Category — Uncategorized

Many years ago, I told the story about the only three-way symmetrical stack interchange in the world, which turned out to be one of many three-way symmetrical stack interchanges in the world.  So that mystery was solved due to a drive.

This week, I solved another, thanks to the Internet.

When I was eight years old, I went on the camping trip with the trumpet-playing boy.  That camping trip was to a beach.  Things I remember about the beach: There were horseshoe crabs.  Some kids got stung by jellyfish. We got ices one night after playing mini golf.  It rained really hard right after we set up the tents so we got to snuggle down in our sleep bags and read which the counselors ran from tent to tent wearing trash bags as rain ponchos to drop off snacks of peanuts and raisins.  The counselors sang, “You Are the Sun, You Are the Rain” by Lionel Richie.  And a staircase down to the sand from the bathrooms.

That staircase down to the sand has bothered me for 18 years.

I thought the beach we went to was Chincoteague.  It was the only semi-local beach that fit the beach in my mind.  I could even point to the place where we played mini golf and the campgrounds where we stayed.  But there was no staircase down to the beach.  The parking lot was flat with sand meeting asphalt.  The bathhouses were portables set up on the other side of the lot, away from the beach.  So it must have been another beach, but which other beach?  I would loop through everything I remembered again and again, always getting hung up about the staircase.  Everything fit except that.

I’m in a Chincoteague Facebook group and someone posted a picture this week of THE STAIRCASE IN MY BRAIN.  The copy: “Found this picture of the old bathhouses.  Circa 1997” and then a picture of the stairs.  It was like spending 18 years in a slot machine, spinning around, and finally landing on three cherries.  They must have removed the stairs and bathhouses some time between 1997 and 2001 when we started going each summer to Chincoteague.

Counting the “mango and orange” mystery that I solved in 2015, this counts as the third big life mystery that I solved completely by accident.  This is when I love the Internet.

I host a bunch of holidays at my house, and by now, I’ve fallen into menu rhythms for each of them.  But a long time ago, I tried new themes for each holiday, and for one Pesach, we had Argentinian food. I made this steak dish in a pan that I finished in the oven. I wasn’t paying attention when I went to serve it, and I grabbed the metal handle, just as I would if the pan was on the stove top. I burned two fingertips and the soft skin at the base of my thumb.

I was okay if I held my hand under cold water, but the moment I dried my hand, all I could focus on was the intense pain. I ended up filling a surgical glove with burn ointment and slipping my hand inside (a hack that I thought was brilliant at the time). It allowed me to use my hand, but most of my concentration was focused on the pain for the rest of the meal. I couldn’t think about anything else. Pain demands that you think about it.

First-degree burns are funny things in that way. You know, rationally, that once the skin begins to heal, the pain will diminish and––over time––all will go back to normal. It isn’t permanent. It isn’t chronic. You just have to let the ointment do its work, and you’ll be able to use the hand again. Maybe there will be a small scar. Usually there won’t. And, one day, you’ll forget about the incident entirely except for times when you have a metal pan in the oven or you’re making Argentinian food. Those times, you remind yourself to be careful.

I was thinking about this because someone I love is moving. Unlike the hot pan, it has been a burn that has built slowly with the knowledge unfolding over time––from possibility to definite. And now that we’re in the definite stage with a moving month on the horizon, it feels like that time when I was sitting at the dinner table, unable to concentrate in the moment on anything else. It hurts to think about her five hours away when she has been anywhere from two floors (in an apartment building) to 45 minutes away for the last 20+ years.

(I am trying to keep my shit together for her. I am not doing a great job with that, but she has been forgiving about it.)

I know that in time, we will find our new normal. We’ll make plans to meet in the middle somewhere 2 or 3 hours from each of our homes. We’ll visit her in her new town. She’ll return to see us in ours. We will have FaceTime lunch dates to replace our face-to-face lunch dates. Our daughters will have their own texting chains. It will all be okay. She will always be my heart, no matter where she is living.

