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Friday fun

(23 Jun 2006 10:15)

Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it's worse when they are wearing dark glasses and have streamers in their antlers because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot.
Ellen DeGeneres

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.
Woody Allen

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx

Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.
Evan Davis

For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small stain.

Last night, I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and thought to myself, "Where the heck is the ceiling?"

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons because, to them, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Ways To Annoy People

Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way".
After visiting the local donut shop, sit on the floor cross-legged and insist in a childish voice that you haven't received enough chocolate sprinkles.
Answer every question with another question. As soon as one of you says a statement instead of a question, shout "I win!".
Any time a member of the opposite sex tries to talk to you, hold your hand up to prevent them from saying anything and say, "Look, I know what you're going to ask me... For the last time, no, I will NOT go out with you."
Ask people what gender they are.
Ask the waitress for an extra seat for your "imaginary friend."
Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."
At a golf tournament, chant "swing-batabatabata-suhWING-batter!"
At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
Continuously open your briefcase or bag and say into it, "Have you got enough air in there?"
Deliberately hum songs that will remain lodged in co-workers' brains, such as "Feliz Navidad," the Archies' "Sugar," or the Mr. Rogers theme song.
Every time you see a particular coworker, shout, "So we meet again!" and laugh evilly.
Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.
Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with a can of Lysol.
Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
Go up to a someone and say, "Are you annoyed by irrelevant questions?" And then walk away very quickly
Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc:" them to your boss.
Holler random numbers while someone is counting
In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sensual massage."
Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play along to avoid the appearance of ignorance
Leave your Metallica CD in Great Uncle Ed's stereo, with the volume properly adjusted.
Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
Run through the halls of your office building or school with your arms outstretched, making airplane noises. Periodically crash into pedestrians and lose a wing. Spiral to a crash and repeat
Switch your neighbor's lawn furniture with someone else's
When in a chat room, spell everything incorrectly
While going down in an elevator scream, "AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!! WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!" for no apparent reason.
Write "X - BURIED TREASURE" in random spots on all of someone's roadmaps.
Write the surprise ending to a novel on its first page.

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Voter's Pledge for Peace declaration

(22 Jun 2006 15:18)

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When Bush visited Iraq on June 13, Iraq's President and Vice President asked him to set a timeline. The Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress refuse to set a timeline for withdrawal, saying U.S. troops need to stay to protect Iraqis until there is stability. But when the Iraqi people were asked who they trust to protect their personal safety, only 1 percent said the coalition forces!

In an op-ed piece in Tuesday's Washington Post, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffik Al-Rubaie admitted that Iraqis now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators, and said that their removal will strengthen the fledgling government by legitimizing it in the eyes of the Iraqi people.

And did you know that when we in the peace movement were successful in convincing the House and Senate to approve amendments to the emergency supplemental spending bill calling for no permanent bases in Iraq, the Republican leaders in the joint conference committee simply eliminated the provision from the final bill. Little wonder that 80 percent of Iraqis fear that the U.S. plans to have permanent bases in their country.

The rulers of our nation refuse to set a date for withdrawal and renounce permanent bases because they plan to be in Iraq not for one or two more years, but for decades to come. Their goal is not democracy in Iraq, but control of Middle Eastern oil.

Help build a bloc of U.S. voters-millions of us-who pledge to only vote for candidates who commit to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq. We ask you to commit, during the course of the summer, to getting 100 people to sign the Voter Pledge for Peace. [ link ] If we can get millions of voters to sign the pledge, we will have a chance to influence not only the upcoming Congressional elections but the 2008 presidential campaign.

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trusting again after mental/emotional abuse

(21 Jun 2006 10:58)

I read a letter today on another website. It was written by a woman I have come to know and admire in the last few months. In her letter she had written about how her first marriage was extremely abusive, she was in fear of her life.
After that, she met Jerry. He tried for so long to get her to marry him, to let him be the father of her children and have some of their own and she wrote about how she kept saying no, even though she loved him and he loved her. Then when they were going to be married, she had to have surgery and told him she couldn't marry him because she would not be able to have children and he said that's ok. He told her how much he loved her and her children. He adopted her kids and has loved her and them for 22 years. She wrote about how beautiful and happy that love has been and how much she appreciated his not giving up on her. I loved it and wrote a reply. I then talked to her and asked her permission to reprint that reply here. She said yes. We talked about how as bad as the physical abuse was, how scarring mental abuse is.

