Dragonflies, framed.

At some point, I will probably revisit last week's post on giftedness. It did get a conversation going on Facebook, which I'm glad of. I think a lot of us smart folks learn to hide our light under a bushel basket to appear "normal", so that we aren't subjected to bullying, jealousy, and so on.

I do want to apologize for some of my terminology, though. I did not mean to denigrate people who have ADHD or are on the autism spectrum. My beef is with those who would lump everybody who's not "normal" into the same basket and offer all of them the same sorts of solutions for their "problems", when it's clear that our situations are wildly different.

Anyway, I'm sorry.

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I am hoping to be in a position to reveal the new and improved laundry closet in next week's post. There have been some setbacks over the past couple of weeks, so I'm not promising anything. But I want to focus this week on small bits of progress -- like this picture. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

It's not actually a picture. It's a piece of Italian wrapping paper that I found at Barnes & Noble. I put it in the frame yesterday. (I also covered some in clear contact paper and glued it to a small wooden crate.) I thought the colors would go really well with the yellow walls. But the dragonflies are symbolic, too.

If you ask Mama Google "dragonfly meaning", you'll get a whole bunch of hits, most of them centering around the idea of transformation. Dragonflies start out as larvae and eventually transform into the four-winged creatures we're familiar with. When you extend that idea symbolically, you get the idea of maturing -- from a childhood state into a more evolved, more mature form. So dragonflies represent not just transformation, but also the gaining of wisdom that comes with maturity.

I've written about dragonflies before, in July of 2016. Back then, I talked about how I think of them liminal creatures because they live on land but must stay near water to lay their eggs. That connection to water also connects them to the emotions, and gods know this has been an emotional time for me. Besides all the complications with renovating a literal closet in my home (more on that next week, assuming all goes well this week), I've also been dealing with the thing in my head that I mentioned briefly in July.

What I have is an acoustic neuroma -- a benign tumor on the auditory nerve of my left ear. It's also called a vestibular schwannanoma. This type of tumor is slow growing; I first realized I had a problem in February 2021, when I was sitting at my dinette table one day, minding my own business, and suddenly the hearing in my left ear cut out and tinnitus replaced it. It tooks months to see an ENT here in Santa Fe. An MRI confirmed that the thing was in there. The protocol then was "watch and wait", plus another MRI in a year's time. After the second MRI, I was referred to an ENT specialist in Rio Rancho.

There are two treatment options besides "watch and wait": surgery, in which the surgeon literally cuts into your skull and fetches the thing out; and gamma knife radiation or gamma knife radiosurgery, in which the doctors and technicians put you in a machine and focus a whole bunch of gamma rays on the tumor. That wrecks its DNA, so that eventually it dies off and hopefully shrinks. My docs said I was a good candidate for gamma knife, so that's what I had done on October 3rd. 

The worst part was having the metal frame attached to my head. It has pins that go through your skin and anchor it to your skull in four places. The frame is then clipped into an MRI machine so they can map your brain and figure out how to target the tumor; then it's clipped into the gamma knife machine for the actual procedure. We got there at 6:30 a.m. and were done before noon.

For a couple of days after, I had a mild headache and swollen eyes. Plus the pin above my right eye hit a blood vessel, and I still have a pretty good shiner from it. I've also been more tired than usual. But that's pretty much it for side effects.

Because the tumor grows slowly, it'll take a couple of years before we know whether the procedure worked. If not, then the option of last resort is surgery. But gamma knife has a success rate above 95%, so I'm hoping this will be it. Some patients get their hearing back, but my docs say it's not gonna happen in my case. Which sucks, because I can only understand 12% of the words I hear in my left ear. 

So yeah, it's been a crazy time here. 

But coming back to the surface: Dragonflies live near water. Laundry rooms are a place where water comes into your home. And a transformation happens there: the machines remove dirt and stains from your clothes and linens, fluff them up, and dry them. Right? So if you're looking to put some symbolism in your laundry area, dragonflies are perfect. 

Plus this wrapping paper goes really well with the yellow walls. So I framed it.

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What does "smart" mean, anyway?

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When I was in my 20s, I took the test for Mensa. It was actually two standardized IQ tests, given on the same day. To qualify for membership, you have to score at or above the 98th percentile on one of the tests. I scored above the 98th percentile on both -- and on one (don't ask me which one -- it was 40 years ago), I scored above the 99th percentile, which also qualified me for membership in Intertel. In short, I am what used to be called "smart". When my kids were in school, it was called "gifted and talented", or just "gifted". 

Please miss me with your comments about how IQ tests are biased bullshit. There has been a culture-fair alternative IQ test available since 1949, although not everybody agrees that it's actually culturally fair. I suspect that complete fairness will require each culture to create its own IQ test -- a herculean task. 

But to be honest, I think some in the sniffy crowd are just mad that they're White but didn't make the cut. That's a culture-based response, guys. Americans are so obsessed with the idea that Everybody's! Equal! that they're suspicious of anyone who has superior abilities (unless those abilities can be monetized by some promoter, but I digress). And they're sure as hell not inclined to help anybody who thinks faster than they do.

