(no subject)

Things I've Thought About A Lot, Today:

1.) Pentaquarks. They've isolated a new particle! I went through a period of intense fascination with the concept of a fundamental particle, following high school chemistry. I was trying to explain this to Ananda and Aaron, today, in terms of how when I was their age, and hell even when I was 25, quarks were still theoretical.

2.) As I've mentioned before, I feel good in metaphysical, "spiritual" stores. Even when I'm rolling my eyes at some of their services (aura photography?!) and many of their products ("angel pendants" to watch over you?!), I cannot deny that I am more content than normal, and not at all eager to leave. Grant feels the same. My kids obviously feel the same (all of them, different though they are). Is it the clean expanse of wood floors? The soothing new age music? The smell of sage and incense? The plants, the crystals, the salt lamps, the way everyone talks in really warm and welcoming hushed tones? I DON'T KNOW. But it's significant enough that Grant and I have actually taken steps, some involving money, to make our home feel more like that.
I believe that there's a lot to be learned about how natural materials and nature in general enhance our well being. I also believe we don't really understand much of it yet, so what we have in this in between place is people who are keyed into this feeling but don't know what to do about it, and unfortunately also those who prey on them. Thus we have things like in-depth, matter of fact sounding lists of symptoms each different kind of crystal can supposedly "cure." That's ridiculous to me, and yet the idea that being in a place full of glass, wood, and crystals could be good for you does not seem weird to me at all. We know sunlight (or Vitamin D supplements/UV light) is necessary for health and mental health. We know that plants filter the air. We know plastics contribute to rising cancer rates. Fucking hell, scientists have proven that when your skin smells sandalwood oil, it heals itself. I read an article a couple of days ago, about a very large scale study done in Toronto, proving that living around trees improves people's health in many ways. I learned years ago about how being near the ocean or a mountain improves people's moods significantly enough to help alleviate depression and measurably boost engery, because of negative ionization in the air. When I hear about people wanting to colonize the moon or live on Mars, I think...we don't even understand all the ways we need this planet to thrive. I imagine living in space a la sci-fi radically shortening our lives and nobody understanding why - it would be like the whales at Sea World that live 13 years instead of 100 with people standing around scratching their heads, saying "But they have water to swim in. They have food. What else do they need?"
Please note that all those links I embedded are WebMD, PBS, the Washington Post, and the BBC. I don't read or share anything from the kind of horseshit "Natural News Daily" and "Spirit Science" sites that have viral facebook posts daily.

3.) My mother only talks to my sister and I about medical things. It's a source of major frustration for Laura. I've gotten kind of zen about my mom, not really expecting more from her than is realistic and ok with what I get. It would be nice, though, if she were connecting with us for any other reason. As it is, she texts or calls only when Nana, Pa, her, or Todd (her husband) visit a doctor or hospital. Then, she gives us exhaustively detailed play by plays of those visits, even if they're routine or she doesn't understand much of what was said. She also leaps on to any mention - say, from a facebook status - of Laura or I, or any of our kids, having an illness or injury and grills us to a ridiculous extent for details. No matter how minor it is, she will be angry that she wasn't personally notified. In between health updates...nothing. Weeks pass without a text or call, barring a birthday or holiday. She doesn't comment or ask about anything else, even when, for instance, I told her in person while we were up there about how I was worried I'd fail a class and that I really had to cram for the final I was going to take as soon as I got back home. That is just not something she was ever gonna think about again - if I'd said I had a weird feeling in my knee, she'd have been texting me every couple of days and trying to lecture me for not seeing a specialist.
Part of this is, I believe, because she's traumatized by her father suddenly dying of liver cirrhosis (before she could arrive to see him, even) and then her mother having a crippling stroke due to malpractice complications, while she was still in shock about her dad. Both of her parents went from healthy and autonomous people who'd barely turned 60 to dead or totally changed within a month. It probably doesn't help that like 2 years before that, Elise and I went through a mega medical nightmare that she was deeply involved with. My mom doesn't write or talk out her stuff even casually - she definitely hasn't sought counseling. She shakes and has panic attacks anytime she relaxes, so she's generally pretty tense.
The other part of it, though, is that my mom has basically zero interests or activities that do not revolve around medical crap. There are so many layers to this - like ok, she doesn't work or go to school, and she doesn't really have friends, and she doesn't have any hobbies or attend church. She doesn't go anywhere with Todd, and usually seems offended that he loves his job and wants to go out places. She doesn't have an online community, or even something like a Pinterest. But it goes deeper than that - she doesn't watch shows or movies. She doesn't read books or listen to music. She doesn't keep up with the news, or vote, or exercise, or cook, or craft, or clean her house (Todd does that). She takes care of Nana, which while important and appreciated is incredibly repetitive and monotonous. She drinks a lot in the evenings. It's like all of her energy goes to holding back a flood of thoughts and feelings that she just can't deal with. It's kind of wild to wrap my head around.
The hardest part of letting go and being ok with her as she is, has been ceasing to just want to SHAKE HER and yell at her, to make her live her life before it's too late.

