Author Archives: asher

Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class, Now With 100% More Kelly!

Dec 6

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We did Essentials this morning, which was enough for my recovering respiratory system.  Our friend Kelly came and was able to hang in throughout class.   Yay!

Barre was lovely.   A week off the bike means my hip flexors were nice and loose, so I had high extensions and an effortless full left split.   It was just like, “Oh, look, here I am on the ground!”   (The right was pretty close, but not all the way there).

Except for chaînés across the floor, we didn’t do turns today (not even at the barre).  Just little jumps followed by grand jetés.  The grand jetés were fun, as always, and I focused on keeping my upper body together and not going all squidly.

At one point one of the girls whose names I don’t know because I’m a  horrible person and I went together, perfectly synchronized but on opposite legs (this makes sense to you if you’re a horse person :D).  We looked really cool in the mirror, even if it wasn’t actually something we planned (I started on the wrong foot, somehow).

I was reminded of that cool synchronized dressage drill where you and a partner canter (with lots of collection, ideally) down the centerline on opposite leads and turn off in opposite directions at C (looks even cooler in counter-canter).  Ballet: it’s people-dressage!

Margie wanted us to focus on really traveling in our leaps.  I didn’t quite have the aerobic capacity today to manage to clear the studio in two jetés, but I got across in three every time.  A couple even looked pretty 😛

In other news, my chaînés are magically becoming solid.  This feels awesome, because chaînés are basically my nemesis, you guys, and also something I shouldn’t struggle with at this point.  I made the mistake of noticing this during my first pass and promptly ceasing to spot halfway across the floor. (You know how it is: “OMG I’M DOING IT AAAAAAAUGH!”)

Fortunately, because I have bizarre ear problems sometimes and thus have tons of practice moving while dizzy, I managed to finish my pass and not fall down at the end, even if I did wind up tracking a bit diagonally.  So that was cool, too. Thereafter, I paid attention to my spot.

For what it’s worth, while Kelly would disagree, I think she looked very good considering that this was her first class back after a significantly longer break from dancing than mine. 

She has beautiful feet, and her leaps may not yet have been super high, but she did them with straight knees and pointed toes.   She also has a very graceful way of carrying her upper body and arms.  Her musical theater (like, actually-performed-in-New York musical theater!) and modern dance backgrounds come through there.  She’s also not at all afraid to ask questions in class.

I am happy to have Kelly in class and very much looking forward to watching her re-emerge as a dancer.   Exciting stuff!

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Lucky

Dec 5

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We’re going to visit my parents in Connecticut in January, and I’ve been looking around for a ballet class to squeeze in while we’re up there. I’ve been surprised to find few options — there are adult options at a number of schools, but most seem to offer only one or two classes a week (and so many happen to be on Thursday — is there something I don’t know about Thursday?).

There are a couple of notable exceptions — Hartford City Ballet, for example, offers five adult open technique classes (and a conditioning class, which is one offering I wish we had — we do have Pilates, though).

I’m reminded again how lucky we are to have access to Louisville Ballet School’s robust adult class offerings — nine ballet technique classes per week, not counting the 6-week Intro Pointe class that happens once in a while. I’m not even counting non-ballet offerings (tap; something called “fitness fusion,” which might be ballet conditioning masquerading as a general fitness class; and Pilates, which doesn’t appear to be on our Winter Break schedule).

It surprises me that LBS, a school attached to a small company in a small city in a part of the country where the arts are vibrant but always struggling, offers such a robust adult program in what is presumably a much smaller adult-ballet market than one would expect in the Northeast. Not that I’m complaining! I’m just surprised.

I think the topic of how to cobble together a reasonable class schedule sorted has been bandied around the adult ballet boards at Ballet Talk for Dancers quite a bit, but I guess I still hadn’t realized how challenging it can be.

Any thoughts out there on why things shake out the way they do? How do class offerings look in your necks of the woods, fellow dancers? Do you think LBS’ offerings are more typical or more atypical for a ballet school in a moderate-sized city?

