Bursting the Lead Balloon

Or: How Not To Be a Dick, Lesson 1,000,000,000...+ ∞(And Beyond!)

When you've been under the weather- no prettier phrase for this area, where one week one wears light cotton and rolls down hills with happy 4 year olds and the next, you're debating using the free heat and laying  in the fetal position under three blankets while it's gray outside, and frankly, if you're honest, and not attempting to quietly close a conversation... (Well, loud, shouty people are getting frightening, that's just me...  and if I could sort myself out PDQ, that'd be delightful. The first isn't helping with the interactions and the exhaustion caused by the signals my brain is sending off, and frankly, I'm scared and having a few funky weeks.)- a conversation with the understanding is great. It can take one person who listens and is sarcastic and silly right back, and just enjoys, to pull you back to yourself. It can take another who seems to want an overtly cheery but quiet and well behaved, and obedient person, in all aspects, to simply bite their tongue as a litany of complaints is read off (Fine. Have you tried taking a pain reliever? Having a coffee? Getting yourself out of there for a while?- because as much as I like people, a litany of complaints that are getting nothing done for them is exhausting.) Finally, as I do, I start laughing at something seemingly silly and inane... maybe a phrase that could have rather filthy acronyms attached... and getting hung up on with, "Well, I'm glad you're happy" when the tone implies, "I insist you be as miserable as I am!" (Look, I feel horrible that your head hurts, that the weight loss pills you bought, after I warned you to be wary, are making you feel a bit wonky... that the puppies are keeping you up...I did say, maybe Dix should be spaded after her first litter...I feel bad your head hurts. That you seem to eat to shut out nastiness from people. But you're not going to cure anything dwelling on what's bad and horrible!- I am not in control or in power of that, I am trying to help you live a full life without worry, but when I am yelled at for having a seizure, or for being scared because you allowed a stranger to touch me, I lose a lot of trust and sympathy. I have so far kept my trap shut on most of this.) I'm forever getting hung up on these days. And then called back with more bad memories and litanies. So, I've chosen to laugh. It may not solve any or everything, but it makes me feel a million times better. As for the funk? Clearing my mind of weirdery, and of things that are disturbing. I've always been the type to find something laughable in the dark and scary. And please, expect, if you wake me up, having known me all my life, expect that a Neanderthal could write the Oxford English Dictionary in comparison to me, (This is slightly unfair to the Neanderthals who were quite sophisticated.) and that I need something to get me going. But being upset because of spontaneous happiness? Be happy I can be happy! Ps: Infinity Plus One: Be wary of the Shoulds! "You SHOULD be able to discuss ABXYZ by now"... I am going to be no sooner or have no easier time doing so if I am being forced and shoved around. I lock myself in when that happens, try to focus elsewhere. It's coping. I can't do things until I, personally, am ready to, and have dealt with things on my own.

Image courtesy of the wonderful Broken Symphony at Deviant Art's Artisan Custom Dolls

A Twinkly Thirteen

Thirteen is my favorite number, if not my "lucky" one. And randomonium is my forte.

13: I love ancient Rome and Israel. Yes, there was war, bloodshed, gore, horrible wrongs perpetrated...
but we had great art, and the Romans gave us the art of going really far in a straight line. (They were beaten in the art of the straight road.) (So, you know, apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what have the Romans done for us?) I'm hoping eventually, along with my occasional blips into vulgar and church Latin, and into Yiddish, (oy vey!), to learn modern Hebrew and to visit Israel, which, at this point, could be a bit of a tall order. 

12)I have an incredibly overactive imagination. I have discovered that it's worse if I'm eating spicy food. 
One evening, I made jambalaya, adding in banana peppers... and ate this fine mess before going to sleep. I dreamed a dream that I was in a house with red walls and liturgical dance was going on all around me. (Youtube at your own risk!) I came across, in my fevered endevours, St. Theresa of Avila... who was lovely... but in this portrait, was looking up, not angelically, but under her brows in a terrifying way and still occasionally shocks me if I look at her portrait. I have to look at more realistic paintings of St.TofA as an older woman to remember that it's not something scary I'm looking at. At least it wasn't the "cat-clock" creepiness of the Sacred Heart or St. Bartholomew  who strangely, just looks like a man in red long underwear holding his coat. (It isn't.)

So, the lesson to myself is: No Spicy Food Late At Night!

11)(Freebie-I skipped this the first time around)- Some of my favorite foods fall on the spicier side of the spectrum. I try to avoid making my lips go numb, or going into an unladylike sweat, but the occasional hot sausage or pepper makes my heart sing.

10) Getting out of the scary and staying with random-
I was born without muscle tone. While this makes a person really squishy (Babies without muscle tone are actually rather delightful to hold for this particular reason.) it's really not good... and so, my sports-loving Czech pediatrician offered my parents a solution that was natural for her. To strengthen her infant-sized, bony, squishy patient, she advised that they take her and throw her around, er, sign her up for gymnastics. I only learned to walk fully on my feet as opposed to my tiptoes at 20, and am still uncomfortable with it, and still throw my arms out for balance as if I am on a balance beam. I am notorious for being able to bend into "uncomfortable" positions, and while possessing strength worthy of an anemic mosquito, I am dangerous with my elbows. I try to stay away from people when I am either angry or very excited.

9)One of my funnier annoyances lately is that my Kindle, while being set to English US, seems not to recognize the usual American spellings of various words, for example, neighbors, color, recognize, licence. I'm almost terrified someone will think I'm being a snob!

