Light and Momentary

The Thursday Murder Club

I borrowed the first Thursday Murder Club book from the library when Swistle blogged about it last month, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were some spots where the plot seemed to get away from the writer, and some authorial decisions that made me say "...really?" but it was so sweet and funny that I couldn't put it down. I requested the second one right away, and I'm in the middle of it right now. This will be a short post, in fact, because I want to put on my fleece pajamas and read about murders in my nice cozy flannel-sheet-covered bed. Nothing says hygge like some nice cozy murders, right?

Now that I know the characters, they are even funnier. They make me laugh and laugh. I am hoping the body count will be a little lower in this book than in the first one, because I do not actually love reading about murders, but I will read about murders for the sake of spending more time with these characters. I want to invite them over for tea and a lemon drizzle cake or perhaps a Victoria sponge.

I am reflecting on the Sherlock Holmes stories I loved as a kid, and I am remembering how often they focused on crimes other than murder. The Red-Headed League: theft. The Copper Beeches: an involved strategy for ditching a persistent boyfriend. The Blue Carbuncle: someone is eating the wrong goose for Christmas, oh no! But it seems like contemporary crime fiction tends to require dead bodies rather than geese gone astray. I myself would enjoy crime fiction and movies more if there were more misplaced geese and fewer jump scares, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.

Doctor Knows Best

There's been a lot of talk about the difference in the public's response to 1950s polio vaccine campaigns and its response to the 2021 COVID vaccine push. There's been a lot of justifiable frustration about folks who say they've done their "research" when the research consists of dubious Facebook links shared by people inside their echo chamber. (I say this as a person with an echo chamber of her own, just so we're clear.) But there hasn't been, I don't think, much focus on the changes in the culture of medicine.

In my ten years as a La Leche League Leader, I often thought about the paternalistic approach to medicine that the founders of the organization were responding to when they started hosting meetings in 1956. "Your baby isn't getting enough food; that's why he's nursing so often," said doctors who didn't know anything about normal variations in maternal storage capacity. "Your milk isn't rich enough," said doctors who didn't know that the fat content of human milk is a moving target, changing across every feeding and over the course of every day. "Formula is scientifically designed to give babies what they need," said doctors who didn't know that the absence of LC-PUFAs in 1950s infant formula could influence both the structure and the function of infants' brains. 

Don't even get me started on the long-since-debunked obstetric nonsense that was the norm in 1950s maternity wards -- practices that were hard on mothers, hard on babies. When the founders planned their physician-attended births at home, they were reclaiming their autonomy in a way that inspired many thousands of women to figure out birth options that would work well for them and their babies.

At the time, the demise of the "doctor knows best!" approach seemed to me like an unambiguously good thing. I mean, sure, doctors know best about some things, but they may not know a lot about lactation. "Watch for your baby's cues," I said to the women who came to meetings and called me seeking help. "Your baby will tell you what he needs."

There's a lot of truth in that, I continue to think, but even then it was clear that a person could take it too far. There was some anti-vaccine sentiment among the moms who came to meetings, along with some reluctance to set limits with toddlers, and there were an awful lot of people trying to determine whether their babies were fussy because they'd eaten too many tomatoes or too much broccoli or whatever else. (NB: It is very unlikely that a tomato in mom's diet will cause a baby to cry.) Sometimes your baby's cues are not the most reliable source of information. Sometimes the things that seem true to you are not actually true.

I would still say it's a good thing that we've left the "doctor knows best!" days behind us. Informed choice is better than uninformed lack-of-choice. But an emphasis on informed choice is going to mean that some patients wind up more informed than others, and some patients make better choices than others.

I was hopeful that we would see 1950s levels of enthusiasm for the COVID vaccine. It really does seem to me like a gift from God that these vaccines became available so quickly and have worked so well to reduce disease transmission, severity, and mortality. I guess, as with any gift, you can't predict how people will receive it.