***
Update

The New Haven Ballet has a nice selection of Open Division classes, so I think I’m going to try to work their Friday morning class into our visit. I’d love to visit Yale’s Peabody Museum while we’re up there, so it works out nicely for me.

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Scheduling; Afternoon of a Faun

Dec 4

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I’m starting to feel human again this morning. Not quite ready for prime time, but awake and together enough to finish my homework, get some review done, pay some bills, and maybe do a little writing today. It’s good to feel like things are winding up and room is opening up for creative work. Also rather nice to be pretty convinced that this little thing I’ve nicknamed Thanksgiving Virus (which has snagged about half the people I know) is, in fact, just a little thing, and will go away on its own.

I’ve decided to repeat the math class I took this semester. I might finish this semester with a B; I might not. Regardless, I don’t feel like I’ve really mastered the material, so I’m going to repeat the class.

I’ve popped it in my schedule for Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 9:30. That won’t interfere with my plans to do class Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (ballet class: it’s funny how ballet takes over your life, and “math class” continues to be “math class,” while “ballet class” just turns into “class”).

__

In other news, if you haven’t seen the brilliant and moving documentary on Tanaquil LeClercq, Afternoon of a Faun, you can catch it on Netflix streaming, or you can rent it from Amazon‘s streaming service for $3.99 (it’s not Prime eligible, but it’s absolutely worth the $4 to see it or the $10 or so to buy streaming rights).

Afternoon of a Faun is not only a touching story about a brilliant ballerina struck down in her prime, but a keen reminder of what medicine has done for us; what we stand to lose in today’s anti-vaccination foment.

I’m not sure what further to say. LeClercq’s spirit and strength are inspiring, as are the stories told by her contemporaries and the vintage performance footage. If you haven’t seen it, watch it.

That’s it for now.

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I Am Good At Three Things

Dec 3

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  • Riding Bikes
  • Dancing
  • Obsessing About Food

Actually, I suppose I’m good at more than those three things, and there are certainly things I’m better at than I am at riding bikes and, loathe though I am to admit it, dancing (I like to pretend that I’m really awesome at dancing, in hopes that one day soon I really will be, though at the rate I’m making it to class right now, that’s going to be some time in 2075).

It so happens, however, that — perhaps because Pride Goeth Before The Fall, etc. — after boasting inwardly about how proud of myself I am for making it through one whole semester without being sick enough to miss a day of class, I have managed to come down with some nasty (but not dangerous) infectious thing during the last week of the semester.

Whereby I have now missed a class due to illness (I went to school Monday morning, discovered that we didn’t actually have math class [because my poor prof got called in for jury duty!] and promptly turned around and went home, thus missing Senior Seminar).

Which is a sentence fragment.

About which, in my present less-than-entirely-coherent frame of mind, I am unconcerned.

Anyway!

So now, having survived my Last Day of Class for this term, I’m busy lying around and not dancing because, seriously, nobody wants me in ballet class in my current condition (snotty, wheezy, full of inappropriate gastric noises, vague, feverish, “pale and interesting”). And because I cooked my brain doing maths homework and going to class, I am not trying to review for my math final right now, or to write (in case you’re wondering — nope, blogging does not count), or to do anything else that could be construed as “useful.” Nope. Instead, I’m lying around being useless and going crazy on Pinterest. And listening to my cat purring his hilarious purr, which sounds like a normal purr on the inhale and like one of those bird-shaped water-whistles that you used to get at the Strawberry Festival at the local Catholic church on the exhale.

Somehow, in my muddled, befuddled state, I have suddenly noticed that Pinterest is amazingly full of recipes for pretty miniature desserts — just the sort of thing that (again owing to my muddled, befuddled state) I am currently pretending I will make and serve to guests at the sparkly little holiday party I am pretending I will throw. Some of which simply involve dipping things that are already desserts in melted chocolate and then dipping the in colorful sprinkles, which even I can do, though I should probably wait until I’m doing being contagious and horrible.

Heck, I’m not even sure why I’m writing this. I was going to try to link to thinks on Pinterest that I am finding immensely interesting right now, but on second thought, that just sounds too hard. So, instead, here’s a link to my JustDesserts board:

It has twelve things on it now! It will probably have even more any moment now! Exciting things covered in sprinkles and chocolate!

