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.

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.

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.

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.

Bene­dict Carey, “The Mud­dled Tracks of All Those Tears,” The New York Times, Health Sec­tion, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2009

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.

You know all those sto­ries and wor­ries about immu­niza­tions con­tribut­ing to autism? For­get them. The doc­tor who wrote the study that start­ed the scare back in 1998 has been charged with “fix­ing” the data. What’s more, the “study” only involved twelve patients!

The sec­ond sto­ry is a very good arti­cle about how the obe­si­ty scare is just lead­ing to more health prob­lems, espe­cial­ly for young girls.

I start­ed play­ing around with Social­Whois today, which led me to vis­it Friend­Feed and add Dis­qus and DandyID to this site. And that led me to vis­it­ing a bunch of oth­er sites for the first time in ages, like Blog­lines, which wants me to claim my site all over again.

DandyID has the most exten­sive list of social net­work­ing sites I’ve ever seen. I mean, who wants to be part of some­thing called my.curse.com? Ick! I could­n’t even begin to guess what some were about. I think I may set a mora­to­ri­um on sign­ing up for any new ones unless there’s a seri­ous­ly com­pelling rea­son to do so. Odd­ly enough, they don’t have Rav­el­ry list­ed (but I did sug­gest that they add it).

Their text actu­al­ly says, “If you pay me enough, I’d sing these songs.” I would­n’t have to be paid, though. I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly been in a karaoke bar, but I love to sing, so there are plen­ty of songs that I would be will­ing to sing!

I gig­gled so much while watch­ing this video on ‘s jour­nal that I had to re-post it.