Dahlia

There used to be a hat store in town.

This is extraordinary.

Sunshine and buttermilk

“As far as the eye could see, strips of linen, hemp, and cotton stretched over the fields. Dull gray from the loom, the fabric had been drenched repeatedly in stale urine, sour buttermilk, or sulfuric acid. Now it was being ‘grassed’ on racks to bleach in the sunshine. In the eighteenth century, it took six months to bleach linen and up to three months to bleach cotton. Theft was a problem; stealing fabric from bleaching fields was a capital offense in England. Scottish bleachers augmented their insufficient supplies of sunshine and buttermilk by shipping semibleached fabrics to Dutch dairy farms for finishing. Grassed cloth, nowhere nearly as white or as bright as modern fabric, was a symbol of wealth and status.”

-Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Enhancing my brand: Why, really we’re just not the gossipy kind.

You know what’s running through my head now? This:

“Now, we’re not ones to go ’round spreadin’ rumors,

Why, really we’re just not the gossipy kind,

No, you’ll never hear one of us repeating gossip,

So you’d better be sure and listen close the first time!”

The good news for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about is that I cannot find a video clip of it that you would feel compelled to click, thereby exposing yourself to this insidious earworm.

The bad news for some of you is that you know what I am talking about and now have this song going through your head.

The bad news for everyone is that I found this.

Where Are Ann’s Shoes?

Who cares?

A friend sent me the following link and I immediately had school flashbacks and had to go lie down in a dark quiet room until they passed.

Reading Proficiency Test in English

It isn’t difficult. It’s just boring. This was always a problem for me with school and  standardized tests of any kind, so for a few years there, I think there was speculation about me having some sort of learning disability related to reading comprehension when, in fact, I just found the stuff deadly dull and pointless and responded accordingly.

I never was a very good student.

A change in hormone levels may alter the way we perceive social cues.

You don’t say?

Actually, this study of white-throated sparrows is quite interesting:

“The findings suggest that the perceived meaning of a stimulus may be related to the activity in the entire social behavior network, rather than a single region of the brain. ‘The same neural mechanism may be operating in humans,’ Maney says. ‘In women, preferences for male faces, voices, body odors¹ and behavior change over the course of the menstrual cycle as estrogen levels rise and fall. Our work with these songbirds shows a possible neural basis for those changes.’”

[via]

1. Related. Sort of.

Silver Maple (I think)

Your opinion matters!

To the guy in the black Mazda-

Thanks for the attention this morning on the interstate. Your appreciation of older women is duly noted and appropriately treasured.

Although it is clear from the way you look that you haven’t been driving long, I was dazzled by your ability to suddenly surge forward and block me as I try to pass you because you desperately need to tell me something via a barrage of gesticulations. With your tongue.

Sensing my shyness, you came through a couple of miles later when you pulled up beside me and signaled your desire more forcefully with your hands.  Your ardor naturally impressed me as did your commitment to the big romantic gesture to get my attention. Still, a 20-car pile up on the interstate is too much. You shouldn’t have and it is only a result of sheer dumb luck that you didn’t.

I’m sorry we will never ever under any circumstances meet. I know it is incumbent upon me as a woman, particularly one who is no longer in the flower of her youth, to be grateful for any and all attention I receive, no matter how ridiculous and unwanted and offensive it is so thank you.

I mean it.

No, really.

-Jane

Capriciousness

Not bad when you consider the capriciousness of butterflies and the fact that I don’t have a fancy DSLR. Or any patience whatsoever.

I’m getting better at these.

Self serving

I needed some things. I needed some things I could most easily get from Ikea.

I had a plan to get in and out in under an hour. I was motivated. I got everything I needed in 37 minutes, and most of that time was spent walking (and walking and walking).

I was thwarted by the checkout.

One aisle was open and it forked into two rows of self-serve checkout stations. I hate self-serve checkout stations. They seem like a terrific idea, don’t they? Ideal for the misanthrope, which surely makes me their target market.  What cancels that out completely is a profound lack of patience on my part combined with technology that consistently fails to work efficiently.

There’s also the fact that the item limit for these is 15 and I had 32 (small) items.

So I cleared my over-the-limit checkout with the Mistress of Self Serve and tried to convince myself that Ikea’s scanners wouldn’t suck like everyone else’s do.

Wrong.

Even working with two scanner windows and that taser or plasma gun or infrasonic emitter or whatever the hell that thing is, I was unable to scan about 6 items. So I either asked for help or dutifully set them aside, finished my purchase, and went on my merry way.

No, of course I didn’t do that. If they didn’t scan they went in the bag anyway and then I went on my slightly less than merry way.  By doing this I maintained my tenuous grasp on tranquility and did not vaporize all the lingonberry snacks, meatballs, and Swedish fish within a 50ft radius.

You’re welcome.

In other news, on the drive to Ikealand, I saw a large gray van with that extra layer of van on the top that had the following, including quotation marks, written on that top layer:

“BERNIE MAC”