Caws and affect

My adductors and abductors (theoretically opposing muscle groups, you know) are in complete accord today: they hate me. I am forming a theory that my adductors need a little midweek help, like hitting the adductor machine, so that Sunday squats won't be a big surprise for them every week. Please stop hating me, muscle groups.

Annnnnnd, I don't really have a new year's resolution, but it appears I'll be drinking far less coffee. bluechromis speculated a while ago that my cup-a-day coffee habit might be contributing to my annoying armpit-sweating, so last week I cut down to about 1/4 cup of coffee per day... sure enough, I sweated progressively less as the week went on. We have a conclusive diagnosis! It's a little bit annoying that I have to stop doing something I enjoy, but it'll be great to sweat less. And yes, it's a good thing that bluechromis is studying to be a doctor. She's going to be great. :)

Lastly... I've been doing a lot of thinking about my parents lately. Not my favorite topic, but who knew? There were things in that box I still needed to look at. One thing that's impressed itself upon me more and more is just what a spectator I was. My parents for the most part did not mean to be hurtful, and they also weren't doing very much as a reaction to who I was; mostly they were doing their own thing and I just happened to be there. Let's say that again: they were just doing their own thing. In a way that's a vast relief. And then again, in a way that makes me furious, since their thing did not create a fit environment for a child and they damn well should have known it. I called my mother today to ask her if she'd be willing to tell me what happened to her, to make her willing to go along with the whole let's live in a super-impoverished manner morality play... I've gotten inklings that maybe her own growing up was not the idyll she always described to me when I was little. And shockingly, she said she'd write me a letter all about it and that she didn't mind my asking. Note: she really is a good person. Imagine working your ass off to raise a kid and then have it come back to you as a 28-year-old asking what the fuck you were thinking -- even if it asks more politely than that! If I were her, I would have thrown a flaming torch at me. But I have to know. I have to know, because I can understand a war-ravaged vet being all fucked up but I have no idea what happened to a nice middle-class girl to make her so fucked up. What makes a smart woman live in poverty with an emotionally abusive person, and keep her child in that environment, when different choices (it's even still possible to run home to those middle-class parents) exist and are open to her? Christ, it would have helped so much just to live in a normal TRAILER like the normal poor people did... whatever stood between me and that white-trash dream, well, I just want to know. So I'm quite looking forward to that letter.

Edit: I am feeling the need to announce that I do know the difference between affect and effect. I was just having fun with this post's title, which I hoped was obvious. But today I saw an actual use of affective in place of effective. Scary!