Merry Christmas Eve!

I'm on vacation with my parents, visiting my brother in Anacortes, Washington state.  Anacortes is a small town on Whidby Island.  It's very beautiful, although cold and rainy.  Like the time when I was in Florida earlier this year, I'm going to try to blog everyday...We'll see if that happens!

The view near my brother's house:

I haven't done a lot today, but it's sort of fun to just lounge around sometimes, especially in a nice, warm house with a scenic ocean view and a brother that I don't get to see that often.  The one big thing we did today was do a big grocery store.  I must admit that I got really anxious towards the end and almost started crying.  The place was really crowded and I got overstimulated, plus we were buying a lot of food, which triggers some old eating disorder anxieties.  I decided to use the DBT skill of distraction to get my mind off of the food.  Fortunately, I always have a book with me and so when I got to the car, I read until my mind was focused on the great story - The Diamond of Darkhold by Jeanne DuPrau - instead.

Great book!

I am very happy today doing almost nothing.  In my last couple of posts I've forgotten to leave my recommended links at the bottom of the posts, so there'll be more than usual left there today.  Happy reading and happy holidays!

Recommended Links:

Living My Social Work - Evil. Insane. MentallyIll. Autistic.

Is the philosophy of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps more important than a country prioritizing funding for excellent accessible mental health services 

With Love: Dear Good Men Project

I don't think that a feminist man who doesn't understand what privilege is can actually be feminist.

Owldolatrous:

No Shooter’s Name Appears in this Post

 On FOX News and elsewhere, religious political and entertainment entities Bryan Fischer and Mike Huckabee each laid this horror at the feet of secularism, declaring that God didn’t protect the innocent victims of this shooting because we’ve taken God out of schools and “God doesn’t go where he’s not wanted.”

I’ve always known Bryan Fischer was a ghoul, but I didn’t know he thought God needed an invitation, like a vampire waiting on Sookie’s stoop. Since when has God been so small? What is the Bible but the story of God and God’s messengers going precisely where they weren’t wanted?

 Telling the (Queer) Christmas StoryThey’ll hear again the ancient story of the baby, the undocumented foreigner, conceived out of wedlock, child to two dads, born in a filthy shed and laid in an unclean trough, a fugitive from the law from his very first breath. They’ll be told that this baby is God—that there’s something in this world greater and more important than wealth, or political power, or the laws of birth, or even the “laws” of nature, and they will find it worthy of praise. In this act, as much as church leaders would often try to deny it, lie the seeds of revolution.