap, someone out there will probably now come up with gourmet catsup and lots of it.

Image note: Warhol's 1964 "sculpture."

It's gotten boring

The word "boring" on a blog entitled "everything is interesting"?

Yep.

What's boring is depression. I'm in a mild depression. After a lifetime of depression both mild and extreme, this depression thing has become a terrible bore. Not only is it boring to me, but it's boring to others. It saps the life out of things, as everyone knows. Isn't that one of the definitions of depression?

I've had little enthusiasm for this blog and it shows. I have had enthusiasm for knitting, and so I'm making all sorts of projects, as both working in the yarn shop and knitting itself seems to be safe from my blah frame of mind. I have a strong feeling that if I was working in the shop every day I'd be feeling fine. There's nothing like being surrounded by wool and people asking me to help them with their knitting to make me feel better.

I really wish I owned my own yarn shop, but it's an expensive endeavor. I crunched the numbers a few weeks ago and I was surprised at just how expensive an undertaking it is, so as much as I'd love to envision my own little shop (and it's a lovely vision), it's just not possible. I've been thinking about it a lot, nonetheless, and I've come to think of it as "buying a life."

Ah well. I can't buy myself a new life at this moment, so I'm stuck with some free-floating malaise. And even though I've dealt with this problem all my life, I still think I can (and should) talk myself out of it and pull myself up by the proverbial bootstraps. Cognitive behavioral therapy aside, it really doesn't work.

What works is being engaged by life. So, for now, I'm burying myself in knitting, watching documentaries, and reading some truly lousy mysteries. I took a Robin Cook medical mystery out of the library the other day and am quite amazed at how bad the writing is. The guy uses exclamation points! That's fine for blogging, but in a novel? C'mon, if you're a novelist, you should be able to convey emphasis in a conversation by writing it, not relying on the exclamation mark. Next thing you know, there's be an OMG in his next novel. OMG! The patient has an tumor created by an evil medical cabal! WTF?!

There: I feel a tad better from writing a bit of silliness. Maybe I should forgo the documentaries about health care and the Holocaust and watch comedies instead. Good idea.

Image note: John Cleese from the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. For a list of silly walks in comedy, go here.

Two recommendations and a small bit of thought

Last night I watched "Forgiving Dr. Mengele." Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz (and Dr. Mengele's experiments) says she is a free human being because she has forgiven. Some survivors are incredulous, others angry, but she is adamant that it is the only way one can survive after such trauma; without forgiveness, one can never be free. She separates forgiving from forgetting. Of course, she says, how can one forget?

Ms. Kor doesn't articulate her reasoning that well, and I can't articulate for her why I sense she is absolutely right.

One person I know said that when he stopped hating homosexuals he felt as if a burden was lifted off his back.

I also watched Frontline's "Sick Around the World", which I think every conservative in America should be forced to watch. This film analyzes the health care systems of Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.K. At the end of each segment, the question is asked "Does anyone in your country go bankrupt because of health care bills?" The answer is always "no", along with incredulity that any modern nation could allow this to happen to any of its citizens.

The American health care non-system is a disgrace to our supposed sense of being a moral nation. I don't understand why the most "morally-minded" of our citizens are so firmly against any kind of national health care. Other countries are mystified by Americans' attitudes on this. I am, too.

There are so many lies out there. For one, we do not have the world's best health care. Fears of waiting forever if there's national health are unfounded and unsupported by wait times in other countries. And, as it stands now, it is generally unusual to be able to see a doctor in a timely fashion unless one is deathly ill.

The only area in which America's non-system stands above other countries is in elective surgery. Why don't we come out and call it what it is: cosmetic surgery. Should we really be proud of that?

I now see that there is actually something tying together these two seemingly disparate films. One involves an evil individual. The other, health care in America, may be about an evil health care system. One always hesitates to use the word "evil." We generally reserve it for such figures as Dr. Mengele, but what else can we call a system in which children go without basic health care, families are destroyed because of illness, the rich have all the access they want, and in this dominant superpower called America, the poor basically are thought to deserve what they get. Do mentally ill people deserve to be homeless? Do children deserve to die because their parents don't have money? If thinking that only by merit and money people deserve to have proper health care and a roof over their heads isn't a type of evil, I don't know what is.

Painting note: Edvard Munch "The Sick Child" 1907

Sugar

Lately I've been craving sweets. That's unusual for me.

