Complaining
The other day my glasses broke at the hinge (Sammy did it) and I've had it taped with electrical tape, and it keeps falling apart and I have to keep readjusting the tape, and just now when it happened I was fixing it and Sammy comes up and grabs the other side and pulls THAT one off at the hinge, so now I'm wearing my OLD glasses which are in terrible shape and an old prescription even BEFORE pregnancy hormones, so I'm seeing funny until Jason gets back with some superglue and we attempt to repair the new ones. I mean, the current ones. (Also, my contacts are the old prescription and I haven't worn them in about two years). Really have sort of a headache.
And the newspaper kept making me cross as well. Inlaws gave us a sunday subscription to the Post-Gazette for Christmas so I was reading that this afternoon. There was a big stack of coupons and advertisements, and in my current financial state they just made me bitter and angry at Consumerism in general and these ads proclaiming Great Deals in effort to make people buy stuff they don't need to begin with, and how that in turn produces a culture of people who will never be satisfied by what they have now, and they'll always want more, which makes the minimum wage go up a LEETLE, which makes the people who PAY their workers minimum wage decide that PRICES need to go up EVEN MORE, so the people who are poor keep getting poorer and the people who are rich keep complaining because they don't have enough to send their children to the BEST private school or pay the mortgage on their summer cottage. I got mad at the article on financial planning in the "Parade Magazine" (which incidentally had a cover story about how Benazir Bhutto will affect politics, not mentioning that she was assassinated WEEKS ago, which ADDED to my sense of jaded bitterness, that the media could be so careless to run an obviously outdated story without a note of explanation added and you wonder what all other LESS obvious things they're careless about), anyway, I got mad at the financial planning article for saying "Eat out once a week instead of three times," I mean SERIOUSLY? How about, Eat out only for special occasions you lazy nitwits?
And a little note in the church bulletin made me angry, the time for a talk some people are doing on how An Amendment to Protect Marriage will strengthen Marriage because "traditional marriage has been devalued and children and families have suffered the consequences," and I just ASK you, for the last time, HOW? How does denying people who want to get married even in a simple legal fashion the right to do so protect Marriage as a sacrament and especially how does it protect families? How is it even RELATED? I say this not as some godless hippie, but as someone with simple logical reasoning! If you want to strengthen marriage, spend your resources promoting marriage counseling and models of healthy relationships in the media, not REFUSING marriage to those you don't believe deserve it. The strength of my marriage, and certainly the strength of the Church Sacrament of Marriage, are in no way affected by anyone else who gets married, particularly if they marry just legally, outside the church-- denying somebody that right won't make my marriage stronger! OBVIOUSLY if anyone is seeking marriage, they certainly give it VALUE-- they could just as easily live together unwed! How does denying that promote marriage? HOW? I'm genuinely interested in the logic behind this! And I'm REALLY genuinely interested in WHY people seem to think this is so important when there are SO MANY REALLY PRESSING ISSUES IN THE WORLD that ought to be dealt with first!
And while on the subject of religion, I am SO SADDENED by how people won't listen to other people's beliefs. I'm not sure who makes me angrier-- the atheists and agnostics who profess to be "freethinkers" and that's why All Christians are Creationists, Bigots, Fire-and-Brimstone Preachers who believe in the Old (White) Man In the Sky God; the outspoken "Christians" this description DOES apply to, who give a beautiful religion a bad name; or the other Christians like myself who DON'T speak up enough, who DON'T share what they REALLY believe or what Christianity is REALLY about because we're afraid people will think we're one of THOSE Christians if we even mention it! It would be SO GREAT if people could put their preconceptions aside long enough to actually LISTEN to what individual other people believe, to be able to DISCUSS our differences without making assumptions, to find strength in our common ground rather than strife in our differences! I was thinking about this last night as I read a book by a rabbi, and how I really enjoyed the book and how I really got a lot of the things he was saying, and how there were things he said that I disagreed with, not just in religion but in other things as well, but how that didn't change that other things he said were REALLY GOOD and even the things I disagreed with at least made me think... and that made me wish ALL discussions could be like that, that people could share their innermost beliefs and people would LISTEN to them rather than just ASSUMING what the person thinks before they say it, that people could be generally interested and look for the Good in what other people believe rather than judging the person and their whole Label by the Bad in it. It saddens me that people won't give "VeggieTales" a shot because it's religious, or fantasy novels a shot because they mention pagan things. And it really saddens me that most of the time people don't even realize they're being hypocrites.
