riffday: TGIT

Thursdays are now my favorite day of the week.  I go to my classes, drive home (and drive and drive), and then I don't have school again until TUESDAY.  It's the most lovely feeling.  The thing is, it only lasts for about 6 hours.  It always takes me a few weeks to get back into the swing of school.  This past weekend, I let myself take off Thursday night and all day Friday-- and definitely regretted it later.  I just didn't get everything done this week.  So, this time I'm taking tonight off and starting up again tomorrow.

I was planning a brilliant post while I was driving-- actually about six of them, part 2 of the Legacy post, and the followup to the hornets' nest post, and the one on feminism that has been knocking around in my head since february, plus some others-- but at the moment, I'm so exhausted that I can't remember any of them.  So I will just riff.

So.  the eye thing.  The subconjunctival hemorrhage.  If you read the comments, I'll update you on what happened.  The arnica didn't work.  It got worse.  Considerably worse, which makes sense in hindsight because the way that arnica works to remove bruises is by increasing blood flow.  You should have seen it last night, the entire outside half of my eye was bright red.  I decided to spare you another picture.  But it is much better today, and although everyone is way too polite to actually mention it, you could see the surprise in their eyes when they looked at me.  It was hard to miss (my eye, not their surprise).  I made a joke or two about having been bitten by a vampire, or getting in the way of a tire iron, and when I would bring it up, you could see the relief in their faces.  Oh.  we can talk about this.  :-)  I hope it will be gone by tomorrow so no one else will have to worry that dh is beating me.

Speaking of dh.  I asked him to read the hornets' nest post (which had a discussion of parenting styles in it) to see if I'd been too negative (he thought not).  Then the next evening after we had spent about twenty minutes dealing with pet issues-- the cat had thrown up, the dog wanted to go out and then come in, and then go out again, they both needed treats, etc etc-- we ended up both standing by the back door watching the cat out on the deck.  He glanced at me, shook his head ruefully, and commented, "Pet-centered parenting."  (that story won't make sense if you haven't read the other post, which makes this a shameless plug for reading the other post.)

and as long as I'm plugging old posts, this one, the one about whether or not we have to be 100% dependable or only 98%, got considerably more interesting in the comments, so if you missed them, you should go back and read.

Linguistics fascinates me.  Here are our fun linguistics facts for the day.  /d/ and /t/ are the same sound (tongue against the ridge behind your teeth), but one is "voiced" (d) and one is "unvoiced" (t).  You can make a "t" sound without using your vocal cords, but you can't make a "d" sound without your vocal cords.  Try it.

But if you are listening to someone talk, if they speak as most Americans do, it is impossible to distinguish between "waiter" and "wader" except through context.  Or "latter" and "ladder."  This is called neutralization-- when the difference between two phonemes disappears in pronunciation.  At least, I think that's what it means.  If I have any linguists out there, chime in.  Also, the "t" in "Gatwick" is pronounced differently than usual:  your tongue never gets near that ridge behind your teeth (the alveolar ridge).  But we are all sure there's a "t" in Gatwick.  This kind of stuff fascinates me.  I have no idea why.

OK, twenty minute break to help MadMax with math homework.  The teacher gave them math puzzles to do, which he hates (this is dumb. why do I have to do this?) and I love.  Puzzles are fun.  As long as they're not too hard.  I made a spreadsheet to work one of them, which I thought was fascinating, and he thought was dumb.  I think at 14, 98% of the world seems dumb.

And finally, a couple of thoughts on the 4-letter word.  If you remember, my diet has become not a weight-loss diet but a cholesterol lowering diet.  It is amazing to me what difference this makes.  Weight loss involves all kinds of guilt and shame and outrage at societal expectations and rebellious thoughts about conforming and etc etc.  but watching my fat intake so I can lower my cholesterol just makes sense.  I didn't realize how much fat I was eating-- and I'm still not sure exactly what all of it was, but the first week I was hungry all the time.  Since I was letting my body adjust to the low-fat thing, I didn't starve myself.  If I was hungry, I ate.  I just ate low-fat foods.  And I ate a lot.  I think I am almost adjusted now, though.

The only advice the doctor gave me (other than handing me a list of foods to avoid) was 1) don't eat if you're not hungry (heard that before?) and 2) bump my exercise time from 30 minutes to 45.  I'm not sure how much difference 15 more minutes is going to make, but I'm doing it.  The hard thing is that I won't be able to see if it's working unless I go in and do a fasting blood draw to get my cholesterol checked.  She scheduled me to come back in six months, but I think I may do a 3-month check.  I'll have to see how much the test costs when the bill comes back from our insurance.

And that's all.  In fact, it's entirely possible that this is way too much. :-)