I overslept this morning and had to run out of the house to make it to an appointment. After the appointment, I did a big grocery shopping. I was hungry, for I hadn't had my morning oatmeal. There was a Dunkin Donuts right there in the supermarket and I got a decaf french vanilla iced coffee. I noticed for the first time that the shopping cart had a built-in cup holder. Whee! I didn't buy a donut, but as I was passing the market's cupcake and muffin section, I saw there were carrot muffins, "New England Morning Carrot Muffins" to be exact. So, I got one. It had been filled with what I mistakenly thought was sweetened cream cheese. Oh, not so. It was filled with sugar icing. I used the plastic bag I put it in to try and scoop out most of the icing, but I wasn't all that successful. The muffin, I have to admit, was quite good. It would have been better without all that awful icing, and it would have been excellent if it had sweetened cream cheese, but what was I expecting from a supermarket? It wasn't Whole Foods. It was a regular market.

Nonetheless, I devoured it. My newly acquired sweet tooth was sated. It's been four hours since I had my sweet drink and sweet muffin and I still feel like crap. I'm edgy. I feel certain that it has made my back ache worse. And was it worth it? I couldn't tell you, for I ate it without much thought or relish. It was mindless eating, the kind places like Dunkin Donuts really like people to do. If one stopped to think about eating a box of donut holes or a 20-ounce cup of coffee, they'd be in trouble. Those items really do affect the way people feel, but hey, America runs on Dunkin, right? Being edgy is the American Way.

Photo note: This is supposedly a pile of sugar beets.

Are we losing our collective minds?

A man shot 6 people in Orlando today, killing one. Yesterday's death toll at Fort Hood is high - is it up to ten yet? In the days before, police dug up 10 dead bodies at a man's house in Cleveland. And, I'm sure there are many other murders that happened recently that didn't make the national news. Here in Maine, a man attempted to kill his mother, killed his father, dissappeared for a few days and then showed up a truck stop, where he had a cup of coffee. When the police arrested him, he asked that they allow him to pay for his drink.

Since Columbine, now ten years ago, people have been asking "what's going on in America?" We were asking that question before then, when there was a rash of disgruntled employee murders, which spawned the expression "going postal."

I do think we've lost our collective minds, but this country was forged in violence, and we also celebrate it at the same time we let out our collective gasps of horror, so I'm not surprised when these things happen. We love our mass murderers. Last year, Newsweek had a cover story about mass murderers that had a two-page graphic spread where we could see the body count of all the famous killers. Each dead person was nameless - just an icon somewhat like the ones we see for men's bathrooms. I could imagine a would-be nutjob wanting to beat the record.

Then there's the television shows. Every night one can watch a show about killing. I'm not immune, even as I ask myself "why am I watching this?" On Criminal Minds this week, we learned about enucleators, people who gauge the eyes from their victims. There's enough of them to warrant its own term. This episode was the stuff of parody. Who thinks up these things? Let's see - there's a young boy who lives with his father and leaves school after the 4th grade when the mother died. Dad's a taxidermist. Mom had retinosa pigmentosa (an eye disease that causes blindness). Boy loves hunting. Dad dies and boy tries to do taxidermy but he's no good at eyes, so he goes out and kills people to get "good ones." Wow - those writers sure know how to come up with a plot!

Okay, I know this seems like it's beside the point, but I don't think it is. It screams of desperation to find a new reason for murder, a hunger for understanding that's misplaced (and displaces) real analysis. Well, that's entertainment. How many motives and scenarios can one come up with?

The truth about murderers is that, for the most part, their motivations are fairly mundane - not the stuff of mystery - abusive backgrounds, mental illness, triggers in the environment that cause an unraveling of control.Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of "evil."

All this aside, I do think Americans are in a strange emotional place. Anger and resentment are high. Folks like Limbaugh and Beck are fueling those fires. Unemployment, which I suspect (as do folks who know) is much higher than what is reported. The endless wars are taking their toll on those in the military and their loved ones. The future doesn't look so rosy. When someone "snaps", even as we may profess shock, we can also understand why.

I have no conclusion. I'm only ruminating. It's a gray and gloomy day. We've had our first snow and it doesn't look pretty. The big tree branch that holds our main bird feeder fell down and is sitting in the wet snow looking sad. I'm wondering where I can hang it up. My house needs a good cleaning. No, don't worry, I'm not going to snap and go kill someone because I'm overwhelmed by chores that need doing and a lack of work, but it does make me think of people who do.

