Category Archives: Long-Winded Metaphors

My grant! It was ROUND!

Long-Winded Metaphors, Silver Linings, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Imagine for a moment that the world really had been flat when Columbus decided to sail around it. He’d have literally fallen off the face of the Earth.

His trip took a long time and I can’t imagine that cell service reached that far meaning that contact with home was non-existent. As such, people probably thought that he did fall off the face of the Earth.

Last Thursday, I said yes to a real big grant with a very short timeline.

And as you may have noticed, I sailed my ship right off the face of the Earth.

Or so you thought!

But like the world, my grant was round, and here I am! Back among the living! (Just a little tired…)

Sigh of relief though. That was a doozy! The grant still isn’t technically out the door and I’ve spent most of the day today making minor tweaks and changes and edits and such, but for the most part, it’s ready to go. Monday is the official deadline, and on Monday, “send” shall be clicked. Huzzah!

In the meantime, I had a total It’s a Wonderful Life moment. My house was a MESS! I almost took before and after cleaning pictures last night… but it was simply too horrifying to even be funny. We had crossed the line. (See! I matter! I really do!)

My gmail inbox has 55 unread emails– and that’s after deleting the junk! (Huge apologies if I’ve been ignoring you!)

Insane Inbox

I have an episode of Downton Abbey on the DVR (what that whaaaaat?!).

(It's the Masterpiece Classic one. Permission to judge.)
(It’s the Masterpiece Classic one. Permission to judge.)

My nail polish is flaking off to a pathetic point and I haven’t even had the time to pick at it. (But I love picking at it!!)

Nail Polish

And I haven’t posted on Under the Tapestry in over a week!!!

No Posts

Oy. None of this is ok. Thank goodness for this upcoming weekend!

But there are some reasons why the insane hours and the seriously mentally taxing work (and not just mentally! I hurt my finger on a staple! writing can be physically taxing too!) was completely worth it… there were some silver linings, if you will.

First, I learned A LOT. About A LOT.

Unfamiliar funding mechanism, unfamiliar topic, unfamiliar PI. But not anymore.

I could write another HRSA grant, and I could do it well. (Fingers crossed HRSA thinks it’s written as well as I think it is.) Especially given more time. Because seriously, I could have used more time. A lot more time.

The topic– fascinating!! I have a personal interest in improving access to behavioral health services (because remember, I’ve kind of cra-a-azy) and I think the proposed project offers a really wonderful way to do that in our community. Very easy to get on board. Not as easy to learn the material. But I read and read and read (and googled and googled and googled) and I’ve come out the other side with a much better understanding of the role that different types of health professionals can play in behavioral healthcare as well as how the different pieces of the organization I work for can fit together to make that happen. Fascinating stuff!

And the PI… she was wonderful. Truly a dream to work with. She’s passionate about what she does and really understands how to make care better for patients. And that’s why she does what she does and why I wanted to help her do more of it. She makes all those hours worth it… and will continue to do so as I cash in on some favors I’m owed to help advance some other program grants I’ve been toying around with. (Mr. Burns-style excellent.)

So, yes, I am tired. And my poor husband is starved near to death. But we survived it. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat, even if it meant there was another week where we couldn’t chat.

(That’s not to say I haven’t missed you, because I have! And dearly!)

Anyway, I’ve sailed back to you, little lovelies! Back to Earth, back to normal, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Yay!!

Richard Sherman’s Literary Throwback

Long-Winded Metaphors, , , , , , , , ,

Are you a football fan? A couple of pretty awesome, down-to-the-wire games this weekend. And rightfully so! The stakes were high, after all!

I was watching, cheering for Seattle (over the 49ers– the Fail Mary over the 2x post-season Packer defeat, the lesser of two evils), and having pizza with friends. And we, like pretty much everyone else, were pretty floored by Richard Sherman’s post-game interview. I mean, dang! He was amped!

The Internet pretty much BLEW UP over Richard Sherman’s comments. And I mean BOOM. There were articles condemning Sherman, articles defending him, biographical articles, and tweets, tweets, tweets galore! It was certainly hard not to think about Richard Sherman, or at least note of him, in the days following that game.

