About Guns and Different Skills - A friend wrote me and offered, If you ever want help overcoming your "irrational fear of guns" just let me know. ;-) When else do you get to exchange the physical coherence of old vegetables for emotional self-confidence?

To be honest, I have no interest in getting over it. I can function fine, standing in line in a restaurant with a trained peace officer who has their fully-loaded weapon on their belt right in front of me. And I suppose if I needed to defend someone's life and a gun were handed to me, I could deal. But I have ZERO interest in shooting recreationally or for practice. EVER. No need to. Don't want to, you can't make me, la la la la la.

That last bit is what I can assume is the irrational part. And I'm leaving it right there.

I continue to believe that my gun-enthusiast friends are okay with me leaving it right there. You're not the only ones who've offered to get me past this, and you're not likely the last. I grew up as a cop's daughter. I've been on a shooting range as a small girl, taught gun safety, and never never NEVER want to have to hold a gun again, if I don't have to. I'm okay with trained professionals (or interested enthusiasts) taking care of that for me.

I don't want to learn to be a surgeon either. But no one ever says "I'll teach you to use a scapel if you want to get over your fear of innards." I squint when I watch ER or some movies, and move on. I joke that my sister got the "medical brain" and I'm okay with that. Not only has she taught high school (AP) biology, she pioneered a cadaver class for high schoolers and ran an internship program for high-schoolers headed into pre-med programs. She rocks.

I'm actually glad we all have different skills. As wonderful as it is to build a broad knowledgebase and skills (certainly see the previous discussion), I have no burning desire to learn to repair a car, stitch up a wound, or solder a computer mother-board. At the same time, my areas of passion, training, skill, and expertise are not the same as yours. There are plenty of musicians who have no desire to learn to be a vocal performer or a musical composer. That's fine. I have no desire to learn to play the Germanic Lyre, either.

There's something to be said for the wonder that is diversity in skills in humanity. I like the quilt that we (figuratively and sometimes literally) create in our communities.

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My Week So Far - It took me a while to even remember my week. It's been rather lack-luster. On one hand, my house has fallen apart. I haven't had any motivation to clean, although I will have someone over tomorrow morning and additional friends over Sunday. So I just *know* I'll be going through the house in a flurry tonight and again tomorrow morning. I wish I didn't wait until the last minute.

Weight-loss has also been a heart-breaker this week, but not the way you think. I mentioned that I'd recently took off 7 pounds, and was feeling proud about it. Then I was pretty sure that food would be unpredictable at Hogwarts, but stepping on the scale Tue it registered +2, Wed +2, and today -4 lbs. What? I had the weirdest thought before stepping on the scale this morning, where after two days in a row of registering gaining 2 lbs each day, I thought "oh no! I ate three meals yesterday!" and then the scale said I'd lost -4 lbs in a day. Okay that's ridiculous -- both the instinct to feel bad about having EATEN (which makes me want to smack my forehead), or the inconsistency of scales. I *know* that stepping on the scale every day is a bad habit, because daily weight swings are not true indicators of weight loss. But I cannot bear to skip the ritual, even though I know it just adds to my daily stress.

Monday, I went over to Arts and Sciences, where it was our quartely Scribal topic. We've finished a year of 4 scribal sessions, and are starting a new series now. This round, we're designing actual real scroll templates, and we'll be completing them for real kingdom scroll assignments. I managed to pencil-sketch my new template, and I'll find an evening to go back over to Aliskye's later to finish it for the light-board step next.

Tuesday, Bjo and John met over at Theresa's, to plan some computer things, and I was supposed to help out. But they accomplished everything before I arrived, so my time there was just a social visit and a nice dinner (thank you, T!) with dear friends. I had a fantastic conversation with Bjo and John while T went to pick up Alan from the train station, and then all five of us just socialized for another hour or so before everyone headed back home.

Wednesday, yesterday, I made it over to fighter practice a little bit late for the start of our Tai Chi, but the four of us had a great session. Aliskye is reviewing all her Tai Chi learning, and passing it on to Amya, Eowyn, and me. Eowyn was last enrolled in Tai Chi about 15 or 20 years ago, I last took it about 12 years ago, and I cannot remember if Amya (Kim) ever took it before. But the four of us are really enjoying the time together. I imagine this just might keep growing. It started out just Aliskye and me, and it's been growing all month. :)

Tonight is Tattershall. Today I have to seriously get some massively backed up tasks done, and someone just microwaved something that is completely horrible smelling to me. I think it's something generic-frozen that other people love, because I've smelled this kind of horrible lunch somewhere before. Gotta flee the building and find something to eat.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Aliskye