This is my list …
1. It is definitely about guns. But it’s about a specific kind of gun.
Specifically, it’s about semi-automatic weapons. Fully automatic weapons have been banned for personal use/protection for a long time now. This is about the ease of getting semi-automatic weapons into the hands of just about anyone. Regulating and/or limiting sales of both semi-automatic weapons and their ammunition clips should be as automatic as regulating Tylenol, or the food we eat or any of the other things our government does. There are more regulations concerning the production of play ground slides than there are concerning the production and sales of semi-automatic weapons. Why? Because we (as a culture) have decided that safety for children is more important than the rights of slide manufacturers to make a substandard ambien product.
“And don’t say that it won’t make a difference because crazies will always be able to get a gun. We’re not going to eliminate gun deaths, any more than we have eliminated auto accidents. But if we could reduce gun deaths by one-third, that would be 10,000 lives saved annually.” (Kristoff, Do We Have the Courage To Stop This)We have reduced automobile deaths by (hold up) regulating the amount of liquor one may consume and then drive a car. Why? Because we have decided that the rights of other drivers and their safety are more important than the right of a drunk to consume large quantities of alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car.
2. Let’s leave certain aspects of God out of the discussion. A proper focus on theodicy is fine; whether or not children are allowed to say the Lord’s prayer in schools is a red herring. This is not about prayer or the lack thereof.
Theodicy is the study of evil as it relates to God. How can there be a God if S/He allows this sort of evil in the world? What if God intervened in all the evil that goes on in the world? Why do we ask why God didn’t stop this and refuse to ask that same question of ourselves? Why don’t we ask the hard questions about what we have done (as communities and as individuals) to sustain the culture of violence? I don’t have any answers to those questions. But I do know that we’ll get no where until we begin seriously asking them. getting antabuse Those people (and their voices are shrill) who believe that this kind of thing is a judgement of God on _________ (fill in the blank with the moral objection of the moment). James Dobson made ill-advised comments in this regard just yesterday:
Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I’m not talking politically, I’m not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God. I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too. And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on
Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I’m not talking politically, I’m not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.
I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too.
And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on
That’s a nice tidy answer, but it’s meaningless. It would be nice to think that going back to some earlier, (and misconstrued as) simpler age would or could ensure that frail human beings would not behave this way. xanax 1mg 3. It is definitely NOT about mental illness.
We have a habit of responding to outlandish things that people do by attributing it to mental illness. It’s become a flip reaction to human behavior we don’t understand. The problem is that with the exception of a very small group of people (untreated paranoid schizophrenia) most people who struggle with mental illness are not violent and do not go on the attack like this.
As a group, people with mental health issues are not more violent than any other group in our society. The majority of crimes are not committed by people with psychiatric illness, and multiple studies have proven that there is very little relationship between most of these diseases and violence. The real issue is the fact that people with mental illness are two and a half to four times more likely to be the victims of violence than any other group in our society.
An interesting paradox to consider is this … we do not consider our military leaders to be mentally ill. Indeed, we hail their heroism in battle. Yet how many of them have ordered and/or undertaken mass killing of innocents. We call that collateral damage and absolve ourselves of the deaths. Those women and children, grandpas and grandmas are all loved by a family. Families just like those in Newtown, CT. We wreak havoc on them without pause and call it heroism. prednisone usa Do we need to have a national conversation about mental health care and how mental illness is perceived in this country? Absolutely. It is a must, linking mental health and gun violence is a bad idea.
We need to consider what our national idols have become and like the abortion debate, we have to decide between competing sets of “rights.” The right of our school children to anticipate safety and the right of gun owners to have what they want. And perhaps that is why this argument, like the abortion argument becomes so volatile and emotional. There are no clear RIGHT answers. There are only shades of grey which cloud the nuances of the situation.
