Monday, December 24, 2012

Empty nest

My mom and sister went to visit my other sister in Canada, so it's just my dad and me at home. And the dogs, of course. And the cleaning lady, occasionally, plus her daughter and her daughter's son who plays on the Wii and lurks in corners*. Empty nest.

So I've been watching things with my dad. We watched two movies the other day, and I watched him fix the dining room table's wobbly leg, and I watched him look at his computer while we ate, and he watched me play (and lose at) Mario Kart.

Yesterday he and I also went to the market to buy supplies for our contribution to the family Christmas lunch/dinner. We bought ingredients to make stuffed poblano peppers. My grandma called on Friday and when I answered the phone she said,

"Hello? Señora?"
"No, grandma, it's me, Lalli."
"Señora, I was wondering if you could make some stuffed poblano peppers for Monday."
"Um, okay, but I'm Lalli."
"...oh, Lalli!"

I gave the phone to the cleaning lady and she said, "It's for your dad."

My dad was on the phone for about fifteen seconds before saying goodbye and hanging up, then turning to the cleaning lady and saying that it was my grandma asking if she could make some poblano chiles. It struck me as very roundabout.

Monday (today) is the 24th and the cleaning lady said she could do it very speedily in the morning and then go home to her own family, so my dad and I bought all the stuff to make it quicker for her.

We also got a piñata and some candy. The piñata was big and bulky, and we had to stuff it into a taxi to get it home. A few peaks got a little bent and some of the crêpe paper tassels stayed behind in the taxi, but it ended up fine in the end. Maxie sniffed it when we got home, but kept walking away and pointedly ignoring it when I tried to take her photo with it. In the end I had to bribe her with a piece of rawhide and even then she wasn't cooperating. I pointed at a spot right next to the piñata and was all, "Sit!". Maxie gave me a puzzled look, like "But... there's a spiky thing where you're pointing. I'm gonna sit over here so I'm not next to it.". I picked it up and moved it a little closer to her and she got up and walked her tail right over to the porch. That dog.


*Well, whenever I see him it's because he's popped around a corner. I never walk into a room and see him already in it; he's always on the move, that kid.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Curve

My previous smugness has morphed into boredom. Not with my life (average) but with the Internet. Don't you ever get bored? It seems I always end up in an Internet rut, finding myself time and time again on the same time of websites.

Looking over my browsing history from the last three days, about two-thirds of it is homework-related stuff ("Regeneration in compound eyes of Crustacea", for example) and the rest is a mix of recipe blogs, articles, movie summaries and trailers, English tabloids*, nutrition and muscle-building advice, videos of meerkats, social networks and snark forums.

Do you see how much wasted time that is?!

"Wasted" is relative, I suppose. Obviously any amount of time that I spend browsing around is benefitting me in some way, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But there's a point where the cost of time invested exceeds the benefit of stress-relief and entertainment.


I borrowed a cost-benefit curve from here. I don't know why it's talking about hamburgers, but imagine that the benefit is entertainment and the cost is time– a limited resource. See, the point of maximum returns isn't the point where the benefits and the costs cross near the top. The optimum is much lower, where the distance between the lines is greatest (at the mark of two hamburgers, in the above graph). You get the most returns for your investment.

This post started out making sense to me, but it's degenerated into a messy unloading of the brain. Also, I've always like cost and benefit curves. There's just something about them that appeals to me, and I suspect it's to do with my laziness. You do best when you don't give it your all.

I remember the first time I came across them was during a talk this one guy gave us about overfishing by individual fishermen and small (local) fisheries. People were fishing to the point where the cost and benefit curves intersected, and he said that he had been frustrated when he'd first started working on the problem, from a conservation point of view. Didn't the fishermen understand that if they overexploited the fish, they'd have no more resources in the future? How could he make them see? And then someone told him something, and it changed his entire perspective on fish and many other things: The fishermen weren't stupid. They knew the species they were fishing would die out. But they needed money, and they needed it NOW.

And with that, I say good night.

