OK.  I participated in marches, protests, wrote letters, phoned legislators.  I donated money to the party of my choice that most accurately portrayed my views.

I have many intelligent people who are conservative that I count among my friends.  I respect and love them.  I think that the current state of the Republican party serves them poorly.

I am sad that Fox News is allowed to persist in their misinformation.  My hope is that Fox will go the way of similar outlets like, "The National Enquirer,"  and become a source of laughable stories, quickly dismissed and put back "on the rack."  I think there's a place for intelligent, well-argued conservatism.  Unfortunately, their portrayal of them as a "news source" for the conservatively minded is bullshit and their presentation of themselves as intelligent reporting for conservatives is probably the one thing that any future Republican candidate should see coming and run screaming from the room when approached.

Their reliance on misinformation  makes a mockery of that and in no way resembles intelligence or a well-structured argument.  Somewhere in my educational elucidation, I had an English professor discuss the logical fallacies.  I am so very dependent on reason.  It's a part of my psyche to make sense of things.

I do think that logic is not faith nor is faith logical.  In politics, I don't  mix the two.

My experience of Fox is that they resort to all of the logic fallacies that crumble before what makes sense -- ad hominen, non sequitur, etc. discussed here.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy) The fact that it is so easily made fun of by Comedy Central icons, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is because they simply make no sense.  That lack of sense-making is why it's hilarious to watch them be made fun of.  It's kind of like poking a trapped animal with a sharp stick, which I think is where much of the rancor of this recent election comes from.

My hope is that as Americans that we pressure the hell out of our legislators to find MIDDLE GROUND.  Yes, it's nice to push your way because you can..  However, I think it's far more gracious to include your enemies into your circle of friends, so that they can learn that you are both human, afterall.

I have found lyrica.  I don't like the idea of crawling into a bottle for relief, but that bottle is a lifeline.  It's saving my life a day at a time.

This week I finally was out of pain sufficiently, after a pretty hefty flare, to go to the pool.  I did the aqua-aerobics class. The teacher kept trying to put me in some therapeutic group and I thanked her and declined.

The problem with a "therapeutic" group in my experience is that it's a bunch of old ladies, who aren't really trying to huff and puff.  I need to huff and puff.  I want to huff and puff.  Just call me Wolfy, baby.

I finally just asked the instructor, if she'd just let me do my own thing.  I adapted stuff to work with my body size and abilities.  Being that my shoulders were feeling pretty ripped apart still from the flare, I just did it smaller and simpler.

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Currently, I am working on an edit that is making me tear large hunks of hair out.  I swear the level of illiteracy in people is simply astounding.  No, "abliverate" is not a word.

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Some day, I'll sleep at night again.