I am a hothead. Sometimes it takes every bit of my energy to bite my tongue or refrain from smacking stupid people in the forehead. But I understand that you cannot impose your anger on people, no matter what you might think of them.

What I don’t understand is how our school system can allow violent students to walk the halls of a high school and chalk their behavior up to the tired old adage “kids will be kids.” If a child cannot control their behavior, then measures must be taken to teach the child coping skills and while I don’t think the school is responsible for that, I do believe it is the school’s responsibility to maintain a safe environment for children to learn in.

Parents are the most influential people in a child’s life, and when they fail to instruct their children on the appropriate ways to treat others these children pose a potential threat to children who are taught non-violence. Unfortunately, the non-violent children often pay the price. Especially in school.

When children are bullied, threatened, and humiliated for any length of time they are placed under undue stress that can lead to depression, alcohol & drug use, suicide, and acts of rage such as turning a gun on classmates and themselves. Some of our best and brightest will never get the chance to reach their full potential, and be effective leaders in our communities and society.

Zero tolerance, man. Schools have zero tolerance for drugs and weapons but not for violence. They do impose zero tolerance if a child strikes a teacher which I am in FULL AGREEMENT with, but my question is..why is a teacher’s safety more important than a student’s?

Zero tolerance should be enforced across the board and available to everyone who attends or works in a school.

That’s my soapbox.

The toys that Piper had were the Hartz Chew & Clean brand.

These are similar to other chew toys on the market that are of

nylon/polyurethane blend. If your dog enjoys these, just make

sure that there are no broken pieces, and as soon as it starts to

show wear, throw it away. If any of the pieces are ingested, it can

pose serious problems.

Our puppy Piper has been at the vet for 6 days now, and is currently

in very bad condition. She became ill about 4am last Wednesday and

couldn’t eat, and threw up a lot. She spent Thursday at the vet getting

fluids and medication for her nausea because x-rays showed there was

something stuck in her stomach and intestines. Friday afternoon she

underwent surgery and the vet removed some material (which we think

she ate in an attempt to throw up) and pieces of a nylon chew toy. The

chew toy was similar to the Nylabones, with nubs on it. I will be posting

the exact brand as soon as I verify it. There were a couple of large shards

as well as multiple smaller pieces. Today, she took a turn for the worse

and had to have a second surgery, and is now in critical condition. The

reason I am posting this is because after a little investigation, there seems

to be a problem with these types of chew toys, and many dogs have become

ill and some have died because chunks of the nylon/plastic material cuts

up their intestines. The packaging on the toys claims that they are safe, but

I caution against using them. I never would have given them to my dog if I

thought they were unsafe. I am not sure what to do next, but the public

needs to be aware that these toys are not safe.

I “Stumbled” upon this wonderful essay at www.hackyourself.org

It’s amazing how transforming the truth can be if you let

yourself hear it.

********

You can be happy. You can live the life you want to live. You can become the person you want to be.

This is what I’ve figured out so far.

Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you.

You know whose fault it is that your life isn’t perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you’ve been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn’t real. “That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we’re not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don’t spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I’m saying you should just “get over it,” by suggesting that you should let go of your past. I’m sorry for that. But life won’t hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can’t do anything about yesterday.

You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.

“I don’t have time to write.” “I can’t dance.” “I can’t talk to new people.” “I’m not attractive.”

I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves.

To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!

Yes, again, it’s simplistic of me to say that. But it’s simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

We’re excellent pattern-matchers. That’s what the human mind does — it’s a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points — we assume that just because we’ve done things a certain way in the past, we’ll always do them that way in the future. If we’ve failed before, we’ll always fail.

Screw that.

Surprise yourself. No — amaze yourself.

You don’t have to keep doing the things you hate. Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going over and saying a few words to someone you find really attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage you’re going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

Find the demon.

Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the little voice in the back of your head that’s always whispering, “You can’t.” You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don’t. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there’s something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can’t have that.”

What you don’t realize is that your demon doesn’t know anything. It’s an idiot. It’s nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it’s ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You’ll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It doesn’t care.

Exorcise yourself.

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can’t; but it’s telling you that. You can.

You don’t exist.

You just think you do.

We’re nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we’re capable of, because we’ve told ourselves what kind of people we are. You’re a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you’ve told yourself you have.

(Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.)

You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don’t like the story your life has become — tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do. Act the way that person would act.

Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person.

And you’ll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self.

You are a product of your environnent.