43

I have spent too much of 2021 counting down the days until the next thing. The spring semester was so hard -- I was constantly adjusting the mental tally of days completed/days to go. My summer class was also really hard and I was doing the same kind of countdown there. The fall semester has been much better, for the most part. It's so nice to be back in the classroom again. On the work front I'm back to my usual level of tallying: the end of week 12 means 80% of the semester is over. But it is the beginning of Dark Season, which always makes me feel a little gloomy. There are 43 days until the winter solstice, when the days will get brighter again.

Things I am doing: taking fish oil, working out consistently, getting enough sleep.

Things I am planning to do: use my full-spectrum light instead of thinking "I should use my light", eat a little better, read the book on hygge I checked out of the library in hopes of finding my inner Dane.

Tonight I made cocoa for Stella and me to drink while we watched an episode of the show we've been watching about Taronga Zoo. I am hopping into bed just as soon as I publish this post, with fleece pajamas and a fun book to read.

The usual Dark Season challenges are augmented this year by some not-really-bloggable stuff. Seasonal affective disorder with a side of someone else's untreated mental health issues -- it's not my favorite. But I think I can I think I can. One day at a time, right?

Recommended

I bought a copy of Mark Shea's most recent book not long after it came out, but then it sat on my Kindle for a while. It's called The Church's Best-Kept Secret: A Primer on Catholic Social Teaching [affiliate link], and I really like it. I wasn't enthusiastic about starting it. Mark Shea can be strident on social media, and I didn't know how much of that might spill over into this book. But I am finding the book to be very compelling and not at all strident. It is both easy to read and thought-provoking.

Back to the gym with Joe

I asked Joe if we could lift together while he was home this weekend, because I was pretty sure I could bench a hundred pounds today, but only pretty sure. It was so nice, you guys. I miss that boy when he's away. He spotted me and -- milestone alert! -- I did indeed bench a hundred pounds for the first time. 

The nice thing about going with Joe is that he will give me as much or as little input as I would like. He has many, many sensible thoughts on how to optimize efficiency, but he also knows that it can get a little overwhelming to hear about 25 things I could do differently. So I tried a wider grip for bench, based on his comments (he was right about that, by the way), and I didn't worry too much about whether I was fully extending my arm for every single rep of incline bicep curl. 

I love having someone to chat with about how much harder it is to do incline bicep curls. 

Scrappy underdog songs

Recently Youtube suggested that I might like to watch a video about musicians in an airport who started playing music when their flight was delayed.

Much as I hate to admit it when Youtube is right about my taste in videos, I did want to watch that video. It made me want to learn to play the Irish bouzouki, and it also made me curious about the singer.

You don't have to dig very far into Daoirí Farrell's music before the Youtube algorithm serves up this suggestion:

I love this song. I was expecting it to be a lament about the sad death of the bonny white hare, but -- plot twist! -- that's not how it unfolds. I love the figurative twist of his lip when he sings "pedigree greyhounds" and I love the bouzouki accompaniment. (I'm still thinking about acquiring an Irish bouzouki, but maybe I should just learn how to play the banjo that is already in our house instead of buying another instrument.)

I might need more songs about scrappy underdogs in my life. Any suggestions?

"I want to put that in my MOUTH."

Back in the spring of 2020 I ordered goodies from New York Shuk for the first time, and I continue to shiver with delight every time I lick the spoon I've used to add preserved lemon paste to something. I feel about it like Miracle Max felt about his MLTs-- so perky.

Recently I bought a bottle of kafe hawaij, and I find that I am using it all the time this fall. It's nice for chai, it's delicious on roasted squash, and I used it for soul cakes on Tuesday. Just tonight I mashed together sweet potatoes and squash with butter and a healthy shake of kafe hawaij. Pete smelled the result and his eyes went wide. "I want to put that in my MOUTH," he said, and proceeded to gobble it down. Maybe you already have the individual spices in your cupboard, but the proportions in this blend are just right.

If you find yourself in need of some fun fall treats for your own household or some fun fall gifts for someone else's, I've been pleased with everything I've ordered from NY Shuk. This is not a sponsored post, just an appreciative one.

