observation one of two

I've been doing at least a little bit of cross-reading of the news in the last year or so (meaning, I've been trying to read some conservative sources along with my usual liberal-slanted favorites). And something occurred to me recently. You can predictably guess how a story will play on either side, so there's not much of a surprise there. I think a more interesting difference is in how either side reports on the other side's extremes. You know-- how the conservatives report on liberal extremists, how the liberals report on conservative extremists. Because in each case, the media tries to make it sound like the other side's extremes are normal, at the same time that they have a huge blind spot when it comes to their own extremists.

For example, the liberal media reports on white supremacists, and their conclusion is: see? this is what conservatives are like. Even if they say they disagree, they are still allowing white supremacists to find a home in their party. But I suspect that most conservatives have no idea what the white supremacists are up to, because Fox News never talks about them. I bet my two readers who are conservatives would be unable to tell you who Richard Spencer is, but Richard Spencer shows up in my newsfeed regularly.

And conversely, a conservative relative of mine posted a story about liberal protesters at a university trying to break up a peaceful meeting of a conservative student group. My relative was incensed that liberals were getting away with this clear violation of freedom of speech, but among liberals, it seems like an insignificant one-off, because the liberal news media never reports on that stuff. That hardly ever happens, liberals think. It's not nearly as big a deal as racism or homophobia. And yet there's plenty of evidence that particularly on college campuses, conservative voices are being ridiculed, harassed, and even suppressed. Conservative news sources make it sound like this happens all the time; liberal news sources rarely talk about it.

I don't think there's any way to change this, it's just the way social media news feeds function these days. But I think it can help to be aware of it. Your news feed may not be feeding you straight-up lies, but it might be leaving stuff out, the disturbing things about your own side that you don't want to hear.

I was going to put both of my observations in one post but this one turned out to be longer than I expected (OF COURSE), so I will save "observation two of two" for another time.

7ToF: what a weird world we live in

1. Hello, people. I could list all the things that happened that resulted in the title of this week's 7ToF post, but I don't need to. We're all living through this. The good thing is that I think everybody is noticing this comrade-in-arms friendship that has sprung up, even between strangers with opposing views. Maybe eventually we will come out of this OK. I don't think it's going to be any time soon.


2. Remeber back in December when I said that my reading challenge for myself for this year would be to knock one book off my longstanding TBR list each month? The idea was to concentrate on actual physical books that I've had for years. Yeah, well, it hasn't happened yet this month. There are several reasons for that, but I haven't given up on the challenge yet. Stay tuned.

3. Part of the problem is that there are (were) several ebooks in my queue at our library's website that I'd been waiting for that became available this month. So I had to get my queue cleared out. There are still a few there, but not nearly as many as there were. I've got a couple to finish in the next two weeks, but I should be able to move on by mid-Feb.

4. One of the books that I cleared out of my queue was Columbine by David Cullen. It's fascinating and absorbing and disturbing. It's about the school shooting, of course, but it's also about the media and teenagers and mob thinking. Sadly, it turned out to be timely with two more school shootings this week. I don't know what the answer is, but I do feel a little better educated. If it's a topic you can stand (Dean declined to read it), highly recommended.

5. I'm not teaching my short story class this spring. Teaching while working was just too much. My job is a one-year position, so it will be over in April. I will probably start teaching again next fall. But in honor of the class I'm not teaching this spring, here are my favorite short stories from the past four years of teaching this class: "Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son," by Kurt Vonnegut; "Today Will be a Quiet Day" by Amy Hempel; D'Arcy McNickle "Hard Riding"; Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"; Tobias Wolff, "Bible"; Elizabeth Gilbert, "Elk Talk"; anything by Edith Pearlman or John Updike (not a huge fan of his novels but his short stories are amazing). I'm looking over the lists of stories we've done and there are so many good ones. "Walking Out" by David Quammen, "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton. I could just keep going and going.

6. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I gave my family a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 for being environmentally aware? Yeah, well, as soon as I posted that, I started noticing a bunch of ways that we could pretty easily do better. The first and simplest was to dig out the cloth napkins I bought years ago and ditch the paper ones.

7. If you never see your landfill this may seem a little silly to you, but I drive past our landfill at least a couple of times a month and (for once I'm not being snide when I say this) I'm not making this up-- it's frightening how much that landfill has grown in the 15 years we've lived on the north side of our town. Back then, you couldn't see it when you drove by. Now it's like a butte or a plateau or something looming up in the background. Paper napkins may not make much difference, but little changes can add up to bigger ones. I hope. I don't know what else we can do but do what we can.

