December 2003 Archives

So now the Redskins have no coach. That's right boys and girls, Spurrier has resigned.

Another one bites the dust.

Someday, somehow, Dan Snyder has to realize that he can't keep doing this with the team and expect big results.

Just when I think that people can't be any more depraved, someone proves me wrong. A woman in Oklahoma killed a pregnant friend and cut out her fetus so she could claim it as her own!

Jesus FUCKING Christ.

I can't even find the words for my own disgust and anger, that this woman would take two lives like that, just for the sake of being able to say that the fetus was hers.

I can't even believe I share genetic material on a base human level with this woman.

Merry Christmas and Happy Haunakkah everybody! I hope you all have a blessed and joyful holiday. May your family cause you more happiness than pain and may you find laugher and delight during these special days.

I spent Monday night/Tuesday morning at the hospital, after I had two really bad seizures. These were different than other seizures I've had though, because I was conscious, awake, and alert during these, and it was scary as hell.

I woke up at 01:30 AM and started shaking for 30 seconds. I couldn't control it. Once they subsided, and I was able to talk and move around, I got up to go to the bathroom. It was there that I had my other seizure. While trying to piss, I suddenly felt it rise up out of my stomach and I yelled for Heather to come help me. I pinned myself against the wall, and jammed my arms hard against the walls in a desperate effort to not fall and crack my head on the toilet.

Once I felt Heather grab my arm and have my weight, I let go and fell to the floor with no injuries.

But because these were the first I'd had without losing consciousness, we drove to the hospital. I spent the rest of the night in an adult crib for epileptics and others prone to fall out of bed, and tried to sleep.

I was woken at 07:00 AM by a nurse and taken for another EEG. This would mark my 5th one! My 5th one! I sat in the chair and let the technicians put the electrodes on my head. Within minutes I was asleep in the recliner, and they were recording my brain. BAM! Another seizure. I woke up in a panic, and I tried to sit up straight. I was dizzy, and I couldn't get my bearings. It took both of the technicians to get me to calm down and relax.

We figured, this was it. The final word on me having epilepsy. Now they had a seizure on EEG. But no. It came back clean. No abnormal brain activity. So now my doctor's thinking anxiety attacks, and has given me a slip to have an MRI done to make sure there's nothing wrong in my brain physically, like a tumor.

In some ways I'm relieved that I had the EEG and the panic attack there. But we still don't have any answers. And we might not for a while. Which sucks. But Heather and I will make it work and deal with what's going on.

I was skimming Wil Wheaton's blog and I came across this entry about how much TV really sucks.

I've always thought that TV sucks, but I will agree with him that it seems to be getting demonstrably worse each year that goes by. I've got three shows I watch with religious fervor:

1. The Simpsons
2. Mythbusters
3. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

I'll also pick up Will & Grace reruns if they're on, but that's it. I find TV repulsive, condescending, and demeaning. The feeling I get when I watch TV is that the producers of TV shows assume that I have a consistent drooling problem, I'm unable to use words with more than one syllable, I really believe every dumb stereotype known to man, and I enjoy seeing every bad idea from 20 years ago rehashed and reheated.

Or to put it more succintly:
Why is television called a medium?
Because it is neither rare, nor well-done.

What else can I be? All apologies...
"All Apologies" - Nirvana

While I'm here, and it's late at night, I wanted to make a couple of apologies. I'll start with one immediately and say, to those people to whom I'm apologizing this way, I'm sorry. I don't know of any other way to contact you, other than to hope that somehow, you find this and take it to heart. If I could, I'd say these things to you personally. But for now, this has to do...

Ruth - Ah dear Ruth. I hurt you bad, and why? I don't even know why I made the choice that I did, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that sometimes, when I think back to those murky days of my youth, I wish I could have chosen you instead, and followed my heart. I guess I was scared, and for being both afraid to listen to my heart, and for hurting you when I did it, I'm sorry. The truth is that even today, I can't look at Orion without thinking of you in some way. I hope you're still painting, and I hope it's going well for you.

