a wolf angel is not a good angel

Last night, I had to explain to my family what a buttplug is. Why? I don’t know. My sister had decided to repeat the word (which she didn’t realise actually meant something — neither, oddly, did my mother) in gales of laughter. I got to describe the shape of one, as well as that concrete enema story. Also the tales of discussing whether it was a type of dildo or not at my last job. Today my sister asked me why anyone would want to use a buttplug (”to keep farts in?”) and, really, I did not want to go there. I sort of vaguely explained, very vaguely, and tried to explain how it was not something sick without actually explaining anal sex to my 12 year old sister.

Happy new year, all!

Apparently I should not be actually thinking about things — analysing things just makes them worse, or confuses you about things.

Of course, this is a NYTimes article: not necessarily the best imaginable science writing. And a study that says that depressed people spending some minutes thinking about themselves get *more* depressed is not exactly breaking news, or that if we want to change something, the best thing to do is go out and change it, not think about it.

Though I would argue you need to think about it to figure out what you need to change — perhaps I’d argue that because I like thinking about things.

I finished the book The Collaborators today, and I was, in the end, disappointed. The blurb talked about how it was a story of the balance between large and small causes, your country and your family, how far you can or should go to save others.

Spoilers! I don’t particularly recommend the book, but fair warning.

(more…)

I’m pretty sure the rash is a sun allergy. Though I’ve never had this before. I guess I will see: if it disappears shortly after I get back in the cold north, it’s something sun-related, if not, it’s something bad. Comparatively bad, anyhow, though I am not really pleased about this idea of a sun allergy. I wear suntan lotion!

But right now my hands are creepy and swollen and getting past itchy to painful. Today I forgot the anti-histamine, but I do have cortisone cream. Last night it made it better, so hopefully tonight it will do the same.

Itch itch itch itch. Itch.

I have this free-floating anxiety. I’m not entirely sure what it is. Part of it is the job security I feel I lack: I just bought a place! What if I lose my job and can’t find another and . . . blah blah dull. But not because it has been making me worried. I’m not sure why. I still have some savings, I have family who could help for a while, I could always sell . . . and yet and yet.

But the anxiety is more than that, only I am not sure where else it is, what it is about. It’s at night mostly, before I fall asleep, or while I cannot because I am too worried. It is not constant, but when I notice I’m *not* anxious, of course there it comes again, ruining the moment.

I still blame this on Prozac, which made me so anxious I cannot describe it.

The worst thing, though, is how I am avoiding figuring out why I am so anxious, or where the anxiety rests. Usually it’s easy to do: think about thing x and y and z, one after the next, see which one makes my breathing seize up. Right now I am unable to make myself do so and I cannot say why. Am I avoiding something, or is there no reason at all, just depression squeaking out in a different form?

Obviously I refuse to think about this puzzle enough to come up with an answer.

Especially from those up in the frozen wastelands up north. But I seem to have a rash — heat rash, I assume, though it’s also swelling a bit too — all over my right hand and right foot, and it’s going up my leg and a little onto my left hand. Being in the sun is not helping, but I will soon enough have to stay inside that I am coping (mostly by scratching and complaining), but it’s really obnoxious.

Sigh. I wrote a whole complaining post about Wordpress, but it got lost. I am now on 2.0. So far: I am unimpressed with the new admin interface, hate the changes to the write post page, and it did not fix my stupid mysterious theme problem. My support request seems to be responding only to the weird plugin problem and not the comment problem, which is the one I actually care about. I am frustrated.

But it looks like everything is working. If it’s not — you can’t comment, you can’t whatever — please let me know.

Update: looks like I got the theme to work again.

PZ Myers posted about religious people who are not anti-evolution — Orthodox Jews. Now, this is true: generally, a Jew who has been well-educated in religion does not believe that the Torah is *literally* true — nor do you actually need to believe in God to be Jewish (which is why I call myself an atheist Jew, though I tend more agnostic than atheist).

