Diphenhydramine HCI

Three things:

1. I find it disturbing (or perhaps just shocking as all new, unexpected, unsought-for knowledge is) that you can buy meds on Amazon.com.

2. I find it disturbing that it was not easy to find information about this drug in particular.

3. I find it odd that most of the "hits" I could find referred to this as merely "the active ingredient in Benadryl."

(Note that "insomnia" is not checked off as a symptom that the pink pill will tackle. The sleeping-labeled pills are blue. They are the same size, small. It only grows if you have to add Tylenol. Why is Tylenol so big?)

So, they sell this as a sleep aid, and that's why I have it around.

So, does this mean that if you have allergies that you are more prone to being awake, or does this mean that if you take Benadryl for your allergies and expect to drive, go to work, function, etc. that you are falling for a bad pharmaceutical joke?

A page selling something called Sonador says that this concoction can also be used to treat "certain forms of parkinsonism, motion sickness and certain allergic conjuntivities."

It reduces the time to fall a sleep [sic] and gives more depth to your sleep. Sure, that explains why when I take it I wake up four times a night. I guess falling back to sleep seems easier, but this stuff's definitely a dehyrant.

Is it because ". . .side effects from diphenhydramine are not common," that they don't list them on my OTC sleeping potion? Are my symptoms of these severe enough or not going away enough that I should tell my doctor: dry mouth, nose and throat, drowsiness, upset stomach, chest congestion, headache?

I have headaches all the time, regardless. My sinuses are dry as scabs. These things are normal for winter, for people who can't drink enough water because it is tiresome and time-consuming.

PS - How long is "not go away" for drowsiness? Twelve hours?

Tomato Trifecta

Gosh, one sure sees funny things on the ground in Northeast.

This is the 100-block of South Elmwood Avenue.

My best guess, as none of the jars are busted or seem to have been opened, is that someone dropped their groceries in the snow, the jars sank, and the tomato-lover never looked back.

I can't imagine being so cold and cranky that I couldn't dig up my name-brand salsa and such, so what was this person going through?

No, I did not pick them up (ie: steal or clean litter). Another one of those small, urban moral dilemmas.

Cafe v. Harvey

While the Harvey House food court/diner dealy in the southeastern nook of Union Station is much-celebrated and usually crowded at lunch time, around 9:30 in the morning, there are hardly any people there, and personally, I'll miss the sun-blasted singular coffee shop that apparently can't compete.

I love that the post office is at Union Station, as it's always nice to come into a grand space for a mundane task, but it's pretty much you and the dust motes during the week. And bad news like "you can't get coffee at Java Time anymore." No chairs for you!

Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf

Can you tell I have one of those "authors' birthdays" calendars from Half-Price Books sitting in front of me much of the time? This is the first week I looked at that fine print, though. Coincidence.

1882 was the year for Mrs. Woolf, a Modernist and so little like Mrs. Wharton. What a difference 20 years makes. She was brilliant but also what we would call bi-polar today, and she ended up dying by her own hand (a river's, really, but it was intentional). One wonders what a difference Paxil/Lithium/Prozac, etc. would have made.

W. Somerset Maugham was born today, too, in 1874, but I know nothing of him or his works. How this is possible with one of those "English degrees" is beyond me.

I'm just grateful I live in a time when I do have that room of my own. Time, however, is till a missing piece.

Happy Birthday, Edith Wharton

She was born in 1862. Perhaps you know of my addiction to her works. She was a rich woman who was not afraid to venture into the world of literature when such a thing was frowned upon by members of her society. She got to spend her formative years in Europe, where her New York family retreated after the Civil War had deflated the U.S. dollar.

Ah, to be corsetted and sipping tea at 4 each afternoon, told not to associate with "people who write," spend summers in Newport and "seasons" everywhere, to later have the chance to be in Europe often again, motoring around with a best friend such as Henry James.

You can read about what she wrote yourself, but I'll just point out that she was named a Chevalier of the (French) Legion of Honor in 1916 for all her work with World War I refugees in hospitals and hostels (the latter of which she founded).

