Take it to the limit...

I hate summer.

So why does the spring, with all the impending summer season it implies, turn me into an overachiever? I got up this morning, did yoga, did a load of laundry and dishes, worked on the computer a while, went shopping, just got back from a 3 mile walk, and tonight there's still class and the potential for social plans after that.

I'm insane.

A Long Week's Journey Into Night

This is absolutely inhumane.

I'm talking about what's happening to Terri Schiavo. As of this writing, she has been off her feeding tube for eight days and her family members are starting to admit the lack of nourishment is taking its toll.

Let's forget, for just a moment, all the legal wranglings, and Congressional attempts at intervention and everything else outside that hospice room. In the end, which her family says is near, this comes down to a woman who can't feed herself, being starved to death. Doctors say she can't feel it, but she can't speak for herself, so we don't truly know. It's illegal for doctors to administer drugs to kill her, because that would be murder, or assisted suicide. But it's okay to let her wither away without food because that's a "natural" death since she chose to refuse it.

In a case like this, I can't help but wonder why a medical coma is not an option. It would neither prolong her life nor hasten her demise, but if, as her family says is true, she CAN feel and is TRYING to communicate, then they would know for sure that she at least felt no pain as her last wishes were carried out.

There is so much more to be said here, but I'll bite it off one bite at a time. Perhaps I'll tackle the legalities or the ethics of it all a little later in the week.

Susan Sarandon Does It Again

So I watched the end of Shall We Dance this morning. I've seen the original, and the remake was so lackluster that it's taken me a good two weeks to slog though it. But there was one passage that wasn't in the Japanese version that really made me sit up and take notice.

I've been struggling for more than a year now with the importance of marriage and why I care so much about it. I think I've found the tip of the iceberg (of course, it was in a pretty blase movie buried in a story line that never truly developed, but that's why it's a hidden nugget) in something Susan Sarandon had to say:

"I'm not a romantic, I'm a realist. Why do people get married? We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on this planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But, in a marriage, you are promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all the time, every day. You're saying, 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.'"

That makes sense. Maybe that's what I've been looking to put into words all this time. It's not the physical security or the financial security, but the emotional security - the promise that someone will care.

Can I have a witness?

Luck o' the Irish

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. Raise your glass of green beer or Guinness in a toast -

May you be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead!