mommyhood

Dual Posting

2007-07-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

So...I've discovered that I can't post Vimeo clips on WP, only Google Video (boo!!) and YouTube (BOOO!!!) so I'm posting this clip here instead. She's totally walking!

Baby Steps from jennas mommy and Vimeo.

Moved to a secure location...

2007-07-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

I did it! I actually did it!

I've moved my whole blogging life to a new home. Since a big point to the whole relocation is more privacy, I'm not posting the new website here. You can email me for the new location: lightheartedmom@gmail.com.

Child's play

2007-07-10T18:02:00.001-07:00

Jenna is sitting in her pack n play (the "cage" as we call it in our family) very quietly "reading" to herself. She's very carefully turning the pages of The Little Fur Family over and over again, laughing and giggling at the pictures. It's so adorable and it's amazing to me how she has become familiar with the stories I've been reading to her since she was a few days old. The minute she opens the book, it's clear she knows what it is - her little face totally lights up. This was one of my favorite stories as a little kid (I remember my dad reading it to me) and it's so neat that she loves it too. It's also incredible to reflect on how even as a newborn she was absorbing information like this!

Just a reflection...

July 10th, 2004

2007-07-09T17:11:00.001-07:00

Three years ago, on a very windy hill in Sonoma County...

Girlie products

2007-07-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

A few months back, my hubbie treated me to a full body scrub at a spa in Bodega Bay (can you say AMAZING?! It was such a nice experience) and the woman who did the treatment (she used this really yummy scrub made with Cabernet grape seeds) recommended I look for a vitamin C serum since I have some skin issues. I've been on the look-out for one ever since, but I am simply not in the market for a $50 jar of goop. I finally found on at the local Vitamin/Health Food store! Kiss My Face has a line of products called "Obsessively Organic" and I bought a sample pack of their new skincare regime. I've been using it for a week and it's wonderful! I use the cleansing bar Shea Soy, the Balance Act toner, C The Change serum and the Underage moisturizer. My husband asked me if I was pregnant the other day because my skin is starting to look so radiant (I'm not pregnant). ;-) I usually have a problem with really dull skin and these products have made a real difference. I love the toner especially because it doesn't have alcohol in it (which dries my skin!) and all the products contain mostly organic ingredients. Ooh and the jojoba mint facial scrub is so yummy (don't eat it). :-) The products are still a little pricey ($13-$20), but not nearly as expensive as many non-organic products I've found.

The sample pack also came with their Sugar Reef Organic Body Scrub. Usually I find sugar scrubs a little too abrasive for my skin but this one is perfect. The oils in the scrub made my skin so soft!

You can buy everything online at Kiss My Face, but I found that my health food store was priced about $1 cheaper (go figure) than the online store.

Reading Material

2007-07-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe some of you go through this, but I've felt the last couple months like my mental faculties are slipping dramatically. When I was in high school and college and studying all the time, I felt like I was mentally sharp and my mind was active all the time. It feels like I've let some cobwebs settle in parts of my brain, which is frustrating. To mend the problem, I've renewed my efforts to read at least a few chapters a day. I'm reading two books right now. One is Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul. The only other R.C. Sproul book I've read is Chosen by God (the standard beginner's guide to predestination). This book (Knowing Scripture) is a down to earth guide on how to study/interpret the Bible. I'm only a few chapters in, but I have been convicted about many things already. For instance - he talks about the sensuous Christian (scandalous word, I know): "The sensuous Christian is one who lives by his feelings rather than through his understanding of the Word of God. The sensuous Christian cannot be moved to service, prayer or study unless he "feels like it." His Christian life is only as effective as the intensity of present feelings. [...]The sensuous Christian doesn't need to study the Word of God because he already knows the will of God by his feelings. He doesn't want to know God, he wants to experience Him." I am guilty of this far too often and I see it all around me, especially in San Francisco where many "churches" focus so much on an emotional experience that they often preach and worship a god who is entirely contrary to the God of the Bible.