I am particularly inspired by the way she could take her artistic connections and operate workrooms for unemployed French women, hold concerts for out-of-work musicians, and edit a fund raising collection "The Book of the Homeless" to put her money and privilege where her mouth was.

No mere "chronicler of society" was she, though I relish the lovely details of the lifestyles she provides access to, over 100 years later, the drawing rooms and domestic conversations that were behind those "robber barons" you may have been reminded about, if you watched Sen. Webb's response to President Bush's seventh State of the Union address.

After that generation's Great War, she remained in her beloved France until she died, returning only once, in 1923, to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University.

I have a bit of a crush/role model thing going, as you can see.

(Chers Famille et mes Amis, oui, c'est vrai, we have inklings abroad. And if you can locate a cheap one, please send me a copy of "The Decoration of Houses," which she co-authored as her first book with an architect named Codman and which I somehow - I don't know - had chucked out with other "college books I no longer care about.")

And, even though she wrecked my GPA with her cursed "pass/fail" experiment, thank you again to Dr. Catherine Parke for veering off the published course content as well, from Woolf and Stein to Wharton and Cather.

Vaporize me!

When I was a kid, a "vaporizor" was the thing you got to have in your room if you were sick. Steam is fun.

Apparently, there's one for alcohol, too. It turns liquor into pure misty alcohol that you can inhale (at the rate of a shot per hour). It goes straight to your brain, doesn't fill you up and may bypass hangovers as well.

I'm inclined to believe the claim that talk-of-ban leads to increased sales - the first thing I thought when I read that Missouri is looking to follow the lead of Illinois, etc. to make sure no one can buy this kind of vaporizer machine, was

Hey, I need one of those!

I wonder if vaporizer stock is in any legislator's portfolio. The president of Spirit Partners said that within a few days of a proposed Kentucky ban, he sold 200 machines. At $300 to $3,000 a pop, that's no mean profit.

I wonder what else you can use them for? This seems to be behind the scenes, as well. What if you put an egg in it, for example? What about lighter fluid?

Now that I've seen them, they seem kind of dorky-phallic and I'd be embarassed to have one around, even if it was il/legal.

I hate bans, you know. Especially since the U.K. doesn't fear them as much as our Big Brothers do over here.

Okay, brain damage is nothing to sneer at. . .but alcohol already is known to do that. So, next time I'm in England, I just might try it out. Then go to an O2 bar and compensate with yet another silly trendy device.

Missouri Sen. Luann Ridgeway (R-Smithville) is the one sponsoring a bill that would ban the possession or use of alcohol vaporizers.

She called the devices "potentially deadly" to teenagers. . . .

Over the past two years, Nolte's bills proposing a statewide ban have failed to gain traction.

Maybe it's because they're all on the AWOL payroll, or, they're thinking what I can't help conjure, which is just because teenagers have bad judgment doesn't mean I can't use mine.

Hopeful thing

Humans operate at a lower tempurature than avians. Both are bipeds, according to Pangloss, though one distinctly featherless.

The virus now circulating in birds does not attach easily to cells inside human noses or throats.

Cause for minor celebration?

Sunny-cat sunny

The best kind of day, especially if you can spend it indoors behind south-facing windows.

For those of you who had to go outdoors today, for work or food or because you have no place else to go, rescued cats everywhere are expressing their empathy.

Temporary tundra

I had to go to a park to take photos today. It's sunny again, after all, and nothing is falling (from the sky).

It would be funny to say that I was looking at this:
and that then I was looking at this:
but it didn't happen that way.

The ice du jour is unique to my experience for its durability and meanness. Never before have I almost broken into tears while trying to scrape my car.

Falling was fine, as I'm not over 40 or brittle as frozen grass. I was expecting it to happen. I was standing still. I am wearing boots. It didn't matter. I landed flat on my back. My hat popped off, so I'm expecting some kind of pain tomorrow to emerge. Maybe I won't be able to move at all. It already hurts, of course.

