Archive for March, 2005
CALL JEB BUSH NOW
The Florida State Senate has rejected a bill that would allow Terri's feeding tube reinserted. Gov. Bush has said that he DOES have the statutory authority to go in and take Terri into protective custody, via DCF. CALL JEB BUSH NOW at 850-488-4441 and BEG him to do so ASAP!!!!!
OK as of 5 pm EST, the office there is now closed. No wonder I got through so easily. *sigh* You can still leave a message. You also can send a fax. The number is 850-487-0801.
Terri Schiavo
I have so much to say on this matter and no time to say it. Well, no time to write it anyway...my poor hubby has been getting an earfull.
May God have mercy on the people responsible if she dies. 'Cuz they'll need it.
Keep praying everyone. Our God is more powerful than the courts. (Although part of me fears He has turned His back on us as a nation since we have strayed so far from Him....)
“The Farm”
G's social studies assignment yesterday was to write a story about a farm. Here it is:
My grandma and grandaddy have a farm. They have lots of cattle. One time one cow got stuck in a mudhole. My dad and my grandaddy tried to make it better, but it didn't get better. So my dad and grandaddy killed it, and we had hamburgers from it.
ROFLOL!!!!!!!
SMEAGOL IS FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Exactly one year ago today, my life changed. It probably sounds like I'm exaggerating. To some, a simple phone call is no big deal. But this wasn't just any phone call. As I said, this phone call changed my life.
My husband was offered a new job.
It sounds like such a minor thing, doesn't it? Good, but "life changing???"
Well, while I hadn't exactly given up hope of ever moving, I was approaching that. We had been living in dh's hometown for nearly 3 years. I had sworn up and down that I was never going to move there. God really has a sense of humor at times!
We lived in a house that I had never wanted to live in (I agreed to buy it because I thought we'd be able to sell it and make money on it, to help get out of debt...little did I know that it was going to SHARPLY INCREASE our debt. *sigh*). We didn't have a church. My closest friend lived 1.5 hours away. My in-laws lived in town with us, and my mom and stepdad lived 1.5 hours away, but they had their own lives as well. And it was just LONELY.Dh's job when we first moved there was a relief position. That meant that he was a substitute inspector in charge, for whomever was on vacation/medical leave/etc. That meant he traveled. A lot. After a little over 2 years of doing that, he was able to get an in-plant position at a plant about an hour from our house, so he actually got to sleep at our house again (instead of a hotel like he had been). The only problem with that was that it was a night-shift position, so he slept during the day. Like I said, it was LONELY.
Those 3 years were the hardest years of my life. (So far!
) I'll spare you the gory details. But I will tell you one thing. JESUS CHRIST IS REAL. While yes, He proved His love for me on the cross, He also continued to show it to me during this time. My situation stunk, I'll be honest. But He carried me through it. At the time I didn't really see it usually. But there were times when He spoke to my heart and reminded me of the promises in His Word: "My grace is sufficient for you." "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."I wonder what Joseph was thinking the night before he was summoned to Pharoah. Was he praying to be released? Was he thinking about what he was going to do the next day? Was he thinking about what had happened to him? Had he given up hope of ever getting out of prison, I wonder?
Personally, I had plans to go to a Creative Memories crop that night. It was life as usual. I still was hoping and praying that dh would be called for an interview and get promoted, but he'd been on several and had applied for several, and nothing had happened, so yeah, I was beginning to lose hope.
But then he got the phone call from this guy (who is now his boss). Although they hadn't interviewed dh, they'd talked with his supervisors and found out that "although he's young, he's eager to delve into things." So they offered him the job here. As I listened to dh talk on the phone, I just sat down on the floor and started crying.
I was finally going to be freed.
A few days ago dh mentioned that he can't believe we've been here for almost a year (it will be a year at the end of May). I said something about how yeah, March 19 will be a year from when they called you for your promotion. He seemed surprised that I remembered exactly what date it was.
I've never actually been in jail, but I'd be willing to bet that someone who has been put in there, especially if they were innocent or had just done something STUPID (like I had in agreeing to buy our house)...I bet they'd remember the date they got out. I bet Joseph marked his anniversary every year of going from prison to standing before Pharoah!
