Congealed Watery Particles

Jack. Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.

Gwendolen. Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous.

Jack. I do mean something else.

Gwendolen. I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.

--Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest (Part 2), by Oscar Wilde

I do mean to talk about something else other than weather.

I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong when expressing my love of snow.

Snow! Yes...talking about weather is boring beyond belief...but sometimes, Mother Nature brings us breathtaking beauty. As in the case of falling snow. I am mesmerized when I watch it falling down, coating the whole world white around me.

It is peaceful, quiet. When I am inside, I love to look out the window to watch. When I am outside, I am filled with wonder. Except perhaps during those times when I had to drive home during a blizzard--thanks to my former company, I, which seemed to be the last employer in town to let its employees go home in inclement weather without fail.

What can be more fun than stomping around in snow?! Making a snowman or snowlady?:-) If it's gonna be bitterly cold out there, might as well have some fun! You can't build a snowman in summer!

I could easily complain about bitter cold. But I don't like to complain. It's enough to hear other people waste their breath to complain. Just layer up: put on more clothes if you have to go outside, for goodness sakes! Or is it goodness' sake? Whatever!

On the other hand, you would not want to be around me in the heat of summer. Excessive heat will put me in a foul mood in no time at all. Hot weather makes me HOT tempered!%-0 With heat, there's nowhere to go, especially if you live in a humid climate. Unlike winter, where you can put on more clothing to stay warm--in summer, you practically have to strip to cool off! You can go into an air-conditioned room, but often, people will put their a/c on full blast...and then you get cold because you don't have much clothes on to start!

It is miserable to be hot and sweaty and clammy. In my mind, I think: is this what it's like in the fiery depths of Hell, if indeed it does exist? It's hard to be productive, mentally or physically, when you're hot and bothered.

On the other hand, when you're shivering in the cold, you can at least move around to generate heat! When you're hot, you feel like a slug. A useless lump on a log. If you're home, you can force yourself to do unpleasant household tasks for the sake of keeping warm--or engage in that long-delayed exercise routine you promised yourself because you lack self-discipline (me!). OR, sit and cuddle in your favorite chair or sofa and escape into your favorite book.:-)

Can you tell I'm a winter person? For all my shivering, I'd sooner put up with freezing rain, sleet, snow and ice than hot, humid weather. Yes! Even ice. Ice that caused my car wheels to slide, ice that made me fall not once, but three times in my 13 years of living on the east coast. I'd rather be shivering and jumping around, than feel like a crumpled piece of paper wilting under the intense heat and humidity of a summer sun. Any day.

In Dante's Inferno, the bottom part of Hell was actually COLD! The icy Ninth Circle. I was quite surprised to read that. If you feel like scaring yourself, read Dante's Inferno, part of his The Divine Comedy. I thought it was scarier than any Stephen King novel I read. It is kind of funny, in a very morbid way. %-0 I only had to put it down several times because parts of it were gruesome in detail.

Snow, snow, snow! Come and get me! Paint the place white! Decorate my coat and boots with fluffy, white flakes! Mesmerize me! But don't make me slip and trip (again)!

******

Snow flakes

I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!

--Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

A Napoleonic Quest

I want to beat Napoleon. Over 40,000 published letters and dispatches are credited to him. I LOVE writing letters, and I LOVE receiving them! I have been this way since the day I asked my mom if I could have one of the envelopes she took out of the mailbox.

"You want to pay the the bill?" she asked.

"No! I want a letter!"

She said there were no letters in the mailbox. If I wanted a letter, then I would have to write one. I think I was in third grade, a ripe time for me to learn how to compose a coherent letter. Who would I write a letter to? I started with my favorite aunt and uncle, who lived about 10 minutes away. And why not? I only saw them just about every week!

Not only do I love writing and receiving letters--I also save them. Most of them. But I'll get to that later. My Aunt L wrote the majority of the letters to me, while I was growing up, even though she signed the letters from both her and my Uncle T. She typed many of her letters on her manual typewriter. And she never talked down to me in her letters, she spoke to me as if she were right there--telling me of her recent activities, including golf (which I knew nor cared nothing about), or attending a bridge party, or describing in detail a fantastic meal she cooked that evening. She wrote as if she were talking to a friend.

