Diction and Credibility

At a national security research conference (don't ask), I had the opportunity to ponder why people who one hopes are very smart seem to consciously try to make themselves sound dumb. Like Jimmy Carter and the pronunciation of the word nuclear (and yes, it discomfits me if you're someone who works in the nuclear energy or arms industry and you pronounce "nuclear" as "nu-cu-lar"). Here's the security dumbing down: instead of potential criminals, terrorists, or simplest of all, threats, such individuals have to be called "bad guys." Because our playbook is from Marvel Comics. Doesn't make me feel safer, same as taking off my shoes in an airport doesn't make me feel safer. In the wake of the underwear bomber, are they going to make us strip down before going through security.

That said, the conference was a very pleasant day and a half, with otherwise well-spoken and intelligent people who just happened to say "bad guys" a lot.

Blogs and Misanthropy

I am trying to be a good deal less misanthropic, not with a great deal of success. Fortunately, I do have some grounds for hope. My neighbors are just plain old lovely. As are my friends. But driving around during the last two weeks makes me wonder if Darwin expected to be proven right quickly with the rapid demise of my species. Really.

Like the people who can't clear snow off the top of their cars and then drive rapidly and erratically, like the people behind you won't be affected by 60 pounds of snow falling onto their windshieds.

Like the people who are still marking their parking spaces, five days out. Tacky. Yes, you, I, and everyone else shovelled their cars out. It wasn't just for our own benefit. I think the whole marking your parking space thing is so Southie (I'll say no more), but even in the Northeast, the general understanding is that the "saved" space is saved for 24-48 hours. No more. And in my neighborhood, the people who are religiously marking their spots are the ones who borrowed shovels but didn't help neighbors dig out. The couple who helped me and six or seven other people? They aren't marking their spot.

But that's the problem with a post like this. Focusing on the problem brings up the negativity that won't help solve the problem. The problem is people acting like they aren't part of the social compact isn't a problem that can be fixed my ostracizing people or looking down on them. The only way to get people to chip in and carry their weight is to be a good example and praise any and all good behavior one sees. That's why the first few paragraphs of this post and all of my previous post are attitudes I need to eschew. Eschew, eschew, eschew.

Me feeling self-righteous and superior does nothing, and honestly, I know I have plenty of behaviors that would inspire someone else to self-righteousness and superiority with regard to me. No one has ever read another persons list of pet peeves and thought "No! I'll never do that again." They read them and think: "Aw, get a fucking grip." So, lets focus on my many great neighbors, not the nitwits. Nonetheless, markers in "your" parking space five days after the snow? Don't expect others to honor them.

Race for the Cure -- Why Haven't They Caught It Yet

The whole Avon Pink Warrior/Susan Komen Race for the Cure thing pisses me off. My mom had breast cancer in 1996. She's still alive in 2010, and she doesn't call herself a breast cancer survivor. I'm all for finding out how to cure any number of ailments, including breast cancer and heart disease, but I have no idea why spending a ton of money getting a bunch of people to walk over three days wearing Pepto Bismo pink is supposed to have anything to do with curing any kind of cancer. For all the money they're spending on advertising and organizing the hike, as well as all the money spent supporting the hike seems like it could just be donated to cancer research without all the contortions of everyone patting themselves on the damn back and infantilizing women.

Now the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is apparently reputable, with only 8% of money raised going to administrative costs, but as far as curing cancer goes, 28% goes to research. The remaining 64%? Not broken out from what I can see: I'm seeing fundraising (is that administrative? They're spending a ton on advertising), education, screening, and treatment. But to cure a disease, the research part would seem to be the primary focus, and 28% doesn't seem primary to me.

The thing that bugs me the most about the whole thing is the attitude: the woman saying she never had a say about losing her mother to cancer, but this walk makes her feel like she's finally had her say. Like everyone else gets a say regarding the loss of a family member? On what planet? (Or as the Saturday Night Live skit goes: Really? Are you fucking kidding me?) So we're going to walk wearing hideous colors so that no-one ever dies when we don't want that person to die? I don't even know where to start with that.

Don't get me wrong. Breast cancer is horrible. So is leukemia, skin cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, liver cancer, heart disease, cholera (a big threat in Haiti right now, and no-one there got asked whether they wanted to lose their loved ones either, I'm pretty sure), myelofibrosis, typhoid, Tay-Sachs disease, or old age.

Nuclear Grammy has suffered more broken bones, and no-one asked me if I wanted my tough as nails grandmother to have her bones crumble to dust before she died (I don't, and she doesn't). I don't get a say. Fortunatley, my family, accepting that you don't always get a say, is simply making her pain free (if a bit addled) by loading her up on the opiates.

Big Grampa's second wife died horribly of ovarian cancer, and her teenage kids didn't get a say either: she was younger than I am now and her younger son was all of fifteen. Wearing pink didn't help, you know?

So if you want to use up a bunch of resources organizing a hike rather than paying for research, find. Why not just take a hike with friends, and give all the money that would be spent on organizing, etc. and have it go directly to research? I just don't get it. And find it annoying. Yes, I'm a misanthrope.

Things I Have Learned in the Last Week

1-I have truly fantastic neighbors (thanks for the wood, the wine, the coffee, the community).
2-Without heat, shovelling a car out of the snow really does help with keeping warm.
3-Tea candles are quite effective in heating up a meal when placed on the lower oven rack and the food being warmed is placed on the upper rack.
4-Candles can actually keep a place pretty warm, if you use about 300,000,000 of them.
5-Children make great snow shovellers, but get bored quickly (actually, I already knew that).
6-Between the first snowstorm and the second, my shoulder strength improved a great deal.
7-My life is pretty good right now.

To Have a Friend, You Must Be One

And yet, despite not giving a ton to my community, I must be doing something right. My neighbors got me through 3' of snow (more falling as I write), digging my car out, two days of power outages, and lack of firewood as well as the truly dire situation arising from not being able to brew coffee because of the lack of electricity. One couple helped my aging, recovering from dislocated-shoulder and stomach surgery self dig my car out. Another couple got coffee for all of us (driving to a coffee shop in a 4-wheel drive vehicle and getting 4 of those nice portable urns of coffee -- my heroes). Giuseppe's family gave me logs, so that I would have a fire in the fireplace -- and today, with the snow rising, came by with more, so in case the power went out again we'd have heat.

What do I do? I occasionally have their kids over to play, and things like that. I did sign TigerGrrl up to help dig out a neighbor who had back surgery two weeks ago, but he's going to pay her for that, so I can't get brownie points for that. And I don't think any of my neighbors give a crap that I give platelets and volunteer for vaccine and another tests. Nope. But I'm doing something right. With school out for the third day in a row, my girls are at friends' houses, and I'm relaxing and enjoying the quiet.

I've cooked up a nice brisket, enough so I can serve my nice neighbors some. Also, I'll be able to reheat it if the power goes off as I have figured that out: put tea candles on a tray on the lower oven rack, and then place the pot to be warmed on the upper rack. The dish heats relatively quickly, when using enough candles. So I'm ready. Oh, and I have an extra bottle of wine (a Simi Valley Chardonnay) given by a neighbor for whom I performed this not-so-onerous favor: I called her on Sunday when the power came back on (after two days out). And for that I get a $12 bottle of wine? I don't spend more than $5 ($7 when I'm feeling flush) for a bottle of wine. So I'm feeling guilty. But not so guilty that I gave the bottle back or anything.

Anyway, a neighbor's kid (Giuseppe) just stopped by, so now I have to play a game of monopoly with him until TigerGrrl gets back. DestructoGirl and Giuseppe's little sister will be by shortly, to trash my place. Life is good.

Pop Psychology, Self-Help, and Snow

For reasons that remain unclear to me, I am reading a fair amount of pop psychology/self-help literature (if you can call it that) right now. While much of the writing is dreadful, there actually are some useful insights. And yes, I am consciously checking these books out of the library (Power of Positive Thinking, Blink, The Tipping Point, Blink, The Luck Factor, How to Make Friend and Influence People and the like).

