I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to title this post because it falls into the category of random thoughts and I just didn’t want to categorize it that way this time. A little variety is always nice. Went to my thesaurus and came up with these offerings:
A collection of various things: assortment, conglomeration, gallimaufry, hodgepodge, jumble, medley, mélange, miscellany, mishmash, mixed bag, mixture, olio, patchwork, salmagundi, variety. Slang grab bag. See collect/distribute.
It is a good collection of odds and ends. I am pleased to say that I have used almost everyone of the aforementioned words at some point in time. I once told a substitute teacher that I was a new student named Salmagundi Gallimaufry. She asked me what my nationality was and I told her that it was a mix of things. I remember feeling far too clever.
It has been a busy week for so many reasons. One of the more popular posts was my questions about whether having children impedes having an active sex life. It generated a lot of interest and many responses in both the comments and email.
Part of the response was because I mentioned Ayelet Waldman and the article she wrote in the New York Times.in which she wrote about her love and lust for her husband. The article outraged many people and excited a number of others.
People spoke to me of the way things used to be in their marriages and how they are now. I found it interesting. One thing that I noticed was that within the email I received there were two groups. One group spoke about the love/lust that Waldman did in a way that suggested to me that they related to her and could understand/agree with her.
The second group was outraged by her comments and made a point of focusing upon that. Now call me juvenile or focused upon sex, but I wonder if that second group is still getting any. I know that this is crude, but that is just what occurred to me.
The other thing that I thought about was she describes the kind of mad passionate love that only a few relationships have but all should aspire to. We should all be involved with others who are so important to us that just holding hands is enough to inspire carnal thoughts, in whose presence we never feel anything less than complete exhiliration.
In my experience this is not something that happens every time, it is a rare and beautiful combination. And it always involves a melding of the physical and the mind. That is, the love and passion cannot be described as being completely sexual or solely mental. Your partner just fulfills you in every way, they are utterly intoxicating to you.
From an entirely different tack I have the issue of education and my children. I very much appreciate the feedback I received. I don’t feel lost or without any sense of how to go about making a decision, but I feel the weight of the decision upon my back. I don’t think that there is one right answer, but there are wrong answers. What I do today has so much of an impact upon the future. My son is far smarter than I am, so all I want to do is cultivate his love of learning and keep it stimulated.
I look at him and my daughter and think about my goals of making sure that they grow up to be people of character and integrity and cannot help but wonder what they will be like. When I look at myself I see a lot of my father and mother in myself and then I can see things that come very much from my grandfathers. Little things that I don’t see in my father, but see in his are within myself. Did they skip a generation.
Will that be the case with my children too? I wonder.
I am glad that Terri Schiavo has finally passed away. Her death was upsetting to me because as a parent I cannot help but feel for her family. As a spouse I wonder about what would happen if heaven forbid I was placed in such a position and more than anything else I still think that the nation is reeling in pain and confusion about a number of issues.
And I still see polarization and politicizing of so many issues that do not have a middle ground although they should. Few things in life are black and white and I find it to be dangerous to treat most issues that way. When you assume a position that says “you are with me or against me” you begin the process of painting yourself into a corner and you it is not overly dramatic to say that you can hear the dogs of war begin to pant and bark.
It is late, so I’ll stop babbling. See you all a little later.
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