Get out and vote!

Thank goodness for the volunteer group Rock the Vote!

During Fulbright Orientation, they set up a table, and I stopped by to request my absentee ballot. I would have had NO IDEA how to vote from Madrid otherwise and would have lost my opportunity to vote in such a crazy election.

I got my ballot in my inbox earlier this week and printed it off on Tuesday (just before I watched the debate)!

It feels really poignant to fill it out this year, not only because I'm so far from home. I know so many people just hate Hillary Rodham Clinton with such a deep visceral disgust (or at least, it feels like I do). And yet, I'm proud to finally FINALLY be able to cast my vote for a woman.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3ub0utCmw1qe2ha5o1_250.gif

So many people have argued for so long about how they were ready for a woman to be elected, just not THIS woman. Heck, that was Carly Fiorina's whole campaign!

To those people, I say, "Fie! A pox on all your houses!" That argument is one of the most deeply misogynistic statements because there would then never be a first female president of the United States. No woman in the entire world would have been able to meet society's expectations in order to become her.

Just look at how hard HRC has had it for proof. That woman has had to draw some impenetrable armor on for her entire life so that others might have better lives themselves. And then she gets criticized for being too withdrawn. I, for one, am grateful for the sacrifices that she has made (even in spite of the scandals) to ensure that our country works for everyone: men, women, children. Immigrants and those whose families immigrated generations ago. Muslims, Christians and Scientologists alike.

And so, I am proud to be casting my ballot for Hillary Rodham Clinton. I am ready for a female president, and I am ready for THIS female president. #ImWithHer

Ávila

Last week, I took a break and took a drive with some friends to Ávila.

We took the scenic route--through the mountains, with some winding roads, but zero traffic--and ended up in Ávila just in time for lunch.

I ordered the ham and melon that you see to the left, and my friend Á ordered the fried potatoes with ham and eggs to the right. There were then second courses to the meal + dessert, so we ate a lot of food.

So did that wasp! He was a little stinker, flying around our meal and trying to chow down on all my ham. We definitely did succeed in extracting him from the ham and enjoying the rest of our meal in relatively wasp-free peace. 

Ávila dates back to Roman times, and was hugely important during the Reconquest and the Empire. It even boasts the birthplace and baptismal chapel of Santa Teresa de Jesús, a nun and mystic who was also a prolific author and poet. 

It has a pretty plaza (where we ate that massive, wasp-filled lunch)

 and took an awesome photo

And a massive cathedral (that we didn't enter)

But most notably, Ávila has some AMAZINGLY well-preserved medieval walls. 

I really wanted to walk around the ramparts, but there wasn't time. Looks like I'll have to go back!

On Watching Presidential Debates Abroad

Last night, I watched the full presidential debate.

I know, I know. I was watching it almost a full day after everyone in the States had the privilege of seeing Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump go at each other's throats live, so I had clearly already seen the late-night highlights and read ALL of the news dissecting their performances. (Also, the event was PACKED!)

I don't normally watch presidential debates--usually because I've always had some paper due, or some reading to finish, or because I've pretty much already decided who I plan to vote for, so watching an extended infomercial just seemed like a waste of time.

This election has been different though. When the Republican primary debates happened, I watched one or two. And when the Democratic debates happened, I think I also watched one of those.

Even when I was in Spain last summer, it felt different. That was when Trump declared his candidacy and said all of the ridiculous things at a time that people now look back on fondly as an age of innocence. We just didn't know how BADLY discourse would break down in this election (though, with hindsight being 20/20, we TOTALLY should have seen this coming).

And I use the word "felt" in the above paragraph intentionally. Elections in the US are always about feeling: both Bush and Obama won because they were the candidates that people wanted to have a beer with. Gut instinct trumps logic most of the time in US elections, and that's why this one has been so fascinating, perverse and scary for me. Because our gut instinct is a very powerful thing, but most people don't actually know how to understand what it's telling them.

To take an example:

My one criticism with Oliver here is that feelings ARE facts. However, Gingrich is not expressing feelings, he's expressing opinions. People don't feel that crime is up (even though it's not). People BELIEVE that crime is up. A feeling is embodied; it's a neurological and physiological reaction to specific circumstances. "Crime being up" is not something you can feel. People may be afraid. They may feel threatened. (Most likely because we live in a scary and violent world that has ALWAYS been scary and violent, and nostalgia does funny things with our minds and makes us forget that last part).