I'm also reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali fled from her Somali family in Kenya to escape a forced marriage. She describes her childhood (moving around between Somalia, Ethopia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia; growing up with strict Muslim values) and how she came to reject Islam. Some parts of the book are very painful to read (including parts relating to a common practice in many Muslim countries - female circumcision). Ali ends up getting refugee status (and later citizenship) in Holland where she earns her Masters degree and gets elected to Parliament. Most people are probably vaguely familiar with her because of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004. The film that made him a target for Muslims (Submission) was written by Ali. The sad thing about Ali's story is that she rejects Islam and becomes an atheist. I have yet to find a book by a Muslim woman who rejects Islam for Christianity. If any of you know a book like this, I would love to read it! I greatly appreciate Infidel because it points out a problem that is happening all over the Western world. Multiculturalism is blinding people to how dangerous extremist Islam is in a society. It's ripping many European countries apart at the seams and she documents that in Holland very well.

What is everyone reading these days?

Historic = Me updating le blog

2007-07-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Stef's fun new mommy-blog has inspired me to try and be more regular about updating my own.
I've added some new links (by the way - Blogger beta is evil), some favorite sites and my blogging friends (my "daily reads"). I've been trying to redo my layout, but again, Blogger beta is evil and I'm having trouble with the templates. I keep giving up and reverting back to the old ones which I know how to edit manually (thank goodness for HTML 101 in college). :-) I may end up switching the whole operation over to Wordpress - something I've been threatening to do for ages. Since this used to be my political soapbox blog (pre-baby), I haven't wanted to post real family information (ie - pictures of my husband, who really DOES exist, our last name, etc) lest potential employers Google him and find out he's married to one of those right-wing nutjobs. A new blog would maybe give me a little more freedom in that aspect. One of these days...
We spent last weekend up at the ranch with my husband's family. Every year all the families that have cabins up there have a big 4th of July barbecue. We haven't been since before we were married (at least four years ago). For those of you who don't know - "the ranch" is my husband's family's cabin up in Sonoma county. It's actually a land co-op with about 12 cabins on it and lots of great outdoors for exploring. There's a creek that used to have a big swimming hole (until the enviromental nazis came along and got the area to ban swimming holes since they didn't approve of the dam); DH spent a lot of time there as a kid. We also got married there way up on the mountain. We try to go up every chance we have. It's so relaxing to be out there in the country - even when it's so! hot! :-) Anyway, we had a great time. DH got to see a lot of his old childhood friends, who are now mostly grown and married with kids. Jenna loved it up there too, especially wading in the creek and driving with daddy.
Jenna has four, almost five teeth and is clamoring more and more for grown-up food. It's making nursing more of a challenge, something I wanted to do for at least one year (yay! we made it!), but hopefully longer. She's being really nice so far and not biting (even though her attention span is pretty bad). She even knows the sign for "eat" and is usually pretty polite about asking for it; at least the first time. We'll see how long the arrangement lasts. I don't think either of us are ready to go through a miserable weaning process yet.
Two weeks ago Sunday, we celebrated her 1st birthday with my side of the family at our favorite Japanese restaurant in SF. My older sister sent her this gift (A Brio stacking clown) that nearly made me cry when I saw it - I know, that's odd. I played with one almost exactly like it when I was a baby and there's something very neat about a company that's making the same toys now that they were 23 years ago. Jenna LOVES this toy! It's supposed to be for kids 18+ months, but she's already learned (thanks to Daddy's patience) how to stack them herself on the wooden spool. It's really amazing to watch her pick things up.
I have a couple other things I'm going to post - mostly just general stuff about things I'm doing. But I do have one last question. My biggest struggle with being a stay at home mom is keeping house. I never guessed it would be this much of a challenge for me and I am aware that I am lacking in time management skills (something I've battled for years). However, it seems like I can never get a handle on the housework. Between caring for Jenna and cooking and doing basic things (like washing the dishes - we don't have a dishwasher), I feel like I never get to the real housework. I've finally made a ginormous weekly chart with all the things I know I need to do to keep the house clean. I've been working to stick with this chart for the last couple days and I know it's going to take awhile for me to get a rhythm. I want to know - how to you ladies, especially with more than one baby, keep up with the housework? Any tips? Also, do you naturally enjoy cleaning/housework or is it something you see as just a chore? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Happy Monday!

