Too Much Imagination?

Around our house, when faced with something unpleasant, we don’t simply say, “I’d rather not.”

We say things like:

“I’d rather take a bullet”

or

“I’d rather get my teeth drilled”

or

“I’d rather chew off my own finger”

or

“I’d rather get my eyeball tattooed.”

(Eyeball tattooing is actually a thing. Blech.)

I guess you could say we have vivid imaginations.

Not sure that’s always a good thing.

Some studies show that worriers tend to have higher IQs, also that depressed people are better leaders in difficult times because they are actually more clear-eyed about reality than non-depressed people.

 

Wow, that’s a downer.

Anxious people tend to be more in tune with their bodies, more aware of every sensation … which is why many anxious people have hypochondria. Also, ask any doctor, anxious people can be very difficult to sedate; they fight the medication to stay aware and in control.

It takes an active, perhaps overactive, imagination to look at an innocent mole on your skin and visualize the whole course of terminal melanoma … but (I know) it can be done.

My husband is a big believer in distraction. “If something is worrying you, the best thing is not to think about it,” he says.

Doesn’t that sound a wee bit counter-intuitive to you?

Also impossible?

But when you can manage to do it, it’s true.

A Stereotype Is Born

Image courtesy of Teerapun at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have a thing against white, late-model SUVs.

They seem to be driven by skinny white women talking on their cell phones who block intersections, go at a four-way stop before it is their turn and double-park.

White SUVs are particularly common in Houston. White is currently the most popular car color globally. Sometimes, in traffic, I will feel like I have stumbled into the middle of a parade of ice-cream trucks. (My car is blue, which this article, at least, makes sound like a sophisticated choice. Ha.)

The popularity of SUVs in Houston may seem piggy, but there are actually some good reasons for it. Houston streets flood. And it’s occurred to me that, here, where most people don’t have bus service to bring their kids to school, parents with SUVs, which can seat 7 or 8 kids at a time, might run car pools that create less emissions overall than a car pool of Priuses (which is what I drive and which can only take 4 kids each).

Be that as it may, I still find myself thinking that white, late-model SUVs are driven by the self-important. Hence, the lack of turn-taking. There may be some proof that drivers of expensive, high-status cars do drive more aggressively … though this linked article points out that people who think their Priuses are high-status cars drive like jerks, too. :o(

(I don’t get how you can think a Prius is impressive. When you blow the horn on my car, it sounds like a doggy chew toy.)

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article about why people choose to buy SUVs. They feel safer in them, though they are not.

Then, of course, occasionally a white SUV will nicely let me into a lane or whatever – blowing a hole in my theory.

Why Do You Think I Got A Dog?

Sometimes, when I see dog-training advice, that’s what I want to ask.

Cesar Millan tells you to “assume the dominant position” and “make your dog work for your affection. Before you pet him, make him come to you or sit for you. Don’t go over and pet him out of the blue.”

This article, from Petfinder.com, tells you, “Going out should not be his for the asking.” Oh, great, so I can’t just let my dog tell me when she needs to pee, I have to keep that schedule in my own head so that I can always be in control, the dominant one.

But I didn’t get a dog so I could have a BDSM relationship, thanks.

I like petting my dog.

I like seeing her personality: how excited she gets about walks, where she wants to go (to the shopping street near us, because she wants to be with people), how she loves her treats.

Sure, like kids, there’s a certain level of behavior she has to have. For dogs, they can’t be aggressive and I am very glad to say that Lola does not pee in the house.

She loves coming when she’s called. She’ll come to other people calling their dogs. She sits. She stays. She “leaves it.” She will heel perfectly – IF she knows you have treats. But she is also a lot like this dog, in my opinion, the best one in the whole competition. Lola has a lot of strong opinions, including that whatever she finds in the garbage is fair game.

Do I have a dog so that I get to make her perfectly obedient? No. What an absurd thought.

I like having a dog because I love my dog and she loves me.

