1989 Doldrums, and other stuff

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Titles:
I am amused by some of the titles people choose for their blogs.

My own, for example.

It started out as "Moraine", on AOL journals. A moraine is a pile of mixed rocks dropped by a glacier, and I think it did sort of suit, but it was rather esoteric.

When I moved to Blogger, I changed the title to "I Don't Understand". I liked that, because it was so very apt.

When I had to move the blog and go into hiding for a while, I changed the title to "The Silken Touch". I like it as a bunch of words (and there are men who think it fits), but it doesn't really suit the blog because I snipe and complain a lot here. Not exactly a silken touch, even though sniping and complaining here releases me to be more silky in real life.

I'd like to go back to "I Don't Understand", but I won't, because I don't like it when other people keep changing the titles. I forget who they are. I lose continuity.

.... I changed my mind on the course of this post. I'm not going to comment on specific titles, mainly because I'm not able to think of synonyms to disguise them. But I'm thinking mainly of those that, like "The Silken Touch", set up expectations in the title that just aren't met in the content. It must be awfully hard to live up to some of those titles.

A little humility is a good thing.

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The Doldrums:
This entry, Medical Matters #1 :: The Furious Compassion of Diligent Dr Payne, from La Bête, is a perfect description of what I call the doldrums. A kind of loss of motivation. Not exactly depression, because I still enjoy things that drift past. I'm sort of in doldrums these days. With me, it's sort of like I've stopped moving, and I'm waiting, waiting for something to happen, a breeze to come up and move me on.

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Today:
My nose and sinuses are still complaining, and I'm coughing a lot, but the cold medicines are doing nothing. I stopped at the pharmacy and bought a sinus-dryer-upper, and that's working better. (If you could hear me now, you'd wonder what "worse" must be like.)

Lunch with Vinnie and Piper. I had a bowl of very good cheese broccoli soup. I rarely eat soup (the only kind I like is "cream of"s and bisques), and although today's soup was very good, with lots of nice big pieces of broccoli, it reminded me why I rarely eat soup. When it was finished, I felt empty. Soup just doesn't fill me. Lunch? What lunch?

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Frustration:
There's a woman in M3nsa that I've had some run-ins with. She's a drama queen, I mean ultra drama queen - to the point of faking asthma attacks when anyone passes on the street with a cigarette within 20 feet of her. Faking! Which pisses me off. She's loud and demands attention. When another friend and I were entering menopause, she decided she was, too. She was 35 at the time, and had hotter flashes, worse sleep, and bigger mood swings than anyone ever. And it's going on 15 years now that she's been menopausal.

We have a hardship committee, which pays the dues of any member who has run into difficulty and can't afford the dues. I'm on the committee. One of the other committee members moved away, and I was unaware that this woman had been appointed to the committee until we got a request to review.

The member requesting assistance wrote that he and his wife had spent their savings on IVF attempts earlier this year, and now he has discovered that he is losing his job. This is what the committee was set up for.

Well, the drama queen and her husband have no children (good choice). She's vehemently and loudly anti-population growth (I don't know that her husband ever had a voice in the matter). Anyway, she voted to deny the assistance request, because she disapproves of what the guy spent his savings on. That's the only reason she gave, and there's been no reasoning with her.

I pointed out that last year's recipients were a guy who has no job and is incapable of holding a job because he's a total idiot, and a woman on disability who blew her budget on a fantastic sound system. And you want to deny this guy because he wanted to have a child? Her response, in effect, "Yes. No one should have children, let alone blow their savings to make one."

The woman is past reason. Pardon me while I go bash my head against a wall.
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