Sponges... sort of

Ok, so there’s this thing about information. I want to know stuff. Right now, mostly stuff about birthing babies, because… yes, I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies. Which isn’t exactly true.  At the moment I know a lot about what is supposed to happen and lots of things that might happen, but no idea what will actually happen.

Be that as it may, this is just the latest in a long line of things that I want to know about. My brother and I have this in common, but he’s much better at it than I am. More follow through and charisma. He likes a thing, he researches that thing and becomes an expert. Example: He likes wine. Now he’s a sommelier.  I mean, I guess by extension, I’m doing something similar. I like babies, now I’m going to be a mom, but it’s not quite the same.

ANYWAY… so, information. Here’s the thing about it. You’ve heard the expression “to be a sponge” right? Where someone just sucks up all the information about something that they can get, like a sponge absorbing water? Well, there are lots of levels of that situation that I’m going to ramble on about.

See, a totally saturated sponge is actually pretty useless if we’re talking kitchen-type sponges and not the things that live in the ocean, which I am, so keep up, ok? If you pick up a saturated sponge, you just make a mess—water everywhere and then you need a sponge to clean up the mess you just made with the sponge you have. It’s really not that effective. I guess this is what you call “analysis paralysis” if you’re one of those people who are keen on naming things that people do with easily remembered phrases to explain away the oddities of human behavior. I am one of those people and I want to avoid this. The internet is FULL of information. Not just forums (which seem mostly full of the extreme cases) and my Twitter ladies (who are mostly full of the reasonable), but we all know the dangers of Googling your symptoms, right? Too much information.

You want a damp kitchen sponge, right? If, for example, you’re going to use the scrubby side of the sponge to get something that’s dried onto a dish or counter, what you really need is very little liquid and a lot of brute force—for the scrubbing. I don’t need a lot of knowledge to move furniture. Some understanding of physics, gravity, and simple machines is enough.

Also, you need the right kind of liquid to get the most use out of your sponge (which I’m using to talk about my brain here, in case this has already gone completely off the rails). Plain water is fine if you’re just planning on wiping up a few crumbs but if you need to sanitize something (well, first you need a clean sponge, and I’ve always been a little uncertain as to how one cleans a sponge exactly, but I think a dishwasher is involved), you probably want something more potent. Like bleach or Lysol or that Mr. Clean stuff that comes in the purple bottle. So when my brother decided that liking wine was going to become a hobby he wanted to get better at, he had to know who to ask to get reliable information about things, like the wine guy at his local liquor store, not, you know… me because I still describe the way wine tastes in colors more often than flavors.

The point in all of this? I’m not sure. I want to be a useful sponge. I think it's like this--you hold the sponge under the water and let it get good and soaked, then squeeze it out to use just what you need. I’m learning as much as I can about birth, and babies, and how to take care of them and myself, how to be both wife and mother, cut myself some slack, rest now, nest now, enjoy these last few days when it’s just J & I with the critters in the house, be ready, knowing that I’ll never be 100% ready and remember that I’m more than just pregnant since lots of things will go on the back burner once Freckle decides to make her external debut. Filling the sponge, as it were. Then there will be some squeezing and hopefully what I'm left with is what I need to do the job at hand. I’m really kind of glad that I’ll be unemployed* in a week or so. 

*anyone else hear that in Vicini’s voice and have to restrain themselves from adding “in GREENLAND!” on the end? 

What I know, which is not What I learned

So, due to limits of brain function, time, funds, and other limited resources, we, as humans, don't know everything about everything there is to know on the planet. That's just the way it is. We have to pick and choose what we care about, what we learn about, what facts we hold on to and which just roll off of us like water of some damn duck's stupid back. This frequently frustrates me when I realize that there is something cool that I want to do but can't seem to find the time to learn given that I already have a list 17 items long of things I want to do/learn/be when I grow up. That being said, we each have areas of our lives where there are large gaps in our knowledge. Some people are fabulous repositories of trivia and know a little about a lot. I'm like that. I recently learned an easy way to explain the difference between Brittain, the UK and England, in case you're curious*. Some people know a lot about certain areas--like my friend Bill can explain why soap works. Ok, none of this is revelatory or new, but I'm getting to a point, I think. We are ignorant of some stuff, either willfully or accidentally. I think that's the point I was getting at 200 words ago.

I am accidentally ignorant of the number and kinds of agricultural climates on the Asian continent, among a startling large number of other things. I am willfully ignorant of most things pertaining to sports. It's not because I'm of the gender with mostly internal plumbing. Of the few close friends of mine who are fans of sports, half of them are women, and the most fanatic half too. So, it's not a boy vs. girl thing. It's a uncoordinated, non-competitive person vs. other people thing. I know some of the basic rules of the major sports that are around and advertized on my radio. I know how things are scored in football, basketball and baseball. I think I even understand what an inning is, but I'm totally lost when it comes to soccer. I'm willfully ignorant, as I've had it explained to me before, I just don't retain the information. I also watched a four hour movie explaining Cricket and still only have the foggiest idea of how that works--you have to run a lot while other people throw stuff... that's what I got.

So, from sports, we go to games in general. I do not know the rules to most of the games that I enjoy playing. I know that makes no sense, but if you go back to yesterday's revelation about favorites and strategy, it does make sense. I know how to play lots of games, but I sort of bend the rules a bit in my brain to make them more fun. Like Scrabble. If you're playing Scrabble with the sole intent of getting the highest score and stumping your opponent, you might stick to rules like no proper names or words in other languages. I think that makes things significantly less fun. If, instead, you play to see what kinds of words you can make on the board, with bonus points being awarded for ingenuity, creativity, flair, and sheer determination--well, that's a lot more fun. There is certainly more laughing, more animation and less consultation of Mirriam Webster. MBFJC and I once spent an afternoon in Hawaii doing that. I was sunburned from the nape of my neck to my Achilles tendon from the previous day's snorkeling adventure, despite the repeated application of sunscreen and the fact that I was wearing a shirt over my bathing suit... anyway, walking was painful, so while my parents went on a hike over beautiful and senic terrain, we lay about the condo room eating Cap'n Crunch (with Crunch Berries) and giggling hysterically over the various and sundry words we managed to come up with. It might have been the best day of that vacation actually...

Anyway, the Cap'n Crunch thing is what brought all this crazy tangential thinking about. Tomorrow is the first Saturday after Faire... the first Saturday in 13 weeks that I don't have to be awake and getting ready at 6:15. That's a beautiful thing. Several years ago, my friend Shannon shared with me her Sacred Saturday tradition--Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries. The first Saturday of rest, she made sure to have that cereal on hand, and spent the day in her house, doing house-type relaxing things. I'm sure she puttered in her garden and tended to her fur-babies and maybe watched a Jane Austen movie... who knows. The point is that relaxation had a ritual that signified the begining of the next stage of things in our lives. For me, the cereal of choice is Cocoa Puffs, because that's the cereal my grandma always made sure to have for me at her house when I came to visit.

So, while I remain ignorant of many things agricultural and athletic, I will venture to the grocery store after work and procure my box of cereal for tomorrow morning. I shall eat cereal on the couch, with my cats, and rest.

*It's like a Venn diagram, actually