Hobbies that can kill you

Saturday, as we approached what is in most of the civilized world, spring, my alpha rhythms went delta. All of them. Outside, it blew fat wet snowclods, which changed to sleet and freezing rain and finally to rain. The streets were as sloppy and grey as my state of mind.

I'm not one to sit and conduct a pity party for any more than a few days or weeks, so I decided to cheer myself up by taking an online IQ test. The results (the ones you didn't have to actually pay for) declared me to be stunningly average. (As Weedy says, "Remember that part in American Beauty when the girl wails 'I am not ordinary'?" Matter of fact, yes. Matter of fact, I was howling something just like that to my walls.)

And it seems, from the scant information they deigned to provide free of charge at the conclusion of the test, that it is visual pattern recognition that lowers my score. You know: the part of the test where they show you four objects that look like squared off, tortured drain pipes, and ask which one doesn't fit? I flunk those.

Once, during the Christmas season in Toronto, when I was working in my business partner's store and ripping yet another folding box, my partner exclaimed merrily to the customer, "Can you believe she can work with all those teeny little beads and she can't fold a gift box?" So, I ask you, how am I going to manage the twisty drainpipe problem?

And I've taken that round peg/round hole test too. And the psychologist, in an amazingly unprofessional display (I thought) remarked, "I'm surprised. You're such a bright girl," as I attempted to squish a triangle into a square hole.

Just thank the gods I didn't take up driving - or architecture.

I do splendidly on general knowledge and communication. I can easily figure out what number comes next in a sequence. But there's another area that drags my score down, too...

If four trucks with six wheels each are travelling down a highway carrying eighteen bicycles and it is snowing in Japan, what direction are they going and when will they get to Memphis?
I'm not kidding. This is precisely how these questions look to me. And then, instead of trying to figure it out, I stare at the screen and say (usually aloud because I live alone) "Who the fuck cares? Are you serious? Who needs to know this kind of shite?" My brain grinds into reverse. I can almost feel my brain hurting. Don't tell me about having no pain centers in the brain. The brain knows when it's being asked to imitate a seal balancing a ball on its nose. And then I guess.
Eight o'clock p.m. Why not? Who cares? Personally, I'm wishing flat tires on them all and urging the drivers to stop and have a nap.

Afterwards, I turn my average talents to thinking up solutions to the intricate problems of world peace. Stay tuned.

Something old and calm

These are my new treasures. Ammonites, possibly half a billion years old. I'm planning to make pendents and pins out of them - perhaps one framed piece with a fossil in the center. I started out buying four. The next trip it was ten. I couldn't seem to put them back in the display box and just leave them there. Next piece of jewelry is for my boss - a Happy Sabbatical present.

Just so you know. I do stay out of trouble now and then. And you can only iron your wimple for so long, right?

An actual post, I dearly hope, will be coming soon.