So I'm watching Monty Python, trying to relax...

...after spending 6 hours in the car, driving today. Sure, I dropped off the kid, but my muscles are not happy about it, particularly those located in my hips, namely the right one.

Ed's in the 'Boro, doing friend things. Unless he decides to pick up some other couple in hopes I'll be interested in swinging - hey, I'm all for it for other people, if that's what floats their boat... me, however, I can't share opinions well, much less my husband, much less doing something like *that*. So, for all of you who hope, one day, to get me drunk or otherwise lessen my inhibitions to the point where you'd hope I'd decide such things are a good idea - don't get your hopes up. It won't work. I've tried a similar thing before in my younger, wilder days and it was not at all something I wish to ever repeat - it was an ok time, I've just been there and done that with no desire for a replay. It's just not for me. I feel as though I'm married for a reason - to be with my one person, and anything additional just detracts from the fun. I know that Ed feels the same way as I do, which is part of the reason we work together so well - sure, we're very different people with different backgrounds and different brains, but we're on the same page where it counts - for example, something like this.

I ate the leftover won-ton soup for dinner and darn it if it didn't taste very good. Mind you, I ate it, but it was nowhere near what I was expecting. Now, this wasn't from last night or anything, it was from tuesday night, so I'm not *that* surprised. It's amazing how my tastes for food have changed - I'd rather be eating cottage cheese and carrots than won-ton soup and crab rangoon. I've all but given up completely my penchant for fast food. The remnants are my liking for bacon, egg, & cheese biscuits from Mrs. Winner's, where I get orange juice instead of my previously-usual sweet tea. Man, I haven't had sweet tea in I don't know how long. Don't really want it, either. I went to Sonic today with Natha and he got a chocolate shake and fries, and didn't even want a kid's meal - and hardly ate the fries. I got mozzarella sticks with marinara and a cherry limeade - it was the most expertly made cherry limeade I think I've ever consumed. Too bad it was in Munfordville, Kentucky and not anywhere around here because I'd be in trouble. I think that unfolded as it did for a reason. :)

I taught Natha about several important things to know when traveling - like what the symbols on the map means and where we are relatively speaking. He knows now that the lines are roads, and different color lines are different types of roads, and they all have numbers. The dots are cities and the numbers + wedges point to exits and their mile markers - so I had to explain mile markers, too. All of this while driving and him looking at the map. A couple of times I had to have him put my finger on the symbol he had a question about and then try and figure it out whilst driving. After a while I had to stop, for safety's sake. Natha also insisted upon not listening to music most of the way there - which actually made the trip go faster. I also had to think more instead of be distracted by channel-surfing the radio for audible music that wasn't Christian in nature.

Which brings me to another thought - don't you just hate it when you're channel surfing on the radio and hear this new song you haven't heard before and start really digging it? Sometimes you get as far as listening to the words and you realize that it was christian in nature... other times it strings you along to a snippet about the station after the song that clues you in that you've been sucked in to non-secular compositions. What do you do then? Admit you liked the song? Realize that you, an agnostic/atheist/satanist/pagan/etc. were duped into liking something christian? Get mad at the Christian music industry for sucking people in with decent-sounding music hoping they'll be converted and/or born again? Do you do anything about it? Does it make you question your spirituality/personal relationship with Jesus (even though he still owes you 20 bucks)? I personally get kind of disappointed that the melody wasn't secular because there's a dire need for decent new music and someone spent the money to produce that song which has a more limited audience - I feel like the composition should have been better used, not spent on something that the majority of the world finds objectionable. I guess the same could be said about most topics of pop music as well, though - they can be quite objectionable. I know that the christian music stations are, for the most part, not actively proselytizing the general public with the music they play - they're just providing it to those who already profess to believe. At that point, I calm down a bit and move on to another station. In the end, I just get over it. I can just imagine, though, how many people hear one of these christian songs on accident, question their current faith, and become christian, just because of accidentally hearing that song. I wonder what the stats are on that one - how often does it happen?

Reading Yoga Journal lately has me thinking more about my spirituality - I consider myself, for most other people's purposes, to be agnostic/buddhist - but I've been thinking more about what that means to me lately. It's not a religion, per se, to me - it's just how I am. So instead of being guided into a religion and then striving to live by its principles, I was who I am naturally and tried to find a religious category that went along with my inclinations. Once I found the name of what I was inclined to be, I like to study it to further enrich my spiritual life. See, by doing it this way, it's the path of least resistance on my part, with still allowing room for growth. I get to be the good person I've been trying to be, then work on properly approaching the issues that come up to truly accept them. Sure, I'm not the best at it, but it's the dogma I try to follow, just like any organized religion. The reason YJ has sparked this introspection is that the magazine has lots of articles about spirituality and meditiation, not to mention articles about all kinds of interesting things, for example, about Bhutan, a country with an interesting take on life. Most people don't realize that yoga is a way of life, not just something to practice 3 one-hour sessions a week at the YMCA - thus the magazine has to cater to those just looking for asana guidance as well as those looking for sprirtual information. I'm glad to be back to reading it again, after my hiatus.

Speaking of which, I'm going to go take a bath and read YJ until Ed comes home. That's what I'd most like to be doing *right now*.