Long road, heavy load

It’s not that I insist on doing things without help. I just don’t ask for it if I don’t need to. And I will never assume I need help until I’ve tried on my own.

I have no idea whether this is because my parents wanted to teach us to be independent. They expected us to make our own decisions from a young age, and to go places on our own. If there was something we didn’t know how to do, we were expected to try to figure it out.

At school, I never needed help, because things like math and reading came easily to me. If there was anything I didn’t figure out right away, I wasn’t going to let anyone know that because I had a reputation for being the smartest kid in the class (maybe in the school).

Perhaps it was because I was shy, and asking for help meant initiating a conversation. I didn’t ever talk much, even with people I did know. I preferred being alone, and I preferred doing things on my own.

I also was eager to prove that I coud do things, even at a young age. I was the youngest at any family activity, even those that included my cousins. I didn’t want anyone to make any accommodations for me being younger and smaller, so I worked at being able to keep up with people with longer legs, and to keep going even if I was tired.

I preferred to be with people who were older than I was, because I other children my own age didn’t know as much, and were more likely to act childishly. I wanted to prove that I belonged with older children or adults, so I felt a need to be able to do things without needing help.

Maybe it was some of the books I read. The sort of hero I wanted to be like was one who was independent, who didn’t need anyone else for anything. One who could face any difficulty or danger with equanimity, who didn’t get upset or excited at much of anything (even positive things). I wasn’t like that, really – I’ve always avoided danger, though not difficulty. But that was my ideal.

I remember going shopping for my mother, which meant walking a mile to the supermarket, and then carrying home the bags of groceries. These were paper bags, of course – plastic bags with handles hadn’t come into use yet (at least where we lived). One bag wasn’t hard to carry, but two full bags were.

I remember one time the bags were so heavy that I had to stop a few times to rest, and by the time I reached home my muscles were so tired that I could barely hold the bags up. But that was no reason to consider asking for help – it just meant I had to be more careful how much I purchased (weight-wise) in one shopping trip.

These days I almost always drive the car to the store (normally I go on the way home from work), and I use cloth bags with handles. I only have to carry the bags from the car to the house, which means going the length of the back yard (we live on a corner, and the driveway is at the rear of the backyard).

My husband does not understand why I insist on trying to carry everything in one trip, instead of taking one bag, going in the house, and telling the boys to go get the rest. Occasionally I will ask one of the boys to get the rest – but only after carrying as much as I can possibly manage on the first trip.

When it comes to solving puzzles, I especially do not want help. I get very annoyed if someone tries to give help, because I want to solve it on my own. My younger son does not understand this – he is always quite ready to ask for help on something that is hard to figure out. But that takes away the fun of it for me, and certainly takes away the sense of accomplishment in figuring it out.

What do I ask for help on? Coming up with ideas for meals. I get so tired of thinking of what to cook. (Except that now, when I’m trying to cook and eat healthier foods, I don’t generally ask because the suggestions are likely to be things I don’t want.)

If I have trouble figuring out the notes in a piece of music I’m learning for choir, I’ll ask for help. I don’t have nearly the sense of music that my husband does (and my older son). I’m also not nearly as good with the piano (every time I have to count white and black keys to find a C).

If there’s something heavy to carry at work, I just might ask for help, if there’s a man around that I am comfortable asking. (And I couldn’t tell you why I am more comfortable asking some than others.) But if I don’t find one, I’ll go ahead and do it myself.

A few weeks ago, I took down the artificial Christmas tree from the lobby. By the time I finished, most of my co-workers had left for the day. There were a few I could have asked, but no one I knew well. So I decided to try to carry it myself. Not too bad – for the first few yards. It got heavier as I continued down the hall, but I could do it.

Out into the plant, up the stairs to the storage area on the mezzanine. Funny how heavy that tree got as I went higher up the stairs. There were some people sitting on a bench at the bottom, but of course I wasn’t going to ask them for help – I didn’t know them at all. And since they saw me carrying it, I wasn’t going to look foolish by deciding I needed help after all.