But here is the thing: Differences in cognitive ability are real, and they don't exist only on the low end of the scale. 

Which brings me to the new concept -- or new to me, anyway -- that giftedness is better defined as a form of neurodivergence. Like, say, autism or ADHD. Here's a Venn diagram developed by a therapist that attempts to show how the traits of giftedness, autism, and ADHD overlap. 

A free, more readable PDF version is available here.

I have mixed emotions about this concept. On one hand, the traits that the author associates with giftedness mostly seem to tally with my experience (she says right on the diagram that it's not meant to be a diagnostic tool, and she emphasizes elsewhere on her blog that not everybody in these categories has every trait). For instance: I do "skip thinking", aka logical leaps; I developed the concept of fairness very young; I prefer precision in expression; I make connections across domains (the Pipe Woman Chronicles being one example); I need time alone; and so on. Plus psychology has always interested me -- it's one of my many wide-ranging interests, to use another trait from the diagram.

On the other hand, giftedness-as-neurodivergence feels like a way to lump smart people together with the weird kids. Remember what I said earlier about how Americans view anyone of above-average intelligence with suspicion? Labeling gifted people as neurodivergent could give "normal" people an excuse to hand us a ticket for the short bus.

Do you think that's an exaggeration? Take a look at this blog post, in which the author attempts to argue that labeling someone "gifted" is a way to whitewash ADHD and/or autism: "'Gifted' is autism/ADHD/neurodivergence with the crusts cut off to make it more palatable to neurotypicals, slicing away anything that makes things hard and leaving only the child's strengths to praise and enjoy." She also blames the "gifted kid" label for the "social isolation" that some gifted adults experience. 

Did I feel socially isolated as a gifted adult? Well, yes. Why do you think I joined Mensa? For the dubious prestige of it? Nope, it was to meet other people with whom I could have a conversation on my level. And if you believe that statement makes me some kind of superior asshole, I refer you to that culture-based bias against intelligence that I mentioned in the third paragraph.

Anyway, the point this blogger misses is that not every gifted person is ADHD and/or autistic. Some of us are just ... smart.

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Not for nothing, "neurotypicals" can exhibit traits on that Venn diagram, too. 

The definition of "neurotypical" tickles me. According to Oxford Languages, it's "not displaying or characterized by ... neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior." In other words, you can't define it with precision without knowing every possible neurodivergence -- which we seem to be busy labeling. At the rate we're going, I can envision a time (there I go again with the giftedness traits: forseeing problems!) when the pool of neurotypical people will become vanishingly small. And then what Margaret Mead once said will really be true: "Always remember that you're absolutely unique -- just like everyone else."

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This post was prompted by a recent conversation with a friend I'd met in Mensa. As we talked, I remembered that I'd hated geometry in high school because doing proofs seemed pointless to me -- and then I realized why: My brain moved so fast through the steps that it was stupid and annoying to have to write them out. In short, I was bored. Giftedness or ADHD? You decide.

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These moments of possibly neurodivergent blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're registered to vote -- and then do it!

On demons and rattlesnakes and other things best left alone.

I took another unscheduled week off from the blog last week. (Did ya miss me?) I had a friend visiting for the week, so things last weekend were a little hectic.

It's too bad, too, because I had a topic all ready to go and everything. But it might even be better for this week, since today is the fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere -- some Pagans call it Mabon -- which means we're progressing into the dark half of the year. Our attention may be turning not just to pumpkin spice everything, but toward ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Like, say, demons.

blueringmedia | Deposit Photos

Why am I using a graphic of a rattlesnake when I just said demons, you ask? I'm getting to that. 

My go-to Druid priest, John Beckett, recently wrote a post on Patheos about the Pagan view of demons. You can read his post here, but basically he says that demons exist in many cultures and religions around the world, not just in Christianity, and they take on different roles in other cultures and other religions than they do here in the West. But in general, he says, "demons are spiritual persons who are generally antagonistic toward humans." He says it's possible to do magical work with them, but it's best to do it from a place of mutual respect. Starting off, as many old texts advise, by puffing yourself up as a "mighty sorceror" and demanding that a demon appear and do your bidding is probably not going to end well for you.

I mean, think about it. Say you're a spiritual person, kinda crabby in general and an introvert anyway, especially when it comes to interacting with humanity, and some human gets hold of your name and insists that you appear before them and do whatever they want you to do. I sure wouldn't be inclined to play nice with the idiot. Would you?

This put me in mind of the way sane humans ought to treat rattlesnakes and other critters that can hurt us: treat them with respect, and don't rile them up if you can help it.

After all, snakes aren't evil. A rattlesnake in your path is just a snake doing its snake thing. Leave it alone, and you'll be fine. Same holds true for demons.

But Christianity has scared us into worrying about demons -- specifically, about being possessed by one. (Not to get political, but MAGA world has been freaking out, ever since Vice President Harris won the Democratic nomination for president, over the idea that she is a demon whose election would usher in the Apocalypse.) Beckett says the number of cases of actual demonic possession is pretty small historically, and we're talking centuries here. So the odds are that if someone is calling someone else a demon, they're just trying to scare you.

