A Matter of Perspective

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Honey, pass the kidney stones please.

For some time, kidney stones have (rightly or wrongly) been associated with high intake of dairy products such as whole milk, cream and cheese. Why, then, would a Milk distribution company use the campaign slogan Milk Rocks? That just seems dumb.

Whether or not it's true that calcium causes kidney stones is beside the point - people associate kidney (and gall) stones with milk. If I had suffered the painful passing of a stone, I would certainly think twice about picking up a carton that has any of the words "rock," "pebble," or "stone" slashed across the label.

Which reminds me, yet again, of the company that advertised it's product, sugar, as being Consistently Good. No freakin' DUH! The average American consumes 135 pounds of sugar a year. Do we really need to be reminded that it's good?

So, when was the last time you heard someone say their coffee was fine but the sugar tasted a little stale? Or, upon taking a bite out of a chocolate chip cookie, remarked, "The sugar's a tad bitter?" 135 lbs a year per person implies no one in their right mind thinks sugar is anything BUT consistently good. Only two things in life are a foregone conclusion - death and consistently good sugar. But I digress...

Research indicates other foods are just as likely to increase your risk of kidney stones: spinach, rhubarb, chocolate (say WHAT?!), peanuts, cocoa, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, apple juice, soda and berries. In the United States, the South has the highest incidence of kidney stones, a region where sweet tea consumption is very common. Note to irish folksies, you may want to think twice about offering your guests a cup o' tea, especially if you are sweetening it with consistently good sugar...

Drinks associated with decreased risk of stones include wine (yay!), lemonade and orange juice, the latter two of which are rich in citrate, a stone inhibitor. Wouldn't that be a funny campaign slogan for Sunkist?

There is, to date, no conclusive evidence that alcohol intake increases the risk of developing kidney stones, although some research implies so. Other theories indicate that frequent and binge drinkers create situations that set up for dehydration, (alcohol consumption, hangovers, and poor sleep and stress habits). In other words, it's not the alcohol that creates a kidney stone but the drinker's associated behavior that sets it up.

Be sure, then, to get plenty of rest following Wednesday night's Pool League event, and drink a glass of water after every Scooby Snack. This will ensure you are not developing milk rocks.

Storms and such...

I used to wish I had lived 100 years ago -- like Laura Ingalls Wilder, on the prairie in a house made out of sod. I'm not sure I'm cut out for that lifestyle anymore, though...

Case in point - we had a windstorm this week. It knocked out power to over 750,000 homes when last I was able to receive news from the outside world. Our home was one of them, and we are still out of power two days later. We also have no cell service and no internet connectivity. And what am I most upset about? That I cannot blow-dry my hair. I don't see someone that vain being able to live in a house made out of sod, do you?

The storm was glorious! I was headed for a work-related party up at Newcastle Golf Course. For those who've had the oppy to golf that course, you're likely aware there are always winds up there. This night the wind was blowing hard enough to bend the landscaped trees to right angles. That would have put serious distance on a ball, to be sure! Or brought it up short, I suppose.

And, by the way, for those who care, yes there were candles and no, I didn't catch on fire again. I also did not pole dance; so all in all, I provided very little entertainment to those I was with. I'll try harder next time...

Le troisieme ange and I awoke to find a 100-foot tree had fallen across the only access in and out of our property. Not good - potato cakes were calling us from downtown Redmond, so we discussed our options. I wanted to call a tree service; however, we had no phone service with which to do so. She wanted to "cut it up" ourselves. When I asked her what we would use to cut it up with, she replied, "Some sort of cutting tool."

I laughed - I could just picture us trying to cut through the tree's 3-foot diameter with an axe, and I was certain we would die of hunger before we were successful. Still, she put on some clothes (we had been discussing this outside in not much more than underwear) and she went, got the axe, and started swinging away. I put on clothes and went out to shout verbal encouragements to her. The guys next door came over (either because they saw us earlier in our underwear or because they couldn't believe she was seriously thinking she could chop through that trunk). They fired up a chain saw and sliced and diced until there was nothing left but a stack of 14" rounds to help us survive next year's storm! Wasn't that nice of them?

We suffered very little other damage, although, as I mentioned, we are still without power or cell coverage. More sad is that my dog died that day as well.

Charlie has been with us for 15 years. My ex-husband bought him for our first anniversary. Charlie got sick last year at this same time, and survived (helped by Glenlivet and $2500 worth of modern technology). When I brought him home from the vet last January, I made him promise to live at least one year for that amount of money. Bless his soul, he kept that promise.

I will miss you, Charlie Brown. I already do.

Thanksgiving

David said, "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Pastors and preachers throughout the Christian world will remind their congregations to take comfort when walking through the valley as it is only a shadow of death they face, not death itself. Exactly how is that comforting?

To walk through a living version of death. Basically, you are alive and suffering. Your soul is in torment and, because you are still alive, you can feel every single moment of it. YIPPEE SKIPPEE...

Death on the other hand, depending on your spiritual beliefs, results in one of three things:
1. If you believe in and serve a higher being, death results in a state of perpetual happiness - coolio!
2. If you believe in and reject a higher being, death results in a state of perpetual torture - hm, no thanks.
3. If you don't believe in a higher being, death is simply The End.

Death actually seems preferable in cases 1 and 3 to living in a valley of unbearable pain and suffering. It's easy to see why someone walking through the valley might decide to take matters into their own hands and hasten their end...as long as they are reasonably sure they aren't scenario #2 above.

