Mas Fuerte!

I believe that children should be well-mannered and respectful.

"Please," "Thank you," and "May I?" should be part of their every day vocabulary.

But, with everything, there are exceptions to the rules. There is one situation in which a child should be as demanding as he wants, and the adult has an obligation to fulfill this command....



"Push me higher!!!"

Kids These Days...

I've mentioned before that my work is roughly .75 miles from my house. While this is good and all, I must also mention that there are three school zones between here and there, two of them in an alternate route. Going straight on Hammocks Blvd. runs me dead into an elementary school, where parents picking up their children are under the impression that they have the right to stop in the middle of the road, thus eliminating any and all movement of other motorists. Passed that rests Hammocks Middle School, where I must break for acne-personified moving at the speed of erosion, AND their stone-still parents. No, thank you. I will by-pass the alternate route and take the conventional way home, which dumps me off behind Varela High. I turn into my subdivion just before the blinking yellow school zone light, so some may say this would be the best route to avoid back-ups.

Well they are wrong.

Know that at this time, all good little teenagers are skipping home from school. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. And they all think that everyone on 152nd Ave. is looking directly at them. These little punks do whatever it takes to catch attention. Some disregard the sidewalk made specifically for this purpose and utilize the street as their means of transportation.

Do they not see that I'm driving a Hummer?

The worst part is when I try to swing that right-hand turn into my subdivision. Those little jerks won't stop! They all just flow along, and the minute they see my beast of a vehicle, I SWEAR THEY START WALKING EVEN MORE SLOWLY.

LISTEN! COMMON SENSE TELLS YOU THAT WHEN A CAR IS COMING, YOU STOP OR RISK GETTING CLOBBERED! BUT THESE KIDS THINK THEY ARE QUEEN OF THE ASPHALT AND THEY CONTINUE STROLLING ALONG, JUST LOOKING AT ME AS I GIVE THEM DEATH-LOOKS AND ULTIMATELY CUT THEM OFF AND TURN IN ANYWAYS. And yes, I yelled that paragraph in it's entirety. Just like I do in my car. Daily.

One of these days, I'm going to just run them over. And you will know when this happens, because the story will be plastered all over the news that evening.

Warning: this next paragraph is riddled with cliches of the bitter and the old. Continue at your own risk.

We were not like that as teenagers. I swear they are waxing worse and worse. I don't understand why some of them (aka the punks) think they know everything, yet they still live with their parents, rarely have jobs, and have never paid a bill. They've never tasted responsibility or financial difficulty, yet manage to have all the answers.

That is the only proof to me that I am no longer a teenager, considering it seems like I just got out of high school a couple weeks ago. And I'm sure we had the same irritating tendencies - although surely not to this extent - yet I feel no different now than I did then.

I'm still rebellious. I still have the attention span of a fruit fly. I still need to be humored. Although those are all characteristics of a woman, as well...

Ok, ok, example. So I can't run on a treadmill unless I have something occupying my mind. I went to the gym a couple weeks ago clutching my ipod. I began running and wasn't five minutes into it when I had already skipped through my whole playlist. I found them boring and trite. So I looked up at the tv's suspended from the ceiling. One had basketball. Meh. One had baseball. Ugh. And one had politics. Kill myself. Six minutes down, twenty four to go. I started feeling short of breath. But I can generally run three miles without even sweating. Ok, ok, what could I possibly do for twenty-four more minutes to keep my mind off cardiovascular activity? I tried merely thinking about stuff, but I had nothing to think about. My mind, for once, was a blank page. I actually wanted to start crying. It took all my willpower not to scream out to the entire gym, "ANYBODY! GIVE ME SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!" I finally just got off and jumped on an eliptical machine for the remaining 15 minutes. Wanted to kill myself on there, too.

High schoolers, do you do stuff like that? Well if not, enjoy the story. And can you please tell your peers to yield to oncoming traffic? Thanks. I really do like you guys. Oh, and also tell them not to do drugs. Now get off the computer and go study for your test.

Reality Mists, Cave Chains, and Other Sad Pitfalls

When I arrived at work this morning, I was greeted with this thick fog sprawled across the back property. We all know what a sucker I am for a solitary tree, so combine that with the sunrise, and here I am scampering across the lawn with my phone, snapping pictures like some crazy morning optimist.

It was the fog, though, that sparked my attention. The way it just hovered dormant and still. It reminded me of this series I'm reading involving the Olympian gods living among mortals. While the books are generally light-hearted and geared towards children, they use Mist as a solemn symbol of how humans use reality to excuse situations that seem abnormal. I'm basically left feeling cramped up in a reality straitjacket.

