Random Occurrences that I Find Irksome

• It irks me when a health care provider (can't say just plain old Doctor anymore because you could be seeing a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician's Assistant; it's all so confusing these days) is checking my lung sounds with the standard, "Okay, take a nice deep breath in" routine and the cold, creepy stethoscope is moving around to different areas on my back and I'm being instructed to "take another deep breath and another and again, and one more...good". I have never once been given enough time to let all the air out and then naturally inhale. It all feels so rushed and hyper-ventilate-y. Don't they know how long it takes a healthy person to inhale and exhale deeply? Have they never been to a yoga class? The next time you're at the doctor's office, I dare you to ask, "could you just give me a second to breathe normally here, please?!?" Maybe I'm just putting too much effort in to my breaths - showing off my respiratory vigor for the health care provider. Could be. Sounds like something I'd do.
• I don't understand why anyone would put the toilet paper roll on the holder with the paper coming off the back so that you have to search for the flimsy little end and fight with the wall to get a grip on it. Why would anyone do this? Does it not make it easier if the paper falls over the top of the roll? The end then hangs down in the open air where it's obvious and easy to grab. Don't people pay attention to this detail when they put on a new roll? Put the damn toilet paper on the RIGHT WAY, people! This is a serious pet peeve of mine to which I've never before admitted. There, I feel better now, how 'bout you.
  
• There are tons of things that irk me at the grocery store. Anyone who's read all my blog entries is aware of my hate/hate relationship with the local Shaw's. Have I mentioned how much it annoys me when people enter the automatic doors, stand smack between the theft detectors making it impossible to safely pass them - right or left - and then stop dead in their tracks as if they've never before entered a grocery store and are baffled as to their next move. KEEP WALKING!! I know the store enters into the frightening produce section and you're looking for Hamburger Helper...but don't worry, the veggies and fruits won't hurt you if you just keep walking forward! There should be a device that would goose anyone who stopped on the way through the doors. Or maybe it would be better if some creepy old man with a nice alcohol stench to him was hired to do it. That would keep people moving and provide a job for someone in this lousy economy. Instead of a Greeter (like at Wall-Mart) you could have the Gooser.
  

Okay, so this blog post was mostly for my entertainment. Other than the 25" of snow in the front yard, 10-12" of it just from the last 12 hours, it was a pretty dull day.

Homegrown Dictionary

A bunch of years ago around the winter holidays, NPR ran a story about portmanteau words. It's where you take two or more words, combine some of their sounds and also their meanings. The only example I remember from the show was "anticiparcelpation"- the feeling of excitement while waiting for a package to arrive in the mail. Since then I have had occasion to create my own portmanteau words, not always on purpose. Sometimes it's just that in a nanosecond of speech production, two words cross through my brain almost simultaneously. The signal that gets sent to my speech mechanisms gets goofed up and a blend of the two words comes out. Examples of accidental portmanteau-ing:

Clapter- n. Audience noise caused by hands clapping and people laughing at the end of a very funny performance when the mood is high and people are joyous. (eg. My date couldn't hear my marriage proposal over the thundering clapter at the end of Nunsense and that's why I'm still single 20 years later.)

Thermomostat- n. Just a combination of the words thermometer and thermostat. I don't see any reason why the thing in your house that controls the heat isn't both at the same time...hence a thermomostat. (eg. Could someone check the thermomostat? I'm freezing.)

Exstrenuating- adj. Circumstances that are both extenuating and involve strenous effort. (eg. You may be excused from turning in your homework due to exstrenuating circumstances such as childbirth or a flat tire on the way to class.)

The rest of the list contains words that did not occur spontaneously. These are words that ought to be in our dictionaries. Feel free to memorize and use them as often as possible.

Nontrepreneur - n. This is the first word I ever invented (as an adult). "Entrepreneurial spirit" is highly valued in this country and gets a lot of lip service. But some of us just don't have that kind of spirit. We're more nontrepreneurial. I think that's an okay way to be, so I gave it a word.