My hands are all invisibly bruised from bashing car ice, too.

Wonderful World of Woodland Avenue

Now that the 27th Street Bridge over the Paseo is open again and I have a car with a functioning catalytic converter, I am once again enjoying the option of occasionally taking the very hilly Woodland Avenue between 27th Street and Independence Avenue.

These photos are from the last couple of weeks along a stretch of Woodland where a few people decorate and barricade their homes. For the most part, though, it includes empty lots where trash gets dumped.

This is some trash around 26th and Woodland.
This is a view east on 25th from Woodland. Notice the sidewalks and how they seem to call out to litter. [The scene also reminds me of some of the best Missouri hiking days I ever had (with people I love).]
This is a smashed up car full of trash that was on the 2500-block of Woodland up until today. Notice the homes in the background, which were "rennovated" during 2005.
This is a house on the next block; this trailer of yellow bags may become illegal dumping someday, but has been in situ since at least mid-December. I wonder if the truck runs.
This is a view west down 24th (I think). The bus is coming. The house on the south is abandoned.
This is the "newer" trash pile on the east side of the street, on the same block. It's as if someone was evicted from a house that hasn't been there for decades. On a related note, the stairs to these ghost homes are still visible. The Urban Coeur developers tore the ones out on Cherry to built new housing. For some reason, that makes me sad. I didn't even know about this development of theirs. They seem to be following me.
Proceeding on, when you get to 22nd Street, you can look west and see the Vine Street Lofts, looming out of the urban grassland. Downtown is peeking out behind and keeping its distance.
On the southwest corner, there is a house on that was occupied back in 2004. It's been boarded up for most of 2005, but now, the plywood is off the front door and maybe the resident is back? The light on the outside is on, anyway.
Looking to the east and north shows Lincoln College Preparatory High School up on the hill.
Then, after 18th & Vine's eastern edge, Parade Park homes, Parade Park, Truman Road with Weld Wheels, there's 12th Street and public housing on both sides.
Across 12th, things get a little denser and commerical. There's Woodland Elementary School* at Ninth (which the School District is looking at closing), then Century Towers* (apartments and city offices in the former osteopathic hospital), a 7-Eleven and the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences*. After Della Lamb Community Services*, Woodland ends by touching yet another public housing development (Riverview Gardens) and Maple and Kessler/Cliff Drive parks*.

*(Not shown; aren't you tired of photos?)

For some reason, someday far into the future, when (if) this area is "blessed" by the urban renewal fairy and full of new in-fill housing, marketed for its proximity to downtown and Highway 71, I'll miss all the empty spaces and the bleak, isolated drive that reminds me of of some kind of "end times" scenario.

It's not the best land, though, and the extreme hills have already made it a "less desirable" part of the city - at least until there's some kind of Katrina-esque flood that fills up the city's valleys.

I guess Woodland is merely a blatant reminder of itself and the conditions that foster such things.

One day when I was wandering in my car, along 25th Street (approximately) headed downhill and west during a pouring rainstorm towards Woodland, during a time in my life when my eyesight was compromised by my vanity, thrift and laziness against getting a new prescription (the glasses finally disintegrated, long after the last contact was lost), a man in a wheelchair, not an old man, much thinner than I and let's say kind of attractive like Snoop, perhaps not even physically threatening, was mostly sliding down the wretched hill, going who the hell knows where at 8 in the morning in a spring storm on the East Side where hills are high and sewers are apt to be clogged.

This person quite unexpectedly encountered, in a place I seek solitude, didn't indicate any communication in my direction; I didn't do much but maybe catch his eye. One of my thoughts was that my car was full of crap, and I have had grievances about transporting babies illegally (state law; carseats) and trying to accomodate large and/or disabled people into my crappy "I am so clearly child- and friend-less" car in the past - and - I have learned a thing or two about picking up strangers.

So far, nothing terrible has happened.