So one night a couple months ago a friend asked me this question: “You have have been pregnant and had kids. At what point during your pregnancies were the children you carried your children? I mean, when did you consider them life? (not trying to start an argument, just trying to understand is all)”
She asked me in a chat window and made reference to something I posted on FaceBook concerning the beginning of life. I am ashamed to say that I did not answer her right away and I went off-line. It was not the kind of question I felt I could answer in a chat window. I wanted to take my time working through a lot of angry thoughts I was having about the state of affairs in our country concerning women, pregnancy and the beginning of life right now. I did not want to dump those on to my friend. I needed to let the question percolate and I wanted to write about my thoughts more fully here.
My friend is correct, as all of you know, I have two children (the LightChildren). But I’ve had four pregnancies. Two pregnancies ended as live births and two ended as abortions. One abortion was caused by medical professionals, one was caused by nature’s capriciousness. Both of those pregnancies ended at about the same point – between 9 and 10 weeks. You see, a miscarriage is medically classified as an “abortion.” I didn’t know that until I read my chart in the emergency room. I grieved after both pregnancies ended. I was sad. I was much sadder after the second (a planned pregnancy) than after the first (unplanned). After the second I also felt a crushing sense of guilt because the thought occurred to me that the justice of a God who required an eye for an eye might have taken the second pregnancy in payment for the first. I now recognize that this is not true.
So I began to think (after my friend posed her question) what was it that I was grieving? Why was I sad at the end of those pregnancies? When did I feel that my children’s lives began?
My best answer to that is … I don’t know when I actually considered my children to be alive and embodied with who they are (their soul, for lack of a better term). It might have been when I first felt them move. I know that when those two pregnancies ended I was not grieving actual people. I was grieving dreams, potentials, wishes and hopes. Far more were shattered when the second one ended capriciously than when the first ended as a planned event. But even though I and LightHusband knew that first pregnancy had to end (for reasons far too complex to write about here), it was not something we did lightly or without sober thought. Given the circumstances surrounding that pregnancy and the context we were in, I believe I would do it again. My sense of loss and failure were the tightly woven warp amongst the weft of self-preservation, ability, and meeting expectations.
I know that for every reason given by every mother who makes that Hobbesian choice, there is a person out there who can counter with a Tebow like story of transcendent victory over obstacles with God’s grace or the assistance of some other natural intervention. Yet there are an equal number of stories of children born into oblivion. Mothers who have multiple children in their teens, but only one (if any) is given up for adoption. The cycle of poverty, ignorance and misery is visited upon another generation. For them the American dream is a nightmare of squalor, dependence, and terrible options.
We sit at a crossroads in our country right now. No one is comfortable here and a lot of vitriol is being thrown around in attempts to regain comfort levels and upper hands. People who support the right of a woman to be in control of her body and pregnancies are called by various factions, “Pro-choice” and “Pro-abortion.” People who support the right of the fetus to exist to the limits of it’s potential are called variously, “Pro-life” and “Pro-fetus” or “Anti-Choice”. The problem is that none of those labels are adequate. People who support the right of a woman to be in control of her body are not running around promoting abortion (despite what anyone says). I have yet to meet a single person who thinks it’s even a mediocre idea; it’s not a choice that anyone wants. Believe me. So saying that one is in favor of a choice you never want to make is like saying you love blood ice cream. Gross. What women are really saying is that they want freedom (and I’m going to get back to that in a minute). On the flip side of the coin, those who support the existence of the fetus are not truly pro-life. There are a few in that set of people who take on what might be called a consistent ethic of life positions (that is, they also reject war, death penalty, etc.) and thus are truly PRO-life. However, most of the speaking on behalf of the fetus/baby has been just that … simply get the child born. Once born (since the pro-life movement is primarily conservative) there is not very much support for it’s life after that should s/he be born into an impoverished family.
Boiled down, we have an impasse between mother and fetus. What a terrible crossroads to be at … pitting mother against pre-child? One set of people proposes that the mother’s rights are paramount. The other side proposes that the fetuses rights are paramount. Yet both sets of rights must inhabit the same body. Both sets of rights (if we are going to grant rights to a fetus, and I am not certain that we should) may not be compatible with one another.