So, um. Yeah. There we go. And in the interest of not making this post any less coherent, I’m just going to go ahead and post it without attempting to proof-read it*, and then I’m going to go pretend I’m watching a movie but probably really fall asleep because the cat is on my feet shooting out his soporific beams.

Moar ballet soon. I promise**.

Notes
*Okay, so I went back to add tags and categories and made a couple of small changes. I am a horrible lying liar.
**Seriously, I expect to be back in action on Saturday, even if I am only up to doing Essentials. Besides which, our friend Kelly is planning on joining us in class! Class with 100% more Kelly! w00t! They should seriously give me a gold star or something for my recruiting efforts. BALLET FOR EVERYONE!!!!

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This Time of Year

Nov 27

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This time of year I tend to get a little frazzled — fall semester is short, and everything seems to be happening at once, and instead of preparing for the long cleansing breath of summer break, we’re preparing for the Frenetic Rush of Holidays (which we do much less frenetically, it would seem, than many, but it’s still more than enough for me!). I’m tired, overtaxed, and irritable because I haven’t been to ballet class in Way Too Long.

So it’s easy to lose sight of those things for which I’m thankful.

So I think I’ll plunk them down here.

First and foremost, the lovely people — both in “Real Life” and on The Innertubes — who make my life so amazing.

Second, ballet, ballet, ballet. I am so freaking ridiculously grateful to live in a town with a good ballet school, one where I can take class until my head explodes, one where our teachers push us and expect us to learn the material and to grow and stretch and challenge ourselves.

Third, school. I am grateful to have the opportunity to go to school and pursue my dreams. Heck, I’m grateful to finally have some freaking idea what I want to do when I “grow up.” I am grateful to my lovely husband for having suggested Dance Movement Therapy, and I guess I’m grateful to Dance Movement Therapy for existing … and I’m grateful for the opportunity to hit up the conference this year, and immerse myself in the world of DMTs, and walk away feeling like, yes, these are my people, who understand people like me.

I’m grateful for my bicycles, and my bike peeps (even though I haven’t been on a real ride in aaaaaages). I’m grateful for the capable body that lets me ride bikes and dance. I’m grateful for the bus system that carries my bikes around on longer trips, making the bike-and-bus intermodal option so practical. I’m grateful that between the bike and the bus I can get to ballet school, no sweat.

I’m grateful for my lovely husband, who has somehow managed to remain sane in the face of my highly-strung, hyperactive, bipolar nature. It’s been a tough year in some ways, and he has been there for me at every turn. And he also looks adorable in tights ^-^

And … well, there are a billion other things. When I’m feeling grateful, I feel immensely grateful, for everything — for all the miraculous beauty of the sky and the power of nature and for the fact that the ocean exists, even though right now I’m too darned far away.

I’m grateful for the unending act of creation that is the process of life; the fact that we are free to create and re-create ourselves over and over; that it is never necessary to stop growing and evolving.

I’m grateful for my cat, who keeps my knees warm when I’m not dancing and uses his vibrating massage feature to keep them comfortable ^-^

And. Yeah. All that other stuff, too. Everything. All kinds of stuff. I’m grateful.

So there you have it; my ridiculous mildly-tipsy stream-of-consciousness I-had-a-really-great-day-today Thanksgiving post.

And thank you, all of you who read my ramblings. You’re great, too. Thank you.

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Post Is Unrelated

Nov 26

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I am something of a language nerd, and I enjoy reading articles written by other language nerds about language-related nerdery.

This morning, I ran across a good one (link to follow here) explaining where to put apostrophes in familial names on holiday cards (the short answer: don’t).   The author wondered about the source of our confusion about the use of apostrophes, but didn’t propose a hypothesis.

I’m an overachiever, so I have two.

First, many of us don’t read much — or, rather, we read text messages, news blurbs, forums, and blogs, but we spend a lot less time with texts edited by editors who know how to use apostrophes.  

