Batfort

Page 39 of 67

Shade-loving container garden in the high desert

(Or to be precise, “semi-arid steppe climate.” I don’t really live in the high desert but I like to pretend.)

Let’s talk about baseline reality for a minute, shall we? Things like the layout of our dwelling places and the types of food that we eat and the living things that we surround ourselves with.

Unlike the malfunctioning washing machine in my rental, the deck is a pretty dang sweet setup. First of all, I actually have a usable deck, and I’m excited to have a protected outdoor space for my own. Second, the deck is pretty much the only bit of outdoor space that I have control over. I could potentially put some plants out my front door, on the opposite side of the house, but there’s not a lot of room there. Third, this a covered deck that faces North. It will be absolutely fantastic in the heat of the summer, but I’m looking to make it a more hospitable place by adding many pots and containers of plants.

The challenge here is that while my deck will be a relatively shady place, the summer will almost invariably be hot and dry. I’m no gardener, but I can’t think of any plants that will be tolerant of (or even thrive in) the hot shade.

Good thing there are people in this world who have more knowledge and experience with plants than I do.

image source

After some searching, I now have a list of plants that I desire to put on my deck:

Hellebore
Begonia
Hosta
Creeping Jenny
Ferns
Lamium
Columbine or acanthus
Coleus
Japanese forest grass
Silver-falls dichondra

Apparently Japanese maple trees also do well in the shady-but-hot regions of the world (potted, clearly). Not sure I’m ready for the responsibility of taking care of one of those beautiful trees, but it’s certainly something to put on the “soon” list.

For now, I’m focusing on creating a beautiful, hospitable space for both myself and others that will harmonize with the natural environment–thus being the easiest to care for.

My plan is to take my list to a reputable nursery and ask the staff there what they think will also work best based on their experience in our region.

This is one of the reasons that spring is my favorite time of year; there’s so much promise and opportunity everywhere that only exists for a moment. Everything is new, and changing, and shimmering–until you blink.

Capitalize on it while you can.

On a side note, climate maps are fascinating. It’s interesting to me how the climate zones in the South and East are so broad, while the climate zones around the Rocky Mountains are much smaller and more varied. I wonder how that impacts things like regional culture and architecture.

Don’t be like my washing machine

2018-03-03 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

There’s a washing machine in the basement of my rental, and like most rentals it’s a little…quirky.

That’s what we would call a “manic pixie dream girl.” The nice, cute way of saying “batshit crazy.”

What’s batshit crazy about a washing machine, you ask?

You select a cycle, and pull out the dial to start filling the machine with water. Then, you add detergent and your clothes, put the lid down and go do something more interesting. When you come back, the dial LOOKS like it went through all the cycles–wash, rinse, spin–but when you open the lid, your clothes are making like soup and swimming in a giant vat of soapy water.

The “brain” of the machine isn’t in step with the “guts” of the machine. Reality is broken.

So you reset the dial to mid-cycle, to catch the rinse and spin cycles again.

Twenty minutes later, the dial says that your clothes are done, but your eyeballs clearly see laundry soup in the machine.

The very dial that supposedly tells the washer what to do is not only not doing its job, but misrepresenting what is actually happening under the lid. Not very sportsmanlike.

But it’s 10:30 pm at night, and you’d like to put your sheets back on your bed eventually so that you can sleep, so you have to get this laundry soup into the dryer somehow (preferably rinsed, so you can sleep without itching yourself to death). To outwit your faulty dial, you set it to spin cycle–at least there’s no more laundry soup–and then go through another rinse.

A relatively short and simple process has now taken 2.5 times longer than it needed to, and you no longer trust the dial–the very piece of machinery that’s instrumental to getting the laundry done.

Friends, it is important to have our mental models match reality as closely as possible. When our dials are off, we are in danger of doing useless things, or we are unable to ascertain whether or not our accomplishments were successful, or–even worse–both at once. Doing something useless and thinking that it was useful.

Human beings are much more complicated that washing machines, as we are capable of so much more than simple agitation, but dealing with my haywire washing machine tonight has reminded me that it is of utmost importance to have a mental model of the universe that is in tune with reality as much as humanly possible.

Maybe I will sleep on clean sheets tonight. Maybe I will roll myself up like a human burrito in my duvet cover, because my sheets are still stuck in spin cycle limbo. I will find out after I post this.

Maybe I can’t fix my washing machine, but I can take a look at my own accomplishments, and my view of myself in the universe, and I can start to align them with observable reality.