All this thinking reminded me of something I learned long ago...and philosophers, forgive my butchering of this theory, because I don't remember the story so much as I remember the illustration of it. Apparently I need visual aids to retain any form of information...

Plato concocted the "Myth of the Cave," wherein he imagined people chained in a cave their whole lives, facing an empty wall; the only images they see are shadows on this wall. He describes how their only forms of reality are the shapes and movements they see projected onto the wall. He states that if they were to escape this prison and personally witness the objects responsible for casting the shadows, they wouldn't be able to associate the two. He went further to say that they would probably return to their imprisonment because that is what they have known their whole lives.

Again, the picture is what has lasted with me, but I believe I also specifially remember this because of the severely despairing impression it left on me. We actually do this. "Ignorance is bliss" isn't some hilarious pardon for our indolence or incompetence.

I am by no means a philosopher; therefore, I am not going to go into depth with this theory. But I would like to point out from a Christian standpoint how often we do this. And I'm warning you now - I'm not taking this in the direction you think I am.

I get serious red flags when I see a pastor who has lived this squeaky clean life inside this sad little bubble, trying to witness to or counsel a drug addict. I know some people are gasping right now; let me try to make this short and sweet. Say you are studying to be in the medical field. Everyone knows that you don't spend years and years inside a classroom behind a text book; a huge portion of your time is spent in the hospitals getting hands-on experience. It's ridiculous to assume that one can properly learn this practice being solely educated through lecture. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Do I think we should carry on in debauchery, because grace abounds? God forbit it. But I do know that the Great Commission is to Go into all the world. How can I go into the world if I am chained to a wall, watching only the shadows of what the world is? Once I am released from my chains, I won't comprehend the world anyways. I'll crawl back to my cage. Although their lifestyle is not my own, how can I understand their addictions, vices, and downfalls if I am ignorant of them?

Christians seem to forget that God is in the world. The drugs, the prostitution, the cold-blooded murders, God is in the midst of it all. He's not absent, so why should we be? We cling to this "don't-ask-don't-tell" mindset and stay tucked inside our bubbles and focus on moot points and the length of our skirts.

Just be educated. That's all. It never hurts to know things. And if you're wondering how to "educate" yourself without participating in it, just open your eyes. It's all over. And when you find it, don't run from it. Dissect it, prod it, and empathize with it. Pour God first into the deepest holes and let Him fill the voids. And if you claim to have opened eyes and you still don't get it, then you're just ignorant and there's no hope for you.

Simple-Carbohydrates Anonymous

I felt a strange headache coming on midmorning this past Sunday. Strange in the sense that I didn't think a pair of Advil would clobber it this time, but it was slight; almost like an irritation behind my orbital cavities spreading from the pituitary gland. And if I leaned down, it pulsed. It felt like my frontal lobe just might spontaneously combust.

I knew it wasn't a hangover, and I had already drank my coffee....but my sutures were pounding and I would swear that they were chanting, "De-ple-tion" with each pulse. Then I remembered something - I hadn't eaten sweets in about 48 hours.

I don't have an addictive personality. I'm not an alcoholic, I don't smoke, never have I done any type of drug whatsoever, all the while heeding to I Corinthians 10:12 as well as 2 Corinthians 3:5. Seems like a winning combo....

Hi, I'm Traci. And I'm addicted to refined sugar.

My sweet tooth is powerful, haunting, and unjust. It runs a mean tyranny. It is judgmental and racist, performing vicious holocaust practices on anything boasting the names Hershey, Nestle, or Russell Stover. However, it basks in decadence: flan, creme brulee, baklava, pastalitos. It hails the names of Toblerone, Hagen Daas, Ghirardelli, and Godiva.

It hasn't been fed in the past four days.

It was all an accident, I swear. Never would I purposely neglect my sweet tooth. It all started Saturday when I didn't have time to eat until two o'clock. I had a gyro and that's all I ate that whole day, save a couple bites of churrasco and mushrooms that night. Then came the strange headache. It was then that I realized it probably isn't normal that I spoon frosting out of the can like it was a bowl of ice cream and call it dinner. That most people generally don't eat a meal of cupcakes and then follow it up with pudding for dessert.

SO, that's it. Since then, I haven't eaten any sweets, and it sucks. Try going to the gym with no energy. Try doing downward-facing dog with "De-ple-tion" racking your skull. Try walking into the kitchen at your work just to find that the sugar fairy has left bags of donuts, cookies, pastalitos and croquettas donning a sign that says, "Free." It hurts. It physically hurts.

But summer is on it's way, and my size zero's are manifesting in my drawer. Maybe once I drop some weight, I'll reward myself with a trip to the Ale House....(cough, cough) captain jack's buried treasure (cough)....