Amanda - I was a fool. A terrible, frightened, and confused fool. You were also a person where I let my fear get in the way of what I knew was right and good for me, and I made an awful choice. I'm sorry that I was so terrible to you, and hurt you. I'm sorry about the way things ended between us. I often wonder if you've made it to being a professional opera singer. Your talents were immeasurable, and for the short time I knew you, you made me feel like I was a god. So loving, so accepting, so caring, and yet I was so stupid. I hope you're doing really well right now, and you've found a partner that will love and cherish you like you really deserve.

Holly - It would be easy for me to say that you were responsible for all of the pain and horror in our relationship, and for a while, I had myself convinced that was true. But I know better. I wasn't the easiest person to live, and my decisions and actions often drove you crazy. We both were very very bad for each other, and it's shame that it took so long for us both to realize it and move on. Before we dated, you were a fabulous friend, and I wish that there was some way we could have salvaged what was good about us. It's too late now. I'm sorry that I spent so long blaming you for everything that was wrong, and not spending enough time looking at myself. I know you're married, and a mother now, and I'm happy for you. I hope you have a long, happy, and healthy life.

That's it for now. My hope is that as I make my apologies, and get these things out of my system that I will be able to move on with my own issues. I'm really just taking a page from the 12-Steppers here. One of the things that a person going through a 12-Step program must do is go back and apologize to all of the people they've hurt.

I don't regret where I am now, or hope for a change. Far from it. I love Heather like crazy, and I love my children. I'm not willing to trade my wife or kids for another chance in the past. I just want the people in my dark distant past that I hurt to know that I recognize that I hurt them, and know that I'm sorry.

I don't consider myself a religious person, though I do say grace at meals, and often talk with God. I think it's more an informal kinship with God than one of deep religious faith. I believe in Jesus, and I do go to church when children and time permits, but my vision of God has always one of a prankster God, a laughing God, that holds us in our pain, but would really love for us to recognize the deep humor there is in a lot of the things that happen in life.

God has shown himself to me in little ways to know that he does care, specifically around the issue of lonliness. Sometimes I think that my prayers don't go anywhere, or he's not listening. The year following my breakup from particularly bad relationship was one such time. I had spent 4 years with this toxic woman, and had become toxic in my own way, like it was some virus, that had jumped from her mother to her to me. Finally I had had enough and I broke it off.

I spent many months adjusting to not having anyone in my life. I returned to school, I got a new job, I started losing weight, I was even having weekly beers with the boys again, but I felt so awfully alone. The kind of alone that settles in around your joints and bones, and you try to shiver off like the cold.

One very lonely day, as I wandered around Strawberry Square in Harrisburg, unwilling to go home and be alone, but crazed in my isolation, I walked down to State Street and entered St. Patrick's Cathedral. I had never been there before, but I figured that if maybe God wasn't listening to me when I kneeled next to my bed, maybe the towering green spires of St. Patrick's would somehow amplify my voice and carry directly to God's ear.

I kneeled in the back and started to pray.
"Dear Lord, I know you already know this. You know everything, but I have to share this with someone, or I'm going to burst. It's too heavy for me to carry. I'm so alone God. I don't feel like there is anyone around, and I can't get rid of this feeling. It hurts like hell." I started to sob at this point, but I was the only one in the Cathedral, so I didn't care. "I just...I needed to talk to someone, and I'm so alone. Please help me carry this burden. Amen."

I kneeled there for another minute, just sobbing, and trying to compose myself. In the choir loft above me someone began quietly playing music on the organ. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up. There, in the dome above the altar, staring at me in giant gold lettering "Lo, I am with you always". I fell backwards and stared at the words. I started to sob again. Just like that, he'd heard me and answered. I sat there in the back pew, crying and crying forever, like the cork holding back all of the pain from my previous relationship was finally pulled, and I could get it out of my system.

Whenever I doubt that I'm being heard, or I feel like I'm alone, I remember back to those words of gold, and how God promised that he'd always be with me.

Like I said, I don't consider myself religious, but that for me cemented my relationship with God. Maybe you don't believe in God, or, like me, reject most of the current Christian notions of God. Maybe you believe in Buddha, or Allah. But I don't think we are alone. Something divine and benevolent showed that to me in that church 5 years ago. I hope that someday you too can experience something like I have.