Those feelings are valid and need to be paid attention to. But they should not be played on, exaggerated, baited and manipulated. They should be confronted and resolved, as steadily and calmly as possible.

And so, watching this debate was difficult, mostly because I know that there are people who will vote against their own best interest, purely because their feelings are at play.

And yet, other aspects of the debate reminded me of this one:

With its great closing statement:

And that makes me smile inside. 

On Bedtime Alarms

For the last several years, an alarm on my phone has gone off every weekday at 9:15 PM.

Sometimes I ignore it, sometimes I don't. I try not to, but the fact of the matter is, I need my rest. A LOT of rest. Like a solid 8-9 hours a night.

And when I'm working at my computer--trying to get everything read before class or staying up late to get that paper/abstract/blogpost written--it can be very difficult to pull myself out of my screen at a decent hour to get ready for bed.

There are all sorts of studies about what screens (computer, TV, tablet, cell phone) do to our brains, but most sleep experts recommend turning them off at least two hours before bed. So I have my bedtime alarm to try to remind me to start winding down without screens.

But then I moved to Spain, and 9:15 might as well be 6:30 in the evening, because that's when people are eating dinner or out with friends for tapas, so I changed my bedtime alarm. And then I stopped paying attention to it because I can start my days late if I have to.

And then, the new iOS update came out, and it includes a BEDTIME SETTING in the clock function.

I'm so excited to try it that I've decided I'm going to force myself to try to stick to a more US-oriented bedtime schedule during the week. This will also help me take advantage of the archives and writing time. PLUS, privileging sleep helps me organize my day.

And when I'm well-rested, my central nervous system (CNS) doesn't need any soothing whatsoever. Win-win!

The Inquisition

The apartment where I'm living is just around the corner from the building that used to house the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition.

I was walking by there one evening, and I came upon a city tour stopped outside. The guide was sharing some of the history of the Inquisition, and he noted that first, suspected heretics were taken to the basement and tortured (for a while), then, once they had confessed, they were brought in front of a tribunal who then determined the punishment for their crimes.

Apparently one of the most popular punishments involved a barrel: the punished would have to wear a barrel (with holes cut out for arms, legs and head) for a month and they couldn't take it off--not to sleep, not to sit, not to ... you get the idea. The sole purpose for castigations such as this was not punishment (after all, they'd already been tortured), but rather public humiliation.

The very existence of the Inquisition has always seemed to me to be one of the darker times in human history: so full of suspicion, shame, punishment, treachery and fear. And it's hard to be reminded of how terribly human beings have treated others throughout history, if only because it sheds so much light on how far we still have to go. We may no longer force people to wear their shame publicly (via barrels or scarlet letters), but that doesn't mean we're any better off than our ancestors. 

Mitte: Eat Art

On Friday, some friends and I went to this fancy restaurant with a tasting menu. It's in Chueca--one of the best places to go out on the weekend, and we had wine beforehand and then a most delicious meal.

I love tasting menus. Or rather, I really love the idea of tasting menus. I like that the servings are tiny; it forces me to focus on what I'm eating and really be in the moment to fully enjoy the experience. I've had some tasting menus that have been not that great (my Aunt J will never let me live down the octopus in Valencia), but for the most part, they're all very good and very creative. I can't even remember what all was in each dish, but I'm going to try to give you a taste of it with each photo.

First course: The waiter told us it was a hot dog. I guess the crust tasted just as buttery and flaky as that of a pig-in-a-blanket, but the filling and the topping was salty and onion-y, perhaps a black olive or black bean spread in the center with something like an ali-oli on top? 

Second course: gnocchi. Though you wouldn't know it by the smoke filled fish-bowl that they served it in. The gnocchi definitely had an amazing salty, smoky flavor, and it just MELTED in your mouth. 

Look at how cool all that smoke is wafting out of the container!!!

Third course: Some sort of fish in a butter sauce, with ginger caviar on top. The only thing wrong with this dish was the sauce--it was a little bland, maybe they put too much flour in the roux? The ginger caviar was excellent though. 