Image of the week: reality is weirder than you think

2018-03-02 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Another art piece this week. It was either that or a meme about gun control and magical thinking, and as much as I support the 2nd Amendment, it’s not a fight that I’m willing to jump into the middle of. There are people who are much more experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate than I am to lead that charge.

This week, I’m reminded that reality is a weird wild wooly thing. It’s definitely not tame, and yet somehow we can influence it with our actions (and even our thoughts).

Background: I’ve struggled mightily with dating. You might have been able to tell from some of my previous posts (#understatement). I signed up for Match.com last month.

Last week, I was challenged to project myself into the future, to December 31, 2018, and write about what made 2018 the best year ever. It was an exercise in preemptively looking back, which set an extraordinary amount of expectation and implicit planning in motion.

(Confirmation bias is a bitch, isn’t it? Better to have it working for you than against you.)

One of the themes I touched on was, of course, a relationship. And since when you’re creating a best year ever, you may as well go big, I envisioned the kind of relationship that would blindside me.

That night–no literally that same night–I was messaged the kind of man that I have always hoped to run across on dating sites. Christian, courage of conviction, /our guy/. Despite the fact that a few of these men are on Twitter, I was beginning to doubt that there were any IRL.

Now it remains to be seen how this all will play out.

But the timing is still intensely weird.

They say there’s no magic bullet

2018-03-01 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

And I used to believe them. I wanted a magic bullet. I wanted to be well without doing any work. I wanted to take a pill or do a raindance or stand on my head while whistling “The Star Spangled Banner” or SOMETHING.

My autoimmune illness was raging (although it was nowhere near its worst) one night when I met up with a friend to grab burgers after work. At that point, I was eating somewhere on the paleo spectrum, so I got a lettuce wrap and stared longingly at her truffle fries.

“I have finally realized,” I said, “That there is no magic bullet for dealing with my disease. I just have to suck it up and do the work.”

She nodded in agreement. I really didn’t expect her to understand but she was sympathetic to my cause.

I kept talking: “I have been looking for a pill or something that would just make everything better, but I’m finally resigning myself to the fact that there is no quick fix for any of this.”

Well, past self, I have news for you. There are no quick fixes, this is true, but after a long, slow slog, when you find the right thing the results are instant.

(Or maybe they just feel instant, because a week is so much quicker than 5 years.)

I have been working on my diet for years. First I cut out gluten, then sugar and all other grains. Soon afterward, I realized (for the 3rd or 4th time in my life, and certainly not the last) that dairy had to go too.

Then, I started cutting out vegetables. Maybe it was just nightshades at first, but then I rooted out [lol] foods high in FODMAPs or foods that I could tell caused an extra special skin reaction. I even cut grapes because I finally realized that any form of grape (fresh, juice, or wine) gave me a runny nose.*

At some point, I was eating about 5 foods. Meats, pickles, cooked carrots, and of course my addiction to sunflower seed butter and honey.

I still wasn’t getting better. Or I would get a bit better, and then get worse again. Usually this coincided with a change in diet or treatment option, so I would get all hopeful for a week or two before my hopes were dashed again.

Even when I went full carnivore, it wasn’t even a week before I decided to try dairy again.

And guess what? Dairy and I are not friends. I mean, we are. Cheese is one of the most delicious foods on God’s green earth. But dairy + me = inflammation all the livelong day.

So last week, roughly 9 months into my carnivore journey, I quit dairy again.

And this week, roughly 9 days later, my health has improved so quickly that I have whiplash.

Is it perfect? No. There’s still a “3 steps forward 1 step back” theme going on. But the three steps forward, well, they are biiiiiiig steps.

Magic bullet? Maybe not. It sure feels like one.

Even after years of experimenting and months of dialing in something that works, those gains come hard and they come fast.

I’ll take it.

*That’s code for “fed the bacteria colony that has a permanent resident card in my left nostril.” And yes I’m serious about the left nostril part, that’s not just poetic license.

Reset

2018-02-28 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Woe is me! For I am

Like the fruit pickers and the grape gatherers.

There is not a cluster of grapes to eat,

Or a first-ripe fig which I crave.

The godly person has perished from the land,

And there is no upright person among men.

All of them like in wait for bloodshed;

Each of them hunts the other with a net.

Concerning evil, both hands do it well.

The prince asks, also the judge, for a bribe,

And a great man speaks the desire of his soul;

So they weave it together.

