my bone to pick

Okay, this is not a new topic for me to discuss, but here goes anyway.

I went to this church this morning. I've been meaning to try out a few to see if I can find one I like around here, so I can bring the boys. I went to the first one today, an Assemblies of God one. Very small, very new. It was alright. The people were really friendly, and it was very casual. The preacher was okay, not particularly compelling or interesting, but not ultra boring or stupid. And as an Assemblies of God church, I know basically their beliefs, so I was prepared for any conservative politics, etc. And there wasn't anything that worried me much.

There was just one statement that grated on me a little, a very small side comment about Prozac.

As I'm sure you know, I take a few crazy meds. I know that there are people who think it's stupid and that medications aren't necessary, etc. I know that there are people who don't believe in them. And I know that the hardcore religious community often believes that medication would not be necessary if one was living the way that they believe is right.

I have issue with this. Let me just say something. I have had problems with this crap since I was in sixth or seventh grade, possibly before, but that's the earliest I specifically remember. I was raised in church, and everyone knows my parents. I didn't start any real rebellion against anything until high school, and I lived a clean life. But still, there I was, a 12 year old, wanting to kill myself. As I got older, I definitely had my backs and forths with religion and spiritual beliefs. But I NEVER was able to leave these issues behind. I had equal bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts regardless of what I was doing with my life. I had serious depression when I was going to church three or four times a week and hanging out with church friends and doing a 100% religious living. And I had serious bouts of depression when I was partying and drinking in college. It was equal ALL THE TIME. It always went back and forth, and I was typically pretty good at being highly functioning about it, so I guess people might not have known any of it. The only time I ever went any amount of time without serious issues was when Tony and I first were dating, and I'm guessing that was the new love endorphins. J There were times I took medication and times I didn't, but until I took Prozac after I had Liam, I didn't find any relief from any of it. After a while, it stopped working, and we had to try something else, and things are good again.

So why is it that people have to be so negative about something that helps others? It doesn't give me any sort of high. It's legal. It doesn't have any real side effects. By talking to me or being around me, you wouldn't even know I was on anything if I didn't mention it.

If we can believe that there are brain malfunctions that cause Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's, then why can't we believe that there are much smaller malfunctions that can affect mood in a way that must be balanced out with medicine? I mean, I am not saying at all that these horrible diseases relate in any way to depression. My great grandma died after suffering from Alzheimer's for YEARS, and I've got friends and family members who've had their experience with relatives with these other diseases. I'm just saying, why does it have to be devastatingly life threatening for us to believe in it?

If you're happy on your own, if you never feel the overwhelming urge to drown yourself over a very minor problem, if you never feel as though you wish you were dead when there is literally nothing going wrong in your life and you can't figure out why, then good for you. But why knock those of us who aren't so lucky? And why make it so that someone who feels so much better on medication must feel guilty morally for wanting to feel better?

another reason for me to hate the post office

Okay, so I've stopped using the post office for shipping gifts to people after their gross loss of two full boxes of Christmas presents I sent to Louisiana last year. I've only been using them for simple mail and for shipping media mail books, etc., that I sell on Amazon.

So recently I had to send an envelope with a small small small gift in it that made the envelope a little heavier. I sealed it and put two stamps on it to make sure they'd take it.

Like two days later, I find a tattered envelope on the road near my mailbox. Apparently, our useless mail person (who I already had issue with because of her putting new mail in and stupidly leaving outgoing mail in the box) just negligently dropped a piece of my mail and left it there. Because the envelope was destroyed, I couldn't use it again, so I peeled the two stamps off to use again.

I addressed a new envelope and taped the two stamps on the top, because the glue wasn't sticky enough, and I didn't have any glue here. I put it back in the mailbox. That afternoon, after the mail idiot came, the envelope was still in the mailbox. Now it had a thing on it that said that the stamps were previously used.

So now I have to get two more stamps to mail the card. And two perfectly good stamps in the trash. Not to mention, I just bought a book of stamps and now I can't find them. So let's do a little math. That's almost ten bucks down the drain. Which wouldn't tick me off as much if the post office didn't suck and my mail jackass wasn't retarded.

my weekend

Figured I would write a little to tell how my RSA workshop went.

We flew out on Thursday and spent the evening traveling. Got to Harrisburg airport and then rented a car and drove to State College, PA. Got there about 1 am local time.

On Friday morning, we were able to sleep until we wanted to wake up (which was early, but still not an alarm clock) and then we went into the little town. We hit a local coffee shop and then walked around the town just looking before we headed to the workshop registration.

Finished registration and ate a lunch with all the participants present. Keynote speech much less boring than I anticipated. Basically it was this awesome linguistics scholar saying that rhetoric is applicable to a ton of fields, kind of almost like she was throwing a middle finger to those who say otherwise.

Immediately after the workshop, we were to report to our workshop classrooms, which we were told (just at the lunch, not any time before) was a "hike". I walked back to the parking garage to grab my laptop and then took off on a grand trek across Penn State. It was MISERABLE. I was dressed the way I dressed for work—jeans, heels, a regular top. I had to walk literally like a mile and a half in my heels, in the BLAZING HEAT. By the time I got to the building, I could smell myself. I was embarrassingly sweaty and also very angry and wanted to just say, screw it, and go back to the hotel and take a nap.

Thankfully, the workshop itself wasn't bad at all. The first day was basically some general introduction to the topic. I'm not going to go into a bunch of detail, but the point of the workshop was to study communication among members of a group doing a project to pinpoint problems and find solutions to streamline the communication or make it more efficient and less problematic. The professors who ran it were excellent… They were all young and dynamic and clearly passionate about the work, which always rubs off. By the time I left, I really could have immediately ran off to do a similar project. Too bad it's totally not feasible with my life. If anyone has a rich uncle who dies and wants to pay for me to do the PhD program online through Texas Tech, I'll take it!

Friday night we went to TGIF and had some margaritas and food, which was very relaxing and tons of fun.

We woke up Saturday and had workshops all day. For lunch we went to a local pizza/salad/sub place, which was good. The workshop went well, although this was the day that I had more trouble with. I'm not good with graphic organization of info, which was essentially the entire research method. Still, it was handy and interesting. We went to get some Penn State t-shirts on the way home. That night the RSA had a dinner outside, so we hit that briefly to make an appearance and then went to a local bar. They had a sort of street fair with an excellent band playing just outside, so we had a good time for a little while and then left. We stopped and got some ice cream and then just wandered the streets and chatted until we went back to the hotel.

Sunday morning was the workshop wrap up. We ate at a local sandwich shop and then took off for the airport. We were traveling from around noon Eastern time until midnight Mountain time. Miserable. Got home at around one in the morning.

The university there was beautiful, and the cool New England houses ruled, but it was clearly way too expensive for me to ever consider living there. The campus was awesome.