Under the Weather and Gloom Post

The weather here has been heavenly the last five or so days. Just heavenly but I'm under it as the saying goes. Not so much physically sick but bitten by a mental bug. Funny how much words can hurt. Especially when they come from someone you're related to and love. Someone you've known your whole life.

"Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.

But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders have a point. Yelling at a living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them.

Sticks and stones may break our bones,

but words will break our hearts."

Robert Fulghum

It always amazes me when we treat relatives with so much less care than friends and acquaintances. Several years back, I read something about this phenomena. Shortly after reading that article, I stopped watching a number of television programs where family members belittled each other or treated each other poorly. One in particular was "Everyone Loves Raymond".

This also was a prime example of how poorly spouses treat each other. Now, I don't mind an occasional dose of sarcasm and so on, life is like that, but not all the time. The Middle is another show I have a problem watching. It just seems so negative, so damaging mentally to watch. And of course, how could I forget Two and a Half Men? So very many bad examples there.

Life is too short to waste time viewing such cynical drivel. Seems it also makes it "okay" for people to turn around and treat others in real life virtually the same way as they've seen characters on TV shows behaving.

"Think of what a better world it would be

if we all - the whole world

had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon

and then lay down with our blankets for a nap."

Robert Fulghum

Maybe I'm just feeling gloomy as another birthday is slowly approaching. It's funny, speaking to a friend several months ago, she mentioned how turning 26 was devastating for her. Quite a few of her girlfriends had voice the same opinion. I almost fell over because 26 for me had been a truly depressing birthday...not 25 or 30, but 26!

This feels a lot like the same oppressive weight I felt at the approach of that birthday. Mind you, I have...holy c#@p! I was just counting and it's about two months away! Yikes! We won't be talking numbers here, but it's not one of the milestones you'd think would have such an effect, just like 26 wasn't.

Maybe it's a lot of things combined. The economy, the divorce, the loss of family members, the loss of my life as I knew it, the upcoming, inevitable surgery and so on. Who knows?

I want to thank you for stopping in and visiting, it's such an honor. And for getting all the way down to the end of this gloomy little post I'm going to leave you with another quote, also by Robert Fulghum from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten:

"Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave

something and take something away.

Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard

or numbered or scientifically detected or counted.

It's what we leave in the minds of other people

and what they leave in ours.

Memory.

The census doesn't count it.

Nothing counts without it."