Fourth course: Iberian lizard. (Just kidding! It's pork.) The funny thing about this dish is that the cut of meat is called "lagarto", which sounds like lizard in Spanish. It's actually a bit of rib meat slow-cooked to perfection and served with thinly shaved celery and orange, along with a chestnut mash and sauce. 

Fifth course: 1st dessert. Violet-flavored mascarpone with pop rocks, covering a small scoop of lavender (or violet, I honestly couldn't tell) ice-cream and a graham cracker bottom. 

Sixth course: 2nd dessert. A super-sweet digestif. I honestly can't remember the flavor, but it was something tropical and very sweet. I clearly finished all of mine. 

Seventh course: 3rd dessert: Olives served over ground chocolate. Actually, they were olive-shaped chocolates served over chocolate. 

In all, Mitte was delicious, and I would totally go back. I think M² and I should go when he comes to visit. 

Storyboard Saturday: The Rose Princess (Part I)

There once was a princess who lived in a rose. It was a precious home, fragrant, with soft petal-pillows all around. She was happy and safe there, and she would often invite her bee friends over for flower-pollen biscuits and rosehip tea. Her rose castle was sheltered from the wind, rain and sun by an overhanging yew tree, and she was cozy-comfortably in the little life she led there.

And then, one day, some giant clippers separated her cozy rose home from the other flowers in her rosebush neighborhood, and she floated into an arrangement with some strangers in their peony houses, along with one ethereal beauty in a lily-of-the-valley.

But in spite of the beauty of the floral composition, and in spite of the fact that she was now even better protected from the wind and rain and sun, our little princess was very unhappy. She did not like living in a work of art; she wanted to go back outdoors with her wonderful bee friends! Her neighbors were grouchy and mean, and her lovely home's fragrance was becoming overpoweringly sweet. Even the petal-pillows had begun to lose their softness.

And so, the rose princess decided to bake one last batch of pollen biscuits, pack the last of her reshape tea and leave her ruined flower castle behind. She climbed down the stock, jumping from thorn to thorn, until she reached a very narrow, smooth ledge. Glass dropped sharply away on both sides: flower stems in murky water on one side, and a dark, flat expanse on the other. She opted for the side without water and slid all the way down.

She landed with a thump and looked up. Her old home towered far above her, and she marveled at how far she had traveled in such a short period of time. And then she noticed that the air smelled much fresher down on the flatland--though not at all like her old home. She knew she couldn't stay at the base of this glass mountain, though, so she trekked across the mesa until she found herself in the shadow of a steep overhang.

Large letters on the side said "Telephone Directory" in bold black font, though, properly speaking, our little princess only knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. She was resting against the spine of the book when suddenly two giant tentacled pink aliens reached down to grab it. She had no choice but to hold on and fly through the air with the book until it landed with a thud on a high wooden shelf. Once again, she slid down a precariously smooth surface until she was once more on level ground.

She looked out over the vast area she had traversed--a great chasm now lay between her and the high plateau she had first crossed, and then, off in the distance, her wilted palace with its noisy neighbors. Those giant pink tentacles were attached to a bright purple sweater, which sat under a pretty face, which was, at this exact moment, hovering quite near her old home with a beautiful smile.

At first, she was glad of it: "At least someone can still enjoy its beauty". And then she was furious, for if that woman hadn't cut her rose from its bush, she would still be enjoying its beautiful fragrance -- comfy and cozy and without a care in the world.

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(To be Continued)

Bosch

This year was the 500th anniversary of the death of Jheronimus Bosch, a medieval Flemish painter  whose style is so unique and original that Salvador Dalí based his surrealist style off of elements that he saw in Bosch's works.

A tiny museum in Bosch's hometown in the Netherlands brought together as many of his existing works as possible this past spring, and the Prado paid to bring the entire exhibition to Spain until this coming Sunday.

It is so popular that the line to get in has been around the corner and 3/4 of the way down the Prado (and the Prado is a VERY LONG building). Luckily, I have the "Tarjeta Anual", so I was able to skip the line when I went at 11AM. That said, I still had to wait until 2 until I could actually enter the exhibition.