And on that note, let me just wish you a nice weekend. Sorry to be a downer. This was a rough week.

let's talk about tea

The problem for me with posting on controversial topics is that I always regret it. But once I've started, I feel like I have to see it through, and then I just want the whole thing to go away.

So now I'm posting about tea.

About ten years ago, I realized I was going through the day with an upset stomach. And then I noticed that if I didn't have my coffee until late, the upset stomach didn't start until late. Finally--you'd be surprised how long this took--I figured out that I needed to quit drinking coffee. 

Switching to tea was the obvious solution, but you know, tea doesn't have that same bite that coffee does. It took a looooooong time for me to make the switch to being a happy tea drinker.

Then, being an obsessive sort, I started the search for my favorite tea. I've tried more kinds of tea than I can count--green, white, black, red, herbal, fruit. All of them are OK, and I still drink all of them occasionally, but for morning, for me, only black breakfast tea will do.

I've tried Stash, Taylors, Twinings, Bigelow, Republic of Tea, Celestial Seasoning, local brands, and probably others I can't remember. I'll decide I've found the best one, but then I'll hear about something else and off I go again.

So in case you ever have to go through this yourself, I'll save you a few steps by telling you what I've learned.

Tea is so individual, there's really no point to making a recommendation. Even more than coffee, I think, people like what they like. I would drink a mediocre cup of coffee back in the day, but I'll go without rather than drink a tea I don't like (for example, Earl Grey--can't stand it).

For the record, I switch between Taylors Scottish Breakfast and Yorkshire Gold. Amazingly, they are both available in grocery stores here in Montana. I don't add sweetener, but I do add milk (plain soymilk for me, which I know some object to strenuously, but it works for me). 

It definitely makes a difference to pre-warm your cup, even if you all you use is hot tap water.

If you want it stronger, use more tea-- steeping it longer makes it bitter. But ymmv-- I said that to a friend, and she said she never takes the tea bag out.

I've read that using re-boiled water decreases the flavor of your tea, but I've never been able to tell the difference on that one.

I still get annoyed at how long it takes to make a cup of tea. I've got an electric kettle, so I start the water heating, use hot tap water to warm the cup, then once the water boils, dump out the tap water, pour boiling water over the tea bag, let it steep for four minutes. I use a timer, because otherwise I either get impatient and don't let it steep long enough, or I forget about it and come back to a stone cold cup.

The whole thing takes about 7 or 8 minutes, which is considerably longer than the olden days when Dean would run a pot of coffee when he got up and then I could just pour my cup when I got up.

I guess that tells you exactly how much patience I have. I do try sometimes to relax and enjoy the ritual, but usually I just want a damn cup of tea.

Finally, finally, in the last six months or so, I've started craving tea. I guess now, instead of being a coffee drinker who is settling for second best, I'm offically a tea drinker. At least I'm in good company (i.e., practically the entire United Kingdom).

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough
     or a book long enough to suit me. – C. S. Lewis

rage, not so much, part 2

My first job after I left grad school in 1985 was at an office of 50ish people. I was 24, and I'd been married about a year. There were about a dozen of us who were young and, for lack of a better term, fun. I had been miserable in grad school, so I was like a kid let out for recess. We teased and flirted and went out for drinks. (The story about the softball team came from this era.) Most of us were married, and we included our spouses on various outings, but we also did things without them. 

Even with the flirting and the teasing, I never felt uncomfortable or coerced, and I hope no one ever felt that from me. There were guys I was attracted to, but part of being married is knowing you're attracted and not acting on it. It was a lot of fun, but it was, at least in my mind, just that: fun.

Except for the time one guy (married) made a comment that made it clear to me that he would like to have more than just a friendly relationship. It felt different. I was definitely uncomfortable.

It's a small example, and he backed off so I didn't even have to do anything about it. I'm lucky. The point I'm trying to make is that there are attractions and flirtations and teasing that no one is worried about. But there is a different feel to it in certain circumstances, and like I said last time, I'm not sure I can define exactly what makes the difference. 

But I can tell you how frustrating, maddening, and enraging it is when you try to talk to one of the good guys about it, and he immediately becomes defensive and angry, and misses the point. The reason why I can tell you this is BECAUSE I KNOW YOU AREN'T LIKE THAT. I know YOU aren't sexually harassing me. That's why I'm talking to you. You're not, but THIS OTHER GUY IS.

