Curse of rotten bananas

I like stories where I get to know each of the “threads” first and then I notice how they wrap around each other to make an elegant braid. But the most amazing part is how the story again untangles to reveal the original threads.

This week, we had hesitations about buying a new Dyson. Our v10 has been broken and not fixable for several weeks now, but the concept of buying a new one still felt not justifiable. 

A close friend of mine mentioned that she is trying to be “minimalistic”. I find myself far from being one. Yet the urge for minimalism or guilt of being far from it sinks heavily.

What does it mean to be “satisfied”? If you ask a neuroscientist, you might hear about certain parts in the brain being stimulated. When I was teaching action potential at WM, this stimulation was described merely as opening & closing of voltage gated ion channels. Ions flooding in, pumps working to revert it back. Pretty disappointing, right?

What is it that is making me unsatisfied and thus requires the movement of ions across a cell membrane? I used to work with an American dietician and she told me that I have “Disordered Eating” problem. I think she is correct. Why would I need repeated opening and closing of same channels by eating 4 bars of chocolate? I remember hearing my boss complain about people not sensing that they are full: ‘They would not need to eat 4 hamburgers to be full and something is broken’. Now that I work with my Turkish dietician, diverging from my plan and eating chocolate feels like a sin. I find my confessions to be like confessing my sins. 

We ordered the new Dyson, which almost felt like an innocent sin. On top of that I also asked for a 34 inch curved screen for my home study. Well, that feels far from minimalistic and bigger as a sin. It is as heavy as the curse of rotten bananas. The ones that I need to make them “disappear” time to time. I can put some of the other type of leftovers in the backyard for squirrels. But rotten bananas — they have little chance. They wait in the freezer to be made into a banana bread. Even if they become a banana bread, there is again not much chance to be consumed by humans in our house. 

Yesterday, we had the big event of this week, which was the “Super Bowl”. As you might guess, I have no clue and I did not watch. I tried to make sense of why people are “satisfied” or “unsatisfied” with the half time show, with the advertisements, with the game. I must be culturally incompetent to even understand the discussion — but I tried. I felt like I was going down a rabbit hole, looking for rabbits. Came out like “Where are the rabbits?”

The balance of minimalistic and wasteful should hover somewhere in between: “well taken care of”. I noticed in the backyard, at the left corner, our fences grew bright green mold. In this case, they were ignored to get in bad shape. Balancing our attention to navigate the needs of our environment and fight out false=made up needs of cursed brains is like surfing in a cavalier outfit. You would need to focus attention on real deficit. 

Tomorrow, we will have one more snow day. I am hoping to get some work done on my magnificent curved screen, minimizing my time getting lost in rabbit holes that I do not belong, and focusing on deficits in my diet plan to have an earned day. I will have to feed to browning bananas to the kids, on a pancake with some maple syrup. That should do it.