Back to research

So, having handed in The Packet that Ate My Life, I find I can get back to doing what I am "supposed" to be doing - including research.

I began sorting the fall soil samples this afternoon. I had forgotten how peaceful it is. Just me, the soil, and the microscope. I can't be pulled away from it quickly or easily, I don't have to talk to anyone, I can just work. And there's the tiny chance of some kind of fun surprise - you never know what will be in the soil. (I found one of the rice beetles in the sample I'm soaking right now).

I also discovered that I talk to my samples. (I said, "Oh, what are you? Oh, you're a rice bug. Let me grab you, rice bug.*" Even though it was (a) dead and (b) wouldn't have understood me even if it was alive.)

I guess in a way the soil is kind of like knitting or cooking or quilting - it is a known property, it doesn't have all the messiness that human interactions do. (Some days I wonder if I'm a bit farther along the "continuum" than some people are - I mean, the continuum that has Asperger's at one end of it and what is sometimes called "Neurotypical" at the other. Because I often find human interactions baffling or uncomfortable. Or maybe I just wind up dealing with lots of nutso people; it seems the few times I've met up with fellow bloggers and such the interaction was not particularly strained.)

But it is nice to be working on it again. Even if I am wearing a hot, stuffy N-95 mask in the hopes of not breathing in all kinds of mold spores and giving myself an allergy attack.

(*I think one of the reasons "Ducky" Mallard is my favorite character on NCIS is his tendency to talk to the bodies that are brought in to his morgue. And his tendency to go off on rambling tangents, which I catch myself doing sometimes in class. Though I will say in recent seasons they seem to have downplayed those tendencies more.)