So Sherman’s “rant” was on my mind. And it was on my mind as I worked my way further into Robert Louis Stevenson’s Scottish tale The Master of Ballentrae when I realized what it was that Sherman was actually doing: paying tribute to a literary classic!

It makes sense if you think about it. Sherman graduated at the top of his high school class with a GPA of 4.2– no small feat considering he came from Compton, a notoriously tough suburb of LA. He went on to graduate from Stanford and even started a masters there before being drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in 2011. Of course he’s a fan of the classics… and of course he was paying homage to Henry Durie when he made his post-game speech! Don’t believe me? I’ll show you!

First, here’s what Sherman said in his interview with Erin Andrews:

Andrews: The final play, take me through it.

Sherman: Well, I’m the best corner in the game! When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that is the result you gonna get! Don’t you ever talk about me!

Andrews: Who was talking about you?

Sherman: Crabtree! Don’t you open your mouth about the best, or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick!

A little context for you. This was a big game– last step before the Super Bowl. And Crabtree, wide receiver for the 49ers, knew that he was likely to be up against cornerback Richard Sherman and he talked some crap… a lot of crap… in the days leading up to the game. And yet in the final seconds of a seriously brutal competition, Richard Sherman knocked a touchdown pass out of the air before it made it to Crabtree’s hands, preventing the touchdown, and winning the game. He punched his team’s ticket to the Super Bowl. It’s no wonder he was absolutely ON FIRE in those immediate moments after… I can get that.

And then what Henry Durie, Scottish nobility, says nearly 270 years earlier in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae in response to what amounts to trash talk written by his (jerk)  brother:

“What do you think of that Mackeller,” says he, “from an only brother? I declare to God I liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how he writes! But I will not sit down under the imputation”– walking to and fro– “I am as good as he; I am a better man than he, I call on God to prove it!… I shall stuff this bloodsucker.”

Considering the vernacular of 1700s Scotland and that of the National Football League circa 2014, I’d say these two speeches are pretty much identical.

History does repeat itself, doesn’t it?

Both Richard Sherman and Henry Durie were mad– and with good reason! Their good names had been dragged through the mud by people who by all accounts should have had respect for them and they were tired of it. Given the opportunity to reclaim their good name, they did so! Vehemently!

So whether it was a literary throwback or just a well-deserved chance to publicly “stuff” (as Henry Durie would say) the man who spent so time trash talking him before the game, I’d say Richard Sherman was completely justified.

Regardless, it was a LOT more fun to watch than the typical “We just went out there and played our best and scored more point than the other guys” crap that most players bore us with after the game.

More Richard Sherman! More literature! Less milk toast!

Super Bowl-lantrae

 

PS: I just looked up milk toast… I knew it was supposed to be bland and boring, but I honestly had no idea what it was. Sounds pretty much like I expected– bland and boring…

…and kind of DELICIOUS! I’m thinking some milk toast (with lots of lactaid) may be on the menu this weekend! (At least French toast!)

Mind the gap, love.

Long-Winded Metaphors, , , ,

Have you ever been to London? And if you have, did you ride the Underground?

In 2009, I went. And I did. And it was every bit as awesome as I ever could have imagined.

True, I was living in DC at the time and the DC Metro really isn’t that different from the London Underground, and yet, it felt quite different to me. My favorite thing? The warnings to “mind the gap”:

File:Mind the gap 2.JPG
{Source}

And even better was how polite people were. Until recently, I had a nasty habit of severely over packing when I traveled. (Don’t worry, baggage fees and lost luggage have essentially cured me.) As I lugged my ridiculously large suitcase around in London, people constantly offered me help. My favorite line: “Can you manage, love?”

He called me love! What an excellent term of endearment! I hope I can make it a habit when I have kids someday, because it’s just too good!

