Artificial

I am a sodaholic. Especially caffeinated and sugared sodas. When my weight exceeds my 5 additional pounds limit (I have a limit as to what I will accept so that I don't feel the need to diet continually during holidays and family visits and times of great stress) I break out the diet sodas. (Diet Cherry Coke is acceptable right now, and Diet Dr. Pepper was ok until I ran out of those.) But with all the chatter and "research" on aspartame, et al, I am trying to cut calories in other areas and just drink the regular Dr. Pepper.
I get migraines on a regular basis, and the diet drinks are becoming a trigger for the headaches. Caffeine helps though, so I can't go totally off the sodas. And I don't like 7-up or Sprite unless there is some alcohol mixed in with it!
Breathing unfiltered air when the honeysuckle and crape myrtle are blooming is another trigger. For the last couple of days I have been able to drive back and forth to work in our repaired A/C'd van, allowing me to enjoy the blooms without the pain.
I have long thought that the migraines I get before major rain and thunder storms were related to pressure changes, but tonight I think worrying about all the people in the hurricane path may be more of a trigger than the pressure change. Lack of sleep is a migraine trigger. I like to read to settle my mind to make it easier to fall asleep (Patricia Cornwell is my writer of choice just now) and as I am about ready to drop the book and pull up my quilt, my husband will come in all excited and upset about something financial. Or he will be talking about the possible starters for his favorite college (American) football team, and quoting weights and how often they work out, and I totally tune out except for his voice keeping me awake. He really needs some male friends he can talk and discuss these things with. He needs a "red hat society"-type group designed for aging/graying or balding men. In his case, they can wear bright orange. I "like" football, and I enjoy watching the games on TV with him, but the pre-season stuff, or the politics of conferences and rankings leaves me weary. And migraines are always waiting to pounce! I went 3 days last week without needing a decongestant or my migraine pills or even aspirin, and tonight I feel like they are at my brain's check-in desk and are demanding a room with a view. Maybe even a suite!

I need to try posting more often as I have been forgetting the procedure between times! It might also help if I tried posting earlier in the evening, instead of early in the morning! And I might get to that sooner if I wasn't caught up in surfing through other blogs, and following the links they post (tonight's surfing led me to reading about several post 9-11 groups: The Brudenhof Peace Barn & Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation were 2 I felt very inspired by; and several Philippine bloggers...I read some of those to see if they mentioned places I visited as a military-dependant teenager. Totally different times and locales from when I was there. But interesting just the same.

Angst

My dictionary defines "angst" as a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.

When you are anticipating something that you have no control over, whether it be a good thing or not, you may feel angst about it.

The "anxiety" may be about whether the event or situation will evolve the way you desire, or whether you will perform an action in the best manner, or if someone else will do or say or be what you expect, and if the outcome of the event or situation really matters to you, a feeling of angst may precede the event or situation.

You may feel angst about a reunion. You may feel angst about a business meeting or interview, or a speech, or a sale, or a class, or an examination, or even a party or holiday.

You may feel angst about telling someone something that you know they will be unhappy to hear about.

You may feel angst when you expect to hear someone tell you something that you don't think you will enjoy hearing. It may be angst or it may be barely contained hysteria.

When you feel angst about too many things that typically occur in your day (starting up the car, driving down the highway, answering the phone, opening a bill, discussing finances with your spouse, turning out the light and trying to go to sleep), then you need to get help. Just talking about it isn't enough. Just writing down how troubled you feel isn't enough.

If you don't have someone you trust to tell your anxieties and worries to, someone who will listen uncritically and help you decide what you want to do and just help you get through the angst of it all, you can blog.

And then later you can delete.

Arithmetic

I dislike mathematics. I don't trust the concepts that I think I learned some eons back. I know I can figure percentages and I know I can estimate stuff... but I prefer having a calculator close by and I will worry a chart to pieces if the mathematics is bogus. (Think: big company politics as relates to sales goals and multipling various numbers not really related just so you can get some kind of point system to score a contest.)

