LA VIVA LOCA

I keep my promises, people.

But first, the "sandwich spread:"

I thought the parsley was a nice touch.

And on Thursday, the Viva arrived:

Within 20 minutes of the delivery fellas' departure, I had discovered that the Viva is an excellent piece of furniture for checking e-mail, reading young adult fiction, and napping. (Mr. Banality does not believe in naps. Sad.) And we've already changed the configuration of the pieces twice.

What was maybe more exciting was that we also received a large box of nearly 200 fabric samples that go along with this particular line. Mr. Banality started a new project with them. While I napped.

Our house will be only slightly less noisy tomorrow than we had expected, as we have canceled our family get-together due to anticipated inclement weather. That sound you hear is the collective sigh of relief from me and my 16 introverted family members. Now we can spend the day in our respective homes, reading magazines and doing other things that require no contact with other humans.

There's a newish book out there titled, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch. It offers suggestions for interesting and thought-provoking blog posts. Obviously, I have not read this book. By the way, I had red curry with tofu for lunch. In case you were wondering.

on living in this place

"I know that you like it here because it's what you're used to. It's a lot harder for people who are used to living in cities."

That was what one of my colleagues said to me upon my arrival to this small town. When I moved here, I was all kinds of ambivalent about it. I had grown up in this state, and after I left, I swore I wouldn't be back. The bad food! The ugly clothes! The popularity of country music! Mr. Banality had to convince me to apply for my current job. When people heard that I was moving to this state, they either responded with confusion ("Why?") or sympathy ("Don't worry--I'm sure another job will open up somewhere else.") So, when this new colleague made this comment (in a very condescending voice, I might add), I didn't know what to say. Part of me wanted to yell, "Nuh-uh, I don't like it here either!" After all, I had just moved here from a large city and was lamenting this area's absence of sushi and used book shops. But another part of me was so deeply offended by the comment, which implied that I was a naïve simpleton who didn't know any better than to be satisfied, that I was speechless. That this colleague liked to sell herself as culturally sensitive was especially annoying.

I've given this a lot of thought since that day. It's true, growing up here didn't provide me with an understanding of the world beyond my small community. My parents chose to save my mother's schoolteaching salary and have our family live on my father's income as a factory worker. We didn't go on many vacations, we didn't talk about current events around the dinner table, we didn't go to movies. My parents thought that credit cards were despicable, so if they couldn't pay cash for something, they didn't buy it (their mortgage was the exception). We ate really cheap food, and very few things in our house were name-brand products. However, the values of this culture, with its emphasis on simplicity, hard work, and honesty, have served me well, and I'm not just talking about my own internalization of those values. My parents worked hard and spent very little money, and because of that, I am one of those rare people with advanced degrees who never took out a student loan.

So, you can see why I might feel insulted by my colleague's statement.

What I've grown to realize is that it does take a special kind of enlightened attitude to be OK in a place like this, and by "like this," I mean a place that doesn't fit your peer group's definition of "a cool place to live." You have to be high in the trait of openness (and not limit that openness to certain types of places and certain types of people). You have to be mindful and creative. If you're rigid, your ability to be happy here will be severely limited.

Take, for example, the recipe book I've mentioned before. Sure, I poke fun at its partially-hydrogenated-fat-laden dishes, but I also have a certain appreciation for this type of cooking. The growth in the processed food industry during the 1950's didn't benefit only the suburban housewives. This stuff that was cheap and fast and easy to make was a godsend for farm wives. They could throw together a casserole and then use that time that the Velveeta and can of cream of mushroom soup saved them to help in the field. Plus, rural folks were used to preserved foods--they spent the winter eating the vegetables they canned back in August. And these processed foods were more than acceptable to German, Scottish, Norwegian, and British palates. Hamburger Helper and haggis? Practically the same thing.

The "advances" in farming (bigger machinery, synthetic fertilizers) haven't made life more convenient either. They've made farming less profitable. Now, farm families have to rely on multiple sources of income, which means even less time to do those daily living tasks like cooking.

