I've been thinking a lot about the nature of family lately--it's a constant theme in my life what with my troubled relationship with my mother--but my sister just visited this weekend so it got me thinking even more about what family means.
I'm nearly 10 years older than my sister, so we were never exactly close growing up. Sure, I babysat her, fed her, changed her diapers--but we were always too far apart in age to ever be real siblings. That has changed now that she's older and on her own. In a very real sense, it's like I just found out I had a sister a few years ago, because we don't really share too many childhood memories.
I'm very glad I have a sister, and that we have each other amidst all of the family craziness we share. It's just odd being looked up to as a kind of surrogate mother-figure at times, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. She has different memories than I do of our mutual time at home (she was 8 when I left home at 18), and overall we have different influences given that we have different fathers and family histories. But for all of that, we have become close, at first mostly out of mutual disgust over the actions of our selfish mother, but more recently, we are starting to develop a relationship all our own.
All of this makes me realize how fortunate I am that I got out, and that I had the strength to get out, and stay out. I'm glad if I am an example for her that life can be lived in a (mostly) sane fashion, that you can build your own family if your real one sucks. I am sorry for her that she has no one, and I understand now why she has the boyfriend she does--she needs family! I wish I lived closer to her, I think it would do a world of good for her to have me nearby, and maybe even for my mother too--but if I moved back there it would ruin me, I would probably resent being cast in the role as everyone's rock, and my marriage would probably end over it because my husband can't stand their drama. Maybe I'm being selfish by wanting my own life; does that make me as selfish as my mother in the end, albeit in a different way?
It would be interesting to see a tv montage of what might have been had we never left Louisiana...I do think about that sometimes, probably more often than I should. But I have no regrets.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Have We Forgotten How to Do Everything?
If you don't already know, I listen to the Today Show while getting dressed in the morning because I like my daily dose of spite. Most days it's the same old yawn-inducing crap--some white child is missing, another kid succumbs to bullying, or some hack has a new book out--ho-hum. Every once in a while though some truly asinine story will piss me off, and last week it was a story about cooking.
The segment was about how preparing your own meals at home can not only save you money, it can help you lose weight and be healthier.Then I overheard a credulous female voice saying, "Cooking is really not as difficult as people think it is." DING DING DING!
Do you understand what pissed me off about the segment? Well let me explain it anyway in excruciating detail.
I'll end with words from Voltaire's Candide, which if you haven't read, you absolutely must go out and get a copy and read it. NOW.
Cooking, you say? How could a brainless Today Show segment on cooking possibly piss you off?
The segment was about how preparing your own meals at home can not only save you money, it can help you lose weight and be healthier.Then I overheard a credulous female voice saying, "Cooking is really not as difficult as people think it is." DING DING DING!
Do you understand what pissed me off about the segment? Well let me explain it anyway in excruciating detail.
You see, preparing food has been around for EONS, and people have known how to do it forever--and yet we now seem to live in a unique time where we can fly airplanes, make Velcro, and tiny tiny batteries, yet people are apparently so retarded that they have to be reassured about cooking because they are afraid of it. The act of cooking is apparently so foreign to the collective mainstream consciousness now that fucking John Stossel needs to be called upon to launch an investigative report called, "The Crisis of Cooking: Debunking the Myths'' or some shit.
Intriguing that this Crisis of Cooking comes at a time when there is unprecedented coverage of professional cooking on the Food Network and regular TV in the form of celebrity chef shows, food porn segments, food throw-downs and challenges. And don't forget The Biggest Loser, which tells me America hasn't forgotten how to eat, they just don't remember how to render raw foodstuffs edible for themselves.
Intriguing that this Crisis of Cooking comes at a time when there is unprecedented coverage of professional cooking on the Food Network and regular TV in the form of celebrity chef shows, food porn segments, food throw-downs and challenges. And don't forget The Biggest Loser, which tells me America hasn't forgotten how to eat, they just don't remember how to render raw foodstuffs edible for themselves.
After my instantaneous rage over the Crisis of Cooking segment subsided, I got to thinking about where we are at the beginning of the 21st century. There is no question that, by and large, we have forgotten the basics for sustaining human life in the even of a sudden collapse of our (unsustainable) economy--cooking, gardening, canning, hunting, gathering, sewing, dressing properly for winter. We have also forgotten how to be civil and polite to one another, another of my pet peeves, and a topic for another time. In essence, we have now become grunting mongrels who would turn on each other over the last Twinkie at the end of the world.
