Catharsis Is Not the Left Side of a Battery.

I try to be upbeat. I am typically a glass half full kind of guy. In fact, I am an engineer so if my glass is consistently low I start using a smaller glass. Why pick up more glass than you have to? Laziness is the fertilizer for innovation. But back to positivity… I am pretty evenly split between moments of tearful joy and finding myself teetering on blind-rage-toy-smashing. Most of the time it is sleep related. Couple that with a frustrating day where a series of things I encountered could be explained with a heartfelt, “No shit Sherlock.”

If you are looking for some sunshine keep scrolling because I’m party cloud with a chance of an opinion storm. Where to begin? Who is my first innocent bystander in this literary drive-by?

Maybe I’ll start with inspiring quote status updates. Dear inspirational quote person: You are having the exact opposite of your intended effect. Showing me a video of some dog named Skippy with only two legs serving soup at a homeless shelter and jumping rope does not make me want to get up and change the world. It does make me feel a little more worthless since I slept the last two nights with a pile of shirts on the foot of my bed and I can’t find the time to put them on a hanger. Seven shirts from what I can see but who knows, it might be eight. Somebody should move that top one so I can be sure. I would do it but I’m busy not hanging things right now.

Who is next? Pinterest person? Okay pinterest person. Those things you pin look amazing. I personally want a pirate ship bed, the soup can drawer beside my refrigerator, and a patio set made from recycled pallets. I would also like a Unicorn and for any one of my four kids to be able to eat cereal without the surrounding area looking like someone turned on a blender without a lid. Maybe you could figure out a neat way for that shit to happen and pin some instructions. Then I can focus on the important things in life like making cute cookies or turning bed frames into weird high-backed chairs.

What about all the life tips floating around? Doctors find that lack of sleep destroys your body. Wow! The story should read, “Idiots pay money for sham of a study.” Any person who has been around a toddler at 2:00 in the afternoon knows sleep is a remedy. It is probably the sole reason teenagers look so youthful and exuberant. They sleep until noon, why shouldn’t they?

The formula for healthy living is the catch 22 of life. All you need to be healthy is a reasonable diet, proper rest, and regular activity. Yet for some reason the world keeps writing books about diets, searching strangely malnourished countries for super foods (that one baffles me), and creating drugs to address all our ills in exchange for side effects that cause similar issues.

Why do you suppose that is? All that effort towards healthiness and the basic answer is a)Don’t over eat, b) Sleep, and c) Move Around. I shouldn’t be confused about my health because I do the exact opposite of those three things. But when I see some new berry that is a health miracle that Ethiopians have been hiding for years, am I suspicious? Yes but do I still read about it with a faint hope? Yes. Every. Time.

What else? What else? Oh I could do a little something on parenting advice. Step one: Don’t writing parenting advice for say… parents of toddlers, if you have never been within ten feet of a toddler. I don’t try and explain to pregnant women how it will feel to push out a baby because I haven’t had that pleasure. For all I know it feels awesome and the women are lying to us men. Sounds like a crazy theory but we have four kids soooo something isn’t adding up. Telling me about discipline and how they are these developing rose buds sounds nice but sometimes they are self-centered sociopaths who need a little reality to prepare them for not getting their asses kicked on the playground.

How about organic food posts. Eat organic cucumbers for your depression…blah, blah, blah. These are my favorite. First let’s pop the organic balloon. Organic doesn’t mean pesticide free. It means they don’t use a list of certain older pesticides with long term studies that show the effects of exposure. In fact, the farmers probably use newer pesticides that haven’t been researched nearly as much and may in fact be more dangerous that the ones that the organic label promises to protect you from. Something will try to eat the fruits and the farmers will do something to stop it. The word organic blows my mental circuitry anyway because I learned in Chemistry that compounds containing carbon are inherently organic. You show me a non-organic plant and I will show you an interested scientist somewhere.

And all-natural ingredients? Thank God! I can’t stand those cheeses made with moon rocks. Or those carrots grown in clouds. They just aren’t natural. Unless you live on acorns and forage native grasses you probably enjoy foods that are mostly domesticated and far from natural. Crude oil comes from dead animals, fossil fuels? What is more natural than methane and gasoline? Anyway.

Okay I’m back. That felt good. I hope I didn’t injury too many relationships or feelings. The truth is that I like interesting quotes, cool pinterest ideas, wish I could do healthy living, and even exercise. I hope to raise good and happy citizens of the world and I want them to eat healthy things. But I also struggle getting motivated to do any of it and my inner five year old likes to throw rocks at things that frustrate him. I’ve put him away and am prepared to read more about the right vitamins to develop an infant’s brain or a new strawberry quiche. We can all be friends, I just need my 2:00 nap.

If you get moody and deconstruct everything in your path, this post is for you. You’re welcome. Me too.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.