Lots Of Random Thoughts

Here are some random thoughts for your Thursday.

Things around my house are slowly getting around to normal.  For those of you who know me personally, sorry I went off the deep end lately.  I need to remember the number one rule of swimming: if you are drowning, stop flailing.

In my house, Jesus Christ is savior.  He does however, have a new assistant: Effexor.  Hopefully, my insurance will pay for it (right now, they are balking).

Lintilla is officially back to her job today.  This is her first day doing actual patient care, after 3 months of being away from it.  She promised me she’d take it easy.

Jesus’ other assistant is snow.  My kids were so excited to be out of school yesterday, they got along the entire day.

Lost in my own drama is the incredible story of my friend Mark Mills.  If you haven’t yet, go to Ginger’s site and read it.  When it comes to prayer, God may not be an ATM, maybe we can’t name it and claim it, but sometimes, I think, He uses prayer (and answers them) to remind us of His awesome power, if we will only bend our knees to Him.

You may not like Michael Medved, but this post is very wise.

Note to Tennessee liberals: YOU are supposed to be the “intelligent” ones.  Why do you allow your “lessors” to play you like a cheap violinevery presidential election cycle?  Lots and lots of people who didn’t know Obama’s middle name do now, because of your very vocal outrage.  It doesn’t matter if you are “right”, and that this is a dirty trick.  You guys better get out in front of the “Obama is in league with or will be soft on Islamists” meme, or you will lose.  I don’t care how outraged you are.

Update - Read this article  for context.

My ambition overcame my phobia last week.  I actually picked up the phone, dialed a number, and after a few days of phone tag, talked with a producer at NPR about an Ugly Betty story they are doing.  (No, they aren’t featuring ME, although they should - my task is to find fans in the LA area for them to interview).  It was during this conversation that I realised I have an “NPR” voice.  I don’t use it very often, but it’s funny how I have many different “voices” I can pull out like tools from a toolbox.

Can’t the Preds play defense anymore?

Finally…

I find it weird that our sexual attractions age with us.  Yesterday, while watching some commercial for this or that wonder-drug, one of the smiling faces was a partially white haired, fifty-something woman.  And it shocked me when the thought popped into my head:  “She’s pretty hot!”  Later, the news did a story on the MTSU poll, and it showed the students conducting the poll. 

Now, in my world, “college girls” and “girls who are pleasing to look at” were synonymous.  But yesterday, I looked at the young ladies and saw little girls.  To be attracted to them would make me feel like a dirty old man.  What the heck is happening to my brain?

That’s all I’ve got right now.

Learning To Love Annie

Being insane, I may be the only parent in the world who does this, but I doubt it.  Since my children have been little, say,  preschool age, I have watched them with their opposite-sex classmates, and play matchmaking games in my head.  I look at little Bobby, and try to picture him as Trillian’s husband one day.  Or little Susie, imagining a sweet courtship with Zaphod.

I have my favorites, always have.  There is one girl at church, we’ll call her Alexis, who is the most well-behaved, intelligent little girl I’ve ever seen.  And, when I’m in one of my insane moods, I’ll picture the grown-up version of Alexis joining our family.  It gives me the warm fuzzies.

But I know love, and I know young men and women.  My compulsive, must-be-organized, order-needing son will one day find the love of his life in a free spirit.  It’s just how things are. 

My matrimonial dreams for my progeny are shattered, because in order to play this mind game with myself, I have to think of the kids at hand.  And there’s only one female free spirit I can think of within my kids’ circle of friends.

And, I don’t like her very much.

Even though she annoys me greatly, Zaphod hates her with the kind of passion that’s usually reserved for the Yankees.  Let me explain how much Zaphod and Annie hate one another.  Annie is Trillian’s best friend from school, and whenever she calls the house, she’ll ask to speak to Zaphod, just so she can yell “I hate you!” and hang up the phone.  My son is always plotting a scheme to “get” her on the playground or in the hallway.  One of his passwords is “IHateAnnie” .  He spares no opportunity to tell me how horrible she is, and how much he hates her.

