This sort of reminds me of how my dad quit smoking. He went to a hypnotist who did hypnosis and then told him to play with tape (like the kind you use to wrap presents) whenever he wanted a smoke. So he would carry a roll of tape in his shirt pocket. He was always breaking off a piece which he would roll into a tube and twist between his fingers.
Anyway, I hope plucking back hair doesn't count because otherwise I'd have nothing to do on long conference calls and I'd probably have to go to a waxer for beach season.
It's only a problem if it causes you distress! Otherwise pluck away, Young Hick.
Some pluck away, some pluck around.
Fidgeters fidget, frowners frown
Me, I like to write on blogs,
Chase the llamas, roll the llogs.
I don't know how people with cubicles or shared offices even live.
I'm a compulsive scab picker. Unfortunately for a while I was in the habit of sitting on the floor while surfing the web, and one of my cats would regularly scratch my lower legs while climbing into my lap. As a result I have the scars of picked-at cat scratches on my lower legs. This was a total non-issue until I started to see results from working out and dieting and realized that if I keep it up it won't be too long before I have the legs to rock a kilt. I think the socks will cover most of the scars, but there would still be some visible.
3: It's only a problem if it causes you distress!
A remarkably useful concept in many areas of life, including but not limited to the temptations of Internet-based self-diagnosis.
To the OP generally, I don't understand people who don't fidget in one way or another. Really? No need to direct nervous energy into minor physical activities? What is it like to be like that?
I still pick at my skin even now, but obviously it was a billion times worse when I did drugs. even now if I take an extra pain pill I'll scratch the fuck out of myself in a half-sleep, as happened, unfortunately, last night. not till I bleed, though. I used to save my cuticles up for exams by not biting or picking at them at all...
6: leg scars add authenticity to a kilt-wearer. You can prresume that ye got them strriding thrrough the heather.
9: Saving them up for stress occasions is pretty impressive, though.
Fidget so much with a rubber band for so many years I do worry about absorbing toxic chemicals thru the skin.
I also pick at scabs. They last months.
I also pull on one side of my beard so much the asymmetry of length is embarrassing.
I fidget my feet or tap my hands on the desk, tapping imaginary beats. But because I find other people's fidgeting [if it's noisy] annoying, I do it quietly.
Once you tap a beat, it's no longer imaginary.
I cosign 10. well, and 14 I guess; seems pretty incontrovertible.
And I have now learned that I have a visceral repulsion from this subject.
Whenever somebody talks to kids about the importance of imagination, I always tell the kids to never actually create something or else it's no longer imaginary.
Wooly kneesocks also add authenticity to a kilt-wearer, and can hide scars.
There's probably a correct term for wooly kneesocks that sounds more butch.
Unusually-Dense, Mid-Rise Fishnets?
Resilient, Thermally Insulating Shin Protectors?
22: If the goal was "more butch", I think you went sideways there a little.
Hose. Or just "kilt socks". They also give you somewhere to put your sgian dubh.
Don't wear white kilt socks! (My grandfather would always say). White is for bandsmen! Green or blue only.
24: You can't prove that I'm not Tim Curry.
Red socks. Ajay's grandfather is appalled.
Red hose clearly also acceptable, given 27.
I've never actually noticed that before, but I think he was just anti-white rather than being pro-any particular colour.
This is a wonderful read, for the kilt hose curious:
"Designs for Knitting Kilt Hose
--Lady Veronica Gainford
Dowager Lady Veronica Gainford's Kilt Hose is gold-to-be-mined in the form of traditional Top Turnover designs that decorate the upper reaches of authentic Scottish Kilt Hose. The stockings themselves are not Lady Gainford's focus -- any of your favorite stocking instructions will do -- it is the top of the stocking that is scrutinized for authenticity. Gainford's droll humor adds to her scrutiny of traditional hose. Over two dozen different motifs, plus full instructions for several stockings."
http://www.schoolhousepress.com/socks.htm, scroll down.
Knitting is kind of a controlled, useful fidget.
10: I was thinking I might be able to pull off "it's because I'm so rugged" if I make a habit of carrying a sgian dubh and stabbing people who look askance at me.
Otherwise I'm with J Robot, compulsively ignoring the rest of this thread!
I have to stop myself in large, internal meetings from noticing all the biting, picking and nibbling going on.
32 very astute, mobes. See, broadening my horizons!
Should I also point out that links work better if you don't end them with a comma?
Thanks, not very tech capable. Dab hand with the knitting needles and the Supremacy Clause, tho!
How much of the population fidgets, anyway? At my workplace it's pretty much everyone, I've observed in staff meetings.
Habitrpg has helped me keep a lid on it in public. I've made the shower the one allowed place, and that seems a decent outlet.
"It" in 38.2 being picking, not fidgeting.
Nice try trying to sneak your disgusting habit (picking) under cover of normal behavior (fidgeting). Those are not remotely the same.
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A friend of mine, in celebration of his birthday today, has invited me and a couple other friends to do a sweat lodge with him this afternoon in his attic. The thing is, his girlfriend has long been planning a surprise party for him, also in the afternoon. So now I've become the person in charge of getting him over to the surprise-party house at the appointed hour. If I don't die in an attic.
|>
Nice try trying to sneak your disgusting habit (picking) under cover of normal behavior (fidgeting). Those are not remotely the same.
You are such a fragile flower.
The "sweat lodge" is probably going to involve working up a sweat by installing insulation.
An attic doesn't sound like a very sweaty place. Not sweaty enough anyway. You may find that this is just a case of a "sit in an attic".