But right now, that sadness is a first-degree burn, demanding that I think about it. There are no clever hacks; I’ll just need to wait to find our new rhythm. And in the meantime, help her pack and clean and do all the tasks that come with moving. Tell my brain that it will be okay later even if it doesn’t feel okay now. This will heal.

I saw Sam Horn speak at BlogHer many years ago (I still use her hands-as-blinders idea), and just came across a TEDTalk article featuring her idea of happiness squares.  It’s pretty simple: draw a square and divide it into the four quadrants.  Write “Doing”  (left) and “Not Doing” (right) over the top two squares.  Write “Want to Do” (top) and “Don’t Want to Do” (bottom) down the left side.

In the top left box, fill in what you are currently (in the present, not this exact moment) doing that you want to do.

In the top right box, fill in what you are currently not doing that you wish you were doing.

In the bottom left box, fill in what you are currently doing that you don’t want to do.

In the bottom right box, fill in what you’re currently not doing that you are thrilled you are not doing.

The top left and bottom right are your happiness squares. Your top right and bottom left are your not-happiness squares.  And then she says: “Next, ask yourself: How long? How long have you been doing these things you don’t want to do? How long have you not been doing things you want to do?”

It’s kind of eye-opening, isn’t it? It’s also not always feasible to stop the things that are making you not happy or begin the things that will make you happy. But I do like her idea of a hooky hour. If I had an extra hour, I would spend the whole time reading and meditating. How about you?

I just read a book that I loved so much that my heart hurt when I finished the last page.  It reminded me of Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays in the sense that you will feel such an ache as you move through the weirdness.  It’s called Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams.

The heart of the book is a hand-held machine called Apricity that can tell you with a simple cheek swab what will make you happy.  Not combat depression but move you from ennui to joy.  Throughout the book, people either use or reject the device, choosing to know or remain in the dark about what will make them happy.

Because it’s a tricky thing.  You don’t have to follow the machine’s advice, but how could you not?  How could you discover that doing something as simple as eating tangerines will make you happy and then choose not to eat tangerines?  And yet the suggestions range from benign (eat tangerines) to extreme (remove a healthy fingertip or cut yourself off entirely from your identical twin).  And it comes with the knowledge that the act itself — no matter how painful it sounds in the moment — will bring you happiness if you trust the machine.

Because you’re told that the machine is 99.97% accurate.  And what are the chances that you’ll fall in the .03%?

I think I would want to know.  Maybe I would act on all the advice.  Maybe I wouldn’t.  But I think I would want to know… now.  Meaning, I don’t know if I would have sat for the machine at every point in my life.  When I was in the throes of infertility, would I have sat for the machine?  Would I want to know that kind of secret when I was feeling so fragile?  Am I only willing to take the risk right now because the step is lower to get to happiness?

Would you sit for a machine if it could tell you the three things that would make you happy, even if one of those things could be something you wouldn’t want to hear?

Our library system uses an app called Libby for e-book borrowing.  You can search for a title on the app or browse a category OR browse the last items returned to Libby.  In other words, it’s like GoodReads except you’re seeing what’s available now that other people are done with it.

Popular stuff ends up on that list — new releases — but interesting older books end up on there, too, and enter into a strange loop: person one checks out, reads, and returns an old Nick Hornby book.  The person two sees this book on the list and says, “High Fidelity!  I haven’t thought about that book in years.”  And then they check it out and the loop keeps going with each new person perusing the recently returned list, seeing this old book, and checking it out themselves because they figure someone else found it worthy to spend their time reading.

Unlike the genre lists, I usually know every single book on the recently returned list because, again, they tend to be popular books.  And if they’re not popular to begin with, they become popular because they keep looping around again.

It would be cool if our physical library had a bookshelf like that.  They have a new release section where you can see what’s hot at the moment because it’s new.  But it would also be cool if they put returned books on a special set of shelves for a few days before moving them back to their proper place.

I love peeking at what other people are reading.

Do you ever choose books to read just because you see other people around you reading it?