Next Christmas I will probably ask for help. Then again, if I keep working out at the Y three days a week, maybe I won’t need to…

But it’s a good thing that’s what Dorothea Taylor did, because it turned out it was her husband who was being stomped on by the moose. After a few whacks from the shovel, the moose decided this petite woman wasn’t someone to mess with, and went on his way.

I’ve already read that the sort of people who choose to live in Alaska are strong, independent, resourceful types. This story certainly makes a good case for that assertion. I hope when I’m 85 that I have the strength to swing a shovel – but I hope I never have to defend myself or anyone else with it.

I have since read all the Tintin books I could find, between those I purchased in Europe (in French), and those in the local library here (most in English, but also some in French). I don’t know how much it is for the pleasure of the books themselves, and how much some sense of nostalgia for an element of my childhood. But I do enjoy them.

When I first learned that a Tintin movie was being made, I was pleased. Then I read that it would use motion capture, and initial samples that had been released did not seem overly promising. I wasn’t planning to go see it in the theater.

Then I read a very positive review of the movie by Frederica Mathewes-Green. (I am on the emailing list for her newsletters.) Plus we still had money left on the movie theater gift card that Al had won for his Ent costume at Halloween (even after going to another movie – going to matinees saves a lot of money).

On the whole, I would say that I am “underwhelmed.” It certainly wasn’t a bad movie – on the whole it was reasonably entertaining. But I didn’t leave the theater with any particular eagerness to see a sequel (which is strongly hinted at in the ending), or any sense of wonder over what a remarkable movie I had seen. I certainly didn’t replay scenes in my mind as I do after movies that really impress me.

It’s hard to put my finger on where I think the movie falls short. It doesn’t particularly bother me that it does not follow the original storyline very faithfully. (The Adventures of Tintin actually combines elements from three Tintin books.) I was surprised, at the beginning, when Tintin did not take the model ship he had purchased to the home of his friend Captain Haddock. But that was the last time that I noticed a detail that seemed wrong to me, rather than something I simply didn’t remember being in the book.

I don’t think I’m bothered by the motion capture effect, though I don’t think it adds anything much to the story over traditional animation. On the whole, scenes seem remarkably realistic, and sometimes I found myself marvelling over intricate details, such as in the sheikh’s home. (I suppose, though, that my attention wandering from the story to the visual details shows that the story wasn’t exactly gripping.) Characters’ faces looked as they should, if not quite how I remember them from the comics.

Perhaps it is the fact that so many details are filled in, compared with the relatively simply line drawings of the comics. I have heard since I was growing up that one of the drawbacks of TV is that children do not use their imagination the way they do when they read books. Comics such as Tintin are visual, but they still require a fair amount of filling in details by using one’s imagination. And the characters of Tintin and Haddock in the movie simply did not either match how I had imagined them, or provide a good alternative depiction.

I read a lot of very positive reviews at imdb.com. I wonder if perhaps some people had imagined Tintin and Haddock more like they were portrayed in the movie, and that therefore the movie met their expectations better. But there were also a number of neutral or negative reviews, so I am not alone in feeling that the characters in the movies do not do justice to the originals.

Perhaps it is that the movie was nearly all action, with little humor. I did not find the Thompson and Thompson duo nearly as amusing as in the books. Though, again, some viewers thought the bumbling detectives were just right and that the movie as chock full of humor.

Even the positive reviews did admit that the action sequences were somewhat overdone. The Tintin stories were full of action, some of it fairly improbable, but they did not have the extended chase scenes that seem to be the province of action movies. Those scenes are Tintin as he would have been if Spielberg created him, rather than Tintin as  Hergé created him.

Perhaps I’m being overly critical. I don’t put down a Tintin book with a sense of wonder either, or replay its scenes in my mind as I do after reading a really good novel. I simply enjoy it – but then I do look for another one to read next.

Perhaps the movie will get more people reading the Tintin books. Perhaps the library will get in some additional Tintin books I haven’t read before. That would be a good sequel to seeing the movie.

It’s not that I was bad at math. On the contrary, it came easily to me (except for one unit in third grade when we had to learn base 8), and I found it very boring. As a senior in high school I did my calculus homework to relax from more challenging subjects like literary analysis and chemistry. I enjoyed competing in Math League, but I had no interest in studying advanced math topics on my own in order to do better at the meets.