I once saw a woman in court, a grandmother and none too slim (perhaps at 50- or 60-something that comforting age was her charm, her saving grace - heck, I fell for it) be the subject of a "prostitute gets 10 years" story; the woman was one I had had in my car, on Troost from 18th to 27th Street, and she was up there in court, beyond the rail and being called a career prostitute via a prosecutor's PowerPoint presentation.

One never knows.

She asked me about the music I was playing (back when the tape-deck worked); it was Ani DiFranco; when I asked her what she was up to, where she was going, she only said, "Oh, here and there."

A man once tried to wave me down in the 27th-Street dusk of a summer afternoon, at Prospect. As if a younger woman is going to see Jesus in that situation and help a capable and less-threatening-to-other-demographics person with some kind of mechanical battery thing women don't "do." I must be evil.

Admittedly, I have accepted help from strangers who are male. A number have been neutrally helpful at that stupid QuikTrip air pump, for example. You may know of my nemesis issues with nails and screws and also with males who want something.

I tend to be found in isolated places and sometimes, more often than my parents must have invisioned my being, with people who have records, are high, are pitiably senile or disillusioned, foreign, possibly evil and decidedly "different." A man who won't talk to me anymore about his own humanity once taught me "different is okay," and another priest once made me understand the differering philosophies of the world and hence opened the doorway to the Eastern "liberal" proto-Christ "it's all in your head" trip, where, apparently I've stayed.

Quiz: Name one bad thing about working until 9 p.m.

(Hint: You stay up until 2 a.m.)

Still, what I didn't do still bothers me.

Merry X-mas

[Pre-script: I'm of "generation x," the outer cusp.]

We have a new crockpot now, despite it being "no gift" Christmas. That's from my husband's parents. My mom sent $X00, and my dad gave us shovels, a mitre box, some knives and oil lamps, things gleaned from estate sales that tend to crowd the apartment-set despite their actual usefulness; that was the other week, over Thanksgiving.

Siblings seem to have broken the tradition, as it were. It's a mutual and chosen decision. We don't buy each other things; though, if my brother had children, I would buy for them, most likely. Generally, we accept that we are all broke and that if we wish to purchase something we think we can afford, we'll choose it ourselves. Sorry to those who feel otherwise, generations are different.

Tonight, the ever-boyfriend of my sister-in-law, a computer technician who works from home and at client sites, actually came inside, had a sandwich and stuck around a while. His perpetual excuse is that his own earlier family life was bad and that he can't endure spending time with any current one.

Wouldn't we all be legitimate if using that excuse? The point is to keep trying. . .

He left before the presents part, with excuses about having to work.

He talked about some vacant lot he suggested I investigate, somewhere, as far as I could gather, near 31st and Troost. Feel free, anyone, to look it up. Something about the Port Authority.

He asked us, however, as a point of "haven't seen you in a while; how long have you been married (implied)", when we were set to have babies.

Right, "soooo, when are you having kids?" That kind of thing.

I consider that a naive, if not rude, question.

(I mean, does anyone ever take into consideration that some people really want children and really try and really feel inadequate and horribly blue because nothing works?)

Additionally, I don't go around preaching to my child-bearing friends that I think they have made poor decisions, do I?

So, in the spirit of the holidays, I said, "well, we've only been married three and a half years," with a squinty smile, along with, "I'm not forty yet," to which my husband's older (barren) sister replied in a serious tone that, no, i wouldn't want to wait until then - while my husband chimed in with "never," amid laughter.

Yes, and his mother said, "well, we're hoping for an accident."

Good gracious. Baby Jesus surely does inspire what the priest said tonight, amid lots of child chatter and terrible singing.

[Catholics, they just don't shout as if they're proud of their faith.]

They ran out of consecrated hosts, though my husband and I were not among the partaking or even the desirous-of-partaking. We didn't know until the priest closed Mass with first an apology. No matter. Still, what's with all the procreation? Why should I, in particular, be obliged?