Mommentary - n. A long, drawn out commentary given by your Mom. (eg. I got home 30 minutes late from my date to see Nunsence and was treated to an hour long Mommentary about responsibility and trust when all I wanted to do was go to bed.)

Dramastic - adj. state of agitation that is both drastic and dramatic. Kind of related to melodramatic but a bit more harsh, angular, and spazzy and less pathetic and woe-is-me-ish. I haven't come up with a good usage for this word yet. Feel free to try it out and share your sentences. Originally created as - dramastically.

Befortitude - n. Strength and stamina you must work up in yourself before tackling a tough project. (eg. I dug up some serious befortitude to get out of my sleeping bag when I was camping at -20F.) <--- this is fiction for me, although people do it. I'd never camp at -20F. That's insanity.

Ambitchous - adj. (slang) Being ambitious and bitchin' at the same time. (eg. That line you took down Tuckerman's Ravine was ambitchous, dude!)

Dreamality - n. the real, believeable and urgent world of your dreams. (e.g. In the morning you try to explain last night's dreamality to someone-- you were riding a hippo through the airport to catch the plane that was really a train with dolphin flippers and if you didn't make it you'd miss math class again which you didn't even remember where the room for that class was--and suddenly your dream seems completely illogical and yet it was so real, made so much sense and seemed urgently important last night. That's dreamality, baby.)

Most of the time I'm the wordsmith in our house. I like games like Boggle and Balderdash (my favorite because it involves both words and BS-ing people). But I've saved for last, the word that Chip created. This is how he presented it to me:

C: So the clothes that a nun wears are called a habit, right?
J: uh-huh.
C: And you told me yesterday that the thing around the face and head is called a wimple, right?
J: Yep.
C: So, what do they call the stuff they wear underneath all that?
J: Um...I don't really know.
C: Nunderwear!

Yup...Chip created a portmanteau groaner.

Armchair Philosopher

Welcome to the new and improved Cozy Toes. Okay well, really it's exactly the same except for a little cosmetic re-arranging. But it does provide a pleasant illusion of change, doesn't it? Hey, if we're not going to sign up for the gym, start lifting weights and doing lots of cardio work to make ourselves look and feel better, then at least I can improve the look of my blog and for a few days we'll all feel refreshed without even breaking a sweat. You can thank me in the comments section.

Hopefully the new administration isn't banking on this kind of illusory tactic.

Winter is a good time for pondering. I have tons of free time at work so I'm basically being paid to read for my enjoyment with an occasional patient getting in the way of that task. My reading in the past month has led me down abstract paths involving the evolution of Free Will within the framework of a Deterministic world and whether this can really exist. I've also been spending some of my time visiting a really great blog called Visual Skeptic. It's exposed me to some fascinating modern philosophers and pseudo-philosophers all hashing it out over the topics of religion, atheism and the nature of belief. It's all very cerebral stuff and most of the time I feel I'm barely hanging on intellectually. I'm loving every minute of it!

After plowing along in Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves, I started to feel overwhelmed. Philosophical explorations can begin to feel like crazy spirals of semantics and logic games where even what is meant by the word "meaning" gets called into question. It's maddening. And thrilling. I start to suspect that the search for knowledge, truth and meaning doesn't really need to be so complicated, so convoluted. Why do we make it so?

Perhaps we all get too caught up in spinning webs of our own words as we attempt to forge an understanding of human consciousness. Language is a strange and powerful tool but what if it's not enough? Colin McGinn, in his autobiography The Making of A Philosopher, proposed an idea that I'd never considered but is now percolating away in my brain. I won't do his idea justice because I'm not very good at paraphrasing, but basically he proposes that our language has not kept up with the demands of our intellectual needs. That perhaps our words and language-based concepts have fallen behind the needs of philosophers and cognitive psychologists as they attempt to understand the meaning of consciousness and to explain where the "mind" is within the brain. A fascinating theory. He also seems to be saying that humans may never come to an understanding of these mysteries, that perhaps we are not capable of doing so. Although I am not a formidable philosopher such as Colin McGinn and perhaps don't have a large enough base of knowledge upon which to stand, I choose to disagree with Mr. McGinn on this point. I'll leave that for a future post.

