And you think you're having a shitty life.

What is playing in my room right now? Oasis, "Stop Crying your Heart Out"

For Christmas, my space freak son received a Space DVD collection with five discs. He and I love to sit down with our bowl of munchies of choice and enjoy a round of learning about the cosmos. Learning about the universe is often a slap back into the peculiar reality that is life and reminds me that I often just take my existence for granted. It's basically the quietest hour that ever takes place in our household.


At the end of the about-an-hour long movie, we sit in awe for a moment. My brain will start to hurt as I make an attempt to absorb and decipher what in the hell we just watched. It's no wonder to me that the universe is as incomprehensible as it is. I mean, first of all, the idea of infinity is crazy. Black holes? Light not being able to escape? Worm holes? Entering one hole... being stretched as thin as a spaghetti noodle as you travel through, for lack of a better word, a tunnel.... time as we know it standing still... and then being spit out someplace else without ever having to go between point A and point B? The thought of our universe continually expanding.... stretching.... is... well, out of this world. And then what happens? According to the video we watched yesterday, the universe may very well reach a point that it no longer expands, but rather, it will shift its gears and start driving in reverse.

At this point in the DVD, I could feel my eyes drying out from not blinking and staring at the television, my mouth slightly agape, and my curious brain struggling to comprehend what it just heard and trying oh so hard to grasp on with every ounce of understanding that it could possibly muster.

When I was a little girl, my very first word was "luna". I only speak English, by the way. However, my family is part Mexican and I grew up in a household where this language was spoken fluently and often. "Luna" is really the only word I picked up on, except for tortilla, guacamole, burrito, jalapeno, and puta.... Anyhoo, la luna is an awesome sight in the night sky. And to think that every year that passes, it moves about an inch away from earth. Eventually, it will no longer be in sync with our lovely blue and green planet. Once la luna is too far away from us, life here will be drastically different. And unfun. Imagine blizzards in our hottest, driest deserts, the waters frenetically engulfing the wonders of our world, sunbathing in Antarctica while sipping a pina colada... right before you are swallowed by the sea.

I was logging into my Yahoo email today and an article caught my eye, "Earth's Moon Destined to Disintegrate". Now there's a spirit lifting title, I thought! I must read it! I clicked on it and entered a fascinating read, much like these videos we've been watching. I continued to read on about the fate of the earth where I read, and I quote, "Sometime in the next few billion years, according to new studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the third rock from the sun will either freeze or fry. Unless things simply dry up much sooner".

Now this particular article is about the inevitable fact that our friendly, warm, happy, yay we're so happy you're here for our barbeque today sun will eventually, of course, blow up... and without getting too scientific here.... and assuming that our earth isn't cast out of the solar system prior to this cosmic event... eat everything in its way. After, that is, our oceans evaporate and all the plants die.

Before you start packing up your families and old photos and jammin' the highways in an attempt to hop on board the next space shuttle outta here... the good news is our sun isn't expected to do this for billions of years.

The bad news is, our great mother is likely to only have about a half a billion years left in her.

More bad news... humans are likely to destroy her well before she gives up on us.

Anyone feel like procreating?