This Kiss

Last night I was watching a documentary of Icelandic people venting their opinion about the collapsing of the banking system back in 2008. The documentary maker says it shows the revolution of the people there who do no longer bow for the corruption of banks. Indeed, that is where it came to surface, I think, the crisis, followed by the eruption of the volcano with the terrific and unpronounceable name in 2010. Is it typical that I think that that was Mother Earth’s protest?

Hm. There is something else here. I cannot ignore that there is a resonant feeling deep down in me that says ‘hey, what did you say you were doing?’. Suddenly it dawned on me. I was watching a documentary about a dead serious topic ON A SATURDAY NIGHT!!!

Although I do really like serious topics, Saturday nights are by far the nights of having fun. In my opinion. At least of relaxing and let go, re-energize for the next week, that kind of stuff. Until I had met him of course. It was still relaxing and re-energizing with him, definitely, but also, uhm, how do I put this? Well he was the first who made me aware of the madness in the present global financial system. Oh, and many, many, other things as well. He is a walking encyclopedia. No, that does not do him justice, he just really knows a lot. I cannot say that this is what I like most about him because  he is also an enthusiastic kisser. And kissing is something I like even more than elaborating serious topics.

Is kissing not serious then? Cher sings very convincingly ‘if you wanna know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss’. The kind of kissing we are talking about here are the subliminal, pivotal moments shared between a man and a woman (Faith Hill). Not the friendly pecks on the cheek. But neither necessarily French kissing.  Love and kisses are highly correlated and are being sung in an equally number of songs.

Kissing is also topic of science and not exclusively something psychological, it is also biological (evolution of kissing) and neurological (a true firework between neurons in the brain and the senses). But is it equally evaluated by men and women? Women do kiss because it tells them more about the relationship. To see where this is headed. Kissing is important to men, they enjoy it too, but they describe it more as a means to an end, they are more focused on what may come next (Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of "The Science of Kissing").

Contracts used to be signed with an "X" and then kissed to signify their legality. This is where signing a letter with "xxx" comes from (Ben Nadel). To me there is a significant difference in signing an e-mail or text message with one “X” or more than one (xx or xxx or even xxxx).

Without kissing a flirt is just a flirt and friendship remains platonically. A good kiss is the best medicine to make up a fight with your lover. That is why it is a shame that kissing subdues often when a relationship is lasting longer, beyond the falling in love stage. Couples’ therapy should include ‘the Art of Kissing’. After all a wedding ceremony ends with the magical words ‘now you may kiss the bride’.

Although I am definitely a woman I would like to say that I am focused on what may come next as well. So let us make a pledge. To meet in September. And seal it with a kiss (Bobby Vinton). 

Bang Bang

It feels like I am chasing my own tail. There is so much that needs to be done but what I really need is to sit back and relax a little. Last week I needed to clear the closet in the attic where the central heating is stationed because a guy came in for the annual maintenance (for the heater). I store many things in that closet like camping stuff, suitcases and the cradle and pram which belonged to my babies. Before he was finished he called me up there and said apologetically that he had broken the glass of a painting which stood near the wall in the closet. My own fault, I had not seen it when clearing the place. It was the first painting my first love and I had bought a long time ago. A beautiful painting of a sunset colored sea.  It did not suit my living room walls because of the color of the passe-partout but I still feel rather attached to it. I carefully carried the picture frame with the shattered glass down the two stairs. Some pieces were too big to put in the carton box I had found and I shattered them further in the backyard, using a big old towel and a hammer after the guy had left. The frame was not useable anymore and I removed the picture from it. Without the passe-partout it suited my walls wonderful and I decided to re-frame it someday when money is not so tight, with another frame, a silver colored one.

