Category Archives: Personal Issues

7 Quick Takes — Brought to You by Fibromyalgia Grumping

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7 Quick Takes

I haven’t gotten half decent sleep since… yeah, it’s been that long but it’s been especially bad this week which means that my fibromyalgia is flaring up. This means that I’m in a boatload of pain and in an extra cranky mood. Jon had to be in the office and doing visits today but his day off is tomorrow and that means I get to sleep in guilt-free. (OK… so I also slept in on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but that had to do with having problems sleeping and having to be more than semi-comatose to take care of Daniel.)

— 1 —

I still have remnants of the mutant death cold from Thanksgiving. I still have random coughing spasms that wake me up and keep me up at night. I was almost coughing to the point of vomiting on Tuesday night and my dad ended up bringing a couple packages of Ricola to the guestroom — I guess I was waking him up and keeping him up. I don’t know what specifically is irritated and causing it — it’s not asthma-related so my inhaler and nebulizer are useless against it.

— 2 —

I see that the Rose Parade is being held on Monday. The joke is that it (almost) never rains on the Rose Parade because the organizers have a deal with God: they don’t hold it on Sunday and God gives them good weather. It illustrates the fallacy of prayer making God into the Cosmic Vending Machine but it is curious that they usually have amazing weather even though it falls during the rainy season.

— 3 —

There’s a new season of The Biggest Loser starting. The only problem is that it’s on at the same time as NCIS:Los Angeles. I missed pretty much all of last season — I only caught the Thanksgiving show where they showed who kept the weight off. I think I’m going to have to pick a night to watch it online or something.

— 4 —

My resolution for 2012: be more active. Fibro can be a catch-22. It helps to be active and get moderate exercise but… the pain makes doing so difficult, especially with me because I’m also under a huge amount of stress and that exacerbates things. I think I’m going to have to be super intentional about taking the time out to go for a walk, do playground stuff with Daniel, or just… DO SOMETHING.

— 5 —

I’m getting a ton of political fundraising emails. Apparently, there’s a huge FEC deadline on December 31, 2011 and all the political stuff I support are hitting me up for money. Can I honestly say that I’m really not looking forward to all the politics and media crud that will be coming soon?

— 6 —

I had to put down The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was interesting in the beginning but it seems like Grossman took the whole Harry Potter thing and twisted into this dark and fatalist thing. It did sort of keep my attention but it was also depressing how hopeless the characters attitudes were. I still haven’t used up my whole gift certificate from my birthday and I have an additional one from my sister-in-law that she gave me for Christmas so I think it’s time that I invested in some stuff that I do want to read. I also finally figured out how to “close” books on my Nook. Go me!

— 7 —

I did the Saint’s Name Generator again this year. For 2011, I had St. Gianna Beretta Molla which was good because I did need to get to know her better, especially as she also had a killer pregnancy (which unlike me, did eventually kill her). My saint for 2012 is St. Luke which should be interesting. I think this will be a year of reading his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. As a Lutheran, we don’t revere saints in the same way as Catholics or Orthodox do — for us, it’s more of “this is a person we should emulate”. I think I’ll be pondering some of these things internally for awhile.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

7 Quick Takes — TV Edition

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7 Quick Takes

There has been some good TV this week and as I’ve done enough updating on my so-called life already, I figured I’d give y’all my thoughts on what I’ve watched.

— 1 —

Judge Judy. Nothing new with this one — I’ve just gotten addicted to watching her. I saw an interview with her a few months ago and her philosophy is that if you’ve graduated from high school and are working and trying to live your life decently, she’s chill with that. Her problem comes when people make choices that aren’t wise and that hurt other people. I love her sternness, her wit, and the fact that she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She’s also a good source of ideas for my NaNo piece.

— 2 —

Hart of Dixie. This isn’t in the class of CSI or NCIS but it’s been a new addiction for me. I don’t think I ever watched anything with Rachel Bilson before and I happened to see ads for this randomly while channel-surfing and watching NUMB3RS. I love the contrast of the Zoe Hart and Lemon Breeland characters.

