I See What You Meme

I am such a creature of habit.  I like to be spontaneous and switch it up every once in a while but, on the whole, I like ritual.  My breakfast is almost always one of two choices: yogurt or oatmeal with fruit and coffee. I drive the same route to and from work every day. When I come home, it's the same routine again: shoes off, coat and keys on the hook, feed the cats, get the mail (usually in that order). When we received Charlotte's initial diagnosis of brain cancer two years ago, our routine was disrupted in a major way.  Our world turned upside down.  Our life for the next year gave us little in the way of regularity.  Living one day at a time was all we could do because treatment protocols, unexpected hospitalizations, and 8 week stints in Houston, Texas kind of put a crimp in your style for maintaining regular routines.  The control freak in me was not happy. Somehow, we managed to find new routines within the chaos. The plan still seemed to switch every time

Communication is fascinating.  I probably wouldn't be a speech language pathologist if I didn't think this was true but I feel that it bears repeating.  Today I want to talk about code-switching .  In layman's terms, code-switching is what we do when we use terminology, slang, or certain elements of language with one group of people and then switch when we encounter and communicate with a different group.  We engage in this phenomenon on a daily basis and some people are more proficient at it than others.  Sometimes this happens when two languages merge.  Those of you who have spent much time in Florida, Arizona, Calfornia, or Texas know the joys of Spanglish.  Once in college, Roger was called from the waiting room of the student health center and the nurse said, "Royer! Please come to room one-oh-seis (six)."  That's Spanglish.  Code switching happens when both parties are communicating in English as well.  If you've ever accompanied your significa

So I've officially been  a blogger  for a month now.  I think I like it.  Apparently some of you do, too.  Thanks to everyone who has started following my random and scattered musings.  I appreciate the comments and all the "followers".  I'm still not really sure where this is going but I'm hoping that with some practice I will find my voice.    We're barely a month into 2011 and already changes are afoot.  The major news in the Reynolds household is that I am getting a new job.  Actually, I'm getting my old job back.  Before Roger and I jumped off the proverbial ledge of entrepreneurial adventure to run Romp n' Roll , I worked as an educational consultant for Commonwealth Autism Service  (CAS).  I really loved my job but in 2007 we felt that the time was right to try something new.  Little did we know that a global recession was brewing.  We continue to try to make Romp n' Roll work (and we're hanging in there...barely) but earlier

     "Chimpanzees and orangutans may be capable of very limited forms of imitation, but only humans are capable of the kind of widespread and general imitation that...leads to memetic evolution."  --Dr. Susan Blackmore in The Evolution of Meme Machines "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." -- Picasso " Imitation is the sincerest flattery" -- C.C. Colton "Stealing from one source is plagiarism.  Stealing from many sources is research."              -- Wilson Mizner....or Joseph Cummings Chase...or Steven Wright or....? As humans, we are drawn to create.  It also seems to be an innately human behavior to take someone's creation and do whatever we can to make it our own.   In this way, we form our culture.  In this way, we spread our memes.  Memes are born They spread through simple contagion.  We blog about them.  Repeatedly .    We write news stories about them. We transform them into art (or craft). We create othe

Our identity is the way in which we meet the world.  We present ourselves to the public in ways that are obvious and unchangeable (our gender and race) as well as in ways that require slightly more preamble.  And are subject to change.  Sometimes we give outward hints to our identity through our clothing (an executive power suit, mom jeans), our leisure activities (fishing enthusiast, crafty crafter, football fan), our behavior, and our relationships (divorced, married, "just friends"). Sometimes those outward signs of an identity may mask a true reality. How many Lifetime movies are built around the premise of the woman who shows the world she has it "all together" but hides her destructive behavior/addiction/illegal act/mental illness from the outside world until it all comes crashing down?  These movies may be fiction but chances are good that someone in your neighborhood is living that life right now.  In this last year, I have struggled with my identity.