Actually, some of the reasons are apparent, or at least partially obvious. Next year, DestructoGirl will be in school full-time and it will be time for me make whatever career move I need to make, and, while I like what I do now, it's not the most high-powered job ever. And I could stand to make more money, especially if I want to contribute more to my daughters' college funds (pretty darn essential) and someday own a home again (a fond desire). I don't think any of this stuff is really going to change anything, but after years of rejecting any self-help or self-improvement advice and "literature" and being in a bit of a rut, well, why not read some of the classics.

I'll say this: I like Dale Carnegie, Malcolm Gladwell, and Richard Wiseman tons more than Norman Vincent Peale. And I had plenty of time to read this weekend, snowed in without electricity. Other than shovelling out the NuclearGrammyMobile, I read. Finally, my heat is back on, as is the electricity and Internet connection.

Now, I have to line up back up back up child care until the Saintly Babysitter can make it. Since buses are running on really limited schedules tomorrow, her commute and mine are both going to be godawful. And no, I don't get tomorrow off work.

Crossing the Bar/Falling

NuclearGrammy is now dying. Well, maybe not dying, but nothing good is going to happen from here on out. She has fallen again, and broken her hip as well as tibia, fibula, and various ribs. This time, they're not operating, they've just put her in a brace/cast/whatever and given her lots o' morphine. BigGrampa and his sister, who has Power of Attorney and NuclearGrammy's medical directive, have agreed that palliative treatment is it.

I agree with them. A 97-year old woman with her third hip break in a decade, and additional breaks, isn't on the mend. NuclearGrammy was up and walking around in December, albeit with a walker. Now, she's doped up on narcotics and will not be walking again. She's been explaining how to make apple pie to the nurses. She has explained to them how a Chinese exchange student in the 1950s found the New Hampshire habit of her daughter of eating cheese on apple pie for breakfast totally repugnant even as he had a ginormous crush on said daughter. She's been singing ditties from the late 20s and early 30s, when my grandfather (ten years dead) was courting her.

BigBob has totally lost the plot and been going on the rampage about how NuclearGrammy was a wonderful mother (she was, I'm sure, if a tad fierce and harsh) and how her children should do everything possible to promote a recovery, do all treatment necessary.

Call me cold-blooded, but I agree with BigGrampa and his sister Aunt Y. BigGrampa cared for his second wife while she died of ovarian cancer, and Aunt Y cared for her mother-in-law during her years of decline and dementia. Neither has any delusions about recovery once the owl calls your name/once the bell tolls for you/once you've played twister with death.

At the same time, I'm having that foresight into what it feels like to be old and frail: I'm still doing physical therapy from my dislocated therapy, and I'm still anxious about falling when I walk on ice or snow or go up or down stairs. Skating is still verboten. That whole "I've fallen and I can't get up" thing is a lot scarier when you actually have the image of what it feels like to fall. And yes, physical therapy is progressing, but I'm still anxious.

FoilMormor is feeling her mortality as well: she's made her plans to close up shop in Florida and move to New England full-time, saying "I just don't want to spend my last years alone in Florida." I actually understand what she's saying even as I want to yell at her: "Mom, given your parents' life spans (and their lives were cut short as Christian Scientists who didn't get medical treatment) you can reasonably expect another healthy ten years." But she recently scattered her husband's ashes and she's feeling old. Not as old as her ex-mother-in-law, and I have nothing to realistically complain about. But still.

I've got to get back into shape. DG is just five, TG is just ten, and I need to keep up with them as an active parent. No more falling and dislocating my shoulder/elbow/hip/whatever.

Quick Question, Mountain View

Someone from Mountain View, California is coming here every day (even though I'm not posting much anymore) and reading multiple posts. That's Google-land, right? This blog is boring now, not exciting (for exciting, check out the 2005-2006 archives), so what's drawing you in? If you don't feel like commenting, anonymously or otherwise, drop me an email at foilwoman at gmail.