Keep it short?

     One of my French teachers once told me that, as a graduate student, she was given a very specific writing assignment. First, the prof had them write a five-page paper about a topic of their choice. After being turned in and graded, they were given back their papers and told to condense it into a 3-page paper. The same thing happened again: break it down into a one-page paper. Then three paragraphs, one paragraph, five sentences, and one sentence. The last stages of the assignment were to get the ideas conveyed in the original five-page paper across in five words, three words, two words, and finally a single word. What an incredible challenge.
 
     That story has stuck with me since, and I finally realized the importance of it this week while (where else?) in the shower. I've been wanting to get back to writing stories again for a while- not these blog posts, but actual "make up a world and everyone in it" stories- but I'm having troubles writing. Remembering my teacher's story made the light go off in my head: Our society has trained us to be as succinct as brief as possible. Granted, many people are not effective at it, but we all still strive for it. Hurry, hurry, be brief, get to the point, stop beating around the bush, summarize, use abbreviations, shortcuts, text speak, hashtags, keep it less than 160 characters.

Being sick

     Three weeks ago, I started getting a sinus infection.
     Two days in, it became apparent it would be a bad one, and I got medicine.
     That night, I realized I was one of the 12% that got insomnia as a side effect of the medicine.
     But if I didn't take it, I got headaches from the sinus pressure and couldn't breathe through my nose.
     Two weeks ago, my gentleman brought home the cold bug that's going around.
     And gave it to me.

     For two weeks, I slept less than one hour every night, usually on the couch, because I didn't want to wake my gentleman up (also because, once he got sick, he was snoring like a chainsaw). The first few days were the worst, because I kept hoping it would get better, or the other medicine I was taking to try to get some sleep would kick in, and I'd be able to pass out. After a while, though, it caught up to me, and I spent both days and nights in a mostly-coherent zombie state. I literally hated everything, living or dead, and had to move slowly in order to a) understand anything, b) not run into walls more than usual, and c) not start lashing out at things that really weren't the cause of my problems.

     A week ago, I felt well enough to just take the cold medicine, not the sinus stuff that was giving me insomnia. The first night, I slept for four hours, and life started looking better. My gentleman was still in the middle of being sick, though, so I was still mostly sleeping on the couch. By the middle of the week, I was sleeping for eight hours, and even ventured back onto the bed for some of that time. Finally, a couple nights ago, I was able to sleep not only all night long, but also all night long on the bed. And suddenly, literally overnight, my perspective changed.

     They say you get sick as a reminder to appreciate what you have when you're well. I have to say, sleep deprivation is a darn good way to realize that. There have been problems gnawing on my consciousness for a while now, and finally getting a good night's sleep helped put them in perspective. Sometimes, you just need a solid wake-up call (heh) to reorder your priorities. So while I'm not thrilled that I was so horribly sick and sleep-deprived, I'm glad I got things straightened out. And I really, really appreciate a good night's sleep now. Cheers!

Best friends, for 15 minutes.

     A couple months back, my gentleman and I bought an automatic laser kitty toy to keep his cat busy. She is decidedly of the portly persuasion, and we figured that we'd be able to turn the toy on while we were busy, and she could chase the laser around for exercise. There was a bit of a problem at first with getting it to sit correctly so it didn't either go all over the wall and furniture (where she'd either ignore it or claw the furniture to pieces), but a convenient roll of duct tape serves to keep the thing balanced nicely. While it's a little loud, it's nice to know that kitty can play on her own while we get things done.

     Kitty has learned that the "click!" of it starting means there's a red dot to play with, and comes running. She's oddly shy about batting after it when we're around, but since the toy has a 15 minute timer on it, we just turn it on, walk away, and let her at it.

     The other day, I happened to be just one room away while the toy was working its magic on kitty, and I'd tuned out the noise it makes. I was pretty engrossed in what I was doing, and was slightly disoriented when the noise suddenly stopped. It took me a second to realize the timer had been tripped, and the toy was turned off. I was about to get back to work when I heard a single, soft, sad little "meow…" of kitty realizing her playmate had vanished again.

     Who knew an automated laser could have such an affect? I went and turned it back on, and she promptly ignored both it and me. At least until I left the room. 

Cross-promotion

     For those of you who don't keep tabs on this sort of thing, I started a business this year, making hats and bags for cosplayers (Steampunk in particular), and those of us who don't fit the "one-size-fits-most" hat sizing that women have been saddled with. As the winter's coming on, and things get colder, I discovered that my go-to hat, which is unlined, does absolutely nothing to keep my head warm when the wind comes through. So, the latest offering from the store is a fully-lined hat made from old tweed jackets that covers the tips of the ears (for those of you without thick hair to keep them warm). Go check it out!

New winter hat, the first of many!

Time and books

     When I was younger, I read a book about Merlin and King Arthur that suggested the reason Merlin was so wise is that he lived backwards in time. Therefore, to him, everything was clear as day, because it had, in a sense, already happened.

     Now, first of all, to a linguist- even a young, untrained one- this brought about a fascination with the problem of verb tenses he would have to use. If it were true, and his intellect was running backwards through time and into a progressively youth-ing (roll with it) body, then he'd have started off as a doddering old man with no idea how to speak, take care of himself, or reason. Ok, fair enough, that's how a lot of lives end, so makes sense, and he'd be so venerable and respected by then that there probably would have been people to help him.

     But think of the problems with language acquisition! No one's going to babble baby-talk or use simple words to someone they believe to be wise beyond everything. If Neil deGrasse Tyson walked up to you, pointed at a dog, and said "What's that," you'd be confused as all heck, think it's a trick question, and answer with as many details and scientific facts as possible! Ok, maybe that's just me, but you see my point?