Painting note: Octave Tassaert "An Unfortunate Family" 1852

In which I change my mind

After reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog today, I've changed my mind about being so understanding of the yes on 1 voters. Okay, I still think that their opinions are generated by fear more than hatred, but perhaps it's more useful, or at least empowering, to see that it is discrimination, pure and simple, and not try to analyze any further than that. It's not okay to discriminate. If you are afraid your children are being exposed to things that you think are wrong, take them out of the public schools. Anyway, it's totally hypocritical of the Glenn Beck-loving folks to use the public schools, or anything else that's funded by government. Get off the roads, people! According to Beck, that's socialism.

Maine punditry

Reading pundits scratching their heads about Maine voters makes me want to tear my hair out (a little bit). I don't want to sound like a person who's complaining about the intellectual elite 'cause I actually like the idea of an intellectual elite. But, they've got to have better analytic skills than the average person, right?

One blogging head said he was still puzzling over how such a secular state as Maine is could have voted against marriage equality. This idea that Maine is a secular state comes from a recent poll (those darn polls again!) showing that Maine has a lower than average amount of church goers. C'mon folks, don't you think it could be possible that there isn't an exact correlation between church attendance and religiosity?

Most of my neighbors are not affiliated with any church. However, many of my neighbors are also fundamentalist Christians. One woman I know doesn't go to church but she sends her kids to Bible Camp. When I lived in another town, I knew of many people whose kids went to a fundamentalist Christian after school program. It was free. That group was loosely affiliated with Focus on the Family, and they indoctrinated the kids with all sorts of messages that they'd bring home to their parents. A free program for poor kids? Smart move. They're "doing good" for the community - might as well take their advice when voting. They handed out dummy ballots showing people exactly how to vote. One of the general stores had tall stacks of these ballots right next to the cash register.

I played a little game an hour ago. I looked at the list of towns in my county and guessed as to how they voted. Squeaker, or significant win for either yes or no - I got every town right on the money. Maybe I should become a pundit.

But really, how did I do so well? I didn't rely on any polling data. Here's the somewhat sad criteria I used:

1. Poverty - Poverty, in my opinion, is the biggest predictor of conservative voting amongst white people.

2. Education - I will reference study data (without the numbers). The more education one has, the more likely one is to be liberal.

3. Isolation - People in rural areas are less exposed to diversity and are more likely to be afraid of it.

4. Lastly, and unique to Maine, whether people were born here or not is a big predictor of voting. Folks who were not born here are called "from away". They bring the values of where they're from with them. Many "folks from away" came here during the back to the land movement and settled in some very rural areas. Towns with fewer folks from away vote more conservatively.

Now, given all this, I wouldn't have predicted that voting for expanding the use of medical marijuana and opening dispensaries would pass so easily. Then again, folks up here do generally think "live and let live" and there's also an awful lot of people who smoke weed here in Maine. It's odd how live and let live doesn't fully extend to gay people. Honestly, I think it does (for the most part) but people aren't quite ready to legislate it. Remember - the initiative won by a slim margin.

I think of this couple I once met - a lesbian couple, one black and one white, and one of whom was planning on having sexual reassignment surgery (and was quite open about it). They lived in a tiny town downeast (the northern coast of Maine). I heard many a person from that town make jokes about gays and black people. But this couple was accepted fully. Why? They were good neighbors and, as one person put it (of the larger of the two woman), "She handles her chainsaw well." Having a well-stacked supply of wood goes a long way up here in Maine.

The culture wars continue

The vote has been tallied here in the middle of nowhere, Maine. In my small rural town, the vote "to reject same sex marriage" (as the Bangor Daily News calls it) has won by 20 votes. 178 people voted yes. 158 people voted no. As far as rural hamlets go, it was pretty close. Curious about the entire state? Click on the paper's link, above. It's pretty interesting, though quite predictable. The more rural the location, the more votes for "yes." Also, here in Maine, more liberal views thrive (if you can call it that) on the coast. My town is only 20 minutes from the ocean, so even though I tend to think of it as totally redneck, well, it's a pretty even split as far as voting goes.

And so, the culture wars continue. The ballot counting is not over, but I suspect that the yes votes will win, as the uncounted ballots are coming from the more rural areas. I voted on a paper ballot and stuffed it into a locked wooden box. It takes some time counting ballots. Some of that time is spent reading the notes people write on them.

Here's my take on marriage, gay or otherwise: I don't think the government should be in the business of marrying anyone. As far as I'm concerned, marriage is a religious institution. If one goes to a court to get "married", it should be a civil union for everyone. This civil union is a legal contract between two people, one that religious beliefs have nothing to do with.

The government can't force a church to marry gay couples and I respect that. We (supposedly) have separation of church and state. If this were truly so, then no religious views would interfere with the right of a gay couple to have a judge perform a civil union.

