Let's go earthing

Wait a minute: Don’t tell me you don’t know about earthing. You must live in a cave on the moon. I guess I’ll deign to explain the concept.

Earthing, you ignorant slut, is the practice of walking barefoot on the ground, which will raise your spirits or grant you wellness or whatever. It comes to us courtesy of Academy Award winner and noted Google-educated scientist Gwyneth Paltrow. On her Goop website, she explains a former cable TV technician recognized the practice of walking without shoes, giving a catchy name (and monetization potential) to something humans have done for uncounted ages. As an article explains about earthing:

“What he seemed to draw from his experience in cable systems was that, not unlike live wires, humans’ electrical charges could be neutralized through contact with the earth. Doing so, he explained, “prevents inflammation-related health disorders: ‘It’s intuitive that—like in a cable system—grounding would neutralize any charge in the body. After grounding myself, and a few friends who had arthritic-type health disorders, I became convinced that grounding could reduce chronic pain.’”

Would you like to join the healthy set in earthing? Then Paltrow has a deal for you. Goop links to these bedsheets and mats you can buy. You plug them in and get the same “grounding” effect you would get by walking on the ground for free. The sheets and mats, in contrast, cost $200. (Maybe they're decorative.)

If you pay $200 for some sheets to walk on, man, they saw you coming.

This is just … so dumb. You know why you might feel better if you walk on the ground barefoot? Because you’re probably doing something pleasurable anyway, like walking in a park on a beautiful sunny day, or playing with your kids in the yard. Of course you’re going to feel better in that situation than walking around in dress shoes from one meeting to another in your fluorescent-lit office.

Oh, but people who read Goop swear by those $200 sheets! They say they'll relieve everything from arthritis to depression! There’s no way that could be misleading, because I assume when they say “swear by,” it means people are testifying under oath and not just offering anonymous internet testimonial. Who would exaggerate to sell a product?

I don’t understand the interest in Goop and all these weird products. Paltrow is always telling people to shove special jewels in their groins or walk on expensive sheets. It’s not some revolutionary science. It’s just people making a ton of money off other people who can’t tell shit from Shinola.

I also don't understand people who search a few scientific papers on PubMed and all of the sudden think they have the knowledge to challenge the rigorous conclusions of multiple trained scientists. I’ve been editing a podiatry magazine for 16 years. I write multiple times a month on research in the field, edit a large volume of clinical research written by others, have attended countless hours of scientific lectures, and have socialized with the top people in the field. If I can do all that and still not claim to be an expert in comparison to the actual podiatrists, how can people claim to be experts in other scientific fields after spending a few hours of free time at Google University? 

Apparently, I'm not afraid of clowns

I mean, they’re not pleasant and I can see why people are afraid of clowns but I just don’t think they’ll be showing up in my nightmares.

It was very good. It was very engrossing, the cast was pretty good, and the scares were inventive, relying not just on clowns but on the even scarier adults abusing their kids in various ways. It was scary but it wasn’t something that will affect me and I didn’t feel any raw dread or terror like I sometimes get in horror movies. I did like the slideshow scene when the mother’s red hair shifted frame by frame into Pennywise’s hair. (I think image doctoring is effective in horror, like when someone finds an old wedding photo and oh my God, is that the killer’s face in the background?!)

So clowns are creepy and all that but I just don’t have coulrophobia. I think some of this is because I wasn’t there for the original It. I didn’t read the book and I only recently saw the miniseries so Pennywise was not a part of my childhood or anything. As an adult seeing it for the first time, I thought Tim Curry was funnier than anything else. I can definitely see how children watching this would have been horrified and developed a lifelong fear of clowns. Even if I’d seen the miniseries when it came out, I was 16 at the time, so I don’t know how scared I would have been. You develop fast in those years so there’s a big difference between ages 12 and 16. I think if you’re not there for some pop culture at the beginning, you’re never going to get it like other people do.

I definitely am not afraid of the clowns in American Horror Story: Cult. Part of that is because the show mixes horror with a hefty dose of camp and snark, to the point where I can’t tell which is which or even if what I’m watching is any good. Ally’s over-the-top screaming at the clowns mostly strikes me as funny. I wasn’t scared of Twisty the Clown in Freak Show, either. His background of hurting kids was definitely disturbing but the grease paint and red nose didn’t bother me. For some scenes, it seemed like they told the actor, “Just stand there. You don’t even need to do anything; the appearance of a clown is scary enough.” Not for me, not really.

Anyway, It was very good.

Is Bernice There?

I’ve stopped answering my phone. I used to answer all the calls, even from area codes where I don’t know anyone. Sometimes you’d hear no one on the line but sometimes you’d hear someone ask, “Is Bernice there?” When I was younger and less wise, I’d say, “You have the wrong number.” Now I know it’s not a live person at all asking for Bernice. It’s a recording and the name is just a pretext for getting me to answer some questions to phish for my information or record my voice for whatever sorcery the telemarketing company is up to. I guess they chose the name Bernice because it’s an uncommon name these days. But what happens when they ask for Bernice and a woman named Bernice answers? “Yes,” she’ll say, brightly and professionally, assuming someone wants to speak to her of something important. Perhaps she has left a message with a contractor for her kitchen renovations, or she’s waiting to hear back from her child’s school. Does the recording just patter on with, “Well, maybe you can help me,” assuming someone other than Bernice has answered, confusing an actual Bernice? Does a person come on the line to talk to Bernice, having no idea what to say after a real, live Bernice answers? Does he stammer about life insurance or important information about your credit card? Does the phone explode in a cosmic Mobius strip of feedback, as Bernice actually reveals herself to be real, collapsing the whole venture into the rubble of irony? And where does this leave Bernice? Does her heart break a little when she realizes nobody actually wants to talk to her, that it’s all a scam using her name? Does she hang up the phone and analyze further, thinking, “They only used my name because nobody names their kids Bernice anymore and they thought they’d never get anyone with my name” and suddenly feel dizzyingly, claustrophobically alone in this world?