�I believed that I wasn�t worthy of being loved, by anyone, and that I deserved all that happened to me. It was this kind of life that caused me to build a wall around myself and push away anyone who wanted to be close to me, no one was having the power to hurt me again like that. �

To those who have experienced this pain, yes it is so hard to ever believe again. But you must trust that the happiness she has found can happen to you too. Mary, thank you so much for your courage, first in believing Jerry and letting him become a part of your life 22 years ago and now for sharing this with others and believing that it can help them. I know it will.

Here is what I wrote:

This is such a beautiful letter. It is so true that having real love in your life is what makes us so rich, it's so much more important than money or any things, no matter what those things may be. Without love, everything else is so empty and unbearable. The things that happened to you before were so sad. We want so badly for our lives to work out, we put so much care and thought into finding the person we think we can work together with to build that happy life and when things go so horribly wrong, it is such a blow. The person we entrust our heart to has been given our most precious possession and has the ultimate responsibility to always treat it as the precious gift it is. We do the same for theirs. If they then show repeatedly over and over by their behavior that they have no respect for our hearts it is absolutely devastating. At that point it doesn't matter how much that person says they love us, we have seen the truth. It can be so incredibly hard after that to ever believe in another person. It can make us so scared to ever believe in love again that we are afraid to let ourselves love or be loved as completely and totally as the other person wishes to love us. It can be equally hard to believe that we are deserving or that any human being is capable of real love.

It was a beautiful sign of the depth of his love for you that Jerry did not give up. Through all of your troubles and disappointments, he kept on, and I am so happy for you guys that he was able to convince you that he loved you for who you were and that you were a wonderful woman who deserved to be loved. It was an act of courage on your part after having experienced such abuse from your first husband, someone who should have been the one person you most trusted in your life, to believe enough in this new man and his love for you that you stopped telling him no and married him. 22 years of happiness together and the love you two still share everyday is so apparent. It is such a wonderful reminder to the rest of us that it is never to late to believe in love. No matter what someone else has done to us before, there is someone out there who really does get it and loves us the way we were meant to be loved.

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The hardest and maybe the most important life lesson I have learned.

(19 Jun 2006 16:10)

Courage is saying, "Maybe what I'm doing isn't working; maybe I should try something else."
Anna Lappe, O Magazine, June 2003

When we have put so much of our life effort into a relationship that no longer works, it is much easier to go on for years after, taking our anger out on each other, bitterly hating what it is doing to ourselves, blaming each other for not changing who they are, and only deepening the painful destructive wounds that cause each other to react all the more defensively, blindly raging against the agony without doing anything to stop it. Whether by active fighting or passive resistance, we will ourselves to not back down. By easier, I do not mean that one is any happier doing that�in fact it is a thousand times harder on yourself and on the other person than stopping would be, but like a sore that we cannot stop picking at, we become so involved with the battle that we lose all perspective and cannot see outside of the situation itself enough to realize how much worse we are making it. All we can feel is blind, overpowering hatred and a desire to punish the person we once loved. We see ourselves well enough to know that every moment we spend this way hurts ourselves just as much as we are hurting them and yet it is so hard to stop.

It takes courage to stop. It takes a real effort to stop and remember that no matter how much disappointment and rage has clouded your thinking, that both of you are people who have a tremendous amount of beauty in you. There are reasons you once felt such complete and total love for each other and the things you admired most in each other are still there and still worthy of respect and friendship. Hatred is a false shield against pain; it makes us think we can avoid the pain of facing reality while in reality, it increases the eventual pain. The pain of realizing a chapter in your life is over is real; but in accepting reality and letting go of the anger, we allow healing to begin. Until we do, we remain stuck in the destructive, downward spiral of hatred and depression, dragging ourselves and everyone around us down with it. We grow, we change, and we cannot force time to stand still. The secret to a good relationship is compromise and cooperation, but there must still be enough basic compatibility to make the balance of things given up and things received happy for both sides. When what it takes to create that happiness becomes too impossible for too long, when the amount of change one would have to undergo to make the other person happy is so great that the only way to do so would be for each person to have to become someone they are not and cannot ever be, we can strike out in anger for who they have become or accept that they are still a good person, just not the right person for us anymore.