It's not easy to talk about this stuff. Our culture values stoicism: kids that don't whine, employees who get their work done without complaining, friends who see the positive. You may have kept a stiff upper lip, worked without complaining, and maintained a positive attitude for years, but the minute you make a complaint, there are those who will dismiss you as a whiner.

For these people, as soon as you say "look, there's a problem," no matter how carefully you word it, you no longer deserve to be heard. You can be ignored, because you just have a bad attitude. So you know what? If you're in charge, consider the source. If this is someone who is usually a team player, rarely complains, and one day something is bothering them: maybe you should LISTEN. In fact, maybe you should try listening, period. With everybody.

OK, I think I've re-written this one enough times that I'm comfortable with posting it. For the record, I know my small, minor experiences with sexual harassment are hardly enough to worry about (although I didn't mention the worst ones, but even saying that, I don't need or expect sympathy). 

Also, for those of you who know us in real life, the healthcare professional I mentioned in the previous post was not associated with Dean's organization.

Edited (AGAIN) to add a link to an article on Bust that says (in part) what I'm trying to say but she says it better and also takes it much further. I don't have the experience she has-- I was that rarity, a virgin until my wedding night (not hard to do when you're raised conservatively and get married at 22). But that's another topic entirely. Forewarning/trigger warning: it has even more bad language than I used in the previous post, and it is at times difficult to read. 

7ToF: my lord, why did I even bother, except there is a link to a cool video

1. I wrote a "rage, part 2" post, but it was dumb so I deleted it. I think I'm going to let the first one stand. The second was just more of the same, less well said. Not that the first one said it well either. Maybe I will revisit the topic some day.

2. I cannot think of one single thing to tell you. I'm in the middle of three different books, but I haven't finished them yet so I can't tell you about them. We went to see "Darkest Hour" last weekend and it is good. We've been watching the Australian Open all week. We've always wanted to go, but it looks so miserably hot that we're having second thoughts.

See what I mean? I'd have to have something interesting in my head to be able to tell you about it, and at the moment it's empty. Hmmmmm.

3. Oh! I know what I was going to tell you! My nephew Stewart released a new song yesterday! You should check it out:

Also, that is not him in the video--I'll have to ask him what the story is on that. Last time I saw him he had no beard and lots of red hair. :-)

4. There's winter, and then there's WINTER. We had our share of the latter this year (including a blizzard and getting stuck in a drift of snow, which hasn't happened in years), but I think we've moved on to just regular old winter now. Our usual-- gray and overcast, frequent morning fog, daytime highs in the 30s and lows in the 20s. You'd think that we'd like that better than the deep freeze, but not so much. Highs in the 30s, everything starts to thaw, overnight lows in the 20s, it freezes back up. It's a mess out there.

5. I always run out of patience with winter outerwear before winter is over. I quit wearing a jacket and gloves and a hat because I'm tired of them. Which means that even though winter isn't that extreme at the moment, I'm still cold all the time. I should freaking wear a jacket.

6. You know what is remarkable? I'm afraid to even say this. *knocks on wood* I have hardly had a headache since the new year. And I haven't really done anything different or even really thought about it. So far 2018 is working well for me.

7. Not with a bang but a whimper. This one is petering out. I'll do better next week.

rage, part 1

Like most women, I have experienced some sexual harassment. A co-worker making it clear he wouldn't mind having an affair, a boss making random salacious comments and then a blatant proposition, a health care professional being pretty damn unprofessional. I also know dozens and dozens of men with whom I've never felt even slightly uncomfortable.

I was talking about this with some girlfriends the other day. Women know the difference--the difference between teasing or mild flirtation and that slimy feeling you get when some guy is coming on to you in a way that feels degrading and coercive. It's difficult to put a finger on exactly what that difference is-- maybe a sense of entitlement on their part, a feeling that they deserve to get from you whatever it is they want, a narcissistic lack of awareness of when their advances are not wanted. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it doesn't even have anything to do with you--it's a power play, wanting to notch another conquest.

I'm rambling, I know. Because this whole topic makes me so angry, and I can't figure out how to get into it without dissolving into a banshee wail of rage. I pride myself on having something at least marginally intelligent and/or interesting to say when I write a post, but in this case I can't get there. Any of the half-dozen ways I've tried to logically or practically or sensibly discuss this have simply dissolved into outrage. What is wrong with these assholes? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE ASSHOLES?

You know what just about made the top of my head blow off the other day? Our local newspaper ran an opinion column (I'm not going to link to it, it doesn't deserve any more clicks) by a conservative commentator who blamed the current wave of sexual harassment charges on liberals, because it's our fault the sexual revolution happened back in the 70s. WTF??? First of all, does she think that this kind of stuff never happened before 1970? What kind of nostalgia-inducing drugs is she taking?