Maybe this is why there seem to be so many movies in the last decade about the zombie apocalypse, nuclear disaster, ice-age, and earth-destroying asteroids. I think these movies are desperately trying to calm our unconscious fears of surviving despite our lack of survival skills should we find ourselves in that situation! If civilization were rolled back to zero overnight by some random viral or supernatural event, these movies ask, what the hell would the paltry survivors do with themselves? Why, they would become truck-driving vigilantes who take over the nearest grocery store or shopping mall, content to barely eek out the rest of their pathetic lives at subsistence level on Twinkies (hell, those things last forever), that's what!
Interesting that you never see anyone plant a garden and learn to peacefully fend for themselves in most of these movies. What you see instead is a consumerist culture fantasy, one where we can ransack grocery stores and shopping malls at will, pillaging and plundering the foodstuffs that we so desire, shooting those that stand in our way. Oh, the humanity!
I'll end with words from Voltaire's Candide, which if you haven't read, you absolutely must go out and get a copy and read it. NOW.
Pangloss: "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunégonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbéd the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."
Candide: "All that is very well, but we must go and work in the garden."
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Don't let the bastards grind you down.
Today I ran 12 miles without stopping, and it took me 2.5 hours. That is the farthest I've run to date. Yesterday I did Zumba, which made me sore for today's run, but I ran anyway. I was momentarily jazzed because my time today means I am definitely going to run a sub-3 hour half-marathon next month. Which isn't great by super-athlete runner standards, but it is fucking amazing by mine.
Tonight I checked my RSS feeds. The woman who writes the stupid running blog I read just ran her first post-baby half-marathon, and she did it in fucking 2h7m, and has the nerve to complain that she's "out of shape," that it wasn't her best, blah blah freakin' blah. Even my super-in shape husband didn't run his 12 miles today in the time that she ran her half-marathon! What is this bitch complaining about?
The thing is, running is the kind of activity where you really only compete with yourself, in the end. You compete with your previous personal records, and battle your own personal demons every time you hit the pavement. But sometimes you can't help but compare yourself to how others perform. It made me feel like shit to read this woman's post about her tragic half-marathon time, just like it made me feel like shit when a 77-year old Japanese woman beat me (by mere minutes) last year at the Stockade-a-Thon. This Japanese woman and I crossed paths at a few races last year. Surely I can outpace the shuffling grandma, I thought. And most times, I did, but that one time, at my first 15K, she outpaced me. I have since learned that where you start relative to others in a race does matter. No more starting in the very back for me. She won't outpace me again.
I know I shouldn't care about these things, but they do bother me. I aways seem eager to piss on my own achievements--why is that? It also doesn't help that someone made an off-hand comment to me yesterday about a 1-hour Zumba aerobics class being harder than running. Said by a non-runner, of course. The class was tough, but I completed it, and I don't think it's harder or easier than running, I think the two activities just aren't comparable. I wish I had shot back, 'well YOU try running 12 miles and see if you can do that, then get back to me.' Stuff like this shouldn't bother me, it should roll right off, because I am focused, and I have been training hard, and I'm proud of how far I've come. And yet it haunts me.
Here I am, at the end of week 7 of my self-imposed half-marathon training, and instead of feeling on top of the world, I feel like utter shit tonight. Maybe I just need to have a good cry and go to bed.
Tonight I checked my RSS feeds. The woman who writes the stupid running blog I read just ran her first post-baby half-marathon, and she did it in fucking 2h7m, and has the nerve to complain that she's "out of shape," that it wasn't her best, blah blah freakin' blah. Even my super-in shape husband didn't run his 12 miles today in the time that she ran her half-marathon! What is this bitch complaining about?
The thing is, running is the kind of activity where you really only compete with yourself, in the end. You compete with your previous personal records, and battle your own personal demons every time you hit the pavement. But sometimes you can't help but compare yourself to how others perform. It made me feel like shit to read this woman's post about her tragic half-marathon time, just like it made me feel like shit when a 77-year old Japanese woman beat me (by mere minutes) last year at the Stockade-a-Thon. This Japanese woman and I crossed paths at a few races last year. Surely I can outpace the shuffling grandma, I thought. And most times, I did, but that one time, at my first 15K, she outpaced me. I have since learned that where you start relative to others in a race does matter. No more starting in the very back for me. She won't outpace me again.
