No Facebook for YOU!

I deleted my Facebook account.   Not in an effort to prove some socially-conscience point, saying in an effort to connect people Facebook has actually achieved the opposite effect.  They disconnect people.  Which is kind of true in a way.  My husband and I will message each other on Facebook, him downstairs, myself upstairs.  We use the excuse of 'less yelling'.  But it also means we are moving less, because when did it become a chore to walk up five steps to address a person face-to-face.
No, I am quitting Facebook for awhile because my account was hacked and when I go on Facebook it redirects to porn.  Or it will post porn links on my friends' pages. 
Great. 
And mind you not just any porn but porn that scares me.  Like porn that is probably illegal in certain countries, but not here in the USA.  Our country has pretty low moral standards when it comes to stuff like that.  Or our moral standards can easily be stretched when it comes to commerce.   
Now I am getting political.
I have no idea how long I will be off Facebook.  A week.  Or two.  Maybe forever.  I am enjoying not viewing certain parts of the male anatomy everyday.  Certain parts of the male anatomy that closely resemble a certain appendage of the elephant.  ((Shutter))  I'd become a nun if they were all that grotesquely big. 
We shall see what is to come of this whole porn/Facebook sabbatical.  Maybe I'll take up a hobby.  Or I'll read more.
 Or blog more.

I have a sick kid today and I had a sick kid this weekend and three weeks ago or so I had a sick family and four weeks before that I had in some way shape or form some kind of sick person living in my house.  Under one roof.  Sharing germs.
I can't tell you- express to you how sick I am of sickness.  I am convinced these disease-ridden midgets have been sent here to destroy me.  Or I just feel this way because I was up all night with a snivelly, whiny five year old who had a tendency to kick me endlessly in the bladder as I slept next to her.  Or didn't sleep.  On guard with bottles of  Triaminic and Handwarmers.  In what can only be explained as a divine intervention, at midnight I had the genius idea to use a Handwarmer that I had shoved in the back of a drawer to help ease sick kid's ear ache.  It worked fabulous and I am planning on buying a gross of them tomorrow.  Or because I am a blogger and I deserve free stuff some random PR person can send me a gross of them.  It's been awhile since I have blogged about a product- I'd so pimp myself for HeatMax Hot Hands Handwarmers right now.  That and a trip to someplace warm.  Anywhere.  Without snow and without the ability to see ones breath the minute you step outside.  Hell I'd go to hell if it meant I didn't have to shovel snow one more time.
And the kids will get better and the winter will end and all will be right with the world.  It just has to happen sooner rather than later.

Giving Up the Giving Up

I have not stepped into a church and meant it in quite awhile.  Sure family obligations and a short bout of Christian guilt had placed me in some sort of brick and mortar 'House of God'.  I was there.  My heart wasn't.  I don't have a bad relationship with God.  I have a very private relationship with God.   It is not a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" kind of relationship.  It's a sitting in a quiet room, reflecting on my life and the good and bad and how I can work to make it better kind of relationship.  I don't talk about God a lot.  I think about God a lot.

This time of year a slow seeping guilt finds me.  I think about my youth and all the candy I said I would give up and all the candy I never gave up.  I think about all the rosary decades I had to say kneeling in the living room, not before we fought over who would get the 'glow-in-the-dark' rosary.  Mostly I think about kneeling in the church kneelers trying to keep my butt from resting on the pew.  If your butt rested on the pew as you were kneeling you were a bad Catholic.

I never liked Lent.  Not because I had to 'give up' something.   I never like Lent because it was depressing.  It was like we were forced to not be happy.  The less happy you were the better person you are.  It's so depressing.  Isn't life depressing enough.

I would have to give up the one thing as a kid that I loved, candy, and I hated it. I'd last a few days and then I would search all over the house for any sort of change and would take a walk to the corner candy store.  We had a corner candy store that sold all kinds of candy, it was two blocks from the Catholic church I kneeled in and went to school in.  I'm guess they made a killing during lent.

The things you give up our the things you want the most, and contrary to popular belief it isn't the devil tempting you it's your mind craving the routine or the sugar.  We are creatures of habit and if we break a habit our bodies demands it.  Our body wants the satisfying norm we have created for it.

I have decided for Lent this year that I am 'Giving Up' on the 'Giving Up.'  Instead I have decided to give more.  Give more time for myself and my family.  To try harder to be a better person and better citizen of this world.  To stop demanding and start thanking. 

