The Ink-Pot and the Palette

In my research into attachment "disorders" I came across this article about cold people in Psychology Today.

If you've gotten into a relationship with a cold person, the article says, "hopefully you walked away." "Avoidant-dismissive attachment disorder" (characterized by aloofness, coldness, lack of affection, self-absorption--the list is long and decidedly not neutral) is caused by faults of "maternal caretaking". One commenter on part 2 of the article calls for finding and sterilizing women with this disorder, presumably to curb the creation of more people the commenter might feel uncomfortable with.

It's just one pop-psych article, written in a comment-baiting style, so I don't take it too seriously. But its strongly biased language and illustrations caused some disparate ideas to coalesce in my mind--ideas about myself, heredity, types of people, and the peculiarly American drive for "self improvement" that has dogged me all my days.



( Detached, haughty and stand-offish am I )

To every wonderful person who has dared to be my friend I say thank you, from the bottom of my cold (but deep) heart.

And to the name-calling institutions and individuals who can't get past the fact that I'm not the kind of lady you're comfortable with, I say NOT SORRY. FIND BETTER WORDS, OR STOP TALKING ABOUT ME.

( Sartorial )

I'm really having fun. And I'm working on some actual pictures of myself before and after Dressing Your Truth.

Because the universe loves a joke...

On my way home from Zumba tonight I fell off my bike. Not, you know, while rolling at speed down the hill between Skidmore and Mason Street. Not while frantically trying to get across Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard at the Going Street crossing in the dark.

No, I fell off my bike while it wasn't even moving. Right in front of my house. *eyeroll*

I was trying to roll into my back yard, which involves a U-turn from the street onto the sidewalk, and then a sharp right from the sidewalk into my garden path. It's always wobbly, and I give myself one point if my front tire makes it onto the garden path before I have to stop and walk, two points for both tires, and all the points if I actually manage to ride right up into the back yard.

Well, I could see I wasn't going to make the turn from the sidewalk to the garden path. Part of me--the part with its hands on the brakes--wanted to stop, but part of me wasn't quite ready yet.

Result? I went a tiny bit farther than Eleanor and landed in the dirt and dying day lilies; Eleanor (who weighs about 45 pounds) tipped over on top of me, my earphone cord got caught up in the handlebars, and for a longish and really ridiculous moment, I could not figure out how to get up.

That, my friends, is Sophisticated Craft in action.

No harm befell me, my phone, the ivory leather jacket I was wearing, or Eleanor O the Dutch Bike. Only the cat witnessed my Style Statement.