And secondly, are we supposed to believe that men can't behave like decent human beings unless they're hemmed in by strict social codes? "This is your problem," she said, addressing liberals, "you fix it." No, it is not anyone's problem except the men that are harassing women. THEY need to fix it by treating women with respect and common decency.

Now you know why I almost never read our paper.

For now I'll just end by saying something about the good guys, the ones I've never felt uncomfortable with. Because sometimes, innocent as they are, they are as much a part of the problem as the bad guys.

Because even the good ones can still get prickly and defensive when you try to honestly explain how it felt. Even the good guys are sometimes more worried about the small chance that they'll be falsely accused than they are about the women who are being taken advantage of. Even the good guys can be more worried about their professional relationship with an asshole than the evidence right in front of them that the guy's a slime.

That's when you know that not only have women been groomed to stay silent, but men, the good guys, have been groomed to be blind. The slimy guys, the guys who take advantage of their position of power over women who are vulnerable, who push women far past the point where it has been made clear their advances are not wanted-- those guys just seem like normal guys if you're a guy, too. He's never put his hand on your ass, right? So why should you believe that he'd put his hand on your co-worker's ass? Who are you going to believe? That hysterical, bitchy female or your buddy who buys a round of beers on Thursday night and keeps you laughing while you play a round of golf?

The bad guys have made it a matter of male solidarity to stand together. They do it in ways big and small--by casting doubt on women's perceptions, by spreading the impression that women are just out to get men, that for every true story of harassment out there, there is another woman just making it up, or getting revenge for some imagined slight, or just for the joy of bringing a man down. Men have to stand together, don't they? They have to understand that most women can be ignored, most complaints are just whining. Because if that's not true, then what?

EXACTLY.

Then, what? I can only imagine. I don't know exactly what else to say here. But I may have more to say, and this one is already long enough.

7ToF: book lovers' edition, not on Friday

1. Somehow, I have no idea how this happens, in spite of regularly taking boxes of books to the thrift shop or our church bazaar or the Friends of the Library book sale, new books keep showing up at our house. So the carefully arranged bookshelves--arranging books is one of my most reliable calming activities-- are suddenly bulging again, with books perched sideways on top of other books, tucked into corners, or stacked up in places where books really aren't supposed to be.

Hmmmm. Is there anywhere books aren't supposed to be?

2. I've told you before that I love my kindle. But, as has recently been made clear, I'm also frugal/thrifty/cheap and if a book is cheaper in print than as an ebook, I buy the actual book.* And some books--cookbooks, for example--will always imo be better in physical book form. Also, a longstanding family Christmas tradition is the annual stack of books from mom (i.e., me). It's my favorite part of shopping for Christmas-- everybody gets four books. But it means that every Christmas, a whole bunch more books show up at our house.

* /soapbox on/ I may be cheap when it comes to buying books, and I've snapped up dozens of kindle books when they go on sale, but I am completely opposed to pirating them. I didn't even know this was a thing until this past week. Don't do it. That's flat-out stealing. We want our authors happy, healthy, well-paid, and writing more books. /soapbox off/

3. So finally we're getting around to the point of this post, which is figuring out how to cull my books. The "clearing your clutter" folks are not much help with this because to them books are not friends, they are clutter. They just want you to get rid of them. (Insert here the story of the interior decorator I worked with last year who wanted me to keep only a few books that look good on the shelf, i.e., just go ahead and JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER. *shudder*)

4. So to help me figure out what I could get rid of, I made a list of the reasons I will keep a book.
- I loved it so much that just seeing it on the shelf makes me happy.
- It's one I will re-read. I don't re-read a lot, but I do have favorites I come back to.
- It's one I want to read. A supply of books I'm looking forward to reading is like having a supply of made-ahead meals stashed in the freezer. *happy*
- And the one that was a surprise to me: it represents the kind of person I'd like to be. I'd like to be the kind of person who would read a book on the history of mathematics or the origin of the galaxy. And sometimes I do read that kind of thing. But mainly I just like having them on the shelf. (this one occurred to me because of something I read, I think on Book Riot, so it wasn't my idea. But it's so true.)

Bye-bye to these books :-(

5. So what books can I get rid of? In the most recent round of downsizing, I got rid of some books I once wanted to read but that no longer sound all that appealing; some short story anthologies that I picked up when I was teaching the short story class; and a bunch from that last category above. I like having those books on the shelf, but I don't need 30 of them.