I know I shouldn't care about these things, but they do bother me. I aways seem eager to piss on my own achievements--why is that? It also doesn't help that someone made an off-hand comment to me yesterday about a 1-hour Zumba aerobics class being harder than running. Said by a non-runner, of course. The class was tough, but I completed it, and I don't think it's harder or easier than running, I think the two activities just aren't comparable. I wish I had shot back, 'well YOU try running 12 miles and see if you can do that, then get back to me.' Stuff like this shouldn't bother me, it should roll right off, because I am focused, and I have been training hard, and I'm proud of how far I've come. And yet it haunts me.
Here I am, at the end of week 7 of my self-imposed half-marathon training, and instead of feeling on top of the world, I feel like utter shit tonight. Maybe I just need to have a good cry and go to bed.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Some Pig
Stephen Hawking has announced that God did not create the universe, that the existence of gravity makes spontaneous creation inevitable. Why not just come out and say 'there is no God,' Stephen Hawking? I know why--imagine the zealots who would plot to kill the poor bastard. Not that I care about God (with a capital g)--I don't believe in a divine clockmaker who looks down on us humans, shaking his head in bemusement at our foibles. I'm not sure I ever believed that.
I don't know why we humans think there must be a god out there somewhere, a divine creator--I'm just fine acknowledging that it's the cold, deep heart of space that stares back at us, and it's that same void that will envelop us in the end. Knowing that space and planets and stars exist while we slowly rotate around the sun is enough to humble me. After space, belief in an omniscient, gendered being seems superfluous and ridiculous when you get right down to it.
But I get why people need religion. I do. Really. My understanding of religion is that it serves a very important, repressive social function. I've been reading about sexual repression in the fictionalized account of Alfred Kinsey's team and work, The Inner Circle, by T.C. Boyle. Kinsey and his (male) team wanted to eradicate sexual repression, and therefore eliminate feelings of guilt and criminality associated with certain sexual acts, in order to open up humans to the sexual panoply that is theirs for the taking. Problem is, you can't have people going around fucking any and everything and everyone all the time, or the world would look like an Hieronymus Bosch painting. One grave factor that Kinsey didn't seem to consider important was that someone realizing their sexual potential might at times infringe on the free will of another person, that is, might rape them and stunt their development. (I also think Kinsey himself probably was probably on the autism spectrum, or was at very least, a single-minded sociopath.) It is no exaggeration that women would lose in this kind of open, libidinous, pan-sexual scenario. This is why animals fight each other to mate with females, and why extreme puritanical restrictions have been placed on female sexuality since the dawn of time. Such an eradication of boundaries can only lead us back to the chaos from whence we came. This, in a nutshell, is why religion and social law exist. Anyone who argues to the contrary in favor of plural or open marriage forgets the obvious fact that they too were born into and live within the context of an ordered world, and that their behavior is the exception to the rule.
At some point, atavistic urges must be contained, restrained, and retrained if a species is to progress; hell, if a species is to survive into successive generations at all. When we were cavemen, I'm sure there were cave orgies every night, with cave people murdering and fucking and eating each other left and right. We were animals, pure and simple, guilt-free and unconscious; monkeys for whom behavior had no consequences. Sure, life's a party, but that shit can't last! Then the Monolith arrived and we became conscious of other things to do with our time, and the possibilities of what we might become began to emerge out of the darkness.
What is religion if not an agent of control, a "right and clear path" established in a world of free will and entropy? "Do unto others" is the golden rule, and we have laws in place to reinforce good behavior and punish bad. As I have learned from watching one too many shows about demons, vampires, and supernatural entities (and maybe from CCD), being evil is easy, the path of least resistance; being good and principled is the thornier path to take in life. Have you ever tried turning the other cheek? It ain't easy. Much more satisfying to slash and burn to make your point. What would Jesus do indeed.
I know I certainly prefer living in an ordered world, with police, electricity, plumbing, the internet, movies, garbage collection, house plants, deferred gratification. At this point in time, humans have mostly mastered the art of impulse control. Mostly. (Some might argue that we have replaced sexual urges with food, but that's a different topic for another time.)
There are no gods or demons out to get us; these are just metaphors we humans have created in an effort to help us understand ourselves, and life in general. We are self-conscious, self-loathing, dirty, pathetic, insecure, ingenious, comedic, poetic creatures. Try as we might to control our world, order it to our liking, things in our nature will always bubble up to the surface, just as in "The Tempest," despite all of Prospero's careful planning, Miranda will always see Ferdinand and exclaim:
"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!"
It's up to us, what we see in the stars.
