entropy

entropy

i am aware that a great deal of material has been published on the topic of entropy, the tendency for all components of a system (or the universe) to devolve towards a state of disorder...(yes, i know that's the layman's or generalist definition.) i have neither the maths background nor the desire to read most of this material. and hey, i don't need to: i can sit back at my leisure and observe it right here on a daily basis, in a variety of areas in my life.

the first area is quite simple to sum up: home ownership. basically, you buy a house, move in, and then watch as various systems, appliances, and objects fall apart and cease to function. indeed, i was aware of this before, having lived in an older house; but it didn't fall to me to deal with the consequences then. one of the chief factors in my decision to buy the current house was the fact that so many of its appliances and exterior and interior bits had recently been replaced. but of course, the few that were overlooked in that process have promptly decided to fail...most notably the garage door and the dishwasher. at least they are not particularly vital, like heat or a roof, or a hot water heater, but they are annoying in their quirkiness. the garage door opener suffers from some obscure electrical bipolar syndrome. sometimes it works flawlessly, if noisily, and sometimes it, well, doesn't. inevitably it chooses the times when i am in a hurry to get out of the house to go all wacky. i rush to the car, get in, click the button on the clicker; the door goes up. all seems well---i back out of the garage, click the button again, and...nothing happens. you can repeat that ad infinitum. so i have to turn off the car, rush back into the garage, close the door using the wall switch, run through the house and out the front door, locking it behind me, back to the car, etc. insert imaginative profanity as desired when picturing this. i never know, when i come home again, whether or not the garage door will work. generally not. sometimes it goes up, but not down, for days or weeks. and then one day, it works again. wtf? if there were some medication i could put the damn thing on, i would...
the dishwasher is just as mental. the door is broken, to the point where it has to be opened with great care or it falls in the floor altogether. i keep a small step-stool under it when it's open to prevent that. it leaks like a sieve whilst running, but the amount is highly variable. some days it's a wee puddle which i deal with by flinging a dishtowel on the floor or careful placement of a plastic basin under the obvious leaking spot. other times it defeats this system, pouring what seems like gallons of water into the floor...well, at least it forces me to mop the floor occasionally. my friend jeni has had similar experiences in her home. we are both getting really good at duct-taping, bucket-placement, and other last-ditch attempts to manage appliance entropy. at times, we have seriously thought about dating men based solely on their jobs, i.e. plumbing, hvac repair, the maytag dude...

the second area is relationships. apparently these are simply entropic by nature, and the best one can do is try to remain somewhat detached throughout. that way, at least you can see the humor in the process...and there is a LOT of humor.

the third area is pet ownership. i have a cat, you see. i love cats; i've always had at least one cat in the house and a varying number of outdoor cats. they are unquestionably possessed by demons, which may be one of the reasons i love them so, but they are also annoying little beggers. their capacity for spiteful behavior is the flip-side of their intelligence. cats do on purpose with their paws what dogs do accidentally with their tails. i have seen small cats take down 8-foot xmas trees just moments after the tree was decorated---i will never forget the look of sheer glee on the cat as the thing came crashing down. all those shiny swinging toys! all the breakage! if you go to someone's house at yuletide and notice that their tree is tied to something---a nail in the wall, a curtain rod---it's a pretty good bet that they own a cat. you can also infer this if they decorate the tree down to a certain level, and leave the bottom foot and a half or so bare of ornaments, or use only plastic ones at the bottom. cats also have a singular ability to regurgitate, and a preference for doing so on carpet rather than bare floor. i don't know if it is a comfort thing, that they prefer to be sick on a warmer, fuzzier surface, or their innate sense of luxury, or just malice. clearly, it would be easier to clean up on the hard surfaces. it wouldn't leave a disgusting stain, either. but for chrissake, why do they have to choose the best antique oriental rug? perhaps it is a similar motivation that induces them to choose the most expensive or most delicate pieces of furniture to nest on. they even seem to prefer the upholstery that will show their vast piles of shed hair to greatest advantage---the black cat will sit only on white furnishings, and vice-versa. you may notice an absence of wicker in cat-owners' houses too, for the simple reason that cats regard wicker as a giant scratching post and chew toy. you can provide cat toys and scratch-posts galore, but they never seem to appeal in the way that furniture does... apparently, cats view it as part of their manifest destiny to destroy a house and its contents. thanks, kitty.