6. I discovered Book Riot last fall. It's a great site for book lovers. Even though the conversations skew toward millenial readers, I just like reading stuff written by people who are as reading addicted as I am. My favorite posts of theirs so far are their book recommendations based on your Hogwarts house. I thought the lists for Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw (me), and Slytherin were inspired and spot on, but the list for Gryffindor was disappointing. Not sure why. (Fair warning: Book Riot is one of the reasons I needed an internet break. They often publish several posts a day and it's a lot of keep up with if you have obsessive tendencies.)

7. Another reading site that you probably already know about is Modern Mrs. Darcy. It's a lot of fun, and I find Anne Bogel to be very appealing. But she doesn't always post about reading, so although I read there occasionally, not all of her posts are about things I'm interested in. But what I recently discovered that I love is her podcast What Shall I Read Next. If you've never tried it before, start with episode 62, the first anniversary of the podcast, where the usual format is reversed and readers recommend books to her instead of the other way around. Even though it isn't a typical episode, it will give you a good idea of Anne's personality and the kinds of things she looks for when recommending a book. Warning: it will make your TBR pile explode.

This is sort of #8 but I'll just tack it on here and hope you don't notice. If you haven't figured out how to use your library's ebook website, you should, because it is so fun. (You don't have to have an e-reader to read ebooks, although admittedly it isn't much fun to read on your laptop or your phone.) The downside is that usually the books I want to download from the library have waitlists. This can be annoying, but I've become sort of attached to the waitlist process. It's a method for managing my TBR (to-be-read) pile--the book I'll read next is the one that's available next. The only problem is that it is surprising how often I'll have 6-8 books stacked up in my waitlist, only to have 3, or even 4, become available within a few days of each other. And since you only get them for two weeks, that's a problem. Somehow, I manage.

For the record, I am posting this one the old-fashioned way, because I couldn't figure out how to add pictures in an email. Sorry this got so long, but at least for those of you who aren't readers, I got all my books news out in one place! I kept editing it to try to make it shorter, and instead of cutting it down, it just got longer and longer.

One thing (that turned into three things), and a pretentious attempt to figure something out

I decided my 7 things on Friday list this week was too boring, so I'm just telling you one thing, because it happened today, and then you get my current self-involved meanderings.

1. One of the most important life lessons I have learned is that I am often wrong. (Oh, boy, I can already tell this is going to turn into two things.) I was raised in a subculture (Evangelicalism) and in a family with a particular type of father, which trained me to think that my opinions and ideas were always right. But the older I get, the more obvious it becomes that I am often wrong. I mean, really, really often. So I try to keep that in mind. In fact, I've become so good at keeping that in mind that sometimes I do things on the assumption that I am wrong, when I'm not.

2. (See? Two things.) So a couple of weeks ago, right before my No Internet Experiment started, I read an article about skincare that said the latest understanding about skin care is the opposite of what we have all been taught. We've been taught that people with oily skin (me) should avoid products with oil in them (and heck yes, I do), but really oil is the best thing for cleaning up oil. (Google "using oil on oily skin" if you're interested, there are dozens of them, I couldn't even find the exact one I read.)

3. (and now there are three). So I actually already have one of the products they mentioned in the article, and you're supposed to put ONE DROP in with your moisturizer and it will revolutionize your life. So this morning I tried it. One freaking drop in my moisturizer. It felt different immediately but I thought I must be imagining it, because how could I tell that there was one drop of oil on my face? But you know what, it made me nuts. You may remember my long search for makeup that I couldn't tell I had on, and this was the opposite. All morning there was something on my face. I finally had to come home at lunch and wash it off and start over. No oil for me, thank you very much.

OK, now for the morality tale.

As much as I love my music, I am a thoroughly mid-level musician. I already told you abut the choir, where I sing with a capable but unremarkable alto. I've also been playing the flute since I was in third grade at a public elementary school in Dallas. A few years later, we moved to a town in East Texas where the band program didn't start until seventh grade. Among all the newbies, I had been playing for four years, so for a brief shining time, I was the acknowledged expert. A position that I held until about halfway through the year when one of my fellow flute players overtook me, as she continued to do until we graduated from high school. I was good, but I was never great.

Anyway. I'm telling you this whole story because even though I'm an unremarkable flute player, there are moments when—without me doing anything different than what I usually do—suddenly my playing sounds divine. I've never been able to figure out exactly what happens or why at one moment I'm a decent, average player, and the next moment it sounds like an angel is playing my flute. It is more likely to happen if I've been practicing regularly, but sometimes it happens the first time I pick it up after weeks of not playing.