I don't know why we humans think there must be a god out there somewhere, a divine creator--I'm just fine acknowledging that it's the cold, deep heart of space that stares back at us, and it's that same void that will envelop us in the end. Knowing that space and planets and stars exist while we slowly rotate around the sun is enough to humble me. After space, belief in an omniscient, gendered being seems superfluous and ridiculous when you get right down to it.
But I get why people need religion. I do. Really. My understanding of religion is that it serves a very important, repressive social function. I've been reading about sexual repression in the fictionalized account of Alfred Kinsey's team and work, The Inner Circle, by T.C. Boyle. Kinsey and his (male) team wanted to eradicate sexual repression, and therefore eliminate feelings of guilt and criminality associated with certain sexual acts, in order to open up humans to the sexual panoply that is theirs for the taking. Problem is, you can't have people going around fucking any and everything and everyone all the time, or the world would look like an Hieronymus Bosch painting. One grave factor that Kinsey didn't seem to consider important was that someone realizing their sexual potential might at times infringe on the free will of another person, that is, might rape them and stunt their development. (I also think Kinsey himself probably was probably on the autism spectrum, or was at very least, a single-minded sociopath.) It is no exaggeration that women would lose in this kind of open, libidinous, pan-sexual scenario. This is why animals fight each other to mate with females, and why extreme puritanical restrictions have been placed on female sexuality since the dawn of time. Such an eradication of boundaries can only lead us back to the chaos from whence we came. This, in a nutshell, is why religion and social law exist. Anyone who argues to the contrary in favor of plural or open marriage forgets the obvious fact that they too were born into and live within the context of an ordered world, and that their behavior is the exception to the rule.
At some point, atavistic urges must be contained, restrained, and retrained if a species is to progress; hell, if a species is to survive into successive generations at all. When we were cavemen, I'm sure there were cave orgies every night, with cave people murdering and fucking and eating each other left and right. We were animals, pure and simple, guilt-free and unconscious; monkeys for whom behavior had no consequences. Sure, life's a party, but that shit can't last! Then the Monolith arrived and we became conscious of other things to do with our time, and the possibilities of what we might become began to emerge out of the darkness.
What is religion if not an agent of control, a "right and clear path" established in a world of free will and entropy? "Do unto others" is the golden rule, and we have laws in place to reinforce good behavior and punish bad. As I have learned from watching one too many shows about demons, vampires, and supernatural entities (and maybe from CCD), being evil is easy, the path of least resistance; being good and principled is the thornier path to take in life. Have you ever tried turning the other cheek? It ain't easy. Much more satisfying to slash and burn to make your point. What would Jesus do indeed.
I know I certainly prefer living in an ordered world, with police, electricity, plumbing, the internet, movies, garbage collection, house plants, deferred gratification. At this point in time, humans have mostly mastered the art of impulse control. Mostly. (Some might argue that we have replaced sexual urges with food, but that's a different topic for another time.)
There are no gods or demons out to get us; these are just metaphors we humans have created in an effort to help us understand ourselves, and life in general. We are self-conscious, self-loathing, dirty, pathetic, insecure, ingenious, comedic, poetic creatures. Try as we might to control our world, order it to our liking, things in our nature will always bubble up to the surface, just as in "The Tempest," despite all of Prospero's careful planning, Miranda will always see Ferdinand and exclaim:
"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!"
It's up to us, what we see in the stars.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tired Tuesday
I was going to call this post 'Angry Tuesday' but wanted to use the magic of alliteration again like last week. Besides I'm not so much angry as I am tired. What am I tired of? I'm tired of taking abuse, and having to thank others for the privilege, that's what I'm tired of.
Basically, I'm tired of bullshit. Specifically other people's bullshit (OPB).
See, I have more than enough bullshit of my own to trudge through everyday, but I don't take it out on other people. You know what I do when the shit gets real bad? Sometimes I have a glass of red wine or a vodka tonic at night to help calm me down so I can sleep, that's what. I don't construct accusatory essays of how I'm right and everyone else is wrong, and how my life is sooo hard I shouldn't be held accountable for being a jerk when I'm a jerk. That for sure I don't do.
So, Tuesday, I'm saying that I am tired and stressed from working through my lunch break today to deal with myriad bullshit on top of bullshit, I have internal nasal pain that I've never experienced before, my foot hurts from running yesterday, and I'm tired. Yeah, that's right, Chickin is TIRED. Tonight was my night off of running, and I had a glass of wine to calm myself down after the day I had. And now I'm heading to bed before 10:00 like I'm 80 years old--and I will get up and do it all over again tomorrow. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation indeed.