I'll just get back to my point: pizza made with Velveeta is not my thing, but I try not to belittle people whose thing it is.

I've learned a lot about openness from Mr. Banality. I was especially worried about how he would adjust to living here, and it was his turn to follow me. Mr. Banality is a problem-solver. He's a man of action. That guy gets shit done. I could get really smarmy here, but I won't. Let's just say that he's really good at making life meaningful and interesting, and I'm very lucky that I get to come along for the ride.

My mom has a pillow on her couch on which she embroidered the message: Bloom Where You Are Planted. I've always hated that saying because it seems so passive and helpless. She made this pillow after my dad decided they should move to a rural community in an area they hadn't lived near since they were children. For my dad, this was no big deal, but my mom left many friends behind. And, as you might guess, the friendship circles of the 60+ crowd are difficult to break into. However, I've reconsidered that saying lately, and I've found some new meaning in it. I'm not saying that I'm "planted" here forever, but while I'm here, I might as well enjoy the Snickers salad.

Yeah, I'm procrastinating

But the papers! Ugh! They are sooo not enjoyable to read. Things I have learned today:

1. Feeding squirrels is more fun than grading research proposals.
2. Doing dishes? Also more fun than grading research proposals.
3. The people who work at the natural food store need to take it easy on the patchouli skin care products. I do not like patchouli-flavored flour tortillas.
4. Next year, I will work harder to help students understand that random does not mean haphazard. The word random has been completely bastardized by popular culture.
5. The guy who lives across the street is apparently really mad at the snow drift in front of his driveway. Or maybe he's mad at the individual who suggested that he go outside and get rid of the snow drift. Hmmm.

And one more thing: Mr. Banality will take something to the office potluck on Monday. It needs to be equal in impact to last year's dish (circus peanut salad), so the pressure is on. He's chosen a sandwich spread recipe from his hometown church's cookbook. It's made from five hard-boiled eggs, sweet pickle relish, pimentos, cheese (the recipe calls for Velveeta, but they don't make an organic version, so he's going to use cheddar), and . . . peanut butter. Add mayonnaise if it's too dry. I'll wait while you retch.

The recipe was contributed by a woman named Leota, but her nickname was Poodie. They just don't make nicknames like they used to, you know?

And speaking of cookbooks, I received one last week in the mail. I do public speaking things from time to time, mostly to service clubs, red-hat ladies, and adult Sunday school classes. They usually pay for my mileage. A women's club from a neighboring small town gave me their cookbook as a thank you gift. This community is the kind that isn't familiar with difficulties in planning holiday gatherings because everyone lives in the same town and most people are related to each other somehow. This might explain why the cookbook contains multiple recipes for the same things: tapioca salad, Oriental salad, pistachio salad, vodka slush (life must get rough in this little town), Mexican lasagna. The recipes use lots of Cool Whip, Miracle Whip, Velveeta, and marshmallows. My favorite "salad" recipe in this book (Cookie Salad) includes vanilla pudding, buttermilk, Cool Whip, fudge striped cookies, and bananas. And this is salad because . . . it contains fruit? Doesn't this seem like a salad an eight-year-old would create with a friend while raiding the refrigerator after school? I don't know, but I'm surprised that this particular community hasn't been completely wiped out by Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Oh, and my talk was about changing health-related behaviors.

Maybe I'll have a dinner party sometime and use only recipes from this book. Simple Champagne-Looking Punch (or vodka punch for the lushes in the group), Snickers salad, Touchdown Taco Dip, Diet Coke chicken, cheesy potatoes--and for dessert, Oreo Balls. Let me know if you'd like an invite.

no drama before 11 a.m.

I was walking through the skywalk the other day when I overheard the following portion of a cell phone conversation:

"So, she kept calling me, so I finally answered it. And I was all, 'What do you want? Why do you keep calling me,' and she was all, 'You need to know that I'm 5 months pregnant' . . . OH, MY GOD . . . I know. It all makes sense now. It totally makes sense now. Why he has pictures of her on his phone, why he calls her all the time . . . He doesn't know that I look at his phone, but I do. . . . I know. So, I called him and was like, 'You are so busted. Carrie just called me and told me that she's 5 months pregnant."

