Notes from the homefront

[serene]

1) I feel like I'm neglecting 3WFDW, but let me just say I love Dreamwidth.

2) I have chosen not to appeal my rejection from Cal, after doing some research and deciding I don't have a good, solid basis for an appeal. So I am happy to report I'll be going to Cal State East Bay in September. So much is great about this, including a major that looks more interesting to me than UC Berkeley's did. The only drawback really is the commute, and I can cope. Yay, I'm gonna be a co-ed!

3) My boss has been SUPER ROCKTASTIC about supporting me in my quest to return to school. Yay, good bosses!

4) Experimental data suggests it's not the cold, damp weather that makes my body hurt all over. Damn. I was kinda hoping the warm weather would have a beneficial side effect of making me not ouchy.

5) My mom wants to cancel her knee surgery in June because she intensely dislikes the surgeon. I plan to call Kaiser's Member Services for her tomorrow and see what her options are. She's in a lot of pain and needs the surgery, but I support her desire not to let someone cut into her if she has a bad feeling about him. (She's not generally squeamish, and has undergone much more serious surgeries without a peep of complaint.) Any advice about advocating for her would be welcome.

6) The kid and I just can't seem to connect lately. We're not yelling or fighting; We get hurt and quiet instead. It makes me sad, but I guess I'm glad that we know how to go through tough times without being mean to each other.

7) Last year, my two charities of choice were the Ms. Foundation and Doctors Without Borders. I usually choose new charities earlier in the year, but this year I'm lagging, mainly because I've been dead-ass broke. But my new hours went through and I'm a little less dead-ass broke, so I'm soliciting suggestions on where you think my money would do the most good in the world. Past choices have been NPR, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Barack Obama's campaign, things like that. (Also open to the idea of sticking with one or both of my current choices, if they feel like they're promoting the highest good.)

8) I like the number 8. In my weird brain, numbers are either "sharp" or "round". This appears to have something to do with their shape as written, but also with their odd/evenness, but it's unpredictable and I'm not sure why I even connect it with odd/even/shape at all. For that matter, I don't know why my brain categorizes them that way, since I don't do anything with that information beyond noticing it.

7 is sharp, obviously, on both counts, but 3 is round (even though it's odd) and 4 is sharp even though it's even, and 9 is sharp even though it's shaped like a round number, and now that I've written that, my brain is having a crisis of definition and wants to convince me 9 may be both sharp and round, but I've never had a number that was both before. 13 is sharp. So's 14. 16 is round. So's 99. I have only articulated this once or twice before, and have never met anyone else for whom numbers have these "shapes".

Comments

[aquaeri]

The round and sharp numbers is probably a kind of synesthesia. Which is not a big deal, it wouldn't surprise me if lots of people have their own private form (given the number of possibilities).

And as someone pointed out (I think it might have been in a TED talk I watched once long ago) nearly everyone has some basic degree of synesthesia: the talk showed a blobby figure and one with straight lines and sharp edges and two made-up names and asked the audience which shape had which name, and pretty much everyone chose the name with bs for the blob and the name with ks for the "kinked" shape.

[kalmn]

i'm trying to find a new gp for my mom, so you have my sympathies. she's still a ways south of you, yes? otherwise, going to the clinic and talking to the front desk staff can be useful.

and while i think that consumer rankings of health care providers are a tool of satan (or something) angies list does have a healthcare providers ranking section. which i just used, to get the names of some possible gps for my mom.

[kalmn]

also, spring is hard in general, if the weather is changing. here we're going from snowing to 70f in less than a week and i am limpy as all get out.

also also, partners in health and doctors without borders would be my votes.

[serene]

Could be! It doesn't seem to me that I "see" or otherwise perceive the numbers as having the qualities of roundness or sharpness, but that my brain just categorizes them that way, so I've assumed it's some sort of cognitive processing thing rather than a perceptual thing, but who knows?

[merielle]

Yay! So happy for you about school! Go forth and geek out!

Re: advocating for your mom - I'm pretty sure she has the right to switch doctors; it just may take a while. In my experience, being calm, polite, and respectful with insurance company staff is a pleasant change of pace for them and makes them more likely to help you. Not that I think you wouldn't be - I'm just sharing my experience.

There are so many fantastic nonprofits! I second PIH and MSF/DWB. More that I dig: HIFY is in your area and is just amazing. They do anti-racist and sex-positive health education for young people, and young people in the organization have genuine power to affect policy and goals. Rad. I am a big fan of Oxfam, because I love how their policy shop and on-the-ground programs inform each other. SisterSong is fantastic, doing badass intersectional reproductive justice work. I am super excited to go to their sex ed conference this summer. That's who I'm loving right now.

re: Notes from the homefront

[betonica]

Roundness and sharpness for numbers makes perfect sense to me, although I don't categorize them that way. I do have a color for each of the first 9 numbers (starting when I was 4 or younger - I remember telling my father about it), but like you, I don't see or perceive the numbers in those colors. Just if you were to ask me, I'd say that three was green. (Because of the ee, maybe? but I think at 4 I might not have gotten there yet.) Eight is orange. Perhaps more like oranges than like the color orange (there's that round thing). A few of them have gotten confused over the years, though. I think one was white, but it might have been red. Five was probably red. Did I maybe have a set of colored blocks with numbers or something?

Anyway, there are other things that just "are," like the year/seasons. The year is set up on a big oval, with New Years day at one apex and sometime in early-mid summer (well, really, after official "midsummer" - July?) at the other apex. The progression of time goes counter-clockwise, too (odd). And it's kind of a lopsided oval, with February (after you come up the right side past New Years and start back to the left) higher above than November is below the New Years apex.

This has always been true in my brain. Whenever I think of months or seasons or the year as a whole, there's that lopsided oval, and the month or season is pinpointed on it.

[snippy]

I wonder whether the sharpness of numbers is related to their word sounds as well as their written shapes and their value.

[deane]

Kiva is my current favourite charity. It's a bit more interactive than most charities (though not as much so as I would have liked). It also has the advantage that you get to keep giving the original donation over and over again.

[snippy]

Gracious, why am I getting so many spam comments in reply to my comment earlier? I've had 3 in the last 24 hours!

[serene]

I just had to delete 20 spam comments. Sorry. :-( I reported them all to DW.

[snippy]

Oh Serene, you're so popular! :)

[serene]

Yeah, the spammers love me. ;-) (It's closer to 50 now. I suspect it'll stop eventually, but dang, it's really annoying.)