We mostly encounter apostrophes in contexts in which their use is as likely to be incorrect as it is to be correct (around here, I’d argue that they’re actually more likely to be used incorrectly, but bias might be skewing my perceptions).  Seriously, drive by a strip mall and check for stray apostrophes, and chances are good that you’ll find plenty(1).

In short, we’re missing the substrate of experience that would allow us to confidently infer whether and where an apostrophe is appropriate.

Second, and much more importantly, we’re battling uphill against the power of idiom and homonym (a battle that can be won, potentially, by reading a whole lot, which helps to overcome the ambiguity of spoken English as it relates to written English).

Case in point: when we say we’re going to visit someone, we often do it using a truncated version of the phrase, “We’re going to the So-and-sos’ house” – we say, “We’re going to the So-and-so’s.”  

The context remains possessive (“I’ll be at Dave’s if you need me,” rather than, “I’ll be at Daves if…”).   This trips us up when we try to refer to our families using a plural proper name.

Because the plural and possessive forms of “So-and-so” sound alike, we forget that they’re spelled differently (q.v. other commonly misused homonyms: “too, to, two,” “they’re, there, their,” “its, it’s”).   Because we don’t have a good “feel” for the rules that govern the use of apostrophes, we choose the most familiar form – which, unfortunately, is also the wrong form.

In short, we treat family names as if they are being used within the context of a familiar possessive phrase (“The Dawsons’ house”) but apply the more familiar singular possessive (“The Dawson’s…”) rather than the less familiar plural possessive (“The Dawsons’…”).

In fact, when we say, “Happy Chanukah from the Singers,” we’re not using a possessive sense at all.

Fortunately, as with many of the arbitrary rules of English grammar, there are shortcuts to correct usage.  

The easiest way to remember whether to employ an apostrophe in a greeting is to swap out the family name (which is plural) for a personal name (which isn’t) that doesn’t end in ‘s.’   If you’re already a bit confused, names that end in ‘s’ only muddy the water.

Exchange “Good Yule from the Cunninghams” for “Good Yule from Pat.”  Make note of whether an apostrophe was required (it wasn’t).  Treat the plural name accordingly even if it ends in ‘s’  – it’s still not possessive in this context.  (For names that end in ‘s,’ just add ‘-es’ to the end: Jameses, Hearknesses, etc.)

If you’re still in doubt, of course, it’s also entirely kosher to simply write out, “Happy Holidays from the James Family.”

So that’s that.   My hypothesis, with a bit of application thrown in for good measure.

…And, yes, I know I split an infinitive back there.   The rule about not splitting them derives from a misunderstanding of the origins of the English language, contributes nothing to meaning, and, I am happy to say, is falling by the wayside thanks in no small part to the original Star Trek.

I  realize this is basically way off-topic.  I promise that I shall return to blogging about ballet, bikes, and bipolar disorder soon.

Notes

  1. I suspect that this only amplifies the problem. Business names do crazy things with apostrophes — take, for example, Chili’s. Is it “The place that belongs to Chili?” Or is it “We’re trying to name our restaurant after that key ingredient associated with Tex-Mex cuisine, Chilis?” Out in the world, you’re likely to encounter a million places with names like “Tinks” or “HotWang’s,” and it’s generally pretty unclear whether the person who name the business is simply unschooled in the correct use of apostrophes or is attempting to employ some kind of play on words (you can be pretty sure that when a business is called something like “Johnsons” or “Changs,” but isn’t actually marketing human beings, an apostrophe has been omitted). Since business names are plagued with bad puns, the context gets even muddier. It makes one long for the strictures of a language such as French or Japanese, in which nobody asks questions like these, because possessives aren’t rendered using apostrophes in the first place.

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In Defense of Anecdotes

Nov 20

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Ages ago, I found myself debating the value of anecdotes with a friend.

He argued that anecdotes should never be used because they can just as easily represent outliers as norms; I argued that they were extremely valuable as vehicles — people remember stories better than they remember reams of data.