Will someone, PLEASE buy-out Dan Snyder, owner of, and worst thing that could have ever happened to the Washington Redskins.

I know that he'd personally like to blame the coaches and players for the utterly shockingly miserably poor output from the team, but as many people smarter than me have pointed out, bad leadership starts at the top, and there isn't anyone higher than Dan Snyder to point at.

Now, LaVar Arrington and Champ Bailey have announced that they are not interested in what the Redskins have to offer as far as contract renegotiations are concerned. Dan Snyder and Steve Spurrier are going to sit by while the defense is gutted. Good job Dan!

I grew up in DC, and the Redskins is something I live for. With such a history, and growing up to see them in the days of Theisman and Riggins, I remember the glory days. I love them and it pains me to see them lead so ineptly.

So I ask "Please, won't someone buy-out Dan Snyder and end this insanity?"

Heather and I got a night off!

Someone was nice enough to watch McKenna and Owen, and so we went and saw "Return of the King" (which rocked) and had dinner.

It was really nice to get to spend some time with just Heather, and do some other things than watch the kids. I'm still adjusting to not having the Topamax in my system, and so I feel a little off-balance at times, but I'm willing to let it slide.

Heather keeps talking about a lawsuit, saying that the company has released a drug that's obviously messed up a lot of people and caused problems, but as always, I sit on the fence. I mean, yeah, I'd like to go to Ortho-McNeill and have a chat with the developers of the drug and ask them if they really thought through all of the potential side effects, but when you look at the number of people that Topamax has helped, how do you balance that out?

I just know that I lost a month of my life, lost to spacing out, not being able to remember things, spontaneously crying, unable to think clearly, wondering why my hands and feet wouldn't stop tingling, wondering why my face would go numb, lost to worse panic attacks and seizures at night. It makes Heather mad. But really, it just makes me sad.

I was doing some more cruising, looking at Topamax information, and I came across this thread of people that have been experiencing seizures since they started taking Topamax. Now call me crazy, but isn't Topamax supposed to be an anti-seizure medication?

Why in the world is it giving people seizures? Is this drug really safe?

Doing some more searching, it seems like I had the whole gamut of negative side effects: tingling in my extremities and face, spontaneous bursting into tears, forgetfulness, MORE anxiety...

Jesus Christ. And now they want to give this drug to people to help them lose weight. I can't stand it. I just can't stand it.

I'm okay with competition. I love capitalism. I just don't like Wal-Mart. We've had this discussion before.

I'm not cool with the fact that Wal-Mart hires enough people that they can then average out the total number of hours worked for each employee to right around 28 hours, and making the average salary of a Wal-Mart employee $11,000/year. I don't like the fact that most of the things sold at Wal-Mart are manufactured in China by women and young children for $0.13/hr. I understand that both of the people in those situations typically entered with their own free will, but when Wal-Mart enters a town, most of the other businesses close, and for every two jobs it creates, the town it enters loses a third, so often, despite the fact that it is free will, Wal-Mart often becomes the only employer in town.

It bothers me that Wal-Mart is the largest employer on Earth, and has so much sway and power. It bothers me even more that Dubya brags about having created jobs when most of them are at Wal-Mart, and people had to take pay cuts and lose benefits to take them (only 38% of Wal-Mart employees can afford to be on health care insurance of any kind), but they need to earn money to live.

Is the other side of this economic coin (lower prices and convenience) worth the above listed costs?

Not for me. That's why I don't shop at Wal-Mart.

Democratic Underground

Working For Change

Wal-Mart Day Of Action

I've gone back off the Topamax and I've never felt better! After weeks and weeks and weeks of feeling dopey and like I was losing my mind, and being jittery, and anxious after I took the medication, and not sleeping, I finally called my neurologist and said "This ISN'T working." I think he finally listened and agreed that I could go off of the Topamax, and I'm back on the original, very small dose of Trileptal that I was on a long time ago.

My plan now is to get off of that next.