She and my uncle traveled much of the world after they retired, and I have all of their postcards in their thick letter file. After she passed away, my uncle continued--and continues, to write to me. He's 96, now! Their letter file in my collection of letter files is one of the thickest I have: 34 years worth of correspondence.

After I began to write to my aunt and uncle, I targeted my cousin in Minnesota, next. I wrote letter after letter after letter to her...until she wrote me back. Over the years, I wrote letters to other cousins far away, my Uncle T's grandniece, my great Uncle G, and briefly to a little girl in New Zealand.

New Zealand? Yes! I love learning about people in other countries! I loved watching "The Big Blue Marble" on TV, after school. Or maybe it was on Saturday afternoons, after cartoons? A true geography show for a geography nut like me. It was fun writing back and forth, while it lasted.

When I got older, most of my letters were sent to friends, less often to relatives. Nowadays, it's email. Email is so convenient, quick, and easy! I must be old-fashioned that way: it's always nice to have a tangible letter in my hands...to keep and cherish. With email, I click and put it in mail files within seconds. With letters on paper, they pile up for a year or more until I file them away!

Like today.

At what point do I save or throw away letters--especially from those I don't hear from anymore? I have thousands of letters (if you include my emails floating in a file somewhere). Some of my longtime friends' files have 25 years worth of letters in them, give or take a year. Some are small bundles that I didn't organize into a file: from childhood encounters with friends from other countries, and from penpals I never met in person, as an adult.

I have one big box and one smaller box. I save every little scrap of paper--especially from family members, on both sides. A note with a check to get a new bike, from mil (mother in-law). A note from my mom enclosed in a care package--telling me how to prepare this vegetable or that vegetable for dinner. Yes! I save every little scrap of paper with loving or non-loving words from family!

My sister remains the most prolific writer--I've saved everything with her words on it. Even just a post-it note. This includes her emails, which I don't print out, but which are saved somewhere in a computer file. I have over 700 of her emails in one file folder! I don't think anyone will catch up with her, when it comes to my entire collection! Aunt L and Uncle T come pretty close in the paper domain, since they've never emailed. And a couple of longtime friends are up there, too. But sis...she takes the cake.:-)

This afternoon I did something painful: I threw out about 30 letters and cards from a short term penpal. We wrote for maybe eight years, on and off. This was a case where the old-fashioned letter-writing didn't quite hold. When I moved to the east coast nearly 13 years ago from the west coast, I was really lonely. Didn't know anyone except my in-laws. And even at that time, I didn't know them that well.

Hubby set me up on the computer, on a usenet group, where I could put an ad for penpals. I got about seven new friends in one day! All but one of whom I still correspond with by email to this day. And I even met two of them: one from Denmark and one from Portugal . I got one more, some months later, from Sweden, whom I also still correspond with. Of the original seven, one wanted to write the old-fashioned way, and I was happy to oblige.

We never met in person. What we had in common were interracial marriages, and we shared stories with each other. But our letters became less and less frequent over time, until it died out two Christmases ago. SO! Today, while filing my letters--and getting frustrated with less space in my box, I managed to pull out this person's letter bundle out (w/o knowing it was hers) and stared at it for a moment. I haven't heard from you for a long time, I thought. Then I dumped it in the wastebasket, without a second thought! I've only done that to a few people in my life!

What did they ever do to me to cause me to dump them? Nothing. Literally. They quit writing! Do I want to write to a brick wall? Of course not. I looked into my other bundles and wondered why I hadn't thrown them out, either? Why? Because they're from other countries.

I'm biased! Omigosh!%-0

"You're biased!" my hubby laughed at me. "There is no rhyme or reason to your dumping this person's letters instead of someone else's!"

The ones from different countries are more interesting, I said! No method to my madness!