Sure my life is still stressful. But I am no longer ISOLATED. I have a church. My husband is home (usually
). As Gollum says in The Two Towers, "SMEAGOL IS FREEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"
Bummer Subway doesn’t deliver
I'm getting a cold and am in NO mood to cook. Dh is on his way home from being out of town and won't be home till after 8 pm tonight. We did grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, fish sticks last night, and PBJ a couple days ago. Heck we did cereal the other day for supper too (another night when dh was late - he's been away a lot this week). Our house is about a 30-min. drive from the nearest fast food place, so it's not like I can just run to McDonald's or whatever. (And we had McD's yesterday for lunch after G's dentist appointment.)
Hmmm I guess I COULD order a pizza, but the only place that delivers pizza here, while it is good, it's quite pricey, and I'm not quite willing to pay that much for just being lazy LOLOL!!!
ALTHOUGH..........now that I think about it, there is a Subway near our grocery store, which is only 20 min. away......I'd still have to load everyone up and truck them all down there, but it sounds better than anything else we have since cooking is just about the last thing I'm in the mood for! And I have some coupons too....:-D
My man :-)
Thought ya'll might like to see a picture of my hubby.
(And G's forehead LOL!!!)
Another funny from C
C is our "pulled out of left field" kid, just so you know.
Yesterday I was sitting at the computer, attempting to pay bills (as I had been all day but kept getting interrupted LOL), and he was in the room with me, just sort of flitting about, playing. Typical C stuff.
Then, out of NOWHERE (he hadn't even been talking), he asks me, "Mom? What's an exhaust system?"
?????????????
Parenting Magazine’s latest poll
I'll be honest. I can't stand Parenting magazine. I'll glance through it as I sit in some sort of waiting room, but usually the articles (especially the advice columns - ugh) will just get me riled up in some form or fashion.
So I read about their latest poll on their website after someone posted about it on an e-mail list I'm on. Evidently it's in response to the "controversial" subject of having a second child! SECOND! (Boy I wish blogspot had a rolling eyes smiley!) The poll is on whether a family can have "too many" children. Of course, based on the normal readership of Parenting magazine, the poll is overwhelmingly in favor of yes, it's possible to have too many.
As with anything, kids get the blame.
Mom has health problems? Chances are it's somehow linked to having "so many" children, so the solution is to stop having them. Especially if it's some sort of depression problem or "female trouble."
Money troubles? Oh, it must be that you have too many kids.
Kids act like hooligans? It's because you have so many.
You name it, somehow it can be blamed on the size of your family. RATHER THAN the true issue at hand.
Somehow we've gotten forgotten what the Bible says about children. Psalm 127 says they are a REWARD. BLESSED is the man whose quiver is FULL of them. (Oh, I've heard so many folks say a quiver is this big, that big, blah blah blah, but the truth is that the Bible DOESN'T SAY. The key is that only God knows how big our quivers are. Since He has a different purpose for each of us, naturally we'll have different-sized quivers. But it's not up to US to determine His plans for us NOR what size quiver we want. So HE decide may one family's quiver is full with 2 children and another's is full with 6 and another's is full with 10. All 3 families are equally blessed because their quivers are FULL.)
I could say that this anti-child stance is taken by non-believers. But sadly the church is just as much anti-child as the world. They just use different reasons: "We need to be good stewards," "Having a large family will hinder my ministry," etc. The first few children they have, oh they are so excited, children are a blessing! But then they make SURE to not have any more!!! I mean my goodness, we can't have an "accident" occur, can we? What I want to know is, at what point do children become a burden or accident rather than a blessing?
We've become so scientific I think that we start to think that all there is to the creation of a child is biology. In general we've forgotten (or we are purposefully in disagreement) that GOD knits us all together in our mothers' wombs. A baby simply CANNOT form unless God steps in and works a miracle. People tend to think that it's amazing and miraculous when a baby DOESN'T get conceived. But that is just the opposite of reality. The miracle is that GOD STEPPED IN and breathed the breath of life into that little union of sperm and egg.
ANYWAY!!! So I know that's where this poll is coming from. Fine, whatever, and I don't expect that the majority of voters will vote "no." But it sure would be fun to skew the results.
So go vote at http://www.parenting.com/parenting/ (at the bottom of the page) and make them scratch their heads a bit.
Some funnies from the kids
The other day we saw the news or something, and there was footage of a mudslide or something of that nature (sorry I can't remember exactly!). G asked if someone under there wouldn't be able to breathe, like under water or a lot of snow or something. And C piped up and said, "Yeah, or beanbags." LOL!
