Wow, it's been a month.
As I'm getting settled in, I'm finding that my new life is taking up much of my time. I'm not sure when I'll be able to return here. For those who have been checking in here, thank you. But I may find myself saying goodbye to this blog.
I am glad, though, to be moving forward with my life. I hope I can stand as proof to anyone who doubts that lives can be transformed. They can be, and it's worth the effort.
I'm moving next week, and have about a gazillion projects between now and then, so posts here are going to be sporadic.
I was on the bike again today, and it was really uncomfortable even at 9 pm. The people in cars around me -- or at least the ones in the newer models -- were coasting in air conditioned comfort. The road was crowded with vehicles with one passenger only.
This kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable, people driving around everywhere by themselves in a car. I opted out of this, but in that process, I'm subjecting myself to some discomfort. I could've taken the bus instead of riding my bike, but not all the bus stops are shaded, and the buses vary in frequency. I could be out in the sun for hours if I took the bus.
I am committed to viral change, but sometimes I wonder how this can be possible. How can I sell people on a carless existence? It's very uncomfortable to live this way in south central Texas. I was downright miserable today. I can't say that I'm glad to be in this mental state, but I can't bring myself to own a car anymore. But who's going to be on board with me?
An obvious solution is improved public transportation and the cessation of this fucking insane overbuilding of roadways combined with better city planning. Ahahahahaha! I'm not asking much at all, am I? Frankly, I don't see the gubmint helping me and my kind on this issue any time soon.
In the meantime, how the hell can I keep up my hope?
Maybe I can convince people to give up their cars from October to April at least?
Just to be clear, I don't mean to scold any of you readers who ride around in a car by yourself. But this is an issue that I think needs to be talked about, regardless of people's feelings. It seems to me that our political leaders avoid this very conversation because they don't want voters to feel bad about themselves and their consumption and lifestyle habits.
Anyway, I'm going to be taking a short blogging vacation for Memorial Day. Y'all enjoy your weekends!
I don't have a large income, so forking over $50 for a bra made me cringe, but I haven't bought a bra in, well, years, and I was getting sick of the straps of ill-fitting bras slipping down my shoulders. I should relax about the price because I take such scrupulous care of my clothes that they last for years and years. Anyway, It Was Time. So I hied myself to the mall the other day and bought a Wacoal t-back bra. It fits *perfectly*. No wires dig into my flesh. Nothing protrudes weirdly. Aaaahhh...I'm sure my female readers can relate to this feeling.
I foresee some wiseass might make a comment questioning why women bother wearing bras, but I'm not comfortable with even the minimal amount of jiggle that my small boobs produce. Bralessness feels too exposed for me. I've experimented with bralessness in the past, but I feel vulnerable when I do it, even if I'm wearing a camisole/shirt combination. Too bad strapless bras feel so weird, though. I feel like they're going to fall down any minute, even if they fit well.
Yesterday, the temperature went up to 101 degrees with a humidity of around 20%. In the shade, it didn't feel too bad because of the wind. Although I tried to avoid it, I got stuck in rush hour traffic in the afternoon. The heat, amplified by the asphalt and the heat generated by the cars around me, was immense. I was in full gear, too. While I can't imagine riding around in intense sun without being fully covered, heavy leather boots, a nylon jacket, and a full-face helmet doesn't quite have the heat protection dynamics of, say, Bedouin clothes. I was absolutely baking, but because of the low humidity and wind, I arrived at home without having sweated much.
I had been drinking water all day, and felt okay when I got home, so I didn't hydrate. I ate dinner and went about business as usual, but around 9:00, a weird torpor set in. And then after 10:00, my head started pounding and the pain intensified over the next several hours. I figured I was dehydrated and kept drinking water until my urine ran clear, but the pounding in my head kept waking me up during the night. Right now, it's almost 3:00 pm the next day, and the pain *still* hasn't fully gone away. I still get occasional stabs of dizzying pain in my head.
I remain committed to living a car-free life. But I'm still used to the complete freedom of owning a car, and haven't yet learned to fully compensate for the consequences of not having one. So, I have learned that:
1) I need to carry a water bottle with me, like bicyclists do.
2) Since I don't have to commute to work during the rest of my stay in Texas, I should avoid riding during rush hour if at all possible.
3) I need to think of different ways to dress that combine safety and heat protection.
I'm also surprised at my inability to bounce back quickly. I mean, I drank water last night, but the headache and weakness remained. Of course, I realize that people get weaker as they get older; I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. I'm still in my thirties for chrissake! The other night, I got really tired swimming laps, whereas in previous summers, I adapted to the exercise very quickly. Being ill right now, I'm going to indulge in some self-pity. I am struggling to learn to age gracefully in terms of my appearance, but this other stuff really sucks.
Mongo lift body weight. Mongo ride motorcycle. Mongo go to Whole Foods to buy humanely raised chicken legs. A very cute meat counter attendant does double take as Mongo walk by. He then blows off another customer who was talking to him to help Mongo. Mongo ask about chicken raising practices. Mongo get chicken and Italian pork sausage. Mongo go home.
*sigh*
It's not like I'm determined to get into the meat counter guy's pants, but it would be nice to have a flirtation. I just don't know how to do it.
:(
I haven't done any weightlifting for years because it bores me shitless. It's so damn repetitive. Instead, I maintain muscle strength through yoga and pushups. But now, I'm tired of that, so I'm back on weights for now. I'm doing machines, anyway; I don't feel like buying weightlifting gloves and all that, and anyway, free weights take up too much time. I don't have the patience of my early 20s, when I enjoyed being one of the very few females in the mostly male domain of free weights and disdained those who used machines. Well, screw that; I don't feel like spending hours in the goddamn gym. It's hard to find a gym with a pleasant atmosphere.
