I had one of my many recurring nightmares the other night. This was the one in which I’m back in Physical Chemistry class in college. Physical Chemistry, affectionately known as P-chem, can be loosely described as Chemistry, Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Calculus all wadded up and tossed out as something assumed to be comprehensible to human beings. If you are not frightened by this depiction or if you took P-chem and liked it, you are either way too smart to be reading this blog, or you’re that smart but you need the comic relief to get over yourself for the second-and-a-half it will take you to read it.
As luck would have it, my adored Organic Chemistry class took place in the same room as, and immediately prior to, the dreaded P-chem. All was bliss in that room as long as Organic was going on in there. But once that class ended, the room morphed into a torture chamber where unspeakable horrors took place. As the P-chem prof walked into the room, my right leg went stiff as a board from hip to toes, and I developed excruciating pain in my neck and shoulders. I had to sneak a paper bag from my backpack, duck my head under my desk, and breathe into it in an often-futile attempt to prevent hyperventilation. I distinctly remember that there was one session in which the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was discussed. What I took home from that lesson was My Certainty Theory, which was that I was certain to fail P-chem. I should have had my first inkling back then that I was entering the Insanity Zone, because I would show up for exams as if going to witness my own execution and arrive early to get a good seat.
Not to brag, but by some miracle I got an A in the Nightmare Course. I think that explains a lot. I often wonder what is wrong with me when I can’t think of relatively simple words, such as “confused.” Apparently my brain is in urgent need of exfoliation. The dead cells are suffocating the ones still desperately trying to function. All too often I find myself blabbering along only to hear myself stammering, “uh, uh, uh…” I know that I know the word I want, it may even be monosyllabic, but it simply refuses to be summoned forth. If the person I’m talking to is either kind or impatient, they put me out of my misery by supplying the word that is obviously escaping me. I’m convinced that most of the words that I have ever known are still in my brain somewhere, but the search engine designed to bring them up when I need them has certainly suffered damage.
I blame most of this brain fog on organ overuse due to my inexplicable determination to kick rear in P-chem. The rest I blame on raising kids. As a real smart guy named Sam Levenson said, “Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.” Now that the grandchildren are arriving, that damage seems to be reversing itself. It seems that there is something restorative in watching your kids struggle through payback. Sorry, kids; no ill will intended. Those mental faculties of yours should return one day, given that you manage to survive Stage One (children) and advance to Stage Two (grandchildren). But that, as they say, is another story. For now I’ll just content myself with the thought that when I find myself back in P-chem, the good news is that I will eventually wake up with hope of regenerating brain cells lost. Somebody pass the coffee and the crossword puzzle, please…
Monday, April 26, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Roughing It
Nothing kills a good blog-post idea like a blank blogging-editor screen. It looks empty at first, but as I gaze intently, ghostly word images appear. They spell out spooky messages like, “I’m WAITING…!” and “tick, tock, tick, tock…” Brain freeze then seizes me, and not the kind you get eating ice cream. What began as an urge to express my thoughts becomes a voice screaming, “I command you to write something significant - NOW!” What it makes me want to do is find a firing squad, tap the head guy’s shoulder and beg, “Please, may I go next?”
Probably the most intimidating thing about trying to work in the blogging editor is the space at the top labeled
TITLE: (_______________). I have no idea what I’ll call my piece until I’ve finished a considerable portion of it. I don’t absolutely have to fill out that field first. But if I don’t, its emptiness stares, glares, and finally shrieks, “Fill me, you moron!” I can’t even breathe, let alone write, under that kind of pressure.
In an effort to overcome my fear of the blogging editor, I’ve put pencils and pads of paper throughout the house so I’ll be ready when lightning bolts of inspiration hit. I can’t tell when or where they will strike, but I’ve noticed trends. There’s the obvious pencil-and-paper spot – on the nightstand. I do think of funny things in the middle of the night. Or do they just seem funny because I’m not fully conscious? Whatever; come morning, my notes can be a bit difficult to decipher. Usually, ideas come while I’m doing something ordinary, like holding a frozen dinner to the vent-hood light, squinting at it, and trying to read the microwaving directions. Pad and pencil in the kitchen – check.
Many of us think most clearly in the shower. Sadly, somehow it’s not the most practical place to write. I have noticed, however, that I often get ideas while I dry my hair. Apparently aiming an electrical appliance directly at my head somehow jolts the inner-dialogue center of my brain. Pad and pencil at the vanity, definitely. Hey, as long as I’m in the bathroom, chaining a pencil to the toilet paper holder couldn’t hurt.