I did not meet those other people either; just because they're from another part of the world warrants my keeping their letters?

I don't know. Some people just write better than other people. Even if their English isn't as good as an English-speaking person's. Their warmth comes through, even if I've never met them. Their letters are more interesting to read...therefore I'm saving 'em!

I don't know if any of my friends keep my letters or not. I know my friends in Turkey do: they showed them to me when I visited them! I was flattered--and shocked, given their limited living space. But I was happy to learn that I wasn't the only person who hoarded letters from friends!;-)

So how can I beat Napoleon if I don't even know if my letters will be saved for posterity?

It doesn't matter! It's the spirit of letter-writing that counts. So what if I never become famous (though that could be interesting!)? I'll be content to know that when I leave this world, I will have been as prolific a writer as Napoleon...on my terms.;-D

* * * * * * * *
Happy Valentine's Day! In the spirit of this icy winter storm and V-day combination, let me share a poem with you:

Oh Lift Me!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love and kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast: ~
Oh! Press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
1702-1822

Planetary Bliss

A widely publicized 2003 study^[2] performed at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine demonstrated that cognitive performance declines with less than eight
hours of sleep.

--Wikipedia


I am a woman who needs lots of sleep. Everyday. If I don't get it, I can be awfully cranky. Just ask the man who lives with me. Or my family (particularly, my mom, who was always quick to let me know what a cranky girl I was when I wasn't very pleasant to be around).

I once had an anxious friend who was the ULTIMATE dragon lady when she awoke in the morning. It was truly frightening to see her in that state; not only did she snap at me, but also my hubby, for no good reason. Granted, she had some deep issues she was grappling with, such as having been raped at gunpoint when she was in college, having a violent ex-husband and a troubled young son. But I don't believe that just because a person has serious problems, that it gives her justification to abuse others, no matter how bad the situation. From that point on, I vowed I would not ever be a dragon lady again, when I woke up! And if I was verging on bad behavior, I would hope hubby or whoever else I was with, would call me on it, so I that could make a quick adjustment in my attitude. Abuse is unexcusable. It is, above all, disrespectful toward others.:-(

When I read health reports on the benefits of getting enough zzz's, then I feel validated for my extra snooze time, especially on weekends and my increasing afternoon naps.:-) That would be sleep binge, according to some sleep experts. I am NOT a catnap person: 5-10-15 minute naps are nothing...I might as well not close my eyes at all. When I'm out, I am OUT! I'm talking at least one hour, minimum, two hours, average. I'm so OUT in la la land that I don't even hear the phone ring, even if it's in the same room. And so OUT that I didn't even know hubby snuck in under the covers next to me for some ten minutes, this afternoon. I was definitely on another planet. Good thing I was home, in bed. Imagine if I was snoozing in public and some stranger tried to get next to me? Hopefully, a sixth sense would kick in and I would kick the stranger into the wild blue yonder!

I have slept in buses, trains, planes, and cars (not while driving--but came close one day, due to excessive overtime) numerous times. Slept on the way to work. On the way to class. One the way home. I have ended up in other cities because of it!%-0 That really sucks when it's 10 p.m. at night! That was when I was single and living in the Bay Area, in California. But it could happen in any urban area.

I have slept in classrooms, libraries, airports, in a cabin full of classmates with whom I wasn't particularly fond of, in a cabin full of women I didn't know--in a foreign country, and in a room full of people who didn't speak English--in a foreign country.

Did I care about those factors: strangers and unfamiliar places? No! I like adventure! Live to tell! :-D As long as I got my SLEEP--I was a happy camper. I'd do it again. I DO sleep just about anywhere, except in the open air...unless I'm with someone, and he or she is awake while I'm sleeping. Call me a wuss if you want: I'm leery of vermin crawling around me while I'm on another planet. A spider or some (large) insect crawling on my sleeping body would be an invasion of my privacy. I would wake up, jump, yelp like a puppy, and run like a madwoman if I felt something crawling on me! Yuck!


Dreaming involves an involuntary conjuring up of images in a sequence in which the sleeper/dreamer is usually more a participant than an observer.