Shoes

2007-06-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

So...yesterday between Dr appointments (mine then hers, we're both dandy), we wandered over to Stride Rite because it's so totally payback time for all the painful hours of shoe-shopping my mom did with me when I was a hard-to-fit kid. Since Jenna's almost walking we figured it would be good to get her a pair of shoes because she doesn't own a pair that fit (the size 2's for her baptism fit for like, 5 minutes and the 3w crib shoes my mom bought her also don't fit any more). It's about time our child stopped looking like a poor shoe-less orphan (in a $700 stroller...but no one knows that) every time we take her out.

So we went to Stride Rite. Where the nice lady informed us that she wears a 3 1/2w-4w and would probably need to come in every 2-3 months for resizing (me editorializing mentally: "Oh, ok. Here's my credit card. And here's a few extra limbs I have lying around while we're at it."). We bought her an uber-cute pair of Mary Jane's that cost more than most shoes I've purchased in the last two years (except for my Clarks, but I've worn those for two years! I think they've paid off!).
I'm having visions of weepy shoe-shopping trips in my future with this kid. I remember those trips with my mom. She totally has my feet. Siblings have been mean to me all my life because of my feet and my wonderful in-laws couldn't resist making a few jabs at me because of my sad foot-height ratio (big feet, short girl). I really hope one of my (future?) daughters gets my mother-in-laws gene for petite feet. Thank goodness Payless Shoesource offers kids shoes in wide width.

Happy Birthday Baby

2007-06-20T14:52:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe it's been a whole year since this little bundle came into the world. With all the love I felt for her the moment she came into this world, I am surprised on an almost daily-basis at how deeply I am devoted to and in love with this child of mine. We celebrated a little this weekend during a last-minute getaway to the Northern California Coast (our favorite spots) and then with a stop at Grandma's ranch (where we got married almost 3 years ago). Grandma J is on a good track to completely spoiling Jenna with all the birthday cards and gifts but probably her most favorite was the little floaty-innertube-ish toy. We tried it out in the swimming hole at the ranch and it was an immediate hit. She also had her first taste of cake, also a big hit (child after my own heart, loves her sugar). Grandma J is going to be out of town so we were really happy to be able to celebrate with her before she leaves. Jenna is really lucky to have such a wonderful grandmother. I was going to post a one-year retrospective video, like I did at six months, but I haven't finished it (okay fine, it's barely started)...This last year has been full of big challenges and adjustments and hopefully some serious spiritual growth and mostly overwhelming love. It doesn't get much better than this. :-)

Updates

2007-05-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't really felt the need to blog these days. Daddy (husband) is on a nice long vacation and Jenna and I have been gobbling up every minute we can get with him, since work has been so busy these last few months. I'm also trying to find more joy in home life and home making and spend less time on the Internets.
That said, I figured I should probably update since I'm the mother of an almost one-year-old baby who's no longer acting like a baby! Jenna is standing on her own now, not quite ready to walk, she's very talkative and has added several words to her vocabulary including "dog" (which is actually more like "gog"). She's finally using the ONE sign we've been trying to teach her since she was 6 months old for "eat." She acts more and more like a toddler every day. She's so independent and curious and she imitates so much! I can't believe she's going to be a year old in less than a month. It's flown by so quickly and I'm almost sad thinking about how fast she's living behind her little baby ways and moving on to newer and bigger things. I love this age that she's at right now but I do miss my snuggly little cuddle bug.

Time to Panic

2007-04-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Update time:

In the last week and a half, here's what's happened in our lives...