What I liked was writing. I had always been good at it, at least according to my teachers. (My mother also thought I wrote well, but I discounted her opinion as lacking objectivity.) I had always loved to read, and I longed to be able to write stories that other people would enjoy reading.

I also was drawn by the idea of being able to communicate important ideas. I enjoyed studying literature, history, and philosophy because they were about ideas, about the things that really mattered in life. How could anyone want to sit at a desk adding up columns of numbers when there were opportunities to shape people’s views on important issues?

I’ve written in a previous post some of the reasons I did not become a writer, or a missionary, or last very long as a high school teacher. When I worked as a programmer/analyst I took pride in my ability to learn new computer languages, to interact with users and understand their needs, and to solve puzzles (getting programs to work the way you want is a big logic puzzle). I knew that part of being good at it was being detail-oriented, but I never thought of that as one of my primary abilities.

I don’t know exactly which of my abilities got me the job I’ve had for the past seven years, but it certainly has given me a reputation in my department for being very detail-oriented and very good at catching mistakes. (I wish, sometimes, though, that some people’s first reaction when I approach was not to ask “What did I do wrong?”)

Now that the software change management process is being integrated with infrastructure change management, that part of my job is going away. I’ve accumulated a variety of other duties over the years, due to my ability to get things done very efficiently and my willingness to take on new responsibilities unrelated to what I was already doing. But my supervisor felt it was necessary to find me a new place in the department now that my “primary” responsibility (primary in importance, but pretty low these days in the amount of time it takes) is going away.

We had discussed having me join the PC setup group, and I was looking forward to getting my technical skills back up to date. I wondered what would happen to some of the other work I do now, but I thought that configuring new computers and troubleshooting and repairing older ones would make good use of my abilities and perhaps develop some new ones.

I was quite unprepared for the news I got Thursday afternoon, however. My supervisor came to my desk, clearly excited by the result of his meeting with his manager. He had found a place for me, he told me, and his manager was excited about it also. It’s not with the PC setup group, though – it’s in telecomm.

Telecomm? As in phones? I know very little about phones except that I don’t like using them. I’m sure I could learn the technical stuff, but I just don’t like talking to someone without being able to see facial expressions and other body language. Why would I want to become an expert in devices that I dislike on general principles?

It turns out they’re not interested in my technical skills, however. They want my attention to details, to process the mammoth phone bill that currently takes someone about ten hours a week (and takes her away from dealing with technical issues). My previous supervisor assured my current supervisor that I would be very good at this.

I suppose I will be. I’ve always told employers that one of my strengths is learning new information and procedures quickly. The telecomm supervisor said it will probably take me months to learn this, but I hope to master it more quickly than that. He tells me that I should feel free to modify the process to improve it, which I hope to do.

I can’t help wondering, though, how it is that I end up with a job working with numbers. I love words and ideas and helping people see things in new ways. Why is it that what I’m really good at is efficiently processing information that is of no inherent interest? I know it needs to be done, and if I can streamline the process it will be an accomplishment I can point out to prospective employers.

But phones, and numbers? That just wasn’t how life was supposed to work out.

The weird photoshopped image of a football player (Ray Rice) looking like an overgrown head of lettuce didn’t exactly draw me in either. But then I happened to notice the subhead, which mentions chia seeds.

I first heard of chia seeds from a co-worker a few months ago, when we were doing Dr. Ann’s Eat Right for Life program. I was surprised to learn that the tiny seeds used to grow chia pets were actually useful for something other than gag gifts.

Chia seeds weren’t mentioned in Dr. Ann’s book, but they seemed the sort of food she would recommend. They’re high in protein, soluble fiber, and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as antioxidants and minerals. Plus they absorb lots of water so they should help in reducing hunger cravings.

I bought a bag one day, along with a new jar of tahini to make hummus, from the health food section of the local supermarket. Then the bag just sat in my cupboard for several weeks. Even though I’ve been trying to eat more healthful foods, I’m just not into eating a lot of “weird” foods.