4.) I tend to accomplish things in fits and starts - I rarely if ever just do something all at once, beginning to end. I suppose there are exceptions, like in cooking or washing the dishes, or homeschool lessons, but in general I like to move between projects, I like to have different things available to choose to work on at any given time, and I have a lot competing for my attention. So there is often just not a block of time available to do something completely without having to step away for a bit, even if that was my style. And, it's not. Compounded problem.
Unfortunately, when you have a somewhat forgetful and messy husband and a bunch of kids, you can't ever really leave something unfinished and expect it to be there waiting for you when you get back. This is THE BANE OF MY FUCKING LIFE, and has been for a long long time.
If I'm going to sew, I have to set my sewing machine up somewhere - this involves clearing a space and carrying it there, sometimes a new needle, finding the right notions, locating and plugging in both cords, threading a bobbin, adjusting my thread tension and stitch length and troubleshooting why the machine's giving me trouble at first when I test it out, and often additional stuff like ironing fabric (find the iron; get out and fight with the ironing board) and checking my measurements, or digging around for new pins. The point is that it's a 10+ minute process that seems like an insurmountable hurdle when I only have a spare 20 minutes total for sewing, or when I'm just feeling tired and lazy but know that 3 different things need some kind of mending. My place to set it up will also inevitably be a computer desk or the dining table, so once someone asks for a snack and the phone rings I generally have to put it all away halfway through whatever I'd planned to do, because I'm taking up valuable real estate, and then I don't want to get it out again. Or, I can leave it where it is to get back to later, right in the middle of the house, and then find a cat has chased away my spool of thread, Jake took my stitch ripper to be a Lego accessory, and my lightbulb is burned out because Elise turned it on right before bed. There was a time when I had a dedicated sewing table and the ironing board stayed set up next to it, and seriously, I used it at least weekly. Six months at a time pass, since I don't have a dedicated spot. Part of my setting up process is getting all the thick dust off of everything.
This is an allegory for all of life, though. If I start sorting laundry into piles on my bed, someone will come mindlessly shove them over into one big one so they can sit down while my back is turned to turn on Pandora. If I lay out an 8x5' area of quilt pieces I need to move around and plan, or all the granny squares I have done so far to see if my counting is right, Grant will not even realize he's kicking some of them under the bed when he comes in to take his shoes off.
I log in to three different websites on two monitors to get everything I need going in tabs, to study Stats, because there are formula cards and necessary tables along with video examples and my practice problems. Get notebook/calculator/pen by the keyboard. Walk away to pee and grab a cup of water before I get started - get back to somebody logged in to google under their own name, watching Bob's Burgers. Pen on the floor, calculator missing.
This kind of stuff makes me so nuts! I was actually crying talking to Grant about it this morning, partially because the tights I'd finally gathered up from around my closet and drawers and the laundry room to see which fit were under the chair I'd set them on, and partially because he basically feels it's my responsibility to change my methods. I get his point, maybe he's even right, but a.) I also think everyone should be more considerate of each other's efforts, it's worth prioritizing, we don't have babies or toddlers anymore and 2.) "changing my methods" feels impossible. My own procrastination and distractibility already make life hard enough - adding in a bunch of people with the same issues creates a serious uphill battle to productivity.
I have a novel and a nonfiction book I'm aching to write, but I can't do it with one half hour on a Saturday, 10 minutes Sunday, and then 3 hours two weeks later, etc etc. It's like flood gates that, once opened, are going to be really REALLY frustrating and disappointing to close, and those are also threads that I'll lose and not be able to find again. There is a reason that everything I've written for the last 5 years has been "microfiction" and poetry. Bursts. Because being able to leave something and come back to it? As-fucking-if. Most of my saved writing notes and research are on a broken laptop, and some is on a hard drive that's been replaced but is still somewhere in the house.
Part of the issue is that too many things are important to me, and I have a hard time letting go of any of them. Part of the root issue is that this frustration represents me feeling out of control in general, and like there isn't room for me, in my life.
I've begun to fantasize about having my own rooms, like a wing of the house nobody else ever goes in except to tiptoe carefully or sit near me for conversation without disturbing anything, as I work on something mindless (like crochet or chopping vegetables). It's unrealistic and it's selfish buuuuut it's also a beautiful vision, that wouldn't disturb my ability to read with children and then fall asleep in someone's arms, at night. The way that, say, my own apartment would.
What's that, you want to run and play, or get on Minecraft? You're having an argument? You want to eat cereal and then leave the bowl on the table with milk spilled next to it? Absolutely, in the main house. Have fun! DON'T LET MY DOOR HIT YOU :)
A girl can dream.
I think as I read over this last section that there might be a few simple things I could do to help alleviate the worst of this one... I'll have to think about it a bit more. And why it's suddenly bothering me more than it has in years.