P.S. I saw a movie the other day where it was pointed out that mexicans have an ideal that you're not worthy of happiness until you've suffered enough to deserve it. I think this applies to many cultures, not just mine. I mean, religion. Right? GUILT!

That was disjointed. I could probably make that fit together, but I want to go to sleep. Use your imagination.

It got me thinking. It also reminded me of the time when I got all frustrated and said, "Why've I got to be happy, anyway? What's so great about being happy?" and my psychologist metaphorically patted my head and said that happiness isn't overrated and to calm down.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Smug

I feel snarky today. Snarky in a way that makes me feel happy and smug, not snarky-frustrated.

One of those times when I get tired of people complaining about how bad everything is and figure, what the hell, all I can do is what's best for me. At this point that means doing my Math homework and not eating any more graham crackers. These are easy things to do, because the homework is some easy-peasy limits and we ran out of graham crackers because I ate them all.

See?

Damn, I really feel good today.

I joined a new gym with about ten different instructors. The Wednesday guy is very good, one of the Thursday guys is good, the Monday girl is okay and everyone else oscillates between passable and really bad (Friday girl). Also, pushups are kinda dangerous because the gym floor gets incredibly slippery when it gets sweaty. My knees slide around in an entertaining way, but I don't want to do full push-ups because one of my hands might slide off to the side and I'd end up like Michael Jackson.

Of course, I could bring a yoga mat, but I'm too lazy to bring one with me on the bus at 6 AM.

Isn't it funny, though, that I'm early for the 7 AM classes at the gym, but was late for every single 7:30 AM History of Biology class? Well, maybe not funny. Telling, I guess.

I've been doing my nails a lot lately. Right now I'm wearing sparkles, only half of each nail chipped off and I have yet to re-do them.

I stubbed my two tiniest toes a few hours ago. The pinky still hurts, but luckily my nails are intact. I knew a girl whose foot slipped when her knee gave out (there's something wrong with her knees and apparently they do that every so often; she said she's had many surgeries, but will inevitably end up in a wheelchair by the time she's… I forgot how old. Maybe 35?) and her big toe's entire nail came right off. Augh! So I treasure my pinky toe's nail, although actually there isn't much of it. If I clip it, it's about 3mm long. But it's there, make no mistake.

Okay, Math.

Right.

Friday, September 07, 2012

Non sequitur

I didn't mean for this to come out feeling bland, but I guess that's how I feel at the moment.


I was doing some homework this week about neurotransmitters. It was funny. As I read about serotonin and depression, I was like, "Holy crap, this was me yesterday!". Horrible morning, slept all afternoon, woke up at night feeling better.

I love my Behavioral Ecology class, but the annoying thing about trying to talk about it is that within a minute many people veer the conversation over to humans and human behavior. Yes, humans are fascinating. But don't try to make comparisons between humans and other animals if you don't understand the animals you're talking about in the first place. Like in a book I read recently, where the characters had a long conversation about lions and lionesses and female power and it was mostly founded on a bunch of false assumptions they made about lions. If you want to talk about humans, then talk about humans. Don't drag lions into it and start making up fantastical analogies just because you think they sound cool.

I really am a stick in the mud sometimes. I was just thinking about that today. I was on the bus and I saw a kid reach into his book bag, pull out a microfiber cloth, pick some lint off of it and then wipe his glasses on it very carefully. "Kid," I thought at him, "there's a fuzzy hoodie on your lap. No need to be carrying around your microfiber thingy. Don't be a stick in the mud."

I think about this a lot, sometimes. It's very comforting:
I tend to think of human beings as huge, rubbery test tubes, too, with chemical reactions seething inside. When I was a boy, I saw a lot of people with goiters. So did Dwayne Hoover, the Pontiac dealer who is the hero of this book. Those unhappy Earthlings had such swollen thyroid glands that they seemed to have zucchini squash growing from their throats.

All they had to do in order to have ordinary lives, it turned out, was to consume less than one-millionth of an ounce of iodine every day.

My own mother wrecked her brains with chemicals, which were supposed to make her sleep.

When I get depressed, I take a little pill, and I cheer up again.

And so on.