— 3 —

NCIS. Serious goosebumps when they were off-loading Quincy’s body and the Marines were saluting. (I may be a flaming liberal but I am patriotic and I do believe that we need to treat our fallen heroes with dignity.) It was a lovely two-part episode. Other highlights were the flashbacks with Gibbs and Matteson when they were at basic training and seeing what Di Nozzo’s greatest fear was.

— 4 —

NCIS:LA. It was a tough episode to watch because of the brutality and I genuinely felt sorry for Jada in the end. It also made me wonder if Ruben, one of my seminary classmates from Sudan, was still alive. He was getting his MTS in Old Testament at Trinity and I used to word process his papers for him (all 30 pages). He went back to Sudan to be an Anglican bishop for the Diocese of Renk in what I think would now be South Sudan. At the time, he had a wife (Grace) who was my age (21 at the time) and a 2 year old son.

— 5 —

CSI. Powerful writing for the episode last night (Wednesday), especially when the killer turned out to be Detective Vega — one of the good guys for 8 seasons. Seeing Nick tell Russell (the Ted Danson character who I like) to stop working on the murderer that Vega was trying to drown and instead focus on Vega was very well done and I continue to like the character of Morgan Brody.

— 6 —

The Big Bang Theory. OMG… “Relationship Agreement” between Amy and Sheldon tonight!!!!!! I also loved the Warlords of Ka’a expansion pack that was “Wild West and Witches”. Best line: “Like shooting nerds in a barrel.” My college friends were the guys on the show (math/compsci/engineering geeks who did role-playing games) so this show is endlessly amusing.

— 7 —

NUMB3RS. What can I say? I like crime dramas. It’s not my favorite one but it keeps my attention.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

7 Quick Takes — More of the Same

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

I need to apologize to someone. Elia of ConservaMom has been referring to the Occupy protesters as “dopes” and instead of just ignoring her site and not reading it (which is what I do when I come across sites that make me want to throw things), I left a really terse comment. She responded to all my points more gracefully than I deserved and I owe her an apology for the comment I left. Elia, I’m sorry. In the future, I’ll just skip her blog on the Quick Takes list. I also still resent her calling the Occupy protesters “dopes” but it’s something on which I’ll have to agree to disagree with her.

— 2 —

The shots of Morgan at the end of CSI this week reminds me of the way I feel like I look at the end of the day. For those who aren’t CSI addicts like I am, she had been in a helicopter that had been hijacked and shot down. There are a lot of days where I feel like I’ve had all those things happen during the day. Yes, I’m a stay-at-home mom and yes, I only have one child. However, Daniel isn’t your normal child and I feel like I’m constantly on my toes trying to reinforce what we do in therapies and also trying to keep the “terrible two’s destructiveness” to a minimum.

— 3 —

KFC has a new famous bowl which features bacon and cheese. I can’t believe people eat stuff like this. It’s mashed potatoes, chicken, cheese, and bacon in a bowl. They were talking about it on KLOVE on Wednesday with people calling in and playing “can you top this?” with worse foods. One mentioned was on the Denny’s menu and it’s a patty melt with mac n’ cheese in it. My dearly departed gallbladder is seizing in a specimen jar someplace.

— 4 —

Speaking of food, I made quinoa for the first time this week. For those not in the know, it’s a “pseudo-cereal” grain-type plant from South America that is a complete protein and has a number of nutrients like iron and calcium. It looks like birdseed and it has a nutty flavor that’s kind of like that of some wild rice components. Daniel didn’t care for the texture though I ate it quite willingly. (I had made my family’s chicken recipe and the sauce will make anything taste good.) I’m scanning all my recipe websites for other things to do with it because it’s not something that would work with pesto. (The grains are too small — it really does look like birdseed.)

— 5 —

I’m currently reading Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Therese of Lisieux by Heather King. I’ve gotten partway into the introduction and I think I’m going to have to read the chapters in their entirety like I would an essay. It’s so new that it’s not available for my e-reader so I have an actual paper copy. (I like my Nook but I also love real books.)

