Puffy and Sappy

Sunday, 08 January 2012

Today, after laying on his stomach on the living floor for about 15 minutes and writing and drawing random sketches on his little white board, Owen presented me with his picture of – as he called it – puffy math symbols. He explained that he first drew the images like normal, then traced around them so they were “puffy” and then deleted any ink that remained on the inside. He quizzed me on if I could correctly identify all of the symbols (I got one incorrect, otherwise I was spot-on), and then returned to the floor to doodle some more. That’s when I grabbed the camera and took a picture of his work.

Here it is:

Ignoring the blacked-out doodles in the lower-right corner (which he added after quizzing me), the images are (clockwise from top-left): plus, minus, times, division, a lemniscate, pi, phi, and square root. Those are all math symbols, by the way.

He asked if he forgot any symbols. I told him there were others, but I couldn’t recall how to draw them correctly. I was thinking of the summation symbol when I said that. Of course, there are also e and i and parentheses, but since those are more closely associated with writing, I didn’t know if Owen would find them very interesting from a mathematical perspective.

Maybe I was wrong.

Monday, 09 January 2012

Today, about three miles into my drive to work, I pulled off my stocking cap and began itching my scalp vigorously in one specific spot. I quickly realized that I had a thick, solid clump of something in my hair. I couldn’t get it out – not without sudden acute trichotillomania, anyway.

What was that thing?

Was it shampoo? I wondered. No, shampoo doesn’t clump like that.

Was it soap? Hm. Maybe. But my bar soap never meets up with my scalp and, even if it did, I’m sure I would have remembered cleaving off a piece of the soap and grinding it into my head until it stuck to my hair.

After playing with the clump for a few more seconds (yes, I realize that’s an unfortunate choice of words), I smelled my fingers. They smelled like sap. Tree sap.

Then the memories came flooding back. You know, those long lost memories from ten minutes earlier. Turns out, this morning, I had hoisted up our Holiday Tree and carried it from the living room, around into the dining room, through the kitchen, and out Door Beta (yeah, we need names for our doors). At some point, the live tree, which brushed along my left side as I carried it out to the deck, must’ve decided to bequeath upon me a lovely parting gift.

I washed the affected hair upon arriving at work. The sinks at work are all motion-sensitive, so I had to keep waving my hands around while I cleansed the offending area.

I was a little disappointed that none of my co-workers commented that I had a wonderful, rugged, outdoorsy scent about me.