And most discerning adults know this is 10 year old flirting.

So, I have this picture in my head that one day, when the hormones are right, Zaphod will fall for her.  This scares me to death.  I’d much rather him go for the well-behaved church girl Alexis, who would help him keep a Martha Stewart, picture-perfect home.  But I know that when the time comes, he will fall for a girl more like Annie. 

And she is quite a handful, without any hormones interjected into the situation.  I’ve been playing this mental exercise in my head, just so I’ll be ready when Zaphod brings home - if not Annie - some other tattoed and pierced, conventions-breaking girl.  I’ve been trying to learn to love Annie.

She gets on my nerves to no end, so it is taking a lot of practice.  We are good friends with her parents, so we see a lot of each other.  I try to slow her down long enough to talk to her, to see what makes her tick.  I’m the free-spirit in our family, so I’m not starting from scratch.  And, with all the talk about love being a choice and an active verb, I am trying my best to learn to love Annie.  All I can say is, thank God I’ve got 10 or more years to work on this.

Now, I know that Zaphod will not one day marry Annie, specifically, but I have no doubt it will be a girl of her type.  So, if I could learn to love a crazy, never-stop, damn the rules girl now, maybe I could be more welcoming when the real time comes.

This end the ride through my very strange thought processes.  Please stay inside the cars until they come to a complete stop.

Told you I’m  insane.

Technology And Getting Older

The way things are configured into my house right now, my laptop is right next to Trillian’s AeroGarden she got for Christmas.  I gotta tell ya, I was skeptical at first - I figured this might be a ripoff on a level just short of sea monkeys.  Aeroroponics?  It just didn’t sound right.

I should have known better, having been to The Land at Disney World - this is the exact same technology, on a smaller scale.  It’s not a cheap little device.  Looking at the sprouts already coming up, it’s quite a decent machine.  The lights are bright, brighter than the normal lights in the room!  They stay on for 16 hours, then let the plants rest for 8.  We are growing herbs in it right now - once they are ready for harvesting, we can harvest for 4 to 6 months!  Trillian’s already told me she’s going to charge me 5 cents for every sprig.

Which reminds me: many folks, even the most surprising people, keep saying we could make a lot of money growing and harvesting something else.  Shame, shame.  

Considering the trouble it takes to grow herbs in TN, I would highly suggest one for Aunt B.  Here’s a photo of the thing.

Where was I?   Oh, yeah, my laptop is next to it.

The Aerogarden makes me want to go pee.  Talk about drip,drip,drip… It constantly cycles water through (this IS areo/hydroponics).  Here it sits next to me, mocking me, saying, “How long can you hold it, boy?  You think you could type one more line?  You know you have to go…”

OK, I’m back.  Whew.

Anyway, I know I’m getting older, because I’ve decided that next year I want one of those weather stations the old men have.  I have an overwhelming desire to know what the temperature and humidity is right outside my house.  What I REALLY want, I don’t think they make yet, at least for consumers.  I’d like a set of instruments that wirelessly connects to your home network, so you can just view all the readings on your computer.

Before you have to go pee, that is.

 Anyway, there was a beautiful fog rising in the valley this morning.

Would Jesus Be An Enabler?

Josh Tinley wrote a great post.  So great, I tried to write a comment, and ended up with something so long I felt it would best be its own post.  You see, we’ve been talking a lot at MCB and other places about extending Christian mercy to those who are suffering, even those who are in the situations they are in due to unwise decisions.  I think the conversation is specifically about certain elements of the homeless population.

We have actually discussed this in Sunday School before, without coming to any kind of consensus:

As followers of Christ, what do we do when we suspect someone receiving our aid is gaming the system, or at the very least, taking advantage?  I know what common sense says, but what does Christ say?  Are we supposed to care if we strongly suspect we are, basically, giving a drunk a drink?  Do we even give any consideration to the thought that we’re possibly doing more harm than good, that we’re enabling a person in a way that will keep them in misery, instead of getting them out of it?

I ask, because I struggle with this.