Sure, this idea strips the romance out of marriage, but it's fair and sensible. People who want to get married can still do so, and this would include gay people, but for legal purposes, not religious ones, civil unions would be the norm. If people want to have celebratory parties (often called weddings) where they declare their vows, well, nobody can stop them.

I don't mean to sound flip or callous. I'll be sad when I learn tomorrow morning that Maine showed the rest of the nation that it is composed of a lot of ignorant people who think allowing gay people to marry will somehow corrupt children and undermine conventional marriage. I'll also be sad for all the gay people who will, once again, come face to face with the fact that they are still not granted the same rights as other Americans.

I know my viewpoint is not popular. I've explained it to many people and they are almost offended by it. It poses a problem to non-religious straight folks. It strips them of their right to get married without a religious ceremony and that forces them to think about just what marriage is.

I can't help thinking about how the membership of the Unitarian Church would skyrocket if my idea went through.

"That's not a phobia"

When I first lived in New York City, it was not the city it is now. It had just gone bankrupt (see infamous image above). The mental hospitals had just let out their long-term patients and the streets were filled with muttering and screaming people. The subways were close to terrifying. In some neighborhoods, one could see guns sticking out of the top of men's jeans. The gutters were littered with used needles. On the up side, it was cheap to live there, believe it or not.

I lived on the 6th floor of a tenement and had trouble sleeping at night. I was scared, pure and simple. I had at least three locks and a steel rod against my door. I also kept a big steel rod between my bed and the wall (though I couldn't imagine hitting anyone with it). The windows to the fire escapes had metal bars, but these didn't seem secure enough to me. I didn't just have trouble sleeping at night. I pretty much didn't do it. I slept during the day, and some evenings would feel so much fear that I'd call my father. I don't recall what advice he gave me, but whatever it was it didn't help. I was constantly sleep deprived and the minute it became dark out my anxiety would grow until I imagined all sorts of horrors. The odd thing is that I felt pretty safe out on the street. I could handle the street. I knew how to walk fast, keep my eyes averted, act tough, and deflect trouble. But, in my apartment I felt vulnerable. Sometimes when I'd had enough, I'd sleep at friends' apartments. Just a bit of company would make my fear go away.

I couldn't stand living like this. I thought my fear was disproportionate to reality. I wanted to rid myself of it; I didn't want a phobia running my life. So, I did some legwork (this was before the internet) and found a good center for the treatment of phobias. The kicker? They didn't think I had one. I called over and over again, trying to convince somebody to consider treating me. But, I was always met with the same argument: my fear was not irrational.

Was it that dangerous to live in a tenement in New York? Other people slept through the night. When I offered up that observation to a few people, they countered that I simply saw things as they were, which was obviously pretty desperate. In retrospect, this whole thing sounds completely crazy, from my behavior to other peoples' responses. How could a mental health professional profess to say that living in abject fear, fear so severe that I waited until the sun came up to close my eyes, was normal?

Those days felt pre-apocalyptic. There was no hope and no help. How that city of the late 1970's morphed into the glittery clean center of the universe it is now is almost hard to believe. If one had asked back then what would happen, the prediction would probably be that New York would wind up like Detroit is now. That was the way things were headed, except that it was a city full of possibilities and creativity. Sorry, New York, but Detroit was far scarier.

Now that I think of it, visiting Detroit was a precursor to me losing my phobia. I spent a summer on tour, visiting cities all across this country and Canada, and when I came back, New York seemed a-okay. I never did a thing to help cure my crazy fears. They simply stopped. I lived in an apartment with a security system and one day I just turned it off for I preferred to be able to leave a window open now and again.

What's the lesson in this? None. It's just a story.

Addendum: Seeing that the paper cost 15 cents makes me feel very, very old.

Easy as pie

I have no idea where the expression "easy as pie" comes from. I could google it, but I'd rather speculate. Pie making is not easy, though it isn't as hard as, say, making bread. So, back in the days when everyone made stuff from scratch, saying something was as easy as pie made some sense. Nowadays, it doesn't. It's just become one of those expressions nobody bothers to think about. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure anyone except a few old rural folks even use the expression. I can't recall hearing it any time recently.

But, of course, that is not what I meant to write about, and any of you who know my writing style surely must have suspected that by now. By the way, if you know more about the expression "easy as pie", leave a comment. I am curious and comments are far better than google. I still like the personal touch. I'm kinda old fashioned that way.