So it is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.
It's from Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut. I added the emphasis so you'd know which parts to pay attention to, just in case you were temped to focus especially on the bit about goiters.

Every time I go to the study room next to the library I fall asleep. All the warm air rises up into that room, but it doesn't get too hot as the day goes on because there's a dome that the hottest air goes to. Today I was nodding off when a classmate from a few semesters ago sat at my table and talked to me so I wouldn't fall asleep. He told me he ate 16 tacos for lunch, which explains how he can run so much and be so skinny. Seriously, what little there is of his body is in great physical condition and he's known for running on and on, fast, and never getting tired.


Sunday, August 19, 2012

Clutter

My family accumulates things. The fridge accumulates tiny containers of dipping sauce which nobody will eat. We save the ketchup and chili sauce packets that come with pizza, even though none of us eat them. We have tons of keychains. We have tons of books. We have fifteen-year-old elementary-school textbooks. We have tangles of toys crammed into a plastic storage box under the stairs. We must have around a hundred mugs. And there are uncountable decorative bowls, vases, plates, figurines and other souvenirs.

Be it by nature or nurture, I have a tendency to obtain and accumulate things (Star Wars toys, amusing pillows and odd bits of nature extracted from their homes during field trips** all come to mind) and am averse to throwing them away. Luckily for me, I seem to be less averse than my parents, who once yelled at me for not eating the corners of a slice of cake.

Two weeks ago, I felt suddenly overwhelmed by how much stuff I had and threw out two trash bags' worth of stuff from my room, which was promptly picked over by the housekeeper. This means that a stuffed toy, a plastic CD case and other such items are now on display in the laundry room (which is of her domain, as she uses it a lot more than anyone else does).

All my old Star Wars toys (and there were many of them), anime figurines, a music box, a poster I never got framed are in storage; a lot of my ex-clothes is being put to use by other people (I only have one metal band T-shirt left!), I threw out a bunch of useless knickknacks, relocated a table elsewhere in the house, dusted everything…

…and I am still swimming in stuff, but at least it is now mostly things that I want and use.

Still, I've been bitten by the decluttering bug. Today I attacked some common areas and threw out what felt like 12kg of old magazines, threw out a bunch of garbage that has been lurking for who-knows-how-many years un the bottoms of decorative vases that lay, concealed and forgotten, behing potted plants, and amassed two dozen or so decorative bowls.

Why do we have so many bowls? They just sit stacked on a shelf and gather dust and lost earrings. And that's just the ones that were in two rooms downstairs– in the display cabinets upstairs there are bowls all the way back o every shelf, and more bowls stacked in the cupboards underneath. When I asked my Dad if there was any one that he felt comfortable getting rid of, he pointed at one shaped like a green pig (it's not as kitschy as it sounds, it's actually quite nice) and then suggested I wrap up all the others and put them in storage because they're pieces of art.

In storage? Where? What for??

AUUUGH! I am ridding myself of the habit of accumulating things, even small, insignificant things like pen holders.

Oh, I didn't mention the pen holders, did I? We have a lot of those, too. But my Dad's tools of the trade are pen and paper (well, that and a few Apple products) so the pen holders are actually put to use. They're all over the house, on nearly every end table and desk. There's enough of them to be on every one, but some desks are selfish and can have three or four pen holders so there aren't enough to go around.

You know, there's something extra odd about having so many decorative things tucked away and piled on top of each other– none of them are actually hung up on a wall or anything. At most they sit, bunched together like merchandise in a shop, on top of a surface such as the piano. Maybe if we set some of them up properly, people would finally feel the house is "decorated" and stop bringing more things into the house.

Weekend project.

** By which I mean things like a walnut shell, or a giant mushroom which my teacher had harvested and was going to throw out. You know, not stuff like a ghost crab for a pet or anything.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

School

Today was my second day of school. I started fifth semester, which means I'm almost halfway through my bachelor's degree. Actually I'm supposed to be two-thirds done, because the degree is eight semesters long, but you need to take a workshop** during your last four semesters and I didn't join one this semester.

