Would someone just post already?

I'm just coming off a seven-plus day bout of working, and found out that I get to work tomorrow afternoon and evening, too, so the blogging going on around here is going to be darned limited.

On the plus side, I'll get to take some time off if Guy Crouchback comes to visit.

Don't, don't, don't let's start

One of the residents has had some problems with shouting outbursts, and whenever she gets going her roommate will gesture me aside and say in an urgent whisper, "Don't start!" Frequently she wags her finger at me, too. (The injunction is meant to her roommate, not to me.) Sometimes she'll do this for a while even after her roommate has calmed down, so to break up the tension I'll sing the They Might Be Giants song back to her. The best that I can say of this is that a good time is had by me.

I told Mrs. Bear this, and she said it was awesome. I think the dance that goes with it surpasses awesome, but I can't see it (being as I'm doing it).

Introvert vs. Extrovert

Mrs. Bear's recent post, and a conversation on being introverted with a friend in which she told me that I "hide it well" because I seem to enjoy talking with people, have prompted this small clarification:

Introversion is NOT a pathological state (that crazy Jung—always yukking it up).

Furthermore, the distinction between extroverts and introverts is not "loves people" and "hates people." Rather, it is that extroverts are energized from contact with people, especially large numbers of people, and introverts are energized by time alone, especially with large numbers of books.

And, if you want to get into the four ego functions* (and if you have any sense, you'll be into them like a dachshund and a rat hole), extroverts show the world the function that they use most (making them easy to get to know), while introverts show the function they use second most.

Coming up...the title of a good book on the four classical temperaments.

* Disclaimer: this was the best summary I could find (read: the only), but I'd just like to go on the record as saying that I do not believe that hallucinations are simply alternate psychic experiences. Good grief.

Baby Got Back

One of the residents had a birthday a week ago, and her father gave her the DVD Black Beauty. Everyone was excited and the DVD came up frequently in conversation. However, pronunciation being what it is, the first vowel of "beauty" sounded like "oo" rather than "you." I continually found myself on the brink of telling people that Sir Mix-A-Lot hails from my hometown.

No More Meetings!

In about forty minutes I get to go to the third meeting in as many days. This meeting is an improvement on the other two, as it doesn't fall on my days off. (We all have to put up with meetings on our day off now and then, but I been having a pity party on the scale of a five-alarm frat bash because there were meetings on both my days off.) Further, I managed to avoid sleeping for all but one hour last night, so I'd had my heart set on a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep after the morning's duties, but my boss informed me that this makes the devil's work and that I need to come to this meeting or else look forward to a purgatory full of book groups.

The book group in this life has slowed down to two pages a week ("It's so rich!"), so it will take us three years to get through the 300-page book. I can only surmise that the purgatory book group would start at two pages, but gradually cover a portion of the book that is less than any given amount. Then when you finally gave up your own desire to have a sense of the whole in addition to a sense of the details, Grace would come, jump you to the limit (or asymptote), and you would find yourself in heaven and free to read something else.

So how does your intrepid heroine plan to face the day? First, no more caffeine. I've cut down on it to the extent that I've become super-sensitive, and the combination of caffeine (at any point during the day) and a bad-health night sometimes adds up to a grievous sleep deficit which is all my fault. Second, I intend to read more of Freddy the Politician before the book group commences.

God is Good

I just went to the dentist for the first time in five years, and had X-rays taken for the first time in six years. The dread with which I had approached the dentist's chair had nothing to do with a fear of pain. No, it was that terrible grown-up fear of the bill which lurks, green-eyed and slavering, waiting for the psychological moment to bite in the place where it will be felt most. I have a fair amount of dental pain, and had visions of having to sell organs on the Chinese black market in order to cover the fees.

This dentist actually does the cleanings himself—he says he feels like he gets a better understanding of a person's teeth that way. He's not quite as thorough as the hygienists that have cleaned my teeth in the past, but he charges $45 rather than $150, so I'm not complaining.

But the best news of all is this: I don't have a single cavity! The dental pain is simply due to migraines, and I'm not even grinding my teeth from them!

As we say in this house:
God is good!
All the time
All the time
God is good!

Miscellaneous

This week I registered at a new parish, and was puzzled by a blank marked "family salutation." I wrote down "Salve" but something tells me that wasn't what they meant.

I finished the Harry Potter book and very much enjoyed it. In fact, it reversed the one thing that had most upset me about the earlier books. I'm just going to be pleased and not discuss the legitimacy of this reversal—let's just take joy where we find it.

And speaking of finding it, I'm off to the library to find more children's fantasy books. I think it's just about Prydain-o'clock. If my erstwhile readers have any other suggestions, I would love to hear them. I'll probably check out The Dark Is Rising Sequence (although that has always seemed a bit dark to me).