The closet needed some cleaning and vacuuming before I could put all the stuff back but I left that until yesterday. There were so much other things that needed to be done and frankly I could not see the point of cleaning there when the chances are so high that I have to move houses soon. I plucked up the courage to do it yesterday though. The cleaning was not so hard to do. However, when I picked up the cradle a dreadful flash of pain shot through my lower back. Damn, that hurt. I managed to return slowly upright and put all the stuff back and even did some more chores that day. In the evening I could barely make it on or off a chair anymore, frozen halfway descending by the pain. And when I really had to stand up it took me a couple of minutes to walk slightly bended forward. It reminds me of the few other times I had my back hurt. The first time was when I fell off a galloping horse. An even more dreadful experience was after I fell backwards in a stairwell, with my three months old first born in my arms, especially when I recovered from being unconscious for a short while to find my baby was taken away. It turned out that a helpful lady who was passing by took him to the address where I was originally going to, and asked for help. After being collected by my husband we went to the hospital to have the baby’s head examined with x-ray, that was my main concern. He was okay, thankfully, and the following week I climbed and descended the stairs in our house sitting on my bum.  

For a long time I could not recall the event of falling backwards without  feeling as if there still was a huge well behind my back, and my body reached automatically forward, like to prevent me from falling again. Last week, before I hurt my back this time, I was clearing my email inbox. An email from two months ago was about various podcasts about trauma therapy. One of the renowned specialists in the trauma field is Babette Rothschild and I own a book from her:  The Body Remembers, about the psychophysiology of trauma and trauma treatment.  I decided to re-read that book.

The book explains how the body responses to threat through the limbic system in the brain and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) with fight, flight or freeze. Once the traumatic incident is over and the fight or flight has been successful, the natural hormone cortisol will halt the alarm reaction and helping the body to restore to homeostasis. Sometimes this goes wrong and the adrenal glands do not release enough cortisol to halt the alarm reaction. On a chemical level the continued alarm reaction typical of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is due to a deficiency of cortisol production. Throughout the book a story is woven of a boy who was chased and bitten by a dog when he was riding his bicycle. This boy functions normal when he grows up except that he keeps avoiding dogs. This is where PTSD is distinguished from Posttraumatic stress (PTS), traumatic stress that persists following (post) a traumatic incident. It is only when posttraumatic stress accumulates to the degree that it produces the symptoms outlined in DSM-IV that the term posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be applied. PTSD implies a high level of daily dysfunction. The chronically aroused ANS causes the traumatic event to continually float into the present perception, as if it were occurring now, rather than occupying its locus in one’s past. That is where carefully carried out trauma treatment come into hand. I have experienced that myself a couple of years ago for overcoming the feeling of being pulled backwards when I recalled the falling event. Now I can talk or think about it without the bodily reaction I have had before.

Yet, I don’t know if and what my body is telling me know, as I crawl from my chair to my kitchen. Maybe just that I am forced to sit back for a while and stop chasing my own tail.

Girls talk

This semester is finally over. At last I am having time again to catch up with my friends. I arranged to meet with four of them for a good old fashioned girls night in town last night. We had not seen each other for quite a while and I was looking forward to hear all their whereabouts. Compared to them my life as a student is very bleakly. Karin has been dating a new guy, and last time I had spoken to her she was completely over the moon. She had met him through a dating site and after a couple of e-mails with, in my opinion, too many smooth lines she had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. Silvia was in a new job recently, which had been very promising. She was working long days but that would soon be rewarded they had told her. Mandy is pregnant so she would be driving us home later that night. And of course, good old Caroline who would meet us later that night because her plane would land around seven and she needed to go home and change first. That girl is very hard to catch, next Tuesday she is leaving again, so we were quite lucky that she would be there at all.