I don't know what I want to specialize in, you see, and the workshop you join will define what you'll write your thesis about and who will be your supervisor. I was completely enamored with Parasitology, which turned out to be a dud when I took the class last semester, so I'm treading carefully in the world of Biology these days.

I'm getting interested in animal behaviour these days. There's a workshop on that but I didn't join it because what if I end up disillusioned with animal behaviour, the way it happened with Parasitology?

I'm taking Ecology of Animal Conduct this semester and so far it's looking great. The teacher is really good, plus he's English so it sounds cool whenever he says a name or book title. The rest of the time he speaks Spanish with an accent reminiscent of my Mom's, so I feel right at home.

Anyway, the animal conduct workshop will open again next year. If I want it, I'll wait for it and add an extra year to my bachelor's degree. If not, I'll join something else next semester.

I also signed up Biological Anthropology because it sounded fascinating, but after going to the first class and getting a list of the recommended bibliography I can see that it's not what I was hoping for (it's mostly genetics), so I'm dropping it like a hot potato so I can concentrate on my other five courses, especially animal behaviour.



** Workshop as in "meeting at which a group of people engage in intensive discussion and activity on a particular subject or project", as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary widget I have on my dashboard. We don't spend two years carving table legs or something.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Birdie

Yesterday a bird fell out of a tree in the backyard while I was whittling a penguin out of wood**. I only figured it out when the Small Dog, who is a cocker spaniel and therefore is engineered to fetch birds, risked life and limb fighting the bamboo thicket and later a thorn bush while trying to get at it.

The bird was freaking out so it ran around the yard and I managed to tackle Dog just when she had the bird's tail in her mouth but hadn't chomped down yet. The bird ran away into the thorn bush and I tied up Dog so that the bird could regain its composure and fly away. It didn't, though, and stayed on the ground beneath the bush until not even the combined efforts of my dad, my sister, her fiancé and me were any help getting it out of the bush and away from Dog. Eventually we gave up when my dad pointed out that it was hopping around to get away from us and it was getting poked by all the thorns.

Small Dog stayed tied up for the rest of the day, except for a brief stint where she tugged at the chain so much that her collar snapped in two (killer instinct, that dog has), and this morning the bird had migrated into a small bamboo on the other side of the yard. The bird's mom was flapping around the bamboo and screaming at her kid, and also screaming at Maxie when she wandered into the yard for some sniffing, a pee and possibly breakfast. It followed her around, hopping on the wall and on the trees, screaming at the top of its birdie lungs. Maxie totally didn't notice.

I don't know what the bird's status is now. I haven't seen it since morning, although I heard it conversing with its mom in the afternoon. For my own peace of mind, and to make up for making the bird poke itself with thorns yesterday, I made a little bird bath and tied it to the braches of the tree. Next to it I put a slice of bread with almond butter and sunflower seeds. I read that in a kids' activity book when I was little, except in the book they used peanut butter. I figured that our peanut butter has some added oils and whatnot and probably the almond butter is better for the bird. Or for the bugs, who are probably going to be the ones to eat it.

** I do not mention this to show of my whittling skills, but because "whittling" is a funny word. Like "soup".

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Yoga

I woke up today with a horrible headache, stiffness and pain all over my body, including my eyes (!). So I languished in bed for a while, then moved downstairs to languish on the sofa so that my parents could take pity on me more easily (I'm all about helping others).

After some aspirin, a nap and some mother-brewed Chamomile tea, I did some yoga with a DVD. The DVD was bizarre, featuring a woman called Wai Lana who demonstrated the poses while wearing an assortment of colorful jumpsuits and a flower wreath decorating each of her extremities, in various picturesque sceneries (mountains, beaches, rivers…) on a big, orange living room carpet.

Anyway, regardless of its weirdness, the yoga helped me loosen up my sore muscles and made the last bit of my headache dissipate. During the relaxation, when you're supposed to lie down with your eyes closed and enjoy the music, I peeked at the screen and was surprised to see footage of Wai Lana dancing in the snow, sledding with her friends and having snow fights.

