She's just trying to be helpful...

Last night when I got home, Kouryou-chan was trying to figure out how to tie things. I spent a little while with some rope, trying to teach her the fundamental knot used to tie shoes and the like. Like most 3½ year-olds, she has a short attention span (except when we're reading books, nicely enough, and the adult wants to read them) and we didn't get very far.

This morning I came downstairs to discover the shoelaces on my new shoes missing.

Omaha criticizes me sometimes because I seem unable to throw out old shoes, even if the seams are split and the toes holed, but, y'know, at least they're there when I need them.

The Friday Five

1. How many times have you truly been in love?

I've had mad crushes on too many people, male and female, and been badly infatuated (and cruelly used) once, but at this point in my life, looking back, I would say that I've only really been in love once.

2. What was/is so great about the person you love(d) the most?

She wasn't a copy of me, didn't want to be, and I didn't want her to be. Instead, she compliments me in ways that I can barely begin to enumerate.

3. What qualities should a significant other have?

Patience. A willingness to see the relationship through. A complimentary personality.

4. Have you ever broken someone's heart?

I suspect so. I'll leave it at that.

5. If there was one thing you could teach people about love, what would it be?

That it is not miraculous, accidental, or mystical. It is a natural outcome of perseverance to a common cause, namely each other, and whatever family you choose to create about you. It is not treasured or praised enough in the modern era, which is more obsessed with the quick fix, the instant gratification of shallow wants and needs, and a delusional never-never-land kind of "love" that more closely resembles madness and obsession than real love, and the odds are dead set against your finding someone who will persevere in love with you.

Nonetheless, you should try. Your humanity deserves nothing less than the real thing.

Cheers!

( A lemming, just because )

miraclemax asked the question, "What do you do to cheer yourself up?"

I don't. I don't have to.

I think I can say without controversy that there exists an "average" human state, where people are neither cheered nor depressed. I think it's also not controversial that there are people who are mildly or severely depressed most of the time.

I seem to be mildly cheered most of the time. I've never learned "coping skills" for my depression; I've learned coping skills for dealing with a relentless optimism that presumes the car will never break down, that my keys will never get lost, that I need never make backups of my data, and so on. I'm trying to master the Heinlein "optimist by temperment, pessimist by policy" policy, but it's hard to think like a pessimist when the world is, like, so fucking cool most of the time.

Mr. Ashcroft's Neighborhood

Justice Department officials told a group of its employees, called DOJ Pride, that it could not hold its annual gay pride event at the department because the White House had not formally recognized Gay Pride Month with a presidential proclamation, Marina Colby, a department policy analyst who is president of the group, said. The group represents several hundred gay and lesbian employees at the department. This is the first time since DOJ Pride's founding in 1996 that its request for department recognition has been turned down.

Bush has recognized over 250 other "significant events," such as Greek Independence Day, Leif Erikson Day, Save Your Vision Week and National Hospice Month, but declined Gay Pride Month because he did not want to "politicize people's sexual orientation."

See: Justice Dept. Bans Event by Gay Staff at the New York Times.