Hourglass

Have you ever played a board game where the object is to do something quickly or see how much of something you can do in a specified amount of time?  Perfection, Scattegories, Outburst, Pictionary.  You know the kind, where there is usually a timer clicking away while you try to think or an ominous looking hour glass pouring sand from one hemisphere to another...taunting you to go faster,   f a s t e r,   f  a  s  t  e  r, before you

                         run

                                       out

                                                      of 

                                                                     time!!!

Fun stuff, right?  The stress, the pressure.  Seriously it is fun, when it's a game.  But I think those games were loosely based on my life.

I feel as if every day starts with an hour glass being flipped over and as the day goes on, the sand seems to fall faster and faster and faster until *poof* it's midnight and I have to get to bed so I can get my 6 hours of sleep and start the next day.  Invariably the list I had in my head - the to do list I wanted to tackle for the day - never gets finished because I ran out of time.  So the next day starts with another flip of the hour glass and a modified to do list that gets longer and longer with added leftovers from the day before.

And so on, and so forth.

It's never ending.  Especially this time of year when the days are even shorter and the to do list is even longer.

Anybody up for a game of Boggle?

Are you kidding me?

Today must officially be National "That's Ridiculous!" Day.

Today I heard that it's not unheard of (and in some circles it's even considered normal!) to buy Christmas gifts for your pediatrician!  As if I don't feel enough pressure with societal requirements to tip your mail carrier, garbage collector, and give trinkets to my son's preschool teachers and friends at the holidays (which I currently do not do, by the way!).  Now I should be worried that I am failing my pediatrician, too?!? 

And as if that's not enough to stop me in my tracks and ask "Are you freakin' kidding me?!?"...I read a study today that said 3-year-olds who are classified as "fearless" are now considered to be more likely to grow up to be criminals.  What!?!  Apparently this new study shows that "poor fear conditioning at the tender age of 3 can predispose that person to break the law as an adult".  What is this world coming to that we have over analyzed so much of life that we are now expecting our fearless 3-year-olds to become criminals when they get older?  Are they now going to suggest that we treat these 3-year-olds differently?  Perhaps we should lock them all up NOW and save ourselves the trouble down the road.  Argh!  This really irritates me, can you tell? 

In case you haven't figured it out by my level of frustration, I am the proud mother of one of these fearless 3-year-olds and while I rationally understand they are not saying he WILL become a criminal, the fact that they even spent money to show there is a tendency towards this is annoying to me.  I bet if money was spent anywhere they could show that eating Corn Pops as a child also makes one more likely to be unemployed or that riding a green bike instead of a red one will predispose you to having a thyroid condition in your 30s.  I just don't get it.  I realize I am now the one sounding ridiculous but I made the mistake (?) of venting about this in the heat of the moment instead of thinking about it first and so I'm a little aggravated (and therefore sarcastic - Thanks, Dad!).  It just burns my britches.

Has anyone else noticed/read/heard anything completely ridiculous today?!?  Or is it just me and my corner of the world sounding like it's gone off it's rocker?