So what is it that's "easy as pie"? Believe it or not, it's curing a lifelong aversion or phobia. Yep. That's right! In four to five days, one can desensitize oneself. This is no joke, though it certainly sounds like one. My therapist told me today that in four to five days I can cure myself of something that has bothered me for a lifetime. I said,"so why didn't I read this in Oprah?" He said, "because it's too simple."

Here's the deal: Expose yourself to the thing you have an aversion to. When you begin, write down how much anxiety you have. Don't get into it - just give it a number from 1 to 10. Keep exposing yourself to the anxiety source until the number drops by half. Then stop. Do this every day. Supposedly, in four to five days you'll feel very little anxiety. It may not be gone, but it'll be low. In his words, it'll have become "a little bit boring." I thought that was a humorous way of putting it. He's a funny guy.

What's the catch? There's no catch, except that most people won't do it. I sure can't envision myself starting this regimen. Even if it's only four to five days, just thinking about starting gives me the creeps. Therein lays the rub (and where did that expression come from?)

Sure, it's a grand idea, curing myself of something that's been bothering me for years. He said he's looking forward to finding out how it goes. That's when I made a face. "How it goes? You really think I'm even thinking about actually doing it?" No way! I'm attached to my aversion! That's the other reason this easy-as-pie stuff doesn't get done. Most of us (and that includes me) would rather talk about our aversions for years on end instead of getting rid of them. It's what we're made of. It's part of our personalities. Not so easy to give up, even if it is easy.

Notice I'm not telling you what my aversion is. At this moment, I'm not ready to lay my soul bare even to the small readership I have. No, I'm not that open. I'm tempted, to be sure, for I do know that my little problem is one that is fairly common. Perhaps another time. Maybe I'll tell all after I've actually tried the aversion desensitization and see if it really works so fast.

It really isn't easy. One has to be able to tolerate some discomfort. And that's another thing that no one really wants to do.

I promise a full report. Some day.

Painting note: Grant Wood "Dinner for Threshers" 1934
I googled the words "apple pie" and on the first page of image hits was Grant Wood's "American Gothic." I wondered if any of his paintings actually did have an apple pie in them, noticed how different his works depicting people are from his scenic work, and found this delightful painting (but no pie). Click on his name and check out the extensive online gallery of his work.

Addendum: I was looking at my list of links, which I need to amend, and noticed the "Markov Text Synthesizer." I used to have a lot of fun with this. Go check it out. It's a great way to vent one's feelings, then virtually chop 'em into bits and produce odd bits of prose that make odd sense. Here's what I came up with just now:

"I don't mind yours, but I hate taking off my body."

Not being annoyed (yep, two posts in one night)

Recently, it has been brought to my attention that I don't get annoyed easily and seem to have patience with people who would supposedly annoy anyone. I did mention on this blog that a woman yelled at me a few weeks ago, but it didn't bother me in the least. I thought it was rather funny, to be honest, and had to stifle myself from laughing when she did it.

Don't get me wrong; I certainly can have my feathers ruffled. But, I do have a good amount of patience and odd or irritating behavior generally just seems interesting to me. I'm taken aback, quite frankly, when other people are irritated.

I do think that most people are easily irritated these days by waiting for anything. This was true before the internet age, but it has undoubtedly gotten worse since. A few years ago, I bought a great little scanner that was considered "very slow" by reviewers because it took (and I remember this exactly) 40 seconds to perform a scan. Almost a minute! Oh my, how could anyone stand waiting almost a minute for something to scan?! It's an eternity.

An aside: Please, please, don't let me start sounding like Andy Rooney, okay?

But really, waiting is an opportunity. I mean it. When Dick and I watch some Netflix streaming video and it stalls because of whatever, it's an opportunity for us to have a short conversation. Usually the conversation consists of the following: "Oh, this is ridiculous!" "C'mon, it's only 30 more seconds. See?" "No, something is wrong." "Only ten seconds left!" "I should have rebooted." "Look. It's still ten seconds. Huh." Okay, it's not much of a conversation, but it could be.

I'll admit that I don't like waiting in line. This supposedly patient person who can sit for hours staring at a spot on the floor gets really antsy waiting in line. There's no reason for it. I could read a book. I could read any number of magazines. I could talk to another person in line (and I sometimes do, but often they get annoyed). But usually, I waste time trying to find the shortest line. And when I do, it seems that that line has a problem with it. Something won't scan and needs a manager to key it in. A credit card won't go through. Or, since I do use the self-check-outs if they're available, I wind up behind someone who hasn't a clue how to use them. C'mon lady, how many times are you going to swipe that card before you realize you're putting it in the wrong way?

And another thing, why is it that in 2009 the majority of people doing grocery shopping are still women and that most of the men are only buying large quantities of beer?