Get out of here with that other crap.

Applying to College Without Losing Your Mind

Interviewed college-admissions officers about what they thought of the stress surrounding the college-application process these days.

For The Buzz Magazines here in Houston.

Reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Getting organized is upsetting.

Which is why I end up reading about it. I am avoiding doing it.

But most books about organization tell you stuff you already know, like “File, don’t pile.”

I know that.

What they don’t tell you is how to make yourself do it.

So, when I read in the New York Times about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, a book by a Japanese professional organizer, Marie Kondo, and it seemed ... well … different, I read it.

Marie Kondo, who is as cute as a button, is kind of nutty. She treats objects as if they are alive. She tells you to fold your socks a certain way because when they are in your drawer, they are “on holiday” and deserve to be comfortable. She admits having a hard time bonding with people, saying “It was material things and my house that taught me to appreciate unconditional love first, not my parents or friends.”

You’d think she wouldn’t be keen on throwing stuff out, but she says unwanted objects want to be discarded. She tells you to thank a thing for its service before you can it. A gift you hate? “Thank you for the joy of receiving you.” Clothes you don’t like? “Thank you for teaching me what doesn’t suit me.”

Kondo’s clients end up getting rid of most of what they own. “My basic principle for sorting papers is to throw them all away,” she says.

But, really, she focuses on, not which things to trash, but which to keep. “Take each item in one’s hand,” she says, “and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.”

While I won’t be folding my socks anytime soon, I am all fired up to throw stuff out.

La, La, La, La Lola

Yes, I am the type of mother who tells stories on my kids they wish I wouldn't.

When my son was seven years old, we got our new puppy – and he named her “Lola” after a girl in his first-grade class. Awww.

(He swears that this girl “wasn’t a girlfriend, but a friend who just happened to be a girl,” and he may be telling the truth. If Puppy Lola had been a boy, his name would have been “Max,” after my son’s other good friend in first grade.)

“Lola” is actually quite a common name for dogs. For the most part, it fits what people look for in a dog name. It’s short and it’s cute and it even ends in a vowel.

But what I find most interesting is how people respond to my dog’s name.

When people hear that her name is “Lola,” they will almost always start singing one of three songs:

“Lola,” by the Kinks;

“Copacabana” by Barry Manilow, which starts off, “Her name was Lola; she was a showgirl, with yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there;”

or

“Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets,” from the musical Damn Yankees. The people who choose this one tend to be older, which makes sense since the musical was written in 1955.

Whichever one the person chooses really does tell you something about them, I think.

 Got a song stuck in your head now?

The Color Green

Our front porch.

I am sitting on my porch, contemplating the color green.

Not only is our house and our balcony furniture and even our car and, gosh, my cellphone case green, but we live in Houston, where the climate is “humid subtropical,” which is a fancy way of saying “swamp.”

From Rick & Mambo,
a California radio show

 

We live two doors down from Joshua’s, a nursery, which, come to think of it, painted its building a startling lime green the day after we put a bid on this house.

If you are going to live near a commercial enterprise – and since we wanted a walkable neighborhood, we were going to – you could do a lot worse than live near a nursery. Joshua’s has beautiful plantings and you can always pop in for a dose of greenery. Being in the woods or garden or a nursery always makes me feel better. Maybe it’s all the oxygen the plants are producing. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

According to Wikipedia, the word “green” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “grene,” meaning “grow.” It is associated with youth (a greenhorn). You can be given a green light, a good thing. It is the color of environmental causes. It is also the color of jealousy and envy. (Iago called jealousy “the green-ey’d monster” in Othello.) And it's the color of nausea.

I read, here, that green eyes, which I have, are the rarest eye color; only 2% of people have them. I’m not sure I believe this since the same website has a page about violet eyes, and I’m pretty sure violet eyes, if they even exist (do you know anyone with purple eyes?), would be rarer.

And that’s all I got about the color green.