Tuesday: Theory of the Day

I'd like to start experimenting with purposeful thinking, ontologies and heuristics. Actually, I wish someone had introduced me to these notions in particular twenty-five years ago, but introducing these into kindergartens hasn't yet caught on even with me behind it now.

The Theory of the Day experiment is the notion of privileging certain ways of thinking and (therefore) conclusions and actions over others (and, ideally, over the paralyzing effect of having 500 Theories Every Day). A "what-if" made as concrete and non-negotiable as the weather. In the experiment, I'm also hoping to analyze each theory on its strengths and weaknesses both in relation to me and in relation to time and tasks.

Most broadly, I am tangled in the liminal. I get tied up in categorizing, sorting, prioritizing, and managing the things that can't easily be articulated or contained. Physically, it's the projects in progress, the pieces that would, in the age of Teh Internetz, receive multiple tags. I don't do well with recognizing borders, though I am drawn to them and dance around them. I don't do well with endings (and what else are borders?). And I don't do well with rote, simple tasks and things that have no flirtations with other categories. I want my foods and things and tasks to be more that just what they are. I need to be able to read more into them, project more onto them, get more out of them. In that, they are the ends as well as the means.

Because I'm not great at borders and categorizing, I tend to be all tangents. Rather than being a circle with clear borders and solidly filled color, I'm threads and lines of different colors that, at a given distance, will look like a circle. The side effect of pieces of life thick with meaning is that they're also full of questions and challenges. I'm constantly trying to articulate who I am in the world, and this self-definition is always in a conversation with the world. I examine my borders of who I am, and the world challenges me right back. Grocery shopping is a political and ethical dialogue, job hunting places me in discourse with my religious beliefs, going to the bank makes me reconsider my relationships and human evolution.

Reducing pressure

I find the biological differences involved in reproduction to be some of the most disturbing bits of gender disparity that exist. In so many ways, the gender roles determined by and the stereotypes resulting from these feel suffocating, perhaps because they're so inevitable and so deterministic.

Pregnancy disturbs me. More specifically, the notion of me being pregnant seems incredibly unnatural and wrong. Yet I would like biological children for a number of reasons*. I feel like in this realm, I have a certain amount of gender dis-whatever. That's the level of discomfort I have with it. Part of me concedes that this might be transient--maybe when I'm older, it'll seem like a more natural notion--but then I'm faced with the limits of female fertility. And then it's hard not to get upset all over again at the realities of the world and how I'm supposed to come to grips with these notions in a limited amount of time and that even then, there are no guarantees.

But this (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224102220.htm) seems hopeful. I mean, if you extrapolate. Could one have part of one's ovaries removed pre-"natural"-menopause and then reinserted in the future, if one decided one wanted to produce eggs again? Because this seems more promising than the whole freezing eggs thing (my understanding is it doesn't really work) and more open-ended than embryos (because that's part of the decision to not make).

Really, I just don't like the idea of not having options, or of closing doors. I especially don't like deadlines and time limits. Or inequality, even if it's biologically determined, and especially when it leads to evils such as:

old mothers getting much more condemnation than old fathers

women having to wake up at night

stretch marks

no drinking

hormonal changes

pain

nausea

having another human being growing inside one (I'm not particularly fond of even having organs)

expectations

The end.

* Mostly political. I really don't know if I could abide with a self-centered, Republican child. And politics, political involvement, and other related tendencies seem to be more genetically determined than previously thought.

Tuesday:emptying

Tomorrow's errands, so today got laundry thrust upon it like greatness. And not so much telephoning, though I mostly did answer when rung.

Two loads laundry

Counseling

Checked store for favorite reuseable bag in a color I want -- they don't have it and probably won't be getting it in the foreseeable future

Entertained father and hooked him up with email and facebook accounts

Showered

Emptied fridge of random stuff

Put off 'til tomorrow what could've been done today

Monday: resoluting

The task of self-improvement would be significantly helped by less self-implosion. February is a cruel month if Lent didn't start during it, the suffering would seem completely pointless. At least in Lent one attributes some portion of the the misery to the realities of self-reflection and improvement and fasting and guilt. It's sort of like being depressed right before one's period: even if there's not a causal relationship, there MIGHT be and that is enough of a promise of a better tomorrow to pull through.