To sum up the Pagan view of demons: Yes, they exist. Yes, you can make one mad enough to give you trouble. But no, they're not going to possess you for funsies. Give them a lot of respect and a wide berth, and you'll be fine. Just as you would a rattlesnake.

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Fair warning: I may end up taking next weekend off from the blog, too. We'll see how it goes. I just don't want anybody to think the demons got me if I don't do a post next Sunday.

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These moments of reassuring blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Check your voter registration here! I just did!

Laundry improvement, bit by bit.

Lynne Cantwell 2024

I was very much hoping to give y'all a before-and-after report on the redo of my laundry closet this week, but we'll have to settle for a before-and-during.

It all started when I looked up the manufacturing dates for all the major appliances in the condo I bought in 2021 and realized they were all seriously old. So I began replacing them all with new machines. This fall, it's the washer and dryer's turn. 

Ever since I first used the old machines, I'd hated them. The washer was a top loader whose lid opened the wrong way for the closet configuration, and the dryer never heated up enough to suit me. Built in 1997, they still worked, but I felt justified in getting rid of them on the grounds of annoyance alone. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

That towel on the floor was there to block the draft from the dryer vent.

The closet clearly hadn't been updated in many years -- maybe since before these machines were installed -- so the plan was to donate the beasts to Habitat for Humanity, thereby clearing out the closet so I could paint, get rid of the wire shelf in favor of something nicer, and redo the flooring (whoever installed the Saltillo tile in the bathroom stopped at the threshold to the laundry closet) before the new machines arrived.

Pickup of the old machines went off without a hitch. Demolition consisted of taking down the wire shelf (which, as it turned out, was pulling itself out of the wall anyway) and pulling up some suspicious-looking duct tape from the vinyl sheet flooring. I was worried that somebody had duct-taped over a floor drain, but it was just a hole in the sheet vinyl; if there had ever been a floor drain there, it was covered in plywood, and I wasn't inclined to undo the whole floor to find out. Instead, I patched the hole with a piece of peel-and-stick tile and called it good.

Then I painted the closet a sunny yellow. Well, it was supposed to be a sunny yellow -- it's more like an aggressively cheerful yellow. Pulled off the baseboards, put down some of the leftover luxury vinyl plank flooring from last summer's water leak mitigation, painted the baseboards black to match the frame around the closet doors, reinstalled the baseboards, touched up the baseboard paint from the reinstallation, capped off the dryer vent (I'll explain below), installed a piece of quarter-round to finish off the edge along the Saltillo tile, caulked (I suck at caulking -- please make a note), installed a fun new switchplate cover, and it was done. All I needed were the new machines. 

The yellow color in this pic is off. See the one below.
Lynne Cantwell 2024

Then I got a message from the vendor: delivery of the new machines is delayed until mid-October.

It would be an understatement to say that the thought of hauling my laundry to a laundromat for the next six weeks dismayed me. But then I remembered how I'd done laundry while I lived in that tiny apartment near the plaza during the pandemic shutdown, back when we had a coin shortage so I couldn't get quarters for the coin-op machines in the apartment building. 

So call me crazy, but a week ago today, I went on Amazon and ordered a teeny washing machine. It was delivered Thursday. The Amazon delivery guy, bless his heart, even brought it up my miserable stairs for free. Take that, Best Buy! 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The little box on the bench by the door contained a dolly for the teeny washer -- a necessity in the apartment downtown where I had to store the washer at the foot of my bed and roll it into the bathroom to wash clothes, but not as critical here, as this washer fits in the laundry closet with lots of room to spare.

It works just fine. I even went ahead and moved into place the little rustic cabinet I'd bought for the closet a few weeks back. Tigs seems to like it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

For the new machines, I decided to go with compact units, largely to make sure that they'd fit in the closet. The dryer will be a ventless condenser dryer, hence why I capped the vent in the wall (although it was also a strategic move to keep a certain curious kitty cat from seeing where the tube would lead). The new machines will be a lot smaller than the elderly ones I got rid of. But I figure they'll feel luxurious after this teeny machine: 1.38 cubic feet of washer, plus draping all the wet stuff over a drying rack, compared to 2.4 cubic feet of washer and an electric dryer? Yes, please!

I sold the teeny washer I had downtown when I moved here, and I'm figuring on doing the same thing with this machine when the new washer and dryer finally arrive. But I might keep it, just in case.

There's more to come with the closet: I have a pendant light on order (the lighting in there has always been stupid); I want to rig up a taller and deeper countertop for the cabinet; and I'm going to need either an upper cabinet or a shelf, plus a lint bin and a place to hang my octopus. I've put off all that 'til the washer and dryer are in. So as I said, this is a before-and-during instead of a before-and-after. Stay tuned.

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Yes, the little sign at the top of this post is destined for the laundry closet, whenever everything else is installed.

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Oh hey, I should update y'all on the sleeper sofa. Pickup of the broken one and delivery of the new one both went off without a hitch. Here's the new one:

Lynne Cantwell 2024

At least something is going right...

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