Mandy and Silvia were already there when I walked into the pub. They were seated at a small square table in a quiet corner of the back garden and had texted me where I could find them. I was greeted with a warm embrace of both of them and after I took my seat I ordered a red wine from the waitress. Mandy looked like she was almost ready to give birth, her huge belly prominent, but she does have to wait for at least six weeks she told us. I asked Silvia how she was doing in her new job, expecting she would be thrilled about it. Her bright face clouded for a moment when she answered, “I should be enjoying myself,” she said, “but the whole experience is proving as pleasant as colonic irrigation during an A-level math’s exam,” she sighed. I couldn’t suppress a smile at this typical way of expressing herself but I asked her what happened with the huge responsibility she was promised to get. “Well, that will have to wait until I have proved myself with the ‘routines’, meaning archiving, taking care of lunch for the big boss and cleaning the office space,” she said with a slightly sarcastic intonation. That was ridiculous, because Silvia  had been head of accountancy in her former job! “Didn’t you speak to your new boss about it?” I asked her. “Yes, of course I did. I asked him after a week if I could have a word with him. He turned away from his computer, brows frowned, peering over his glasses, two hands clasping together and inhaling so deeply through both nostrils that I thought he was trying to hoover up dust on his desk. What is the problem, young lady? he had said. And I said to him that I was wondering when the real job would start.” Mandy and I nodded approvingly and Silvia continued with: “It is all a matter of the right attitude, he said, and as soon as I had shown him that I was qualified enough for what he was asking me now, the job would increase in responsibility. And with that he dismissed me by turning back to his computer again. I was stunned and raged with fury. But what could I do?” Before we could think of an answer Karin rapidly made her way over to our table. Her cheeks were flustered and she was panting a little. She was greeted with mischievous smiles from us and Mandy vented our thoughts. “Hard to release yourself from mister Perfect?” “Sorry guys,” replied Karin, as she descended on an empty chair at our table. “How are you girls doing?” “We’d better ask you,” said Silvia. “Still gobsmacked darling?” Karin just smiled before turning her attention on Mandy’s big bump, asking if she was sure she really wasn’t carrying quadruples. Karin ordered a red wine as well and we decided to have some of the tapas of the menu as well. Just when we were ready to order for the third time, Caroline emerged from the backdoor and greeted us with her usual loud  “Hiyaa girls!” This woman is always full of energy, no matter if you meet her at the crack of dawn (however, I experience that never) or late at night. “You must have had an easy flight then,” I greeted her. “Ha, don’t make me start on that, sweetie,” Caroline replied, but apparently I had done that anyway, as she extended. “I was seated next to a very big woman, even bigger than you, Man, except that she carried it more broadly. I would be the last one to discriminate, you know that. But this has been the most uncomfortable eight hours in my whole flight experience. I kept on shifting in my seat in a vain attempt to make myself comfortable. I bet I had so little place that it would fail EU regulations for transporting poultry, never mind people. I’ve lost all sensation in my bum cheeks there and I am not likely to get it back any time soon. So, how are you lot doing?” She made us laugh out and the tears were ruining our mascara.

We chatted on for another hour or so before Karin hesitantly asked us if we perhaps could give her some advise. She said she was having a little trouble with mister Perfect. For a couple of seconds we were silent. Then Mandy asked her if she dumped him. “No, no, of course not”, replied Karin. “He is a very nice guy and he could really be the one. But I would like to ask something, to you in particular Deb, since you were doing that sexology course lately, and I consider you as an psychological expert anyway”. Omg, although that sounded very flattering  I did not know what to think about it. Sexology has very little to do with regular couple’s sex and besides I barely past the exam. Maybe Karin meant to say that mister Perfect is not so perfectly equipped. Maybe she has found out he has a micro-penis, that was something I definitely remembered from the course next to some heavier stuff. The absolute minimum size of a penis is 2.5 standard deviation of the mean, and the mean size is….Before I could even try to remember the mean penis size, she said: “He has lied to me about his age. I have found out on our first date that he is in his late forties, and, to be fair, he is looking well on it. Yet he is one of those men who, while technically good-looking is simultaneously deeply unsexy without his clothes on, as I discovered after date three.” Oh boy, what was she thinking? That I’ve been there, done that, or something? The only time I had experienced a complete anti-climaxing encounter was with a guy who has had ‘Mother’ tattooed. Right under his belly button. And that was enough for me to make the quickest escape ever without even caring about my knickers that I left somewhere in his apartment. But I was not even sure I confided my friends in that story.  “Don’t expect too much from me, but go on, spill the beans, Karin”, I said to her. “Er…, okay, well, I am wondering if you could give me some advice. You see, I really would like to marry this guy. I am hitting thirty-eight next month and you know I desperately do want to have kids any time soon”. She then told us how their third date, unexpectedly ended rather disastrous. They have had diner in a romantic restaurant before they ended up in his house on the couch. She knew that they would sleep together that night and she was very ready for that, after all she fancied him a lot. The sex with him was supposed to be the cherry on the cake that night, Encouraged by a couple of glasses of wine too many and us as her supportive audience, she then filled us in with a minute account. “We were just snogging as he pulled my skirt and knickers off with all the romantic flair of someone stripping a bed, I quickly realized he wasn't a foreplay man. Suddenly he rolled off me and walked to the refrigerator where he was fumbling with something before returning back to the couch. He was having a small needle and syringe in his hand and said that he needed a little help to perform. I must have had a quizzical look on my face to say the least, so he explained that he has had to inject himself  to have a hard one. I really felt sick in my stomach when I realized where he had to put the needle in.” All four of us gasped in horror. She was unstoppable now. “And even more when he would like me to witness that. It did work though. Within a few minutes I could see his penis standing up in full erection. He didn’t want to waste much time, because it would not last very long, he told me. So, after a couple of seconds grunting and pushing, he was inside me, thrusting back and forth. Instead of enjoying it, I felt strangely disassociated, like it was happening to someone else. He tweaked one of my nipples like trying to tune into Qmusic Then he grunted some more and that was it, it was over”. Expectantly she was looking at me. What could I say, except that I had heard about those self help treatments? Questioning I looked at the other girls first, but their jaws were still somewhere near the floor. I wondered what kind of advice she wanted from me and to buy myself some time to compose myself, I took another gulp of my wine. She would probably wanted to know how she could make their sex more satisfying for her, I thought. Although, in my opinion you cannot really change a guy’s behavior ever but no matter how dysfunctional his penis is, he could have pleasured her in many other ways to start with. While I was still debating how I would bring this up to her, and to give her the careful consideration to end this relationship before she would be too far into it, she launched the question that was bothering her: “Do you think that he can still make me pregnant?” I spluttered my wine. “Uhm,…. Yes, sure.” I muttered and I realized I would never be a sexologist. 