I'm feeling much better now, enough to want some Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Monday, July 02, 2012

Vacation

Last week, from Monday to Friday, I went with several of my friends from high school to Morelos. One of them has an uncle who built a weekend house there, though the place isn't used much. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an outdoor kitchen all in a row at the back of the property, and then a lawn with a few trees and a pool.

We got there by bus (it's not a long ride– about 1.5 hours on a bus, then two half-hour rides on vans and then a short walk up a hill) and spent several hours cleaning the place and reclaiming it from the insects and arachnids who had staked out their territory in the absence of people. It had accumulated dust and dirt and did I mention the wasps?

There were a few wasp nests here and there. Some of them we knocked down, but we left the bigger ones alone. The biggest was inside a bathroom, so it happened several times that someone would go in, shut the door, and then come barreling back out in a panic shrieking that there was a wasp inside.

One night, most of us stayed up late talking, and then moved into a small tent that we had set up on the porch (on the porch because it was raining so hard). Seven of us somehow squeezed into the two-person tent to keep talking, and then six of us fell asleep inside (one guy was smart enough to go to bed at 3AM). We woke up in the morning feeling all stiff and crampy.

Another night we set up a bigger tent and slept in the yard. Sometime in the early morning someone woke up and noticed that their blanket was wet, and realized that it was raining and the tent was leaking. So we groggily went to our rooms, and stupidly left behind a bunch of sheets and comforters behind to get soaked in the tent.

Oh, and on one day, my friend's uncle– the owner of the house– swung by with some other men to paint the walls. They brought a little boy, about four years old, who we took turns playing with ALL DAY. That kid did not know the meaning of the word "tired". For about an hour we played a game that consisted of him standing at the edge of the pool and "hiding" a plastic ball inside one of four inflatable swimming tires. He would then instruct me to swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other and surface through the hole in the tires, looking for the ball. Of course the ball was always in the last tire where he made me look. On the plus side, it was an excellent workout; that kid should be a personal trainer.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Baby salamander

I promised I'd be in bed by 11:00 PM, and it's now 10:50 PM on the dot. But I wanted to write a quickie blog post for some reason. So, photo review it is!


A few weeks ago my Parasitology class went on our one-day field trip. I was falling asleep on my feet and eventually sunk into a little corner and suddenly my teacher was looking down at me with slight concern and asked if I wanted to go outside and breathe some fresh air. I was all, "Uuuurgh, uh, urgh. OH! Sorry, sorry, sorry, I, um, yeah, I'll go outside."

Anyway, we went to a somewhat big aquarium/fish farm to buy some fish. Back in the lab, we cut them open and looked for parasites (we didn't find a lot. A tiny copepod, but not much other than that). One of the things they were breeding was axolotls, which are well-loved by most people who know them. The axolotl tadpoles were kind of dumb and we could scoop them up and watch them wiggle around cutely, unlike the toad tadpoles who would turn tail and flee if you so much as thought about them.

So that picture up there is an axolotl baby in my hand.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Cuetzalan

My Natural Resources class went on a field trip to Cuetzalan, Puebla to visit the town and study the artisans, beekeepers, general population and coffee, bamboo, pepper, cinnamon growers, both independent and those belonging to a cooperative called Tosepan Titataiske ("together we will overcome" in Náhuatl). The cooperative has several branches so just about anyone can join and do different activities, or be a member of their bank.

Our group was split into teams and each team studied something different about the community or the cooperative. My team studied something to do with the living conditions of the people who belong to the cooperative**. And after talking to the people in Cuetzalan, the (very poor) towns nearby and the people at the Tosepan cooperative, we reached some sad conclusions about the cooperative.

I mean, we wanted the cooperative to be everything it said it was, but the only positive things I can safely say about it are:

  • It employs organic techniques to grow coffee and some other things (but this isn't the same thing as being sustainable, keep in mind)
  • It got some roads built, so some marginalized communities have easier access to the sweet fruits of civilization. Such as cement.
  • The coffee growers who manage to get in have a set price for the coffee they grow throughout the year, if the cooperative buys it from them. Which isn't always the case, apparently.
Other than that, well, it's not so nice. Let's just say that the woman I spoke to on our first day there wasn't missing out on much by not joining. She wanted to join, but she couldn't save up enough money ("my husband," she explained, "he's a Catholic. No, I mean, alcoholic. He's an alcoholic."). You need 800 pesos to join the cooperative as a member of the "caja de ahorros", which is basically a bank. My phone cost a few times that much.