February really doesn't have much going for it. The snow and cold are no longer novel or charming, nor is the new year. The winter wardrobe is getting boring but even the clearance winter items are thin in the stores. Holidays and vacations are done with. It's too early to be glad for (unseasonably) warm weather and too early to let oneself anticipate spring. The winter body is no longer deniable (a jiggliness that Bill Cosby would be proud of, if not actual weight gain). The mail is all bills and 1099s and other reminders of the existence of money (and therefore evil) in the world. Anyone silly enough to make resolutions in January is feeling the sting of failure. The streets and sidewalks are rutted with ice and puddles, making footwear choices impossible. Our vitamin D levels are low. Our TV shows are getting cancelled. Cabin fever is setting in but there's nowhere we want to go.

Hyperbole? I think not. FEBRUARY is the sting of death. The restless, unmotivated, pouting, tired, trapped and trapping sting of death. It's Douglas Adam's long dark teatime of the soul writ large, magnified from a few hours of Sunday afternoon.

But this post is about today's accomplishments (with the weekend's thrown in for an exaggerated sense of self-worth):

called various places about medication (doctor wrote prescription wrong and I am out of the Thing Which Keeps The Doom At Bay)

made cheddar jalapeno cornbread muffins

emailed client

emailed printer

did large load of dishes

went to grocery store twice

cooked meal

labeled recycling boxes (which I have been promising roommates I would do for, oh, two and a half years now?)

made salad dressing

showered (probably twice, but my memory is as weak as my intellect is strong (weaker, actually; I have a very strong intellect))

sorted through office stuff and office area

Hasta el libro

I suddenly recalled tonight, as I was hanging up the phone with my father, that I don't end conversations with "good-bye" or its variations. At this point it's not a conscious thing, nor, as far as I can tell, noticeable, but it certainly was when I was younger. Not a choice so much as a compulsion. I *couldn't* end things with a final ending. Perhaps it was the influence of those (apocryphal?) stories about languages with no word for "good-bye" or perhaps it was something I came to on my own. But I couldn't do it. I remember phone conversations in fourth grade, when I started using the phone on my own, ending with "good-bye" followed by "see you". Always the "see you". Always. Nor could I be the first to hang up the phone.

I think it's a Death Thing. Maybe that's a stretch but it seems to fit the pattern. I didn't, and don't, like good-byes. Or finality. When my brothers and I would tell stories to each other at night, mine often (almost always? always?) ended with "to be continued..." (We'll ignore the painful knock-knock joke I embedded that in.) My favorite (or at least most frequently read) books, having achieved literacy, were serials: Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, the Secret Seven, Danny Dunn, the Baby-Sitters Club, the Hardy Boys, the Oz books, Anne of Green Gables, Madeleine L'Engle's books, Bruno and Boots. It held through tween years and teen years: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, the Belgariad and Mallorean, the Pern books, Jean M. Auel's series. And not only did I prefer books with recurring characters, I was a chronic rereader of my favorites of these. At some point in highschool, I realized I'd read the Belgariad series of five books at least ten times through.

Not only was my reading series serial, but my reading of books in general didn't abide well with ending points. I often "chainread" books, starting the next one almost before I'd closed the cover of the last one. For years, this meant that I'd read into the wee small hours of the morning, stopping only when I couldn't keep my eyes open or when the first chirps of birds told me that it wouldn't stay night forever. The directive I'd give myself, "one more chapter," was useless because one more chapter never came. And this wasn't a matter of gripping adventure and page-turners; these were books that, often, I could practically recite from memory. Two book nights weren't uncommon and three books nights were not unheardof.

I turned to reading after death rather like some would turn to alcohol in the same position. And perhaps I would've turned to alcohol if it'd been a more easily acceptable and accessible escape for a six year old. But books were widely available and the messages I received about reading them mostly encouraging. I wasn't an early reader by any means, but I spent no time dallying with picture books once I had learned to read and was introduced to chapter books (notably Trixie Belden). By the end of first grade, my book limit at the school library was twice that of my classmates and my choices were word-heavy (in comparison).

To be continued...

Monday: repeating

Mondey (Freudian slip of Money + Monday already? I hope this bodes well!) tasks taken care of:

Other tasks:

email stacy

email jennifer

open mail

start sorting stuffs (get it all in one spot)

Friday: Funning

Friday:

made banana bread

entertained pa (and ma, a bit)

made empanadas

made chocolate

hosted a par-tay