I didn't take any photos inside, but let's just say that Bosch is awesome. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" is definitely Bosch's most craze-mazing work, but it was cool to see how the visions, crazy inventions and man-imals that populate his most famous work evolved over the course of his life. Saints paintings have little man-bug-demons tempting St. Anthony, or delicate bubble sculptures protect Saint Jerome praying.


And of course, Bosch gave us this: a score of music drawn on the naked buttocks of a man burning in hell in The Garden of Earthly delights. I give you the Hieronymus Bosch Butt Song:

Brew

My friend, L, got a puppy this summer. A cute little golden Labrador Retriever named Brew. (He also happens to be the chillest, most laid-back Lab I've ever met.

It was apparently kismet that brought them together. L was at a bar with some friends drinking a beer from the brewery BrewDog, and she had been thinking for a while about getting a dog, and she took it as a sign from heaven that should she ever get a dog, his name would be Brew.

And so right then, she decided to get in touch with a breeder and get a male puppy. 

Brew is so well-behaved that L is thinking of training him to be a therapy dog. He's only 4 months old, and he already sits, stays, comes, plays dead and fetches (he is a lab, after all). 

Look at how cute he is!! 

Just look at him!!!!

More Mercados

My roommate, C, would really love Michael Pollan. She's convinced that Monsanto is ruining the world, and she avoids buying food and produce at major supermarkets. The fridge is always full of veggies, though, and she regularly eats fish and chicken. So where does she buy her food?

The local mercado.

I talked about the cool hipster-ish Mercado de Vallehermoso last week, when I went with my friends to enjoy the Sunday restaurants. But the market itself wasn't really open on Sunday--there were no fish vendors, nor fruit and veggie peddlers, nor carnicerías. The market where C shops is similar, but WAY larger, and with fewer restaurants.

Market shopping is a bit challenging for me. It requires a lot of thought to figure out what I want to eat over the course of a week, how I'm going to prepare it, when, etc... But C showed me that I can ask the vendors for just one stalk of celery (YOU CAN DO THAT?!?!?!?) so you don't have to take a whole bunch and then deal with all that nasty vegetable floss.

So I'm going to try to do most of my shopping at our local market (Michael Pollan and Alice Waters would be proud). 

Immunology

According to my roommate, C, I should have run barefoot in the snow when I was a child.

Let me back up and explain that. Last week, the temperature dropped about 30 degrees overnight. It went from high 90's to 60s/70s really quickly, and I was NOT anticipating the change. I was perfectly happy in the un-air-conditioned apartment when it was almost 100 degrees out. I'm weird, I know! I was perfectly comfortable, not over-heated, just right in 100º heat. There's clearly something wrong with me.

I had decided to wear a nice tweed dress to my appointment with the Spanish bureaucrats (everything goes more smoothly when you dress like you mean it here), so I grabbed a light jacket and a scarf to help against the cold. They were not nearly enough. By the time I got home that evening, I was so cold, I felt like I was freezing from the inside (and maybe coming down with something).

So I pulled out the down comforter to warm myself up.

When C noticed this, she had a mild conniption. It's not nearly cold enough for the down! You'll die of heatstroke if you sleep in that! When winter comes, you won't have anything warmer to put on the bed!

And so we got to talking about sauna culture in Northern Europe and about her time growing up in Switzerland, where she had to run a footrace barefoot through the snow every January during elementary school. She maintains that exposing yourself to frigid temperatures bolsters the immune system and helps prevent allergies and gosh knows what other type of illness. I'm sure it does to some extent. My body just hates the trauma of anything colder than 98º.

I mention this because the need to be warm and cozy is one of the aspects of self-care that I have discovered during recovery from trichotillomania. If I notice that I'm cold, I can shiver (there are days where I have actually forced myself to stand in my office shivering in order to warm myself up. It actually works wonders.) I can get up and walk around, shake out my hands and feet to get my circulation moving and my blood pumping. Or alternatively, I can meditate and notice how the stillness helps my pulse even out throughout the body. But the most important thing is to notice. To bring discomfort into awareness and either sit with it and accept it or take productive action to heal it, rather than numb it. 

La Piscine

Thursday, I went to a lovely co-working space in Chueca. It's called La Piscine (check it out here), and it was the perfect place to revise a cover letter and work on some job docs after being in the library all day. 