This is Cuetzalan. The town center is at the end of this road.


**Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what the objectives of my team's study were. One girl sort of commandeered the whole thing and had an idea in mind that none of the other members of the team really understood. We were trying to all work on it but then she would resist any change we tried to implement, until eventually we all each reached the unspoken conclusion that we would just meekly follow her bidding. We asked again during the field trip what the exact objectives were and she floundered for a few minutes and didn't get around to telling us. I wasn't keen on the "lie back and do what you're told to do" idea until I had a panic attack during a Natural Resources class and the teacher found me curled up and sobbing in a corridor near the classroom and told me (nicely) to chill because "what we're doing in the class, it's nothing! It's shit! Real life s so much more complicated than this, in every aspect" etc. My psychologist and I agreed. The bottom line is that now I grasp our project by about 65% and my sanity is back up to about 90%, which is a better proportion than 85% and 55%, respectively.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Decluttering

I got rid of a ton of clothes. A drawer full of pajamas (I don't even wear pajamas. I sleep nak- um, I wear a T-shirt and shorts), about thirty tops including a load of huge-black-metal-concert-tees and some things that never really fit right, around eight pairs of jeans, some sweaters, loads of socks and underwear, some five pairs of footwear, and I still have loads of clothes.

Where does it all come from??

I mean, I gained a few items, too, because my sisters decluttered their closets at the same time. So I got some hand-me-down jackets and sweaters, some tops, and a skirt (for funerals, because I do have this one other black skirt, but it's a flouncy miniskirt and I'm not sure that other funeral attendees would appreciate it).

And I realize that sounds counter-productive, but some of these things are clothes that I lusted after for years. My sister's "I love you very mush" sleeveless hoodie shirt, for instance, which has four little mushrooms on the front. Or this one green jacket she bought in Europe.

Oh, and the jeans I got rid of– I was a size 3 in high school, apparently. Holy crap!

Before giving it all away to our housekeeper (who has lots of daughters and grandchildren to give clothes to), we went through it all with our cousins so they could pick out whatever they might want. They all went home with a few things and we were happy knowing that this stuff is going to loving homes. I mean, most of it is in really good condition, plus it's good quality, brand name stuff.

My cousin took this shirt by mistake and was about to make off with it. I was all, nooooooo! Get away!!

Although there were a few times when certain items were hard to let go of. One of my cousins was looking for clothes to make crafts out of, rather than wear: "Hey! This skirt would make a great cushion!" My eldest sister's eyes shot wide open and her mouth formed a tiny, horrified "o". Later that night I saw her wearing the skirt in question and telling my aunt, "She wanted to sew it into a cushion. This skirt, a cushion!"

Good morning

I set my alarm for 9 AM. It's a good time to wake up during the holidays, as it's neither early nor terribly late. When you wake up at 9AM, it's already light out and you don't feel like you're getting up into a dark, lonely world. You don't lie in bed for a while wondering what to do. The day has already started and it's the right time for going downstairs to fix yourself coffee and breakfast.

"9AM," I thought last night as I set my alarm, "that's a good time to get up tomorrow. I'll get nine whole hours of sleep."

I woke up at 7:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Typical.

What is up with that? One of my resolutions for this year is to sleep more, but how do I do that if my body won't let me? Adolescents are supposed to get nine hours of sleep, but short of taking meds, I don't know how I can do that. I'm on holidays! Why can't I sleep more?

Also, it's really bugging me that I have these bags under my eyes that won't go away. I put concealer under my eyes so that they won't freak people out. Whenever I forget or don't have time to wear makeup, people take one look at me, remark that I look tired, and ask me if I'm okay or if I pulled an all-nighter.

I've always looked tired, even when I was, like, eight years old. You just couldn't tell so much before because I wore glasses.

