Backing Off

I may have to stop reading about politics for a while. I think that it's beginning to affect my general view of life.

I've been reading quite a lot about health care, and about the tempest in a teapot regarding Obama's planned speech to children. I persuade very few -- very few -- people when I bring the subject up on Twitter, and I get mad when people blindly chant slogans back at me. But when I get mad because my wife and daughter went shopping for clothes, and came back with some really nice things -- well, that's a bit much. Because it wasn't the clothes; it was residual irritation from the politics. Need to back off. I have to remember that for all intents and purposes, what I think doesn't matter.

So what else is going on?

An article in, I believe, the Post says that a number of families now use texting for quick messages, anything from a question about whether a room's been cleaned -- one father says he told his daughter to 'take a picture of the cleaned room and send it to me ' -- to updates on child location or statements about the status of dinner. Some have said that it's easier to text from upstairs to down than it is to make the trek. I'm intrigued by this, though I think it's more a function of families that are constantly flying in multiple directions. We're not likely to use it. For one thing, I'd need to have my phone -- my camera-less phone, if you can imagine such a thing -- on, and with me, which I don't usually do. Imagine!

A week and a half ago, the volunteer coordinator at the local hospital, having discovered that I wasn't volunteering to be a typist, said she'd call me in a week. I wasn't surprised not to hear from her -- like other things, I don't seem to fit what they think of or expect. Still, I'm disappointed by that. I suppose I'll give them some time, and call again. And yesterday two of the five people in my group for the local polling place called to tell me that they'd completely forgotten about the election, and wouldn't be able to be there -- so we have to find two more people. Argh. It wasn't fun doing that the last time.

Spent some time getting boned up on things that my daughter is studying. Some was fun, some interesting, and some of it stunned me. I'm doing it to encourage her, to help keep her on track. And to keep myself from musing about the three girls she knows who are doing advanced work -- one's a freshman in high school taking one college course. I have to remember that this stuff can be hard. Harder than I had to do, I think.