Heard water running in (what I thought was) the upstairs apartment. Called landlady to see if neighbors were home and maybe forgot to turn off the sink. Noticed stream of water pouring out the light fixture in my kitchen (by the way, the light was ON). Called landlady again. Find out a pipe in their bathroom broke and leaked all the way down to our apartment. Notice stream of water pouring out the ceiling and down the wall behind refrigerator - puddling into our kitchen and out onto the carpet in the hallway. OH. Joy. Plumber comes. Can't do anything. Contractors come. Rip a big hole in the ceiling. More water pours out. I see my entire household being enveloped by the big giant monster that is water damage and repairs. Thankfully we have great landlords and they fixed everything...
During repairs we had to move out. Jenna got to visit both sets of grandparents. Thank goodness for parents. There's nothing like being able to go home to mommy and daddy when your house is falling apart. I think that instinct never changes no matter how old you get. I think I may need some therapy for this. Maybe not. A week away from my kitchen and lots of uphill hikes with Grandma Jane led to my losing two pounds. This is a world-rocking achievement for me since my body seem to subscribe to a very sick brand of dialectic materialism when it comes to weight loss. One pound lost, two pounds gained. (I do remember one or two things from all those years of Western Civ classes in high school even if this is a gross abuse of the philosophy)
Jenna got to hang out with her Auntie Libby (below) and Uncle Josh (who is all of seven). She was fascinated by having someone close to her size around. :-)
FINALLY moved back in to our place on Thursday after almost a week away. Jenna's sleep schedule is officially shot. Not that she was ever on a schedule in the first place.
Also: She crawls. Feeds herself little sweet potato puffs (like a melty, baby-safe version of Cherrios) and dances to music. Any music. She prefers the $20 CD we bought online that has 6 songs that have her name in them (even if the songs are 2 minutes long at most, one of the best $20 we've spent so far). She also pulls herself up to standing position in her play-yard. She'll be walking in no time .
We painted our kitchen. Actually, husband painted our kitchen. I watched. It's yellow. More yellow than I expected, but I do like it. We also decorated a little more so our home looks less like a dorm and more like a home. It's very nice.

Maybe someday people will look at Jenna and not say "Oh my goodness, doesn't she look just like her daddy!." Not that I mind her looking like him. He's hot. But still...it'd be nice just once for someone to say she looks like me.

She really loves visiting the SFPD horses that are corralled in Golden Gate Park by our house. She got a kick out of petting this one.

So in other non-family interests, I thought I'd mention this business. People in the church attacking the authority of Scripture and denying clear biblical truths is nothing new (unfortunately) but it seems like even the people opposing this guy are failing to recognize the problem with his beliefs. This homosexual "Reverend" from the Church of England is preaching that Christ's death on the cross was so that he could "experience the worst of grief and pain that life can throw at us." Um. No. He also says that the "traditional" (hi. How about Scriptural!!!) notion that Christ died to atone for the sins of man is repulsive and makes God sound like a psychopath. No again. Sadly, even his critics are not rebuking him for his blatant rejection of the absolute authority of Scripture. One pastor argued against him by saying that he's "rejecting the way in which we understand Christ's sacrifice." How about this: a man who is supposedly called to preach the gospel is not only openly living in sin (he's "married" to his gay partner, also a "Reverend") he's out right defying that the inspired word of God means what it says (ie - that Christ died to bear the sins of His chosen ones). (For some pretty hefty and truly awesome reading go here)
Rush Limbaugh said this morning that he's convinced that things (morally speaking) are not as bad as people are making them out to be (ie - all the things that horrify us about today's culture have been going on forever) and that he'll let us know "when it's time to panic." Even the church is worshiping a God of it's own imagination instead of the God of the Bible. Christians seem unprepared or unwilling to truly defend their faith and speak the truth to a dying world. If I didn't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is the ruler of the Universe and that even now He is in control of all events, I would say - now is the time to panic.

I'm out for the day. Going to enjoy the sunshine with mah bebeh.

Feels like summertime...

2007-03-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

We've been having some marvelous weather here in the city, so I decided to take advantage of it and get Jenna out for a picnic in the park. She'll be nine months old next week...don't get me started about how time flies and how much she's changed and how I love her more every minute.

Adorable outfit courtesy of her French cousin, Claire. We're so happy the weather is finally cooperating with her cute baby wardrobe.

Why yes, she does clap on command.

Two front teeth finally came in last week. She doesn't know what to do with them...

Making an effort maybe...

2007-03-03T01:09:00.000-08:00

I've had little or no inclination to think about (much less attempt) to blog these last few weeks, so I figured maybe I'd try making a list...

