(no subject)
So I headed down to the Big Box Megastore this afternoon to pick up a fan. Now normally I have very little use for such things, being of a delicate constitution that quite prefers the warmer climes of, say, the Equator. But both the rent and the malaria treatments are cheaper up here, so here I stay in the temperate zone.
BUT. Today is the first day that my constitution has deemed warm enough to open wide all the windows and air the house after a long, cold winter. The upstairs (or at least the parts where I spend any time) are easy enough; I can open a window in the living room and the kitchen door and have quite the cross breeze going. And my main room downstairs, which has two windward windows and a ceiling fan, is also easy-peasy.
The bedroom, not so much. One door, no windows, and the house's ventilation system does not really encourage the circulation of air in there -- it just comes in through the bathroom vent, sits at that end of the room, and moves out through the door without ever getting to the back of the room.
This might not be such a problem, except that I've got a limited number of configurations of furniture which are even possible, only one of which is realistically workable, and in it my laundry basket is on that side of the room. And while I try to do the laundry regularly... well, over the course of a winter of no circulation, Funk can start to build, and due to the above explanations, just opening windows won't clear it.
But I didn't write this post to talk about air circulation.
See, it's almost Easter. And at the store were those devilish little indulgences in which I... er, indulge myself once a year. That's right: Cadbury Creme eggs.
I love Cadbury creme eggs with a passion that is neither healthy nor wise, as a brief glance at the ingredients list will demonstrate. I know better. Hell, I work at a health food store! And yet... they call to me, with their little cremey eggy voices loaded with enough sugar to fell a horse. Not even the massive overdose of them that is possible in England (a barrel full by the checkout counter at the hardware store for six! months! bliss!) managed to oversatiate me.
But some things, like maintaining a reasonable state of health, call for at least a modicum of discipline. So once a year, and better it be near the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, I yield to their call and allow myself to buy a few boxes. Not too many -- maybe two of the regular, one of the caramel, and one of whatever other sort suits my fancy. This, I figure my body can handle, especially as there will soon be a plenitude of dark leafy greens.
And so I indulged, and managed to at least wait until I got out to the parking lot to open them. And they are still delicious, let me tell you. The sweetness keeps getting harder to handle -- I just sat there blinking for a minute afterwards, shocked by the intensity of SWEET that drowned all other subtleties of flavor. It was a bit like getting hit in the mouth with a sugar encrusted hammer. But still I crave the things.
But I didn't write this post to talk about creme eggs.
I wrote it to talk about entropy.
For as long as I can remember, I have had what one might call an entropic approach to my living space. It's not that I can't clean. It's not even that I don't want to clean (well, sometimes). It's that while I like everything having its own place, it weirds me out a little when everything is actually in its place. It's like a high potential energy situation, when you're just waiting for the delicately balanced system to collapse.
So I keep things in a state of what is, to me, congenial chaos. Yes, occasionally I have trouble finding things. And occasionally it really does get out of hand and I can't function because it's too messy and I have no horizontal spaces. But most of the time, I travel in my little field of entropy and that's just fine with me.
Unfortunately, this often puts me at odds with the world at large. Or at least modern western society at large, which values some sort of type A clean desk yang mentality over the sort where active-but-fermenting projects are allowed to sit quietly in the darkness of the stack on my desk until a change point is reached and they rise to the top. (No, I don't know what that metaphor really means, either, except that I should perhaps look up some information on brewing.)
Case in point (where it all comes together, I promise!):
As a child, I tended to put things that I needed to keep, but not actively use at that moment, in my closet (which was a reasonable-sized walk-in and could handle that sort of loading). And my room was always a mess. This drove my mother nuts, being herself of the clean school of thought. And so at Easter my parents would hide Easter eggs (of the plastic, not biological, kind) in my room to try to get me to clean it up. And knowing the power of the cremey call, they would hide a cadbury egg in my closet.
And yet, it would not work. Not even the dulcet tones of the chocolate covered high fructose corn syrup delicacy could lure me to 'clean' the closet until I was damn good and ready. I think I found one in July, once. They gave up after that, not wanting to incur a rodent problem.
So give it up, Covey and Franklin and all y'all. Understand that you can bring no power to bear on my organization which exceeds that of the creme egg, and that you, too, shall fail against the power of my entropy.