I now realize that we were arguing at cross-purposes. He was arguing that anecdotal evidence should not be used to confirm or deny research hypotheses (a position on which we actually agree); I was arguing that anecdotes have a place in explaining the findings of research to people who don’t necessarily know a great deal about statistics and levels of measurement and all that jazz. I have no idea how he feels about that. I’ll have to ask the next time I see him.

It is true that individual anecdotes can’t tell us much about how the world actually works: if we only hear one story, we can’t glean from that single story whether that story is typical or atypical. Therefore, we can’t base statistical analyses on small samples of individual anecdotes, and we can’t make sound statements about causality or even, really, about correlations based on small samples of individual anecdotes.

When we try to ascribe causality based on anecdotes, we run into problems: for example, a book detailing how the use of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) led to one child’s “recovery” from autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) does not actually mean that ABA can produce the same results for all, or even most, kids (or adults) with ASD. In fact, most of the time, it doesn’t (this isn’t to say that ABA isn’t a valuable tool; just that it’s not usually a miracle cure) — but reading one or two books recounting the story of one or two kids who “recovered” can lead to the impression that ASD is “curable” in most or all cases and “should” be cured using ABA(1).

If, as a parent or helping professional, you read only that book, or those two books, and you decide that they represent a typical view of the world, you’ll have based your entire understanding — your entire statistical analysis, informal though it may be — on an anomaly, but you won’t necessarily know it.

A research paper, meanwhile, that looks at a sample of a couple of thousand folks with ASD and examines outcomes of their experiences with ABA will undoubtedly produce a different picture of the efficacy of ABA and the “curability” of ASD. From such a paper, we’ll be able to get a better sense of the relationship between ASD and ABA: does ABA lead to improved outcomes(2) for people with ASD? Such a study will, ideally, also answer a few other important questions:

  • How often do improved outcomes occur?
  • How much improvement are we talking about?
  • How are we even defining “improved outcomes?”

If a study is sufficiently well-designed and well-controlled, we might even be able to draw some inferences about causality(3).

Unfortunately, the results of the research in question will most likely be published only in academic journals and textbooks, only a few of which will actually be accessible to the general public, only a few of whom will actually have the knowledge to interpret the results(4).

Thus, the likelihood that the average parent of a young child with ASD will be able to lay hands directly on sound research is much smaller than the likelihood that the same parent will be able to read a popular, anecdotal book.

This is where the power of the anecdote comes in handy: as researchers and as helping professionals, we have access to data that can help us to convey information to a broader audience — and we can select anecdotes that do reflect statistical realities. We also, incidentally, are often people who are interested in stories: research, to some extent, is about figuring out the “who (even if the who in question is, for example, a chemical messenger or an invisible physical force), what, when, where, why, and how” of things. In short, results can be translated into anecdotes.

Those anecdotes, in turn, can help people feel connected to the subject at hand, which is immensely important. A bunch of dry statistics about ABA and ASD won’t really influence how most people feel about whether ABA is an important and useful intervention or not; a true story, on the other hand, will — but with that power comes responsibility. When they’re used to reflect the realities revealed by careful research, anecdotes should be told in a way that reflects those realities; a way that reflects a typical (that is, an average) experience(5).

We’ve probably all seen television ads for weight-loss products with “RESULTS NOT TYPICAL” emblazoned across the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, biographical and autobiographical books recounting anecdotes about recovery from neurological and psychological conditions aren’t required to carry those labels.

We probably can’t (and, for various reasons, probably shouldn’t) force them to — but we can find ways to tell harness the power of anecdotes to present results that are typical, so potential health-care consumers have a better shot at making informed choices.