--Wikipedia



Ever have a really intense dream, wake up before it's over, and then want to go back to sleep so you can finish it? That's happened many times to me. Most of the time, I can't finish the dream because I either have to be somewhere, or going back to sleep doesn't accomplish anything. Sometimes, I've had "to be continued..." dreams, where some previous dream is somewhat repeated and continues on, over a period of time. Months. Even years.

I dream in vivid technicolor. Often, I don't know why certain people show up in my dreams. Like high school classmates. I hated high school. Why do they appear in my dreams with coworkers, former coworkers, my friends or my family? They don't know each other from Adam! I suppose it has to do with who I'm keeping in contact with or what events are occurring in my life. Almost four years ago, I got a notice from my high school class reunion committee for a 20 year reunion. Was I going? I called my friends whom I had hung out with for many years, and they said weren't planning to go. Within my old "gang", none of us wanted to go if no one else was going! There were over 500 students in my class. Did I care to see any one of them again? No. Only the ones I had been friends with since junior high; I hadn't seen hide nor hair of all the others since the day we graduated from high school. So at that time, I had a lot of dreams that included my classmates. It gave me cause to wake abruptly from my sleep...and hesitate to go back to sleep--lest they enter my peaceful planetary bliss in the netherworld.

I have had many violent dreams in my lifetime. Probably they were manifestations of stress in my lifetime. I have been known to kick the wall and yell out in the middle of the night, while growing up. Kick or hit my dear honey and yell out in the middle of the night as an adult. One time, I scared hubby AND myself, when I had a horrible dream about a "favorite" coworker and shouted out at her in my nightmare: "GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF MY..." and that's when hubby leaped out of bed, saying he hoped that wasn't for him. I was so horrified at myself, apologizing profusely to him, "No, no! That was for her! Never you! Omigod!" I sounded like Linda Blair possessed in the "Excorcist". Spooky!

Sometimes I get bad dreams from watching scary movies, too. I've often had dreams of being chased: instead of the actor in the film being chased by the bad guy, it was me. Or especially in the case of watching one of the "Alien" flicks with Sigourney Weaver, it was me instead of her, with the aliens. Gives me shivers....! Or "Hellraiser": having Pinhead glare at me and speak evil things to me!:-0

If I do have disturbing dreams, it affects how I sleep. I tend to twist blankets--bad dreams will make that worse! Like a hurricane whipping through the bedroom. Hubby is just the opposite: calm and peaceful. So peaceful that it sometimes scares me because he folds his hands--the way people do when they are lying in eternal rest in their coffin (can you tell I've attended many funerals?)! I often put my ear to his chest...just to be sure. My mom sleeps the same way.

My mind conjures up good dreams, too! Being in exotic locales, reuniting with friends whom I haven't seen for years, meeting friends I've met over the internet but still haven't met in person after more than a decade of correspondence, winning big prizes like a Pulitzer Prize or the Nobel Prize for Peace. Those are good dreams, don't you think? I need many more of those!:-)

Above all, I need my beauty rest. I know what it's like to live on four hours of sleep a day. How many students are out there who aren't familiar with all-nighters? I spent the last few days before college graduation without three days' worth of sleep, popping Vivarin or NoDoze constantly, along with M & M's and massive doses of coffee and tea, while pumping out my last papers. I wasn't even able to pop my contact lenses in after that; had to wear my glasses for graduation. I'm don't intend to do that again, though I have gone through some all-nighters since then.

When I go to bed, hubby says that is when I go to my planet.:-) Where everything there is just as I want it to be: bright and colorful, with all the creatures I love, and my favorite food available at a moment's notice. A mushy place far removed from the harsh realities of today's world!

Sweet dreams, everybody. If you have insomnia, read a computer manual on office programs--Word Perfect, Excel: I've never ever read anything so boring in my life! (My apologies to those who thrive on it!)

I'm Hungry!

Ever want to just touch a beautiful photograph of food and hope that it will magically appear as is, right in front of you, ready to eat? :-) I hope that someone will come up with the technology some day!