I suspect that holiness is something like that (yeah, that's probably not where you thought I was headed). You're going along, doing something entirely ordinary, and suddenly you step into the realm of the divine. The thing that you are doing, in the same way that you always do it, suddenly takes on a wider significance, a deeper meaning.

There is one major way in which the flute playing analogy doesn't work, though, and that is: when those moments happen while I'm playing my flute, I know it. I suspect that when those moments happen in ordinary life, we never know. Something that we say, or do, or the simple fact of our presence, causes a reaction that has reactions, the proverbial pebble thrown into a pond with ever-widening circles of influence. And we never know. We're just going along, trying to do the right thing. Or maybe not even that.

And the reason I'm telling you this admittedly somewhat pompous Sunday school analogy is that I'm trying to make sense of my experience in Cambodia. Was there any point to it? Were we nothing but glorified tourists? Is there anything wrong with that? There are twenty posts I could write about this. Maybe I will. I know it had a huge effect on me, but if that's all it was, it was exploitation in the most basic way.

But Dean made the point that we can't know the effect that our trip had. Maybe more than we know. Also, maybe less. And that made me think of the flute analogy. So there you go.

Have a good weekend. I will probably post the boring 7 things sometime tomorrow or Sunday--it's about clearing my bookshelf clutter.

sit right back and you'll hear a tale

PellMel and I love to travel, so it's not unusual for us to discuss places we want to go, packing strategies, and travel gear. A couple of years ago, I told her that if we were dress-wearing women, which generally speaking we are not, and we were going someplace warm, packing would be easy-peasy because you could just pack three or four of those travel dresses and be done with it. You wouldn't need to color coordinate shirts and pants, and you'd only need about half the clothes I usually take.

But as I said, I am not a dress-wearing woman, and often ideas that sound good when I am planning a trip actually turn out to be pretty bad when I get there. Case in point: on almost every trip I've been on since then, I've packed a dress. But since I don't normally wear dresses, I never actually wear them.

So I decided that if I was going to make this work, I would have to pack only dresses, so I didn't have any choice. That is Part One of this convoluted tale.

Part Two is that when we started reading about what to wear on our trip to Cambodia, pretty much everybody said, dress conservatively. So I immediately go in my head to what "dressing conservatively" meant in the area where I was raised and the era in which I was raised, and I think baggy clothes, clothes that hide the female shape, knee-length skirts, wide-legged pants, and baggy tops.

(Actually, it's not so far from the way people think in the place I live now-- Montana is, after all, the state where a legislator introduced a law to ban yoga pants in public spaces, which fortunately did not pass.)

So I decided that in the interest of being cool, since shorts are out, I will wear knee-length skorts (I think I have all female readers who will know what those are, but just in case, they are skirts with attached shorts underneath). And because I knew I might not wear them if I had any choice, that is all I packed. Seriously. I packed three skorts, and a pair of capris I traveled in but that I wasn't really intending to wear once we arrived because they have no pockets and are synthetic fabric. (And a dress, which, true to form, I never wore.)

Part 3. We arrived in Cambodia, and I discovered that the Cambodian version of dressing conservatively has nothing to do with baggy clothes. In fact, almost every Cambodian woman I saw was wearing leggings or skinny jeans and a normal shirt (i.e., not necessarily a shirt that covered her posterior).

It turns out that dressing conservatively in Cambodia has nothing to do with being ashamed of the female shape. It is about whether or not the skin of your knees and shoulders is showing. And in case you didn't know, if you're wearing a knee-length skirt, when you sit down, it hikes up well above your knees and there is ALL THAT SKIN.

So there I was in Cambodia, with nothing to wear that met their definition of conservative, and a bunch of clothes that I didn't really like or want to wear.

So why am I telling you this story? I have no idea. It's mainly just a great example of how convoluted my brain is. I was trying so, so hard to do the right thing, and I ended up not making anybody happy-- I had a bunch of uncomfortable clothes with me and they didn't even serve the purpose they were supposed to, even though I bought them specifically for our trip.

So I walked around for two weeks with my scandalous knees showing, tugging my skirts down whenever I stood to make them as long as possible, and generally being uncomfortable. And at home in my closet, I had three or four pairs of comfortable, broken in, cotton capris with pockets that would have been perfect. *eye roll*

And lord I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that Alabama won that game. Ugh.

another (sort of) brief one: update on social media experiment

Hello, again. Well, one week into my experiment with "avoiding social media and constant awareness of new headlines," here is what I can tell you. For those of you who missed the original post, I am one week into my experiment with deleting all games, news, and social media apps from my phone, and only accessing them once a week. Also, I'm trying to limit my internet use to between noon and about 10 p.m. on other devices.

