Headspace

I do like being a winner. I don't like thinking about what I've done.

I've asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?

If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?

Libraries and bookshops makes me want to take a crap - literary - and libraries worse than bookshops. I like to own books - I reread them. There is another reason. Buying is much quicker for me: pick and pay up. Books give me a stomachache - especially the book smells from the library. For every library trip, I have to go to the loo at least once. So buying is much faster.

(Ouch. Hurts to hit the space bar: I've cut my nail too close to the skin of my left thumb. Being a bit lazy because I'm near 50k.)

I've been looking at pictures of rooms growing more and more jealous. What I hate about my present living condition is its similarity to the way this damn country is run: you don't get to input how you can lead your life; you are to be thankful you get to live at all. (Yes, I'm exaggerating. My parents are nice people who do not demand that I am thankful but they still do not allow me to arrange the room the way I want it: they like it the way it is.)

I want to face a northern window, not the eastern window. I want more shelves for my books because I don't want to wake up in a fright just because some books are falling over me in my sleep. I want to have two tables, not one. I want to decide how I want to put my things and not have my things go missing, or a book shoved in the wrong cupboard. I want a small uncomfortable bench where I can collapse in exhaustion in the hope of getting up early to do more money earning work or non money earning work.

Who am I kidding? Once I get this beautiful place with the good windows multiple tables, nice shelving, ergonomic furniture and sleeping place, I will start to prefer the kitchen.

The weekend before last was caking making day at Grandma's. Grandma didn't like us making cakes. I wanted to have cakes. So she had to squat to peer under the shelves and climb over cupboards to find the baking trays, the cake tins, the sieves, rubber spatulas, weighing machine and cake mixer and which led to my discovery of the source of my mom's hapazard and illogical methods of packing and organisation. When the flour was sifted and the butter left on the table to soften, I opened up the lap top and began to write.

Aunt K, curious about my computer, sat next to me to ask what I was doing. I explained I was turning on the computer to write on it. She patiently sat next to me while I explained in a voice I hoped was calm and soothing that this was a laptop computer where I do work on, and I will turn on this, that and the other program. Aunt K has fairly serious schizophrenia - well, serious to me, anyway. When we were younger, she would have frequent fits of violence, now, her violent fits have reduced and are mainly frustrated wails of anger, which were frightening to my two younger cousins because they couldn't see what she was angry at. Sitting next to her, I was carefully to be polite. I didn't want to get a cuff on my head without knowing and being that close, she could easily slam my head on the wall, or a brain me with a handy bowl. When I started typing my wordcount quota for the day, Aunt K read it out as I typed - not in smooth lines, like a newscaster but word by word like a child reading a new storybook. It was interesting to hear her reading it - not because she was reading my writing but it was as though I was participating in one of her episode and I was hearing her give a coherent voice to her delusions - I've always wanted to know the characters in her head. She was very polite about my story: she didn't laugh at my writing - and she was prone to laugh easily and suddenly about nothing in particular. I could sense from her reading that she was concentrating out of curiosity while I typed out that 100 words or so, to try to understand something outside of her colourful mind. She went back to her room, she fidgeted in there and came out to sit next to me again. When I stopped writing to start work on creaming the butter and sugar for the cake, she returned to her room.

I had forgotten all about this until today, I read a sig of someone on the nanowrimo forums: "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia" (this was said by a E. L. Doctorow) and began to think that Aunt K could have been trying to write down her delusions in a diary for years and years but the lack of coherence and focus in her thinking led to enormous spaces and meaningless scribbles. (She was really protective over her diary and scream something fierce when she thinks we are too close.) And the occasional flash of coherence and focus made her realise how she had nothing to show for when she thought she had written lots and lots. I wonder if I were to show her this, if she would laugh or become upset. Being upset would be the correct response because it meant I had said something right but I am afraid of being cuffed.

I think I want to write a proper novel next year. I don't like this one and will stop once I reach 50k. It is not good enough a story to halt a wedding.

Excellent tool for Nanowrimo Write Or Die

Made me work!

see link here

1. Gay - Straight IAT.
"Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Gay People compared to Straight People." I wonder why a preference for gay people. Maybe I go to the theatre a lot and they are all not straight?

2. Fat -Thin IAT
"Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Fat People compared to Thin People." I remember blurting this to during primary six English orals to the examiner and was about to go on until I saw the incredible look of pity I saw on her face, for I had always been a plumpy child, bordering on overweight. I froze and switched to a more acceptable answer. I once said to a friend that I think toned men and women or very skinny ones look unhappy, dried up and hard.

3. African American - European American IAT.
"Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American." Crap. I thought I would be neutral.

4. U.S. Election 2008 IAT
"Your data suggests a strong automatic preference for Black people over White people. Your data suggest no difference in your automatic preferences for John McCain vs. Barack Obama." Huh? A strong automatic preference?

5. Family - Career IAT
"Your data suggest a slight association of Female with Career and Male with Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family."

I think I will ignore slight associations because it could go either way.

I like it. Fantastic little program.

I prefer it to Q10

Yesterday, the scales said I reached my ideal weight and then I thought, so what's different about me?

I got slightly crossed that the answer was nothing. Life is suppose to be more beautiful for thinner people since everyone has an automatic preference for thin people. If I am experiencing the same thing fat or thin, what's the point in all these ruddy weight loss? But I still want to believe life is more beautiful for skinny people.

This morning, the scales said I am back to my normal 128 pounds. Impossible but there it is.

Life is tough!