Then one morning recently I decided it was time to try adding some to my oatmeal. I had no idea what it would do to the consistency if I added it before cooking, so I added it after cooking, along with my blackstrap molasses. It had very little effect on consistency or taste, though I noticed a slight difference in texture and taste.

I added a tablespoonful of the seeds to my oatmeal again this morning. I don’t know if the chia seeds were responsible for my not feeling need of any midmorning snack, but they might have been. (Last Saturday, when I first tried them, I didn’t get hungry for lunch until later than usual, so they may be working in that regard.)

A bag of chia seeds seems quite expensive – I paid over nine dollars for 12 ounce bag. But then, when you consider that the bag holds about 28 servings (one tablespoon each), it’s quite inexpensive compared to what I pay for most forms of protein.

I don’t care much whether chia seeds help Ray Rice win football games. But if they help me get in better shape, I don’t mind having that in common with an NFL football player.

Scrabble!

When I first saw the question about a board game I would never get tired of, I had trouble thinking of one. When my son asks to play a game, I usually try to think of one we haven’t played in a while. Most of them are moderately entertaining, but not something I want to play frequently.

I thought of LIFE, Clue, Trouble, and the various other board games in our “gaming room” in the basement (including a few Al and I made up together). I looked at answers other people had given – checkers, chess, Monopoly. (How could someone not get tired of Monopoly?)

Then as I was walking out the door on my way to work I suddenly thought of Scrabble. Oh yes, Scrabble is a board game, isn’t it? I can’t remember the last time I played Scrabble on an actual gameboard instead of a computer screen.

I log on to Facebook at least once a day, usually more, to see if it’s my turn in Scrabble or Words with Friends (similar to Scrabble though not quite as good in my opinion). And sometimes my husband and I play Scrabble (which is also a standalone application) on his computer.

I would probably play it more often if it were loaded on my computer, though I don’t find it as fun to play against the computer as against another person. There’s no one to exclaim to over lousy letter choices or the fact that the built-in dictionary doesn’t allow a perfectly good word, or to suggest good words to (my husband and I regularly offer each other suggestions).

Back when I lived in the Philadelphia area, I had a friend who would occasionally invite me over for dinner and Scrabble (and sometimes to help her with her computer). Those were fun evenings. Playing on a computer is just not the same, though online Scrabble is better than a lot of the other games out there.

Scrabble was the one board game that my mother was willing to play, as I remember. She had no use for activities that were purely for entertainment, but Scrabble was educational. She didn’t care if she won, she just wanted to learn new words.

All in all I prefer to win than to lose, but the main thing I like about Scrabble is the game itself. I love word puzzles of any kind. (I amazed myself by finally managing to finish the acrostic from Saturday’s Wall Street Journal last night, after four days of struggling with it.) And Scrabble is a great word puzzle.

If you like Scrabble and you’re on Facebook, let’s play!

My husband has tried in the past to find it available to watch online, but until yesterday had not succeeded. It being my birthday, he wanted to find something I would like. We ended up watching a couple of episodes of “Bones” (my choice), but he also made a note where to find this movie, and this afternoon we watched it.

I was very impressed by how well the essence of the story was translated to the screen from the novel. It’s been a few years since I listened to the audiobook, so I didn’t remember a lot of details. The one thing that I noticed that the movie lacked was more detail about Claire’s artwork (something that I had found very interesting in the novel because I had never imagined one could be such an artist just by making paper).

Reading reviews (after watching the movie) by others who had read and appreciated the book, I was reminded of characters and details I had forgotten. The fact that I had forgotten them, though – since I do have quite a good memory – shows that they were not at the heart of the story.

The movie gets across well the difficulties Henry’s time traveling creates both for him and for Claire. Henry has no control over when he leaves, what time or place he travels to, or when he returns. He always arrives nude, which often has him on the run, first for appearing nude in public and then for theft of clothing to cover himself.

Claire, to whom he first appeared when she was six, has been in love with him just about all her life (a source of confusion to Henry when he first meets her in his own timeline, since it was a future Henry who had been visiting her). She gladly marries him, but gets understandably upset at his unpredictable disappearances (including during his own wedding ceremony).