- it was only hard the first day. After that it was no problem.

- much to my surprise, I missed my two games more than I did Instagram or Twitter.

- I really like not reading the news first thing in the morning. I've been checking the headlines on my lunch break at work instead and that is plenty.

- My attention span is already better, which is a bit of a relief. I was worried that my brain had been permanently re-wired.

This ended up being the perfect week to do it, because on the one hand, it was a huge success. I got a bunch of reading done, I made progress on a couple of different projects here at home, and I really like starting off the day not being mad at the news.

But on the other hand, my weekly Facebook check-in was tonight, and two of my three groups had significant things going on that I had missed. So it was a good reminder of how much I love my FB people. (I enjoy Twitter and Instagram, but I don't use them to stay in touch with people, they're mainly just for entertainment.) 

So bottom line, I think I might have hit the perfect balance by accident already here in my first week. I don't like to miss things, but I don't think being away for a week is going to make a huge difference, and I'm hardly essential to any of my groups, much as I love them.

Jury's still out on whether or not I like submitting my blog posts by email. I need to do it longer before I figure that out. As I said before, apologies if the formatting is screwed up and for not answering comments.

lengthy shirts, briefly noted

As we've discussed in the past, I have a tendency to be a bit cheap (for example, this post). I'm getting better about it as I get older because for one thing, we don't need as much stuff anymore, so I'm not buying as much, and for another, we're not as broke as we used to be.

Anyway. As any female knows, cheap cotton shirts-- of which I have a couple of drawers full-- tend to shrink up until they are too short to wear by themselves. But the style right now is for long tunic length shirts, so even when you buy the cheap ones, they shrink up to a length that is actually reasonable. As in, you can sit down or lean over without bearing your all to the world.

Case in point, the long-sleeved t-shirt I bought at Target about a month ago, which fits perfectly, is SOFT AND COMFORTABLE (see previous post), and is LONG. Even after washing it several times. So when I walked by the display of those t-shirts at Target the other day and they were on sale for $10 a piece, I bought one in every color I thought I might reasonably wear. Which I guess confirms I'm not as cheap as I used to be.

And then I went home and pulled out all of my long sleeved cotton shirts, measured them by holding them up against another t-shirt that is as short as I am willing to go, and put about ten of them in the Salvo pile. *sigh of happiness* Seriously, head to Target before they sell out.

7ToF: in which I do not save the Earth

1. When PellMel was in preschool, her teacher did a unit on the environment that involved naming an activity like "leaving the lights on" or "putting a newspaper in the trash." After each one, her little preschoolers would chorus, "That's not saving the earth!" Which of course resulted in us snarkily, endlessly repeating decades later, "That's not saving the earth!" whenever one of us feels it is appropriate.

2. On the Aunt BeaN Scale of Family Environmentalism, where 1 is "we get double plastic bags at the grocery store and throw trash out the car window," and 10 is "we forage for seeds and nuts and bicycle everywhere," I give our family a solid mid-range 6. We recycle the things we can, we use cloth grocery bags (most of the time), the cars we use for everyday running around get decent mileage, we carry reusable water bottles (although we have so many of them we've probably moved out the other side into some sort of hyper-consumer alternate scale), and we understand that climate change means it may be intermittently colder than usual in spite of overall global warming. On the other hand, we fly too often, we eat meat, and we don't drive Priuses.

3. Awhile ago I read a discussion by a bunch of hyper-environmentalist types that was sort of like True Confessions where they told the one thing they guiltily did that was completely against their environmentalist values. The answers ranged from a woman who left the water running while she was at work because her cat would only drink running water to a guy who still drank beer out of bottles even though he can't recycle glass. (Sadly, after googling around, I can't give you the link because I couldn't find it again.)

4. Well, here is mine: I use disposable face wipes. Every single night. I "have to" wear makeup for work to avoid scaring the crap out of my co-workers, I hate washing my face at night, I can't sleep in makeup or my face breaks out, so it's got to come off somehow. The reason I am thinking about this is that I read an entire column online last week detailing all the reasons you shouldn't use disposable face wipes (environmental/waste concerns, germs on the wipe, it just smears things around, etc) and I decided I just don't care. I can tell you from looking at the wipe when I'm done and then looking at my skin that most of my makeup is off.

Say it with me: that's not saving the earth!!