Attachment

Last September when I was doing my grocery shopping I noticed a woman carrying her baby wrapped up in a colorful African cloth on her back. The baby was very relaxed and the mom (Melissa as I learned then) had both her hands free for the shopping chart and her toddler. I admired both the baby and the convenient cloth and Melissa told me that it is a traditional way to carry your baby in such carriers in her homeland Zimbabwe, Africa. She was very proud to tell that she produces those carriers and sells them through her own business: a combination of Bereka (Zimbabwean for carrier) and Draagdoek (Dutch for carrier), (facebook: www.facebook.com/bereka.draagdoek,  her website: www.berekadraagdoek.nl).  She was so enthusiastic about the product and the business that I almost regretted not having more babies. It was the kind of talk to a person you do not know that gives you a contented feeling, if you know what I mean. I felt inspired. After that we became Facebook friends and I like her frequent updates with pictures in beautiful colors.

While I was reading in the last couple of weeks about disorders from the psychopathology, diagnostic and treatment course, I discovered a striking similarity in personality disorders, depression and anxiety disorders. In one way or the other, in all three textbooks a disturbed attachment in early childhood was subject of the possible causes of sensitivity for these disorders. No, this is not about blaming the mom, which was a trend for severe disorders in earlier years. It requires a quick overview of what is theorized about attachment before I continue. Bowlby (1958) is well known for his attachment theory. This theory is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with them, and who remain as consistent caregivers and are in close proximity of them for some period of time. When the infant begins to crawl and walk they begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment; these, in turn, lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's perceptions, emotions, thoughts and expectations in later relationships.

Close proximity means real close, as in skin-to-skin or fur-to-fur, as another well known researcher in developmental psychology, Harlow, proofed with his research on baby rhesus monkeys. Those babies were more likely to prefer a soft surrogate mother to find comfort above an iron surrogate mother machine that provided milk. When the monkeys were placed in an unfamiliar room with their soft surrogate, they clung to it until they felt secure enough to explore. Once they began to explore, they occasionally returned to the soft mother for comfort. Monkeys placed in an unfamiliar room without their  mothers acted very differently. They froze in fear and cried, crouched down, or sucked their thumbs. Some even ran from object to object, apparently searching for the soft mother, as they cried and screamed. Monkeys placed in this situation with their iron mothers exhibited the same behavior as the monkeys with no mother.

Civilization in Western countries dictated a rather harsh rule until the 60s: when babies were crying it was no good to pick them up instantly. That would make the child spoiled and demanding. Crying for one or more hours was considered to be good for babies’ lungs until it was time to feed them. More ‘primitive’ cultures like Native Americans, African and Asian knew better, they carry their babies in a carrier attached to their own bodies. 