Ao anyway, I got up at 7:30, stretched a bit, put on some music, read some blogs, danced around a bit, drank some water, took a body test on the Wii Fit and fixed myself a coffee.

I'm too lazy to use the coffeemaker very often, so by "fix myself a coffee" I mean "heated up my leftover tea from last night, plus some extra water, and put it in a mug with some instant coffee. Also milk."

Speaking of which, my sister and I have recently switched from drinking low-fat milk to whole milk. For as long as I can remember, my family's always had low-fat milk. My cousin said it was like drinking insipid, white water and I thought she was exaggerating… until I tried some whole milk in my coffee. After years of drinking 2% milk, drinking whole milk feels like drinking cream.

When I get used to whole milk, I intend to start melting butter and stirring that into my coffee.*

Coffeeeeee.

*Just kidding. OR AM I?

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Seven: a memoir

When I was in second grade, we were learning to multiply in school. So, for a while, our daily homework was to learn one of the times tables. A new one each day, working our way up from 2 to 10.

Now, I've always been lazy. In kindergarten I never did my homework unless I deemed it a fun assignment. And in second grade, that still happened if I felt I could get away with it. It was fine when we were multiplying in 2's and 3's, but it got harder to fake as the number grew bigger. I'd sit in class while everyone around me recited "Six times seven, forty-two! Six times eight, forty-eight!" and I'd sort of mouth along with them. I was probably a bit nervous about getting called on, but not enough to want to study.

Eventually, my parents found out that I was slacking off. They were not amused. A laminated poster was purchased with the times tables on it, my mom made flashcards, and the pièce de résistance was a horrible educational CD procured from some dark corner of horribleness. The CD claimed to teach kids math… with rock music! I remember hating it: the stupid-sounding character (called Mr. Rock or something to that effect*), the bad music, the feeling of condescension that emanated from it all. Mr. Rock would recite the times tables (too fast for me to glean any nuggets of wisdom) and ask his listeners– his buddies– to join in!

Since the CD wasn't bad enough in itself, my sisters mocked me for it as well. In fact, my cousins were visiting a few weeks later and they made fun of me, too, when they found the CD. I hated that CD.

Yuck.

Anyway, my parents made me sit on my bed and learn the times tables using all the study aids they'd showered upon me. So I did, sort of. That was the day my class had been sent home with the mission of learning the seven times table. So that's what I focused on: seven times four is twenty-eight. Seven times five is thirty-five. Seven times six...

Now, I didn't study the six times table, or the four times table (the fives time table is easy, as we all know, and not worth mentioning). What for? Those had been covered on previous days and I'd never be quizzed on them again! No, I studied the seven times table, learned it by heart, recited it to my folks, and thus convinced them that their deed was done.

The same dedication did not go into the eight or nine times tables on following days: I slacked off one those, too. But I'll be damned if I didn't master the seven times table. And here's a little secret: to this day, I have to stop and think for a second when I'm multiplying small numbers... unless there's a seven involved.

I'd thank my parents if it weren't for that stupid CD.**


* I looked it up; it's "Professor Relamido". As in, musical notes: re-la-mi-do
** Which you can buy on iTunes. Don't, though.

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Resolutions

I haven't thought these through, but here goes:

Form these habits:
  • Dink 2 liters of water a day (more when exercising, obviously)
  • Lie down and listen to podcasts* when I'm stressed
  • Floss most days
  • Go to bed early**
  • Wash my face before bed
  • Lose arguments more often (i.e., stop needing to be right all the time)
Break these habits:
  • Eating as soon as I get home even if I'm not hungry
  • Eating before bed***
  • PROCRASTINATION!!
Do these things:
  • Run two races.
  • Throw out/give away/get rid of 60 things in my bedroom (i.e., declutter)
  • Get a 10 in Parasitology
  • Redecorate my room****


** I'm planning to still take afternoon/night classes, so... be in bed before midnight, most of the time.

*** I now suffer of reflux (ew) when I eat big-ish portions, and I do not want esophageal cancer!!

**** Put up a painting or something, at least.