This entry was originally posted at http://wayfarer.dreamwidth.org/6935.html, which is way better than LJ. Please comment there using OpenID or your DW account.
BUT. Today is the first day that my constitution has deemed warm enough to open wide all the windows and air the house after a long, cold winter. The upstairs (or at least the parts where I spend any time) are easy enough; I can open a window in the living room and the kitchen door and have quite the cross breeze going. And my main room downstairs, which has two windward windows and a ceiling fan, is also easy-peasy.
The bedroom, not so much. One door, no windows, and the house's ventilation system does not really encourage the circulation of air in there -- it just comes in through the bathroom vent, sits at that end of the room, and moves out through the door without ever getting to the back of the room.
This might not be such a problem, except that I've got a limited number of configurations of furniture which are even possible, only one of which is realistically workable, and in it my laundry basket is on that side of the room. And while I try to do the laundry regularly... well, over the course of a winter of no circulation, Funk can start to build, and due to the above explanations, just opening windows won't clear it.
But I didn't write this post to talk about air circulation.
See, it's almost Easter. And at the store were those devilish little indulgences in which I... er, indulge myself once a year. That's right: Cadbury Creme eggs.
I love Cadbury creme eggs with a passion that is neither healthy nor wise, as a brief glance at the ingredients list will demonstrate. I know better. Hell, I work at a health food store! And yet... they call to me, with their little cremey eggy voices loaded with enough sugar to fell a horse. Not even the massive overdose of them that is possible in England (a barrel full by the checkout counter at the hardware store for six! months! bliss!) managed to oversatiate me.
But some things, like maintaining a reasonable state of health, call for at least a modicum of discipline. So once a year, and better it be near the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, I yield to their call and allow myself to buy a few boxes. Not too many -- maybe two of the regular, one of the caramel, and one of whatever other sort suits my fancy. This, I figure my body can handle, especially as there will soon be a plenitude of dark leafy greens.
And so I indulged, and managed to at least wait until I got out to the parking lot to open them. And they are still delicious, let me tell you. The sweetness keeps getting harder to handle -- I just sat there blinking for a minute afterwards, shocked by the intensity of SWEET that drowned all other subtleties of flavor. It was a bit like getting hit in the mouth with a sugar encrusted hammer. But still I crave the things.
But I didn't write this post to talk about creme eggs.
I wrote it to talk about entropy.
For as long as I can remember, I have had what one might call an entropic approach to my living space. It's not that I can't clean. It's not even that I don't want to clean (well, sometimes). It's that while I like everything having its own place, it weirds me out a little when everything is actually in its place. It's like a high potential energy situation, when you're just waiting for the delicately balanced system to collapse.
So I keep things in a state of what is, to me, congenial chaos. Yes, occasionally I have trouble finding things. And occasionally it really does get out of hand and I can't function because it's too messy and I have no horizontal spaces. But most of the time, I travel in my little field of entropy and that's just fine with me.
Unfortunately, this often puts me at odds with the world at large. Or at least modern western society at large, which values some sort of type A clean desk yang mentality over the sort where active-but-fermenting projects are allowed to sit quietly in the darkness of the stack on my desk until a change point is reached and they rise to the top. (No, I don't know what that metaphor really means, either, except that I should perhaps look up some information on brewing.)
Case in point (where it all comes together, I promise!):
As a child, I tended to put things that I needed to keep, but not actively use at that moment, in my closet (which was a reasonable-sized walk-in and could handle that sort of loading). And my room was always a mess. This drove my mother nuts, being herself of the clean school of thought. And so at Easter my parents would hide Easter eggs (of the plastic, not biological, kind) in my room to try to get me to clean it up. And knowing the power of the cremey call, they would hide a cadbury egg in my closet.
And yet, it would not work. Not even the dulcet tones of the chocolate covered high fructose corn syrup delicacy could lure me to 'clean' the closet until I was damn good and ready. I think I found one in July, once. They gave up after that, not wanting to incur a rodent problem.
So give it up, Covey and Franklin and all y'all. Understand that you can bring no power to bear on my organization which exceeds that of the creme egg, and that you, too, shall fail against the power of my entropy.
This entry was originally posted at http://wayfarer.dreamwidth.org/6935.html, which is way better than LJ. Please comment there using OpenID or your DW account.