To all of you, I hope your family situation is good these two days especially, or during any especially charged time, whenever that may be. The priest tonight made a show at honoring other faiths while veering during the homily into a political complaint about no one wanting nativity scenes on public property. He suggested, however, that Ramadan was coming soon. Good gracious (can I repeat that?).

My mother celebrated with her family tonight. I'm not sure how early I should call her in the morning. Neither I nor my brother were with her. It's what you do when you re-couple (and you live in different cities) - you trade off the major holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, sometimes Mother's and Father's days. It's odd that certain calendar-marked days carry additional emotional weight.

Speaking of weight, my inlaws' bathroom scale has me at 130 today. It's no surprise, as I've been eating chili and cheese and tons of carbs. Next week, I'll likely eat nothing, by comparison. Blame it on the holiday cookies everywhere. Normally, I don't buy them, and there is a clear reason. If they are there, just like cash in one's wallet, they/it will be consumed quickly. In sight-in mind.

I talked with my dad the other day. Probably Saturday. I did very little on that day. It was not one bearing any particularly good memories. Today was better, as I accomplished more. I did several loads of laundry, in machines that are sub-standard and four flights of stairs away.

I also went to church (see above), which made me cry because of my grandmother - there's that part in the "Lord, hear our prayers" section where they go on about "call our dearly departed to your table," or something.

And, I sat through a presents-presenting, which, for some reason, perhaps because our decision was clearly stated a year ago and that there was nothing to be done, was without guilt.

It may have been because I am relatively good at erasing all emotional ties to a situation, but I prefer to believe that it's because I'm healthy, ha ha, and that I am not going to let myself be upset about someone's wish to give.

Yesterday, a college friend and his wife called to ask to come by to give us a present. They do so every year, despite our lack of reciprocation. My other two couple friends of college days also brought gifts. It should be noted that both were consumables, nothing over $13, wine, candy they had made, etc. Perhaps we are the scrooge couple, but perhaps not. They know our stance, and yet they are generous and kind.

We make good food for them occasionally, though our television is the smallest and "Lost" night not the best, image-wise. We did a projection once. My friends are very resourceful. I try to be generous all the time, in general. I don't think I am, in reality. I think what happens is that I pay my way. I do offer to help, though. I take people to and from the airport, make offers for others that are refused. I used to loan friends good chunks of money. I once was not only not in debt but ahead of the game. I couldn't understand how a friend of mine repeatedly bounced checks. I mean, we both know math, right?

Now, however, I understand. It's probably a large part of why we don't want to produce children. I can't even buy the stuff I want to buy, and that's with me pretending to be "unmaterialistic!"

We also do not "believe" in the inevitable and continual progress of mankind toward the ideal of everyone having what they need and not excessively craving what they don't (and that by which consuming actually creates not only "jobs" but elements of what destroys us). Kids today are born into a distaster-on-tap, and the fate of those Americans who don't worry about that is disgusting blind consumerism. No, thanks, this is the composite of my reason, and also why I continue to rely on otherwise hated pharmaceuticals to suppress reproduction. No one wants mistakes.

Ah, yes, quite gloomy for Christmas night. Santa Claus, if he has enough time during gift delivery, might see me when I'm not sleeping. He's totally not coming here tonight.

We always say that we would take children that arrived due to circumstance, but view that more as a 10-year-old or so, some cousin, nephew or random adopted kid such as Brad and Angelina have done. And they're not even married! Tee hee. So, see, we're all just too dang practical about the whole thing.

And I'm okay with that. I have nothing about which to complain!

Ho, ho, ho.

Yesterday's fog

I miss it. Today's cold, normal for "first day of winter," feels gloomy. Christmas Cheer should abate short-day blahs with twinkling tree lights; however, this is the Christmas of Nonengage.

I don't envy the people, most of them married and accomodating two families' wishes to celebrate together, rushing around from event to event. I have nothing to wrap, and it feels good. I know that there's a certain warmth that comes from giving, but I am too un-Zen to be able to do it without being muddled in the negative elements of gift-deadline, gift-perfectness, gift-budget.