Most people realize this — usually, in the form of having something else to blame — but they tend to forget one important fact:

Humans are the masters of changing their environment.

What this means is that if your environment affects you, and you can affect your environment, then obviously, you can affect yourself.

• Your environment includes people. Figure out who in your life isn’t good for you, whose presence tears you down more than it builds you up, whose nearness is poison to you — and get rid of them. Get them out of your life. I don’t care if it’s your best friend, your boss, your mother, your lover — if they are harming you, if they are doing nothing but reinforce everything bad you tell yourself about yourself, then your relationship with them needs to radically alter or it needs to end.
• Your environment includes goals. Don’t set yourself pie-in-the-sky impossible goals and then beat yourself up over not achieving them — set yourself goals that will be good for you, not a source of pain. Attainable goals. Set them and meet them. Don’t tell yourself you can’t — that’s the old story, that story you used to tell yourself about what a poor sad victim you were and how you could never change anything about your life. You can meet your goals. This is the new story.Trying to clean your house? Good for you — a clean house can really affect your state of mind for the better. But don’t say “Today I’m going to clean the entire house from top to bottom,” when you don’t have the time and energy to — don’t set yourself up for failure; don’t feed the demon. Just say, “Today I’m going to wash all the dishes and clean off the kitchen counter.” And do it.Don’t tell yourself, “This month I’m going to write that novel.” Tell yourself, “Today I’m going to write five pages.” And do it. Take your dreams and break them down into small pieces and you’ll have them in your hands before you know it.And you’ll find, as you start meeting your goals, that you like it. That it feels good, makes you feel confident and capable. You’ll develop a hunger for it.
• Your environment includes yourself — your physical presence. Do what you know you need to do — treat yourself better. Sleep, eat right, exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to stop staying out late at night now and then, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a candy bar, it doesn’t mean you have to stop sitting around watching television — it just means start doing the things that are good for you as well as the things that are bad for you, every so often. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; you don’t have to devote your life to being a health nut. Just try eating more fruits and vegetables, the occasional vegetarian meal; go for walks in the park on the weekends. You’ll feel better and be more alert if you’re a little healthier, and once you start feeling a little better, you’ll start wanting the things that make you feel better. You’ll see.
• Your environment includes your appearance. If you’re not happy with yourself, if you’re angry with the person in the mirror, it can honestly help to literally change who you see when you look in the mirror. Try a different hairstyle, new glasses, new jewelry, new clothes. It doesn’t have to be expensive — there’s a whole universe full of possible You’s waiting to be found in thrift stores, if need be. If you’re deciding to become the person you want to be, then decide what that person is going to look like. Dress the part. It’s not shallow, it’s not about vanity, it’s about self-transformation — even the most primitive tribes understand the value of costumes and masks for ritual, for change, for becoming someone else.

You are not an object. You are a system. Like with any system, if you change the inputs — change what goes into it — you’ll change what comes out.

Despite everything I’ve just said:

Self-examination can be paralysis.

Don’t “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It’s a Tao thing.

It’s the paradox at the center of all this — remember that, “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not a question the person you want to be would ask.

If I can leave you with just one thought, it’s this:

Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy.

Just be happy.

I think the internet has been around long enough that people

would not take everything they read on a website or email for

truth. I went in to my favorite gas station today for a cappucino,

and on the counter there was an email printed off of the internet

and taped down with the header…PLZ READ. It is the still circulating

email about Starbucks not supporting our soldiers yada yada. I had

to wonder, didn’t anyone take the time to research this and find out

if it was true. I don’t generally believe these types of things, but if I

think there might be a grain of truth in it, I go to snopes.com and check

it out. There are a couple of good websites that have researched these

rumors and will tell you if they are true or not. It worries me that people

will so blindly believe everything they hear or read. Has this blindness

encouraged leaders to dismiss us as intelligent citizens? Are our children

going to grow up without independent thought? Much to ponder for sure.

First, I have to find a new favorite gas station.

One thing I forgot to include in my blog on cell phone

etiquette was answering your cell phone while in class. I

guess the reason I skipped this one is because it is so very

wrong that surely no one would ever do it. Wrong. I witnessed

this stupidity myself. A girl that sits next to me in one of my

literature classes answered her phone to tell the caller that she

was in class. Are you kidding me? What makes this worse is that

she had just asked the professor something and he was in the

middle of an explanation. She ducked behind the girl in front of

her and had her little conversation, and didn’t give a second thought

to the situation. Can I just say.. what an idiot. Just because a phone

rings does NOT mean it has to be answered. Come on. Let’s use a little

better judgment on appropriate times to talk on cell phones.