But — and I had a reasonably good Jewish education, as not-very-religious-families go — I never learned this until I was an adult. (Well, the atheism part, anyhow. I believe I got the evolution part while I was a teen.) When I was in elementary school, I was told that dinosaurs were from an earlier planet that was failed, so God smushed it up and started over again. I did not believe this, though I did not notice then that this also conflicted with the standard Genesis story. I don’t remember exactly when I was told this — I know it was in response to my asking about dinosaurs, but other than that, I can’t really say much about it.

I also didn’t get that Judaism is more about doing than believing, not until I started studying for my Bat Mitzvah. Unfortunately, I disliked my rabbi, so this turned me off religion rather more. Plus, of course, I didn’t believe in God. I *wanted* to — it sounds so nice! someone up there looking out for me! someone making sure things happen for some reason![1] — but I couldn’t. No one ever told me I didn’t have to. (Well, of course I knew I didn’t have to believe in God, much of my family does not, and they still are Jews, but somehow things didn’t click for me.)

The problem — or a problem — is that Montreal Judaism is supremely conservative. The Reform temple is huge, and — I don’t know, it doesn’t fit, somehow, I’ve never liked it. The Reconstructionist one is smaller, but the rabbi has veered incredibly rightward, more Conservative now than anything else. Unlike most cities with sizable Jewish populations, there doesn’t seem to be a small group of 20 or whatever people branching off and doing something, well, less conservative. And I wouldn’t know where to start reading things (this book seems like maybe a good start). Normally I would jump in but somehow I feel I can’t. My mother has no such worries and has been happily reworking the Haggadah to be more meaningful to her (which mostly means more contemporary and more feminist). And I appreciate it too, and have sent her things for it, but I don’t seem to move there myself.

There’s nothing exactly wrong with the standard sort of education I got — but it leaves out all the things that make the religion important to me, or would, if I knew about them. Family is important, but eventually a seder is a little boring for family togetherness time. For a while, this is what the traditions meant: family. But sometime in the past few years it changed, and I do not know how or why.

[1] This isn’t strictly accurate as Jewish theology goes, but what the hell.

A meme I am somewhat late in getting to.

1. Books are the first things I buy when I have spare money, but the first thing I cut out when I feel worried about money.
2. I hate getting rid of books, even ones I dislike and don’t intend to reread.
3. I don’t like owning hardcover books. They’re too annoying to cart around — big and heavy.
4. On the other hand, I prefer to get hardcovers from the library. They’re harder to forget about.
5. This explains why most of my purses are big enough to carry a hardcover book around. I have a few that fit only a paperback, but only my fancy party purses (one black, one seed pearl from my cousin, which was my great-grandmother’s) aren’t big enough to carry a book at all.
6. I listen to books on tape on long drives, but not otherwise.
7. I don’t care what happens to most of my books, as long as they’re readable and not in totally ruined condition — this includes cracked spines and dogears and water splashes. I am careful about other people’s books.
8. I hate writing in books — notes or highlighting or comments whatever — with a deep and burning passion, however.
9. I read in the bath all the time. Also the shower. You just have to be a little careful. Or not care (see above).
10. Also I end up sleeping with books. This is incredibly uncomfortable.
11. When I was little, we drove to Maine a few times a year. That’s a boring drive. So I trained myself to stop getting sick while reading in the car. I am now losing this skill.
12. My friends and I used to compete about who did what reading related thing first.
13. I choose books at the library primarily based on the title, though I feel this is unfair because I cannot title things well.
14. My secondary book-choosing mechanism is cover art. This means I rarely pick up new science fiction or fantasy unless I have heard of the author or the book itself, despite being a fan of these genres.
15. I am a compulsive book rereader. Even books I hate. It’s like comfort food, except not edible.

The problem with this vacation is that there are too many ways I want to relax at once. Nap? Do one of the multiple puzzle things I have? Read? I can’t do them all at once, but I want to. It seems somehow backwards and not relaxing — almost anxiety about getting in all the relaxing things I would like to do. But on the beach — even the windy, inadequately warm beach[1] — this is not the worst of all problems. And in the end I am getting lots of reading done (though I am stalling a bit on a book about Nascar) and a fair bit of other things done and no, I don’t have a list exactly, it just seems like it because I do have a large pile of books.

[1] I acclimate really quickly to warm, unlike cold.