Groovymarlin.com

Do you dream? I dream often and vividly. In fact, I sometimes scream, yell, laugh and cry in my sleep. I have never gotten up and walked around, though…at least not yet.

Frequent Dream Categories

Back to School:

Bathroom Blues:

Personal Trauma:

Weird Nostalgia:

Strange Discoveries:

I had to un-friend someone on Facebook today. Then I had to block him. I don’t like having to do stuff like that, but there’s no room for ignorance and hatred in my life, and it all started because this person became a born-again Christian.

I have nothing against Christians, born-again or otherwise. If it makes you happy, brings you comfort, or helps you make sense of the world, then bully for you. Just don’t try to force your religion on me or anyone else (obviously), and we’ll get along fine. So when this friend started posting frequent updates mentioning “Praise Jesus” or whatever, I kind of smiled and didn’t think about them too much. I usually look at religiosity like that as a sort of hobby – some people are into things like knitting, and post lots of updates about their knitting projects, and some people are into their church, and that’s what their updates are usually about. Fine, whatever.

Then today, this dude posts this long diatribe about the “two evils” that are currently vying to “destroy our society.” Can you guess what the two big, scary evils were? I bet you can. They were: Islam, and “the homosexual agenda.” I don’t like to think about it in detail, because it just makes me want to pour some bleach in my ear to wash my brain, but basically the premise was: “Islam is not just a religion, it’s a movement to destroy the world, and also, gays = gross and why are they everywhere in our faces with their icky gayness?”

News flash, religious and non-religious people alike: it’s not OK to hate on a whole group of people because their religion is different from yours, or their sexuality is different from yours, any more than it’s OK to hate on a group of people because their skin color/race/sex/job/hobbies/political affiliation/whatever is different than yours. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

By the way, it is very hard for me to write about this in a calm manner, without using profanity, and that’s why I un-friended and blocked that former friend on Facebook. I have enough stress in my life without dealing with that sort of ignorant, obnoxious hate-mongering. It’s useless to try to argue with a person like that, because he’s made up his mind, and isn’t thinking rationally anyway. I guess that’s the negative side of religion – when it makes people become irrational. I’m not religious now, but I was raised Catholic, and I read plenty of the New Testament growing up. I’m pretty sure Jesus’s whole thing was “love one another,” and he was the guy who was always respecting the folks who didn’t get any respect (prostitutes, lepers, beggars). Why can’t some of these people who claim to love Jesus so much practice what he preached?

No, I haven’t updated in a long time. As usual, plenty of things to write about, but no time or motivation to write about them. In fact, I’m thinking about giving up the blogging thing all together. But perhaps I’ll feel differently after the holidays are over.

In any case – Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year to the two or three of you who actually read this. The Dude abides!

No, not really. But listen — some weird, unexpected stuff happened to me recently. I went to urgent care with chest pains and shortness of breath, and ended up admitted to the hospital for three days with bilateral pulmonary embolism. That’s fancy medical-speak for “several blood clots in both my lungs.”

How the hell did that happen? WHY did that happen? We’re not sure, but the doctors I’ve spoken with all suspect two things:

1. They think I have a genetic clotting disorder which will require some additional testing in the future to determine

2. I was on the birth control pill, which causes more women than I imagined to get blood clots

So I’m off the Pill for good, and taking blood thinners for the next six months, while I recover.

Being in the hospital was awful — boring, uncomfortable, impossible to get a good night’s sleep, and I missed the Bean like crazy. On the plus side, the hospital didn’t care if you used your cell phone and they had free wi-fi everywhere. So, armed with my iPhone and my iPad, I was pretty well able to amuse and entertain myself.

Happy to be home, though.

Follow-up on previous matters: congratulations to Lori, the only person to leave a comment on my Shutterfly giveaway post. She won the codes for free photo cards. I already got my cards back from Shutterfly and they look GREAT. I’m really happy I decided to do it this year – the hassle of working with a petulant model (see below) was totally worth it.

I don’t like to start talking about Christmas stuff until much, much closer to Christmas. At least around Thanksgiving. I mean, I do start my Christmas shopping some time around August, but I keep mum about it! I hate Christmas Creep!!

However, here’s something you need to think about early, well before it feels comfortable, and that is photo Christmas cards. I’ve always felt kind of envious of the people who their shit together enough to plan, stage, and produce a photo; then have it imprinted on custom cards; all in time to send out before holidays. Are these people Superfamilies? Whatever. This year I have PROMISED myself to do the same, with the help of Shutterfly!

I’ve used Shutterfly before, thanks to a coupon code I got once when Veronica had her picture taken with Santa. I got a calendar printed and it was awesome! I loved looking at different, goofy pictures of her all year, and the quality of the calendar itself was really nice. This year, Shutterfly is doing a nice promotion through BlogHer, and I’m definitely going to get holiday cards. I’m on top of it, for realz! Read on to find out how you can win a coupon code for some free cards!

Of course if cards aren’t your thing, they also offer a nice series of photo books. I made one of these for the hubz for Father’s Day one year. It was beautiful, and we still enjoy paging through it. Veronica especially likes looking at the pictures of her as a baby!  Or maybe you need birthday cards, invitations, birth announcements, or any kind of photo-imprinted greeting card you can think of. Shutterfly has you covered there too. They’ll even mail the cards for you, in case you just can’t stand licking stamps.

So this weekend is my big photo shoot weekend – the trouble with little kids is, they grow so fast! So even though I have adorable winter-themed photos of Veronica like the one below, it’s at least two years old and she doesn’t really look like that anymore:

Anyway, I’ll be trying to take that PERFECT picture this weekend. And, as it turns out, we might have actual snow (crazy!) which would make the job a little easier, I guess. Other suggestions welcome. I’m leaning towards a black and white photo on this card (ooh! artistic!).

If you would like a code good for 25 FREE cards from Shutterfly, leave a comment here. On November 6, I’ll choose three random winners (note that you must leave your email address with your comment to qualify). Thanks for reading!