5. Years ago we talked about sensory integration, a challenge that some of us have where we can't ignore minor sensations. We are driven crazy by socks with seams, tags in our clothing, air blowing directly on our skin (because it moves the hairs on my arm, damn it), and any number of gazillion other things that don't bother most people (like water dripping down our arms when we wash our faces at night). 

6. So, yeah, that's me. Today's sensory integration issue is clothing made from synthetic fabric. Polyester, nylon, acrylic. I can't stand them. A polyester shirt can look fabulous, and in ten minutes I'm ready to shred it into tiny little pieces. An acrylic sweater turns me into a ball of static cling and electric zaps. Polyester pants turn into a sodden mass of wrinkles because I get so clammy inside them. I'm OK with blends-- cotton/poly, rayon/spandex, etc. but an entirely plastic-based fabric just makes me want to scream.

7. Which is why I've become so aware since going back to work that looking professional involves wearing synthetic clothing. I realize that I can't wear jeans and a sweatshirt to work (although believe me, I would if it wasn't against the dress code), but for women, if you want to look really, top-notch professional, you've got to wear polyester clothes. I've tried. I really have. I've spent several hundred dollars on professional looking clothes that make me want to chew rocks after I've had them on for a couple of hours.

I'm gradually building up a wardrobe of things that are acceptably natural and not in the jeans-and-t-shirt realm, but there really isn't a good answer here. Or at least, if there is, I haven't found it. Today I wore boots, skinny cotton pants, a paisley-patterned long sleeve cotton t-shirt, and a hip length open cardigan. It was fine-- I was comfortable, and it passed the dress code, but if I were in a different position I would have been under-dressed. Fortunately, I have no desire to move upward into management, so I can just dawdle in the lower levels in my comfortable clothes. If you have any advice, let me know.

So that's it for me this week. Why in the world do I tell you these things?

Hope you have a nice weekend.

So, that experiment I mentioned....

I've noticed, and read quite a bit about, the way that my internet habits affect my ability to pay attention. I'm definitely not opposed to social media. I've used Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for years. I love Instagram for the photo updates of family members near and far, and gorgeous pics from National Geographic, NASA, and others. I love Facebook because so many of my friends use it, and because I'm a member of three groups that are based there.

And Twitter-- I have a complete love-hate relationship with Twitter. Every time I get so weighed down by the negativity that I'm ready to quit, some hashtag starts trending and the exuberant creativity of the responses reminds me of why I love human beings. Like #ruinThanksgivinginfourwords, or my all-time favorite, #ruinabooktitleinoneletter, or the currently trending, surprisingly sincere #sixwordcommitment, which people are using to express their hopes for the new year.

(You didn't ask, but my two responses to #sixwordcommitment are "I will accomplish small things daily" and "more joy and better quality food")(and lord, don't even get me started on #ruinabooktitleinoneletter. I spent hours on that one, and was still thinking them up days later, long after it had ceased to be a thing.)

So I'm not here to gripe about social media. But on the other hand, I have noticed that I can't concentrate anymore. I'll sit down to read a book, and even if it's a really good book, ten minutes into it I find myself picking up my phone to see what's happening online. There is no conscious thought involved-- I'll be several minutes into scrolling before I even realize I've done it.

This is disturbing to me. I feel like I've lost control of my brain. So I'm trying an experiment. I want to find out what happens if I quit for awhile. Will my attention span come back? Is it ruined forever? It's entirely possible that this is just age-related and has nothing to do with social media. I want to find out.

I'm starting with just a week, hoping to extend that to a month. I'm still figuring out exactly what my rules are. I can't stay completely offline or ditch my smart phone, because my work is web-based, and my kids and I, and my mom and my sisters and I, communicate via texting all week long. I like the rule (guideline!) suggested in the article I linked to at the end of the last post: no internet from bedtime until noon the next day. How lovely to wake up to something besides scrolling through the news. 

So I deleted all the news and social media apps from my phone for starters. I've avoided Facebook before for weeks at a time, so I don't anticipate this being a problem. I'm just not sure what the result will be.

This blog will also be affected. I will be posting by email instead of using the web-based version. The web-based version doesn't allow me to screen out the social media aspects of blogging. Emailing posts means that I can't schedule them—they will post as soon as I email them—and I won't be able to check the formatting, so apologies in advance if it looks wacky. Also I won't be able to see comments, but I can respond to them when I get back.

Oddly enough, there were a few social media things I was going to do tonight before this started, but our internet went down about an hour ago and there's no sign of its return. I've already deleted the apps from my phone so I can't do anything over cell. I guess it starts now. 

(Posted via email over cell)