Something Shiny! » MeMeMeMeMe

Be it ever so humble

emily — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:09:06 +0000

I’ve been thinking lately about home, and what home means to me. For the longest time, I’ve been convinced that where I am now isn’t really home. Florida has never felt like home to me. Home is, I thought, back in Kansas. I lived there for most of my life, it feels comfortable when I go back to visit, and nearly everyone I know and love is still there. And yet. And yet, we’ve lived in Florida for seven years now. And surely that’s changed us, changed who we are and what we want. We’re different people now than we were seven years ago, when we arrived in Gainesville and (no kidding) said, “what the hell have we done?!?” And that got me wondering: if, by some miracle, we’re able to get back to Kansas, the place we’re convinced is ‘home,’ would it really be home to us? Or have we changed in such a way that we would feel there the way we feel here, which is to say, as outsiders? Is it really true, as they say, that you can never go home again?

Migration

emily — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:49:21 +0000

Several years ago, John and I were talking to two friends of ours about climate change. Both are tremendously active in the Sierra Club and have extensive knowledge about biology. As we talked, they mentioned that cane toads are migrating further south than normal. Thinking that we were talking about seasonal migration, I thought of how incredible that was, the vast terrain that they must have to cover. I thought about the elephants in Africa that make the weeks-long trek every year to the Okavango Delta in Botswana (start at :28), and what a trial that is for them. Migration for any species is no easy task, and I wondered aloud how cane toads could make the journey. Can you see where this is going? Everyone at the table started laughing out loud at my cluelessness. In between gasps for air and wiping tears of laughter from their eyes, our friends explained that this wasn’t seasonal migration; it was one-way. Besides, they chortled, how would the toads get back and forth? Their butts would be raw from hitting the ground! Ha ha. Har. It is to laugh. But, in my defense, you hear ‘migration’ and you think that there’s a return journey, amirite?

Arachno-thbbbbbbt-bleargh

emily — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:09:51 +0000

One urban legend holds that the average person will consume at least four spiders per year while sleeping. Another claims that a spider bite can inject eggs under a person’s skin, eventually resulting in baby spiders emerging from the wound site (usually a woman’s face). Now, let me say that I’m not the least bit afraid of spiders. I am, however, reluctant to have anything crawling on me. So that, when I woke up last night to a spider biting me (on my face, no less!), I was a little perturbed. But I fell back asleep quickly, content that nothing like it would disturb my slumber that night. Imagine my surprise, then, when half an hour later I was woken up by a spider crawling into my ear. I believe my exact words were “blearghhaaaaahhhhhhhmrrrggggg!” I defy you to try to fall asleep after that. With my head hovering a few inches above the pillow, it was all I could do to keep myself from shuddering and doing a full-body scan every five seconds.

Patient impatience

emily — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:00:50 +0000

Newsflash: I am perhaps the world’s worst sick person. I’m never content to stay in bed and let others take care of me. I get restless, irritable, and impatient. So when I tore my calf muscle five weeks ago, I sensed there might be trouble. My doctor told me to stay off of my leg for two weeks (hah). What he said then was, “In two weeks, you’ll feel a lot better.” What I heard was, “In two weeks, you’ll be able to run the New York Marathon if you want to.” So that, after two weeks, when I felt better but not one hundred percent healed, I started to worry. And I got impatient. Why hadn’t my leg healed fully? Why was it still twanging? Why did I still have to ice it at night? And why was Van Helsing ever made? (That last one has nothing to do with my leg, but it’s a burning question I have nonetheless.) This morning, when my leg twanged again, I understood it for what it was: a cramp. My torn muscle is healed, but it cramps up every so often. Now that I can handle!

The bloody show

emily — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:27:49 +0000

No, still no baby. But I had a meeting with my dissertation committee yesterday afternoon and, I don’t know, the title seemed to fit. (Not that it was bad, you understand– just something that had to be gotten through before my dissertation could be properly… birthed? This metaphor has taken a weird turn.) This was a meeting for which I was eminently prepared and, having turned in the draft near the beginning of June, one which was a long time coming. I won’t say that I was particularly nervous about it, just that I had some trepidation about one committee member in particular who can be a bit of a challenge. In the days leading up to it, I wondered in which hand I should hold the olive branch (and in which hand, the arrows). Ultimately, it went smoothly and it was quite productive. I’ve now got an inordinate number of helpful suggestions that I’ll sift through, using some and discarding others, to make the final product more… final product-y. In the meantime, we continue to await news on Nikki’s baby, who seems to have decided he needs to cook a bit longer before making his grand entrance. (This kid is clearly going to be a handful.)