I find coffeeshops difficult to work in sometimes, because they can be so loud (the music volume is almost always too high for me to be able to concentrate, and then there's all the ambient noise, and the coffee grinders). So when A and I walked by this place last Friday, and it was completely empty and also SILENT, I was sold. 

I'm trying to set myself a schedule and stick to it, and a part of that schedule is choosing certain places to go where all I do is write. It's far too easy to convince myself that I need to do more reading when I am in a library surrounded by books. It's far easier to convince myself to write when I have is 2 hours in a co-working space that I am paying for (I get tea and snacks along with the SILENCE) where writing is the only thing I need to do. 

So I will continue to search out cute co-working spaces and (silent) coffeeshops to try to get some Pomodoros in and write a lot!

Domingo Perfecto

Last Sunday, I met up with my friends L and T for their Sunday tradition, which they refer to as "Domingo Perfecto", or Perfect Sunday. It basically involves nothing more than meeting up with a bunch of friends to eat and drink and tapear (eat tapas) and wander around and hang out for most of the day.

We met at the Mercado de Vallehermoso, a crazy awesome (probably hipster?) neighborhood market in T's barrio. We drank some drinks, and ate some food (there was a crazy delicious hamburger that I was not expecting at this tiny little restaurant), and then went for a short walk and had ice cream. We caught up on life and jobs and how much Madrid has changed in such a short period of time. It was lovely.

And this Sunday, we plan to do it all again! Everyone needs domingo perfecto in their life.

Storyboard Saturday: The Wolf Princess

A few years ago, I really got into writing stories as a way to warm up my brain for academic work. Writing requires practice, and I just felt like I hadn't practiced enough. Plus, academic writing is its own genre, and it really weighs on the brain after awhile. Every so often, it's nice to produce something different, just for fun.

So I wrote short stories. A lot of them had princesses as their protagonists (pretty much all of them). Princesses are problematic, but I just think of the word as a synonym for girl. I don't mean to start a fight about feminism, nor about what we should be modeling for girls (though I like to think that these princesses model a lot of creativity and independent thinking, in addition to self-care and compassion).

I didn't really know what to do with these stories, but I didn't want them just languishing away in my old journals, so I decided to type them up here on Saturdays, to give you all a glimpse into another facet of DNortonLand. So for the first Storyboard Saturday, I give you: The Wolf Princess.

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There once was a princess who lived in the woods. Well, actually, she lived in a tree. A rather large tree, if you ask me; a quite sturdy oak with broad limbs and leaves, and a spacious aerial view of the river a short distance away. She led a quiet life--peacefully gathering berries, herbs, and nuts, occasionally catching a small trout, and weaving spiderweb silk into cloth for a winter coat. This latter task was easily the most arduous, because the thread kept breaking and sticking to her fingers, but she was sure that her cloth would be far warmer than any fur she were to tan precisely because its tight weave would keep the wind out.

One day, as she was returning from gathering trout, she noticed a small wolf following her. As she had caught more than she had intended in her traps, she tossed a fish to the pup and clapped when he expertly caught it with a flick of his jaws. Though she couldn't spare any more fish, the pup followed her to her tree house and lay down at its roots. Right before the sun fell, she tossed him another fish, in the hopes that it would satisfy him so he would wander off. But this pup was bedded down for the night, and when the young princess peeked outside the next morning, he was lying in the exact same position as the night before: ears tucked and nose under tail.

At least, he was lying in the same position until she stepped on a creaky branch. He jumped up, tongue out and tail wagging, and whined and whined until she pulled out another fish. She threw it far away from the tree so that she could hop down while he chased after it. And then, she went about her day's business: weaving, cooking, cleaning and fishing. And when she was on her way back from the river, the wolf was waiting for her once again.

And that's how she learned that if you give a wolf a fish, you'll feed it for the rest of your life. 

Fun times with Gimenez Caballero

Ernesto Gimenez Caballero is one of Spain's more infamous authors. Incredibly prolific, and an early promoter of literary Futurism and other vanguard movements, he nonetheless veered into fascism in the late 1920s/early 1930s and was one of the main propagandists working in Franco's favor once the Spanish Civil War began.

I went to the BNE this week to start doing some research on his writings. There's a lot of love in his writings; titles such as Amor a Cataluña, Amor a Argentina, Amor a México populate his oeuvre. And I think this love is meant in the best possible light, however, such incessant declarations of love seem to derive from desperation and nostalgia, and his work just shimmers with imperial tendencies.