Children who are safely attached feel free to explore their environment. I must have done something right as part of secure attachment of my children although I do not feel always that comfortable to let them trot the globe. Yesterday my second child, Tabitha took off for a 6-week backpack trip to Ghana, West Africa with a friend. After returning in 2009 from being an au-pair for a year in the States, where she traveled a lot in her free time, she made trips to Uganda, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Morocco and France. She did some pretty uncommon things (in my opinion) like rafting on the river Nile, rowing on the river Donau and she and her friend took part in the annual tomato throwing festival (Tomatina) in Spain. Oh, and not to forget riding a tandem bike in New York City with another au-pair, especially when rain was pouring down while they cycled in Harlem and they took that huge bike with them in the subway. When she was a toddler she used to love climbing on my lap which I loved very much too but always  after a few seconds she was ready to jump off again to do something else. Now that I mention it, I suddenly realize how different all could have turned out when I had had a Bereka at that time. I would still have her (and her siblings) wrapped upped against me, I am afraid. That would have restricted both our explorations, I can see that, only it feels so good to have them near me. But as in secured attachment they will return to their secure base, that is what I keep in mind when I let them fly on their own. 

Born to be alive

Photographed by Lida Chaulet

She was not breathing when the doctor put her tiny, warm body on my belly. Although I felt so relieved that the labor pains were finally over I could not feel really happy yet. Almost panicking I could not quite understand why the doctor did not do anything to help her. I knew that newborns do not need to breathe right away as long as they were still attached at the umbilical cord but that has been cut already. I had dreaded to go to this hospital to give birth because both my grandparents had died here. The first child was born at home, the second in another hospital, closer to my home. But due to complications I had no other option than going here. The labor was induced, four weeks before I was due to deliver. The pregnancy was peaceful at first until the doctor called to tell that the blood sample was indicating that troubles were expected. Regular punctures and blood tests had to be done and soon it was clear that the delivery could not wait until the end. The seriousness about it was freaking me out. I was terribly nervous when the time had come to go to the hospital. Only a few days before I was knocked out with a nasty stomach flu and I still felt very weak. The choice of this hospital had made me very superstitious and I was afraid to die there too. The infusion did not do very much until the membranes were cut. Then the pain had washed over me like hell. I was so tensed that I thought I would never manage to give birth but you cannot withhold such nature force, of course. But soon after I did it, I was so afraid that she did not survive all the stress. Silently I begged her to take a breath. Almost hesitantly I said that I was worried that she was not yet breathing. At last he took her over from me and disappeared in another room. What seem to be ages was actually a couple of minutes before he handed her over to me again, this time breathing on her own. My third child, a beautiful girl. After the normal routine we could hold her a little while before she had to be brought to the baby unit. She had to stay at least one night because they expected troubles with her blood but I had to go home. This was the strangest feeling ever, to go home with an empty belly and a Polaroid picture of my baby ‘as proof’ for her little brother and sister. The next morning they called us that everything was alright and we could come to pick her up. As soon as I entered the room where we had left her the day before my heart missed a few beats when I saw her incubator was empty. Rather panicked I scanned the room before a nurse pointed to a crib where she was. I picked her up and held her close to me, happy tears running down my face. I will never forget the way she sniffed my face like a little animal, as if to be reassured that I was really her mother. 

My little girl grew up to be a beautiful young woman. A very clever, pretty girl she is. Sometimes very serious about difficult issues and most of the time just a sweet and happy child who loves to think deep. As soon as she went to high school she loved the lessons of religious studies and social science the most. She was very much interested in Buddhism and for a short period of time she was a devoted vegetarian. She loves to read and that was what she does a lot. You could always find her reading a book. Harry Potter, Narnia but also more ‘heavy stuff’. She loved to read hanging almost upside down in the big chair. When she had to go to the bathroom then she often could not stop reading and walked, mesmerized by the story she was reading, with her book in front of her eyes to the bathroom. Wherever we went, she took a book with her. She participated in model United Nations conferences at her own school and other regional schools. She was the winner of an annual national speaking competition and her English is fluent. But most of all she was a strong willed adolescent who knew already what her mission in life was. To make a difference. Although her dreams about her future career varied a little over time, at first she wanted to become a reporter in war-zones, then she wanted to work for the UN, and now it is “something” for NGOs, the direction was stable anyway. That is why she chose her present university study: Liberal Arts and Science. The main subjects she is studying are Political history, International relations  and Conflict studies. 

