pony episode musing

This refers to the most recent episode of My Little Pony - so if you've not seen it and don't want spoilers, feel free to skip. I'll put the more general observations up front.

The moral of this one was fundamentally the old "put your own oxygen mask on first" metaphor - that if you don't take care of yourself, you can't function effectively to help others. This is something that's pretty well-known and discussed, and yet, a lot of us have a hard time with it, or some aspects of it.

For me, I have hard time with some aspects of it. Sleep, I don't - I know I need as close to 8 hours of sleep as I can manage during the regular week to be able to function. (Given my busy-ness and the fact that I need to make time to exercise and all, some nights I manage 6, but I can't do that for long)

And eating healthful food, getting exercise, taking regular showers: all of that I can pretty much ace. (Though on some nights, when I arrive home at 5 pm, have an evening meeting at 6, and still need to make some time to practice piano - those nights maybe I don't get in all the vegetable servings I "should" have).

What I have a hard time with, sometimes, is taking time for me. I often take on too much stuff, I am often too willing to help out (or things get dumped on me that it's not my job, entirely, to do - the shared room that a colleague and I were supposed to clean out? The colleague has yet to remove the stuff that only they can deal with; I did all the other cleaning because I was around). And the biggest thing for me lately has been taking time for things I dub as "frivolous" - like going to Sherman yesterday afternoon. I almost didn't; I almost said to myself, "You can go to Wal-mart tomorrow morning, most of the things you need can be had there and the things they don't have, you can live without a while longer" All that in the interest of maybe reading an un-usued chapter on one of the topics I have not planned to address in the new class (I am running through the material faster than I anticipated I would, so I am going to have to add on some more at the end - maybe more discussion of land use? Maybe some stuff about the Sagebrush Rebellion and other citizen pushbacks and the controversies? I don't know)

But anyway. I see stuff like that, going to shop at somewhere beyond the "bare minimum" that exists in town as something Frivolous and therefore To Be Cut Out When Responsibilities Demand It.

And, I don't know. When I can't get out of town for at least a little bit each week, I do get kind of uptight and sad, because, as I said, I feel like everyplace is like this, with a dead downtown and essentially no small businesses and having to brave the wal-mart with all its difficult people and deeply unaesthetic qualities for almost any shopping and....yes, I'm spoiled. And I do feel like it's spoiled to demand the occasional Saturday out antiquing, instead of, I don't know, working on research-reading because somehow I was taught that academics are supposed to love their work so much that it becomes their hobby. (I do have a colleague whose hobby is essentially an offshoot of his research interest, so I don't know. My hobbies are extremely unacademic, or at least are completely different from the field I am in)

Even knitting. I will take grading home and do it, even when I'm tired. Granted, part of this is I relax better later on when it's not hanging over my head, part of it is one of the FEW self-congratulatory claims I make about myself is "I get graded feedback back to the students very fast, either the next class day or within a week at the latest"

But I don't know. After taking several weeks of just quick grudging trips to the local wal-mart to restock the necessities, I feel so much better after getting to go to the natural-foods store and the Ulta and the Kroger and all of that. And I don't know. Maybe I AM spoiled. My great-grandmother who lived on a farm - shoot, my grandmother, who raised kids in a tiny town without a car during World War II - would be ashamed of how soft I am in some ways.

But yeah. I need downtime and especially away-time and I find I get kind of crabby and strung-out when I don't allow it for myself.

***

So anyway. The episode. The MacGuffin of the episode was collecting some kind of moss for oxen going to visit Fluttershy's animal sanctuary (yay again for continuity). Zecora is helping Fluts, but the episode doesn't turn out to feature her ALL that much. (I want a Zecora-centric episode, where maybe we learn more of her backstory and why she moved from wherever it is zebras live to the Everfree forest.)

Anyway. Zecora gets exposed to pollen and gets sick (I know that feel, sis....the ragweed here is bad right now). But this is a singularly horrific disease, because after the weird orange spots, and the coughing bubbles and sneezing lighting.....well, Zecora will turn into a tree of the species that releases the spores....which is terrifyingly like a real fungus that infects insects (and was apparently used in a zombie movie as the thing that zombified humans).

So yeah. I had a brief twinge of "noooo, they are gonna write Zecora out!" but I suspect that on-screen deaths are a no-no in the My Little Pony show-bible. (Yes, Applejack's parents can be dead, but that happened offscreen and out of the time we are seeing).

Fluttershy freaks out, of course - though not as much as I would, I think, if I found I had infected a friend with something that was ultimately going to be deadly. She runs off to Twilight for help....Twilight can't help. So Fluttershy hunts through the library (not sleeping - which is where the whole self-care issue starts: She sends Twilight off to bed and keeps working through the night herself).

Fluts, it turns out, has some mad research skills -she finds a link even Twilight overlooked that reveals where the Mage Meadowbrook might have lived. (In Cajunponyland, as it turns out).

So they travel there. Find Meadowbrook's house. By this time Fluttershy is showing some effects of sleep deprivation but she is bound and determined to push on to save Zecora.

They meet up with a descendant of Meadowbrook (time frame being somewhat elided and also whether he's a direct descendant - meaning she had foals - or just a "general" descendant). Cattail by name. (I fear they may be running out of Pony names by now; maybe they need to hit up that AI list I linked to a while back).

Through a bunch of research work (again), they find out that apparently Flash Bee honey cures the disease.....but Flash Bees are kind of like our "Africanized" honey bees, aggressive and unwilling to give up the honey (and apparently bees are insufficiently sentient that you can't guilt them into "Yeah, but if you don't give me a few grams of your honey, ponies will DIE." Or maybe they are, and just don't care?)

Fluttershy, being good with animals, says she must go get it. By this point in time she herself has become infected - remember, this is thought to be fatal without the cure - so it's taken on a new level of urgency.

Anyway. She falls, spends three days in a coma, when she wakes up she's sick, but she still manages to figure out the secret to getting the honey. (The three-days thing is probably to add drama? I guess? How could someone be in a coma for three days without being hooked up to an IV for fluids and a catheter for removal of those same fluids....).

The denouement comes quickly - Fluttershy is cured, they get back to the Everfree Forest fast enough to cure Zecora (who by now has started sprouting branches, and yes, I am sure this is a slightly-horrific nod to the old "I'd like to be a tree" bit Fluttershy said in Season 1) and Twilight reminds Fluttershy  of the essential moral - that if you don't take care of yourself, you're little use to others. (Though despite being ill and sleep-deprived   - at least until the coma - Fluttershy STILL managed to save the day).

Which actually, though, the "put your own oxygen mask on first" moral - that's pretty grown up. Is that something a kid would even WORRY about? Most kids, at least most kids in non-dysfunctional families, seem to be pretty much taken-care-of and maybe it's their moms or dads who need the oxygen-mask reminder....

But yeah. One of the things I really struggle with for myself is "what is an appropriate level of self-care vs. what is me being lazy or self-indulgent?" I still haven't figured it out and I admit there are times I either push myself too hard, or not hard enough.