It was 8:30 in the morning. Isn't that a little early for baby- daddy drama? Keep in mind that I don't hear very well. This woman was loud. Yikes.

This whole scenario was foreign to me. When I was a college student, the most dramatic relationship issue I encountered was that my boyfriend and I had incompatible tastes in music.

News that makes me giddy: The VIVA is supposedly coming on Thursday.

a neuroscience secret no one talks about

There is a homunculus who lives in my brain. He's very skinny and pale. And bald. And although I often refer to the homunculus as a "he," it's really sexless because it's not like he's going to reproduce or something. If it wore a bow on its head, I might call it a "she" instead, but it doesn't. It wears a rather baggy Speedo and galoshes. My brain is full of muck and goo--important to keep the feet dry, you know. My homunculus' favorite songs are "Life is a Highway" and the old Hy-Vee jingle. This is the only explanation I can come up with for why these two songs suddenly pop into my head for no apparent reason. My homunculus owns a very, very tiny red bandana, which he uses to wipe the perspiration from his brow when he's engaged in the difficult work of making my brain function. He packs the bandana into my frontopolar cortex when it's not in use, which is why I have a difficult time adding a column of numbers in my head.

Lately, the homunculus has taken up a new hobby. Somehow, he has found a very, very tiny wine glass, and he wets his slender, bony finger and runs it around the edge. Over and over and over again. This keeps me up at night sometimes.

I'll tell the audiologist about this when I go in for my appointment in January, and she'll probably just call it tinnitus. But I'll know the truth.

Hey, just because it's not a parsimonious explanation doesn't mean it's not true.

I wonder what he's doing now . . .

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1289634956



Oh, yes. I'm absolutely that petty.



And, for the record, he was never that fun in real life.

Speak up, sonny.

So, let's say that someone decides she needs a hobby. She tries out vocal jazz and thinks that it could be a fantastic choice. Then she finds out that she has progressive hearing loss. Is that ironic? Because that Alanis Morissette song has really confused me about the definition of that word.

After asking people to repeat themselves 4,000,000,000 times, I decided to go to the doctor. Beforehand, I Googled "hearing loss," and got all freaked out about something called otosclerosis. However, otosclerosis is a genetic disorder, and no one in my family has it. Probably just a buildup of earwax.

"It's not earwax," the doctor gravely reported, "Those ears are clean as a whistle." Then she stuck her primitive hearing test otoscope thingy in my left ear and told me to raise my hand when I heard the tone. Just like in elementary school! She left it in there for a long time. I waited for her to play the tones. What was she waiting for? Then she took it out.

Long story short: I have pretty significant hearing loss in my left ear and some in my right ear and I go to the audiologist in about a month to get a full assessment. Oh, and, as it turns out, my dad has otosclerosis, but he never said anything about it because he thought it was caused by noise exposure. This kind of oversight is typical of my parents, who are not obsessed with medical information like I am.

Anyway, I can get hearing aids or possibly surgery depending on the extent of the hearing loss and type and all of that. Until then, if we're chatting and you tell me a joke and I don't laugh, it's probably because I didn't hear it (well, it might be because I heard it, but I didn't think it was that funny).

Research Methods Successories

I've mentioned before that I give stickers to my research methods students. It started on a whim with some stickers I got from a catalog. I ran out of those, so I used stickers from my beloved Lucky magazine, the ones I'm supposed to use to mark the purses and scented candles and chunky sandals that I intend to purchase. I ran out of those stickers, too, so I made up my own. I was surprised that there were still some of these left at the end of class:

Come on. That's funny. At least a little funny, right?

Could it be that people didn't take that one because they don't really understand frequency distributions? Hmm. Probably.

Perhaps a similar reason accounted for very few people taking this one:

More than 99% confident that my awesomeness is not due to random error

Instead, all of these were gone at the end of class:

But not one person asked what the variable was that they scored so highly on . . .

The Perfect Gift . . .

You might think this is too good to be true. Mannheim Steamroller offers ringtones on their website.