A fun thing about paper and pencil is that you can erase. Okay, duh, you can use DELETE on a keyboard to accomplish that. But it just doesn’t rock like erasing an entire paragraph with wild abandon, glancing around warily to make sure no one is looking, and then gleefully brushing the eraser droppings to the floor! The writing bogeyman attacks me while I’m enjoying erasing though. The dreadful thought of running out of eraser before pencil sends chills up my spine. When the inevitable happens, do I stop erasing or start a new pencil? The Green in me gasps at the thought of the latter, and contemplating the entire dilemma brings brain freeze back with a vengeance.
Fortunately, what’s even better than erasing is crossing stuff out. I like that I can adjust my cross-out style to suit my mood. I use the neat single-line approach when I feel prim and persnickety. I like an elongated Z shape when I’m in a zen-like state. In catatonic moments, I just stab the pencil in the general direction of the paper. My favorite method is to lose myself completely in the moment and obliterate to kingdom come. Take that, you offending words, ha ha!
Having margins is another advantage of writing on paper. I tend to let thoughts spill out however my brain releases them. As self-editing mode kicks in, I bracket paragraphs and use the margins to draw those cool arrows with pointy things on each end that mean “reverse order.” Or I put a big blobby dot on one end and a pointy thing on the other, meaning “move this over here.”
Margins are wonderful places to doodle while your mind takes a powder, gets a cuppa joe, or whatever it’s doing when you can’t find it. Try doodling with your non-dominant hand. You won’t accomplish anything, but you’ll be in awe of your dominant hand! Another way I like to use margins is to write notes to myself. These notes go something like, “Where did this come from?” “What R u thinking?” or “Help! My home planet has ordered me back!!!”
That’s what I call a rough draft. Dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and working up the courage to face the blogging-editor screen can wait…
Probably the most intimidating thing about trying to work in the blogging editor is the space at the top labeled
TITLE: (_______________). I have no idea what I’ll call my piece until I’ve finished a considerable portion of it. I don’t absolutely have to fill out that field first. But if I don’t, its emptiness stares, glares, and finally shrieks, “Fill me, you moron!” I can’t even breathe, let alone write, under that kind of pressure.
In an effort to overcome my fear of the blogging editor, I’ve put pencils and pads of paper throughout the house so I’ll be ready when lightning bolts of inspiration hit. I can’t tell when or where they will strike, but I’ve noticed trends. There’s the obvious pencil-and-paper spot – on the nightstand. I do think of funny things in the middle of the night. Or do they just seem funny because I’m not fully conscious? Whatever; come morning, my notes can be a bit difficult to decipher. Usually, ideas come while I’m doing something ordinary, like holding a frozen dinner to the vent-hood light, squinting at it, and trying to read the microwaving directions. Pad and pencil in the kitchen – check.
Many of us think most clearly in the shower. Sadly, somehow it’s not the most practical place to write. I have noticed, however, that I often get ideas while I dry my hair. Apparently aiming an electrical appliance directly at my head somehow jolts the inner-dialogue center of my brain. Pad and pencil at the vanity, definitely. Hey, as long as I’m in the bathroom, chaining a pencil to the toilet paper holder couldn’t hurt.
A fun thing about paper and pencil is that you can erase. Okay, duh, you can use DELETE on a keyboard to accomplish that. But it just doesn’t rock like erasing an entire paragraph with wild abandon, glancing around warily to make sure no one is looking, and then gleefully brushing the eraser droppings to the floor! The writing bogeyman attacks me while I’m enjoying erasing though. The dreadful thought of running out of eraser before pencil sends chills up my spine. When the inevitable happens, do I stop erasing or start a new pencil? The Green in me gasps at the thought of the latter, and contemplating the entire dilemma brings brain freeze back with a vengeance.
Fortunately, what’s even better than erasing is crossing stuff out. I like that I can adjust my cross-out style to suit my mood. I use the neat single-line approach when I feel prim and persnickety. I like an elongated Z shape when I’m in a zen-like state. In catatonic moments, I just stab the pencil in the general direction of the paper. My favorite method is to lose myself completely in the moment and obliterate to kingdom come. Take that, you offending words, ha ha!
Having margins is another advantage of writing on paper. I tend to let thoughts spill out however my brain releases them. As self-editing mode kicks in, I bracket paragraphs and use the margins to draw those cool arrows with pointy things on each end that mean “reverse order.” Or I put a big blobby dot on one end and a pointy thing on the other, meaning “move this over here.”
Margins are wonderful places to doodle while your mind takes a powder, gets a cuppa joe, or whatever it’s doing when you can’t find it. Try doodling with your non-dominant hand. You won’t accomplish anything, but you’ll be in awe of your dominant hand! Another way I like to use margins is to write notes to myself. These notes go something like, “Where did this come from?” “What R u thinking?” or “Help! My home planet has ordered me back!!!”
That’s what I call a rough draft. Dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and working up the courage to face the blogging-editor screen can wait…
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Welcome to my blog!