Babies

emily — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:26:29 +0000

No, not mine. We’re anxiously awaiting news on John’s youngest brother’s wife, whose due date was Friday and who was, as of last night, 75% effaced. (I say that like I know what it means, but I don’t. I’m content to be ignorant, though, which is a rarity for me.) This baby ride has been very different from the other baby rides for which I’ve been An Anxious Observer (TM). Partly because we’re super close to the parents-to-be, and yet, geographically, we find ourselves helplessly far away. Partly because we were the first to know (weeks before the rest of the families, woot!). Partly because, well, they seem so young. They’re not, of course, that young. They’re five years younger than us. But for a person who still feels too young to have kids… well, you can see where this is going. Ahem. Anyway, for now, we wait. On pins and needles and with bated breath, we wait.

Tolerance and intolerance

emily — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:30:45 +0000

Without going into too much detail (read: not any, no, not at all), I think it’s time to admit that I’m lactose intolerant. Naturally, as with anything having to do with me, it’s a fickle problem. Skim milk and yogurt? Yes. Ice cream and anything made with buttermilk, including baked goods? No. Solidly no. Which: how unfair is that? I can’t eat ice cream?!? Who’d I piss off in my previous life? Still there’s hope on the horizon. John, for example, is convinced that a product called Lactaid might help. That said, he’s not sure if a) he made the product up or b) if the product is real but, instead, is intended to help women breastfeed. Ahem.

Swell

emily — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:09:18 +0000

I bought a new bra from Victoria’s Secret the other day. It was, from the catalog description, exactly what I was looking for. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated (if you’ve seen some of the bras they’re offering, you know what I mean). Plus, it was on sale. Bonus! Then I noticed something else in the description: swell, it said. “Swell: lightly lined.” Great, I thought! I don’t want anything padded or pushed or even pumped. It seemed like the right, er, fit for me. And then it arrived. Swell: lightly lined? More like, swell: implants. I looked in the mirror and, what the hell? Suddenly I looked more like Dolly Parton than myself. I sent it back. Swell indeed!

At the library

emily — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:48:58 +0000

In the lobby, a tutor is helping a coed learn Trigonometry. I hear snippets of their (one-sided) conversation, but not more than that. “See, if it’s on the inside… then if it’s on the outside…”. His charge is staring off into space. After ten minutes, he has her work a problem by herself. Across the room, a guy with a grating, nasally voice is having a conversation for all the world to hear. He doesn’t seem to realize that there are twenty other people in the lobby, some of whom might not want to hear about what he did all day. “Yeah, and then I took a nap at about 11:30. Then I went to the gym. Then I showered and took another nap.” I silently hope that his sleep schedule isn’t interfering with his studies. Two guys studying next to me audibly hope that he shuts up soon. Meanwhile, the coed has finished her trig problem. It’s unclear if she was successful. Her tutor asks her if she has any questions, and when she doesn’t, he fires off a few of his own. She’s nodding her head, but it’s debatable that she’s taking in anything. Just as I’m contemplating whether or not I should move to a quieter area (though I’d miss the coed-trig tutor saga), Nasal Guy makes another phone call. Time to relocate.

Self portrait by the artist

emily — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:15:06 +0000

I should mention that before I took that personality test, I thought it was basically crap. I figured the results would be well wide of the mark and wouldn’t really reflect who I am. Ahem. ::shuffles feet, looks at shoes:: As it turns out? Those personality tests are, ah, eerily accurate. Apparently I’m the way I am because I’m an ISTJ: Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging. Or, put another way, a Guardian Inspector. I’m dependable and organized. I have a keen sense of duty and tradition. I don’t like rule-breaking. I’m a perfectionist. And when things start to go wrong? I fall into a cycle of doom wherein everything is bad and nothing will ever be good again, no not ever, no not even then. John has forever joked that I’m the human version of Eeyore. Turns out? Yeah (scroll to the bottom). What’s more amusing to me is that I had John take the personality test also. He’s a Rational Inventor, meaning that he’s exactly the opposite of me. I’m supposed to “get comfortable with his ‘need’ to question authority,” while he needs to understand my adherence to rules, procedures, and tradition. We had a good laugh about this, from John’s personality description: “You will cause your partner great discomfort when you flagrantly ‘disobey the rules’ or ‘flaunt authority,’ even though that intent hadn’t even crossed your mind.” And then this, regarding gifts from from him to me: “It needs to be enough to show that they are valued highly but not so much that they feel resources are being wasted.” So, I guess opposites really do attract?