How have we gotten to this impasse? Well, it’s been a twisty, windy road. But I’ve lived through some of it. So I’ll describe some of the view from my perspective. Just as we’ve reached an impasse between mother and pre-child, we are also coming to an impasse between reason/science and faith.
Reason and science teach us many things about the pre-child. But they cannot teach us when a child is given its soul; that breath of being that brings a sparkle to each of our eyes. We know that a fetal monitor can find a heart beat at 8 weeks. That at 12 weeks s/he is growing fingernails. At 24 weeks a pre-child is considered “viable.” Viable means that doctors and medical personnel can keep it alive outside the womb with costly medical equipment. Whether or not the child will suffer permanent loss of different abilities (both physical and mental) as a result of these heroics seems to be capricious. And when I looked up fetal development here is what I found for 25 weeks –
Based on this, a baby born at 24 weeks would not have a spinal structure, nor blood vessels in the lungs and no swallowing reflexes!! Getting a baby to survive under those circumstances is a miracle! Some of them thrive. But does a tiny baby born at 24 weeks have a soul? Or is it a fetus outside the womb? How would we know?
I have seen in the papers (read that on-line media) that politicians in various places want to introduce legislation that prohibit abortion … even in the case of incest and rape and even when the abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the mother. I read those articles with a sense of awe and bewilderment. Awe that someone could be so wed to their principle that they don’t see the human face on it. Bewildered at the lack of understanding and the lack of nuance. Somehow it doesn’t make sense to sacrifice the mother for the baby. No, what doesn’t make sense is that the sacrifice would be codified into law. There are some families who might choose that sacrifice, but it should never be forced on anyone. Nor should the bearing of a child as the result of a rape or (worse) incest be forced on a woman or young girl. Should she decide to make that sacrifice, wonderful! Let’s embrace that and applaud it. But don’t make it a law, molesting women a second time.
We, as a culture, are in a place where science has outstripped our ability to make decisions. 50 years ago, women very often didn’t know they were pregnant until enough time had passed that abortion was not even an option. Now we have the ability to know within hours of conception. The language we use surrounding pregnancy has become dystopian in many ways. I believe this is an attempt to relieve some of the pressure that has built up around pregnancies and our choices concerning them. What are the ethics of competing rights inhabiting one body? How do we choose which rights are paramount? Some would say faith points the way, others say science. I think that both carry inherent flaws and strengths that need to be explored. But that is for another post. Hopefully later this week.
This was a real treat when I was a child. Ends & Pieces. That would be bacon I’m talking about here. The meat packing plant would pack up all the bits that are left over when they are finished slicing up the perfect strips of bacon and they heap them onto a styrofoam tray, wrap some plastic around them and call it good. You get some real treats in there, nice meaty pieces of bacon, but you also get some real duds; slabs of nothing but fat. It’s cheaper than so-called regular bacon because it’s not very pretty. But it’s very tasty. So that’s what you’re getting today … ends and pieces. Cheaper than the regular thing, some pieces might be really meaty, but you might find some that are pure lard. You’ll have to decide.
