Tres Años

I am really sick of church, which is kind of bad, being as how I am a board member and all. Yeah, inconvenient.

The worst part is that I can't decide if it is actually for a good reason or just because I am pathologically unable to sustain a relationship - any relationship - for longer than three years.

Sigh. My brain is all wrong.

But when Sunday rolls around, I try to think of any excuse not to go to church. When I go, I enjoy it because of the people, but getting there is like walking in your most painful shoes. You just don't want to take that first step.

If I went to a church with 300 people, I could skip with no problem. But I don't. I go to a little church, so when I am missing, it is pretty obvious.

I have been involved in this church for a long time, but I never realized before how much it is based on this whole Law of Attraction/The Secret kind of thing. My old pastor was a Course in Miracles guy, not a "think of a pony and you'll get a pony" guy, and we never studied the basics of the church's teachings, so it just did not occur.

But I was mistaken. Once of the basic beliefs of my church is indeed the Law of Attraction. And you know how much I hate that nonsense.

The mush-brainedness of it continues to gall me. One of the notions is that you aren't supposed to think fear thoughts, lest those fears come true.

So during the Swine Flu scare, we put out hand sanitizer but we had to have a whole big dance-around speech about how we weren't going into fear thoughts but that we were just following Health Department orders...but NO FEAR THOUGHTS.

Holy cats, people. It is just hand sanitizer, not a condemnation of your fear-free brain. Germs exist. Get over it and clean yourself off.

(And if you think you are fear-free, you are SO lying. Unless you are an enlightened master. Which you aren't, because you're wasting your time reading blogs instead of going out and doing enlightened master stuff.)

Then this past week, the sermon was about how face-to-face interaction was good and computers were bad because they isolate us.

How about you? Do you feel isolated? Me, I'm looking forward to seeing Suzanne and Mar and Major Bedhead and Average Jane and about 200 of my other favorite isolated people in Chicago.

So I dunno. Maybe I am not cut out for this church thing. Maybe I need another church. Or a break. Or to suck it up and do something for longer than three years. Something. Right now I feel stuck with it until I get off the board in 6 months. Not that I'm counting. Pray for me.

All wet

My aqua aerobics partner-in-crime is Diana, a mischevous, bright-eyed special ed teacher.

We always in trouble with Cheryl, the control freak instructor, for running our yaps while we exercise. We get in water fights, crack each other up and generally behave as if we are 13 years old. But somehow we always get a good workout.

Today Diana was on the verge of being late to class. She walked to the edge of the pool and stepped off into the water.

Unfortunately, she stepped off right next to this hellish German woman. I mean, she isn't hellish because she is German (though my dad did have to go kick those bastards' butts back across the Rhineland in 1944), but because she is an uptight cranky old cow.

She doesn't come to class to work out. Instead, she always latches on to some poor unsuspecting fellow student and talks their ear off for the whole class in this whiny, complaining way she has, all the while moving her arms a couple times a minute so it looks like she is exercising.

I know because she caught me one day and it was horrible. Ever since, I have refused to make eye contact with her lest she draw me in with her Tractor Beam of Bad Personality.

ANYWAY, Diana made a *gasp* splash when she got in.

The German upbraided her severely. She went into a tirade about how she had just come from the salon, you see, where she had gotten her hair done. Right before coming to the swimming pool.

Her hair was this spiky Calvin in Calvin-and-Hobbes looking thing, and NOW IT WAS SPLASHED WITH WATER.


I kept catching Diana's eye as she was getting an earful and making juvenile faces at her over The German's shoulder.

Diana apologized profusely and managed to move away, but The German circled back for more.

"The sign," she said, pointing angrily, "says NO DAIFFFINK!"

Since when is stepping off the edge into the pool "diving"? No wonder the Chinese have been kicking the German's butts in that Olympic event for the past few decades.

And since when does someone go to a SWIMMING POOL where 40 people are splashing to the oldies and expect that they will be completely, 100 percent safe from getting their hair wet?

After laughing for the whole hour, I told Diana "I am SO blogging this."

Stay tuned for more adventures from Jerks at the Gym. Next up: "Yoga Class - You're In My Spot."

It's not FAIR

I was recently in a situation where someone went out of his way to make my life worse.

Why was he so malicious?

Because we were in a situation where he perceived that I was getting treated better than him. And there was no way to make his situation better, so he settled on making my situation worse.

And he was satisfied by that.

God, preserve me from people who want to make everything "fair."

As William Goldman said so wisely in "The Princess Bride"
Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

The sooner you learn that, the happier your life will be. Pinky swear.