Just a note

When everything gets hazy and I can't seem to focus, I pick something on the horizon and try to bring it to the forefront...because when I'm able to define the enigmatic for myself, sometimes I make things a little more clear for others, too.

Absolute Absurdity

Have you ever woken up wondering which side of crazy you were on? As a child, I was convinced that I had crossed that line, and I was proud of it. During college, I wanted to walk that line, ever so carefully, making sure not to move my toes too far to either side, which was tough because my feet are huge.

No, seriously, have you ever seen my feet?

Now I find, as I begin to embrace my adulthood, I am increasingly more willing to live in the realm of normal, boring, and even mundane. This need for normalcy was provoked with the birth of my first child. I wanted to provide the same type of family structure that I was sure my friends had while I was growing up.

So that's a lie, I never really had any friends.

My friendships all started out well enough, but I always seemed to ruin them within two years. Somehow, I believed that a person could only have one true friend at a time. Through my school years, I had come to expect monogamy on the playground. For some reason larger groups of people always made me feel less, not more, secure.

Besides, my parents couldn't afford to pay all of them to hang out with me.

Friends were hard to maintain because I expect so much from people. I have always been unyielding in my criticism of myself and those around me. I got that from my father. No success was ever good enough, it was always just another stepping stone to climb out of the comfort zone. I was taught that it's wrong to be comfortable, you have to continue growing and growing causes pain. Pain is good, it is inspirational. Pain is a good motivator.

And I'm generally motivated to eat gallons of ice cream and huddle under a blanket.

All of this motivation has lead to a weight problem that is starting to become a big deal. I was already fighting off extra weight from having two children in two years. Now, I'm battling stress weight and insomnia. Lack of sleep is nothing new to me. I've never been able to fall asleep very easily. My mind travels all over the place, picking up stray ideas as it tumbles around. These ideas hijack my head and steer me far away from slumber. Once I do fall asleep, I tend to dream that I'm working.

My ex-husband used to dream that I was working too, it's something he thought he would never see.

Now, I'm essentially a single mom, which means every moment of my life is work. The best thing about my current situation is that love surrounds me every moment. I'm happy in everything I do, because I've made my choices very carefully. I'm a lucky woman. I won't pretend I'm not. I just wish that luck would carry over to the Powerball jackpot.

Not everyone looks good in tights and underwear.

If you could be a super-hero, what would your special power be? Would you choose one based on how it could benefit you, or how you could benefit the world?

This question comes about, thanks to this article:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/11/1244204

So, it seems that we're close to having a version of an invisibility cloak. It's probably safe to say that this material isn't being developed for intense games of Hide-and-go-seek or Marco Polo. My guess is that there's some sort of military motivation for this research. But let's not focus on that. Let's not focus on the potential for hiding planes, tanks and landmines. Let's not think about invisible snipers sneaking up to the home of "suspected criminals" and taking action without any accountability. Let's choose, instead, to look at all of the great things that could come from the invention of such a fabric.

Imagine the embarasment that could be avoided if teenagers wrapped their pr0n in invisible paper! It doesn't stop there. Romance novels, diaries, all become safer posessions when you can use them discretely.

Pimples will never be an issue again! Stick a piece of this paper on your problem areas and create the illusion that the irritated spot looks the same as the rest of your face.

Maybe they'll incorporate bits of this into jeans and I'll finally be able to get rid of the extra tummy pooch that I just can't seem to reduce with crunches!

This product is going to be a dream! I can't wait until it's available for everyone! What could go wrong?

Personally, though, if I had my choice I would prefer the power to read minds - then I'd know what other people are hiding under their invisible cloth :D

Just an observation, but...

When you live in a fantasyland, you have to go through the Spooky Forest to get just about anywhere.

How much do you love your grandchildren?

If you found out that a comet were going to hit the earth in the year 2040, would your heart be overcome with fear? Would you be on-board to do whatever we can to save the planet within that mere thirty-two year time span? Now suppose you found out it wasn't a meteor, but a gradual melting of the world's glaciers that was going to make the planet uninhabitable and wipe out all forms of life. Would you be more concerned? Less?

Most of my fellow comp-sci majors would still be living in 2040, in a world free of apocalyptic events. News of a flooded planet should certainly raise your blood-pressure when you realize that it means that your life would be cut short by thirty years or better. Even if it weren't due to happen until 2100, that's certainly going to cut our grandchildren's lives quite a bit short.

What a terrible way to go! How could we let the earth be swallowed by melted ice (sometimes known as water) when the effects of global warming are basically reversible? Truth is, enough people don't believe this type of catastrophe could ever happen, which is making it very difficult to get through to people when encouraging them to live more responsibly. Why would someone want to impede their luxury over a myth? Waterworld was just a really bad movie, right?


Unfortunately, forecasters are predicting that the runoff from melting glaciers would eventually cover the surface of the earth(1). Some researchers have predicted that this process will be complete by the year 2100, others give us until 2200. Two hundred years?!?! That's forever, right? There's still plenty of time for Bruce Willis to gather a half-dozen of his closest friends and make some sort of heroic gesture to right the situation. The bad news is, it will take more than six or seven renegades to correct the gradual heating of the earth. It's going to take at least eight of us.