Two front teeth (Jenna's not mine)
Chunks of sleep that last a precious one hour (at night!)
Forcing myself to workout at least three times a week
Trying to ignore all the bad news in the world (and wishing the media would stop! covering! Anna Nicole's death/funeral/custody battle/baby daddies/good grief make it stop!!)
Looking through Jenna's baby book, realizing how many details I've already forgotten (when she first rolled over all the way, the date of her first real smile, when she first laughed out loud)
Watching Jenna play peek-a-boo (all of a sudden but like she's known how to do it all along), clap when I sing "If you're happy and you know it"...realizing how quickly she's blossomed from the little larvae-like mugwump into this intelligent, aware, enchanting, engaging little person
Feeling more blessed than ever by husband, love, baby, grace...

In closing...

Things we've done the last few weeks:

Vacation - check out that view (also - reason why I love my husband #4279: gel body wrap w/ Swedish massage)

I love this picture and will continue to overuse it

Baby Beethoven DVD, teething and sitting up unsupported by mom

I know, blury - but cute

At least one of us is getting sleep these days

Oh...nothing much in particular

2007-02-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

I saw this "Six Weird Things About Me" meme on someone else's blog and thought I'd change things up a bit. So here goes...

1) I'm a little freaked out by babies that have lots of hair (read: Suri Cruise)

2) I am excessively fond of parenthetical statements (anyone who receives emails from me will know this)

3) I have an alter-ego that likes Def Leppard and old Aerosmith music. I also secretly (haha - not any more) wish I could dance like Fergie (I don't try because seriously, that would be WAY more than a little disturbing).

4) I was a competitive irish dancer for two years in high school and a competitive figure skater for 6 years when I was a kid (I totally wanted to be Kristi Yamaguchi). My sisters and I and the other girls in our neighborhood used to have roller skating competitions in our driveway using music we recorded from TV airings of Olympic figure skating (commentary included). Ahhh the days before Napster and MP3's.

5) I am a very black and white person, especially when it comes to politics and religion.

6) #6 isn't weird...sometimes I look at my daughter - when she's sleeping next to me and finally oh, so peaceful - and I sort of choke when I realize that this really is my life. I am so overwhelmed by her and how much I love her and how grateful I am that this is what God has done with my life...

2007-02-08T16:37:00.000-08:00

Naked outside? It was warmer than I thought it would be and like any good mother, I had her bundled to the nines and overheated baby = grumpy baby. So, peeled off a few layers.

Mmmmmm - Winter Squash.

Pictures

2007-01-31T14:59:00.000-08:00

The Queen of Everything on her throne (Daddy's shoulders)

Eeeeee!!! Soon I will have teeth!

See the big fat tear under her eye? Girlfriend is scared of loud noises, like candy falling into a candy jar.

That HSA I mentioned earlier, all the money will be going to pay for her cavities in a few years.Looking cute is hard work ya'll.

Words and then Pictures

2007-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

So...I have a few things to cover:

Our family is currently undergoing zombification treatment courtesy of Jenna who has been nursing every hour (why God???) at night. Also...that whole sleeping with us thing, yeah, she's still doing that too. I can't blame her, our bed is way more comfortable, but do you have any idea how much a 7 month old kicks and squirms at night?
During the day when I should be either cleaning or napping, I've been playing the Family Guy game on PSP. Someone needs to make sure those people never! make! another! game! It was panned in the reviews but you'd think that they could at least make the game funny. Noooo. The game is terrible. It's completely unfunny; not to mention difficult. Seriously, did they test this game with consumers at all? I think not. Of course competitive me cannot stand being mastered by a game so I will keep playing until I can solve at least the level I'm currently playing. Not that anyone cares...just thought I should vent.
On a political note - I've been making a conscious effort to avoid politics since giving birth because if I pay attention to what's going on, my head will seriously explode. Between Iran, Obama, Hilary, immigration and this global warming farce (PSA to MTV: the words "think" and "MTV" are mutually exclusive. Anyone watching MTV is watching it because they either cannot think or are making a conscious decision to stop thinking [at least temporarily], so just stop with the public service ads about how we can stop global warming, okay? And global warming is from natural causes and even if it were aggravated by humans, have a chat with countries like China and all those developing countries that are polluting way more than the US or Europe. Please. NO.NO.NO.)...yeah, see. Head exploding. I lost my train of thought.

