08 March 2013

7 Quick Takes

1. I’m going to the Balanced Bites nutrition seminar tomorrow in DC. I’m excited to meet several cookbook authors/bloggers that I’ve been reading, and to maybe learn a bit more about things I can do to stay as healthy as possible. Also nervous about seeming stalker-y on the one hand or stiff and shy on the other. I’m old enough now that I should just accept that my social awkwardness will assert itself somehow. I will most likely blurt out something that makes me cringe at the memory for days afterwards. There. If I expect it, I shouldn’t worry about it too much, right? It’s all about managing expectations. And sweet, sweet denial.

2. We watched the episode of “The Big Bang Theory” last night where Koothrappali had a texting date in a library. Other than the fact that I can’t text very fast because two left thumbs, that’s how I feel sometimes—I am much better in writing than I am in person.

3. Which brings me to something I think about now and again. I should write up a complete post about it sometime, but here’s something to think about next time you read a newspaper article, book, or blog post: people who are good with words can make anything sound authoritative, or slant a story the way  they think it should go. Maybe that’s why I don’t necessarily believe news stories tell the whole truth—I know how easy it is to slant a piece, because I’ve done it. I’ve managed to crank out authoritative-sounding articles based on three 15-minute phone interviews by stringing together “good quotes” in an organized manner. I once wrote a very peppy-sounding memo for improving practices at a company I worked at, based on my and others’ ideas. A week later I wrote an irate e-mail about mistakes made on one of my projects. I was called into my boss’s office and reprimanded for the tone of the e-mail. He said it was counterproductive, and look at the way this memo is written, you should try to communicate like that. He didn’t know I wrote that memo, too. The difference was, the memo was slanted to the way I knew he and the troubled section of the company would respond. The e-mail told the same truth, just stated baldly and bluntly. Both, of course, were written verywell.

4. Got an allergy workup yesterday. Nothing terribly significant. “Luckily” for me, they were extremely thorough. When I came up negative to everything on the scratch tests on my back, they re-tested for environmental allergens with stronger solutions. With about 30 syringes, injected under my skin and good heavens, that hurt. Came up weakly positive to cats, dogs, horses, cockroaches (!), and a couple types of mold—but weak enough that the doctor didn’t think I needed to do anything about it, unless I had stronger symptoms. So I started my prednisone today. My adventure in pharmaceuticals begins.

5. Is it a bad thing that I hope the prednisone gives me some burst of manic energy? That might be the only thing that helps me get the house in half-decent shape. Of course, I already want to kick K. out of her room for a few days and do some major crap removal. (Expensive crap, mind you. Only the best toys-that-will-be-played-with-briefly-and-then-thrown-into-the-closet-until-mom-tries-to-donate-them for my kids.) She complains that she can’t clean her room because she has no place to put things. But then refuses to part with one.solitary.item. because “It is mine, mine, my precioussssss.”

6. Now that I’ve complained about K., I must brag about her. She’s been having some minor troubles with the boy who sits next to her in math class. From what I can tell by her description, the kid is trying to shock and/or impress her. ‘Cause telling a girl that you can curse in various foreign languages (and then proceeding to demonstrate) may just be the most sophisticated pick-up line a 5th grade boy can think of. In any case, it’s been annoying her. She asked me to call the teacher and ask her to separate them. I told her that she should talk to the teacher herself, privately if possible. We rehearsed a sentence or two that she could say. She was nervous the next day before school, but I put the ball in her court: it was her problem to solve, and her decision whether the boy was distracting enough to brave talking to the teacher about it. She came home that day and said she’d made the request, and the teacher moved her immediately with no fuss. And that now she could concentrate better. Yay for K. solving her own problems and speaking up for herself.

7. I’ve been reading through the Gospels backward (John first, and now Luke), and this evening I read Luke 6:45. “45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Usually, I would skim right over this—good fruit, bad fruit, any good church girl has heard this a thousand times. But tonight I thought, What am I storing up in my heart? Maybe I should choose more thoughtfully.

For a gazillion more Quick Takes, go to Conversion Diary.