Hard to believe that the holiday commercials will so soon be over. . .giving way to clearance sales and inventory reductions. I spent some money today on us, with money from mom, a one-way gift - everything was on clearance, qualifies as bedding. Beds are important, no?

Sunday, we'll be at a Mass, for the second time this calendar year. The Catholic Christmas of 2004 was a disappointment, so I'm hoping for a more-inspring homily, if I have to be involved in listening to it. Ah, the gift of subjugation. And spending time.

Why do I like this?

And why do I like very little overall?

I keep forgetting that Monday is Christmas, but remember, I spent $900 this month on my car. I know you can get a new car for about that much, "new" being relative and probably all the one I'm driving is worth.

I keep pretending it's a balance, a compromise and even a win that I'm not dishing up $500 a month in a loan payment for a truly new one.

What's 191,000 miles between friends?

The "screw-you, tire" total for the year is now $45 as well. Who keeps dropping screws everywhere?

The fire engines and ambulances have "sweeper" chains that swing around down under the tires to create an all-weather traction situation when it's snowing or icy, I learned from the captain at Station 23, so I'm thinking I need to develop some kind of magnet device to thwart the nails, screws and scrap metal continually in my path.

I hate security lights

Read me

Well, at least now we can trash-talk "cultural" New York, which came in at a lame 42 - and while being the answer to life, the universe and everything, represents a tumble from 2005's rank at 32.5).

However, Kansas City itself fell two spots, from 14 to 17 in the Central Connecticut State University's Most Literate Cities list, putting even more distance be us and St. Louis, which ranked at 12 and was only 15 last year.

It's a data analysis of six "indicators" of literacy in U.S. cities of 250,000 people or more: newspaper circulation, the number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and (introduced last year) Internet resources.

Here are the top 10:

1. Seattle, Washington
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota
3.5. Atlanta, Georgia (tied)
3.5. Washington, D.C. (tied)
5. St. Paul, Minnesota
6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
7. Cincinnati, Ohio
8. Denver, Colorado
9. San Francisco, California
10. Portland, Oregon

The study's author, CCSU's president Dr. John W. Miller, says that it's not important to focus on how your city's rank may be changing, but "what communities do to promote the kinds of literacy practices that the data track."

One southern city, four western ones, three midwestern and two New England.

And no New York.

Boston is #11.

And Minnesota, well, who knew?

Everyone loves dolphins

I don't keep up with the Guiness Book of World Records, but most of you probably already know that Bao Xishun of Mongolia is the tallest man alive today (about 7'9"). I wonder how much he was paid to stick his long arm down the throats of suicidal dolphins to remove plastic shards they somehow had swallowed from their tank.

Given that the aquarium officials said the dolphins had "lost their appetite and were suffering from depression," I wonder if they were upset that humans could be so annoying as to lock them in water-cages where they'd get bored enough to eat shards of plastic.

I've seen my "domesticated" animals swallow any number of unhealthy things, from lead-based paint, to plants that cause peculiar blockages of the intestine (eew). Nothing compares so far to my friend's late blue healer, though, which had a disease that compelled it to eat lampshades, leashes and loads of prescription medication.

Is there a difference in watching humans ingest alcohol, cigarettes, sugar and other drugs? Poor, domesticated humans.

3800 E. Ninth St.

Maison du jour, stately, sitting patiently, since no one minds such a thing around here. Well, Lykins Neighborhood does, but . . . .

In the past two years, the porch supports and that trim paint up top were added, and another garage thing to the east, where a tire shop was, was demolished. It's still a haunted-looking wreck and owned by an LLC that formed in March 2005.

I guess someone is still "working on financing" the repairs?

Strings on me

I got up today at 5 a.m. to drive to Lawrence, Kan. to get my friend to take her to KCI so she could go to Costa Rica/Guatemala for a few weeks. I still do poorly on darkened highways and equally as badly when the winter sun of 7:30 a.m. is blocking all directional and exit signs from view.