AND I think that's all I had to complain about today. No, THERE'S one more thing... Sammy's got a stinky diaper. Bye.
And the newspaper kept making me cross as well. Inlaws gave us a sunday subscription to the Post-Gazette for Christmas so I was reading that this afternoon. There was a big stack of coupons and advertisements, and in my current financial state they just made me bitter and angry at Consumerism in general and these ads proclaiming Great Deals in effort to make people buy stuff they don't need to begin with, and how that in turn produces a culture of people who will never be satisfied by what they have now, and they'll always want more, which makes the minimum wage go up a LEETLE, which makes the people who PAY their workers minimum wage decide that PRICES need to go up EVEN MORE, so the people who are poor keep getting poorer and the people who are rich keep complaining because they don't have enough to send their children to the BEST private school or pay the mortgage on their summer cottage. I got mad at the article on financial planning in the "Parade Magazine" (which incidentally had a cover story about how Benazir Bhutto will affect politics, not mentioning that she was assassinated WEEKS ago, which ADDED to my sense of jaded bitterness, that the media could be so careless to run an obviously outdated story without a note of explanation added and you wonder what all other LESS obvious things they're careless about), anyway, I got mad at the financial planning article for saying "Eat out once a week instead of three times," I mean SERIOUSLY? How about, Eat out only for special occasions you lazy nitwits?
And a little note in the church bulletin made me angry, the time for a talk some people are doing on how An Amendment to Protect Marriage will strengthen Marriage because "traditional marriage has been devalued and children and families have suffered the consequences," and I just ASK you, for the last time, HOW? How does denying people who want to get married even in a simple legal fashion the right to do so protect Marriage as a sacrament and especially how does it protect families? How is it even RELATED? I say this not as some godless hippie, but as someone with simple logical reasoning! If you want to strengthen marriage, spend your resources promoting marriage counseling and models of healthy relationships in the media, not REFUSING marriage to those you don't believe deserve it. The strength of my marriage, and certainly the strength of the Church Sacrament of Marriage, are in no way affected by anyone else who gets married, particularly if they marry just legally, outside the church-- denying somebody that right won't make my marriage stronger! OBVIOUSLY if anyone is seeking marriage, they certainly give it VALUE-- they could just as easily live together unwed! How does denying that promote marriage? HOW? I'm genuinely interested in the logic behind this! And I'm REALLY genuinely interested in WHY people seem to think this is so important when there are SO MANY REALLY PRESSING ISSUES IN THE WORLD that ought to be dealt with first!
And while on the subject of religion, I am SO SADDENED by how people won't listen to other people's beliefs. I'm not sure who makes me angrier-- the atheists and agnostics who profess to be "freethinkers" and that's why All Christians are Creationists, Bigots, Fire-and-Brimstone Preachers who believe in the Old (White) Man In the Sky God; the outspoken "Christians" this description DOES apply to, who give a beautiful religion a bad name; or the other Christians like myself who DON'T speak up enough, who DON'T share what they REALLY believe or what Christianity is REALLY about because we're afraid people will think we're one of THOSE Christians if we even mention it! It would be SO GREAT if people could put their preconceptions aside long enough to actually LISTEN to what individual other people believe, to be able to DISCUSS our differences without making assumptions, to find strength in our common ground rather than strife in our differences! I was thinking about this last night as I read a book by a rabbi, and how I really enjoyed the book and how I really got a lot of the things he was saying, and how there were things he said that I disagreed with, not just in religion but in other things as well, but how that didn't change that other things he said were REALLY GOOD and even the things I disagreed with at least made me think... and that made me wish ALL discussions could be like that, that people could share their innermost beliefs and people would LISTEN to them rather than just ASSUMING what the person thinks before they say it, that people could be generally interested and look for the Good in what other people believe rather than judging the person and their whole Label by the Bad in it. It saddens me that people won't give "VeggieTales" a shot because it's religious, or fantasy novels a shot because they mention pagan things. And it really saddens me that most of the time people don't even realize they're being hypocrites.
AND I think that's all I had to complain about today. No, THERE'S one more thing... Sammy's got a stinky diaper. Bye.