And for anyone who has been following this blog since it's inception--you'll be glad to know that the annual Cleaning of the Toaster Oven occurred last week (a little ahead of schedule actually).

Gratitude Humbles Me

As a child, 4th of July ranked as the premier holiday in my book: summer time, a parade, the picnic food (i.e. potato chips), the bonfires, the s'mores, the fireworks, red flares lining the perimeter or the lake, catching fire flies, the late night with friends. But as I've gotten older most holidays don't excite me anymore. The Big Ones (i.e. Christmas and Easter - which I'd love to celebrate as fantastic solstice festivals with like-minded folks but have not found a way to make that happen...yet) are too Jesus-ified for my taste.

Enter Thanksgiving. Lots of really good food, family, friends (if you're fortunate enough to have friends in the mix with family), people feeling generous of spirit, no gifts other than shared edible/drinkable items, no unnecessary worship of imaginary higher beings. If you want to make the day about your particular god I don't really care. For me it's one of the few holidays I can enjoy without pretending. Life is filled with so many moments of pretending. It's nice not to pretend sometimes.


In no particular order, the top 10 Thanks Givings go to:

1. My friend Nancy beat cancer this year and she let her friends be part of the journey.
2. My mom and dad are healthy and besides loving them, I like them too.
a. same can be said for my brother, SIL, nephew and even my in-laws!!!
3. People once classified as "hiking friends" have become so much more than just people to hike with.
4. Chip, who still seems to think I'm a pretty cool person to spend time with. We laugh a lot. We play music together in our living room. We read books together and talk about them. We cook our meals together and eat them at the dining room table. He was okay with me not working for 6 glorious months. He puts up with my moodiness.
5. My home: although it leaks, smells like musty crawl space sometimes and causes all sorts of other annoyances, it still provides warm, comfortable shelter and is happiest when filled with friends, family, food and music.
6. I have a really cute, fluffy black cat with more personality than some people.
7. Although I don't have a "real" sister, I've been friends with Gigi for about 28 of my 34 years...in my book, we're sisters by choice.
8. Music, music, music: listening, discovering, playing, sharing, making.
9. Having the opportunity to apologize to someone I thought I'd never find.
10. Two friends who have helped me on the path of exploring what it means to exist in this world: Tom. Michael. Although I don't see either of you often, your impact on my life has been immeasurable.

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So, my experiment didn't really pan out. Next week I start a new job as the Audiologist for the Springfield, VT hospital. I'm going right back to what I know I don't really want to do. I'm thankful for the training I have and the fortunate opportunity to use those skills locally. But I'm disappointed in myself for not daring to discover something different.

Thanks for reading. Stay warm, eat good food, drink good drinks, give more hugs.

Cozy Toes going into hibernation.

Don't Leave the Room While Toasting

Soon I will walk to the hospital to the ER. I haven't hurt myself or anything. For my new job I have to have a PPD test done (twice) to prove that I don't have phthisis (that word wins for hardest to hear if you have a high frequency hearing loss) Today I have to have the tuber culosis potato patch they planted in my forearm read at the hospital.

Anyway, for breakfast I had a bowl of tapioca pudding. Then a cup of coffee while I watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a couple episodes of 30 Rock at Hulu.com. For breakfast dessert I had a couple forkfuls of Nutella covered with toasted coconut. You can share that with your nutrition class, Mom! Luckily, I'll still be able to have morning's this productive even once I start working, since I'll only be occupied by that 3 days a week. Phew...what a relief.