and then there is parenthood. children are unquestionably the greatest blessing i can imagine, and everyone knows how much i love them. but they EAT your energy and time, and they are worse than cats on a house. actually, they pretty much destroy all their surroundings, even the well-trained and basically well-behaved ones like my daughter. they are messy as all get-out. i should have seen what was coming when i placed my baby into her shiny new stroller-pram for the first time. this was when she was about 4 months old, sitting up well, and had gotten 4 sharp little teeth like sunny baudelaire. first, she screamed because she was offended that i was not holding her. then she stopped in order to check out this novel device--it might have some hidden charm...while i was placing a blanket into the basket on the stroller-back, she ate two big holes in the padded front bar on it. to be precise, she bit holes in the vinyl, and then proceeded to pull bits of vinyl sheathing and padding off it. silently, but smiling. uh-huh. why, you might ask, is the air vent in the backseat of my car broken? because my little angel kicked the shit out of it during a temper tantrum one day in her younger years...why does the heirloom piano have unsightly orange marks that look suspiciously like crayon on some of the keys? just guess. (and yes, i took away every crayon, pen, and marker for like a year in retribution...) and a child's idea of decor? a thick, painful-to-step-on, unnavigable layer of crap strewn across the floor and all other horizontal surfaces. there is a hamper, right there, but will a child put the dirty clothes in it as she sheds them? nooooooo. she will add them to the mass of stuff festooning the floor, every time. and when you call to her to bring down the dirty clothes for laundering, she will bring an overflowing hamper, simply heaped with every piece of attire she's had on, even if it was only on 30 seconds and wasn't dirty, even if it's dry-clean-only, even if it's non-washable stuff from the halloween/dress-up box. why? because when asked for dirty clothes, she can't be bothered to sort through the piles of crap---she will just shovel everything into a hamper. sort of like the papal forces dealing with suspected heretics: "kill them all and let god sort them out"... there is a bookshelf, so why are there books all about the room and house? there are easy-to-use cubbies or boxes for all the toys and stuff, but do you think that they are in said cubbies and boxes? hell no! other moms have shared stories of extracting tortillas from the computer disc drive; insect infestations resulting from the little cherubs hiding caches of food in their rooms; keyboards made useless by drips and splobs of sticky stuff; broken furniture, musical instruments, electronic equipment, jewelry, china, crystal, cherished knickknacks from great-great-grandmother, chandeliers and lamps, windows, doors, & screens...pretty much anything you can imagine. if somebody sells it, crafts it, or bequeathes it, our kids can break it. hell, they're pretty good at breaking bits of themselves on occasion.

finally, there is one's own physical vehicle to contemplate. whose idea of brilliance was it that mothering offspring should of necessity drain the mother of sleep, nutrients, etc for years and years, until her immune system is shot and she has permanent dark circles under the eyes and can barely remember that she used to have a brain? not to mention the less-than-positive effects of pregnancy and nursing upon her poor body? then one day she looks around at the women who haven't had kids yet, or worse, the ones who had kids and then resorted to surgeries and procedures to deal with the carnage...and she feels old and ugly, even if she really isn't either. i've felt like this, we all have, and it sucks! at some point, you look in the mirror and go waaaaah! i want my old body back! what happened?! but even if you don't have kids, your body is still going to reflect the passage of time eventually. and i really don't want to end up with everything fake---not that i am saying one shouldn't be able to fake something here and there, just keep it to reasonable levels. i use fake-tanning stuff all summer because i am so deathly white when all the other white people have gone sort of golden. (yeah, go ahead and laugh, i know---even with the fake tan stuff i am still horribly white.) i have thought from time to time that it might be nice to bleach my teeth, though i haven't done so. i completely understand dying hair to cover grey if the grey came early. and though i'll never do it, i have looked wistfully at other mums who had their breasts put back surgically to the way they were pre-baby. but after a while, you start to look at people and wonder how much of them is real! you've got the tanning-bed tan, the dyed hair, the super-white bleached teeth, the breast implants, the botox, the collagen injections in lips and hands, etc, the face lifts, tummy tucks, liposuction, spider-vein removal, hormones, plastic nails, etc, etc. it all sounds exhausting. and i have seen some of these productions and just felt pity for them, as the person inside all that manipulated flesh seems sort of submerged, lost under an increasingly desperate attempt to stave off normal aging. i know the media is much to blame, and patriarchal society that only values certain aspects of a woman, but if we don't make a stand for ourselves, how can it change? with that in mind, maybe my body isn't doing so badly. although i could totally live without the cold i have right now, which has morphed into a sinus infection and bronchial-cough thing. yeah.

ah, entropy...