As I said about two weeks ago I'm looking for a no drugs alternative to controlling whatever it is going on inside my head and heart. I don't believe I have epilepsy. I think the seizures I've had are flukes, and they need to be given less weight than the panic attacks and the stressors in my life.

To that end, I'm seeing an acupuncturist I trust. I've scheduled an appointment with a famed group of ayurvedic and herbalist doctors in Delaware that I will be seeing at the end of the month.

I don't think that drugs are the answer for me, and they will never be the answer for me. Maybe it's a matter of belief. I just don't believe in them, so they don't work for me...a placebo effect in reverse.

Whatever it is, I don't care. I'm off the Topamax, and I feel a million times better than I have in a while.

Many people see a President trying to make people's lives better and help them out. Other people see a president trying to cut through a morass of laws and set up some clear laws for dealing first with privacy, and now spam.

Whether this was done intentionally or not, (though I have my reasons to believe that it was done intentionally), what I see is Bush is setting up a dangerous legal precedent to strip all powers from the States. I'm not the only one echoing these fears. Both of the articles I linked above note that the laws passed by Dubya overrule stricter state laws. How does that protect the consumer?

So I was sitting at work thinking about trying to lose weight, and why I wasn't, and I realized that I have been sitting around for the last 8 months just waiting for someone to make me lose weight. Like the Keebler Elves would just pop up and magically shave away the pounds.

"Oh! You've lost 10 pounds so far boy-o? That's great, here, have an E.L. Fudge."

Definitely not the right way to lose weight.

I went to the funeral on Friday and said my goodbyes to Jack. I feel really bad for Randy. He's lost his best friend. We're young enough to not have to think about that possiblity yet, but what does that really mean? How does your life change when you lose your best friend? Does it lose subtle shades of joy? Do you laugh at things that are funny and start to think "I can't wait to share that with...oh..." It's like you're at once less connected to the Earth, and yet even less capable of taking flight.

I lost my dad, and I know what that loss feels like. A best friend is very different kind of loss, and one that will hit me very hard when it does happen. I was very mad at my friend Brian on Friday because he's one of my best friends, and I wanted to see him so badly on Friday. He knew Jack, and loved him nearly as much as I did, and should have been there to say his goodbyes as well. But Brian had to work. I know that Brian had to work I can respect that. Jack would have respected that. Everyone respected that. But I wanted my best friend there. I wanted to lean on my best friend while I contemplated what it was like to lose a best friend. I haven't seen Brian in so long, it would have been nice for once to have him at my side and think, "I haven't lost him yet, he's still here".

I said it first, but the word is spreading.

Think about it. Gov. Action Jackson has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

60 years ago, the most terrible thought an American could have conjured was one of having to live in an America under the fist of a terrible tyrant of the Red Chinese or Soviets, and we built large stockpiles of nuclear weapons promising total world destruction rather than live in a world where we would give up freedom.

Today, the most terrible thing an American can think of is destruction, and would rather live under the fist of a tyrant than face attack. We've come 180 degrees.

Where once our forefathers would have rather blown themselves up in an instant to protect the ideals of freedom, we cower in our houses with our duct tape and plastic sheeting and hope that Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft will protect us from the great menace. Somewhere along the way, we all became a bunch of wussie.

We forget that when we leave the job of protecting freedom in the hands of a few people, like Ashcroft, Ridge, Cheney, and Bush, and we don't do it ourselves, we endanger ourselves and we enslave our children and their children's children. Once the tyrants have won, and there's nowhere to go, there will never be anywhere to go again.

And that is only more true today than it was 60 years ago, when men of good conscience favored destruction of all that was good, over inescapable tryanny, no matter whose tyranny.

Last night's dream was two parts interconnected. I dreamt that I was working in a large bookstore that was both a store for customers and a warehouse that shipped books for Amazon and other booksellers. I had a special purpose that I would search for rare and unusual books.

While I was at work one day I was on an errand at one end of the building, the front end of the building, where I'm not typically doing business, and I needed to get back to my office, so I decided to run through the warehouse. While I ran through the warehouse I noticed that a lot of the stacked boxes were not stable and many were in danger of falling over. I had to many times run down a different aisle than I wanted to just to avoid an avalanche of books and boxes. All the while I could hear the omnipresent beep of forklifts and someone speaking, and I knew that I had to get to my office before the speech was over. It was imperative.