A few days ago she entered a contest on Facebook from the Dutch ministry of Foreign affairs. The contestants have to make their point about UN related topics and the first prize is to join the delegates to the UN-Top coming September as a young reporter. The first statement she made was of comparing ice-cream consumption in the Netherlands against starvation in the Sahel. She did that with an unusual (sexy) picture of a girl holding a melting ice-cream. With votes from friends and relatives she soon became second in the race. Last night she made clear her second statement with a picture of an empty toilet-roll, to compare sanitary facilities in Western countries against places in the World where people lack any sanitary facility. She said she wants to postpone writing a bigger article because she does not want to make people go bored with the subject yet, because she is allowed to make four statements in this first round. I cannot wait to see her next statements. If you feel the same, she will be thankful for your votes here: https://www.facebook.com/NederlandendeVN/app_301201333298390?app_data=/inzendingen/ronde1/samantha-maat-afbeelding-1340487272/

XL

Although we are glued to each other a little too much these days because of the paper I am working on for the bachelor project, I still love my computer. Excel is my favorite application, I realized that when I was making the appendix for the paper. However the appendix is still seventy-eight pages large, compared to the enormous amount of data we had gathered from the thirty-six participants, it is neatly slim. Even more important, it looks smooth and provides all the information necessary to give insight in how this research was carried out. I am almost tempted to attach a copy here so you could judge for yourself.

When you first force yourself through the basic rules of Excel you will learn how well the build-in functions will work for you. I particularly like the “if” functions but yesterday I have learned the convenient function of merging several cells with text. And the easiest thing, compared to Word for example, is that you are able to hide the columns you do not need to appear in your final report.

The analyzing of the data needs to be done with SPSS of course and although I am quite used to that now and even have a student copy at home it is not as elegant as Excel. In particular it consumes a lot of memory and it is a heavy burden on the processor sometimes. But I could not do without this statistical software either. Statistics, after all, are based on mathematical calculations of chance. Although we have learned to do that manually in the five statistic courses we have had, it is very time consuming.

While writing this down it suddenly dawned on me that I am almost at the end of the undergraduate study of Psychology. In a private Excel file I keep record of the marks and credits I have gathered so far. At this very moment I have got 132 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System)  out of the required 180. The 2 is extracurricular from a Summer Course “Big Science” I have done last year. Most courses provided 5 ECTS each and this year I have done also two 10 credit courses. The bachelor project paper will be good for 20 ECTS and the last exam I will do this school year is also a 10 credit one. That will bring the total this year of 162. Coming September I will do a minor “Brain and Cognition” of 30 ECTS and hopefully I will graduate in December 2012. Collected 12 ECTS more than I should have and meeting the entry requirements of more than one master course. I like to have a broad spectrum of choices, however, I do also realize that I am longing to work in my job more than the part-time hours I am giving it now.

One ECTS is good for approximately 28 hours studying, including contact hours for lectures and workgroups. On average that means 1,680 hours a year. Excluding the Summer break that results in 40 hours a week. Compared to commercial education it is not expensive, however I do not receive any kind of scholarship like younger people in the Netherlands do. The tuition fee is approximately 1,700 Euro a year, without books and other materials. I have done commercial courses before for only ten days each for the same amount of money but now I have less hours left a week to earn me the money. After three years now I am ready to admit that it is heavy sometimes but I do not regret a single minute of it. How on earth did I wander from being satisfied about the completed appendix to a slight complaining of the amount of work the study as a whole involved?

Maybe it is because I have a build-in “if” function as well. To analyze my past. What if I had been to college when I was eighteen instead of being in my forties and single mom of four. Than I could have been rich by now but I would have missed the advantages of having four encouraging great kids. I am also trying to make the right choices in the present, like, what if I choose this master education or that. Will that then bring me to the career I dream of? Even though Excel seems to be without limits for the extend of a  spreadsheet it sure is restricted to 256 columns and 65,536 rows. My limitations go far beyond that although it may cost some memory and processor capacity when I am doing a heavy job.