I know there will always be a piece of me that will hold on to the ideas of this time of year.  To take a moment and reflect on what was given to me, for me and for the people I love.  I will hold on a little more.  Give up a little less.  Give a little more

life. grand.

I really want to write about something and everything and nothing.  I like my brain.  I hate my brain when it refuses to focus.  Or it loses focus.  I often go to get something and when I get to the place I am suppose to get that something I forget what that something was that I was suppose to get.  And then I stand in front of everything looking at everything thinking it will help me remember that one something I was suppose to get.
And then my anxiety reminds me that I am probably getting Alzheimer.
Ain't life grand?

My sister had a baby.  The baby is a girl.  I walked into the hospital room and when I saw her I started to cry.  Cause my sister is a little sister.  And it's okay for your big sister to have babies, it's crazy when your little sister does.  Because she's little.  Funny thing is for about two decades my little sister has been bigger than me.  She's taller by like four inches.  So I am really the little sister.
When my sister's little baby girl laid eyes on me I swear she smiled.  I am not kidding.  It was like she was saying, 'I know you, you are my cool aunt.'
It was grand.

baby steps

"I can't control other people's actions.  I can't control what other people do.....I can't control other people's actions.  I can't control what other people do.....I can't control other people's actions.  I can't control what other people do.....I can't control other people's actions.  I can't control what other people do."

This has been my mantra the past couple of weeks.  With deep breaths in a dark room.  This mantra came to me after a moment of self-realization and/or actualization.
I am totally one of those people that will stand in front of another person, I like to soften the blow for everyone else around me.  This could be viewed as a very nice thing, a very selfless thing.  In a sense it makes me the "Protector." I don't like to see people's feelings getting hurt, or one person mad at another person.  At all times I am on alert to stop all and every confrontations.  But in the process of making sure everyone else is happy I forget a very important thing, making sure I am happy.
A-Ha! a lightbulb moment.
I love light bulb moments and I hate light bulb moments.  I love them because I totally figure something out about myself.  I hate them because it's all just words.  Finding the motive to put these moments into action is the hard part.  I hate hard.
I have no idea how to stop being the protector.  I realize with my all my heart I have to take a step back, to stop standing in front of those I love and start standing beside them.  I need to realize I can't make others happy and I most certainly can not control other people's actions.  I can't control what other people do.
It's all smart and good.  And it feel good to say it to myself.  I shall work on it, baby steps.

Your political ideology falls right in line with your spiritual ideology, it's your's not mine and I'd prefer you kept it that way.  I personally get offended when people let me know what they think about politics and/or religion, unsolicited.  I get all weird Willy Wonka "Oh you read the newspaper/bible you must be so well informed."  Mostly I get personally offended because they are either telling me
1. I have no clue what's going on in the world or
2. Only their opinion is right and mine is not.
Equally annoying.

Religion and Politics are based on unknown tangibles.
Will lowering taxes for the rich save the economy?  or Will raising them?
Will God rain fire and brimstone on all earthly dwelling this year or 100 years from now?
It's all a crapshoot.  Nobody's right.  Nobody's wrong.  It's just all one big guess.
I don't have all the answers, I just know what I believe.  If I need to know more or I want more I will be sure to ask the people I trust.  The people who show their opinions through action as oppose to words.

Peace out.

It's always so interesting to go back to blogs you originally started reading when you first started reading and see where they are at.  A lot don't blog any more.  For years.  I have been blogging for about five years.  That's a lot of online years.  I saw the advent of Twitter and when mommybloggers always had a trending topic on Twitter like every day.  I remember there was a time when you didn't ask for sponsorship to conferences, you actually paid out of your own pocket.  And when reviews were just fun things to do on occasion, a perk of this online world.  When people cared more about their words than how much money they can make. 
Blogging is such a funny thing.

Today and yesterday and the day before there was some sort of snow and or ice falling from the sky here.  I hate driving in this weather.  Driving in bad weather is an art form.  You really have to manage a whole lot of different variables and if you mess one variable up you could be screwed.
Driving in snow is a skill you can lose if you don't use it.  You have to go out every once and do practice runs. 
This is probably true about everything in life.