Last week, I had a well-timed therapy session as I was nearing a melt down and I was reminded of how frequently we need to mind the gap– and not just when us Yanks are tooling around London. But everyday. (My therapist agreed that it would make an awesome blog post– he’s super blog-supportive, I love it. Nothing like validation from a medical professional to convince a crazy person they’re doing it right!)

You see, our world is full of gaps– big ones– between society and biology, and some of them have become dangerously large. At least to me.

Our food is engineered to maximize bliss. Don’t believe me? Check out Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. It’s hard to know quite how to eat when our biology is constantly being manipulated for the purpose of increasing consumption.

Sleep patterns are pretty disrupted by the availability of light on demand… not to mention all that screen time. A recent study found that after just a week of camping, away from artificial light and modern technology, study participants’ internal clocks essentially “reset” to sync with the sun.

Fertility is another big one– our biological peak fertility occurs when, from a societal perspective, having kids is something of a no-no (unless you can get yourself on MTV). I’ve heard that the most sure fire way to get pregnant is to be 16 and in the back of a car. For many of us, that ship has long since sailed…

And I could go on listing gaps, chasms even, between biology and society in many different areas– body image and expectations, women’s equality and femininity, familial instinct and the mommy wars, etc, etc, etc.

So what are we to do? How are we to balance the things dictated by our biology with the expectations we face in our society?

The best answer I can come up with is relatively simple:

TRUST YOURSELF.

Trust your gut. Trust your eyeballs. Trust your heart. Trust your instincts to lead you in the right direction for YOU.

Trust yourself to mind the gap.

And trust that others are minding it for themselves.

With respect to food, I agree with Dr. Yoni Freedhoff in believing that the best life for ME is the healthiest one I can enjoy– and that includes food choices. I try my best to eat the carrots, but often eat the cookie too. That’s cool.

With respect to sleep, I believe that the best thing you can do for yourself is listen to your body. I’m not exactly the best sleeper, but naps have recently become something of a hobby for me. And it is good.

And fertility– how about if we all just stop asking about it? I believe I discussed leaving other people alone when it came to s-e-x a while ago (see numbers 11 and 12). And I’m pretty sure this is an extension of that. Someone else’s choice or not choice to have or not have children is really nunya bizness. And if you haven’t already, read this— it’s genius. Says it much better than I ever could.

And in all those other myriad ways in which our society bucks biology, we just have to do the best we can to avoid tripping or getting stuck or falling in, whatever it is that the London transportation authorities are so concerned about, that gap… we must mind it, love!

 

…but because we’re all in this together, perhaps lending a hand with a suitcase every now and then would be good too.

Chop, Chop!

Long-Winded Metaphors, , ,

My hair has been bugging me for a while.  And by that I could mean that my hair has been bugging me since somewhere around the age of 9, but I don’t.  I’d like to focus on the more recent past right now.

Every day for the past month or so has been a battle with this hair of mine and I had become quite frustrated.  I’ve tried different shampoos and conditioners and every different hair gel, cream, or frizz control product I could get my hands… all to no avail.  My hair was up in a pony tail by about 10 am every day, regardless of what I did.

In addition, at the ripe old age of 29 (ok, almost 30… we’re getting very close!) I have become gray to the point that coloring is no longer optional.  (Unless, of course, my vanity changes in some significant way.  Doubt it.)  And that really needed to be done.

So, after work today I finally went in to do something about it.

A couple big chops and many, many, many foils and dishes of color later (I have a lot of hair) and I feel like a new woman!  I’m terrible about getting my hair cut… I tend to go about once, maybe twice, a year and in between I consistently claim that I’m “growing it out.”  But every time I actually pick up the phone and make the appointment, I feel so much better.  And every time I am amazed at what a difference something so simple can make.

My hair has been a single source of frustration in my life as of late, albeit a very physical and outward sign of frustration.  A lot of that frustration needs to be dealt with in other ways, but I think the hair cut is a really good start.

A lot of things in life are that way though, aren’t they?  They are for me.

I don’t feel like going to volleyball, but I do… and I have a good time.

I’m planning not to have a good time, but I smile anyway… and it becomes a real smile.