Notes

  1. I don’t agree with either of these assertions, by the way; nor do I agree that the ability to function just like a neurotypical person in the neurotypical world is necessarily a desirable or reasonable goal. For some of us, it might be. For others, it’s not.
  2. “Improved outcomes” as operationally defined by the study — I guess operational definitions are a subject for another post.
  3. though this is notoriously hard to do in the field of psychology as a whole due to difficulties both with ethics (we’re not generally allowed to dissect people after applying a drug intervention to see what happened to their brains, nor can we keep them isolated in stimulus-free environments, etc.) and the complexity of human subjects (even if we could keep humans isolated in stimulus-free environments, that alone could become a confound, etc).
  4. In short, this is a skill that’s usually taught at the university level, and then primarily to students in disciplines with strong research components. In the US, that amounts to a fairly small subset of the general populace.
  5. I think it’s okay to mention the outliers as well — those atypical results that look so great, or so awful — but we must do so with the knowledge that, on the whole, most of us expect our individual case to be an exception, and moreover, to be a good exception: one with results better rather than worse, than is typical. In short, we need to present outliers with several grains of salt, and we need to balance the better-than-typical outcomes by also presenting the worse-than-typical ones.

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Plants

I’m at school, working on Serious Research Bizness.  I walk across the library to grab some coffee, and on our book sale table, I see a book called Perennials: How to Select, Grow, & Enjoy.

I am reminded, momentarily, that there is a book in the universe called How to Boil Water, and that I would be very happy if someone would produce a similar book called Perennials: How To Not Kill Them.

That’s it for now.  Exciting Research Update Things to follow … maybe?

Edit: Perhaps ironically, WordPress has decided that it would be a good idea to add a “related post” link to the very optimistic initial post about the pineapple I tried to grow back in the summer.  Note that I say tried.  >.<

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Bipolar: My Cynicism About My Cynicism

Nov 18

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Right now, I’m somewhat depressed.

It’s the kind of depression that doesn’t readily identify itself: listlessness, restlessness, an inability to focus, a rampant cynicism that has to be at least as irritating to the rest of the world as it is to me, or would be if my cynicism about my cynicism didn’t mostly prevent me from sharing it.

I don’t feel particularly hopeless about the future. I couldn’t really say if I’m experiencing emotional pain — in short, I’m experiencing a sort of emotional blankness; a sense that most of the range and brilliance of human emotion is right now unavailable to me. It’s like someone has knocked out the antenna of my emotional wi-fi receiver. Emotions are out there; I just can’t find them. I am experiencing the grinding effect of being stuck constantly on scan and finding nothing.

Well, that and cynicism.

Have I mentioned that I generally abhor cynicism?

Cynicism seems like a coward’s response to the challenge of living in a world where bitterness and horror sit cheek-by-jowl with redemption and beauty. It’s “nothing gold can stay” without the reverence for the first green that is gold; it’s skepticism seasoned with a dash of self-serving bitterness.

I’m fine with skepticism by itself; there’s plenty of room in the world for a healthy skeptic — but I feel like I could do without cynicism, especially my own.

In short, I am not normally a cynic. Hell, I’m not even really much of a skeptic, outside of an appropriate dose of scientific empiricism that drives my academic pursuits. There is something in my nature that believes (for lack of a better word, since “belief” implies a conscious process) in the essential goodness of the world and of mankind — an essential goodness that is not tarnished by the fact that lions eat gazelles (which is, to my mind, an amoral reality) or that people sometimes do abominable things.

There is something within me that normally regards even enormous, egregious acts of human cruelty as small and powerless in the face of cumulative, ordinary acts of good (this doesn’t, by the way, mean those egregious acts are insignificant; that’s a philosophical argument for some other time). It might be irrational; it might not (cogent arguments have been made along both sides) — that’s irrelevant. It is what it is.

Right now I am a horrible cynic. I am the worst kind of cynic — not the pithy, engaging cynic whose ability to frame his or her cynicism in the language of dry humor makes for charming repartée, but the grinding kind who harbors an unkind thought about every little thing (though, curiously, not as much about human motivations). Nothing is good enough because nothing is good — and I don’t mean that in an philosophical sense, but in the sense that right now I seem to suffer from the delusion that the world has been shoddily constructed from the elements of decay.

Bike tubes are made from crappy rubber and will fail, and the process of putting the studs on the Karakoram for winter will be insufferably frustrating, so why bother? It should be no surprise if my dinner is less than delectable. My computer is slow because everything in the world is faulty and awful. Characters in the book I was enjoying just fine a week ago seem flat, weary, stale, and unprofitable not because something has miraculously changed the writer’s ability, but because the circuits in my brain that recognize good stuff and enjoy things are down right now. There is no point in going to the effort of making something to eat other than peanut butter and jelly when I am evidently no longer capable of noticing and enjoying flavors. Etc.

