Sticks & Stones

At the end of last month, we attempted No Name-Calling Week. As I said in my announcement, Rodney doesn’t care in the slightest what words we use to address him. I expected NNCW to be an exercise in self-examination. Instead, it became an exercise in definition. What constitutes an insult?

What if the words are accurate?
Calling Rodney a fat horse is no less descriptive than calling him a tall horse. He is 17+ hands. He has blobs of flesh on his shoulders into which you can poke a finger.

What if the words are justified?
When a three-month old puppy chews on your ear with his adorable needle teeth, calling him a pain seems appropriate.

What if your words are kind but the intent is not?
My unfortunate name for Rodney is Dimwit. To reverse that, I took to referring to him as Luminous Lightbulb. The underlying sarcasm rendered this a distinction without a difference.

What if you don’t use any words at all?
Hubby had lost an item. We searched. When he found it, he wouldn’t tell me where. It was cousin to searching for one’s sunglasses/reading glasses while they resided on one’s head. When finally fessed up, I laughed out loud.

If each instance of name calling was worth a dollar in swear jar, how much did each of these instances cost me? 25c? 50c? Hubby said that laughing to his face was a least a full dollar.

While all of the visitors to Rodney’s Saga have been intelligent and polite to date, from what I have seen on other blogs [also here] and in commentary, I feel I need to state explicitly that I have no intention of mocking No Name-Calling Week. Folks who don’t share their lives with animals might not understand, or perhaps feel I am equating animals to children, which I emphatically do not [Rodney’s Mommy]. Granted, we were not involved in mitigating the horrible issues that surround school bullying. However, we spent the week considering the complicated intersection of meaning and intent. I would think that would be part of what the founders of NNCW had intended.

Diet Update
While I am on the subject of self-improvement, the exercise & diet plan is mediocre to non-existent. I’ve gone swimming a few times, done a few field walks, no sit-ups, no stretching. I don’t count riding lessons. Those muscles are plenty fit. It’s the rest of the body that needs tuned, conditioned, and limbered. So, a start, if a weak one.

I’ve totally failed on the soda front. I’m back to 2 or 3 a day. In the long-term, it’s bad for my blood sugar. In the medium-term, it’s bad for my figure and my teeth. In the short-term … oh, the short-term. Picks me right up on gloomy day. It’s partly the sugar, partly the caffeine, and partly the habit.

I seem to be having a lot of gloomy days lately. No major programming flaws, just little coding errors: a heavy rain that partly floods the barn, a vet appointment with a geriatric horse, some little life event that leaves me reaching for that red, 12-ounce can of happy.
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