You live on an island without sun and different types of attics. A Virginia attic on a sunny day can get death-hot.
Is there going to be beer at this party, or is it going to be one of those "basically a children's birthday party but for adults" ones?
Because, if it's going to be an actual party I should warn you that getting really hot and dehydrated and then drinking, can be really great potentially problematic. So maybe it's worth being careful about it.
And I have now learned that I have a visceral repulsion from this subject.
INORITE. This immediately made me think of the pathological head-scratcher from that New Yorker article. Aaaaaagh.
Birthday dude claims the attic was up to 107° yesterday, which had temperatures about the same as today. This does seem well below the numbers I'm seeing on cursory googling of "sweat lodge temperature."
I either manipulate pens, or take off my wedding ring and roll it around in my hands. I set down a pen to write this comment.
JMcQ: Last Monday's noontime concert from Wigmore Hall on BBC3 with Sara Mingardo is exquisite. Listen while it's still available! Pass the word to idp!
50: Looks great, thanks. I just put it on.
46: Yeah, I don't expect beer at the sweat lodge but the later party will have booze. My plan is to drink a lot of water now and again after the sweating.
46.1: You put children in the attic? That's like a V.C. Andrews novel.
You live on an island without sun and different types of attics.
Are attics standardised in Virginia?
In the U.S., attics in more recently constructed housing are less integrated with the living space and often not ventilated very well.
The more I read about the original Halford, the more suitable he sounds:
He was a delightful companion-generous, big-hearted, amusing, a sayer of good things in a human way, and finely opinionated, which of course, was not a serious matter when he expected and liked you to be opinionated also. He was a dangerous man to tackle in an argument if your knowledge of the subject was rickety. He was emphatically what is termed a well-informed man, for that thoroughness of his stamped his knowledge and ruled his memory. You could not always agree with him, but could seldom floor him, the ground he stood upon being rock-solid. As both a giver and taker of chaff he was an adept. He had the courage of his opinions, and none wiser that he when it was best to keep his opinions an unknown quantity.
He was finely OPINIONATED! And liked you to be OPINIONATED too!
I haven't found the Mingardo/Wigmore recording yet, which I want to not least because I was in a performance of Jephte last year.
However, I did find her performance of Brahm's Alto Rhapsody and just finished listening. Magnificent: I'm moved.
Last year you'll remember I mentioned Schubert's Winterreise as the misogyny discussion was winding down. The Alto Rhapsody, with its pointed lyrics and backstory was also very much in my mind. I carry with me the Ferrier/Clemens Krauss version, which I know you're familiar with, and this Mingardo is on the same level
You should be able to stream the concert from the BBC 3 website, but only for a limited time soon expiring. I think you can get the noontime concerts through itoons as well, but don't know anything about the quality. Snottily assume it is degraded.
47: oh come on, we're not anywhere close to that level, really really. Maybe to the level of Zoobiquity. (I can't find the NYT op-ed that talked about overgrooming and cutting, assuming it was by the same author, but it was memorable.)
Mingardo link. Really terrific.
60.1: I know, but it's a slippery slope. At all times and in all places, we keep our hands away from our faces!
(In my case, that's not actually true, because I have curly facial hair that sometimes needs coaxing not to get ingrown.)
What we really need is a video of TRO tying flies in his seecret bunker/lair, blasting the Mingardo concert, wearing a kilt and hose.
But in this fallen world, is there any hope? I fear not.
I don't know of any thorny heather. Gorse is, though. Great names too: whin, furze, Ulex.
I don't pick, but I do itch my eczema, which is very annoying. I hate it when I realise I am doing it in public, because - well, you know that vacuous, distant stare your dog gets while scratching an itch? I'm pretty sure that's exactly the expression on my face when I'm itching.
I've been coming to the realisation that I'm a bit of a fidget. I don't know how other people sit so still. I don't pick, but I do like to have something to fiddle with.
I know my parents taught me to sit still because well-behaved people should. Can't remember how. Expressions of suppressed disgust, and sarcastic couplets from their grandparents' day, probably.
Yes, anxiety disorders are a bitch. I pick skin, head scratch, and compulsively pick/bite fingernails. I try not to do it in front of my kids, by they both picked it up anyway, and my youngest also twirls and pulls her hair out. She finally stopped doing that but she has a fairly big bald spot on the side of her head.
I've never heard of this skin picking thing before, so I google image searched it. Yuck. Although it does make me feel a lot better about my stress eating, because now I see I could have it worse.
I am fairly goddamn fidgety. It is no surprise to be twinsies with Heeber Geeber on this. Most common fidgets are scratching my head and rubbing my face. When I realize I'm doing it, I imagine I must look like a loon.
Knitting is kind of a controlled, useful fidget.
This is true. I have described it as a fidget. I used it in a 2 hour peer supervision thing the last few weeks because one of my cow orkers drives me a little crazy and I was afraid I would betray this fact if I weren't awfully involved in my scarf.
It is funny to imagine a slippery slope of what is fidgeting, however. Playing the Debussy Etudes: VERY CONTROLLED FIDGET.
I think I deserve some kind of recognition for special ability to kill a thread.
Not with comments like that, you don't.
Killing Thread makes me think of Anne McCaffrey. Stop shoving feminism into everything.
Would like to hear from Stanley, possibly btocked.
I'm pretty sure he has a girlfriend. And he might be dead in an attic.
78-9: Not dead in an attic! Not dead at all, really.
We sweated it out for half an hour; decided it wasn't hot enough and added a space heater; forty more minutes, then off to the surprise party where we played Kubb, just like the Vikings used to do.