There are some real wise guys out there, claiming that the melting of a few icebergs won't change the sea levels significantly. Well guess what, they're right. Icebergs are floating in the ocean and have therefore already displaced their mass in water. That means, when they melt, the seas won't increase at all. This would be exciting news if we were only witnessing the melting of a few chunks of floating ice. The problem is, the ice we are talking about is in glacial form. That means that their mass is supported by land and is therefore not effecting the sea levels in any way. As those glaciers melt -- or chunks of them fall off into the sea -- they raise the water levels significantly, all over the planet. The remaining ice over Greenland alone is almost 684,000 cubic miles. Adding that to the ocean would raise sea level more than 23.6 feet...and that's just one glacier! (2) Tragically, it's going to take much less than that to change the coastlines and devour small islands. That process is in motion and must be stopped now!


The most frightening thing about the progress of melting ice, is the momentum. Once the glaciers have started melting at such a quick rate, a steady stream of water begins to flow through it. This water causes friction, which causes heat. Additionally, the rivers of melted ice eat away at the remaining glacial bits, chiseling them into chunks which melt even more quickly.

So, what can we do to help reverse global warming? You need to be the eighth person. You need to hop on board, tell Bruce you got this one, give Liv Tyler a kiss, sing an Aerosmith song and buckle up for conservation. Reduce your use of electricity (3), Reuse (4) and repurpose items and Recycle (5).

In conclusion, I apologize if I've frightened you. If you're panicking about the fact that your great-great-and a few more greats-grandchildren are going to be living underwater in the year 2200, you can relax. The asteroid Apophis(6) is going to take the planet out way before that.



(1) http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/melting-ice-rising-seas-easy-how-fast-hard
(2) http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/418.htm
(3) http://globalwarming-facts.info/50-tips.html
(4) http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/organize/0,21770,1088458,00.html
(5) http://www.thisland.uiuc.edu/57ways/57ways_28.html
(6) http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/dec/07/spaceexploration.research

Pulling

What is it that keeps me believing in happy endings? Maybe it's the same thing that makes me try to pull open the doors when I leave Deschutes, even though my brain knows that you have to push. It's the contradictory chasm between the way things are and the way we believe they should be.

I know that fairytales are only expertly spun works of fiction which are told from the p.o.v. of the winner, but I get absorbed in their pledges and promises anyway. My heart goes out to the underdog and I assume that everyone else feels what I feel and sees what I see when it comes to those who are fighting for a cause or struggling to get through the day. Take this picture for example. I drove passed this man today, let's call him Carl. Carl, like many other homeless and unemployed people of Eugene, chose a spot on the street-corner in an attempt to grab the attention of charitable soles dashing by. Carl, however, had no sign. Now, this isn't to say that he wasn't trying very hard or that he was just sitting there. Infact, he was standing on that corner with his arms up, firmly gripping a non-existant hunk of cardboard. At first, I was in disbelief. Had I actually seen what I thought I had? As I got closer, I could see that he really didn't have anything in his hands, which made me chuckle.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not hard to make me giggle...but it's much more difficult to grab my attention or get my mind fixated on something. Carl accomplished that. I contemplated the meaning of his missing poster. Perhaps he hadn't found the materials to create a sign, but was out there anyway, despite lacking a somewhat necessary tool. Maybe he was making a statement about how broke he was, or an environmental statement about saving trees. In any case, it impressed me that he was standing out from the rest of his peers.

After my errand, I drove back to that corner and pulled into a parking lot. I reached down and grabbed the bag of snacks that I keep in the car for when my children get out of school. Offering in hand, I told him that I thought he was very clever and he told me that he felt very stupid. Circumstances could knock any of us down at any time and while some may retreat within themselves and whither away, others will fight with every ounce of wit and will that they posess, just to get a good meal. Does this mean that some day his fairytale will end with him having a great job and cozy family of his own? Is that even the ending that he wants? I don't know. What I do know, is that even though Carl had no sign, it doesn't mean that he had no message.

A good sense of humor is cheaper than therapy

Has someone ever heard you belly-ache about a situation and sworn to you that you'd laugh about it later? Did you?


Why do we take ourselves so seriously? In the American culture it's socially expected that we internalize our woes. The problem is that repressing emotions can have negative effects on our health. Fortunately, laughter's not only an effective form of stress relief, it's also acceptable!

Formal comedy dates back to ancient Greece, where it was used for celebration and honor. Humor has an infinite variety of subjects and forms. Comedy even transcends species. Did you know that even monkeys laugh? It's true! Like crying, it's often a reaction of the nervous system and it's the body's way of releasing stress which is converted into tension by the muscles.

Besides releasing dopamine into the system, a good laugh boosts activity in the T-cells which make antibodies and kill infection. It also reduces cortisol, a hormone responsible for raising blood-pressure and decreasing muscle-tissue. Laughter is good for you and everyone around you, because laughter can be contagious. I also happen to think that laughing is damn sexy!

Even if you aren't a natural chuckler, it's a skill you can learn. It's true that laughing (like tickling) cannot be forced within yourself, but you can practice! Imitated laughter, or uncontrollable giggling originates in a different reward center in the brain, but the effects are very similar. Pretending to giggle prepares your brain and actually helps you to laugh longer and more often.

To conclude my note, I have a little challenge for you. Next time you find yourself in a situation that seems less than funny, skip the waiting period and find the humor in it immediately. The change will have a positive effect on your health, your mind, and your popularity :)