About 7 months ago, LightHusband and I joined Weight Watchers. We’ve added more than a few pounds over the years and we need to send those extra pounds packing; go find someone else to torment, thank you very much. BlisteringSh33p and BlazingEwe had joined about 5 months before we did, so they were old hands at it. So off we go every Monday night to face the ScaleMiser and listen to our FearlessLeader as he gives us help, tips and pointers for the week to come. This is a long tedious process during which I am coming face to face with my very unhealthy relationship with food and how I use it to feed many things in my life besides my bodily functions. sigh. But that’s another story. Last night as we sat in the meeting, I came face to face to with another gremlin in my life. ADHD. It’s something I’ve often wondered thought I might be dealing with or have dealt with and I laugh at myself about it a lot. But it was not even a diagnosis when I was young, so I was certainly never given that label. And now I’m not sure I want it. But it would be nice to know because then I could figure out how to overcome it. In any case, our FearlessLeader was describing the 4 main ingredients in what WW calls, Filling Foods. These are foods that give you the most bang for the buck (the calories they contain). Mostly they are high fiber/low calorie fruits and vegetables. He said, “blah, blah, blah air, water, fiber, protein …. ” and I had a fully formed vision of Air, Water, Fiber and Protein as the SuperFriends from the Hall of Justice. I could not stop giggling and leaned over to tell BlazingEwe. She started giggling. Then neither of us could stop. And poor FearlessLeader had to bring the meeting to a halt because we were about on the floor! I ‘fessed up to my vision and brought the house down. But my point is, I’m always having visions like this and have had since I was very little. When I was younger, I thought everyone did. As I get older, I’m finding that no, I’m kinda weird. Not everyone thinks like this. In fact, it’s mostly people who have brains which can’t sit still think like this.
I know I can get medicine to help with this. But I don’t think I want it. I think I’m going to read up on coping and figure myself out. I’m going to try and harness this energy for good, not evil 😉 and work with it. This could be a good thing eventually.
The other day (maybe the same day) I had conversation with a young lady about reincarnation. She confided in me that she believes in reincarnation and proceeded to give me some statistics that bore out this belief. I listened politely. Then she asked me if I believed in reincarnation. No, I said, I do not. I do, however, believe that our soul continues to exist past the life of our physical body, but I do not believe that it goes on to live in another body. She wanted to know why I don’t believe that, but our conversation was cut short and I didn’t have a chance to explain myself. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then and the short answer is grace. And, honestly, that’s the long answer too. Oh, I used to believe in all kinds of different things, and yes, I even spent some time believing that reincarnation was a likely possibility. But then I discovered grace and I just can’t get enough of it. I don’t like the idea that we’re born over and over again to atone for the sins of a past life that we can’t remember. It seems capricious and mean and points to a standard of behavior and perfection that really no one can live up to. It reminds of the legend of Sisyphus somehow; always hungering and thirsting for something we cannot have. But the God I found in my late 20’s and early 30’s was giving out love and mercy and grace liberally, to all who wanted it. Believe in me, S/He said, and that’s all S/He wanted; some trust, some faith and some love in return. I can do that. So, no, I do not believe in reincarnation, but I believe in grace and the One who Loves endlessly. But sometimes it’s fun to talk about past lives and imagine … I’ll grant you that 😉
It’s that time of year again … in many different places people are talking about reunions. They are talking about class reunions, family reunions, school reunions, etc. I had a startling revelation about the power of our minds the other day. It was very revealing to me. About 6 months ago, the LightChildren and I joined a couple of homeschooling groups for the purpose of socializing with other teenagers. We get together with one group in particular about once a week and all of us have made friends … me too! It’s been a welcome relief after the past three years in the desert. The moms are all about my age, some a little older, some a little younger. But they are around my age. We all look like a peer group. I admire these women and see them as adults in the middle of their lives. Then one day I was thinking about a couple of my dear friends from highschool who I will be seeing when I go to Vermont next week. It was startling to me that I do not “see” them as being the same age as the women who I am friends with now. For some reason, my perception of my highschool friends is that they are younger than my current cohort group, when the fact is that they are likely older than the ladies here in Virginia. Then I wonder, do my highschool friends and I behave differently when we’re together? Do we revert and act more like our younger selves? What forces are at play here? Or do I behave more maturely when I am with my friends here in Virginia? Or … am I the same and I just play cruel mind games on myself? It’s all very mysterious and makes me realize what a powerful force our minds are when we are dealing with reality vs. perception.
Sunday night we had a huge scare. LightGirl ended up in the emergency room after an anaphylactic reaction to ??? We don’t know what. The best guess at the moment is that she had Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis. This is not common, but it usually caused by a combination of food and exercise. This does not mean that the patient is allergic to the food they have eaten, but it may mean that they are sensitive to it and the increased blood flow, etc. of exercise causes an extreme anti-histamine reaction causing anaphylactic shock. She is going to the allergist tomorrow where we will find out more about this. Her lungs still hurt and she is having trouble talking. I can find out plenty about anaphylaxis on the internet, but nothing about the aftermath and recovery. If anyone reading this has gone through it and knows what we might expect, I’d love to hear your story. It would be a huge help to us.