— 6 —

We have a new speech therapist for Daniel. His former speech therapist is having surgery so Easter Seals put us with a new one. She’s a sweetheart and just engaged Daniel in whatever he wanted to do, which was putting things into a sorter and opening/closing the doors of it. (I learned the signs for “open” and “close” today.) It was educational for me because it showed me that I need to stop flipping out about Daniel not engaging and going with the program. As my mom reminded me, these therapists get paid to do this and it’s not the first time they’ve dealt with an obstinate child. His new therapist is also just going to piggy-back on whatever we’re doing in other therapies.

— 7 —

I have had to change some of the names in my NaNo piece to protect the stupid. If I were to ever edit my piece and submit it for publication, I would have to go back in and redo all the names of the stupid people because I based them on the initials of the real life people from whom I was drawing the inspiration. (Believe me… there could be some really good slander suits if the real life people could reasonably connect themselves to what I wrote.) So… I’m having to go back into my plans and do a “find and replace” — I just wish OneNote gave me the option to replace whatever I found.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

A Complete Lack of Parenting

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Next door to Metanoia, there are a bunch of housing units and the kids of the families use the church parking lot as a playground. It’s not an issue… except that there are some 9-11 year olds who have decided to use the church walkways as their own personal skate parks. I happened to be at church a few of the times they were doing it and I called them on it… which resulted in one of the boys using some really foul language toward me. I got my revenge when they were having a party and I followed the boy home and dared him to tell his parents the things he had said to me. Needless to say, he was not too happy.

Well… our next door neighbor came over today and asked if something was going on at the church. We replied that there wasn’t and she dropped the bombshell that there were several kids on the roof. Yes… THE ROOF. Jon went over there and lectured them because none of them would admit to it. Holy insurance nightmare, Batman! All we need is one of the punks to fall off and we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands even though we didn’t tell the boys to be on the roof and they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.

I’m sure the parents are working multiple jobs to get by and all that but I’m wondering if Metanoia shouldn’t send a letter to them telling them the boys’ behavior and telling the parents that they need to discipline their kids. Daniel would NEVER be allowed to get away with the stuff that these kids do but I have a feeling that the parents don’t really care. They’re probably so burned out by trying to make a living that they tell the kids to go play and don’t pay attention to them.

I’d love it if the police happened to be driving by and cited the kids with trespassing/loitering/whatever. I think it would get the message across a lot better.

Blogging Etiquette

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I’ve had someone follow me from another blog and comment on an entry in an aggressive fashion. The offender got his comment deleted and I went into my domain dashboard and I.P. banned him. This is totally annoying to have to do so I thought I should lay out some rules of blogging etiquette.

01.) Don’t use someone else’s blog as your bully pulpit. If you have something to say that you feel needs to be expressed that strongly, GET YOUR OWN FREAKING BLOG.

02.) If you don’t like what someone has to say, suck it up. I’ve disagreed with a number of things that people have to say on their blogs. Given the diversity of blogs I read, I could probably get offended by at least half of them on a given day. However, life is too short to hold grudges so I just suck it up.

03.) If you absolutely MUST speak up, do it gracefully. If the issue is so grievous that you just have to speak up, do so gracefully and respectfully. We can all agree to disagree and maybe what you have to say will give the blogger something to think about.

04.) No chasing commenters. Do not chase someone from a blog where they leave a comment to their own blog to chastise them. It’s rude, will cause your comment to be deleted, and will cause you to be I.P. banned.

05.) Brevity is best in comments. Long comments get sent to my moderation queue on WordPress so any response over a few paragraphs long is going to not post because the program views it as spam. Be brief — save the long diatribes for your own blog.

06.) If you’re just too tempted to rip a blogger a new one, it probably means that you’ve been online too long and need a hobby. I recommend knitting, crocheting, chainsaw juggling, or cake decorating.

Just a few thoughts.

7 Quick Takes — Things Not to Say

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7 Quick Takes

I’m going to do something different and record my Quick Takes as a sound file. If you want to skip listening to the file (which isn’t going to randomly start playing unless you hit the play button), just click on the word “more…” and it will take you below the cut where you can read the transcript.

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