Understandable, truly. I've been in the valley; I've known people who journeyed through that valley. And I feel a deep sense of compassion for those who are in it now. The thing is, it's difficult for people who have never been in that place to understand the temptation to choose death over the shadow of death. But there is a moment in suffering when the pain is so great that all sense of perspective is lost; that makes death, regardless of the conditions of afterlife, seem preferable.

I took the littlest angel on a whale-watching trip one year. The boat left from the harbor with gale-force flags flying. The bow of the boat was rising well out of the water with each huge wave and slapping down again with enough force to lift l'angle off her dainty little feet.

Now, I suffer motion sickness. Doesn't matter if it's a car, a boat or a plane. If it moves and conditions are right, I will turn a truly awesome shade of green. That day, even the strongest stomachs were turning. I was so incredibly sick that I could not raise my head off the bench I was clinging to. Every time the boat heaved, I followed suit.

And I remember thinking, with clarity, that if I could find a gun, I would shoot myself. I remember thinking I must stop this horrible feeling at all costs. Afterwards, it seemed a dream - surely I hadn't actually been serious? Oh, I was. I was deadly serious. I did not want to live another moment under those awful conditions.

Thankfully, no one on the boat was flashing a gun around. The boat eventually returned to shore, my stomach eventually returned to the mid-section of my body, and thoughts of ending it all eventually returned to the furthest reaches of my mind. But I remember that brief moment of thought, and I know I was sincere.

Motion sickness in your soul is infinitely worse. Your mind is already suffering incredible upheaval; your thought processes are already skewed. The thing is all that tossing and turning of your emotional well-being is bound to toss up that one horrible thought residing in the furthest reaches of your mind. The one that says, "I am done with the shadow; give me the real thing."

And what's to stop you? The knowledge that you don't need to fear evil because God has a Rod and Staff? That's very little comfort unless you are in an emotional frame of mind to grasp the understanding of what that means.

The Rod, of course, represents protection; the Staff, guidance. So, there in your valley of suffering, you are suppose to take comfort in the knowledge that God will whack evil and lead you to safety, even if it means grabbing you by the neck with his crook and forcibly dragging your bleating ass back to safe ground. Ok, yeah, that is a little comforting...if you can manage to pull that thought up fast enough to prevent yourself from taking action on the other thought first. Ah, there's the rub!

Thankfully, we don't, in that moment, have to do a thing except allow God to hook us with the Staff while He whacks evil with the Rod. Thus bringing me to the point of this blog - to thank God and the people He chose to help drag me back to safety. To those who repeatedly held back my hair while I emotionally retched; to those who continuously whacked evil thoughts on my behalf -- thank you for being God's Rod and Staff! I am eternally grateful.

Holy Smokes!

My hair caught on fire last night. Yeah, there's one for the books, eh?

A friend and I were crashing a work-related party. The venue was quite lovely, once we found it - brick walls, tall windows, candles everywhere. And an open bar - yay!

Upon arrival, we discussed our priorities. Hers were drink, food, guy. Mine were drink, guy, food. Having agreed that drink was first in either scenario, we picked up a couple, grabbed some food and wandered around until we found a quiet table to people-watch from. The table was bar-height and had a candelabra in the center of it with the lowest candle being, well, at just about the 5-foot mark. I know this because I measured it with my hair.

We'd just spotted Sienfeld-cum-Jesus in the crowd when the guest speaker got up to officially open the event. Now, I don't want to say "snooze," but the only word I actually remember him saying was "robot." Everything after that was pretty much a blur until my friend reached up, gently patted my head, and whispered, "Your hair was on fire."

Now, she speaks with an Irish accent so I was nearly certain I'd misunderstood her. Then she started to laugh. Then I smelled the acrid odor of burned hair. Then I started to laugh. Then we laughed until we cried.

The speech continued for 20 minutes, and I'm fairly certain that we laughed for all of it. And I'm equally certain that the guest speaker (a VP, no less) thought we were laughing at him. How not to get promoted, if you care about such things. Clearly I do not or I would not go around catching my hair on fire during VP-given speeches.

I'm so glad I wasn't wearing hairspray...

Bless me Father, for I have sinned

Catholics have got it MADE. They sin, they get blessed. How cool is that? Then they are told to stroke some beads and whisper a woman's name 10 times. They might as well have to write "Sin is good," on the chalk board 100 times.

What they should be saying is, "Spank me Father, for I have sinned." To be honest, I would convert just for the sake of a blessing each and every time I sinned, but I would convert faster if it involved a spanking.

The army, on the other hand, takes another approach to transgression. In boot camp, you screw up, you get punished and then you thank the man who punished you. "Thank you sir! May I have another?" Can you say sadism?

Let's do the math. Catholicism encourages sin; the army punishes sin and teaches you to be thankful for the punishment. So what happens if you are a Catholic in bootcamp? Seems like 6 weeks of grueling physical punishment and brainwashing, followed by blessing and bead-stroking would result in some poor soul spending an awful lot of time in the confessional.

Sargeant: "Fall in!"
Soldier: "Piss off!"
Sargeant: "Drop and give me fifty!"
Soldier: "Thank you sir! May I have another?"

(later that day)
Soldier: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned."
Priest: "Tell me, my son."
Soldier: "I pissed off my sargeant today."
Priest: "Was this intentional?"
Soldier: "Yes, Father, I wanted him to punish me."
Priest: "What motivated you to do so, my son?"
Soldier: "So I could get you to bless me."
Priest: "You are blessed. Say Mary's name 10 times and rub your beads."
Soldier: "Thank you Father! May I have another?"

Someone's beads are gonna need replacing sooner than expected.