What I Learned Today

After five days of visiting my nieces (2.5 years and <2 weeks old, respectively), I’ve learned some relevant lessons.

• Toddlers are really good at figuring out what their points of leverage are. (“Mommy can physically pick me up and move me, but she can’t make me eat…”)
• As adults, we send mixed messages and do hypocritical things all the time. We don’t realize it until we encounter a strictly literal individual, like a two-year-old.
• When a toddler refers to a container of sour cream as “ice cream”, it’s not actually worth correcting her (unless you’re really interested in having a knock-down-drag-out argument.). Same with her stuffed “tiger” (actually a leopard), “Hot Dog” (Mickey Mouse), “snack” (can only refer to chips/crackers/pretzels, not fruit/cheese/anything currently undesired), and that prize word: “mine” (telling her that it’s yours is like bear-baiting). Not every moment is a teachable moment.
• I’d forgotten how much fun rolling around on the floor and tickling someone is, especially a giggly two-year-old who keeps laughing, “I got you!” even when you’re the one getting her.
• Projectile vomiting is not, as I had thought, just a funny phrase used by the over-inebriated.
• Breast milk has natural antibiotics (!) and you can use it to clear up mild eye infections, such as those caused by blocked tear ducts. This actually worked!

Other experiences that capture my week:

• On a walk, we encountered a flower. Me: “I wonder what kind of flower that is?” Toddler: *throws a rock at it*
• Toddler, after breakfasting: “I’m done!” Me: “Okay.” Her: “No! I want to tell Mommy!”
• I walked in after an afternoon trip to the grocery store. Toddler: “Daddy!” Me: “No, Daddy’s still at work.” Toddler, running past me to check the garage: “Daddy daddy daddy!” Me: “No, he isn’t home yet.” Toddler, echoing in garage: “DADDY!” Repeat for five minutes. (She does love her Daddy!)

I’m already looking forward to my next visit. :)

On Sunday, I drove out to Amboy Crater in the desert between Barstow and Needles. More on that later. On the drive out I listened to the LibriVox recording of How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day, a book written in 1912 by Arnold Bennett. It’s a delightful book with tips not about time management per se, but more about how to enjoy living your life in the hours available. His tips include:

• Get up earlier in the morning. You don’t really need as much sleep as you’re getting, and it keeps you from more interesting mental activity. “Most people sleep themselves stupid,” he quotes.
• Difficult tasks are good for you. He lauds the “necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done,” indicating that this is what separates him from the cat on the hearth. Well, he has a point; the deliberate choice of difficult endeavors is not something a cat regularly attempts.
• You aren’t really tired when you get home from work. “Mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity […] all they want is change, not rest.”
• His prescription: use the morning commute to train your mind to focus on something, anything, of interest, and keep it there for the whole time. Use the evening commute to learn about your self: analyze your behaviors, desires, goals, and really get to know what makes you happy. Use 3 evenings a week to, basically, improve yourself: e.g., pick an art you like (music, ballet, theater, etc.) and learn about how it is produced, its details, its history, and your enjoyment of such performances will be greatly heightened. Or do some “serious reading”, by which he means, specifically, “difficult reading.” He recommends “imaginative poetry” as the most difficult sort, and therefore best for you. He recommends starting with “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which I am now intrigued by and have placed on my to-read list.
• Reading time should be split half and half between reading and reflecting on what you have read. I find this an interesting proposition. He notes that you will make slower progress, but it will be richer progress. This seems likely to be true, yet could I force myself to spend so much time on reflection and analysis? A good challenge!

Overall, I found the book thought-provoking and very entertaining as a reading (listening) experience alone. It’s only 1.5 hours long spoken, so I imagine it’s an even quicker read… consuming a minimal amount of your 24 hours.

Last semester, I joked that I’d somehow gotten ahold of a virtual Time-Turner, since I was taking a class at USC that occurred at the same time I was teaching at Cal State LA, on Thursday evenings. This was possible since I was taking the class through the Distance Education Network, and therefore could view the 2.5-hour lecture on my computer at a later date (usually the weekend).