I made it back to my office in time and dropped off several soapstone and jade statues on my desk. It was past lunch time and I was starving. My office was big, and shared a corner of the building with a small cafe that was run by two sisters. I knew they would be closing the lunch side soon, so I walked over to grab something to eat or I would be starving all day. When I walked in, the girl behind the counter with the curly hair was there, and she smiled at me. She was wearing a blue shirt and bandanna over her hair while she swept. I didn't know her well enough, but she looked very similar to her sister. I looked over the offerings and picked a carrot cake/cheesecake looking thing. I opened up the display counter myself and picked it out. I'd been around long enough and knew the other sister well enough that I could do that. The cake looked and tasted delicious. While I was eating, I became aware that I could hear the thoughts of the girl behind the counter.

"Why isn't he looking at me?"
"My sister said he should like me. She he'd like me. Why doesn't he like me?"

I looked down at my wedding band. I wondered if she couldn't see it. I was starting to get embarassed that I could hear her thoughts. What was this all about?

"Maybe I should ask him out."

I hurried through my lunch. She kept looking at me. I wouldn't look at her. I set my plate down.

She approached me. "How was it?"
"Oh it was good."
"Good."
"Have you tried the flan?"
"No, which is that."
"Here I'll show you."

She came around the counter and stood next to me. I tried to search the air around her head to figure out what she was thinking but my sudden ESP was just as suddenly gone. Where was it? What was she thinking? As we stood there, she reached out to touch my arm. I bolted and ran out of the café I ran through door after door after door, just running through doors to get away.

The further I ran, the worse I felt. I realized that I probably made her feel really bad, and I didn't want to do that, so I walked back to the cafe and took off my jacket, and stayed for a while, talking, and helping clean.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will live as one.

Spent some time yesterday and today listening to some John Lennon on the anniversary of his assasination. I can't figure out if he'd laugh out loud at the absurdity or weep at the insanity.

A lot of people, especially at work, ask me why I'm so politically and passionate about my beliefs. My mom asks me that a lot as well. And I admit, that I question myself on that issue as well. Does it make sense to worry so much about the direction the world is headed? Does it really do any good for me to spend any energy to worry about the environment and lives of people overseas and even the lives of people in other states and the next town over.

I'm glad that my dad played Lennon for me when I was growing up, so I don't feel hopelessly alone in my hope for a better world. I may not agree with Lennon's politics, or my dad's anymore, but that doesn't stop me from agreeing that it's better to act and dream, because for all of my immediate skepticism, I'm a helpless optimist in the end, and I'm going to act, because it truly is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

I’ve noticed a lot of traffic coming to my site looking for information about Claria and spyware, and more importantly, and the intersection of the two. Claria is the company formerly known as Gator, notorious for their software that, once installed would track users on what websites they visited, and what they did on the web, and for selling users personal information, all without explicitly telling the user.

When the word got out that this was happening, and people reasonably got pissed off, Gator tried to sue the whistleblowers. When that backfired on them, the gave up and changed their name to Claria.

Well folks, Shakespeare said it best. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, except in this case, Claria’s not coming off smelling like roses. They’re doing some really shitty things with your private information, and if you’ve got Gator installed, they’ve got your information, and they’ve sold it to persons unknown.

And that’s why I say, do yourself a favor and download a spyware removal tool, like Ad-Aware, and, remember, Claria is Spyware.

So I braved the first winter blow and went to my first acupuncture appointment. It was a cool experience. I was a little nervous in anticipation. I really want this to work because I want to be able to do something like this and yoga and be able to stop taking Topamax.

I have panic attacks that somehow, for some reason, have progressed at really stressful moments to seizures, and still, my doctors want to tell me that I have epilepsy. I've seen enough evidence that other people with panic attacks are being mis-diagnosed with epilepsy, and I think this is endemic to many people in modern medicine. When I complained to my doctor that I don't think I have epilepsy, he said "Well, the medical definition of epilepsy is having two or more seizures in a year." That's a self-serving definition for a doctor. Right here on WebMD they say that not everyone who has seizures has epilepsy, but I think there's more going on here. The doctor's not the only interested party in perscribing the Topamax.

