I just want to say that today, I made s'mores.  Except instead of using a Hershey bar, I used Nutella.  And I will never go back.  

Going over like a lead doubloon

I want to tell you about what I saw yesterday.  I went to the movies with my oldest so we could see Captain America:  Civil War.  No, I'm not going to tell you about the movie, except to say that I totally geeked out on it just like I do on anything related to comic books (except Green Lantern.  Seriously...) and had a great time with my kid.  But what I saw was during the trailers.  Yes, I am excited about the upcoming Star Trek movie, Rogue One, and Dr. Strange.  But they had this one trailer.  It showed this woman in a VERY haunted house that CLEARLY had a direct conduit to some seriously dark hoodoo.  She walks up the stairs and there's a door rattling.  And the light is on under the door and you can see a shadow, so something is there. But she reaches for the doorknob anyway.  Then someone yells out:  Hey!  Stop!  And she says, What?  Who said that?  And another voice yells:  Don't go in there!  There's a monster in there!  What are you doing?!  And she says, Oh.  Right...thanks!  And she backs away and she walks off and never opens the door.

Here's what I think.  I like to draw analogies and I really can't help it; it's second nature to me, as a writer, to look for symbolism and similarities and it's just part of who I am.  Sometimes we do what that woman in the trailer does.  We know we're in a bad situation.  We can leave any time, but we don't.  We insist on riding it out, even though it scares the crap out of us and it feels wrong and we know we probably shouldn't be reaching for that doorknob anyways.  We stay there, in the shadows, and we suffer, because we think that we will disappoint someone if we try to change things, or try to do things in a way that feels right for us, or that that's our only option.

But it's not.

Have you ever heard that old cliche "if it feels good, do it"?  I wish they would change it to say "If it feels right do it".  Because lots of things feel good.  Eating a bag of potato chips feels good (until it doesn't).  Speeding down the highway at 90 mph while listening to Disturbed feels good (it does.............I imagine..oooh wah ah ah ah..) and all kinds of things feel good.  Doesn't mean you should do them.

Listen, you know if something is right.  It feels great.  Everything falls into place.  Things aren't hard anymore.  They work.  It's like God is giving you a giant thumbs up.  And it's scary too because sometimes it's way different from how you normally do things.  If it's not right you don't feel right.  You feel sad.  Furtive.  Depressed.  Angry.  Scared.  And most of all, frustrated, because you want something that you shouldn't have or you want something to be a certain way when it can't be. 

 So you have to make a choice.  You either stay where you're at, and keep feeling bad, and scared, and worried, and frustrated, or you leave.

I'll bet that woman had a great reason for being in that house.  Maybe she had a curse to break, or she inherited it, or there was a case of Spanish doubloons hidden on the third floor and she had until sundown to find them or they would turn into lead.  Whatever.  The point is, the circumstances weren't right for her to be there, and because of that, whatever it was that she was there to do wasn't going to happen in that moment.

So she left.

Do you think she forgot about it?

Heck no. Spanish doubloons are worth a bloody fortune.

Do you think she'll come back?

Sure.  If all the stars align and God gives the giant thumbs up and the sun is shining and all the bad hoodoo has vanished, she will.  In the meantime, she's going to go have some fun and not worry anymore about the dark stuff.

Quite possibly my favorite meme of all time.  At least for now.

"The opposite of emotional stinginess is emotional generosity. An emotionally generous person freely gives love, praise, affection, and encouragement. They freely give smiles, and hugs, and also tend to give freely of their time, talents, and resources. They are positive, fun, and generally very pleasant to be around."

"What are the emotional and psychological effects of being in a relationship with an emotionally stingy person, whether it be a boss, friend, parent, sibling, or spouse? The toll taken can be very high. Relationships with emotionally stingy people are highly stressful, and depending on the type of relationship, can lead to anxiety, depression, and a deflated sense of self worth. It can also just plain wear you out."


 - "What is Emotional Stinginess?" by Contributer from bogbit.com (http://bogbit.com/what-is-emotional-stinginess/)

I can't live my life as a hostage to being a nice 

person. ~ SPinSC

Everyone has an opinion; This is mine.

I keep reading on the news about this incident with Harambe the gorilla and how Harambe got shot because a kid fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.  I hear so much anger against the zoo for shooting the gorilla and so much sympathy for the gorilla and not once have I read:

Thank god that kid is safe.

Am I sorry that the gorilla got shot?

Of course.  It's a terrible, unfortunate incident.  But what bugs me about this is that everyone keeps assigning human emotions to this gorilla:

He was protecting the kid.

He was holding hands with the kid.

But really, what he was was a 400 pound wild animal who could have accidentally injured or killed that 4 year old just by handling him the wrong way with no apparent malice intended.

It was also a 400 pound gorilla who could have gotten spooked by an onlooker who decided to throw something at it, yell at it, or distract it in any way.

So, do I think the zoo did the right thing by shooting the gorilla?

I wish that they could have handled it another way.

But I think that they handled it the best way that they knew how, given the lack of precedent for such incidents at the Cincinnati Zoo.

And I really wish that humans would stop harassing the zoo, and the family, and just be grateful that we aren't planning a 4 year old's funeral. 

The Best Hand

A friend of mine once told me, "I know my life will change one day, and it will change yet again and yet again.  Nothing ever stays the same."

I find it coincidental that I remembered this today...it ties in with a conversation I was having with a family member earlier about chronic pain.  She told me that she kept waiting for the pain to resolve and get to a manageable point so that she could move on and make plans.  The problem was that with her condition, it would remain unpredictable the rest of her life and would probably never resolve.

How do you live with something that's unpredictable?  How do you deal with something that you know is not going to resolve?  I find myself comparing this to what we are going through with Logan and know that it's the same.  Some people think that autism is a thing that you can "get over" or "grow out of".  And for some, that may be true, in a sense.  It's not so much that they "get over it", it's that they mature and learn excellent coping skills.

But this is not going to happen with our son.  There are too many other things that complicate his condition.

How do you live with that?

I always used to tell people that he would live with me for the rest of my life.  I accepted that a long time ago and made those plans in my head.  For me, that was what life had in store for me, and that was fine.

But sometimes life has different plans. Things change.  The hardest decision anyone can ever make will be to do what's best for their child when it doesn't follow the map you've drawn on your heart.

So what is the point, then of making plans?  Of hoping for things, of setting goals, if life is so damned fickle, and it never does what you think it's going to do?  The point is that it's better to be an active participant than someone who's benched. 

No matter what cards you get dealt, you play your best hand.