Tales, Morals, and Chainsmoking Cabbitroids...

The story is told of a father who had twin sons. One son was an optimist, the other a pessimist.

On the twins' birthday, while the boys were at school, the father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly. "Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, and I'll have to read the instructions, and I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will get broken," answered the pessimist.

Passing the optimist's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" asked the father.

To which the optimist replied, "There's got to be pony in here somewhere!"

All too often I think we get so caught up in the disaster of the moment that we forget to look at the larger picture around us. I've has a series of chats with a half dozen different individuals today, each of them as blue and forlorn as I myself have felt for days. As I talked with each of them, I realized I was hammering the same basic rhythm, adapted to however I thought they'd 'hear' it most easily: It gets better. Some people have nothing better to do than be mean, and it does -not- make you any less a person. Don't give up. Remember that someone cares.

As the night winds down, and my thoughts turn inward, the blackness tries again to swallow me... and that tiny (and normally quite sarcastic) voice in the back of my head repeats my own words to me. And it's true. And I need to take my own advice and -trust-.... even though trust is a difficult thing for me. As life stands, there are exactly -three- people that I trust completely, and four more that are just -barely- outside of that (generally hovering there due ti time, travel, and pain constraints rather than anything perceived 'wrong' with them; I simply haven't had the wits to process them into the inner cloister.) It gets better. Mean people suck, and generally not the nice way. I refuse to give up. And... I have an awful lot of truly wonderful people that care about me. And yes, R, that includes you no matter -what- your opinion of yourself is. Yes, Frances, you too, silly. And Clara and Ryn and Owyn and Marcia and... it's such a long list, filled with wonderful people who're everything from service department managers at car dealers to magazine editors (bet you thought I'd forgotten you, Ysa. :p).

So we move on.

THREE COWBOYS

Three cowboys are sitting around a campfire, out on the lonesome prairie, each with the bravado for which cowboys are famous. A night of tall tales begins.

The first says, "I must be the meanest, toughest cowboy there is. Why, just the other day, a bull got loose in the corral and gored six men before I wrestled it to the ground, by the horns, with my bare hands.

The second couldn't stand to be bested. "Why that ain't shit. I was walking down the trail yesterday and a fifteen foot rattler slid out from under a rock and made a move for me. I grabbed that snake with my bare hands, bit off his head, and sucked the poison down in one gulp. And I'm still here today.

The third cowboy remained silent, slowly stirring the coals with his penis.

*chuckle* The other big thing seems to be that I take myself -entirely- too seriously sometimes. It's a problem that seems to impact several of my dearest friends as well. It's good to laugh. I thought this was amusing, and ... well, sorry if you don't like it, but it's here. :p

Anyway, I'm going to try and sleep now. G'nite, darlings.

~Ellie-chan

PostScript: Ysabet, darling, if you're still reading... somewhere in the house there are my glasses... and I really REALLY need them. Could you send them to me, please?