Regular Tuesday with Irene

Another day, another round of news to dissect. Irene and I kvetched over coffee today about how some people can go through life seeming to have no angst and no existential quandaries. They have no pain, no visible suffering, they've never cried through church...they haven't even cried while singing Amazing Grace at church. How do they do that? Is life still meaningful for them? Is life meaningful for us or just depressing? After we validated how wonderful we think each other are in a little private re-commitment ceremony, we got down to business.


Topics Discussed:

• Dawn simulation. Should I buy the more expensive dawn simulator? Or should I be a cheap ass and keep complaining? American Psychiatric Association says that dawn simulation and light box therapy together have a 48% higher success rate than light box alone. But, according to this magazine, there is a cure for tiredness! Irene says "Buy the better box!"
• Irene is totally over being cold and the winter is barely here.

How I am totally over...and I can not say that firmly enough...I am TOTALLY over farming. I won't go into the whys and hows because I have to keep it from my children, but I am TOTALLY over being a farmer.

• Buddhism R Us: The First of the Four Noble Truths, Life is Suffering. How do people manage to go through life without feeling this truth? We don't know...
• Things we can't blog about...
• The delicacies of Learning Disability Law and how I am applying them to my life. No, I have not called back the hounds.
• Intense bedtime stories; good idea or not? Probably Not, but a good primer for Old Testament Studies.
• How it is NOT a payoff to buy Halloween costumes early to save money. You can get the same things cheaper at Costco the week before Halloween. Oh Well...
• How Halloween is the only day of the year Falcom is going to dress the way he totally wants and how it is difficult for me to watch but I will stand firmly by his choice and continue empowering him to be his own person. This year he is going to be the 'goth cheerleader'. OY!
• Irene sends out a warning; Her next blog post will likely be HEAVY. To put it her way, "I feel a heavy blog post coming on!"
• Last night I made a pork and tomattio (sp?) stew for Valda and Marge T. Marge lives in Adak now. I don't know why, but I am completely intrigued with Adak. Why? It is rat infested and the electric service is sketchy at best. She camps and hunts and has a friend who made a quilt out of rat fur. "It's not like they are rats from down south, they are flea and tick free and don't carry diseases, they are huge and their fur is beautiful." There is a thriving community of Pacific Island, Filipino and Mexican ex-pats working in the fish processing factory. The wind is always blowing. Adak is as close to Hawaii as it is to Homer. I am strangely compelled to visit.
• Maya has cute hair now!
• How Irene needs to call her father on Saipan and tell him that we are on our way. That really made us laugh.

Sunrise from my living room, October 14, 2008... 9 am-ish

I forgot to tell Irene about how my friend Danny asked me to join him in Peru this January for a meditation retreat. I read that for what it is and said, "You want me to join you for a week of drinking jungle tea and vomiting when I could spend just as much money on a ticket to Bali and be served tall drinks by cute young Indonesian guys? You've got to be kidding!" He then tried to tell me that the energetic healing I would go through while in Peru would have an impact on my entire family. I said, "So you are saying that somehow, upon my return, mud will not be trapezed into the house, the shoes will not be strewn around by the door, the toilets will self scrub, the volume of the children will decrease and they will suddenly be cured of their ADHD symptoms?" He saw my point and we laughed. Irene would be laughing.