Tuesday, May 19, 2009

One For the Road

“You’re going to get this treatment your whole life. What are you going to do, stand up every time?”

Well... YEAH.

Good Reads

J. was out and about today, so I asked him to pick up a copy of Norse Code on the way home:



I'm already clipping through this one pretty quickly. I get the sense that it'll be inevitably (and favorably) compared to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Don't let the cover fool you. It's real urban fantasy, not vampire porn at all! Huzzah!!

Norming Disordered Living

Last night, I was telling J. about the leftovers in the fridge:

"There's chicken rollups and spicy coleslaw," I said, and opened my mouth to add, "Watch out for the cabbage, tho. There's more carbs in that than you think. Calculate at least 30 carbs for that."

I closed my mouth, amused at my own default.

At a certain point carb, insulin, and exercise math just becomes the norm. You do it in your head all the time. Every time I choose to eat something, I start doing the cost/benefit analysis in my head. Sometimes I'll even count out stuff on my fingers at the table.

I realized last night that it’s become so normed over the last three years to budget my carbs/insulin/expected activity level that my subconscious assumes, at some level, that that’s just a concern that *everybody* has.

It was an interesting example of how we unconsciously assume that our defaults must be the “norm.” Doesn’t everyone live like this? Doesn’t everyone want what I want? Doesn’t everyone hold the same values I hold? If they don’t HOW CAN THEY LIVE!?

After all, I couldn’t live without developing this disordered mode of living.