Antennae: Permanently Aflutter

In yesterday's post I didn't even tell you about the nascent friendship Thing that was most on my mind. It felt too weird and vulnerable so I wrote about a coffee meet-up from a month ago instead. But here it is: I had an odd lunch with a friend this week.

We were on the retreat team together last month, and after the retreat was over I sent her an email. It said something along the lines of, "Hey, I really enjoyed getting to know you better during the retreat preparations. Would you like to meet up for lunch sometime?" It took a little back-and-forth to set a date, and then we had a weather-related cancellation/reschedule, and then we finally got together this week.

The whole time, she seemed kind of irritated. This could have been a zillion things, I know. Maybe the maintenance light had just come on in her car and it felt like ONE MORE THING for her to deal with. Maybe she's having some kind of friction with a loved one, and she didn't want to talk about it but also couldn't quite set it aside. OR MAYBE-- she was irritated because she didn't really want to have lunch in the first place. Or because, even though she had warmly assured me that eating outside was fine, she actually didn't want to be outside. Or because I had ordered online and she had not, so she had to wait in line and it was a zoo in there.

In my life I have been in situations like this a kazillion times. Other people get annoyed at stuff. Sometimes it's my fault, mostly it's not; annoyance happens. It just felt unusually bothersome afterward, as if I could have prevented it with a little additional forethought or perhaps a little less personal quirkiness.

I think the pandemic has recalibrated my awareness of other people's unhappiness. Sometimes when I am lecturing it's like there's a little alarm going off: THAT STUDENT IS BORED!! SPEED UP!! BE FUNNY!! STOP BEING BORING!! It happens in office hours, too: THIS STUDENT IS UNHAPPY ABOUT THE THING YOU JUST SAID EVEN THOUGH YOU HAD TO SAY THE THING. I feel more aware of the way that a joke lands, or doesn't. 

This week in one of my classes I am talking about autism spectrum disorder-- about challenges with managing sensory input, and difficulties with making sense of other people's emotional states and responding appropriately. Just today I was talking to my students about how we refine our understanding of the workings of peer relationships by experiencing peer relationships. I'm pretty neurotypical, or at least I like to think so, but phew! No wonder people on the spectrum struggle with this stuff.

I suppose it's not surprising that I would need to recalibrate after so many months of connecting with other people asynchronously and through screens. It's as if I have relationship antennae, and right now they aren't really distinguishing between "light breeze you can ignore" and "gale that requires you to take shelter immediately." Here's hoping my antennae and I figure it out soon.

Friendship at fifty-something

I am lonely.

I have a little circle of true dear long-time friends, all of whom I've known since 1980-something. We text each other all the time, even though we don't see each other often. I have a wider circle of friends who seem happy to see me when we cross paths. But I am finding that making new friends or strengthening recent friendships is not easy for me these days.

Some of it is COVID. Some of it is that people are busy. I guess my worry is that some chunk of it is also about me.

Someone I knew when we were doctoral students together took a job at Gladlyville U. Her building is across the street from mine and I asked if she'd like to have coffee. I thought we had a very pleasant conversation about being academics with big families. But I am not sure she would agree. I emailed afterward and said, "That was so nice -- let's do it again sometime." She said, "Maybe next semester!" 

She is busy; I know she's busy. She commutes for an hour to get here, and her kids are younger than mine with a full slate of activities, and she's pre-tenure. It doesn't have to mean that I misread the situation completely.

It just makes me wonder if I misread the situation completely.

I have heard lots of people say that adult friendships are hard, so I hope it is not that I am too quirky or too intense or too...whatever else. But you know, after a while a person starts to wonder if maybe she's the problem.

Party like it's 2004

It's November 1, friends, and even though I am the only blogger I know who longs for the days of NaNoBloMo, when all the cool bloggers would write a post per day for the month of November, I am gearing up anyway. Thirty days, thirty posts, here we go.