Madison

Today Cherity, the boys, and I went to Madison in an effort to Christmas shop. It's way to exhausting w/ kids. We never think about what we're there to buy in the first place. Cherity and I had an interesting conversation about living our life and what we want to do with it what's wrong w/society. The church and weather it's paradigm is effective in respects to it's parishoners. I'm convinced that in many ways it's not. Intimacy is lost. You'll never see a heartfelt prayer request from any man of the church about struggles he's been having with lust. You never actually get to know anybody when they have you turn around and shake hands with the person sitting next to you @ church. I suppose that's for the visitors though. To greet them or something...? Anyway, the main concern is that were not getting anywhere if we don't feel that there's a calling to what we're doing. That there's no spiritual or emotional payoff.. some kind of payoff. Doing what you think you're SUPPOSED to be doing just doesn't cut it anymore.

Anyway... got Owen a gun for christmas that shoots foam discs. Actually, I got 2 so I can play w/ him. Owen's actually making a mess of all of his reading books as I type. He just got out the noise making ones. The books that play songs. " The Cow Jumped over the Moon" and such. Owen reads the stories to the music the best he can and improvises the rest. I hope I don't screw him up. I can already tell he has my lack of patience and unwilling to deal w/ petty problems calmly; spazes out whenever theres a problem and he hasn't eaten or is short on sleep. Most kids grow out of that I suppose, but I never did. I'm worse during the winter too. Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD) my wife calls it. Thing is, I seem normal to everybody @ work. So I guess I can keep it together as long as I'm staying busy, and in a proffesional environment. Cherity has said I should Tan. I think that's crazy, besides I'm way too tight to pay for something like that every week or two.

Well, I can tell I'll need to get at a comfort level with blogging thing. I'm not sure if I wan't to keep this thing as a 'deep thoughts' thing or as a trivial day to day bio... i.e. had diarrea today, Cherity's complaining about cramps, Owen had three meltdowns and Sebastian has a wierd rash on his back. ...?

Actually both seem kind of interesting to me. I think maybe you need to break up the philosophical rhetoric w/ a little bathroom/trivial/day-to-day stuff. I'll have to check out some other peoples blogs and see what I like and what's a waste. Actually I suppose what would be most effective is try it a couple different ways and then go back to what I've written later and see what entertains me the most. The hope is to entertain/initiate myself after all. Self-improvement, self improvement... I've heard it said
"Self-Improvement is Masturbation" and in one way only, I agree. If all you do is think about betterment of self then the previous quote is right. Action, actually doing, application, is reality. Talk, ideas, decision, is the genesis I admit. But, if you turn the key and it won't turn over, it needs to be inspected, taken in for repair or junked. Polishing the bumper is not going to do anything that's for sure. I don't know... maybe it's a bad analogy. There's a lot of polishing a lot of us are doing that's for sure.