A novelist by the name of Neal (Neil?) Stephenson actually thought of something related to this in his sci-fi novel, The Diamond Age. In it, the main character could just press a button and food that she wanted would come out of a drawer! How cool is that?! How absolutely lazy is that?! Imagine: having a computer programmed to create any kind of food you want at the touch of a button! Where and how does it get made? Who knows...who cares? In the novel, I think it came from dirt! Throw dirt in the drawer, and some minutes later you get prime rib, fresh veggies, rice, and even dessert. I LOVE cheesecake! (Dirt) cheesecake, anybody?

I recently got some vegetarian recipe books from the library, which don't have photos inside, but which have a very tempting photos of food on the cover. The photos themselves were almost enough to make me get the books alone! But I did my research first, reading reviews on Amazon.com. There are delicious sounding recipes in them...whether I attempt to MAKE them is another story. I ordered from the library all these 15 minute and 30 minute quick and easy meals books. Geez, I must be really getting lazy as time goes by!%-0

Why vegetarian recipe books? Our diet at home is probably 3/4 vegetarian and becoming more so over the last several years. Also, I recently read The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study Done on Nutrition..., by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, a world reknowned nutrition expert. It documented decades' worth of hard scientific study/data linking animal protein to many ailments. Although the author only used one kind of animal protein, casein--from cows, he still made a good case to prove his point: that a whole foods and fresh vegetable diet was the way to long-term good health.

I have attended funerals, visited nursing homes, watched loved ones and friends grow old, get sick and die, since I was five years old. And I've had my lifetime share of ailments; all that combined has made me want to NOT get sick...to be as healthy as I can be. I'll be damned if I spend the end of my life wasting away in a nursing home.:-((

To my mind, going to a nursing home means you didn't take care of yourself properly when you were able to, then you developed lots of health problems--thus becoming more and more dependent on others, and then others can't or don't want to take care of you anymore. That may be rather simplistic, but that's how I feel about it.

Going back to cook books: I'm hoping I'll be inspired by these "quick and easy" recipes. I have a quick and easy Chinese cook book by Ken Hom. That book is falling apart all over the place and has food stains galore throughout!;-) And I got that from a used book store in Berkeley, CA, when I first got married, precisely because it said "quick and easy"!

My dearest friend sent me a surprise for Christmas last year, a book called Heat, by Bill Buford. It is "an amateur's adventures as a kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany". It is really hilarious! An insider's view of what it's like to work with famous chef Mario Batali (and Batali's adventures as an apprentice, also) at his famous Italian restaurant, Babbo, in Manhattan. I think anyone who enjoys food would enjoy this memoir...highly recommended!

I'm no chef. Mario would throw me out: I'm like molasses in the kitchen, unless it's something I do often. But I remember watching Julia Child in the kitchen and cracking up every time she let a chicken fall off the counter or when stuff spilled. I, myself am quite messy, so it was refreshing to see her take joy in her cooking and make a mess and not care! From reading her biography, it was also refreshing to learn she was unapologetic about her often-criticized unhealthy food choices. I think her cookbooks are too complicated for my simple ways!

We don't watch tv unless we're down at my in-laws, who have cable. It's fun for us to catch the Iron Chef late at night! Or other food shows--I just want to be there and EAT their creations! Well, as long as it doesn't involve organs...I'm not that brave! Maybe if I didn't think about it and they didn't tell me, I'd eat it!

I think the bravest food feat I accomplished was eating a giant sushi--wrapped like an ice-cream cone, with caviar and a raw quail egg. It looked quite pretty, actually. But the raw egg startled me...and so did the sushi chef who made it especially for me (for my b-day) and was holding a very large cleaver in his hand--threatening not to allow me to eat anything else UNLESS I ate that big ice-cream cone sushi he just created. For me! Oh my! How could I turn him down with that large cleaver in his hand?

It was pretty good, believe it or not. I asked for tea beforehand to wash it down..."just in case"!