Santa sometimes has a funny sense of humor, and this Christmas he brought me (among many other wonderful things) an actual Time-Turner. And yet — while it was pretty cool to be able to turn time last semester, unlike Hermione I didn’t actually end up with any more hours in the week. By the end of the term, I was aching for a break. So I held my Time-Turner and realized that, rather than a symbol of incentive for double-booking, really it was more of a warning — a caution against that kind of stacked-up crazy schedule.

But did I heed the warning of the Time-Turner? No. By the time January rolled around, I’d already committed to an even crazier term: working, teaching an entirely new class at Cal State LA, taking yet another class at USC, all the while trying to write a Master’s thesis so I can graduate this spring. None of them are technically overlapping in time, but (just as when the Time-Turner let me spread things out) all together it’s still a gradually suffocating weight.

Thank goodness my teaching duties end with the winter quarter at Cal State LA. As of March 15, I’ll have one less thing to occupy my energies. And if I ever propose this sort of schedule again in the future, someone kindly strangle me with the Time-Turner’s chain.

Last night, I spent a fun evening playing board games (new: Container!) and engaging in geek talk. Oh, how I love a good intellectual discussion! (You know, like the Salon des Geeks.) I guess it’s the geek version of a jam session; everyone hangs around and throws in their particular views or brings up new themes as the thought strikes them. Here’s what the idea buffet served up last night:

According to the latest evidence, Homo sapiens apparently did not evolve from Homo erectus. Both of us, plus Homo habilis, came from a common ancestor — erectus and habilis were different (less successful) offshoots.

There’s an anti-aging chemical that reverses effects such as a loss of elasticity in connective tissue which has been doing human studies since 2001 (and shown that it helps with, for example, hardening of arteries). However, the chemical’s patent expired, so it is now in the public domain, and no pharmaceutical company therefore is interested in finishing the (expensive) trials needed to get it FDA-certified.

I claimed that irradiated food seems to be unavailable because people are scared of the word “irradiated” and therefore wouldn’t buy it. Others noted that irradiated food can actually have a bad taste, since the irradiation process can damage the “good” proteins in, say, milk, not just the “bad” (bacterial) ones. So there might be a valid taste-reason that irradiated milk is inferior to un-irradiated (bacteria-laden) milk. Also, apparently many people agree with this statement: “If you had some radioactive milk, boiling it would make it safe to drink.”

As annoying as shopping is, it can be viewed in a more positive light if you think of it as an act of exercising your financial power. I like that.

And to follow up on my comment about carbonated fruit, there is actually a company, Fizzy Fruit, that is marketing it.

There was much more, and it got very late, and it was a great evening overall.

It has nothing to do with heaven.

I’ve observed that I persistently fill any available time with new adventures and activities. It’s not that I don’t like being alone, or idle, in itself. But sometimes I take on a bit more than I can handle, and something doesn’t get done, and I’m disappointed. So the question is, why do I keep doing this? Why not just sit back with a reasonable status quo and let it tick along?

The answer seems to be that I need to be challenged. It’s not just that I like to be challenged. I need to be pushed. Courses often give you this push, forcing you to spend hours working on homework or preparing for exams. Deadlines at work provide pushes, too. But in the absence of that sort of external force, I cannot resist imposing my own push on myself. I like the feeling of accomplishment when I go further than I thought I could, or achieve more, even when there is risk of failure — perhaps even more so when there is risk of failure. And sometimes I do fail (or at least dissolve into a puddle of stress). But somehow I keep coming back for more.

I sometimes despair at this tendency, since it seems inevitably to ratchet up my stress level. But I think I can at least articulate why I do it, and little self-knowledge goes a long way.

I’m constantly worrying away at my boundaries. How high can I jump? How fast can I run? How many degrees can I get? I like to live right at the edge of my capability, right at my limits. I like to know that there are limits. I like to be pushed to exceed those limits — and maybe even to expand the limits in the process. In taking on more commitments, maybe I’ll be forced to find ways to be more efficient, which will extend my time-reach. Maybe I’ll find more ways to trade money for time. Maybe I’ll learn the tricks needed to run faster, jump higher. Some core part of my being rejects a static existence, a single fixed optimum that solves “enough” of what’s out there. What’s existence for, if not to continually get better?

It’s time for bed. I’m off to slay dragons in my sleep.