Category Archives: open letter

Howdy, Strangers.

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Something happened when we moved into the new house and all of the sudden, I lost my blogging mojo. I’ve spend a fair amount of time performing some self-analysis of the situation, and I’ve come up with a whole battery of semi-valid reasons that I haven’t written on here. I’m not going to list them, though, because they all just read like excuses and everyone hates excuses. The standard “no news is good news” rule doesn’t seem to apply to blogging — especially not when you announce the return of your sometimes-crippling depression, and then drop off the face of the earth. I recognize that my timing has been poor, so I’ll try to resolve some of the grey areas that have been left standing with an update-post. Perhaps that will get the blog rolling again.

I’m seeing a therapist on a weekly basis. I was very blessed/lucky to find someone that was a good fit for me right off the bat this time, as opposed to the disastrous results I got last time I looked for a therapist. She’s young and hip, and we spend a good amount of time in our sessions laughing, which is exactly the way that I like to deal with things. If I can’t at least laugh about something, it makes it impossible for me to talk about the really hard things.

And there are some really hard things. This therapist has helped me dig around in my mess of a brain long enough to find a few things that were really bothering me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on them before I started seeing her. In short, she’s done what therapists are supposed to do. So, that’s great news. I’m getting medically sorted and I’m getting therapized on the regular, so, wins all around.

Zack and I are still loving the new house. I of course have big plans for furniture and decorations for every room. It took me about a month of living here before I realized that all of the furniture and decorating wasn’t going to happen immediately, that, in fact, it was going to be a very slow, laborious process. After that I chilled out a little bit, and started to really soak up the glory of being in this stage. It’s a fun stage. Instead of spending my time flipping through real estate websites, I’m back to looking at magazines and imagining the perfect craft room set-up.

I started working out at a new CrossFit gym that’s right here by the house. In short, it’s pretty much kicking my ass. I did my second workout there today. I’m exhausted even though it wasn’t even a miserable day — we were just doing skill work. Learning how to do kipping pull-ups and double-unders. I am very proud to say that I can do pull-ups with the kipping. I might be less proud tomorrow, however, if the way my arms and chest feel is any precursor to how sore I’m going to be. I hyper-extended my elbows about 23 billion times as I was coming out of the pull-ups (apparently you have to be strong to do a pull-up AND to STOP doing a pull-up, too). That should make working tomorrow a total delight.

But anyway, y’all: fear not about the state of me and my mental health. I am improving, undoubtedly. And I am coming back to you. I promise, I haven’t quit blogging. It was more like a leave of absence, and I’ve missed it the whole time I’ve been gone. Thanks for checking up on me every once in a while, though. It was nice to be missed.

Political Opinions! I has them!

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I had to write a Letter to the Editor or a Letter to a Legislator for a school assignment this week. I decided to go for the Letter to the Editor because you get to be way more sassy when you’re writing the newspaper than you do when you’re writing a Suit in Austin, Texas. Because I’m lazy tonight, I’m going to let it be my blog post for the day, too. This should be fun, since the subject isn’t really one that typically elicits a partisan stance. Who agrees or disagrees? Play nice.
Update: The letter got published.

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It strikes me as one of life’s absurd coincidences that among the 23 bills that Governor Perry vetoed on Friday was a bill that would have made some Texas drivers 23 times safer.

Everyone knows that texting while driving is a bad idea; Oprah made sure of that. I’m not convinced, however, that everyone truly understands exactly how dangerous it really is. In 2009, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released a study saying that drivers who send text messages while behind the wheel are 23 times more likely to be in a crash or a near-crash event than non-distracted drivers.

Despite the knowledge that texting and driving is unsafe, many people choose to do it anyway. Common sense, education, and threat of severe injury or death do not seem to be reason enough for people to put down their phones when they get into their cars. Creating a law that fines drivers who choose to put their lives (and my life, and everyone else’s lives) in jeopardy by sending text messages is not, as Perry says, micro-managing. In fact, enacting legislature might be the only way to get the job done.

Why Our School (Kind of) Deserves A Recycling Award: An Essay

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Our school deserves an award for recycling because we have made great strides to conserve our planet’s natural resources by reducing, reusing and recycling.

In order to reduce the amount of resources our school needs, we have implemented several important programs.  The most marked reduction in consumption in our school can be found in the area of paper usage.  Instead of resorting to easy and comfortable paper-saving techniques like 2-sided printing, we have taken our dedication to the next level.  We have gone so far as to abandon interoffice communication altogether out of our heartfelt care for the environment.  Instead we use shouting as our sole method of communication, bellowing our daily notes and notices to each other from the roof tops.  Soon, I fear, we will have to abandon this method too, lest our hot breath contribute to global warming.  We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.  I can’t be too concerned with it right now, though, because I have to finish this essay before our daily school-wide mandatory nap time, instituted to allow 1.5 hours of lights-out time which helps save another precious resource: energy.

Even more than we excel at reducing our usage of resources, we are experts in the area of reusing.  One teacher in particular, Ms. Jones, is pioneering new depths of the term “reuse,” as she never throws anything away, ever.  And that’s kind of like recycling.  Really, we call it hoarding.  She can be found on the weekends, nose in a dumpster, feet kicking in the air, as she surfs around looking for abandoned milk cartons or other objects that could be used as either a project or a container (which she will fill with other things she got out of the dumpster).  She’s very crafty that way.  The teachers have taken well to Ms. Jones reusing methods and have started applying it to other areas of education as well.  When the end of the 2nd 6-week cycle arrived, the teachers thought, “Hey!  Let’s just re-use the first 6-week cycle’s grades for this cycle again!  That’s reusing, and reusing is good for the environment!”  We all try hard to do our parts.

I have to be honest, though — recycling is where we fall a little short.  We only recycle sometimes, and that’s usually because Ms. White is in the room, and she makes us feel bad when we don’t recycle.  She’s from California, so she’s kind of weird, as I’m sure you’ve already concluded.  She’s forever filling up my shred bucket with her non-sensitive materials just because the shredding company does really recycle.  Unlike us.  Or at least, that’s what I tell her.  We’re trying harder and harder all the time, though.  Whenever I drink a bottle of water, I always put the empty bottle in the recycling bin on my way out the door.  Always, meaning, every time I remember.  And that’s most of the time.  Well, most of the time that Ms. White is around, anyway.

An Open Letter To My Brother-in-Law

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Matt,

Last night, Zack asked me to wake him in the morning before I left for work.

“I have to vote tomorrow,” he said.
I asked, “Who are you going to vote for?”
“Not sure.”
“You’re going to have to decide soon,” I reminded him.

This morning, right before I left, I poked my head in the bathroom door.
“Have you decided yet?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said, while shampooing his hair.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, “Just pick the guy that’s on the top of the list?”
He said, “No,” then paused. “I think I am going to write in Ron Paul.”

So, never mind Zack’s constant stance that Ron Paul was going to damage America with his Gold Standard Ideals, and never mind the hours of discussions you two had, wherein he told you that voting for Ron Paul was the wrong choice, because being crazy about the Gold Standard meant that Ron Paul would be crazy about other things, too.  Looks like you won him over in the end.*

That, or Zack is taking desperate strides to remain the neutral middle, for the sake of the sanity of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.  You know.  One or the other.

Love,

Sarah II

*Having not conversed with Zack since this morning, I can not, in any way, verify whether or not he actually did write in Ron Paul.  But the above conversations, contrary to the usual dialogue on my blog, did actaully happen, almost word-for-word.  And I have been laughing about it ever since.