Perhaps my favorite of his works is the tiny volume, Norteamérica sonrie a España; a 25-ish page 4-part essay about American economist, Frank Henius. In it, EGC addresses US optimism, Dale Carnegie, the Marshall Plan, and the development of Henius's book "Save Spain or Lose Europe" (I can only find it in Spanish, though I bet it's at the Library of Congress). He's especially taken with the optimism part in one of my favorite quotes, which I will put here:

"And like all of the panglossian sons of North America, who, thanks to their belief that everything will turn out for the best, always work it out so that everything turns out for the best. Rescuing thus for Humanity one of the treasures that God set upon the Earth for one chosen race: self-confidence. The ultimate secret of the Western or Aryan genius (I told you all that the man was a Fascist, ok?!?). The secret that was of Ancient Greece. And of 15th Century Florence. And of Victorian England. And today is that of men who, like Henius, want to save North American by helping Spain, in a fit of filial gratitude to Spain for having been the inventor of America and for having given them the occasion of being born in the best land of possible lands: that of Washington. And of being able to live from time to time in 2000 Connecticut Avenue." (p. 20).

Professor Pangloss is a character from Voltaire's satire, Candide. Pangloss is supposedly the greatest philosopher in the Holy Roman Empire, according to Wikipedia. There's some fun linguistic acrobatics that I need to work through before I can use this in my research, but it gives you all an idea of what I'm working on.

If you want to see the original Spanish, here it is:

"Y como todos los panglossianos hijos de Norteamérica que, gracias a creer que todo puede ir bien, logran al fin que todo vaya bien. Salvando así para la Humanidad uno de los tesoros que Dios colocó sobre la tierra para una raza elegida: 'la confianza de sí mismo'. Secreto último del genio occidental o ario. Secreto que fue de la Grecia antigua. Y de la Florencia del XV. Y del inglés victoriano. Y hoy es de los hombres que, como Henius, quieren salvar a Norteamérica ayudando a los españoles, en un rapto de gratitud filial por haber sido España la inventora de América y haberle dado la ocasión de nacer en la mejor tierra de las tierras posibles: la de Washington. Y poder vivir de tiempo en tiempo en la Avenida Connecticut, número 2.000" (20).

On Spirit Animals

One day (a while ago), I asked M2 what his spirit animal was. He just laughed and paused before blurting out, "probably a cheetah". That makes sense for him. He runs pretty fast, and they're quite majestic creatures. Also, he's pretty much a cat in a lot of ways, so his spirit animal should be one too.

The problem with asking someone about who their spirit animal is is that then they turn the question on you. And that's especially a problem when you haven't really thought about it for yourself. I love otters

But they're not exactly my spirit animal, no matter how adorable and fierce they are. (Also, look at that cute otter right there! Just look at him!!)

So it took me a few days to think of one, really think of an animal whose spirit encapsulates all the qualities I see in myself (which is really a silly game, but it's fun to play, so whatever).

And then I watched this speech by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I realized that it had been sitting (or rather, humming) in front of me all along. My spirit animal is clearly a hummingbird: small and fierce, with loads of energy. It also happens to be animal that has graced this blog's background from the beginning.


My spirit animal just happens to be an "obese bee in need of a nose job", according to John Oliver, and that is fine by me.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Let me share with you an anecdote of the first day that I arrived in Spain this year. 

I hauled all my suitcases up 4 flights of stairs (I cannot stress this enough), and while I was unpacking, my new roommate/landlady, C, turned on the television to see what movies the Spanish channels were showing. It's pretty common that Spanish television replays old Spanish and (dubbed) Hollywood films in the afternoons and evenings. 

(Sidenote: most of the collection at the Filmoteca Nacional--The National Film Archive that I use a lot to watch old Spanish films and dubbed/censored not Spanish films--is actually videos recorded from when these movies were aired on Spanish TV in the 80s. The commercials that you have to fast-forward through make for an AMAZING viewing experience.) 