So on to what I really wanted to say: Today I remembered why I am still glad that George Bush won in 2004. He's crumbling under pressure on many fronts (immigration anyone? Also - since when did big government become a Republican thing? Aren't we supposed to be the party of smaller government?) but his health care plan reminds me of one of the reasons why I liked him so much in the first place. This article over at National Review explains how he's trying to help lower the cost of health care for everyone. In short, remove some of the tax incentives for employer-paid health care and offer a (BIG FAT) deduction for individuals and families to pay for their own health coverage. Having spent the last four months trying to sort out my post-job health coverage, I can tell you that insurance companies that have "consumer driven" health care in their company profile are not concerned with consumers, nor are they driven. I spent countless hours on the phone babysitting incompetent customer "service" reps and doing work that should have been done by the insurance company (which - among many other things - LOST the premium checks I mailed). In the end, I discovered the amazing option of a high deductible individual PPO combined with a tax free Health Savings Account. All of the money that I was going to throw away to that awful insurance company is now sitting comfortably in an HSA for us to use if and when we need it. I think President Bush has done a lot of things the wrong way during his last term, but hopefully he will continue to push this plan. It's definitely a better idea than the plan the Governator is promoting.

Anyway...that was long winded. I'm putting pictures in a separate post.

2007-01-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

Runts are a food group, right?

Hi. Sitting up. This is not okay.

Mmmmmm. Camera. Tasty.

Homegirl looks like a Monchichi Pet

2007-01-15T13:40:00.000-08:00

The new trend in hairLook at the new motor skills! Binki. In mouth. The right way!

Look at my super-cool fauxhawk.

New outfit from Grandma, which we love!

Wee!!!

That's it...because, no one wants to read about poop, drool, teething (oh...the biting) and how solid food (rice cereal) does not agree with her at all. Those are the daily components of my life and I do love this life, this thing called motherhood. The rest of the women can have their independence and carefree living, I'll take the toothless smiles of my daughter any day. :-)

I meant to post these yesterday...

2007-01-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

But Blogger is lame and the image posting feature wouldn't work.

These are from New Year's day around 2am (because our child is that much of a night owl).

Happy 2007?!!

2007-01-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Seriously...2007? What's up with that? I was just huddling in a corner with my sisters waiting for the world to end on Y2K. 2007? That makes me what...oh yeah. Old. Old enough to be more than four years post-high school graduation. Old enough to be married. Old enough to have a kid. OH....the kid. She is wonderful.

Anyway...Happy New Year. I guess I could mention a few resolutions to keep the tradition alive.

Spend less time on the Internet. I recently heard that people spend a total of 10 hours per day on entertainment of the computer, TV and video game varieties. Also, it's becoming more and more clear that the more time you spend on the internet, the more depressed you're likely to be. Not that I'm depressed. But still...this year, I want to step away from the keyboard and pick up a book or a pen and paper. Also, internet relationships (Facebook - which I love anyway, Myspace - which I hate always, YouTube - which is vastly stupid and useless and all that is horrible and bad and also, owned by liberals) are so distant from reality. So...as far as my motherhood and my lack of car will permit me, I really do hope to spend more face-time and less chat-time with people I love.
Work out. I would say lose weight, but that would kind of miss the point. Losing weight is a perk that I very much look forward to, but I really need to get my body into better shape. There are certain areas of my arms that have become quite strong, and even - when flexed - muscular. We call those the Proverbs 31 arms - from picking up baby and carrying groceries and scrubbing showers. But...the belly, and the legs...not so svelte any more. I am - in truly arminian form - recommitting myself to work out consistently each week. And reminding myself, in the immortal words of Elle Woods "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't kill their husbands."
Finish reading: Gleanings from Thomas Watson, The Almost Christian Discovered (by Matthew Mead), Christian Apologetics (Cornelius Van Til) and at least one book by Jay Adams (to be decided)
Try new recipes and document the results with camera and notes. I have an on-going cooking project and I've really been trying to expand my cooking horizons these last couple months. I want to organize (read: actually write down) the recipes that our family loves so we can recreate them consistently and share them with other people (who don't think we're crazy bush-dwelling hippies for not eating dairy or cow products). So, I want to cook more, write down recipes more and take more pictures of the food I cook. Fun stuff.
Get organized and stay organized. Unfortunately for me, the evolutionists haven't been able to disprove the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and things in my house still collapse into disorder if I miss one day of chores. This year, as a newly minted stay at home mommy, I really want to organize my house by the motto "A place for everything and everything in it's place."
And last but not least - finish a more private family website and stop blogging here for good. The era of the blog as a personal journal (as a good thing anyway) is rapidly closing and the more I wander around the internet finding the insipid and banal musings of someone describing what they ate for lunch yesterday, the more I realize I do not want to be a part of this community. Like my sudden motherly urge to retreat to suburbia, I want to diminish into the confines of friends-only updates. When I get my act together, I hope to develop a multi-media blog/vlog family page where people who care can read about us, and people who are just nosey and bored (or worse, perverted) cannot.