Blerg. Bedtime.
Basically, I'm tired of bullshit. Specifically other people's bullshit (OPB).
See, I have more than enough bullshit of my own to trudge through everyday, but I don't take it out on other people. You know what I do when the shit gets real bad? Sometimes I have a glass of red wine or a vodka tonic at night to help calm me down so I can sleep, that's what. I don't construct accusatory essays of how I'm right and everyone else is wrong, and how my life is sooo hard I shouldn't be held accountable for being a jerk when I'm a jerk. That for sure I don't do.
So, Tuesday, I'm saying that I am tired and stressed from working through my lunch break today to deal with myriad bullshit on top of bullshit, I have internal nasal pain that I've never experienced before, my foot hurts from running yesterday, and I'm tired. Yeah, that's right, Chickin is TIRED. Tonight was my night off of running, and I had a glass of wine to calm myself down after the day I had. And now I'm heading to bed before 10:00 like I'm 80 years old--and I will get up and do it all over again tomorrow. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation indeed.
Blerg. Bedtime.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Thankful Thursday
I'm going to take time out from my usual sarcastic, cynical rants and post something positive for once. A running blog I read regularly had a blog post of the same title today, so I thought I would draw inspiration from that and take a moment to be thankful for the things that have happened in my life in the past week. Here goes:
1. Last week my husband finally got a bona fide, salaried job in his field, with benefits and all, and making more than he has in the past doing the same work. He has been laid off for over a year, and has been working a grunt job since March. Things have been tough for us, not just financially, but also relationship-wise. He has been suffering from slight depression and an overall sense of worthlessness. In fact, we didn't know how tough things had been for us until we experienced the release of good news after all this time. Things are looking up!
2. I spent a great week with my crazy family last week. I ate too much, drank too much, didn't get enough sleep--but it was worth it because it is going down in the annals as one of the best family visits, ever. The only thing that could have made it better is my husband's presence, but there will be other visits. Also, a trip to London to visit family might materialize in the near future.
3. My mom may have finally broken up with her emotionally-destructive and physically abusive boyfriend of 5+ years. She left him and was looking for houses last week when I was there...she wants a place of her own, away from him. Though I'll hold off believing it until it finally transpires, that's still something to be thankful for.
4. We started our 1/2 marathon training this week despite recent runninglaziness setbacks, and so far we are sticking to it. We've run 8 miles this week with 5 to go by Sunday, totaling 13 for Week 1. It hasn't been easy, but I will get there.
5. In my immediate friend realm, I am happy for friends who are expecting, and another friend who is expecting to get engaged very soon. Lots of happy events will be occurring in the coming year, and I feel lucky to be a part of it all.
Wow. FIVE things to be thankful for--that's quite a lot! All of this positivity is making me depressed however; I'm going to bed.
1. Last week my husband finally got a bona fide, salaried job in his field, with benefits and all, and making more than he has in the past doing the same work. He has been laid off for over a year, and has been working a grunt job since March. Things have been tough for us, not just financially, but also relationship-wise. He has been suffering from slight depression and an overall sense of worthlessness. In fact, we didn't know how tough things had been for us until we experienced the release of good news after all this time. Things are looking up!
2. I spent a great week with my crazy family last week. I ate too much, drank too much, didn't get enough sleep--but it was worth it because it is going down in the annals as one of the best family visits, ever. The only thing that could have made it better is my husband's presence, but there will be other visits. Also, a trip to London to visit family might materialize in the near future.
3. My mom may have finally broken up with her emotionally-destructive and physically abusive boyfriend of 5+ years. She left him and was looking for houses last week when I was there...she wants a place of her own, away from him. Though I'll hold off believing it until it finally transpires, that's still something to be thankful for.
4. We started our 1/2 marathon training this week despite recent running
5. In my immediate friend realm, I am happy for friends who are expecting, and another friend who is expecting to get engaged very soon. Lots of happy events will be occurring in the coming year, and I feel lucky to be a part of it all.
Wow. FIVE things to be thankful for--that's quite a lot! All of this positivity is making me depressed however; I'm going to bed.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
I have no ideas because it's HOOOOTTTT.
We're in the middle of a heat wave in upstate New York and everyone is miserable. In winter it's so cold here for about half the year, that I pray for sunshine and/or temps above 40 degrees all of the time, and now that Nature has finally brought the heat, my ass is complaining along with the rest of them.