Running sounds painful and I’d rather just sit, but I get dressed to workout… and end up feeling great.

It’s that fake it til you make it mentality, and it works in so many ways.  My new hair cut says that I’m not frustrated… perhaps tomorrow I really won’t be.

Mind, Body, Prison

Long-Winded Metaphors, Seriously, , , ,

First order of business– THANKS a million for all of your help on deciphering the 100% illegible inscription from Adam Bucko!  I’m pretty sure it’s “may you be the change,” but “may you be in charge” could also be right… and that little word after be seems to look a little more like in than the.  So, after pondering, I’m going to read the book, see if “in charge” makes sense, and then decide if that’s it or if he was quoting Mother Teresa.  Either way– thanks so much, friends!!  You’re awesome and someone’s about to get a book!!

Anyway, on to our regularly scheduled program.  Prison time!

———–

I read a really interesting article from CommonHealth the other day entitled “I’m Finally Thin – But Is Living In a Crazymaking Food Prison Really Worth It?” by Rachel Zimmerman.  It was a really good read and I loved her prison analogy.  Loved it!  So much so that I wanted to extend it to the other side, too.  Because it’s not just thin women that end up in that crazymaking prison… I think all women can.  And it’s not difficult to get locked up.  At least not in my experience.

So, let me tell you about life… on the inside.  (Do I sound hard?  Like prison hard?  That’s what I’m going for.)

Mind, Body, Prison.

When I’m trying to lose weight or maintain a lower-than-usual weight, those are times when I’m working toward parole and I’m so busy kissing the warden’s behind that I can’t do anything else.  My stomach growls and I spend hours in the gym, but it’s never good enough.  So much time is spent obsessing about food, and not eating it.

When I’ve gained weight and feel too fat, those are the times when I feel hopeless and certain that I’m in for life.  I’ll make a shank out of just about anything (cookies! candy! cake!) and I’m quick to use it at even the slightest provocation.  (Nom nom nom…)  Again, I’m obsessing about food, but the feelings are of finding more and then feeling guilty for consuming it.

My body is covered in prison scars and homespun tattoos– stretch marks from rapid weight gain and loss and persistent injuries as a result of over-exercise.

They say that people can become permanently institutionalized… unable to function appropriately in the real world.  And I fear that I share that fate.  I hope for rehabilitation, a chance to live happily on healthily on the outside.  But what does that take and how do I get there?

My institutionalized mind has two alternative answers for me.

The goody two-shoes hopeful parolee says that loss of a few pounds (or many…) will impress the parole board– a smaller pants size, careful control of caloric intake and demonstration that I am willing to eat nothing but leafy greens and crunchy carrots.

The prison yard gangsta says to forget about it because I’ll just end up back here anyway, searching the yard for another sugary, salty treat to turn into a weapon… and let’s get another tattoo while we’re at it.

So then what’s the real answer?  How do we reform the mind-body prison system?

I don’t know.  And at the moment, I’m the tough guy looking for a fight, about to start a dang riot.  And that’s a problem because people who just want to fight (read: eat) are rarely capable of looking for diplomatic solutions in the heat of the moment.  And, to be perfectly honest, the piece of me that hopes for an answer is really just looking for a way back in front of the parole board– in smaller pants.

I have pretty intense physiological and emotional cravings for, as the book says, Salt! Sugar! Fat!  (Really, good read, I highly recommend it.)  But I’m simultaneously dealing with a neurological and sociological obsession with thinness and unrealistic, mainstream beauty ideals.  But above all, the thing that my heart desires is comfort and to be out of prison, once and for all.

Orange really isn’t my color.  Even metaphorically.

 

 

Oh man, nerd alert.  I was re-reading this post and was concerned that I had used the word shank wrong because suddenly shiv was popping into my head instead.  So I googled it.  Don’t worry.  They’re both names for sharp, handmade prison weapons.  Whew.  I wouldn’t want to incorrectly label a handmade prison weapon.  Oh TV, thank you for giving me so much prison knowledge!