Fluorescent yellow toenail polish and other tide-stemmers (puzzling through long-forgotten physics lessons to find inspiration for the here and now)

http://cerrissa.blogspot.com/2010/03/42-yellow-fever.html

I studied physics in the early 1990s. A lanky plain-clothes nun in her 60s was my teacher. She didn’t seem to like me much, but that was okay. I didn’t like physics much, but I did manage to eke out an 86 on my Regents exam (even though Miss Godliness and Kindness predicated I’d fail). And although the formulas of physics seemed to stump my poetry-prone intellect, I do recall a few factoids from way back when. For one: “An object in motion tends to stay in motion.” Google tells me this is Newton’s First Law of Motion. I think the flip side of this rule goes something like, “An object at rest tends to stay at rest.”

A body of water can be considered an object, right? And it moves—ergo, ocean tides. The power of gravity controls the tides, right? The sun, the moon, the earth, their magnetic relationship, their constant motion—it’s a dance, you might say…if, like me, you prefer arts to sciences.

This fascinating albeit embarrassingly simplistic physics reminiscence is just a clunky lead-in to my frequent mental battle cry of late: “Stem the tide! Stem the tide!”

You see, this body has not been in motion in months. Yes, yes—I’ve been “going through the motions” of everyday life. But my body-sculpting physical activities of running, walking and yoga have fallen by the wayside of winter. And like my formerly toned muscles, my mental state has similarly atrophied.

Today, I am stemming the tide—stemming the tide!—by…

1)      Painting my toenails fluorescent yellow. I happened across this bottle of polish because, as I’ve mentioned before, my house is like an ocean and you never know what the tide of clutter will bring in. Today, it revealed fluorescent yellow nail polish, and I applied it to my toes.

2)      Blasting The Wiggles Dance Party on our decades-old entertainment system, simultaneously amusing and mortifying my children, all of whom are home from school this week…and I do mean home, because we can’t afford to go to Disney World.

3)      Writing this blog post. Because I like to write like some people like to knit. I find it relaxing. You don’t have to read it, just like you don’t have to wear the scarf your Cousin Susie made you for Christmas. (But why wouldn’t you?)

And now, for my final tide-stemming act of this early afternoon, I’m going to sweep the living room. Because there’s that aforementioned tide of clutter to stem, as well as my physical and mental deterioration to resist. And I believe what my father has always said regarding these matters: “Every little bit helps.” Google tells me that’s an old saying from the 1550s, but I think I’ll dub it Bolton’s First Law of Perseverance.