Friday, July 10, 2009

Dia Cincuenta y Cuatro – My Analysis of My Analysis

July 9, 2009

I made Snickerdoodles today.


After classes, I swung by the supermercado and picked up the few remaining ingridients I needed. When I got home, I spent about three hours doing homework. It wasn’t hard, just very tedious because almost every word I had to look up in the dictionary to figure out if it was a masculine or feminine noun. So even though I knew what most of the words meant, you can never really tell just by looking at a word if it is masculine or feminine. It’s like English grammar: there are rules but there are so many exceptions that they don’t really make a difference. So, unless I specifically knew what article to use for the word, I had to look it up. Very time consuming.


Because of the homework, I started baking a little later than I had planned. I could bore you with a detailed description of what I did...but really all I’d be doing is filling space, suffice it to say that I baked Snickerdoodles while waiting for everyone to get home from their activities. It actually worked out quite well, I finished just as they started getting home so I was able to vacate the kitchen before they needed to use it and I had fresh cookies just about done.


Maybe it is the wannabe psychologist in me, but it is interesting to analyze their reaction to cookies and to analyze my own analysis. My mama tica, Olga, says that they are “muy rico” (very delicious), but I wonder...would she tell me if she didn’t care for them? If she would say that she liked them no matter if she did or not, how do I know if she really means it? Likewise, Maurico, the eldest son, is a jokester. He likes kidding me and he says that they are “malo” and “me no gustan.” So, does that mean he is kidding me this time, or is he really saying that he doesn’t like them? The moment he says he doesn’t like them, my mama tica glares at him and says “no, they are very good cookies.” So would she say that if he was kidding or only if he wasn’t kidding, or both?


Then there is my own self analysis. Why am I analyzing these reactions? What would my reaction be if I truly knew that they didn’t like them? What would my reaction be if they thought they were stupendous and I could tell for sure? Do I care about what they think of the cookies? Should I worry about it? How much weight does their acceptance/rejection deserve in my mind? Where is the brightline between being aware of other people’s desires and needs and finding self-worth in the approval of other people? Why am I spending so much time thinking about this?


Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut said, "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." In other words, all this analysis and hypothesizing can only take place in the theory realm. The real test is to see how quickly they disappear. :-)


...maybe I could make a Time vs. Remaining Cookies chart and graph it... ;-)


5 comments:

  1. I think the cream of tartar has gone to your head ; )

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  2. I think oddly a lot like that. . .

    .scary.

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  3. Well did you see them eat many or did they disappear after you left, like down the garbage disposal?

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  4. How did the memorization of 240 verbs go???? That was an absurd number of verbs to learn in one week! In my opinion, even 100 would have been over the top!

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  5. Well, I didn't have to memorize all of the verbs in one week. We were just given the verbs and we need to start memorizing them. So right now...it is still an ongoing process. I know about half of the regular verbs...but the irregular verbs I haven't even looked at. :-/

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