Tonight I went to pick up G and C from AWANA. G's leader was standing in the hall, standing on crutches, with his foot in this big ol' walking cast thing. I asked what happened, and he said he had torn his Achilles tendon. (sidebar: OOOOOOUUUUUUCCCCCCCHHHHHHH!!!!!!!) He told me that G was so cute and told him that he'd hurt his toe once. LOL!!!!!!!
Lessons learning from ice skating
A local ice skating rink has a homeschool time every Thursday for an hour. Today we went for the first time. I am NOT an ice skater - I've been twice and broke my arm one of those times LOL. But I thought my kids might enjoy it, and some of their best friends were going too, so we went.
L (4.5) gave up after about 5 minutes. I was iffy about letting her do it anyway, so I wasn't too surprised when she came off the ice, crying that she was scared. So off came the skates, and she spent the rest of the time coloring.
C (6.5), however, gave up about 30 minutes into it. Now, C tends to try to get the easy way out of things ANYWAY. (You should see him when we tell him to put his clothes away - good grief.) But he learned lots of different things today since I wouldn't let him quit, mean mom that I am.
We have to practice sometimes. I think he was expecting to be able to get on the ice and BOOM, be able to skate. And it frustrated him that he couldn't. I told him that he actually was doing better than I ever did! And he'll only get better as he practices. And YES, he will most likely fall in the process. But you just gotta get up and keep on going.
Sometimes we have to stick with it, even when it's hard. C tends to be somewhat of a weanie anyway when it comes to stuff LOL, and this was just another one of those times when he wanted to give up when it was slightly difficult.
Sometimes when we stick with something, we eventually learn that we just might like it. At the end of the time, he was actually almost smiling.
We can't quit just because something isn't how we expected it to be. He kept telling me that he "didn't think the ice would be so slippery." Which, no, he didn't know ahead of time, since he'd never been ice skating before. But just because something isn't what we thought it would be doesn't mean we can just up and give up.
Sometimes we have to finish what we started, so as to not waste someone's time/money. It cost $6 for him to skate today. An hour (and actually by the time he got his skates on and such, it was only 45 minutes) is not too long to ask him to skate since I had paid the money. Especially since he was just being a toot anyway.
I'm not going to force him to go again. He's more than welcome to, and if he does choose to go again, I'll expect him to follow through then as well. But I won't MAKE him go again. But today yes, I was "mean" and made him finish, even though he "didn't want to skate anymore." What he learned today wasn't really about ice skating anyway.
Pictures!!!
Here are my before and after pictures from my big hair cut!!!
Before:
After:
(Not the most attractive pictures of me...UGH!!!)
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m politically incorrect
But this sort of thing just bugs me.
I found this article: FOXNews.com - Politics - Redistricting in Georgia Miffs Democrats. Two things bug me about it.
1. The Republicans are playing politics just as much they are accusing the Democrats of doing. Why can't they just wait till the NORMAL time to redraw the district lines?
2.
The current boundaries were approved by the courts after more than four years of legal challenges. As with other formerly segregationist states, Georgia must prove to the federal government that any new political map does not unfairly weaken minority voting.
"There's no question that this dilutes black voting strength in Georgia. And when you start shifting those, then you're going to have another five years of litigation, which is absolutely wasted money," said Democratic state Rep. Dubose Porter.
Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this is where I'm politically incorrect, but should it really matter what "type" of people live in an area? Why can't we just divide the districts based solely on population? Why does race have to be taken into consideration at all?
I do happen to be white, but if I were not white I'd be offended if anyone assumed I'd vote or think a certain way, just based on my skin color. Heck, I guess I'm already offended when someone assumes that way now! Just like society assumes that I'd vote for some feminist chick just because I'm a woman. That offends me that that assumption is made based on my gender.
So I think it is dumb and offensive for people to try to get as many people with one skin color in a district, just to up their party's chances come election time. Just draw the lines to make the districts equal in the state...DUH!!!
All this time wasted on dumb arguments such as this. All these people raising such a big stink about minority voting, equality, blah blah blah. If they'd all just shut up, encourage EVERYONE to vote (not just people of their same skin color), and let the lines be drawn so that things were TRULY equal, we'd be much better off. And we might actually get something truly important accomplished.
