Life is slowly settling into something I can recognize. Things are better, although not what one would describe as comfortable. I doubt that many of the less-fortunate dream of stepping into my shoes, when they fantasize about "the good life". Still, it's all I have, and I stand by it.

Attila's new job is seasonal, meaning that he will only have work for five to six months of the year. He won't begin work until April. We will need to save a significant proportion of his wage to bridge the off-season wait for Employment Benefits (EI). If the government decides to eliminate EI benefits, we will be unable to support ourselves. This is not ideal, but where we live it is not unusual. I keep telling myself that if other's can adjust to this, I should be able to get comfortable with it as well. Time will tell.

I continue to apply for work, sending carefully-thought-out letters and applications to strangers who toss them aside upon receipt. I am attempting to navigate a complicated passage through cliques and tribes. I have to admit it feels hopeless, and perhaps it is. The experience does not build self-esteem, nor does it build confidence; and as they erode I suppose I will be encouraged by the "health" community to control my "condition" with mood altering drugs. I don't want mood altering drugs, I want a job.

Yesterday was my turn in the kitchen. I had fun. Vegetable soup is one of my favourites, so the crockpot was slowly filled with peas and carrots and beans and corn and potatoes and any vegetable I could find that needed cooking. The soup was ready for today's lunch. Other foods that I missed, while I was working and too busy to cook, are granola cooked in the crockpot and a variety of homemade breads.

Last but not least, yesterday saw another "from scratch" chocolate cake frosted and waiting for its appreciative audience. Attila and I have taken to freezing individual portions of cake to enjoy over several days. These frozen portions make a crumbly, moist treat that is wonderful served with a tall glass of cold white milk.

We use a lot of basic ingredients in our cooking. Bread making usually requires two to three 25 kilogram bags of bread flour each year. Every year we also go through about 25 kilograms of oatmeal, five to ten kilograms of cornmeal and five to ten kilograms of sunflower seeds. These ingredients are very expensive to buy in a regular grocery store. We find an annual trip the mill worthwhile. So, last week we took a day trip to the Arva Flour Mill and bought our year's supply of dry goods.

I read an article this morning that got me to thinking. I am afraid this is a bit of a mental walk-about, but it is my way. The article was about test pressure being toughest on the smartest. I think the the writer thought he/she offered hope to the intelligent, that with repetitive exposure to stress they could obtain peak performance in high-pressure situations.

I found the article disturbing in it's seeming acceptance of the competitive, "high-pressure" environment as worthwhile, an inevitability, a given. It all seems sort of sad from my perspective. Why, if intelligence thrives in the absence of pressure, would society structure itself so as to apply "high-pressure" to intelligence related activities and tasks.

It just seems so, well, so unintelligent, and downright unnatural.

Test Pressure Toughest on Smartest
By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Report

"Situational stress appears to draw cognitive attention away from the task at hand, undermining the performance of highly intelligent people who tend to rely more on this attention for successful performance, Beilock explained....

"I'd suggest trying to practice in a way that is somewhat anxiety-provoking, so that you have practice with the anxiety, as well as the actual test material," he said....

"Beilock agreed, adding that even Einstein might not have shown his true worth if he'd competed on, say, Jeopardy .
"He'd probably still be better than everyone else," she speculated, "but he still might not be as great as if he was playing in his living room alone."

SOURCES: Sian L. Beilock, Ph.D., assistant professor, psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Jeremy Gray, Ph.D., assistant professor, psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; February 2005 Psychological Science
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