Anyway...Happy New Year to all. I wish everyone health and joy and blessings (and mostly that they will grow in the Lord, or for those that don't know Him, that they will be saved) and especially I wish that no one has the misfortune of having to deal with a health insurance company (in reference to the post that I refuse to write about how evil and malevolent my current insurance company is, and how COBRA is the worst excuse for insurance and how the entire health care industry is designed specifically to stick it to the consumer).

But in very happy news - Jenna was baptised on Sunday and didn't cry when the pastor put water on her head (hopefully someone got a picture of her adorable expression) and was generally well-behaved despite all the passing around and fawning and SO.MANY.PEOPLE. She even got to meet her great-great-Grandmother, which was especially special. Maybe I'll post pictures of that later... For now blogger won't let me upload pics. So lame

Lessons from Solid Food v2.0

2006-12-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

- Applesauce is much better than rice cereal.

- Baby likey some applesauce

- Applesauce poops: Not. Cute.

- Applesauce has lots of sugar. Administer past 7pm at your own risk (read: up until 4am with a sugared out baby)

- Applesauce + baby rasberries (of the tongue-spewing variety, not the fruit) = another mommy shirt bites the dust.

In other news...Christmas was fabulous. We did what we always do - stay home, watch A Christmas Story (classic), make turkey (except for last year, when I bought a turkey that turned out to be um...bad...and we ate scrambled eggs). I have major mother-guilt over the fact that I completely neglected to take a single picture of Jenna on her first Christmas (which largely consisted of playing Ultima III with Daddy and napping). I am a bad mother, I'm sure. This conviction is solidified by the fact that I actually took pictures of the turkey I made (for an on-going project of mine) and thus, don't even have the excuse of not having the camera out. Oh well...I hope she forgives me. Christmas was indescribably wonderful with a baby in the house. We count our blessings everyday with her, but especially at Christmastime...I have had moments in the last few weeks especially, where I feel as though another drop of happiness from these things called motherhood and marriage will make me burst.

Today - I am trying to salvage the whirlwind havoc that yesterday's kitchen adventures wrecked upon house and home. The pouring rain has not helped my motivation at all.

So anyway...Merry Christmas, Mirthful Festivus, Happy Birthday to my family (mother, sister, husband, me), Happy New Year. I am lame because I have no pictures to end this post.

Six Months

2006-12-19T17:47:00.000-08:00

I cannot put into words (any better than already posted elsewhere) how much joy has been brought to my life from this little daughter of mine. So I figured I'd acquire a new skill and learn how to make video slideshows and do it with pictures (you know...picture worth a thousand words and all). So...here it is in a nutshell - all the warm, fuzziness of our first six months, neatly packaged into two minutes and fifty-five seconds of ooey-gooey goodness.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Baby's First Six Months on Vimeo

Happy December

2006-12-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

Where did 2006 disappear to?