The best of them is like a briar.

The most upright like a thorn hedge.

The day when you post a watchman,

Your punishment will come.

Then their confusion will occur.

Do not trust in a neighbor;

Do not have confidence in a friend.

From her who lies in your bosom

Guard your lips.

For son treats father contemptuously,

Daughter rises up against her mother,

Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.

But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord;

I will wait for the God of my salvation.

My God will hear me.

Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy.

Though I fall I will rise;

Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.

I will bear the indignation of the Lord

Because I have sinned against Him,

Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me.

He will bring me out to the light,

And I will see His righteousness.

Then my enemy will see,

And shame will cover her who said to me,

“Where is the Lord your God?”

My eyes will look on her;

At that time she will be trampled down,

Like mire of the streets.

–Micah 7:1-10

Player ME has entered the game

2018-02-27 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

In my old job, I worked for the boss.

Wait, let me back up. Of course I worked for my boss.

But my boss was the one who had the final say, the one that everyone else had to bend around. THE BOSS.

And I knew that my boss backed me up 100%. Within reason, of course, but my boss wouldn’t throw me under the bus.

With this convenient arrangement, I could throw myself into the fray of academic politics without much regard for my safety. I had no political designs myself (although my boss may have), and merely had to position myself and my projects in such a way that I could get the rest of my faculty stakeholders on board.

I didn’t have to worry about myself.

***

In this new job, though, I don’t work for the boss anymore.

My boss is just another face in a long line of middle managers (they don’t call them that in my industry, but that’s what they are).

Maybe he has the ear of certain people, but those people can make whatever decisions they want.

Those people don’t have my back. It remains to be seen if my own boss has my back.

(I’m not going to count on it.)

As I settle into this position and start to take on more responsibility–and talk to new people–it’s becoming clear that the political landscape is a bit more vicious. The pieces are out on the board, and they’ve already drawn blood. (Bit of a mixed metaphor, but it works to describe the slow-moving bloodsport that is academic politics.)

This time, I can’t enjoy my protected little vantage point and focus on getting things done..

This time, I have to play for myself.

The reality of this situation finally hit home this afternoon. I’m no longer a politically neutral entity that operates more or less in tandem with my boss-like entity.

If I am going to be effective, it is imperative that I acquire a reputation and political capital (is that what they’re calling it these days?) on my own. It must be as separate from my boss as I can make it.

Which will be a challenge, since he’s a micromanager.

I now have skin in the game.

The mental breakdown of my generation

2018-02-26 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Today I learned that a guy I knew in college came out as trans. Or rather, he followed me on Instagram with his–her–new identity.

What a millennial way to find out something like that, right?

The gender-mania that’s going around right now seems to me most often associated with the younger generation, the ones who are young enough to be unduly influenced by adults with agendas. But it’s a meme that spreads insidiously, and even the older generation aren’t immune. My generation certainly isn’t.

It’s not just gender issues. So many people I know struggle with depression, some friends a while back struggled mightily with suicidal thoughts (and prevailed against them), and girls I know are plagued with hormonal imbalances that greatly impact their mental health and menstrual cycle.

I met up with a friend a handful of years ago who was trying out a high-powered neurotransmitter to augment her therapy. She said it made her feel the best she had in years (she had been studying out of the country so I hadn’t seen her face-to-face in a while) but I felt like I was talking to a robot version of my friend. The conversations that we used to have, so fluid and far-ranging, were stilted and small talky. It was like meeting someone completely new.

Maybe that was my fault. Maybe I was the distant one. It’s more than possible.

I’m not perfect and I certainly don’t have perfect mental health.

It’s been an emotionally exhausting couple of years–if you let yourself get overly engaged–with the meme wars and how the spiritual battle that we are fighting breached the surface of the water of reality. (If you have eyes to see. If you don’t, are you just really confused?)

Maybe the confusion explains why so many people I know are succumbing to the darkness, to the insanity.

I don’t understand it. I fight like hell to keep my grip on reality.

And yet I see my friends being pulled under. I don’t know how to help them–how does a person in rightside-up world throw a lifeline to someone in upside-down world?

All my touchstones, my footholds, are repulsive to them. My anchors are their cement shoes. What lifts me up drags them down.

I don’t know how to help them see clearly.

All I am is sad.

