Where Jill Hath Led.......

One time in 7th grade, Erica McManus said that she wanted to learn to play the harp and I was suddenly struck with a similar burning desire. So I took up the harp. Now I do it professionally. Now, that's the power of peer pressure for you.

My friend Jill has just started a blog, and I feel the same itch to "go and do likewise". Well, all I can say is, I hope the outcomes are similar and this leads to a lot of jack. Because writing a blog, like watering plants, seems like a lot of work. And the problem is compounded by the fact that I only read food blogs (and the Fug Girls). And have named my blog the Feeding Chuckle. If you don't catch my drift, let me sum it up for you: food blogs are Picture-Driven.

Capice?

So instead of just spilling my guts in several installments weekly like Other Bloggers, in order to ever look in the mirror again I must find the camera, find the chip, and remember to take pictures of whatever's going on (having used nice china if it's food- and remembered to cook during the day when the light's not depressing). I must use measuring spoons and cups and write things down so I actually end up with a recipe to publish, not just "and then dump in a heaping one of those roundish spoons full of baking powder, and I think there was some tarragon in there somewhere.... right? No, wait, I got distracted and forgot about the tarragon. But I think there was smoked paprika.."

You get the idea.

Suffice it to say, this may not turn into a full-on food blog. That niche is quite adequately filled. Also, I have a one-year-old. But I will still post recipes from time to time. Meanwhile, I have decided that this can just be an extremely casual chronicle of our life, interspersed with any particularly knobby ideas I have had recently (I'll probably end up looking back at the dates and going "Wait- that's my sister-in-law's wedding day and all there is is some random post about giraffes? What??" Hence the "casual" part). And the occasional picture-and-recipe extravaganza.

So, without further ado, my topic for the day: Coming Up With Fancy Medical Diagnoses For Your Normal Human Tendencies.

It has come to my attention that there has been a surge in the popularity of mental disorders and all their accompanying psycho-babble. This has probably led to a few nuts being cured, and has certainly enabled many more to spend 10 years of their lives, which would otherwise have been cluttered with gainful employment or rewarding relationships, in some quack's leather chaise-longue talking about their mother and being billed by the quarter-hour (is it obvious that I learned all I know about shrinks from the New Yorker cartoons?).

This current psycho-fascination of society has also generated a singularly annoying phenomenon. I am referring to this nonsense where people say, "I enjoy folding laundry and neatly putting it in the drawer. I know, I'm very OCD in that way." Or, "I'm always paranoid that my skirt is clinging to my panty-hose". I would like to point out that the people who make these statements, and you, the reader, are probably not OCD, bipolar, ADD, ADHD, paranoid, or anything of the sort. You, and they, are probably just human, with all the accompanying foibles and tendencies. There are, however, real people who really do suffer from these ailments. It is probably unpleasant.

As a side note, I must point out another phenomenon- Coming Up With Wildly Obscure, Implausible and Incurable Diagnoses for Symptoms that you May or May Not be Imagining, and in Any Event, Ignoring at All Costs the Real Problem, (If Any) which is Prosaic and takes Effort to Remedy. That one is a completely different item, and, while it is also fun to participate in and often hilarious to observe in others, is not really part of this blog post.

That aside, I find this phenomenon (the first, not the second) simultaneously irritating and amusing. And, in the spirit of Going and Doing Likewise, I have decided to give myself a mental illness, too. Upon examination, the nearest description to the mark would have to be: Terminally Relaxed.

Terminal Relaxation, on the surface, may seem benign, but it's a killer. Its symptoms include inertia and lack of motivation. In its more advanced stages , it can even lead to underachievement. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: wide discrepancies between ability and performance, flakiness, weird/obscure specialization (in fields where there is little competition), starting lots of projects and not finishing them, and living on chocolate milk. A strange feature of Terminal Relaxation is that its sufferers may go to great lengths and expend huge amounts of thought and energy, to avoid exertions that seem minor in comparison.

Right. You have been warned.