Doctors are given piles of medication and encouraged to give said medication by reps with quotas to fill. These reps don't have medical degrees or medical training. They almost always have sales training, and they make sales calls. I used to live upstairs from a bright and entertaining young woman who had just graduated from Penn State with a Sales Degree, and she was quickly climbing up the ladder of her company because of her ability to get the doctors in her region to perscribe the company's leading drugs. The fact that she was blond and single probably didn't hurt her sales either.

Pharmaceutical companies have so much money, and so much power (especially in Washington lately), and craft these intricate drugs, but still know so little about how they or we work, and it creeps me out. I don't want to ingest these chemical timebombs made in New Jersey factories by giant conglomerates, sold by a marketing rep without medical training to a physician's assistant.

For example, I took Serzone for a short time in college for depression after my father died, but was again distrustful and stopped. Search now on Google for Serzone and look at the sheer amount of liver damage lawsuits that are piling up because these companies play God with our genetics...Maybe it's the Serzone that I took that's causing my seizures.

Now I have friends who are having Topamax prescribed for depression. It's crazy.

Doctors need to turn away from medication and look to things like diet, acupuncture, exercise, things that restore balance to the individual as a whole. Insurance companies need to stop being supported by these drug behemoths to only support pharmaceutical solutions. People need to understand that health has to come from a holistic approach, and work towards it, and if they work do indeed have their health, the other parts of their life will fall into place as well. I can't fault the drug companies because they're only using the influence we gave them. We the people all went looking for an easy fix, and they tried to provide it. It's time to take take that influence and power away, and stand up for ourselves. No more drugs.

These are things that I'm only beginning to remember myself, but I'm glad that I 'm remembering them at all.

The two things you always hear from police are:

1. There is no quota system for tickets
2. We do not use tickets to generate revenue

Liars

How in the hell does the New York City Police Department expect me to believe this lunacy without the above two being true? Now George Pulido has to take a day off of work, and lose a day of a pay, or lose that vacation day if he's got any left, and face a judge. I'm sure the cop just expected him to pay the fine. What fucking bullshit. A ticket because a balloon popped. God forfend.

Apparently when you go to Google and you type "miserable failure", and then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you get a funny result.

Try it out.

You know, everytime I turn around, President Bush is fundraising. Earlier this week, he was at a $2000 a plate dinner in Dearborn, Michigan before jetting off to Whippany, New Jersey for another $2000 a plate dinner.

Estimates show that he raised close to a million dollars that night shaking hands, signing autographs, and having his picture taken. I can't shake this mental picture of American soldiers sitting in the dark in tents in Afghanistan and Iraq, separated from their families, being shot at and in firefights with rebels, over the holidays, while this smirking asshole gives speeches to supporters. The Detroit metro area, of which Dearborn is a part, has terrible problems with unemployment, crime, drug use, and poverty. Imagine what wonderful things could have happened this holiday season if Bush had arrived at the Dearborn Hyatt and said "My friends, this holiday season is different. Instead of talking about making a change, we're going to actually do it. The $2000 a plate you're paying me is going to Habitat for Humanity, which will help low-income families own homes, which I think we can all agree, helps everyone in the economy. And instead of us eating this fabulous food spread out before us, we've invited the families of The ARC to join us. They're a fabulous charity that works with children and adults with cognitive and developmental and intellectual disabilities. I think the parents and volunteers that work with these people deserve a hand."

Imagine for a second, if the fundraising the President was doing wasn't for himself and his party, but was finally for the people he claimed to represent. Wow, what a difference that could make in the world.

I got some positive comments about my blog yesterday about toxic people, most especially from Laura, and my buddy Jeff. I want to highlght what Jeff said here:
"Its really bad when you read something like what you wrote, you look in the mirror at yourself, and you think to yourself, "My God, could *I* have been that way?" The fact is, I was, to a limited extent, with someone who I really cared about, and I deeply regret it...and when the realization that you did something like this hits you, it really makes you want to hate yourself, and change, so that you never do it ever again. Hopefully something like this can be filed under the "lessons learned" category".

