Squish

I gained more insight into my attitudes toward strength, bravery, and resilience this week. It comes down to stress balls and Silly Putty.

I still have difficulties seeing myself as strong, brave, or resilient. For example, throughout my life I have been victimized, bullied, and abused in some way or another. Bullies, predators, and people who need to diminish someone else in order to feel bigger have found me and made it their purpose to squash me. Other children, adults, coworkers, bosses, even friends: people of all sorts have seen me as weaker than them and gone on to prove it.

My fight or flight reflex? Permanently set to flight. When the group of friends I hung out with in my 20s would get too overbearing and downright mean, instead of standing up for myself, I would take a break from them until I felt recovered. One of them even went so far as to tell me I was like a soft, furry bunny — and he didn't mean it as a cute thing but as a nonthreatening prey object. (BTW: I stopped hanging out with those folks regularly in my late 20s.)

Even some of my well-meaning friends have diminished me. Because I ask other people's opinion, many of my friends and even my mother sometimes treated me as if I were unable to make my own decisions, as if I were not quite a responsible adult. Really, because I have been single and lived alone most of my adult life, I like to get second opinions and bounce my own off of other people from time to time. Some of my male friends think of me as delicate or fragile.

Unanticipated heat effect

It's hot, and time to check for effects and mitigations.

Dehydration? Check. Get the water.

Exhaustion? Check. Get out of the heat.

Sunburn? Check. Get out of the sun.

Melted climbers' putty? Ch ... What?

I have this stuff called climber's putty. It is blue and resides in a plastic fist-shaped container and looks kind of like The Blob. It (the putty, not the sci-fi monster) is made to help strengthen climbers' hands and I have used it in the past for strengthening when my hands were weak.

I have been feeling a bit too weak and delicate, so I dug around, found the putty and pulled it out.

Mistake. It's rather sticky. A lot sticky. A "how the hell do I get it off all my fingers and put it away?!" kind of sticky. I really didn't see that one coming.

We wrestled.

We pounded on each other!

It wrapped itself around me!!

The clamor and the mess were horrific!!!

But, finally, I won.

And got all of it off my hands and into the little plastic fist. Mitigation? Put it in the fridge.

That is one blue Blob won't be eating a human for dinner tonight!

One last thought: will storing the blue blob in the fridge work? In the movie, freezing the blob didn't kill it (maybe), but the blob solidified. Will my blob still be useful for hand-strengthening? I am sure my readers are breathless in antici ... pation! (Quick! What's that reference?). So I will update y'all on this topic again soon.