As far back as I can remember, say from about second grade, when the boy who sat next to me all day would eat his crayons, goofy stuff has really annoyed me. I mean really, how much colored wax does one have to ingest to determine that red tastes the same as green, which tastes the same as yellow, and so on? And none of them tastes GOOD. Did he have any idea how repulsive he looked with bits of crayon between his teeth? I wonder if he's worked up to burnt sienna yet...? This took place so long ago that they may actually have flavorful crayons now; but if so, I really don't want to know. That would just set me off on a whole new path of annoyance.
Over the past ten years or so, the bar for what it takes to make me want to hurt myself or someone else, keeps being lowered at an exponential rate. The goofiness factor of everyday stuff has gotten so big, I'm afraid I'll find myself falling into the abyss of goofdom, never able to climb out again. I've tried ranting and raving at it, but that just makes me hoarse and tired. I've tried ignoring it, but after three or four days, I really must pull my head out from under the covers, get out of bed and move around a bit. I finally hit upon looking for the humor in it, trading seizures involving foaming at the mouth for seizures of falling-down laughter, and it has almost made me look forward to running into goofy stuff. Almost.
Take the mail for example. We won't even go into email for now, just "snail mail." I went away to visit my parents for a while. When I returned home, I had a pile of mail to sort through, and in all of it I found three interesting, albeit somewhat intimidating, documents. They were, in order of presumed arrival, a letter from the US Census Bureau informing me that my 2010 US Census Form was on the way, a larger envelope containing the 2010 US Census Form, and finally, a postcard reminding me to complete and mail my 2010 US Census Form as soon as possible or someone would be knocking on my door to collect my information face-to-face. I was only gone ten days!
I was annoyed by this ridiculous waste of my tax money, not wanting to imagine how large the paper pile would be, not to mention the cost of postage fees, if what I received were multiplied by the number of households in the country. I'm sure someone out there knows how many times the stack could circle the globe. Fortunately I don't, or I might want to hurt somebody...(grrr!) After what I considered an appropriate number of days to allow for procrastination, I again picked up the three documents, and decided to just get over it already and respond. So I opened up The Form. I used a black pen as requested to mark my responses. I put it in the prepaid, pre-addressed return envelope, as instructed. Then I took the initial impending-arrival letter and wrote, "Thank you for letting me know!" across the top in large letters with a red crayon and inserted that into the envelope. Finally, in burnt sienna, I wrote on the post-card, "The Form is in the mail, please don't send anyone by; I won't be able to answer the door because I'll be in bed with the covers over my head!" That also went into the envelope, I sealed it all up and laughed all the way to the post office...
Welcome to my blog! :)
Over the past ten years or so, the bar for what it takes to make me want to hurt myself or someone else, keeps being lowered at an exponential rate. The goofiness factor of everyday stuff has gotten so big, I'm afraid I'll find myself falling into the abyss of goofdom, never able to climb out again. I've tried ranting and raving at it, but that just makes me hoarse and tired. I've tried ignoring it, but after three or four days, I really must pull my head out from under the covers, get out of bed and move around a bit. I finally hit upon looking for the humor in it, trading seizures involving foaming at the mouth for seizures of falling-down laughter, and it has almost made me look forward to running into goofy stuff. Almost.
Take the mail for example. We won't even go into email for now, just "snail mail." I went away to visit my parents for a while. When I returned home, I had a pile of mail to sort through, and in all of it I found three interesting, albeit somewhat intimidating, documents. They were, in order of presumed arrival, a letter from the US Census Bureau informing me that my 2010 US Census Form was on the way, a larger envelope containing the 2010 US Census Form, and finally, a postcard reminding me to complete and mail my 2010 US Census Form as soon as possible or someone would be knocking on my door to collect my information face-to-face. I was only gone ten days!
I was annoyed by this ridiculous waste of my tax money, not wanting to imagine how large the paper pile would be, not to mention the cost of postage fees, if what I received were multiplied by the number of households in the country. I'm sure someone out there knows how many times the stack could circle the globe. Fortunately I don't, or I might want to hurt somebody...(grrr!) After what I considered an appropriate number of days to allow for procrastination, I again picked up the three documents, and decided to just get over it already and respond. So I opened up The Form. I used a black pen as requested to mark my responses. I put it in the prepaid, pre-addressed return envelope, as instructed. Then I took the initial impending-arrival letter and wrote, "Thank you for letting me know!" across the top in large letters with a red crayon and inserted that into the envelope. Finally, in burnt sienna, I wrote on the post-card, "The Form is in the mail, please don't send anyone by; I won't be able to answer the door because I'll be in bed with the covers over my head!" That also went into the envelope, I sealed it all up and laughed all the way to the post office...
Welcome to my blog! :)
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