At first, this is incredibly hard. But over time, the more you think about it, the more you let go and allow each other the freedom to move on with each other�s lives, the better you feel about yourself. Your self respect and your respect for each other make you a stronger, better person. You find strengths you never knew you had. And before you know it, the happiness you thought you�d never know again returns. It is the hardest thing to see when your eyes are clouded by tears.

You have to trust that one who has been in this situation before you genuinely cares about you and wishes you happiness, as impossible as that may seem to you at the moment

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an open letter to the father of my kids for Father's Day

(17 Jun 2006 20:17)

As teachers we deal with other people's kids and therefore other people's family situations on a daily basis. Over the many years both of us have been involved in education, we have seen everything from conventional and unconventional nuclear families, to the most immature vindictiveness of people who used their kids as weapons against each other, to beautiful examples of people who chose, even when their life paths took them in separate ways, to remain friends and always wish the best for each other and for their children. I feel very fortunate at this point in my life, to have such a man be the father of our children. Marie is a wonderful woman, and I see how happy you two are together. She is very good to our three kids and her little boy, Jordan loves you. You are so much happier than I have seen you in a long time. You are supportive of the path my life has taken. When you told me I looked happier than I had in years and that you were convinced this was a good thing, it meant a lot coming from you. It was a lot of fun to attend the JPL Open House as one big family. How much better is that, than if our kids felt like they had to choose which side of the family to side with? Yes, I know there are still people in their lives that want them to make that kind of choice, but I know they appreciate and are relieved that their parents are mature enough not to do that to them.
As a photographer, I did a beautiful set of pictures a few months ago. The mom, the dad, mom�s husband and dad�s wife all came with their children. These children had four wonderful people who loved them and they knew it. The true power of choosing love over hatred is so beautiful. Life is not a fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after together with the same person forever, especially after the neat and tidy first act. We grow, we change, we move on to other stages and people sometimes. None of us were blameless for our lives taking the turns they did. But we were not evil people, we were humans with human needs and imperfections and had the maturity eventually to love each other enough to know that sometimes the greatest love one can have for another is to let go and let them grow, even if it means apart from us. Instead of bitterly holding onto something that has died and is rotting, one regains a friend. And for that, I am very grateful. Happy Father�s day, Chris!

your friend, Josi

enjoy the pictures! [ link ]

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Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

(12 Jun 2006 5:19)

I woke up this morning, started reading my daily quotes email and found that several of her quotes really spoke to me today so I'm sharing several today:

�It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.�

�Live, so you do not have to look back and say: 'God, how I have wasted my life.'�

�It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.�

�People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.�

�We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.�

�The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well�

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I really want to expand on these thoughts with my own but I'm writing this as I'm dressing for work so I'll have to update this later today when I get home.
Some preliminary thoughts: I first came across her writings early in college and they were one of the influences that led me to major in psychology. Like much of life, I see things so much more clearly now at my age than I did back then. For years, I tried so hard to do what I thought was right for others that I neglected myself completely and allowed myself to be neglected and taken for granted by others. It is not selfish now but absolutely necessary to have learned to love and care for myself as this gives me the ability to have something to tap into in loving others.
If today, I am wiped out on the freeway, I can know that I have loved those in my life to the best of my ability and encouraged them to grow, to not fear life, to dare to dream and not held them back out of some selfish fears of my own. I have held the lonely, broken down hearts in my arms and comforted them, encouraged them to spread their wings and fly and escape the life sapping poisons of those whose fear of life is so great that they try to impose their own limitations on others and then tell them they must love their captors and be happy with their cages. You cannot spend years crushing every hope, dream and aspect of another person�s identity, force them to accept everything they most dislike and then demand their love, nor can you then be surprised when they can�t take it anymore. A beautiful soul will endure longer, more patiently, but it too will reach the point where death appears to be preferable to living a life that has been forced to conform to what others demand. Our choices for ourselves and others must always keep these things in mind.

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June 2006

thought for today

Summer school

loneliness

Friday fun

Voter's Pledge for Peace declaration

trusting again after mental/emotional abuse

The hardest and maybe the most important life lesson I have learned.

Einstein

an open letter to the father of my kids for Father's Day

so sad

communication

wisdom

great advice

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

giving hearts


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