The heat was out again; this time I didn’t wait, I put on an extra hoodie and warmer slippers. It did not reach mukluk cold. Now the heat is back, and the extra hoodie is off and I’m debating putting on my regular slipper socks. My toes are on the edge of being too warm but in some ways that’s nice. I can’t believe I’ve reached the state of having graduated warmth indoor footwear. I’ve always obsessed with that for outerwear. It’s selfcare that seems to mean more to me than other people. It’s difficult to judge that as I don’t experience what other people do, only what they say about it, and most people say nothing. That’s part of my motivation for describing mine in detail. At least you’ll know what one other person feels.
I have an idiot story for you. I know how My Gentle Readers look forward to idiot stories. I went to make popcorn last night. That in itself is an idiot story as that’s a classic problem food for people with Crohn’s disease. I avoided it for years even though I love it. The thing is that it has never once triggered an obstruction. Corn on the cob has many times. I have no snacks in the house now other than popcorn and have been going with it. Last night I put it in the popper and went to the bathroom while it popped. I came back and it hadn’t stopped popping. This led to a shocking discovery; if you put the kernels in the butter melter/measuring cup on top of the air popper and don’t put them in the actual popper, they don’t pop! Did you know that? I suspected that it was true, but I had never conducted the experiment before. That’s it. I was not an idiot that forgot to drop them in the popper I was a scientist doing original research. What journal should I publish this in?
I need to give myself a public pat on the back. I listed my first course on Outschool. Try and find it, it’s called calculation tricks. When I tried listing it the first time I couldn’t. It said I needed more training. I thought I had finished all the training. My friend who teaches there said they keep adding hurdles. This was useful, I was on the student end of an Outschool class as a teacher walked us through it. The teacher teaches baseball writing! She was excited when I told her that I wanted to teach baseball math. She thinks it will be a hit. I set my age range as 10-14. If you know anyone that wants to learn calculation tricks let me know. Too late but I should change the name to computation tricks. Next time that’s what I’ll use. I don’t have any students yet. It runs on Wednesday. If you know a child in that age range that wants to learn cool math tricks have them sign up.
This should not cause me anxiety, but it does. This strikes at the heart of my issues. I’ll save the whys and wherefores for therapy; I’ll just you know this took a huge amount of emotional effort on my part. It’s the way most people would feel their first time sky diving. Oddly, I have always wanted to sky dive. I hate the idea of jumping out of the plane, but I love what I imagine the rest of the experience feels like. Do not try and make sense of anxiety and fear, it is inherently irrational. It comes from the amygdala not the cerebrum. I feel the anxiety just writing about it; my vagus nerve is twitching.
My goal today is to get out of the house to pick up a prescription and buy potatoes. I might reward myself dinner at Popeye’s. I have not gone shopping in almost two weeks. My plan was to go to Stop & Shop after my infusion on Monday, but it was canceled because of the snow. It’s rescheduled for tomorrow, so I’ll pick up bagels and other necessities then. Oh great, the heat is off again. I’m glad I left my slippers on. I just had to wash my hands with icy water. That you notice immediately, it takes a while for the room to cool off.
Yesterday I got a call from Marc, one of the people that I always say I need to talk to more often; we used to talk every week. He fills an important ecological niche in my social life Most of what we talked about is things I talk about often with other people, but he has a different perspective. He is also the person that got me into my fantasy baseball league. When the world is as it should be, we talk about that often. We discussed things that I should write about, that touch on things I was planning on writing today, but somehow I’ve already written 835 words. I know what I’m going to do. I’ll write about one related topic that I can do without too much detail.
There’s just been a couple of #metoo scandals involving the Mets, one by their GM, who was fired, and one by their old manager, Mickey Calloway. This led to a series of discussions and opinion pieces on “what’s wrong with the culture of baseball?” It wasn’t as focused on the Mets as it usually would be because they are under new management. They don’t have a corporate culture yet. You’ve seen the same story go on with Hollywood, government, economics, STEM, and many other fields. That is a tipoff that we aren’t dealing with problems specific to baseball, Hollywood, government, and STEM. It’s an endemic problem in the world. The news is not that there is sexual harassment in baseball, news would be a field where it doesn’t happen. Do you think it’s any different in football, Broadway, Wall Street, or retail? Yet people will try and look at it as “what’s specific to our field?” It’s true that each organization and culture needs to focus on it, just like each one needs to work their health plans. They each have the need, but there are no boundaries to it, and it needs to be addressed on a higher level too. People in power will take advantage of it unless there are active efforts to prevent it. It’s not because people in power are particularly evil, it’s just that they aren’t as constrained by society as others. Men dominate positions of power and so women suffer. As that’s the way it’s always been people accept it as, “That’s just the way things are.” We are just now in the “But that’s not the way things have to be,” phase. It means we have to think about this more than we think about other moral issues. We don’t hesitate to say, “Stop thief!” but we find it difficult to say, “Don’t talk to her like that!” “Don’t touch her like that!” I don’t know how to change things. By writing this I’m trying to. If we all spoke about it, it would be easier. If we all reminded ourselves that it’s the duty of each of us to shout, “Don’t talk to her like that!” it would help. If we each actually said it, it would help more.
Wise Madness 