My Diabadass Sister

It's been a while since I got a haircut.

When I was younger, I always kept my hair buzz-cut.  It was short.  I mean REALLY short.  I knew it was time to get a haircut whenever I had to do anything to it when I woke up.

I don't remember why I started doing it, but somewhere around my freshman year of high school, I started growing my hair out.  And I liked it!  My hair grew out in beautiful blonde curls (of which I am INCREDIBLY proud!) and somehow having bigger hair made my head look smaller.  Ever since, it's been my identifier:  the thing that makes me unique.  Because of that, I've resisted getting it cut since then like a turkey resists going out on Thanksgiving, but in high school, I still always knew when to get it cut, because the coaches would tell me.

Then I graduated.

Ever since I graduated from high school, my hair has gotten out of control.  It's REALLY long right now, and if it were straight, it would be even longer.  When I pulled it straight just now, it reached to at least six inches below my shoulder . . . and that wasn't one of the longer locks.

Knowing when to get a haircut is more difficult now.  In the past, I've tended to get a haircut just before something big is about to happen.  I planned on getting a haircut just before camp at the start of the summer, but the one person that I trust to cut my hair right now was suffering from a hand injury.  I honestly can't remember when I got a haircut before that, so, needless to say, I haven't had one in a while.

That's about to change, because of this beautiful little girl:

But first, something completely different.

There is currently a disease raging across this nation.  This disease affects adults and children with no discrimination by age, weight, or lifestyle.  It appears suddenly and causes immediate dependence on multiple daily injections.  Right now, around 3 million Americans are plagued by this disease and roughly 15% of those are children.  EVERY YEAR this disease accounts for $14.9 billion in health care costs.

There is currently no known cause or cure.

Type 1 diabetes has hit pretty close to home for me ever since my baby sister was diagnosed with it her freshman year.  She has done her best since then to keep this news under wraps, hoping that people wouldn't treat her differently, but now that she's graduated from high school, she's decided that it's time for her story to be heard.

For some reason, and I reiterate that no one knows what that reason is, the bodies of people with type 1 diabetes don't produce any insulin.  This means that from her freshman year onward, Sarah gave herself at least six shots of insulin a day in addition to pricking her fingers countless times to check her blood sugar.  Yeah, be nice to diabetics.  They have to deal with enough pricks already.

But a few pricks just scratches the surface of what diabetes has meant for Sarah.

Being diagnosed with diabetes means an entire lifestyle change.   She must pay close attention to what she eats, when she eats it, the regularity of her exercise, how much sleep she gets, her stress level, and dozens of other factors that contribute to your body’s blood sugar levels.  The insulin pump she recently switched to using has reduced the number of shots every day, but since there is no known cure for type 1 diabetes, she will continue to deal with it her entire life.

Despite all of this, Sarah participated and excelled in basketball, tennis, softball, track, and cross country, was a section leader and state solo & ensemble qualifier in band, class president, student council member, was on multiple UIL academic teams, AND was valedictorian of her class.

She's pretty awesome.

So here's the deal.  On September 28th, the American Diabetes Association is sponsoring the Step Out Walk for Diabetes in our area and our family has put together a team.  When we started fundraising, we set a goal of $1000, and I REALLY want to see us at least reach that goal.  As of the time I'm writing this post, we have $414.  It's a start, but it's not quite there yet.

Sarah (along with several other people) has been telling me for a while now how badly I need a haircut.  Hopefully, she'll be getting her wish soon.

If our team can reach our goal of $1000 by the walk, I will not only get a haircut, I'll let her decide how it should be cut.

Whether you want to donate to the ADA and help them to, in my sister's words, "kick diabetes' butt," or whether you want to contribute to the "convince that weird kid with the unnecessarily long hair to get a haircut" fund, you can donate here:

http://main.diabetes.org/goto/Freitag

Help force me to get a haircut.

Help those people who "give vampires a sugar rush".

Help the ADA fight diabetes.

The Brine of Pickled Fish

I think tomatoes are gross, but they are absolutely nothing compared to the atrocity that is ketchup.

According to Wikipedia, the word ketchup comes from a Chinese word meaning the brine of pickled fish which pretty much says everything you need to know about it.  Originally, it had nothing to do with tomatoes, but today it's mad from tomatoes, vinegar, the tears of demon children, and other assorted spices (depending on who makes it).  In the early 19th century, ketchup was more popular than fresh tomatoes.  Apparently, people were afraid that it was unsafe to eat raw tomatoes.

My disgust of ketchup goes far beyond a simple dislike for the way it tastes.  I have something closer to a ketchup-phobia.  It makes me want to puke when I simply touch it.  I can't believe when I see people eating it, and it disgusts me when I think about it ending up on any of my stuff.

I truly believe that ketchup in an abomination and a crime against nature.

But as long as they keep it away from me, I've never stopped anyone else from eating it.

Just a little something to think about this week.

Bye.

This post marks the official launch of the all-new VeeBJamN Network.  But, as Semisonic observed, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  And so, it seems only appropriate to open by pondering an idea that is usually brought to light as things end:

Bye.

 I once heard that there is a language (I can't remember which one) with no word for "goodbye".  I didn't question that fact nearly enough at the time.  According to the mysterious source of this information, the speakers of that language said things such as "see you later" rather than "goodbye", based on a belief that "goodbye" suggests a break in the relationship.  An end.

Here's why I say that I didn't question the fact nearly enough:

What does "goodbye" even mean?

For whatever reason, that question never occurred to me until after I had already learned the meaning.

One of the many new beginnings around me is the start of a new Sunday school year.  My Sunday school class has a new teacher and a new framework.  This year, we are using a method called the Faith Five.  The idea being that there are five things we are doing whenever we meet:  share, read, talk, pray, bless.  We used the Faith Five one week and forgot the last of the five:  bless.

As I was discussing the fact that we skipped that, it occurred to me that blessing is not really something that we do normally in our society.  Aside from saying "bless you" after people sneeze and the occasional long-winded, dramatic, and stylized blessings we offer in a religious setting, I can't really think of any times that we actually bless each other.  I was apparently not the only one who thought of this, either.  I talked to our teacher (who also happens to be my mom and our pastor) about it, and she came to class with a rather simple and elegant solution:  goodbye.

Thus, I turn back to the question at hand:  What does "goodbye" mean?

Apparently the etymology of "goodbye" begins with the rather simple blessing "God be with you".  When it began, it was said in another time where they would have actually said "God be with ye" which was eventually contracted to "godbwye" (which I have no idea how to pronounce).  Then, thanks to the standard greetings such as "good morning", "good evening", etc., it became "goodbye".

So, in effect, whenever you say "goodbye", you are blessing the person you are speaking to.  Going even another step further, since the word "bye" is a further contraction of "goodbye", even when you just say "bye", you are offering someone a blessing.  (Insert mind-explosion sound effect here.)

With all this in mind, let's turn back to the alleged language without a word for "goodbye".  One of the alternatives that these people supposedly used instead of saying "goodbye" was "God be with you" . . . you know, "goodbye".  Instead of saying "goodbye" they said "goodbye".  That, of course, makes perfect sense.

There are several morals to this story:

1. Blessings are not as strange and uncommon as we may think, because every time you say "bye" you are blessing someone.
2. People say things that don't make sense, and if you don't question them, they'll continue to get away with pure falsities that don't actually makes sense once you truly understand them.
3. If you click on links on Facebook, you may end up reading an unnecessarily in-depth article about a three-letter word.

Bye.