So, I'm unpacking, and I hear this exclamation, "¡Ay, esto es una reliquia!" It turns out the movie that C turned on was Siete novias para siete hermanos (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). Great film, amazing dance scenes--a classic of the Hollywood studio system that I definitely watched at some point in middle school, an age when it seems like all American girls go through a Classic Hollywood phase (or maybe that was just preppy American pre-teens in Wichita). 

But there is something about this film that seems to spark especially strong reactions in Spain. Not just C's exclamation that it is a relic (a good, ageless relic), but a whole film came out in 2013 in homage to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, so sometimes it seems to me that in Spain, there might be more of an attachment to this film than there is even in the States. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how attached Americans are to this film? If it was on TV, would you have a deeply nostalgic reaction, or would you move on to watch football or HGTV or something else? 

Grit (III)

In my previous post on Grit (see Grit (II)) I talked about how important it was to be able to FEEL a sense of empowerment. Duckworth talks about learned helplessness at one point during Grit, and I think this point really struck home for me.

See, when I was 14, I started playing with my split ends a lot. In a way that caused a teacher to call me out in front of the class to stop. Boy, was that embarrassing!

Being called out on body-focused repetitive behaviors like peeling and playing with split ends does pretty much nothing to stop them: I just hid the habit by pulling out individual hairs and playing with them under the desk. Obviously, this made the situation worse because pulling hair out is somehow more shameful (societally speaking) than is playing with split ends.

Pulling hair out also happens to be a physiological (aka: bodily) response to stress/strong emotions/overwhelming stimuli. It's the grooming behavior you see all sorts of animals do, but taken to an extreme. And trichotillomania also happens to be the oldest psychological condition on record (probably because of how it relates to our animal bodies and minds, evolutionarily speaking).

Some people are able to will themselves to stop pulling out their hair. Others are not. Those who cannot develop a sense of learned helplessness--that this condition controls them, that there is nothing they can do to stop.

That's patently untrue. However, it's only very recently that advances in clinical psychology have inched closer to providing some relief for certain individuals. Periodically throughout this year in Madrid (probably in a weekly post on Tuesdays), I'm also going to explore my experiences in recovery from pulling out my hair, addressing the grit I've found by tackling what I've always considered to be my greatest flaw and my most helpless self. 

Flat Tire

Madrid's streets are dangerous. No, not like that! They're not dangerous in the sense that someone will sneak up on you with a knife (though there is a decent amount of petty theft, as in all big cities).

They're dangerous in ways you don't think of.

In summer of 2015, I slipped on a french fry on the sidewalk and twisted my ankle. It had me laid up for a few days resting with an ice pack (that's when I downloaded 3 seasons of Parks and Rec and proceeded to re-watch most of the show... solid life choices right here).

This past weekend, I was walking around Chueca with my friend A, and all of a sudden, my sandal broke! They were some cheap sandals from Aldo, so I guess it's not too surprising...

But they were cute, and I was really enjoying wearing them around Madrid!

So then A and I hobbled to the nearest shoe shop to get me some shoes (it was a vintage shop, and all they had in my size were flats, so we then kept walking until we found an AleHop and I bought some cheap comfy replacement sandals there).

My roommate C suggested that I take them to a zapatero (she really hates to throw things away). I'm going to try because I like them so much, even though they may not be worth it. 

About DNortonLand Nicknames

In case you haven't noticed, I tend to refer to people in my life by one letter. Usually it's the letter that their name starts with, but sometimes I nickname the person and go from there.

Like Marathon Man (MM). I really wanted to call him Iron Man (or IM) because the man is as solid and stable as iron. Also, because he has completed a half IronMan, but mostly because of the stability. He's just solid and dependable. But since he hasn't actually completed a full IronMan yet (and since his plans to complete one this fall got postponed), he wouldn't let me call him that.

So I called him MM in one post. My friend A pointed out that that is exactly how the Pioneer Woman refers to her husband, and I really don't want to be accused of violating any sort of copyright (although I don't think she has copyrighted that particular two-letter nickname, who knows?).

So we started talking about how I could adjust the name to make it even more accurate. I thought maybe 2M (because there are two M's), and then she suggested M2, as in M squared (which really just brings out his engineering side even more), which made me wonder if I could actually type a super-scripted numeral into Blogger. I can't do it directly in Blogger, but it seems that if I type in Word and copy/paste, then it works. So from here on out, MM is M².