I have no problem extending mercy to even to criminals who have committed what could be awful crimes; I’ve prayed with such men many times before, and made many friends behind prison walls.  Same goes for just about any situation a person gets himself into.  There but for the grace of God go I.

Yet, I have this blind spot about people who I know, or very strongly suspect, COULD work, but do not. 

The backdrop to this is that I come from pretty humble beginnings.  Everything I say has the backdrop behind it of where I come from, where I am now, and the concepts that got me from there to here.

My father never really preached religion to his three sons; he just sent us to church and let us get our religion by osmosis.  But, he preached nonetheless.

The only thing my blue collar father ever preached about, what he did drill into me was sermon after sermon on the value of work.  He would preach, “If you don’t have a job, and aren’t spending every waking moment looking for a job, you have shamed your name.”  Well, he didn’t say it like THAT, but I got the meaning loud and clear.

He believed that if you have a condition that keeps you from working, do everything possible to alleviate that condition - make it your number one priority - so you can WORK.  The work is the most important thing a man can do. Not the getting paid part - working itself.   Always work, and if you can’t, make a job of looking for work.

He taught me not to turn turn my nose up at ANY job, whether I found it beneath me or not, whether it could support me or not - the act of working was more important than the pay.  He taught me that taking a menial job, and outworking everyone, is the way to having a job that DOES support you and your family.  Other rules include never being late, that sick time is NOT “Not Feeling Well” time, that volunteering for the hardest tasks will get you ahead.  No matter what you do, be the best there is at that job, outwork EVERYONE, and prosperity will follow.  Approach the world of work with the attitude that you have something to prove, because you do. 

And my life has taught me that he was right.

I always have this voice in the back of my head telling me that a well spoken person in an area with 4% unemployment should be working.  He just should, period.   I can see my dad, shaking his head. And I just can’t shake that voice.

So, I have to square this teaching with my Christian beliefs. 

And, let me tell you, it’s hard.  Paul had some things to say about the slothful, and Jesus used them as a “bad example”, but we are not told if Jesus was ever taken advantage of, and if so, what he did about it.  Something tells me that he would have helped.  His prodigal son parable makes me think that; although I wonder: the son had given up “riotous living” - Jesus never makes it clear that the father did not go to the faraway country and help the son financially while he was still living in a way that would just mean his help was wasted.  So, I don’t know.

I am torn.  You can’t just throw away 20 years of paternal teaching - it kind of gets under your skin.  And it has served me well.  So, sometimes, I guess, this Christian has what appears to be an unmerciful attitude.  I’m not proud of it - but now you know why.

I guess all I can do is pray about it.

Me=Idiot

This post will self-destruct in 1 day.  I can’t chance Lintilla seeing it, but I need your help.  I finally put my expensive SLR camera to good use and took some really neat portraits of the kids, made them black and white to give them that “arsty” feel, and had them blown up.

Of course, I blew them up to a size nobody has a frame for.  Michael’s can make them, but obviously not before Christmas.

Anybody know a place that sells matted frames for 12×18 photos? Anybody that has a lot of stuff in stock?

Or, did I blow it?

It’s As Real As It Is Bizarre

Here’s how you know your conflict-averse personality has drifted into unhealthy territory:

If I am listening to the radio, say, sports talk, and the conversation turns even the slightest bit argumentative, I have an overwhelming impulse to turn the radio off.  Not just change the channel, turn the radio totally off.  As if my soul would be sullied by hearing sound waves from the same speakers that were emitting even the most modest strife moments before. 

The more I think about it, the more I have to admit that this probably isn’t normal.

The sad thing is, there are people who sense this aversion to conflict in me and take advantage.  The peacemakers may be blessed, but they also have to pay more at the auto repair shop.

Signature Required

Ugh.  This is so frustrating.  I’ve been so looking forward to the delivery of my new cell phones and broadband card.

I look at the tracking on FedEX’s site, and it says, basically, that delivery failed because a signature was required, and I wasn’t home.  Dang it!

How is it that when I order from Omaha Steaks, they’ll leave over $200 worth of meat on my porch, but they won’t leave a $100 cell phone order?