I started an awesome fire yesterday. I was toasting the above mentioned coconut in the toaster oven but forgot about it when I went upstairs to try and find the cat's toy mouse. I searched and searched with no luck. So I came back downstairs, Chip met me in the hallway and since yesterday was the first time we'd seen each other in 8 days he was delaying my progress to the kitchen. Suddenly I smelled burning. OH SHIT, THE COCONUT!!!! Flames inside the toaster oven wavered gently. Of course when the door opened more oxygen fueled the flames (I knew this would happen) and they flared up like a bad case of hemorrhoids. Chip took the tray out (using oven mitts) and put it in the sink. I, not thinking about the oil that is in coconut even after it's charred to black, turned on the water to put out the fire. HUGE orange flames sizzled and shot up into the kitchen. They didn't last long, but it's a good thing we don't have curtains. Adrenaline makes me shaky down to my ankles.

So, that's the kind of excitement I'm dealing with at 11:00 a.m. on a Friday here at Fairground Rd. in sunny Springfield, VT.

My kind of freedom

"Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterward." Jean-Paul Sartre

I stand alone on the rocky shore--wind whipped, rain-soaked, lips tasting like salt spray--looking out into the ocean. My internal workings begin to match the ebb and surge of the ocean. The tightness in me retreats. No one in the entire world knows I'm here, standing at the ocean's edge whooping loudly into the wind, celebrating the crashing waves.

I stand alone on the rocky shore and, for a moment, belong to the world unselfconsciously.

Make believe again

The past few days I've been feeling about as substantial as a wisp of post-rain fog that rises up out of the forested valley, twists around on cool air currents and then unceremoniously dissipates to nothing while your head was turned to look more squarely at something in your vision's periphery. I could write more about how I'm feeling and about my job interview and how resigned I feel to the reality of interacting with the general population on a regular basis again. But no one wants to hear that melancholy self-pity crap. So, I'll post this really short story I've had sitting around for a long time instead. This may turn into a longer short story at some point, but this is my starting place, the hook sort of. Mostly I just want to get something up here besides the DFW killed himself post.

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The Dog Days

Our smells have mingled to the point where I can’t tell his from mine. They’re just “ours”. That’s how everything is nowadays: we, us, our. The transformation from me to we takes place slowly and imperceptibly like Jell-O setting. The smells aren't bad: my perfume, his deodorant, our clothes washed in the same detergent, the smell of our sleep on the sheets. These should be comforting "us" smells. But in this heat, they’re all too thick and too close.

I hear him next to me taking shallow, even breaths. He’s not asleep. He’ll probably reach over to touch me even though it’s about 94 degrees and the air feels dead in here. He rolls to my side of the bed and I can feel the heat radiating off his stomach against my lower back. He kisses my neck making happy nuzzling noises and I wonder how salty I taste. He reaches around to fondle my breasts and I know for certain he forgot to mail the rent check today. I make no mention of it although it’s all I can think of while he reaches down into my pajama bottoms. I can’t ignore him any longer so I roll over onto my back trying to make my sigh sound like something other than resignation.

We used to joke that our faces hurt from smiling at each other so much. He still smiles at me like that; he’s doing it now. I’m the one who stopped.

He rolls on top of me and as we breathe his chest pushes against mine. I can’t get enough air. His warm breath clings to my neck. It’s too much, I can’t breath. His weight is unbearable against my chest, my hands push against him, away from me.

“Hon, you okay? What’s wrong?”
“You’re suffocating me. Get off me, please, get off!”
“Oh, geez! I’m sorry, babe. Sorry.”
He’s next to me on his side now, pushing a strand of sweaty hair behind my ear, away from my face. He’s up on an elbow looking down at me with worry all over his face.

“It’s hot in here, that’s all. It’s just too hot.” I offer a conciliatory kiss to his scruffy cheek. I’m surprised I manage even that.
“Yeah, it’s hot. Maybe when the weather breaks things'll be better.” He rolls away from me, back to his side of the bed. It's not far enough.

I roll onto my right side, half of me almost hanging off the edge of our bed. I stretch my hand toward the open window, grasping for air. There is none.