Are You Too Sensitive?
I bet you're not the least bit surprised that I clicked on that link.

I have no idea if I was a "fretful toddler" -- I always figured that my oversensitivity stemmed from an overly-controlling former boyfriend -- but I sure nodded at this part:

Cruelty, at least, is a malady that rarely strikes the sensitive. And, in fact, while it's easy to dwell on the downside of being thin-skinned, the pluses are many and varied. "Sensitive people encourage others to feel that their opinions matter, they're usually good listeners and they're naturally empathetic," Dr. Jacobson says. "And because they are so acutely aware of their own imperfections, they tend to be patient with the imperfections of others."
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But the pendulum can easily swing the other way, too -- where, like the princess and the pea, you feel every tiny bump so intensely that you suffer more than is reasonable. The key, as with so much else in life, is keeping things in perspective.

Been working on that perspective for about four years now. Don't know I've made much progress though.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:32 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I'm a woman who likes her routine. I've pretty much done the same thing every day since we moved into this house. In fact, on days that I have a dentist appointment or a knitting class, I often feel really thrown off and have to start mentally preparing myself a few days prior for the change in routine.

Yeah, my mom can't wait to see me saddled with kids. She'll laugh herself silly.

Anyway, I'm all thrown off right now because my husband's Farsi course is running on second shift. For some unknown and odd reason, they're meeting from 2:00-9:00PM every day. That throws us way for a loop, and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around my new schedule. We're eating dinner for lunch and sandwiches for dinner, and last night felt more like he was in the field than at work. This morning we kept looking at each other wondering what we're supposed to do with each other at 11AM. Every day feels like Saturday.

It also throws our computer time way out of whack, so I haven't quite figured out how to arrange my blog reading and writing into this new schedule. Normally it's the first thing I do after he leaves in the morning, but now he doesn't leave until after lunch. Er, dinner. Bear with me as we adjust to this. I haven't read a blog or article in days.

But the husband's already thriving in his class. It's only the second day and he's already memorized all his flashcards for the free-standing alphabet (the initial and medial forms are another story.) And we've been singing our Alef Be Pe's all morning!

Posted by: Sarah at 09:04 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 I'm with you there - we're having work done on the house - which has turned into a major project. It's thrown my husband and I completely off our schedules - I know it needs to be done... but I hate it. It's sad how much of my life is in a rut. Heh.

Posted by: Teresa at August 16, 2007 10:41 AM (gsbs5)

2 "the initial and medial forms are another story." Fortunately most of the final forms are identical to the isolated forms. I thought he already knew the Arabic alphabet, so he just had to add the Persian-only variants (ک instead of ك for kaaf) and letters to the inventory (پ pe, چ che, ژ zhe, گ gaaf). Arabic would have had letters for p and g if only earlier p and g hadn't shifted to f and j (though Egyptian still has g: Gamal for جمال Jamal). I hope he isn't too troubled by homophonous letters in Persian spelling. Since Persian didn't have a lot of Arabic consonants, Persians borrowed the spellings of Arabic words but pronounced them in a Persianized way without the Arabic sounds absent in Persian: e.g., Arabic ﺙ th and emphatic ﺹ s were Persianized as . So if one hears in Persian, one can't be sure if it's spelled with ﺙ se, ﺹ saad, or the regular -letter ﺱ sin. [z] is even worse, with four spellings: the basic ز ze and ذ zaal, ض zaad, ظ zaa for Arabic words. Persian spelling is overspecified on the one hand (due to the adherence to Arabic spelling) and yet underspecified on the other (due to the lack of full vowel representation). It's as if English had spellings like psychlgy and ptrdctyl which preserve Latinizations of Greek (ps = ψ, ch = χ, pt = πτ but leave some vowels unwritten. Here's a table listing the homophonous letters and indicating whether a given letter is used for Arabic borrowings or native Persian: http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/persian-alphabet.html Paul Sprachman's (speak-man - what a name!) book Language and Culture in Persian delves into the issues of Persian writing in a style accessible to nonlinguists: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Culture-Persian-Bibliotheca-Iranica/dp/1568591446/ Reading LACIP is an entertaining way to learn about Persian without actually studying the language. The author himself e-mailed me out of the blue to recommend it and here I am, four years later, recommending it to you. The book may be even more fun if one is studying Persian.

Posted by: Amritas at August 16, 2007 11:31 AM (+nV09)

3 Arabic ﺙ th and emphatic ﺹ s were Persianized as . That reminds me: it seems that Persian underwent a th > s shift at some point (presumably before the introduction of the Arabic script), which is why سه se 'three' now has initial s- and is spelled with Arabic س s- instead of ث th-. In Avestan (a sort of grandaunt to modern Persian), 'three' had initial thr-, which in turn came from an earlier tr- still preserved in Sanskrit (and Greek and Latin). Germanic and Avestan developed their thr- independently from tr-. English kept Germanic thr-, but most of Germanic gave up the difficult th-sound: hence Swedish tre, German drei, and Dutch drie (but Icelandic Þrír still has th-!). I just noticed that Pashto has adopted the German/Dutch strategy of changing th- to d-, at least in dre 'three' according to this table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Iranian_Languages Other Iranian languages have weakened th- to h-. I would imagine you've heard second-language speakers of English pronounce th- as s-. The Japanized version of 'three' is スリー surii and the Koreanized version is 스리 sUri. Maybe I should put this on my blog instead of yours ...