(Oh, and if you’re wandering around my neighborhood on meat delivery day, and you try to take my meat, I’ll throw my old cell phone at you!)

So That’s Why

*FRANK DISCUSSION ALERT* 

I’ve always known I was different.  From a very young age, I was into things that my brothers and friends were not.  I was definitely a “mama’s boy”.  I was my dad’s “weird one”.  Even in preschool, it seemed like I was addicted to melodrama, and flamboyance, and over-the-top, flowery language.  I was manic, as well.

No, this isn’t a “coming out” post.

In fact, I was “different” from the boys who grew up to be gay, too.  I was totally clueless in matters of dress, and socially inept, and I loved toy cars, toy guns, and playing sports.  When puberty hit, I loved girls, in fact you could say I was girl-crazy.  I had an attraction to females that was almost Clintonesque, and it continues to this day.  It is only through the grace of God that this hasn’t gotten me into trouble.

So, I was pretty much just plain different from everybody.  I had no explanation for this, I just accepted that I was “weird”.  Then, when I was 16 or 17, I was playing backyard football when I collided with my brother, and he fell on top of my upraised head, snapping my neck back.

This caused the most intense, prolonged pain I have ever felt in my life.  We found out later at the emergency room that I had bruised my spinal cord.  I was sent to my doctor for follow up visits.  The x-rays we took that day revealed something I had never known.  Most of you reading this have little, tiny bones in your neck, wrists, and ankles.  I do not - they are fused together, and it has been that way since birth.  It is a miracle that I survived the football mishap; my neck doesn’t bend like yours, and is much more easily broken.

We found other weird things, like the fact that one of my thumbs has no working nerves in it, causing it to have no muscle at all.  It’s a small thing, but once you know it’s there, you become self-conscious about it.  My ankles and wrists can go through periods of intense pain, if I hit or turn them wrong.  Then, there’s that other stuff. 

We’ll get to that in a minute.

I just assumed that all of this was just additional weirdness added to the weirdness of my behavior, likes, and dislikes.  Then, one day, my wife and I were in the waiting room of an auto repair shop, and came across an article about DES, and how they were just finding out that it affected sons as well as daughters.  First, a little background:

DES (diethylstilbestrol) was the first synthetic estrogen to be created (1938).  Years later, Sir E. Charles Dodds was knighted for his accomplishment. Never patented, DES was marketed using hundreds of brand names in the mistaken belief it prevented miscarriages and premature deliveries.

DES was prescribed between 1938 and 1971 (but not limited to those years). It was considered the standard of care for problem pregnancies from the late 1940s well into the 1960s in the U.S. and was widely prescribed during that time. DES was sometimes even included in prenatal vitamins so there are many individuals who were not actually prescribed DES but were exposed to it anyway.

Anyway, what got our attention was the description of symptoms of “DES Sons”.  They were almost exactly a match for “that other stuff”.  Go here to read them - I have almost all of them (except the microphallus one - and I ain’t just sayin’ that - my wife has no complaints)

Then, there is this.  Or, as Wikipedia descibes it:

Diethylstilbestrol can also cause feminisation of the male foetus, as DES undergoes metabolic epoxidation, and the epoxide product has affinity towards the estrogen receptors.

Now, Rachel can explain what all the big words mean, but I get the gist, and in reading that I finally had some answers. Especially after I talked to my mother, and found out that yes, indeed she was given “something” (she didn’t remember what) to prevent miscarriage when she was pregnant with me.

The science is not decided on this yet, but I am.  Half the time, I “relate” in a traditionally male manner, the other half, in a more female manner.  I can “tennis” talk.  I seem to have a more “caring and nurturing” nature than most men.  You can even get me excited about shopping for clothes, if you catch me on the right day.  I weep at Pampers commercials.  Yet, I’m capable of male “parallel play”.  I’ve had my share of conversations with women’s chests.  I like hitting things.  I like football.

When I was a teen, about 50% of my, ahem, “fantasies”, were purely romantic in nature, instead of sexual.  It didn’t know how weird this was until I got older and learned what is “normal”.  I am an incurable romantic, though.