Allow me to brag. Last night, I decided to see the max weight I can lift. I did 120 pounds on the chest press machine! Three times! That's my body weight. The dude who used the machine next took weight off! Eee! I love being strong.
120 pounds! I spent the rest of my workout doing high weight, low rep exercises. I'll do different shits later this week. Today, I'm mildly and pleasantly sore, so I didn't overdo anything.
I decided not to work from now until the move.
I had planned to work right up until the day I left to make as much money as possible, but Fuck It. The past three years have been TAXING as hell, and I plan to get in as much quality sloth time as possible in the next month.
I'm going to read whenever I want; I need to recapture my intellectual curiosity, which has recently been limited to things like figuring out who's going to be eliminated in each episode of Top Chef. In the past week, I read Generation Kill and finally finished The Omnivore's Dilemma and Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Life in Victorian England.
Now, I will start Civilization, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year. However, as I read the table of contents a little while ago, I started to feel sorry I bought the book. The book, while critical, doesn't really question the conceit of "Western Civilization." Can you draw a direct line from ancient Greece/Rome to The West, as he apparently does? And even more basic than that, can you lump a bunch of shit together under that monolithic category? Given that, how far does he distance himself from Samuel Huntington? Well, I guess I'll find out when I start reading it.
I'm going to swim regularly, maybe practice my butterfly stroke. I bought a month's membership at a gym, so I'll do some weight work and do some reading on the elliptical machine and stationary bikes. I spent 1 hr 15 min on those machines last week, not 'cause I like them, but because I was so fascinated by the description of a sustainable farming operation in The Omnivore's Dilemma, a farming system modeled on nature. Stopping exercise would have meant an interruption in my reading! I said "farming operation," but it isn't as prosaic as that term sounds; it's a creation of sheer beauty possessed of wondrous symmetry. It restored my faith in humanity, even. My feet were numb when I got off the elliptical and I went on to numb my ass on the bike.
I'm going to figure out ways to make vegetables interesting. I'm tired of interesting salads. I want interesting *cooked* vegetables. Anyone know of an excellent vegetable cookbook?
Heh. I guess "Sloth" really isn't a proper name for this post. I guess "Pleasurable Projects" is a more accurate description.
While we'll probably never again be blank slates, it's not too late to change even as adults. Old dogs can learn new tricks.
Thanks to Rufus for pointing out this fascinating article. The author, a neuroscientist named Susan Greenfield, discusses how the human brain continuously -- not just in childhood -- remains plastic and changes at the microcellular level in response to experiences and stimuli.
She briefly describes an experiment involving three groups of adults who had never played the piano. One group sat in a room with the piano but had nothing to do with it, a second group was given intensive piano lessons, and the last group was told to imagine themselves going through the piano exercises. The brain scan results? Not surprisingly, the control group (the one that did nothing) showed no changes in their brains. The group that did the piano exercises showed significant structural changes in the parts of their brain that govern finger movements, but most surprisingly of all, the group that imagined playing the piano showed almost as much change in their brains as those who actually played the piano!
Greenfield's article dealt with her worries about the effect of technology and psychoactive drugs on our brains; however, for me, that piano experiment struck another chord: What implications does this have for people like me, people who need to heal from trauma?
Here's another interesting article about "lies" versus what we might call "future truths." In the experiment described in that article, college students were asked about their grades and academic histories. Almost half embellished their records, but instead of becoming tensed and stressed when lying -- which happens to people who are lying in order to cover up crimes, for instance -- they became more relaxed as they lied. To paraphrase the article, this was because their goal was not to deceive; rather, the "lies" can be seen as a statement of aspiration or an attempt to project themselves toward their goals. In earlier studies, the research team found that students who exaggerated their grade point average actually went on to bump up their grades, often by the very amount they exaggerated.
I'll admit that I'm engaging in dubious speculation and making connections that may not be sound. But what I read in those articles resonates so much with my own experience. Imagining things: that's exactly what I had to do to get healthy. I told myself all the good things I wanted to believe about myself, and I acted as though I really believed it. There is a starting point: you, unhappy, feeling broken. Then there's a goal point: you, healed, whole.
How do you bridge those states? How on earth do you get to the goal? There's no map or set of instructions. All you can do, really, is imagine yourself there. In my case, I suddenly, almost magically, found myself there. My old thought habits are greatly diminished, if not totally gone. Granted, the magic was only in hindsight; I did a lot of work, invisible work because it was all in my head.
How the fuck do you change your head, you might ask? Well, it's YOUR damn head! You have a CHOICE.
This fucken works, man. I'm not the same person I used to be. My brain is different. It is absolutely possible to change something as seemingly fundamental as your personality.
...'cause you get swollen, inflamed lips from sucking da heads at Quality Seafood, where they overload their crawfish boil with cayenne, yet want to enjoy the orangey fat, you need a special technique. I, a fucking food prodigy who never grew up nowhere near no crawfish, developed this technique during what was only my second experience with crawfish. That's how hard I rock.
 | After eating my first pound of crawfish of the day, I had to stick my lips in my iced tea for like 5 minutes to cool them off. I came to the conclusion that although suckin da heads is a venerable tradition, the pain factor was outweighing the pleasure factor (I now openly reject the tastebud-obliterating macho "more is more" school of pepper application). While contemplating my throbbing lips, the solution popped into my head: Let the Fat Come to You! I share my technique with you, lucky readers. |
| What you do: 1. Grasp the head near its base. 2. Gently wriggle it and the tail apart. 3. Enjoy the fatty goodness. If you look closely at the slain crawfish grasped in my manhands, you'll see the coveted orangey globs clinging to its severed tail. I get, like, an 80% success rate with this method. |  |
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