The conversation in my Nonfiction class today was truth. It

was of course directed at the genre of nonfiction and where the

lines of truth and the writer’s perspective get blurred, but it

made me ponder my own personal truths and their origins. I

haven’t made up my mind yet. Is it truth when it is ingrained so

deeply into your being that you cannot accept another explanation?

Does something become truth because there are facts to back it

up, and if there are no facts, can it ever be a truth? I believe there

is no universal truth. Even when someone is reporting the facts, they

are swayed by their perspective. When someone is taking a picture,

there are images left out of the picture, and those again depend on the

person behind the camera. How do I define truth? And if I do, do I

have to defend it as well? Is it enough to say, “this is my truth”?

This really is going to change the way I view the news, stories that people

relate to me that I have not been witness to, and even my own judgments

on situations that I find myself in. And all this time I thought the

truth would set me free. Sure.

While sitting in the doctor’s office the other day, I was lucky enough to hear a woman’s

cell phone conversation. Yes, I was privy to the going’s on in her personal life and

how deeply she was affected by her boyfriend’s lack of maturity that caused him to kiss

another girl in a bar. Lack of maturity. I’m thinking more along the lines of respect.

Anyway, I cannot believe that people do this. It is rude. It is disruptive. It is space rape.

I hate that people do not practice cell phone etiquette. I think I might start a page about

cell phone conversations that I hear every day and see how many I rack up by this time

next year. Come on Margaret, go out into the hallway and tell Donna how you will get

even with this cheating loser.

I think cell phones are great, and in some cases they are a necessity. I also think there

is a responsibility that comes with them. It is a gentle mix of manners and common

sense. Turn your phone off before entering buildings. Especially libraries and funeral

homes. Have intimate conversations in private. Do not talk on the phone while you

order food at the drive-thru, do your banking, or pay for groceries at Kroger. Turn

down your obnoxious ring tone. It is not really music. Or even enjoyable. Lastly, do not

yell in to the phone when you cannot hear the person on the other end. This will not

help you hear him or her better. It makes you look ridiculous.

While “Stumbling” the other day, I came across a picture taken by

someone I knew many years ago who has become a photographer.

I looked up his website and checked out his work which was pretty

good really. There were also a few pictures of people who I called

friends about 25 years ago. Ironically, this happened the week of

my 43rd birthday, so I took it as a sign from the universe that it was

time for some reflection. I have to say, it was slightly painful, and a

little absurd, but I am so glad I jumped right in there and got shit all

over my boots, because I learned valuable things about myself. It

also showed me how fortunate I am to share my life with amazing

friends who love and inspire me. I know it sounds a little “Lifetime”

but without the people who make up my world, I believe my life

experiences would be bland and limited and sad. The friends I picked

as a teenager were not the inspirational type. They weren’t even the

sober type most of the time. Some of them were downright rotten. Of

course, I was not the same person back then. As a matter of fact, I was

a major asshole until my late 20s, so I guess that’s just the way things go.

All of that is best left where it is…in the far corners of an aging memory.

I think it is awesome that our mind knows as we grow older we don’t

want to remember our days of assholishness, and gently obscures those

memories so that we can focus on better things.  I say, even if I am only

focusing on a piece of birthday cake, I have made progress.

I just watched Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” I am disgusted.

Yes, I know everyone hates him, he hates America, yada

yada. But the fact is that other countries have national

health care and it works very well, and it is quality care.

What the hell is wrong with America? It makes me sad

and angry to think that people in America suffer needlessly

because they have no insurance. I am more and more

convinced that this country is far from the country that

it was supposed to be. Warmongering, greed, corruption,

and disregard for human life are the center stones of our

society. I realize there is no perfect government, but

come on, people dying because their HMO won’t let them

be tested for certain things? I wonder what would happen

if everyone got up one day and realized that we live in a free

country and decided to picket, speak out, and stand against

all the things that are wrong in this country. I guess it will

never happen because we have become convinced that our

country allows anyone to get ahead if they just work hard

enough. It’s not true. That is not the way it works. There are

many examples of people working everyday towards a dream

and not being able to achieve it because of some loophole. We

have been duped. It is overwhelming to try and cut through the

crap to find the truth, and I guess that is why we don’t. It will

take a major uprising to change things. Pffftt..not in my lifetime.