Ceding the floor to Mr. Wheaton

The debate over this has been troubling me for the past several weeks, and has aggressively sapped my spirit in the last day or so. It has festered. It darkens the world around me.

And it feels completely outside of my control.

I don't really like talking politics in the workplace -- I prefer to keep my personal life and my opinions separate -- but I vented with (at?) coworkers during lunch anyway. (It seemed to help a little, albeit only briefly.) I called my Senators; it felt empty, hollow. (Although I appreciate the words Kerry has spoken. But they are just words, not action.) And I feel powerless*. (And however cynical it may seem, I do believe that's sort of the idea.) Powerless and paralyzed.

And then I read Wil's Statement of Conscience:

"What the House did yesterday, the Senate looks to do today, and the President will surely enact as soon as possible, is a direct assault on American values, and contrary to everything our country stands for. Though cynically and cowardly enacted as a purely political tool during an election, those who supported this bill do not speak for me, do not act in my name, and do not reflect my values.

"Torture is not an American value."

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving a clear and eloquent voice to my thoughts and feelings when all I could do was oscillate between sullen hopelessness and seething anger and frustration.

Ok, I'm going to try and pull myself together and get some work done.

*I'm trying to work on some personal growth stuff right now, so this statement doesn't sit well. In my mind, I'm thinking of it as a rhetorical device because I think it's important that I know that I'm not powerless. I have control over my life, and the hard part is trying to navigate how things affect me, how I affect them, how identity is defined and how I define it. And all that.

Late, lately

Late tomatoes
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

The tomatoes have come late this year, partially due to me being so distracted and discombobulated this past spring that I didn't really get a chance to deal with the garden until very late into the planting season (one might say past the planting season, and then not really dealing with it properly), and partially due to an oddly cool and rainy spring and early summer. The melons got a similarly late start, but it looks like they'll be ready before the first frost hits. (Sadly, the yield looks to be about one melon per plant, but hey, I HAVE MELONS!) I did manage to get proper grapes for the first time which was pretty exciting as well as ample carrots and long beans, but we may get only a handful of fruits from the volunteer tomato plants, if they ripen at all. (So far, I've eaten two small yellow pears that ripened sufficiently.)

But, anyways...

I wasn't really thinking about the garden so much as about the general discombobulation of everything right now. I keep planning to post something, but life stuff gets in the way, and by the time I have enough time to gather my thoughts and set virtual pen to virtual paper, the thoughts have gotten listless and wandered off to find something more interesting to do. And once I've stopped writing for enough time, I start questioning whether or not whatever it is that's currently occupying my mind is worth taking the time to sit down and write about it. ...if I could find the time, of course.

So yeah, feeling kinda discombobulated. It was probably just a shock to the system -- the structure and workload vacuum over Labor Day weekend and the listlessness that accompanied it, followed subsequently by the inevitable return of work and the commute and schedules and school and homework and practice sessions, and fall hat starting and... Cat 2.*

Anyway, discombobulated...

We're in the last semester of school, but at the moment, I'm not feeling particularly excited about finishing, I just want it to be done. I'll probably get back into the swing of things, but for now -- eh. It doesn't feel like there's enough time to do the things I want to do, the things I need to do.

Speaking of which, I need to get to bed. Class tomorrow and all.

* Cat 2 was throwing up a lot this year. I was kind of registering it in the back of my head, but it wasn't until the school term was almost over that I actually articulated that he was throwing up pretty much every day. Sometimes more than once.

Vet time.

The diagnosis has progressed from Inflammatory bowel disease to GI lymphoma to possibly some mono-something-or-other to multiple myeloma. In other words, we've been going through a lot of testing and I've been making a lot of trips to Angell in JP, which is a bit tiresome, but still necessary as far as I'm concerned. but hey, I now know how to get to JP from Storrow via the Fenway and Riverway.

So that's been kind of a bummer for most of the summer, but what can you do, y'know? We're just trying to nail down the diagnosis so I can give him the right meds. Things haven't gotten any worse -- he seems to be keeping food down reasonably well and seems alright other than being skin and bones. It seems like he's always hungry which is a good sign, I think.