In a week we go to Vermont for our annual pilgrimage. It’s going to be a somewhat shorter trip this year. But it will be fun nonetheless. I’m looking forward to some porch time to say the least!
So. Basically I really hated yesterday’s prompt and had a rebellion. You’ll be left forever wondering what it was, why I hated it and what I might have responded to it if I’d stopped kicking over the traces long enough to actually think. My tiny little excuse is a really really bad case of hives that is apparently caused by the sun. I have turned into a vampire.
Har. Just kidding. Some meds I take for seizures are causing sun sensitivity which, in my case, causes hives. This has happened before in the past 5 or years since I started this new drug, but I’ve never been in the sun as long as I was on Friday (riding a tube down the Shenandoah). So the hives were mighty and cursed this time. Prednisone has become my new best friend. However, I had so much fun on that tubing trip I’d do it all again … I’d just give in and go to the doctor’s sooner
Today’s prompt is this –
What’s the first thing you notice about a man when you meet him? A woman?
The first thing I notice about men and women is their eyes. Maybe it’s because I was taught to look people in the eyes when being introduced. Or maybe I just love eyes. Or whatever. Who knows … I could spend all day rationalizing, but the bottom line is I dig people’s eyes. I love eye shapes and sizes and colors. I love the way a person’s eyes define their face and their mood. I love the way eyes sparkle and gleam. I think the most fun I ever had in a class was when I took a class on portraiture and learned how to draw eyes. I got so much perspective from that experience.
The second thing I notice is their hands. You can tell a lot about a person from their hands. You can see how they feel about themselves in the way their hands are carried and used in a conversation. You can see how they relate to the world in how they take care of their hands and how their hands are used in their line of work. When they shake hands with you, you can tell a lot about how that person perceives you and your status vis a vis them. Personally, as a woman, I love it when a man gives me a good firm handshake. I hate the namby-pamby woman shake that I’m subjected to in the name of chivalry or whatever. It sucks. It’s like expecting a great bowl of good chocolate ice cream and you get a tiny dish of half melted soft-serve instead. Bleh. I also like good hugs but only from friends. Stranger-hugging is weird in my book. And there is entirely too much hugging here in the south (from my northern perspective). But I digress … as you may have noticed I also love hands. And lately, I’ve loved watching as my children’s hands are developing from pudgy kid hands into adult hands. They are beautiful. The same is happening with their friends and cousins. It’s like a small marker of passage through time and is enjoyable to watch as they cavort through life together.
What about you? What do you notice when you first meet people? Does it differ with the genders?
So, I’m a day late … you’ll have to decide whether or not I’m a dollar short. I was off the grid yesterday, floating down a river in a tube with a group of teenagers and their moms (and a few dads). Well … we each had our own tube. There are now sunburns aplenty and at the end of the day a lot of smiles, weary arms, and tired legs, but we had so so much fun. What a grand day it was.
Yesterday’s prompt – How do you feel about the name given to you at birth?
I was given Sonja by my parents. It is an odd name for my cohort generation. Most girls with that given name and spelling were first generation immigrants from an eastern European nation. I am not. I’m all English and some branches of my family tree can be traced back to the Mayflower, others to the Revolutionary War. But I do not have any Eastern European roots (an unfortunate state of affairs).
I hated my name in elementary school. I was surrounded by Peggys and Kims and Marys and Beths. Growing up in a tiny backwoods Vermont town where everyone had known each other for several generations, I was the odd child, with the odd name. Teachers couldn’t pronounce it because of the pesky silent “j” or they persisted in making the “o” long rather than short. Sometimes they would forget entirely and call me “Tanya,” then wonder at my lack of response. Children couldn’t pronounce or remember my name either, so I lived on the fringe for a lot of elementary school.
