Enemy of Entropy
Archive for February 2009
Weird Fish
If you’d told me yesterday that there’s a fish with a transparent head, I wouldn’t have believed you. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that anything would look up and around through its own head for a greater range of vision! But that is exactly what the barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) does.
Urgent! AB+ blood donors needed in Atlanta!
ETA: This was posted in February 2009. I haven’t heard of any ongoing need, so I think we can assume that the little one is healthy now. Thank you for all your kind offers of help!
I just received this from Elise Witt, who received it from a faculty friend at GSU:
Professor Anu Bourgeois delivered a tiny little girl on Wednesday of this week. She was born prematurely at 27 weeks and is in urgent need of blood transfusions. Her blood type is AB+ and needs an exact match. Please contact Anu at (redacted) if you or anyone you know have the AB+ blood type. Please leave a message if there no answer.
Thank you.
P.S. Anu and Doug would appreciate it if you would broadcast this message to your co-workers, friends and family members.
Feeling Pouty — Please Skip, Whinging Ahead
Bah. I don’t feel good and I can’t sleep any more and I’m the only one awake. There’s a very childish part of me that wants very much to find a way to wake Sam up so I won’t be alone. No, I wouldn’t feel any better, but darn it, I’d have company!
But I’m not actually 3 years old, so I won’t do that.
Yesterday, I had a coughing fit that started around 5 am. It was turning into an asthma/anxiety attack, so Sam brought me a Xanax. I don’t take those often at all, as evidenced by the fact that the bottle I have was a one-month supply prescribed 4 or 5 years ago. One of the reasons I don’t take them often is that they knock me out completely. I could barely manage to get the oatmeal Sam made for breakfast from bowl to mouth, and yes, I ended up wearing some. The spoon was just too technical for me at that point.
I was completely unconscious (but not coughing!) by the time Sam left for work. Katie checked in on me periodically, and apparently gave me some Dayquil around 2:30. Sam called to check on me a couple of times, but whatever was said is a mystery to me, as I was in a benzodiazepine coma. I think I finally got up around 6pm, after he was home again.
I just couldn’t shake the grogginess, though. For the first time ever, we had to re-schedule our regular “date night” because I was a zombie. Back to bed with me, then — and I didn’t even remember to take my normal sleepy-time meds. I was vaguely aware of Sam coming to bed at some point.
At about 2:30, my body informed me that we were Done Sleeping and would now move on to babying my tummy.
Read on…
Is crying cathartic for you?
I hate crying, and will go to great lengths to avoid letting anyone see me cry — a habit I acquired as a child, because I didn’t want to let my father “win” when he hurt me. I always feel worse, rather than better, if I do cry about anything, so I’ve never understand why anybody could talk about “having a good cry.” This piece from today’s today’s Delanceyplace mailing was informative.
Some researchers now say that the common psychological wisdom about crying — crying as a healthy catharsis — is incomplete and misleading. Having a “good cry” can and usually does allow people to recover some mental balance after a loss. But not always and not for everyone, argues a review article in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. …
In her book Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment, Judith Kay Nelson, a therapist and teacher living in Berkeley, Calif., argues that the experience of crying is rooted in early childhood and people’s relationship with their primary caregiver, usually a parent. Those whose parents were attentive, soothing their cries when needed, tend to find that crying also provides them solace as adults. Those whose parents held back, or became irritated or overly upset by the child’s crying, often have more difficulty soothing themselves as adults.
“Crying, for a child, is a way to beckon the caregiver, to maintain proximity and use the caregiver to regulate mood or negative arousal,” Dr. Nelson said in a phone interview. Those who grow up unsure of when or whether that soothing is available can, as adults, get stuck in what she calls protest crying — the child’s helpless squall for someone to fix the problem, undo the loss.
“You can’t work through grief if you’re stuck in protest crying, which is all about fixing it, fixing the loss,” Dr. Nelson said. “And in therapy — as in close relationships — protest crying is very hard to soothe, because you can’t do anything right, you can’t undo the loss. On the other hand, sad crying that is an appeal for comfort from a loved one is a path to closeness and healing.”
Tears can cleanse, all right. But like a flash flood, they may also leave a person feeling stranded, and soaked.
Have you gone a day without your cell phone?
I had not one, but two cellphones die in just a few months last year (or the year before? I’m fuzzy on it now). We have replacement insurance on our phones, but the company takes a few days to get the replacement to us. Since we don’t have a land line any more, I felt especially isolated each time.
The “insurance” company (Assurion) also doesn’t necessarily provide the same model (or brand) phone as a replacement 
After the first incident, I got a really nice Nokia phone. After the second one, they didn’t have anything like that available, so I ended up with a Motorola that isn’t nearly as sweet.