We saw Interstellar this weekend. I guess I enjoyed it reasonably well, under the circumstances: I was sometimes able to click into the visual magnificence of the film, and I didn’t automatically hate every single character. Too often, though, I found my will to suspend disbelief flagging. The sense of wonder that normally allows me to make stunning leaps of faith just isn’t here right now. I found myself unable to feel connected to the settings, the characters, or the plot. I realized halfway through that it wasn’t the movie’s fault, transparent though some of its would-be plot twists were. Normally, that doesn’t bother me as long as the rest of the movie is basically coherent (I figured out the secret of The Sixth Sense very early on, but still enjoyed it immensely; most of the time, I can enjoy the same joke over and over again as well).

Right now, there are things that are funny, but the humor seems a million miles away. Everything else seems sort of pointless. I want to work on fiction or on my research, but can’t concentrate. Even though I know I will probably enjoy my math homework once I get around to working on it, the idea of doing so seems insurmountable. Some of these perceptions are cynical; some are just, you know, depressed.

For the first couple of days that I was feeling this way, I found my own cynicism disgusting. Is it progress that I now realize that it’s just an artifact of a moderate depression; one that will wane as the depression wanes? It feels like progress. Every time I feel myself reacting with disgust against my own cynicism, this sort of voice in my head reminds me, “Hey, this is just a symptom. Don’t sweat it. It’s okay.”

I even feel cynical about writing this post, especially since I can’t seem to do anything I actually want to do. Instead, here I am, adding to the sum of the internet’s misery. But there you have it: that is the nature of the beast.

Yes, somewhere within, I am in fact laughing at myself about all this. I wish I could actually feel that laughter.

For what it’s worth, that’s one of the beautiful things about dancing. Ballet class doesn’t give a rat’s asterisk about the relentless and irrational turmoil in my head. It doesn’t ask for my opinions. IT asks that I show up and do my very physical work at the barre; that maybe I interpret the music a little — something which I seem to be able to do because it circumvents my language circuits, which are shoddy at best and just pitiful right now (I realize it might not sound like it, reading this post: what I mean, really, is that the connection between Heart Coprocessor and Language Coprocessor is currently severed; when I attempt to work through the realm of language, I feel nothing but dead air).

There is something eminently healing in being able to feel your feelings; to let them course unbounded by the clumsy efforts of language to contain them. I can do this when I sit down at the piano; I can do this when I dance. I’m sure it’s neuroscience, but who cares? It feels like magic.

So there you go. For reasons, I won’t be able to hit up class this week ’til Saturday. Okay, something in me feels the need to enumerate the reasons: I will spend the rest of this week analyzing data that I must present at a conference on Friday, doing math homework, and preparing for next Monday’s math exam. Once that’s over, we’re done until after Thanksgiving, then we come back for a week of class and one day of finals (well, I only have one day).

The end is in sight, but I’m kind of bonking: so today I’m resting a little before the storm. Later I’ll bang out some homework, and later still, who knows? I don’t think I feel like cooking tonight. Maybe we’ll order in.

So that’s it. A long, rambling, unfocused post about feeling cynical and unfocused. I’m handling it with an epic dose of escapism and “this too shall pass.”

Tomorrow will be better, and the next day after that — or, if they aren’t, eventually a better day will come.

Posted in bipolar, life

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ADHD Kitchen: What Makes A Meal “Doable?” (With Recipe Link!)

Nov 14

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A while back, I promised I’d write a bit about Cooking with ADHD (which is like Cooking with Gas, only way more dangerous).

Perhaps predictably, thus far I haven’t gotten around to it.

Today, though, I found myself poking around for doable recipes, and I found one that reminded me of one of my primary ADHD-friendly food-prep strategies — and, so, here I — SQUIRREL!

…

Ahem.

Where were we?

