These Things Keep Me Awake

An earworm is music that runs through your head over and over. That must mean that these random thoughts are mindworms.

If sharing an earworm cures the issue for a person then perhaps my sharing these mindworms will stop these things from ricocheting through my mind.

You are welcome! Here are my current Top Three Mindworms on constant rotation.

#1 What’s With These Overalls?

My social media newsfeeds are teeming with assurances that stretchy jersey overalls look fabulous on EVERYONE and I am seriously out-of-step if I don’t own at least two (‘Buy two and SAVE!’).

C’mon, you’ve seen the videos, too, right?

The woman that jams her fists into the pockets (OK- so pockets, that’s a good feature…), then crouches and fans out her elbows and knees making herself resemble a bat squashed on the wall by a tennis racket (my weapon of choice for any yet-to-emerge inside-the-house bats).

I doubt the premise of these ads, yet I watch every reel and video wondering if it will show someone like me looking fabulous wearing them. I mean, I am part of the EVERYONE, am I not? And yet… and yet… I suspect I would look like a short and lumpy potato because jersey has not yet proved to be my friend.

What do you think? Have you bought them? Do they look AH-MAZE-ING?

#2 Turnip or Cauliflower?

Almost a year into a keto lifestyle (note: I have been informed that sharing about a ‘new lifestyle’ is code for becoming a swinger. Evidently, so is buying a pineapple at Aldi. Although I can’t prove that swingers aren’t keto and buying pineapples at Aldi, this musing is about neither of these subjects), I have joined a community of folks searching for the perfect ‘potato-like’ foodstuff.

Growing up I was taught that a balanced dinner included a protein (meat/fish/chicken/pork/meatballs), vegetable (iceberg lettuce, green beans (wax beans if we were being fancy)/corn/peas/lima beans), and starch (potato is the king here, but pasta and rice had their own elevated occurrences).

All of that, as well as a genetic inability to properly use insulin, explains how I got where I am now: low-low-low carb diet.

No potato, no rice, no flour, no pasta, no bread, no sugar. And, after a year, I’m getting more and more OK with it all.

And that means I’m getting more creative with my cooking, so enter the world of ‘You’d never guess this was cauliflower and not…XXX!’

Yes. Yes, I would guess.

But that doesn’t mean it tastes bad, just that it tastes different.

Lately, the big rivalry in the keto blogs is between Team Cauliflower and Team Turnip. Both teams swear that their pick is more potato-ey. And here’s what I am wondering: what do I plant in my garden in order to obtain a steady influx of the perfect faux-potato this fall?

I wonder about yield per square foot, about proper soil prep, watering needs, native pests, storage concerns for that big ol’ bumper crop we’ll get, and the ready availability of each in the supermarket.

What do you think? Which would YOU choose?

#3 What is bigger: a buttload, a shitload, or a boatload? (And how did fecal matter become a unit of measurement?)

My husband is no help with this line of thinking. He doesn’t use these phrases and has no idea why I think about them. Frankly- that’s another train of thought for another day, because think them I do!

My guess is that boatload was the original term, and that it became scrambled into buttload as a colloquialism. I find that was not the case!

A butt is equal to two hogsheads. (Surprising no one, I’m sure, this did not strike me as overly helpful. What size of hog? Why just the heads? Does PETA know this?)

A hogshead is a trade unit of volume used to describe wine/alcohol, and is equal to 63 U.S. gallons. TWO hogsheads equal one butt, aka a buttload, or 126 U.S. gallons ( or 476.961 litres for my metric readers). So it isn’t a weight, it’s a measure of volume.

A boatload is how many passengers or cargo it takes to fill a boat. (I found this anticlimactic, TBH). Now I THINK it could be stretched to mean how many butts (of wine) it takes to fill a boat, which clearly makes a boatload bigger than a buttload.

So far, no fecal matter has been involved in this explanation.

That is about to change.

Enter: shitload.

Much closer to a boatload, a shitload measure quantity, although it is disappointingly imprecise. Given this short explanation, I think that it’s safe to say that boatload is larger, though.

Side Note: As these things sometimes go, I went down a rabbit hole and found a petition that wanted to bring order to the madness. Alas, it didn’t gain traction, or we would know for sure that a ‘shit-ton’ weighs 2,000,000 tons. Which is, inarguably, a lot of something. Here’s the petition, should you wish to revive it.

What do you think? How would you rank them?

~

Even when I am not trying to sleep useless thoughts run through my mind ALL THE TIME! Here are some:

Please let me know in the comments: Do you have an earworm that just won't let you go? You Know: the one that's never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna turn around and desert you?

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