The reason I prefer any subject to math is that I moved frequently as a child and I never got a full understanding of the goals of many common arithmetic processes. When someone starts reciting specific percentages and various averages and starts talking about how you can play with the equation to obtain a result....I tune out. It's a defensive mechanism. I don't have to pretend I understand because the discussion is boring me to the point of extinction. While my military family moved from base to base and I switched schools and teachers and textbooks, I lost continuity (I DO know some mathematical terms!) of lessons and I always felt that I didn't have all the pieces of the secret puzzle that leads to happiness and the ability to balance a checkbook. Ok, add the interest too. I mean my interest in balancing the checkbook, not what the bank pays to your account because you let them borrow your money for a little while. I could care less if the checkbook is all neat and orderly with all the entries (credits and debits) duly noted and balanced. I don't care as long as I have enough in the checkbook to insure that my checks won't "bounce". ( I don't think "bounce" is a true mathematical term.)
My mathematical insecurities have led to many spousal arguments and finally to a humorous acceptance that I will only spend my "allowance" and that I am permitted to treat shopping as therapy. Other military kids, and kids with migrant parents, and kids who have been raised by a succession of adults who may or may not be related to them: all of us have insecurities because we were unable to sink deep roots into communities who knew our strengths and our weaknesses and our talents and our bad habits and the habits of our ancestors and our assorted siblings, and knowing all this loved us anyway. Some of us became high achievers who were determined to make those inconstant communities sit up and notice us, and some of us gave up on ambition because historically we knew that it would be wasted effort as we would soon be moving again and we understood that it was better just to ride the waves that we were given and not worry about tomorrow's waves. Some of us also didn't do well with long term peer and love relationships because we didn't have the necessary life skills training and experience that comes with mending fences and patching up things with the on-again, off-again friends who would still be there when we got up the next day and who would still be there when we graduated from junior high to high school and who might also attend the same college. We rootless children had friends who moved away or we moved away and we would write one or two letters and then we would make a new best friend and we slowly forgot the ones from "my last school".

But mathematics is critical to an optician.
We have to be able to recognize the numerals that a doctor may scribble on a prescription copy, and we have to be able to recognize if the doctor (or their chairside technician) has forgotten an element of the Rx. We have to be able to evaluate the form that the prescription correction will take in various eyewear and we have to be able to recontruct the doctor's form to make the Rx into a usable pair of eyewear even though the doctor may have specified only one solution. We have to be able to do this without tampering with the Rx and we have to be able to explain it to the patient. And we have to make the final product look and feel good. It doesn't hurt if we can do it swiftly and discount the price. (More math.)
Therefore (you didn't think this would ever reach a conclusion, did you?), I have developed a healthy respect for SOME math. And I have a healthy respect for the paycheck that allows me to mostly ignore my checkbook.

~~And one concept will always give me trouble: why is it that no matter what age my skin is on the outside, and no matter what age my joints complain of on the inside, my brain and my emotions still say I am seventeen years old and always will be????

Somewhere lost in time and inside of me, in one of those near forgotten and misty black and white photo places, is a new kid who just wants to fit in with the cool people, and who just wants to be able to pass the algebra exam, who is daydreaming of getting asked to the prom, and who has not yet been introduced to bifocals.

Air conditioning

Ever think about how the air you breathe can affect your thinking?

I was driving to work after noon today in a small hot car with open windows, in nearly 98 degrees heat... for 12 miles, trying to stay under 60 miles an hour for the 55 mile an hour limit...and I started to feel lots of love for my family and my work friends and the people I help each day.... I was thinking that my life is really pretty special!
And once I got to the mall where our optical shop is...and parked and hiked in toting my purse and frozen dinner and soda cans and assorted migraine remedies... and then I walked into our shop and remembered that we still don't have AC in the store: the stink of the chemicals and the smell of high index lenses being cut (think: burnt hair) and the noise of the portable fans were like a filthy blanket I had to pass through... if the back door had been unlocked I would have kept on walking and left!

I hate being spoiled by AC. I hate high index lenses. I hate the sound of fans and trying to talk over them!

August times

Near Sights is my blog journal.
I am "a wannabe blogger".
Part time.
Seriously graying.