Oh, yes. Cooking with ADHD. Very good. Onward!

So! One of the keys to my increasing success as an ADHD-challenged homemaker has been the discovery that I can dump meat and liquid seasoning into freezer bags, freeze it, and have seasoned meat ready to go whenever I need it (1).

I’ve found a few seasonings that work really well for both Denis’ palette and mine. For beef, we like Allegro’s original and hickory iterations or Moore’s. For chicken, we like both of those, any brand of Greek salad dressing, or a blend of soy sauce with ginger and honey. If I plan to make oven-fried chicken, a simple saltwater brine works, too.

For dinner, all I have to do is thaw and cook a pre-portioned packet of meat, bake a couple of potatoes(2), and throw some spinach and a few croutons in a couple of bowls (yeah, I’m that lazy). If we’re not feeling potatoes, a couple of biscuits-in-a-can or store-bought crusty rolls will serve, or I might whip up a quick batch of corn muffins(3). (I also make awesome home-made bread, but that only tends to happen on days when I don’t have much going on.)

Just seasoning and portioning the meat ahead of time may not sound like that big a deal, but for me it often makes the difference between cooking at home or grabbing takeout. In short, it means I don’t have to think about dinner. Options that both Denis and I will enjoy are already ready to go.

This works for me because the work of portioning and seasoning the meat is done up front, and everything else is pretty simple. The process is reduced to a few steps at a time.

To streamline the prep end of things, I buy cuts of meat that are already effectively portion-controlled, like chicken thighs, or ones that can be easily divided into appropriate portions (I do know how to cook a whole chicken quite well, but that isn’t always the best option for a week-night meal). Both Denis and I like small portions of meat, so many of the cuts of meat at the grocery store or the co-op will make two or three servings (or more!) per steak(4).

Basically, the fewer steps there are between “What’s for dinner?” and “Dinner’s on the table!” the happier and more effective I am. I can enjoy involved recipes, but I have trouble following them. The fewer ingredients a recipe requires, and the fewer steps it takes, the more likely I am to actually use it. If there’s a page-turn or a step that takes an entire paragraph to explain, it’s TL;DR time. I don’t switch tasks as easily as other people, so things like that can make all the difference in the wold.

I’ve been trying to cook down (see what I did there? :D) a list of the elements that make a recipe ADHD-friendly (for me, anyway). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

  • Doesn’t require much thinking ahead at cook time.
  • Not very many ingredients.
  • Not very many steps.
  • None of the steps are very long.
  • Intuitive process flow (seriously, I made brownies today from a recipe with very counter-intuitive process flow, and I guess we’ll just have to see if they come out all right. Edit: So we’re eating the brownies right now, fresh from the oven, cooled for 10 minutes, with ice cream … they’re fine.)
  • Doesn’t leave a ton of leftovers (Denis and I tend not to be great about finishing off leftovers, though we’re better about some than others).
  • Doesn’t require the entire recipe to be read through first. (Seriously. This can be a real problem; first off, I’ll have forgotten what I read by the time I get halfway though; second, see the bit above about task-switching.)

A fine example of a recipe that fits most of the bill can be found here. The sole exception is the final step, which is presented as a paragraph — but it’s one that can be readily broken down into steps if you copy and paste the recipe into a wod processor.

I love the fact that this recipe combines all the elements of a balanced meal — protein, carbs, and veggies — into one bag that you can toss in your slow-cooker and forget about until dinner time. I can’t wait to try it. It sounds great!

Notes

  1. This has been somewhat complicated by the death of our microwave. I now have to think ahead far enough to leave things time to thaw.
  2. Okay, so I really prefer to nuke potatoes, too, but….
  3. I used to do whole-grain ricey things pretty often, but I’ve found that Denis and I have very different tastes, there.
  4. This is also an effective way to stretch the meat budget. It’s totally okay to take something that a store packages as “a steak” and cut it into two or three pieces rather than eating the whole thing as one portion. Likewise, boneless beef spare-ribs can be marinated, grilled, and treated as individual beef portions. Get creative!

Posted in adhd, life

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