And. . .WordPress is back to paying like it used to after a strange low-paying hiatus. 

Weirdness.

Whoever said what I have can be a seasonal allergy might be right. I have tons of weird sensations occurring in my nose. Plus, I’m sneezing like crazy. This becomes especially scary when I’m driving on a highway. Can anybody here sneeze without closing their eyes? Because it turns out I can. And neither can I sneeze and then stop without repeating the exercise at least 6 times. 

Hillary Clinton has a plan to improve mental health services for college students. I’m all for it but there is something else we can do to help underrepresented students to avoid depression and anxiety. We need to make sure that tenure lines aren’t closed down and students are taught by full-time permanent scholars instead of part-time transient instructors.

An example. An enormous number of African American students who enter our science programs drop out within the first 2 years. Things are especially bad in pure sciences where there is maybe 1 black graduate in years and years. 

These students could be retained in the programs if they had access to mentors, i.e. academics who are available to guide them through the programs and help them navigate the areas where they might lack preparation. These are the students who need just a little bit of assistance from somebody who cares and has time and resources to assist them. And that assistance can’t be sporadic. 

Obviously, it isn’t helping students to avoid stress and sadness when they have to drop out because they feel that these fields of knowledge are not accessible to them. 

I’m reviewing the work of one such department, and it’s scary to see how the destruction of tenure lines always comes accompanied by the plummeting rates of graduation of underrepresented groups. 

The best thing is to address the causes and not just treat the symptoms. I’m not blaming any of this on Hillary, obviously. But it’s something to keep in mind as we talk about mental health on campus.

On the same day but completely independently of each other, N and I went into a grocery store where we never buy our groceries (I have maybe been inside this store twice in the whole time we’ve lived here) and bought identical focaccia loaves. Which we never buy. The only difference is that his loaf has olives and roasted tomatoes and mine only has roasted tomatoes. 

And in the evening, we greeted each other with an identical “Hey, I bought this loaf for you that I think you’ll like.” After which we stared at each other in confusion for a while. 

We don’t buy bread for each other. Normally, he buys berries for me or if he wants me to do something extreme for him, like make a phone call, he buys charcuterie. And I buy cookies and yogurt for him. 

Today’s focaccia loaves from the same strange store are inexplicable. 

​Research explains why half the female CEOs of S&P 500 companies are blonde.

Research schmesearch. If they are CEOs, they can’t be young. If they are not young, they color their hair. Coloring it red is useless because red washes out like crazy. Coloring it dark needs constant upkeep because grey roots are more visible against dark than against blonde. So women go with generic blonde because it’s the most low-maintenance.

The pediatrician says I must introduce Klara to solid foods. She doesn’t need them nutritionally but kids need to be socialized into eating from a plate with a spoon. 

The problem is that she would chew on absolutely anything provided it’s not edible. This morning, for instance, she was desperate to eat a Ziploc bag. But when I offer her sweet potato puree/ banana / apricot / apple / avocado, etc, she reacts with extreme disgust. 

Of course, it’s not a big deal because there is literally zero chance that she will still not eat solids foods at age 20. But it’s funny that she recognizes as food everything but food. 

We are watching The Killing and N is shocked by the boys’ lack of engagement in household duties. 

“When I was their age, I did everything!” he exclaims. “I swept the floor, vacuumed the carpets, did the dishes!”

“I did nothing,” I say honestly. 

“Oh,” he says. “So how old were you when you started to do all this?”

“Well,” I respond, “It’s any day now.” 

Purdue Pharma marketed Oxycontin as non-addictive, lying to doctors and consumers and saying that it couldn’t generate addiction because it wasn’t giving users a high. What I find incomprehensible is how people could trust these lies more than the evidence provided by their own bodies. 

I took Oxy a couple of times, long before I read Dreamland, heard about the opiate epidemic, or even knew Oxy was an opiate. I took a minuscule dosage and discovered that the drug was producing an immediate and noticeable high followed after a while by a very clear crash. 

And I got freaked out like hell and stopped taking the drug.

I’m sure there are people who don’t get an Oxy high. But those are not the ones who are likely to get addicted anyway. The ones who will get addicted because that’s how their brain is set up do feel the high because without it they wouldn’t become addicts. 

So the (entirely rhetorical) question I have is how alienated must one be from one’s own body to disregard what is an obvious sign of great danger and continue taking the drug all the way into a full-blown heroin addiction? People must see themselves as infants whose bodily functions are a responsibility of an adult. 

After a baby turns 1 year old, its parents begin to socialize it into taking control of its bodily functions. But it seems like too many people were never informed that the ultimate responsibility for their bodies is their own. 

Four hundred million opiate pills were being prescribed annually in Tennessee. Whose population is 6 million.

This is a crime against humanity.