  

Slimy creatures

Wherever you go this Spring you have got a real good chance to hit a snail or a slug. There are tons of them slowly crawling on paths and sidewalks  and as much of them splashed out because you cannot always avoid stepping on or riding over them, unfortunately. Especially the stepping on bit is a rather disgusting experience, I can assure you. The snails with the coiled shell give a nasty crack but the slugs who crawl shamelessly naked pass out in an even worse manner: like a huge piece of old and used bubble gum, however not as sticky as that. It does not matter knowing that they are very destructive for the plants in my garden, such a lethal step will leave me feeling guilty anyway. However you can buy poison for snails in garden centers, I would rather not do that. Because I am a softy. I cannot easily kill any other animal than a mosquito purposefully. Whenever there is a spider or a bee or wasp in my house I catch them carefully to carry them out and release them. Although, to carry out a frog I would need the help of a more braver person. Thankfully that has happened only once since I live here.  You would have laughed your heart out seeing me and my girls standing screaming on the sofa when a lost frog wandered in the living room. However, they do make me jump sometimes too when I am weeding the garden, jumping unexpectedly out of the plants where I had my hand just a minute before. The frogs of course, not my girls. The girls do like to jump too but only on the trampoline in the backyard. The region underneath that trampoline turned unintentionally into an incubator for frogs. When we built that thing in we lowered it half the size of its legs. The groundwater resulted in a pool most time of the year which makes it a perfect frog environment. And frogs, contrary to snails, are protected animals, so you cannot even expel them unpunished. That is, unless you let some other animal do the nasty job, a cat for example. I do not like a cat as a pet, although I think they can be really cute, but they like to reward you with their prey. Not my favorite reward a half-killed mouse or frog on the doormat. So I think I just have to live with the presence of the frog population in the backyard, hoping that they will like it enough to stay under the trampoline, invisible to me. And as for the snails and slugs, well I will keep on carrying them, if possible, carefully onto my hand scoop to the compost container where they can live happily for another two weeks before the container will be collected again. That is a much better perspective for them than being splashed, I guess.

Although there are people, other than biologists, who genuinely like the creatures I described above, as far as I know that means served on a plate.  The French and Belgian cuisine are rather famous for their respectively served snails, better known as ‘esgargots’, and froglegs, which seem to resemble chicken meat a lot. Not for me though, I am a much too picky eater. I would not even want to try it. The same for oysters, although they seem to have huge aphrodisiac effects. Only thinking of sipping the slimy parts out of their shell is enough to make me lose my appetite completely. For food and for sex.

That is exactly what happened with the course I am studying now. Sexology. I needed the study points when I enrolled for this course but I was not particularly interested in the subject since I had seen some lecture slides beforehand. The photos of severely disrupted penises made my stomach flip. So I enrolled but I did not go to the lectures, which were on the ungodly hour of 9 a.m.  I had enough on my plate with the bachelor project so I put the subject away in the far corners of my mind until the exam date became really close. Coming Tuesday. On the ungodly hour of 9 a.m.

I started studying the subject last Thursday night, after having taken my exam on Emotion and Cognition. Way too late to do it properly, I admit. However, not uncommon for students in general. Surprisingly the book does read well, it is not only very nice written but it does teach me quite a few things I did not know before. Like for example that the sexual revolution from the 70’s was not the first in history. The Victorian age was preceded by the Romantic. That is visible in art of course but it really hit home to me reading that because it means that progression is not so much linear but more parabolic.

Also interesting is the establishing of sexology as a science. Is it hard to study psychology scientifically,  sexology is even harder. There are of course many cultural differences, but also many economical and political issues that influence it. Common sense is full of myths about topics like differences in sexual behavior between men and women but even in more serious issues like birth control and sexual transmitted diseases. It was only in the 70’s that homosexuality was no longer considered to be an illness in the DSM. I am not even half way, and even shocking material like two boys twins where circumcise for one of them turned out badly, and the doctors decided to make him a girl, that is about gender identity for your information, cannot stop my determination to try to read as much of the book as I can. It will help me to get a much broader perspective on a subject which undeniably affects us all, although passing the exam is my main goal for now.