We made it, though - and then I made it to work by 8:30.

That's the usual starting time during the week.

Hello, Saturday, I see that you are sunny and nice and that you contain numerous possibilities.

Such things don't matter much to someone who routinely has to go to things that don't begin until 7 p.m., or who spends the dark hours each Monday morning typing up copy until it's light enough to travel to work.

When's the last time I had a weekend, much less a "vacation?" (Six and three years, respectively.)

Do I envy educators, who, like my friend, or like college students, "get to" have a month off at holidays, a week off at spring, and then more weeks between summer school sessions? Everyone who teaches says that it's hard to be a teacher, and that educators need the extra time to catch up on themselves, after giving out so much energy to students, lesson plans, students, parents, conflicts, students, administrational whoo-ha, and incidents such as whatever happened at Westport High School on Thursday (assault times four, student-to-teacher, punches).

I know it is extremely trying to be "on" all the time for students - even good ones or adult ones (I've been a teacher of both such groups and had to run, screaming, into the night) - but, what about all the other jobs that require such sparkling social skills, organizational stamina and mental gymnastics?

Not to mention, a pay-scale that offers very little upward mobility.

Restaurant servers, retailites, office drudges, etc.

They put up with a lot of dolor, a lot of fake smiling, a lot of pushing and back-biting and customers and crap, without a lot of hope or real prospect of changing where they'll be or are at.

No one, likewise, laments what constitute a news-person's weekly life, it seems, the long hours, the outdoor elements, the "it's happening, so, of course, you'll be there, right?" or the tedious sitting-aroundness at "meetings," "hearings" and "sessions," the research, documentation and the sifting through lies that come long before any creative act.

Do we presume that the "adventure" and the "privilege" (of being there - where it's at, right when it's really happening) make up for having to run around like a fool?

Shoot, I don't recall this information being proffered at any of the places I took my education:

According to the Harvard study, 52 percent of the nation's top income earners — those in the top 6 percent of earners and often making six-figure salaries — work more than 70 hours a week. And 48 percent say they are working 16 hours a week more than they did just five years ago.

"Extreme jobs" are defined as ones that take up more than 60 hours a week and fit "various parameters regarding work flow, travel, responsibilities away from the office and outside commitments."

(They also are such that promotion, law-partnership, high-profile existence and money, lots of money, are rewarding elements, a-hem.)

I suppose my job is sub-extreme. Extremely unbalanced?

The article did list media as a potential extreme-job field. I believe they were thinking of "New York" or perhaps television.

Should I have been an attorney, then?

Such professional madness seems destructive to that other American beloved institution (aside from the "do well, make the economy good, succeed! one), the family. You can't very well say, as a father, that you are helping your kids much when your wife is the only parent they see. Sure, money is great, it buys surrogate parents like the soccer coach, gymnastics instructor, video games, and whatever else (research it for me, parents) kids of six-figure-earning families do with their time outside of school.

Personally, I don't think my job would be conducive to parenting either. And I'd like to see anyone determine, based on news product, which weeks this year did take up more than 50 hours of my life's 168-per allotment.

But I digress.

What I began here to say, besides that I love puppets (but not Puppets), is that my drive in "the car with the stereo" allowed me to mess around with memories as old as 11 years. That's what music does, and Plato would say it's a prime reason that art is bad, that it stirs up messy emotions. However, I have never pretended that I don't indulge in messy, stupid things.

Ergo, I give you the chopped-copyrighted lyrics to a more-hitting-home version of that popular psychology mandate to "follow your bliss":

Exerpt from Ani DiFranco's "Joyful Girl," 1996:

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
...
everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
...
i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head

I'm aware that you can't hear what I hear, but if you know me, you know what I mean.

(It's been quite implied in these long, boring-you paragraphs:
unlike Pinocchio, I did not sin myself into a donkey, nor have I figured out how to cut these ties.)

The cold finger

of winter
is pointed at you.

Mission (un)Accomplished

There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.

(he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week.)

"We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.

(source)