Ripples

I'm a pretty thoughtful person.  Not thoughtful as in doing nice things for others.  I mean I am full of thoughts.  "Isn't everyone?," you may ask.  I think not.  Most people appear to me to be a lot about bread and circuses.  

Sometimes I want to write more about the random thoughts that go through my head.  I begin a blog about them but it goes nowhere.  And so it needs to stew.

So here are some thoughts that may or may not actually go anywhere:

1. My friend G wrote a blog post about how eating organic seems like a new religion.  Another friend of mine provided me a link to the "100 Days of Real Food" site.  I have been striving to make small changes to improve what my family eats, and for me, this is enough.  I like meat, and I like to eat junk sometimes.  If living until I'm 203 means I have to eat spinach and turnips all the time, I'd just prefer to die at 80, thank you. I think there is a lot of one-upsmanship and proselytizing in healthy eating, as well as boatloads of anxiety from the media.  

2. Religion and therapy can both do a lot of beneficial things in a person's life.  They can help a person feel stronger, feel connected, make positive changes.  But it seems that if a person finds peace through therapy, he/she is looked at as being weak or a nutcase since they needed the help of a psychiatrist or therapist.  But if a person finds peace through a radical Jew who was nailed to a slab of wood by the Roman government, then that person isn't considered weak or quite as nutty.  For me, religion was just never a good fit.  Ever.  From the time I was a child.  But therapy worked for me.  People who need to find peace should explore a lot of options and find whatever works best for them.  

3. I do, however, wonder when someone says therapy didn't work for them.  I can see if someone is in joint counseling and the other person doesn't do his/her share of the cognitive/emotional workload, then this phrase would make sense.  But in CBT, my impression is that the more open and reflective a person is, the more he/she gets out of it.  So if therapy didn't work for someone, I have to wonder how hard did that person try.  

4. Of course, then I guess someone could say they don't understand how religion didn't work for me.  Is it because in religion one has to believe and in therapy one has to reflect?  

5. I began watching a documentary about the White family of West Virginia.  Let's just say this movie makes me doubt my belief that everyone should be allowed to vote.  

6. I am such a strong believer in public education.  There are numerous reasons for this belief, but now that N is in 2nd grade I have a great one.  One day a week, her class works with the special needs class; they sing songs together and do signing.   She said some kids have Down Syndrome, some are in wheelchairs, some yell out unintelligibly.  In my experience of 12 years in Catholic education, I never went to school with someone in a wheel chair, someone with Down Syndrome, someone with Tourette's or any other unusual learning disability.  I never went to school with any Latinos.  I went 8 years without going to school with Blacks.  I want my children to know and interact with and understand all sorts of people from a young age.  

7. Oh god, does the carpool line ever piss me off.  I want to scream my head off about the following:

* the grandmother who picks up the kids like every single solitary day but waits until she is in carpool line and the kids are getting into the car to install the carseat.  Seriously?

* the guy who thinks it is perfectly acceptable for him to turn left into the carpool line while the rest of us have waited our frickin' turn in the long ass line that turns right.  I think he thinks because he's good looking he gets a pass.  Fucker.

* the people who will hold up the car pool because they want to get in the right lane.  The left lane is perfectly acceptable.  It's not like the right lane stops, but the left lane only allows parents to slow down and the kids have to jump in as the cars are rolling by.  

Brain dump complete.

May return to fluff these notions out a little more.

Or not.