Support Group

I have mixed feelings about the adoption support group we go to. It’s good to get a preview from other parents of the problems we may have to face once we’ve been placed with a child. It’s also good to get involved with the support the agency offers and get some encouragement.

On the other hand, I listen to some of the parents speak and think, “Some people have real problems.” After all, a lot of the people in the group are there because they’re searching for answers to real issues. Kids in foster care, especially the older ones, had a life before adoption. Some of their parents describe the horrible abuse they discover their kids went through before they even knew their kids. The parents are upset and searching for answers and then I feel bad because I can’t offer them any answers because I don't know what it’s like yet.

What they’re going through in the act of actual parenting seems unbalanced compared to what we’re going through in the process. I think going to the group when we can is good overall but after hearing about these excruciating dilemmas adoptive parents have with their kids, what am I going to complain about—“Waiting is hard”?

It’s been a year since we officially started the search and it has been hard on us. We’ve focused on a few kids but those prospects have fallen through for various reasons, and we’ve had to go back to the drawing board again. We’ve also had some meetings and conference calls regarding other kids and we’re cautiously optimistic. You hear things like “It’ll happen” but who the hell knows? There are no guarantees.

One good thing that comes out of it is that the other parents and the agency people encourage us not to give up. There was never a possibility that I would be giving up. I’m not happy that we’re still waiting, stuck in this weirdly airless space between hope and despair, but at least there’s a possibility of happiness. If we give up, I’ll definitely be unhappy and I’m not willing to accept that.

How It's Done

The rest of us all must look like trash to her, all comfortable gym shorts and summer sandals for the long ride.

She walks into the rest stop somewhere between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, dressed in a yellow and orange print dress and matching hat, the kind you might see on women from TV footage somewhere in Africa. She is a column of sunlight in the fluorescent-lit building housing a Starbucks, Burger King and Auntie Ann’s. Heeled shoes show she didn’t come here to mess around.

How many of us, in ensembles made entirely by Under Armour, look up as this woman enters and look down at our venti lattes, breaded chicken sandwiches and cinnamon sugar pretzels in shame? She trails regally through the building, deigning to stop for rest among the commoners.

I wonder, does she think something along the lines of, “Putting on pants and shoes is not a high bar to clear but so many people seem unable to do so”? Does she feel self-conscious at being so close to the hoi polloi?

No. One high heel in front of the other. Head high. Show them.

Well, thank God that's over

Yesterday, Labor Day, a single brown leaf floated on the surface of our pool, like something out of an e.e. cummings poem. That is the official sign that summer has ended. (I should have stopped barbecuing immediately and left the meat to rot for the winter.)

Well, thank God that’s over. I am certainly ready to leave behind the drudgery of pool season and let fall begin. I certainly welcomed the rainy days and cool nights in August, which meant that we had to curtail our swimming for the past few weeks. This, combined with not opening the pool until the third week in June due to repairs, meant we lost about a month of pool time in total. I didn't mind at all, even though we spent so much money on a new pump and tank and patching a leak that my credit card now groans audibly every time I take it out of my wallet.

No, I don’t mind the arrival of autumn one bit. At least I won’t have another awkward night floating in the deep end with my husband, watching the moon or white clouds slipping over the starry black sky, or whatever crap is happening above our heads.

Other things I’m glad to be rid of as summer dies: Beach trips, watching cumulonimbus clouds build in the west before exploding into a thunderstorm, pleasant breezes, blooming flowers, eating lunch and reading a book outside, barbecues, lightning bugs, backyard parties with friends, comfortable clothes, trips to Rita’s for water ice or ice cream, and having hours of daylight after getting home from work. I’ll trade all that for having to put on a sweater, 5 p.m. sunsets, and walking outside to smell … autumn smells.

What a relief. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pretend to care about pumpkin.

One Way

I think we, as a society, should start being harder on people who disregard one-way signs.

Anyone can make a mistake and go the wrong way, and I’m not talking about people who disregard a one-way sign in an empty parking lot or something, or someone who sees the error and backs up right away. It’s the defensiveness by the wrong-way drivers that kills me, especially when their car comes face-to-face with someone driving the right way. What kills me is when a driver going the right way honks the horn at someone coming at them and the wrong-way driver makes that face that says, “What’s your problem? I don’t know what I did!”

You know what you did? You weren’t paying enough attention to see red signs that were specifically designed to catch people’s attention. Maybe you’re the one with the problem, not the person going the right way who is warning you away from trouble. One-way and do-not-enter signs weren’t designed to mess up your drive; they were put there for people who are inattentive or dumb. Anyone can make a mistake but maybe, drop the attitude when someone calls you out on it? And back up—back all the way up—rather than making someone else do it.

My holy crusade against these people reminds me of awhile back when I was driving out the one-way driveway out of the Y when someone drove in the wrong way. I honked my horn (I know you shouldn’t honk your horn in anger but I think it’s OK to warn people they could cause an accident) and I got the hands thrown up and the “Well, excuuuuse me!” expression from the guy. Not only does this Y have the official do-not-enter signs, but there are also special signs that the Y made saying things like “do not enter” and “entrance is next driveway” with arrows and stuff. He missed it all.

Paying enough attention to road signs for your own safety seems like something in the (crowded) category of “It’s not that hard but you just can’t do it.”