Well, according to The Bell Jar synopsis I read yesterday, Sylvia Plath also had trouble with taking showers. So, I am not alone. As disgusting as it is, there it is. I have such trouble with taking a shower but when I do take one, it just doesn't seem like such a big deal and I wonder why I make it seem so.
He has called me a series of C-words over the past couple of weeks.
Clever. Crafty. Cunning. Cruel.
They have hurt because I think I still see myself as the good girl that I've imagined myself to be for so many years. Just because, in contrast to other people, it might be the case. Also, it's supposedly a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Think the kid is a good girl, tell her she is, and she just might believe it, even if it is to the detriment of who she really was destined to become. And then pay for years of therapy as a result.
Other C-words which I think would suit me, even if no one has the guts to say them to my face.
Cunt. Confused. Crazy. Clueless. Chocoholic. Cookie Monster. Cretin. Conard.
Catalyst. Okay, the the thing about being a catalyst is basically that you change events and people around you (for the better, obviously) but without being changed yourself. Does that make being a catalyst really that appealing?
I'll give you a chemistry lesson.
A catalyst is a substance which alters the rate of a chemical reaction but is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction.
"..... but is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction." This means that there is just as much catalyst at the end of a reaction as there was at the beginning. The catalyst is used over and over again. Because catalysts work so rapidly and are used again and again, it is only necessary to have very small quantities of catalyst present to make a chemical reaction go faster. You might have a "catalytic converter" in the exhaust pipe of your car. If the catalyst was Platinum you might expect silly people to start stealing car exhaust pipes; but there is so little catalyst there that it would not be worthwhile for them. A little bit of catalyst goes a long way! What does the catalytic converter do? Well without it the fumes from your car would cause too much pollution and the car might fail its MOT.
Perhaps you don't think that catalysts are very important.
"..... alters the rate of a chemical reaction ....." This means that catalysts make chemical reactions go faster. I am still looking for one which will make you do your homework faster, and another which will make me mark it faster. What about chemical reactions. Some of them go very slowly, your chemistry experiment might take hours, days, weeks, or ever years. Imagine if your chemistry teacher asked you to find out what gas is released from Hydrogen Peroxide: you might have to sit there watching your test tube for weeks; your chemistry teacher would keep on asking why you had not finished your work. Eventually you would have enough gas to test; so weeks later you would say "Oh, it is Oxygen Miss." If you had put a little pinch of Manganese Dioxide into the test tube, the gas would be produced in a few minutes. So, you would be able to go long before the end of the lesson. Even better, you would still have the Manganese Dioxide catalyst which you would be able to sell back to your teacher to use with another class.
Most catalysts make chemical reactions go faster. Chemists call such catalysts "positive catalysts" or "promoters". However, sometimes we want a chemical reaction to go more slowly. So we choose a "negative catalyst"; we could call this an "inhibitor". My wife put a negative catalyst in our central heating system. She did this to stop the iron bits from rusting. We did not have a problem with the Copper pipes (Copper does not rust), but we might have had a problem with the old Iron radiators: we wanted to stop them from rusting so we used an inhibitor. I think that we also have an inhibitor in the water cooling system of our car so that the car radiator does not rust. This is cheaper than buying a new car every year when the old one has got too rusty.
My baker puts an inhibitor into the bread he makes. This slows down the chemical reactions which make bread go stale. This is important since we only go shopping once a week. We used to put Lead in our petrol; this stops the engine from "knocking". Now we have a better car which uses lead free petrol but the engine can burn it without knocking.
Now, although this definition gives a positive spin on being a catalyst, I still think it sucks being one. Especially when, on the surface of it all, I can't see me positively or negatively altering the reaction of anything happening in the world. All the reactions just seem to occur within.
He has called me a series of C-words over the past couple of weeks.
Clever. Crafty. Cunning. Cruel.
They have hurt because I think I still see myself as the good girl that I've imagined myself to be for so many years. Just because, in contrast to other people, it might be the case. Also, it's supposedly a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Think the kid is a good girl, tell her she is, and she just might believe it, even if it is to the detriment of who she really was destined to become. And then pay for years of therapy as a result.
Other C-words which I think would suit me, even if no one has the guts to say them to my face.
Cunt. Confused. Crazy. Clueless. Chocoholic. Cookie Monster. Cretin. Conard.
Catalyst. Okay, the the thing about being a catalyst is basically that you change events and people around you (for the better, obviously) but without being changed yourself. Does that make being a catalyst really that appealing?
I'll give you a chemistry lesson.
A catalyst is a substance which alters the rate of a chemical reaction but is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction.
"..... but is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction." This means that there is just as much catalyst at the end of a reaction as there was at the beginning. The catalyst is used over and over again. Because catalysts work so rapidly and are used again and again, it is only necessary to have very small quantities of catalyst present to make a chemical reaction go faster. You might have a "catalytic converter" in the exhaust pipe of your car. If the catalyst was Platinum you might expect silly people to start stealing car exhaust pipes; but there is so little catalyst there that it would not be worthwhile for them. A little bit of catalyst goes a long way! What does the catalytic converter do? Well without it the fumes from your car would cause too much pollution and the car might fail its MOT.
Perhaps you don't think that catalysts are very important.
"..... alters the rate of a chemical reaction ....." This means that catalysts make chemical reactions go faster. I am still looking for one which will make you do your homework faster, and another which will make me mark it faster. What about chemical reactions. Some of them go very slowly, your chemistry experiment might take hours, days, weeks, or ever years. Imagine if your chemistry teacher asked you to find out what gas is released from Hydrogen Peroxide: you might have to sit there watching your test tube for weeks; your chemistry teacher would keep on asking why you had not finished your work. Eventually you would have enough gas to test; so weeks later you would say "Oh, it is Oxygen Miss." If you had put a little pinch of Manganese Dioxide into the test tube, the gas would be produced in a few minutes. So, you would be able to go long before the end of the lesson. Even better, you would still have the Manganese Dioxide catalyst which you would be able to sell back to your teacher to use with another class.
Most catalysts make chemical reactions go faster. Chemists call such catalysts "positive catalysts" or "promoters". However, sometimes we want a chemical reaction to go more slowly. So we choose a "negative catalyst"; we could call this an "inhibitor". My wife put a negative catalyst in our central heating system. She did this to stop the iron bits from rusting. We did not have a problem with the Copper pipes (Copper does not rust), but we might have had a problem with the old Iron radiators: we wanted to stop them from rusting so we used an inhibitor. I think that we also have an inhibitor in the water cooling system of our car so that the car radiator does not rust. This is cheaper than buying a new car every year when the old one has got too rusty.
My baker puts an inhibitor into the bread he makes. This slows down the chemical reactions which make bread go stale. This is important since we only go shopping once a week. We used to put Lead in our petrol; this stops the engine from "knocking". Now we have a better car which uses lead free petrol but the engine can burn it without knocking.
Now, although this definition gives a positive spin on being a catalyst, I still think it sucks being one. Especially when, on the surface of it all, I can't see me positively or negatively altering the reaction of anything happening in the world. All the reactions just seem to occur within.