Week of Jan 8, 2012

I have been writing everything lately- every thought that comes into my head.  I have a notebook by my side always.  If the notebook is to far-away I write a small post in my post editor.  I don't have anything to write on  in my car and the other day I had this 'zap!' of thought I wanted to get down and couldn't, today I am buying a small notebook.  This is what I am doing now- just writing whatever I feel.  These thoughts are ramblings, sometimes they make no sense and sometimes they make perfect sense, but more often than naught they make no sense.  They are never in perfect grammar so if that is what you need look away.
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There is a teacher at my children's school that left his wife for one of the mother's at the school.  It made great fodder for the desperate housewife sect, myself included.
I saw him today and he is growing his hair out.
At one time he was a young teacher with no hair and a young wife and a dog.
And now he is a teacher with hair and a girlfriend and two pseudo-children.
I just found the hair thing so weird.
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I hate when they make something taste like something else.  Like Mento's gum tasting like a Mento's mint drop.  Cause when I put Mento's gum in my mouth I want to just chew and swallow, not chew and chew and chew.  It's so unfulfilling (is this a word).  I am for certain this is why they don't make Tic-Tac gum.
They make bacon gum and I think the above rule still applies.
Fruit flavored beverage do not apply to above stated rule.  They are fake fruit disguised as fake fruit.  Never once did I take a drink of strawberry kool-aid and say "OMG this is does not taste like strawberry."  Kool-aid drinks have cartoon fruit on the packaging.  Cartoon drawings of actual food implies that you are not actually getting the food that is on the package but a cheap, sugary substitute that doesn't even taste like it's original counterpart.  This is an unspoken rule.
Sometimes I imagine I am a cartoon version of my real self.  Pencil-drawn. Black out-lined.  My hair one complete entity instead of the 100 little hairs that stand up on end like in the real version of me.
In the cartoon version of me I would smile more and worry less.  A sweeter, sugary substitute that doesn't feel like its original counterpart.
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Sometimes, every once in awhile, I bite the ring on one of my husbands left finger.  It is a test. Or some grand symbolic gesture.   I imagine, as I bite down on the cold steel, that it chips my front tooth.

Or that I slice through it like butter against a warm spoon.  And I imagine what we would do if my teeth sliced through it.  Would we stop and stare at each other, fear in our eyes.  Or would we laugh at this great anomaly that I had caused.  Because I was the one that wanted to test that strength of the ring that sits on the finger, the finger that has a vein that goes straight to the heart.
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I thought the other day

Empathy

I have been thinking a lot about Empathy.  It can be a confusing word.  Because you might get it confused with sympathy.  I think sympathy is easy.  Anyone can feel sorry for someone else.  Everyday we feel bad for those who are somehow less than us.  We frown for those who lost, and we thank God it wasn't us.  Or we thank god.  And that is the difference between sympathy and Empathy.  When you thank God that it wasn't you you lost the Empathy game.

What would it feel like to put yourself in that person's shoes for one second.  For one nanosecond.

I really questioned our ability to Empathize when people were cheering that teen mom for killing a home intruder.  And all I could think/feel was bad for her. 
Those people cheering her will be gone when the post-traumatic stress disorder starts. 
She will not feel like a 'hero' when she can't sleep, when the sun goes down and the nightmares begin.
People said they wish they were there, or they wish they had pulled the trigger.  I don't know what to say to that.
And everyday people cheer in the street when people die.  People will always die at the hands of others.  And sometimes it's for fear or self-defense or out of hate or out of love or for the freedom of all.  But it is still death.
And it is still death.  And death is final.  And death hurts.  And it is not without consequence.

And for a second. For a nanosecond I imagined that young mothers nightmares and I feel so sad for her.  Because although she pulled that trigger for the safety of herself  and for the safety of her child, she will never again feel safe.

Pharmacology

Pharmacology

Really it is going to take me days/weeks to process everything in this book.  I just hope in February, when my book club discusses Pharmacology with the author Christopher Herz, I will be able to form a coherent thought.
So good.  So very good.
I am a book reviewer of few words.

Ruminate

I have deep thoughts.  Deep.  Deep. Thoughts.  All the time.  They usually only make sense to me of course.  I ruminate a lot.  Some people use the word ruminate like it's a bad thing.  My mom, who worked in a mental institution, said they used ruminate when talking about patients with certain mental disorders.  Ruminate was the technical term they used for people who talked about the same thing over and over obsessively. 
I like to think my ruminating is the completely healthy kind but it is not.  I usually think of interactions with people and think of at least five different way I could have handled the situation.  My social anxiety prevents me from getting an interaction right the first time.  I usually resort to inappropriate humor.  Inappropriate humor is deceiving.  People always laugh at inappropriate humor.  The question is are they laughing because they truly thought my inappropriateness was funny or because they are uncomfortable.