There is something mind-numbing about incessant heat like this. Not only can you not think, you can't even do anything to take your mind off the heat. Because the only thing that can take your mind off the heat is air conditioning. It's like HEATHEATHEATHEAT drumming in my brain. I can't run, can't do yard work, can't even sit out in the living room and watch tv. All I can do is hole up in the room with the window unit, drink iced wine, watch DVDs, and read books.
Does excessive heat make you lazy both physically and intellectually? I say YES. Before you go formulating a theory that cites heat as the causal factor for why Southerners are largely stereotyped as imbeciles, I would remind you that air conditioning is pervasive in the Southern states.You need only experience the heat minimally if you live down South. This is because if you are Southern, your home has central a/c, as does every home and public building you could conceivably visit, guaranteed, cher. (Woe to the person who must attend an outdoor sporting event in the summer.) The only time you might experience the full force of the heat is when transitioning between indoor locations, or upon first entering your vehicle, and then it's only a few minutes before the a/c kicks in. These people don't play--they know what heat does to the brain. Remember the Civil War? Katrina? Catastrophic events that were, however indirectly, caused by the excessive Southern heat and made worse by the lack of on-demand air conditioning. 'Nuff said.
But I'm not in the South anymore. Up here in New York, where the summers are (usually) temperate, it is not unusual to have seasonal window units instead of central a/c. We only have the one window unit installed right now, so I have been camping out in our bedroom every night this week with a glass of red wine and my laptop, trying to amuse myself while I stay cool. The pugs have been sleeping with us in here at night, and sheltering in the basement during the day. The flowers in our garden crumple in the heat, and the grass is drying up in spots despite our efforts to keep it watered.
Inevitably my thoughts stray as they always do to ancient peoples and how they would have dealt with the heat. Most probably, they lived near water, and could take a cooling dip in said water anytime they wished. Also, they didn't have 9 to 5 jobs, and so could move about freely and care for their children and loved ones in times of heat crisis. They had no knowledge of soap so didn't care if they were greasy and sweaty. And unlike most of us modern peoples, ancient peoples probably accepted the periods of inactivity induced by extreme heat as par for the course, and were therefore well-practiced in napping. Those ancient peoples had way more sense than we do.
Excuse me while I brave the heat to fetch another glass of red wine.
There is something mind-numbing about incessant heat like this. Not only can you not think, you can't even do anything to take your mind off the heat. Because the only thing that can take your mind off the heat is air conditioning. It's like HEATHEATHEATHEAT drumming in my brain. I can't run, can't do yard work, can't even sit out in the living room and watch tv. All I can do is hole up in the room with the window unit, drink iced wine, watch DVDs, and read books.
Does excessive heat make you lazy both physically and intellectually? I say YES. Before you go formulating a theory that cites heat as the causal factor for why Southerners are largely stereotyped as imbeciles, I would remind you that air conditioning is pervasive in the Southern states.You need only experience the heat minimally if you live down South. This is because if you are Southern, your home has central a/c, as does every home and public building you could conceivably visit, guaranteed, cher. (Woe to the person who must attend an outdoor sporting event in the summer.) The only time you might experience the full force of the heat is when transitioning between indoor locations, or upon first entering your vehicle, and then it's only a few minutes before the a/c kicks in. These people don't play--they know what heat does to the brain. Remember the Civil War? Katrina? Catastrophic events that were, however indirectly, caused by the excessive Southern heat and made worse by the lack of on-demand air conditioning. 'Nuff said.
But I'm not in the South anymore. Up here in New York, where the summers are (usually) temperate, it is not unusual to have seasonal window units instead of central a/c. We only have the one window unit installed right now, so I have been camping out in our bedroom every night this week with a glass of red wine and my laptop, trying to amuse myself while I stay cool. The pugs have been sleeping with us in here at night, and sheltering in the basement during the day. The flowers in our garden crumple in the heat, and the grass is drying up in spots despite our efforts to keep it watered.
Inevitably my thoughts stray as they always do to ancient peoples and how they would have dealt with the heat. Most probably, they lived near water, and could take a cooling dip in said water anytime they wished. Also, they didn't have 9 to 5 jobs, and so could move about freely and care for their children and loved ones in times of heat crisis. They had no knowledge of soap so didn't care if they were greasy and sweaty. And unlike most of us modern peoples, ancient peoples probably accepted the periods of inactivity induced by extreme heat as par for the course, and were therefore well-practiced in napping. Those ancient peoples had way more sense than we do.
Excuse me while I brave the heat to fetch another glass of red wine.
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