Please go to this link and download the "Good King Wenceslas" ringtone toute de suite. Then hope and pray that lots of people call you because each time it happens, you will be filled with the joy that only this song (and maybe "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling--does anyone remember that song?) can bring.

Merry Christmas. You're welcome.

P.S. Last Mannheim Steamroller post. Promise.

My evil plan worked . . .

Misery loves company, so I've decided to get "A Wonderful Christmastime" stuck in as many heads as possible.

As they say in the Jack Chick tracts, "HAW HAW!"

Speaking of Chick, my HS jazz band took two field trips. The first was to see MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER. I know. Not a jazz concert. It was more like listening to a series of obnoxious ringtones.

The second was a masterclass with Chick Corea. High school students at a masterclass with Chick Corea! Can you imagine? He sat on a stage and drank herbal tea and talked about L. Ron Hubbard. I was so confused.

Then we went back to school and rehearsed "Owner of a Lonely Heart," which we proceeded to play at every home basketball game from then on out. Wow, was I a bad trumpet player.

I solemnly swear that when the Viva arrives, I will create a post about it in which I incessantly reflect on the hidden meaning behind our choice of the sectional over a less versatile form of seating. I also will discuss the possibility that the Viva is my totem. And, yes, I will call the post "La Viva Loca."

Enough

I got Time Indefinite through Netflix ages ago and just got around to watching it over Thanksgiving. The synopsis was as follows:

Director Ross McElwee documents the family drama that unspools when cultures collide on a personal level. In Time Indefinite, McElwee takes home his fiancée, a Jewish filmmaker who lives with him in Boston, and introduces her to his conservative family in South Carolina. Though genuinely happy for the couple, they're still taken aback by the news, especially as it comes at a time riddled with tragedy for the rest of the clan.

This seemed like it might be a good film to show to my social psych class. I was intrigued. As it turns out, the synopsis was completely incorrect. Cultures didn't collide. The fact that the fimmaker's fiancee was Jewish never came up. The family wasn't what I would call "conservative." "Conventional," maybe, but not "conservative." The news of the engagement didn't come at a time riddled with tragedy for the rest of the clan (the tragedy came later). And also, it took place in North Carolina, not South Carolina, and the last time I checked, those were different states.

Despite that, it was kind of interesting. It was mostly the filmmaker interviewing family and friends as he tried to come to terms with his father's death. This was fine, but I found myself tiring of the philosophical questions pretty quickly.

Not long after that, I read an article in Body and Soul (another fairly worthless magazine to which I subscribe) about "self-help safaris" in Kenya. These safaris (they have names like "Safaris for the Soul") combine game drives and interaction with local tribal groups with "intensive life-coaching sessions in which [participants] assess [their] past, create [their] vision for [their] future, and develop strategies to fulfill [their] goals." The cost was around $6000. I am vicariously embarrassed for these people. Is your totem the lioness or the warthog?

Maybe it's too much blog-reading. Generally, I appreciate it when people reflect on their lives, and I like to read and hear about real-life experiences (not to be confused with "reality" television), but excessive navel-gazing is making me roll my eyes more and more often these days. It might be due to a more general period of irritability I've been experiencing lately. I have dreams about annoying social interactions, and I'm exceptionally grumpy in the morning, as though I've been answering e-mail messages from students all night long.

And that's what I'd call "meta-reflection."

Sometimes it's good to know when to stop. Like with Christmas songs. There are a lot of Christmas songs, so please stop writing and recording new ones. That means you, Michael Bublé. That being said, Mr. Banality's cousins desperately need to add a few more cds to their Christmas collection because I've had it with being subjected to Mannheim Steamroller every year. On repeat. Over multiple days. Hey! You got your "Miami Vice" theme song in my Christmas carols! Ugh. No wonder people get depressed around the holidays. And I have learned to despise that Paul McCartney ear-worm, "A Wonderful Christmastime." And Mr. Banality wonders why I never want to stay more than three days.

Here's an extremely important question I've been pondering these days: WHERE IS THE VIVA?