The last time I got stuck in line because of a problem was a guy who was buying a case of beer that was beat up. He wanted the cashier to find a bunch of stickers he could put in the bottom so the cans wouldn't fall out of the box. If the store still had paper bags, it wouldn't have been a problem.

Oh, I do sound an awful lot like Andy Rooney.

Stores used to have paper bags. People used to be in less of a rush. Waiting for a movie to start used to be fun.

You get the picture. Age brings on curmudgeonly qualities in most people. Twenty-year-olds are not liable to be curmudgeons, are they? Then again, people did whine about liking the old Facebook better. . .

But, the truth is, I'm not easily annoyed, waiting in lines aside. I see customers who demand attention as people who want some company and people who ask for directions to be explained over and over again as insecure or an interesting challenge. When I notice that I'm annoyed, I ask myself if I really am being put out by whatever is going on. The answer to that is usually "not really." I also go out of my way to not get involved in things and with people who I know will bother me. Setting boundaries way ahead of time has helped me avoid a lot of grief.

Some would say that this is plain ol' avoidance. Maybe if I was agoraphobic I'd agree, but I'm not.

So, next time you get annoyed, try sitting (or standing) back and just watching what's going on. Maybe you'll find it entertaining. Generally speaking, I do, and anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm not a bubbly cheerful person, so if I can have some equanimity, anyone can.

Painting note: Gustav Klimt, "Stiller Weiher im Schloßpark von Kammer" 1899. Yesterday, I read that Klimt liked to wear floor-length indigo-dyed smocks with nothing on underneath. "It feels natural", said he. I wanted to post a Klimt, but have been annoyed with seeing certain of his works way too much. I enjoyed looking at the Wikipedia Commons image entries, for I was reminded of just how good an artist he was. His drawings are particularly good, though (obviously) that is not what I posted here. Since I've been fascinated of late with images of water, I chose this painting for your viewing pleasure. Well, more correctly: my viewing pleasure, eh?

And the survey says. . .

I've always liked to ruminate about what other people like, think, and do. Perhaps it comes from being an only child. My sample group was small, obviously, with just me and my parents, and I also knew that my family wasn't exactly typical. Knowing that neither of my parents believed in God was a major impetus for my rumination, or more exactly, I wondered who this God was that others believed in, and why they believed so fervently.

But this post is not about religion, though I certainly could write about that for hours on end. It's about surveys, polls, and studies. Where once a philosopher might spend a lifetime thinking and writing about humanity, nowadays we have random sample groups to "prove" things. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if this keeps us from doing a lot of hard thinking. Have an idea? Just call 100 people and ask them what they think.

I can't help thinking about the ol' Family Feud show. I used to love watching that show, and actually wished I could get my family on it. Not being exactly normal wouldn't have been a hindrance in the least. Being a bunch of people who did a lot of ruminating about things would cinch our win. I was sure of it.

I have nothing against studies (and love reading their results), but sometimes I wonder how accurate their results are. A friend of mine once participated in a study about pain tolerance. He was hooked up to electrodes and zapped until he said "stop!" He told me that it was absurd, for he could say stop any time. Pain is so subjective; how could those conducting the study know if someone was calling it quits way before it got too awful to endure? Even accounting for estimates that any percent of people would, there was no sense to this. My friend actually did wait until the pain was too much until he said stop, but I'd guess that was atypical. On the other hand, I'd imagine that anyone signing up for this study, even with the good pay, was at least veering towards the masochistic.

Here's an example where I don't think anything about this study would be useful except the very concept of the study itself. The pain study makes me think. The results? Knowing that the average person can withstand 4 volts of electricity before they cry uncle means nothing. Wondering why anyone would come up with the study, who might sign up, how people might "cheat" or if some people would wait until they were really suffering, well, those things are way more interesting to me.

Earlier today I was having a discussion with someone about Northern New Englanders' propensity for minimizing their discomfort. Stoicism is considered a virtue up here. Perhaps that comes from living in a cold climate. This women was telling me how her husband had cut an artery in his leg with a chainsaw (by accident), put a tourniquet on it, and drove himself to the emergency room. Then, there was a four-hour long wait, during which he patiently sat there bleeding to death until someone realized that it really was an emergency.

I bet there is a study about regional differences in pain tolerance. I am not going to google it, no matter how much I feel the urge. I want to just think about it. I would bet that people who live in areas where the weather is generally nice do have less of a tolerance for being uncomfortable. It just makes sense. And no, there's nothing wrong with doing a study about it, though I would argue that it's rather a waste of somebody's money.