8)I grew up around people who seemingly got insulted and complained if you said, "It looks like the fish has a beard", or "I don't wish to discuss that", or if you did anything that they weren't doing... or, I hate to say this, breathed wrong. I'm in constant fear of becoming like them, but I don't want to be as nasty as they are, to them. But frankly, there's no need to complain if someone decides that they don't want to sit and complain with you.

7)When I was 11, I saw a weird shadow in my bedroom. It turned out to be our neighbor's 6' long, "baby" boa constrictor. You wouldn't believe the song and dance I had to do to be understood. Finally, "Oh, there he is. He's been missing for two weeks." I'm not really scared of creepy, scaly things.

6)I love music of many different types, but am constantly wondering what that stuff is at the store or beauty shop. Some of it is explainable by the fact that I got an earful of classical, jazz, and  oldies in my childhood, (With the Smashing Pumpkins tossed in in their prime, somehow.) and more modern music is "new" to me. Some of it is explainable by the fact that whatever it is is not music but is made to to either make you move or make your ears bleed. I think I've heard it called "Tesco".

5)When I was a child, my lullaby was "Good Morning, Starshine". It was morning, somewhere. And I did tend to think it was party time at 2 AM as a small child.

4) On music, it was disconcerting recently, to realize I was the only one who had heard of most of my music list. Eeek! This isn't good when you're trying to list musical innovators alphabetically. I was pretty good at not being too cliche.

3)I do tend to speak my own language, which I try very hard not to do. While I love the flow of language, and learning how it develops, I don't like trying to translate myself!

2)I started doing speech therapy at 18 months, speaking at 4. I remember with clarity, using bubbles to blow, instead of suck, as I was doing...because I took in a big mouthful of Dawn, and must have made a very funny face, because it had my mother and speech therapist laughing at me. That might be my first memory. I learned quickly, and to this day, sometimes, if I have a straw, I have to stop myself because I'll be blowing bubbles in my milk instead of drinking it.

1)I've often gotten in trouble for rebellion, yes, me. I don't intend to stop! There are loud rebellions and there are quiet rebellions.

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Tips

If you are currently in need of a mail drop, kindly follow this advice: if you happen to use a private, residential address, it is that resident's right to return all mail to sender. There is hope!

For a certain fee, the nice people at the post office offer these newfangled things called post office boxes.

There's also the very nice people at the UPS store, formerly known as Mailboxes, ETC..
Using people you have formerly robbed, and have stolen their mail, gets your crap sent back. Nastier people wouldn't do that. I'm aware the postal service doesn't deliver to whatever rock your limpet-self is clinging to. But I am not a UPS Store or a branch of the US postal service, however much I seem to be the only person under 60 who still buys stamps.

If this is not acceptable, kindly touch some other sap for money for $70 boots while everyone else is wearing a threadbare coat and sneakers in 20° weather. Or fifteen cheeseburgers while others starve. I'm sure you can ingratiate yourself. I, however, am no patsy, and refuse adamantly to be so. Or, you can go lie in a gutter until you piss off the next person, whom, I am sure will be far less polite than I, and will have you tossed in a cell, dumpster, or worse. You seem not to comprehend that I wish you no ill also means, "I wish and expect no good for and from you".

Rawr.

I saw a really cool craft idea, homemade "dinosaur" eggs. I'll just say this: I love dinosaurs. Imagine my surprise to see it earmarked as, "MOMS WITH BOYS!"

I'm not going to go into gender politics and into how, as late as 1927, Princess Astrid of Belgium was "caught out" when she "optimistically" decorated a bassinet in pink, the color for boys.   (At one time, the more sedate and "softer, serene"blue was fitted  baby girls.)

I'll say this, though. I love fossils and dinosaurs, and know many little girls who do. As the younger of two children by a decade, and with a father who loved Tonka trucks, I inherited rubber T-rexes, Tonka trucks, and a metal Bionic Woman toy truck, made from metal and boasting ouchy edges. (I googled this, but nothing showed. Eh?) I also had dolls and teddy bears up the yin yang. Let me tell ya, nothing beats your realistic baby doll, hitching a ride on a scaly, green, broad triceratops.
Nothin'.

Case in point... (sorta, it's actually hard to find that... Google, 0-for-2!) My thanks to http://coilhouse.net/2011/01/hacking-the-passive-girl-toy/ Coilhouse Magazine for PIXIES ON DINOSAURS! In essence, if you love it, do you have to wonder and worry in terms of pink-washing, or should you just enjoy? Ok, seriously: this is awesome and I want to play in the dirt.
http://www.ehow.com/how_7694711_make-dinosaur-egg.html

Oh, What a Relief It Is!

The days are warmer, the nights are still chilly. Winter tends to stay around much longer than I, or anyone, can  be content with... I had  run- in with black ice just a few days over a month ago now.

Are you trying to get your skin back to normal after being dried out in the cold? Do chilly nights still leave you itchy and looking like you attempted to put a  dog in a dress, or with suspicious-looking wounds? If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, I have an answer for you!

The simple answer is, "olive oil", but at the risk of looking like an oil slick, or smelling like a finely dressed salad, I present you with this mixture:

1) Measure out 1/4 cup of plain colloidal oatmeal or grind up plain "Irish oats". To this, add,
2)a tablespoon of heavy cream, and
3)A teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil
4)Mix together into a rather disgusting looking mess.
5)Pour mess into two large coffee filters.
Oats should feel, at most, slightly... damp. (I really hate the word, "moist").
6)Tie with rubber band, securely.
7)Toss this into a hot bath and relax. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is! (Eww, gross Alka-Seltzer® jingle!)
8)Get your mind out of the gutter, drain tub, and rinse to get any gunk off of you and to avoid smelling like spoiled cream.
Repeat as necessary.