I remember asking my mom to change my name at some point. She suggested that we could do so, but it would be to the second place name (the also ran) that I did not get named when I was born.
Nellie.
I was horrified. For those of you who know me on Facebook, you know my maiden name begins with “N”, so I would move from the merely strange to the geeky and weird world of alliteration. That was an unacceptable alternative. I stuck it out with “Sonja.”
I’m glad I did. As I got older it became who I am. I began to learn more about the name. It is the Slavic version of “Sophia” and means wisdom. I’ve always loved that. I was thrilled when LightHusband when to Germany once and came back with a mug with my name on it because you never see my name on anything here. Ever.
All throughout grade school and high school I was the only “Sonja.” It was just me. I began to really enjoy that in a deep down quiet way. Then in my senior year another Sonja came to the school! And she was a senior!!! To make matters worse, she was absolutely stunningly beautiful and kind!! AND … because of the way things worked out with our last names we were put right next to one another in the year book. It was the ultimate irony.
Now I have embraced my name and really love it. I don’t mind when people mis-pronounce it, but I still don’t respond to Tanya. I do correct the spelling if it’s important because I love the “j” and as a visual person I think putting a “y” or an “i” in there makes my name look like someone else. I know that’s stupid, but there it is. Most of the time I leave it alone, though, because it’s a petty thing. I get a huge and silly thrill out of running across other women who spell their name like me. I don’t know why, but I think we should start a club because there are not so many of us.
So that’s about all there is to know about my given name. Some day I’ll write the story of my middle name and how I had a major depressive episode (that’s what they call nervous breakdowns these days).
… or is that a blog prompt. Either way here’s my goods from Monday … and as you’ll see it’s a nice segue into Tuesday too.
What was the worst job you ever had?
This is difficult because I was always able to find some redeemable quality in every job I ever had. So every time I start to think about the “worst” job, I remember something good too and then mark it off my list. And I’ve done a lot of different jobs in my time too.
I began my working career as a babysitter. I was in fairly hot demand in my hometown and if I remember correctly topped out at the whopping high cost of $.75 per hour back in 1979 when I graduated from high school. Hey … I paid for my class ring and most of my clothes with that salary. During the summer I was also an assistant swimming instructor and part-time life guard. I was the go-to gal when the little kids were scared to put their face in the water. I could always get them comfortable and feeling good enough to put their little faces in, blow bubbles and jump in off the dock by the end of the session. Cause I’m a cheerleader for tots … or something. But I really, really liked that job.
During college part of my financial aid package involved being on the work-study program, so I got assigned some sort of interesting jobs there. My first year I was an assistant in the chem lab. This meant I got to work in the shop where they mixed up all the stuff for the experiments each week. That was a blast. I loved that job. It totally satisfied my inner nerd. But by the next year it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to pursue a science degree so the job had to go to an actual nerd and I was assigned a job in the school snack shop. There I learned to waitress, work the counter and be a short order chef (and make a mean tuna melt too). I worked there for my sophomore and senior years. I didn’t work my junior year because I was away from my main campus on a special study program.
After college I had a bunch of different (mainly secretarial) jobs in a variety of institutions here in the DC area. I worked from 1983 to 1994 when LightGirl was born. After she was born my job was to take care of her and then LightBoy and lose my mind. I have been extremely successful at losing my mind; my relative success at raising children may or may not be seen until after my death. During some of the time I was working, I was also going to graduate school at George Mason University in pursuit of a Masters in secondary education. I thought it might be a good idea to be a teacher. That never quite worked out for a variety of reasons, but while I was doing that I worked as a temporary office worker. It was then that I had what would be my worst job ever.