Well, I have a strong feeling I forgot what it was I intended to write about. I know I started veering off the topic early in this post. Never mind that. My longer entries were always rambling and off-topic, and I've been doing too much to reel myself in for a long time. Writing late, and when tired, is something that I used to do and feel perfectly fine about. Perhaps it's time to let myself ruminate and ramble again. But for now, I'll end this here. I really am tired, and I do wish I'd done this subject more justice. But this is a blog, so I can come back to it any time I want and no one is paying me to write well. That's a good thing, at least tonight.

Photo note: Richard Dawson, the original Family Feud host. He kissed all the women and they seemed to love it. He gave me the creeps but I still watched. And lastly, I think 1970's "fashion" is unbelievably ugly, especially the men's stuff. So, why I'm subjecting you to this image instead of some lovely piece of art is beyond me. But really, what would have been relevant? Survey says. . .you tell me.

No NaNoWriMo this year (for me)

I just removed my 2009 NaNoWriMo badge from the sidebar. This makes it official; I'm not committing to it this year. Participating is only going to be a set-up for failure for I haven't enough days in the upcoming month to write 50,000 words (unless I start taking speed or something).

Ah well. I remember how fun it was last year. It was almost ecstatic. I'd put up a sign saying "No talking to me. I'm writing" so Dick wouldn't unwittingly interrupt my furious stream-of-consciousness. I wrote two to four hours a day and finished those 50,000 words in 21 days. This month I don't even have 21 days to write. Now, if it was last year, I imagine I'd take it on anyway, for last year I was stoked.

I don't want to waste my time on empty promises to myself, so that's that. If there's a real novel in me, I don't need NaNoWriMo to make it happen. Sure, the virtual writer's community helped, but I presume I can find support in other ways if I deign to try again before November of 2010.

I wish NaNoWriMo was in a month other than November. It's a busy month, what with Thanksgiving and the other upcoming holidays. February would be a great month to hunker down to write a novel, especially for us folks up here in northern New England. NewEngFebNoWriMo might be something for me to look forward to. . .

Painting note: Gabriel Metsu - Man Writing a Letter 1662-65
As a thumbnail, I thought this was a woman. No matter. Look how different this reproduction is:

Brainstorming and daydreaming

Now I've got some spare time again, lots of it, and I figured I'd be blogging at least once a day. Not so, so it seems. Writing feels odd. I'm thinking about all sorts of things, but none of them are bloggable (which the spellchecker is telling me is not a word, while blogging, apparently, is).

Here's the thing: I went to tech school, studied medical transcription, coding, billing, blah blah blah, and there are no jobs. And while I'm sending resumes out to the few jobs that arise, I'm discovering that I don't care that no one has called me for an interview. None of those sent resumes were for medical transcription. Not one job has opened up since I finished school way back in mid-July. So, as I was pondering how I'd easily get some part-time job, after all, I'd gotten all A's (whoo hoo look at me!). . .now the cold reality has set in that I can't even get an interview for a receptionist gig, and quite frankly, the idea of working as a receptionist makes me think of killing myself (just kidding).

So what does all of this add up to? Brainstorming. Lots of it. If I can't find a job, I must make one. And, I miss running my own business. I miss work. In fact, I miss hard work. I miss the trials and tribulations of creating something that might succeed (or not). I miss putting my all into something that isn't just personal.

Brainstorming and daydreaming takes up lots of mental energy. I didn't realize that. The Web has been most helpful in my search for "what's next." I've got some ideas, but until I feel that they are ready to be announced, birthed (if you will), I'm keeping mum.

So, there is the reason I've not been writing blog entries. It's hard to write when one is keeping a secret, and it's hard to write about other things when one's mind is filled with ideas. Hopefully, soon, I'll either have given up on the ideas that are filling up my mind (and time) or I'll decide it's time to make a commitment to what shall now be officially called What's Next. Stay tuned.

Somehow What's Next will involve some fragrance, even if it's totally irrelevant. Yeah, I'm crazy.

Painting Note: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Interrupted Reading. c.1865-1870

Patchouli and cigarettes

I've always disliked patchouli. Now, I've not only had a truce with the scent, but have come to love it, though certainly not as a soliflore, though I'm sure there are some good ones out there. I'm not ready for that. I still also hate the smell.

Confused?

Patchouli is used in 1/3rd of all womens' fragrances and in half of all fragrances for men. If one doesn't come to like the smell, that would seriously limit the fragrances one could enjoy. Thankfully, the scent of patchouli as a note in most perfumes is not the stuff one gets in those sticky little bottles from health food stores.