You know, I'm always afraid that I'll turn into my father, and that I'll treat people, especially Heather and my babies poorly. I hate thinking that despite all of the things that I have lived through and all of the things I have seen, the behavior I despised when I was grew up will bubble up out of me one day. I hope that it never does. Jeff's right though. We all need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves "Am I being a toxic person? Have I been? Why?" It's a painful question to ask, for me especially, because I need to admit whether I'm giving in to exactly the very the same things that caused me so much hurt and anger. But I figure that if I'm willing to examine myself and admit that yes I am being a jerk, then there's still hope for me to change. On the flipside, if I'm not being a jerk, then things are good.

Kudos to Jeff for being honest about his own actions and continuing this discussion. Thank you Jeff. I appreciate it.

I can't stand toxic people, the ones who crap all over something big you've done when you've done for whatever reason. I grew up with the king of toxic people, my father. He was older when I was born, so when we moved to Gettysburg, he wanted me to learn how to mow the lawn. So I was like 12 years old and he took me out for my first lesson, and I tried for about 5 minutes before my dad got really frustrated, walked over to the lawnmower, pulled me off of it and told me to go back in the house and he mowed the rest of the lawn himself.

Several weeks later, I was determined that I wasn't going to let that be the end of it, so I knew that my parents were going to be away all day, so I got the lawnmower out of the shed, and I mowed the acre and a half with the riding mower. I used the push mower on the little yard that fronted the road and the side that edged along the creek. I made some mistakes, but I went back over and I did a damn fine job, and I could tell, standing at the house, looking downwards at the slope of the lawn, and the remaining glint of the sun that I had finally accomplished something my dad could be proud of.

When they finally did arrive, my dad stopped and looked at the lawn, but didn't say anything, he just walked in the house. I followed him in and got a drink of water.

"You want me to say something about the lawn? You should have been mowing it a lot sooner."

Another time, I spent hours in my room teaching myself how to read sheet music and how to play my father's nice electronic keyboard. He had this nice Yamaha keyboard that just sat in the corner, and I liked it. I coveted it. I figured that if I could learn to play music, maybe I could have it. So I was determined. Reading music wasn't that hard, and translating it to the keyboard wasn't that much harder, for single notes, so I set about teaching myself some songs. I learned to play "Silent Night", "America the Beautiful", and a couple of other songs. It was really important to me. I knew my dad was a good musician, and he had a really good singing voice, so I figured I'd show him first, and he'd be impressed, so once I was happy with my songs I brought out the keyboard and I started playing. Halfway through "Silent Night" he stopped me and said "So what? You think you'll ever really be a musician, or ever really play?" It took me a long time to ever want to play music again.

One final example for you. My father was insistent that I learn how to play chess. He said that I had to learn to play. It was a man's game, and good for the the mind, and people wouldn't take me seriously if didn't know how to play, so he gave me a stack of 4 very serious books about chess that I was to read, and I had to play him. I was intimidated, but I looked forwarded to playing him, because I really loved spending time with him. He made me feel comfortable and safe (at least in those days) in a warm dark woord, Old-Spice kind of way. We would play and play and play on this imposing Italian chess set made of marble and pewter that I still own.

Well you can see where this is going. As long as I'm losing, and he can teach me, we're playing, but it did finally happen that I beat him. Checkmate. He never played me again. Flat out refused.

After my dad died, and I'd had a chance to get some distance I realized how toxic he was, not only on the big things, like I detailed above, but on a day to day level. It's amazing to me to see how on a day-to-day basis so many people put up with toxic people in their life, and tolerate that kind of bullshit without calling it for what it is.

Ask yourself?

1. Who are the crazymakers in my life, the really toxic people that upset me, aggravate me, frustrate me, and make my life more difficult? Why am I putting up with it?
2. Are the benefits I'm getting out of putting up with this person worth the aggravation of knowing them? If not, what do I have to lose by cutting them loose? Sometimes saying goodbye and cutting someone free is scary because you're changing the status quo, but change is good for growth.