Oh. It didn’t start out that way. It started out sort of fun and light-hearted. And as a redemptive quality, I met one of my oldest and dearest friends at this job. We were tight. We still keep in touch. We had a lot of fun together, laughing, talking, working. We worked for an auctioneer. It was a small business owned by two brothers who auctioned oriental carpets (persian rugs) on the weekends. At first it seemed really innocuous. My friend and I were in charge of setting up the auctions around the country; usually two or three per weekend. We had to run ads in the local papers. Ads for the auction and ads to hire local labor. We had to set up hotels, auction venues, etc. It didn’t seem like it was terrible. But then we went to one. And it wasn’t terrible, but it was really on the dishonest side. By that time, I’d worked there long enough that I rationalized the dishonesty even though it made me feel very dirty. LightHusband and I needed the money as we were very nearly broke because of some medical bills and I was still trying to get a job teaching. However, the day came that one of the brothers asked me to sign letters of appraisal verifying the value of the rugs they had sold one particular weekend. He gave me a title which indicated that I had knowledge of persian rugs that I did not and do not have. I wish I could say that I quit on the spot. I didn’t. I was entirely too shocked and dismayed. I signed approximately five letters and went home. Talked to LightHusband about the situation and quit the next day. There’s a lot I’ll put up with … grumpy bosses who pull rank and my vacation time (because they want to go to the beach with their boyfriend), customers who swear at me on the phone, c0-workers who are jerks, bosses who’ve fired me 3 hours after telling me they’re renewing my contract (and two weeks after having a mis-carriage), etc. But I won’t ever, not not ever, engage in fraud.
Which leads me to today’s question/prompt:
Do you think it’s ever permissible to cheat?
No.
I just hope that speeding is not counted as cheating. Because then I would be in big trouble.
What’s your greatest fear?
We had an (ahem) interesting day yesterday. LightGirl had a very negative reaction to some meds she’d begun taking. I won’t go into the details of it here, but we ended up in the ER just to make sure she was okay. As the meds metabolized she was alright, but we had a frightening couple of hours. She will not be taking those meds anymore. She has a pattern of strange responses to medication and I think we need to be more careful about introducing it to her system (but that’s another story).
The whole situation highlighted for me how frightening it is when I cannot take care of the people I love. I’m not one of those moms who ran around wiping every drippy nose or making the house spotless or anything like that. But it’s important to me that my peeps are happy and healthy. When there are circumstances in their lives that are beyond anyone’s control and certainly beyond my control, it really freaks me out. So … I guess I have two greatest fears; they vie for first place depending on the day, sometimes there are three.
One is that I will die before my children reach adulthood and can stand on their own. It’s important to me that I see the LightChildren through to their own two feet. I’d also like know their children.
Another is some sort of apocalyptic event that would separate us from our extended family in New England … they would die or we would die or we couldn’t get to them or something like that.
A third is that one of the LightChildren will die or become severely maimed before reaching adulthood. As I watched LightGirl in the ER yesterday and contemplated the what-ifs of her situation, I was horrified. My mind could only dance around the fringes and waltz away to hope. We were extremely fortunate that the incident indeed appears to have been caused by the meds and she was back to her normal self by evening.
So what about you, what is/are your greatest fear?
The prompt for today –
Japanese lore suggests that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, your wish will come true. What would your wish be, and what would you be willing to do 1,000 times to get it?
I remember reading about this legend when I was a young girl. I read a book about the bombing of Hiroshima. The book focused on one girl and how the nuclear blast had affected her. As I recall, it killed most of her family and left her very ill with radiation poisoning. She lived out what remained of her life in a hospital folding paper cranes in a quest to get to 1,000 because she wanted to live. She died. It was one of the most gut-wrenching books I had read up to that point in my life. War is a terrible waste.
So what wish do I have that is worth spending my life on to achieve the folding of 1,000 paper cranes? If I did one every day it would take 2 years and 9 months (approximately) to attain my goal. I guess that folding a paper crane would take about 20 minutes (averaged out over the span of 1,000) to complete. That’s 20,000 minutes, or 333.33 hours, or 14 days – 2 weeks (round the clock) to make a wish come true. If you divide 333.33 hours by 9 hours a day (to account for eating, sleeping, etc.) that’s 37 days – or just over a month to make a wish come true. Five weeks (more or less). A lot of time … time to think, meditate, and dream about a solution/resolution for my wish.
