warning: rambles ahead

Sooooo, when you only blog every three months or so, you end up with a lot to say, so here goes nothing.

I had a kind of crazy high school teacher who advised me in my yearbook to "always channel my positive energy for good" which I think is funny--was he worried I would channel it for evil? Maybe I would have made a great enthusiastic drug dealer or an overly peppy oil tycoon?? Who knows. Anyway, I have an unusually enormous amount of rage lately, so I'm working on channeling it for good and it's a challenge. So if you have any tips on DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE with one's rage, I'm all e-ears. A few things upsetting me lately:

Obama is not a socialist. Chill out. I don't really want to have this conversation, but the way people throw that word around is so dumb it's starting to get hilarious, and I'm embarrassed for them.

And, health care is a disaster. No buts about it. Quit saying "Well, in Canada you have to wait six months to see a doctor." A) that's not true and B) US health care is embarrassingly bad. We drop a buttload of cash on health care per capita and have nothing to show for it. Adequate health care is a right, not a privilege. A right. Yep. You heard it here. If you're sick, you should be able to expend your energy on getting better, not on figuring out if you can afford it. I could rage about this for a long time. My ever-wise and delightful rage support group member and friend Mormon Child Bride just said that it's funny when people act like giving everyone health care "is frivolous, like giving everyone a BMW." Bahaha! One more reason she's a champ. Anyway, I'm not saying I've got all the answers on health care, but I am saying that it drives me CRAZY when we act like there's no room for improvement, or that any improvement or attempt to change the system is turning us into Sweden.

Also, what's with people thinking it's racist to ACKNOWLEDGE RACE? If one more person says we shouldn't talk about how Obama's black, I'm going to lose it. He is black, and it is amazing that this country has elected a black man. No, I don't think he's Jesus, but I do think it's awesome, and ignoring that he's black is ignoring a helluva lot about his election. I'm proud that a country founded by slave owners has come far enough to put him in the White House. You know how he was sworn in on the same Bible Lincoln was? Well, I read recently that the justice that swore Lincoln in is the same one who wrote the Dred Scott decision. So, Obama's hand was on the same book as the hand of a man who, not all that long ago, held that black people were property. This is a big deal.

And now for an abrupt subject change: CHILDBIRTH. I don't think you are allowed to say you "went natural" if you had a medicated birth but no c-section. As much as I'd rather not write the word "vaginal" on my blog, I'm willing to do it here to make a point: just say you delivered vaginally if you want to express the fact that you didn't have a c-section but did, in fact, have an epidural and/or other medication. While I respect all forms of childbirth, if you say you "went natural," you are implying drug-free. Aren't you?? And misrepresenting that is just not fair. Even though I say I didn't do it for the bragging rights, I kind of did, so quit lame-ing it up, okay?

I also have a LOT of rage about when people don't acknowledge their own biases. I am biased. Of course I am. We all are. I had a professor that was always talking about "the liberal agenda" and even using that term seriously in an academic setting made me tune out most of what he said because I felt like he was Rush Limbaugh. Did he say important, interesting things? Probably, but I couldn't hear them because he was busy sounding crazy. I listened to RadioWest the other day about this Sundance film on free speech. I love First Amendment law issues so I was particularly interested, and I get what the filmmaker is going for, but she was just so flippant about "conservatives and their biases" that she came off sounding extreme and undermining what could otherwise have garnered a sizable audience. And if I'm turned off and I AM pretty liberal, what's everyone else thinking? Anyway, I have rage about that and more generally, when we only talk about other people and what they do wrong instead of thinking in practical terms about how we contribute to various problems (and then, how we can help solve them). For example, I complained about the air today (and seriously, doesn't it look gross?), then realized it's because of ME, and people like me, who do things like commute 90 miles round trip (even if it's only twice a week, that's a lot). So what can I do?

Drop out.

Just kidding. But I can only drive when I absolutely have to. See, my fault. I just keep thinking "So what?" As in, so what do I do about it? (Yes, I see the irony in this paragraph...I'm complaining about othr people complaining...hrmmmmm). But seriously. I'm taking a class right now that is digging up a lot of my rage about gender in the law, women's rights, and I'm working on "channeling it for good."

I also have rage about people not making new friends. I have a number of awesome friends, some old, some new, some twenty, some forty (really, I have made a lot of 40-year-old friends lately. No one knows why. I really like it, though. Forty is the new, um, cool age). Anyway, let's all make new friends. Hang out with someone new. Make a new couple-friend, a new girlfriend, a new lunch date, whatever. Why is making new hang-out friends so weird? We don't have to have kids the same age to hang out. Turns out you actually have a lot to talk about when you don't have much in common. At least, I think you do. I don't know; I need new friends. Bahaha! I shall now reiterate: "If two of you think alike, one of you is unnecessary." Now, sometimes I like thinking exactly like the people around me (i.e., when I have this intense rage and need a support group). But most of the time, it's fun to disagree and it teaches me a lot. It's a bummer Arby's ruined a perfectly good sentence: different is good.

In other news, our cute kid just melts my heart. She's doing this new thing where she covers her face with a blanket and we say "Where's our cute baby?" and she unveils herself and we yell "There she is!" and she smiles and claps and turns me into a pile of mush. I just can't believe how awesome she is. Also is there anything better than hearing your hub read your kiddo a story? Why, no, no there is not.

Also, I love Kneaders. Why isn't there one closer to where we live?

Welp, that about covers it.