I quit dairy and my menstrual cramps are gone again

2018-02-25 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Forgive me, this entire week has been a learning lesson in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” leading to a bunch of addle-headed evenings. I haven’t been giving my best to this blog, because right now I don’t have my best to give.

One of the reasons for that is the lovely, ever present PMS. All my ladies know what I’m talking about. My astute gentlemen probably track this in their female bosses and coworkers so they know when to get out of the way.

Anyway, back when I was eating vegetables but no grains, sugar, or dairy, I didn’t have any menstrual cramps. I still got hormonal and moody around my period (I doubt there is any way around that), but my period itself was not painful. That was nice.

Then, I went keto, and lost my period altogether. Keto may not stress your body out, but it did mine. My advice for you is to find out what things unduly stress you body, and then don’t do those things.

After my keto experiment, I went full carnivore, with dairy. I thought I could get away with dairy, I really could. And for a while I truly thought that dairy was helping.

I was wrong. Dairy and I do not get along. As my systemic inflammation rose, my menstrual cramps came back–and it seemed like they were getting progressively worse each month.

Last Monday I cut out dairy again as part of the disastrous breakfast experiment. This weekend, not even a full week later, I’m experiencing no cramping.

There’s a lot of work to be done on the systemic inflammation that’s built up over the last 9 months, but if I can see this much improvement in less than a week, I know I’m on the right track.

A few of my friends have had horrific experiences with menstrual cramps, and they eat high-grain and high-dairy diets. If you eat foods that are known to cause inflammation, I encourage you to explore low-inflammation diets like autoimmune paleo, low carb/high fat (LCHF), or going full carnivore, to see how decreased inflammation can have an effect on your periods.

It doesn’t have to be bad, I promise.

Fun with Venn diagrams and k-pop

2018-02-24 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Twitter is a wonderland. Today’s bounty of wonder came in the form of a Venn diagram featuring the many incarnations of NCT.

The problem (“””problem”””) with this particular Venn diagram is that it’s entirely in Hangul, except for song titles which are deliberately in English.

This is not a problem–this is a puzzle! It’s a matter of cross-checking the members in each song with the other songs that they’re in, under which group. The name in the most-overlapping triangle, for instance, is Mark since he’s debuted with every group so far, and nearly every song. (He’s missing only from the NCT U vocal songs–Timeless and Without You–and the upcoming Tae/Ten release.

Then, I double-checked myself with the Hangul alphabet to make sure I had all of the names right, like in the case of Lucas and Jungwoo who both debuted with NCT U but haven’t yet done anything else, or the Dreamies.

Here’s a version in the Latin alphabet for us Westerners.

It’s a little messy but I didn’t want to completely obliterate the Hangul characters.

This is so much fun to look at. I’m excited for the rest of NCT 2018 and what different combinations they’ll come up with. Perhaps a Venn diagram will be impossible in the future–we’ll see.

Speaking of NCT 2018, we have been blessed with fancam of Taeyong and Ten’s Baby Don’t Stop which isn’t due to be released for a few more days.

300% better than Boss, tbh.

The styling is perfect. The choreo is dope and perfectly suited to this duo. The song is catchy as whoa. Sign me up.

Image of the Week: completely unimpressed edition

2018-02-23 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

This week’s image is more like a visual representation of how I’m feeling right now. This week has not been the greatest.

source

It was not my best week at work. While I did extend my tentacles into a new project in a different arena that will allow me to use some of my skills, I made some tactical blunders on the personal side. Being in a terrible mood all week did not help.

The terrible mood stemmed from my eating window experiement this week. In fact, the experiment has been so awful that I’m not even extending it for a full 7 day week. I’m cutting it short today.

Moving my window has made me irritable and tired (even though I’ve been sleeping more), caused me to resent mornings, caused a huge upheaval in my guts, and created a huge scheduling problem with my workout schedule. And for what? No real gains.

I’d rather be in a good mood and eat at 8 pm than be cranky and irritable and think that eating breakfast makes me a better person.

Night owl status confirmed.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Jun
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Batfort

Style reveals substance

Page 39 of 67

Shade-loving container garden in the high desert

Don’t be like my washing machine

Image of the week: reality is weirder than you think

They say there’s no magic bullet

Reset

Player ME has entered the game

The mental breakdown of my generation

I quit dairy and my menstrual cramps are gone again

Fun with Venn diagrams and k-pop

Image of the Week: completely unimpressed edition

Categories

Recommended

Tags

Archives

Recent Posts

Archives

Recent Comments

Tags

Meta