But now here I am … still pondering what I would wish for. The possibilities are endless and huge … world peace, eradicate hunger, wipe out diseases and all of the good ideas to make life better for everyone. Those are the huge ideas. But I think if I’m going to make a wish upon which to spend that amount of time, I have to recognize that changing the world ultimately begins with changing myself. So I think the question then becomes who do I want to be? And I’m left with this … I want to be more of the me I was meant to be. So my wish is that I would be able to embrace myself; the who I am becoming and the where I need to go. I suppose that’s a rather small wish, but I guess it’s enough for now.
What about you? What would you wish for if you did something 1,000 times to get there?
So … my fingers have been itchy and I want to write again. I find myself daydreaming about blog posts … again. It must be time to come back and write.
Thanks to the Holly, I found this site where they are posting a blog prompt every day for a month. I don’t know if I will be that dedicated … maybe I will manage every OTHER day or something like that. But at the very least I will be writing regularly again. Here is today’s prompt:
You’ve just been given a million dollars. You are not allowed to keep it or give it to anyone you know personally. What do you do with it and why?
My first response is that I cannot imagine what a million dollars really is. Really. Can you? What IS a million dollars? What can you buy with a million dollars? What can you do with a million dollars? I simply find myself in the place that I cannot understand the reality of having a million dollars all at the same time.
So I’m trying to daydream about some less concrete. I’m trying to daydream about simply having piles and piles of money that I cannot keep and I cannot give to anyone I know personally. Here are some of the things I would like to do with it …
–> Start a micro-finance program for inner city women, especially single moms, here in the States. I love the idea of Kiva and I think it’s doing huge amounts of good in the world, but I’d like to focus my efforts on women and single mothers, so that they can achieve some level of security and perhaps even raise their level of education, so that the cycle of poverty stops with their generation.
–> Along the same lines, use the money to seed loans and work projects so that those who currently live in inner city projects can participate in regentrifying their own neighborhoods. I love the idea of renewing our inner-city neighborhoods, but not at the expense of those who already live there.
–> Seed money to educate women and girls. There are scores of studies right now showing that the more a woman is educated, the less likely she is to ______ … fill in the blank with all of the ills of poverty, particularly those relating to addiction and sexual abuse.
–> Renew art programs for young people in need. We cannot live by industry alone, children need to exercise their imaginations and creative gifts as well as learn to read, write and ‘rithmetic.
Those are all the things I can think of to do with my million dollars. What would you do?
A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, ‘What does love mean?” The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined See what you think: ———————————————————- ‘When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’ – Rebecca- age 8 ———————————————————- ‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’ – Billy – age 4 ———————————————————————- ‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’ – Karl – age 5 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’ – Chrissy – age 6 ———————————————————- ‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’ – Terri – age 4 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.’ – Danny – age 7 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss’ – Emily – age 8 ———————————————————- ‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’ – Bobby – age 7 ———————————————————- ‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’ – Nikka – age 6 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’ – Noelle – age 7 ———————————————————- ‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’ – Tommy – age 6 ———————————————————- ‘During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’ – Cindy – age 8 ———————————————————- ‘My mommy loves me more than anybody You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’ – Clare – age 6 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’ – Elaine-age 5 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’ – Chris – age 7 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’ – Mary Ann – age 4 ———————————————————- ‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’ – Lauren – age 4 ———————————————————- ‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ – Karen – age 7 ———————————————————- ‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.’ – Mark – age 6 ———————————————————- ‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’ – Jessica – age 8 ———————————————————- The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to th e neighbor, the little boy said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry’
In the spirit of coming to Jesus as little children, take a shot at it in the comments – what is love to you? Where do you see the concept we call love manifest in action in your life? Or … which one of these was special to you and why?
Happy Valentine’s Day!