It’s almost as if I had an equilibrium of estrogen and testosterone, don’t you think?

So anyway - that’s why, to many females, including my wife, I’m like “the gay friend” who is still a heterosexual.  I once had a female workout partner who told her husband he didn’t have to worry about her working out with me, because I “wasn’t like other men”.  This actually hurt my feelings a little, although I knew what she meant.  It’s interesting, and I’m honored to be looked at in that way.  It sucked when I was single, though.

I hope my mother never, ever feels guilty for my “birth defects”.  I have lived an incredible life, and I’ve had many friendships many males cannot have because they do not “speak female”.  After many years, I now accept and embrace my own weirdness.

Such A Tease

I know, I know.  In this thread at MCB, I promised a post about what it’s like being a male DES baby.  And, I swear I will, hopefully today.  But there are two factors that are keeping me from completing that right now:

1) Today culminates the craziest two weeks in my professional history.  We’re finishing up a prototype of an application others said couldn’t be done in the time we were given, and later this morning,  I take the 3rd and final exam in my quest to become a Microsoft Certified Application Developer.  It’s by far the hardest exam of the three, so I have to study with what time I have left.

2) I want to do a little more research.  I can tell you the things about me that are “different”, and I can tell you why I think they were caused by DES injections while my mother was pregnant with me, but for the most part, I’d just be spouting off about stuff I don’t know much about, as usual. :) 

So, I swear it’ll be soon, but you’ll have to wait just a little longer to hear about fused bones, infertility, being touchy-feely and heterosexual at the same time, and other oddities.

And of course, tonight I have my usual busy Thursdays (live blogging Ugly Betty, then putting up a full recap before the episode finishes airing in the West).  It’s kind of crazy, but worth it.

My exam is at 10:30.  After I pass , and my co-worker passes hers at 1:00, we’re going to “have a meeting” in “Building 5″.  For those of you who don’t know me, the corporate campus where I work has 4 buildings.  “Building 5″ is the Outback Steakhouse down the street.  The “conference room” is the bar.

The Lord Giveth…

This is weird, and it’s neat at the same time.

Aside from a little white-ness, I have the exact same hair I had at 17.  It’s my saving grace.  In the locker room, men make little self comparisons (no ladies, believe it or not we don’t make that comparison - you know the one.  Men just don’t roll that way).  Back on topic:  I see men in their 30’s who still have bodies like they did in their 20’s.  I see men older than me, who, based on wardrobe, are far richer than I.

But, I do not fret.  I have more hair on the top of my head than they do.  All of them, younger and older.  I giggle at the men who panic in the face of a receding hairline, and shave their heads, like PeeWee Herman: “I meant to do that!” 

In my mind, this makes everything even.

Now, the bad part.  God, in his infinite wisdom, decided that if He was going to bless me with a lifelong head full of hair, there would be a price to pay.

I also have skin like I was 17.  I’m 43 years old.  My mother told me, when I was in my early 20’s and my skin still hadn’t cleared up, “Don’t worry, it’ll clear up by the time you’re 30″. 

But, at this point in my life, it’s cool.  I’m not so self-conscious about it anymore.   If I had to choose between having a headful of hair and adolescent skin or being bald and having clear skin, it’s not even a contest.

I’m beginning to think that hair is tied to the self worth of men the way breasts are to women.  But then again, I could be wrong.  Most seem obsessed with being so skinny they no longer have breasts, which IMHO is a shame.  But maybe “skininess” is the physical characteristic women tie to self worth, as men do hair.

And in both genders, the tying of the biological to self worth is probably a societal construct.  I’ve had many women tell me that, although they’d never say so publicly, bald (not shaved) heads are turnoffs.  And men aren’t stupid, we pick up on this. 

The same probably goes for the women/weight connection.  Or the women/breast connection.  Men cannot help what they are attracted to, and women pick up on this.  But, I need to give it more thought.

I just think it’s weird that the two things I had always thought would change the most drastically with my body since adolescence never happened (at least not yet).