The reasons for the strains on their relationship are clearly different from that of everyone else, but the struggle to love another in spite of their difficulties is familiar to anyone in any kind of close relationship. It’s a movie about choosing love and the joy it brings despite the loss and sorrow that will also come.

To realize, though, that I have lived half a century – that puts it in terms, not of who I am, but the history I have lived through. And a half century of history seems like a long time, compared to the pace of life as we live it.

I have been alive for all or part of the terms of ten U.S. presidents. And I can remember events related to all but the first two of those. Probably the first historical event that I remember being aware of was the moon landing, though I had trouble seeing why it was quite the big deal that adults seemed to think it was.

Out of curiosity, I looked at some of the websites that list significant events in 1962. Lots of them have to do with people and places that I still know little about, but some are easy to relate to.

The year I was born, the first Wal-Mart opened. And the first Kmart, and the first Target store. The first Taco Bell also opened that year.

Tab-opening aluminum cans were introduced. The first active communications satellite was launched, and relayed the first transatlantic television transmission.

The first industrial robot was introduced. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. The first American rocket reached the moon. The first interplanetary probe reached Venus. So it’s not surprising that toys offered that year included a moon landing set and a robot.

John F. Kennedy was president. His younger brother Ted was elected (as the result of a great deal of money spent by his father) to the Senate seat JFK had vacated to become president.

Things cost a lot less in 1962. (Exact numbers differ depending on what site you look at, but they’re all in the same range.) You could buy a new house for $25,000 (average), and a new car for $3,125 (average). Of course, you were likely making only about $5,556 a year.

Gas cost 28 cents a gallon. A first class postage stamp cost four cents. A pack of chewing gum or a candy bar cost five cents. (I can actually remember paying those prices, and being indignant when the cost doubled to a dime.)

Some things cost a lot more. You would have paid $400 for a color TV, and $40 for a transistor radio (AM only). Realizing how much of a person’s earnings it took to buy those, consumer electronics are amazingly inexpensive today.

Chubby Checker‘s recording of “The Twist” hit the top of the charts for the second time (and was the most popular song the week I was born). Shortly thereafter, Bishop Burke of Buffalo banned it from all Catholic schools as “un-Christian.” (The bishop died later that year; one can only imagine what he would think of the music young people listen to fifty years later.)

We all probably have those favorite foods we wish we could have more of, though. I couldn’t think at first what mine might be, since the foods I miss are mostly those that I got to enjoy when I lived in Spain. I know I could get them via the internet if I were willing to pay high prices for both the food and the shipping, but I don’t miss them that much.

At one time I would have been thrilled to find a supplier of Wise Cheez Waffies, which I loved as a child. I did find a package of them somewhere, a few years ago, and discovered that they just don’t seem as heavenly as they did a few decades ago. I still enjoy Habitant French-Canadian Pea Soup (I bought a can or two last time I did grocery shopping in Michigan), but I’m not willing to pay $2.79 for a 14-oz. can.

One thing I might be willing to pay for, just to see if they are still as good as I remember, would be Callard & Bowser’s toffees, but even the internet suppliers of hard-to-find foods don’t seem to have them. I used to just love the licorice and coffee toffee varieties, as well as their (non-toffee) butterscotch candies. I wonder if these Dutch licorice caramels might be as good.

What favorite foods do you wish were more easily available?

Based on the post’s title, I thought this was the first in a series about the Top Ten Theologians. But when I finished reading it, I discovered that – like many top ten lists – this one had been written starting with number 10 and finishing with number 1.

The order chosen for the ten of them, and in fact the selection of the ten to begin with, is naturally open to disagreements. But the series is well worth reading, unless you already have a good background in the history of theology and influential theologians.

I’ve read a good deal on the subject of theology, and knew something about all ten already, but I learned more by reading these posts. The writing is clear and direct, and does not require previous knowledge of either theology or history. Each post goes through the historical context, the theologian’s life, thought, and writings, his shortcomings (personal and/or theological), and influence on us today.

I hope you also enjoy these posts and learn from them.