Last week, I was stuck for hours in a shop with a nice young woman who reeked of patchouli. I felt suffocated, nearing choking on the scent. Scent seems too nice a word for it. Pretending to be warm, I opened the door to breathe some fresh air. Unfortunately, it was too cold out to leave the door ajar (we had our first snow that night).

Whenever I encounter someone who is wearing that much patchouli I wonder how it is that they are so (willfully?) ignorant of the effect the stuff has on many people. I enjoyed this woman's company, but I really wished she had left the premises sooner. Isn't that awful? My ability to interact with her was hampered by her fragrance.

Loud perfumes are a different story. Their wearers are (usually) well aware of how much of a statement their fragrances make. I can't help thinking of women in power suits back in the 80's. They wouldn't have cared if their fragrances were overpowering; being overbearing was the point.

Is something like that going on with the girls who wear layered tattered clothes and patchouli? Perhaps they're trying to say that they don't care what people think of the way they smell. Ah well. It's just too bad that that patchouli gives the stuff such a bad rap.

Meanwhile, as an ex-smoker, I've noticed that sometimes folks bring in knitting that smells of stale cigarettes. Now, with these people, I know for certain that they haven't got a clue. I certainly didn't realize just how lousy I smelled back when I smoked. One quickly becomes anosmic to that wretched odor.

I feel sorry for the knitting. Beautiful yarn, hours of work. . .and it stinks.

Image note: Wow. It's true. No can deny smoking can help keep one thin (especially once you have cancer).

Yes, I still have a blog

It's been over two weeks since I last posted. My goodness. I used to write an entry at least once a day. Do I have excuses? Sure. Do you want to know what they are? I doubt it. The last thing I want to do after two weeks of no entries is bore you, yet I have no coherent topic today other than "I'm back!"

I've been noticing things that would make perfectly good entries, but I have been falling asleep on my sofa in the evening. I haven't yet mastered the art of writing while asleep. Wouldn't it be amazing if I discovered that secret? Maybe I should just stick a pen in my hand when I'm nodding off, though I figure all I'll wake up with is ink on my couch.

One morning recently I noticed that some of my fingernails were dark blue. I was mystified until I discovered that I'd written something on my to-do list with a faulty pen while half asleep. Writing even whilst in a morning haze is hazardous.

I'm still getting comments about my old Ikea mattress post. Who'd guess that this would turn out to be the most popular entry ever? Seems that everyone has troubles buying a mattress, or is disappointed in the one they've purchased (save a few angry folks who seem oddly brand-loyal or mistake this blog for some sort of consumer report). Our wonderful new one has turned out to be not so wonderful. I wake up stiff and sore, but I suspect that waking up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world that some mattress companies promise with their 5000 buck investments are simply absurd. Have arthritis or a bad back? Sorry, but waking up in the morning feeling like crap is probably just a fact of life.

Oh, darn. I made a promise to myself to write nothing negative in my first post after a long absence!

One thing I've been thinking of writing about is the marquee sign of a church in a strip mall that I pass frequently. They have a weekly message and it is almost always either mildly offensive or at least something that makes me think. This week it says "The next life is more important than this one." This could either be a veiled threat or comfort, depending on the way one looks at it. Doesn't matter to me, quite frankly, for I don't believe I'll be going anywhere after this life. I thought of Muslim suicide bombers and how many Americans think their beliefs are absurd. No, I'm not advocating violence here. I'm only thinking of how similar the belief system actually is. God is on our side. We will be rewarded in heaven.

That's nothing new, to say the least. I like what Lincoln said about this subject in a letter to some generals. Ah, I just spend 20 minutes trying to find the quote, but failed. Perhaps it's a figment of my imagination, and if it is, it's a good figment. In my memory, but perhaps not reality, he wrote something to the effect that if God deigned to speak to both North and South, he might have found the time to whisper something into the President's ear.

Now, I've got some things to do in the real world, so I'll end this here. Tomorrow, I'll have no time for blogging, but I've got some ideas percolating. . .

Painting note: Botticelli's "Return of Judith to Bethulia" 1469/70
Why this? An image search of the words "the return." To read about Judith's return to Bethulia, go here.

New post coming. . .soon?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Random thoughts from today (and no imagery): I like imagining a world where I don't hear or see anything about or from Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck. The Nobel Prize for Obama? It seems premature but I understand it can be given for encouragement's sake. Unfortunately, I forget how much many Americans fear and loathe European values. Some of the trees have lost all their leaves. If you find a connection between the last line and the previous few, let me know.