Posted by: Amritas at August 16, 2007 11:55 AM (+nV09)

4 Amritas -- My husband never learned to read or write Arabic, only to speak a little bit. So this is a new process for him. He did mention the other night how kind it is of you to comment about this and take an interest in his studies. I'm sure he will be fascinated by all your info.

Posted by: Sarah at August 16, 2007 12:29 PM (TWet1)

5 Maybe I should put this on my blog instead of yours ... Now I have yet another reason to come here!

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at August 16, 2007 10:36 PM (Pu/86)

6 Do you really think your mother would laugh herself silly?!? It doesn't take long to realize that with a new baby, you just roll with the punches! I know you'll do fine! You're much more organized than I am, and if I survived raising three children, you'll be able to also! Then when you're my age, you'll look back and think about all the silly things you stressed about. Wish I had been wiser then! I have sooo mellowed in my old age!! I love you! Your Mama

Posted by: nancy at August 17, 2007 07:28 PM (5mt/4)

7 Actually, my son has put me more into a routine. He's much happier when we keep to a schedule. So all may not be lost!

Posted by: Non-Essential Equipment at August 19, 2007 09:41 AM (dHtzl)

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My husband starts his Farsi training today. Things should get interesting around here. It's hard for me to imagine learning a whole language in six months, but I guess if you're at it for eight hours a day, it's a little different than the three hours per week deal I did all through college. And apparently the Army is wising up to how badly they need competent speakers, so they've changed the final test from all multiple choice (sheesh) to reading and aural comprehension. My husband is determined to clobber this puppy and get the highest score ever.

It's funny the reactions you get when you tell civilians that you're going to start learning Farsi. There are two main choices: "What's Farsi?" and "Are we invading Iran?"

Our old neighbors from when we first got married are Iranian, and we got to meet up with them last week. They were just tickled pink hearing what my husband has already managed to learn on his own via the Rosetta Stone program. They about fell over when their daughter toddled into the living room and my husband said, "The girl has on a shirt but no pants." And he just floors them with his knowledge of the region, such as when he found out what city the wife is from and said, "Oh, so you're Azeri and not Persian?" Most of the people they meet in the US can't tell Iraq from Iran, but my husband knows the different Iranian ethnic groups and their corresponding geography.

Can you tell how much this man amazes me too?

Everyone asks if I am going to try to learn Farsi alongside him, and I haven't really decided yet. I can count to ten and nearly recite the alphabet, but maybe I will try to glean more than that.

And when our friends asked, "So are you going to invade Iran?", you could tell they were half-joking, but you could also hear some wistfulness in their words.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:42 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I'm back! Well, sort of. We're still on vacation, but at least now we have computer access. And you don't know how wonderful it feels to hear my internet friends miss me. ArmyWifeToddlerMom called me on my second day gone and asked, "Is your vacation over yet?" It's good to be loved.

We're having fun, but if I never get in the car again I will be thrilled. We'll need another oil change the minute we get home. 9 hours the first day, 9 hours the second, 8 hours yesterday, 4 today, 4 tomorrow, and then another 15 on the way back home at the end of the week.

And it's not quite barfing all the way to Georgia, but we've had a heck of a time in all these car rides too. The first morning we had to go to three separate gas stations before we could find a working air pump for our tires. Then we decided to take the long-cut around Winston-Salem. We were nearly divorced or a double homicide by 9 AM. The second day, as we were chugging along making great time at 5 AM, we hit a crow. Seriously. All I could think about was Lomborg's stat that 250,000 birds die hitting windows every day. Well, we popped one in Louisville. Took out our driver's side mirror. Personally, I wanted my husband to back up and run over that crow a couple more times just to make sure it understood how ticked I was. Not easy to drive without that mirror. Also not cheap to get it fixed.

So then yesterday we start out with no problems. At the first rest stop, we get Charlie out of the car and notice he's covered in poop. Apparently he must've rolled in a nice pile before we left. We manage to give him a cursory cleaning and then let him roll around in the grass to dry off. He comes back covered in sticker burrs. Mind you, we're on our way to stop for lunch at a friend's house, a buddy from high school. I haven't spent any time with him in ten years, and I'm supposed to show up at his home with a dog covered in burrs and poop. Not cool.

Oh, and when we get there, Charlie lifts his leg on their sofa.

Please let us make it through the rest of the trip without any stories to tell.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:33 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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