On the baby front, we're in week two+ of ickines. Thankfully, Jenna's version of sickbaby 1.0 is actually quite tame. Her night wakings hover between 3-5 hours (which is a normal sleep schedule for some babies), her fussiness is still at a minimum and we've yet to experience a true torrent of slimey green goo coming out of her nose. However, she has been congested which has necessitated parental measures to clear her nose of boogers. She figured out REALLY fast how to twist her neck as hard as possible in the opposite direction to avoid any tools we might use to try and suction or otherwise remove those boogies. Smart kid.
Also...she had her first encounter with solid food last night (it could hardly be called solid food, it was like 5 parts breast milk to 1 part rice cereal). She was not impressed. But she didn't instantaneously projectile vomit it across the room either - she waited at least half an hour before doing that. I know we'll have more fun with solid foods when she can eat actual human-tasting foods like bananas and peaches instead of that bland paste they call rice cereal.

Regardless, her absolute cuteness and sweetness prevail in all situations. She makes me laugh a 1000 times a day and I cannot think of a time in my whole life when I was happier than I have been at home with my own little daughter.

End mushiness. You can come back now.

I spent almost all of yesterday in the kitchen testing a candy recipe that is candidating for my Christmas goody giveaway list this year. I haven't made candy in a long time and I had forgotten how much I enjoy the tedious process of watching a thermometer crawl through all the candy stages. Unlike my younger candy-making attempts, this one did not turn out to be a total failure (usually, first batch candy is bad). I managed to cook the honey/sugar syrup to hard crack stage without burning down the house and the finished product (chewey almond torrone - italian nougat) is actually quite tasty. I'm still trying to figure out how to temper my chocolate to just the right point where it will harden when dry by not seize up (I used to know how to do this). And I wasn't being sarcastic about how much I enjoy candy making. I love cooking in general, candy-making especially because it's difficult and I love a challenge.

Anyway...I would post the blow-by-blow pictures I took, but this is not a food blog. It's a baby blog and I know my place in the world, so I'll keep a lid on it.

Have a nice weekend.

Thanks

2006-11-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

On the menu from yesterday:

A way-to-big-for-two-people 12lb Turkey (we'll be eating turkey until New Year's) Cranberry-Cornbread stuffing with Chicken Apple Sausage
Roasted Garlic Smashed Potatoes
Asparagus (with roasted garlic - we're big garlic people)
For dessert: Gingersnap Ice Cream Sandwiches (with soy ice cream, of course)

I love Thanksgiving, mostly because it's an excuse for me to spend most of the day playing chef. I think it will become even more fun as we add more kidlets to the bunch.

This time last year I was a few weeks pregnant and dying from kidney stones. Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of hospital vending machine cranberry juice and saltines (and for me a regular dose of painkillers). Our life is dramatically different after one year. To say "thank you" to the Lord for blessings us with this precious, healthy, happy (and well-behaved), amazing little girl would be the world's greatest understatement. And yet...it's about all we can say. I am so grateful to have this wonderful child in my life and for all the ways her presence is changing me.

Happy (late) Thanksgiving everyone.

Couldn't let it pass without notice

2006-11-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

Jenna is 5 months old today. She's been sick and grumpily all week but last night she was kind enough to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time so I could at least partially remove myself from the mommyzombie list. Still...even with the coughing and fussing and no sleeping, she is adorable and I love her more today than I ever have.

In closing - best words of wisdom to date (that I can remember anyway...which means it had to have been given in the last 24 hours): The pastor at the church we visited last night told us to remember to enjoy our kids, especially when they get older. Of course, this is probably less of a problem with the first one or two kids people have than it is with middle and last children (the novelty of new parenthood has worn off). I pray my children will always find me enjoying them at all of their stages in life, and being patient & loving with them in the stages that are not so enjoyable.

Nothing terribly new these days

2006-11-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

Just this...
And this...Oh....and THIS:

She's growing so fast and totally turning into a little person on me. Completely unfair. I never said she could grow up!! For Christmas we need a new (bigger) carseat (probably Britax, which means...Lullaby Lane can have the arm and leg they didn't take when we bought the other baby stuff*), a crib (because...she's quickly growing too big and too mobile for her bassinet) and giftcards to the Gap because...she's almost fitting into her 6 month-old clothes. :-)

*Edit: Now see, that is not fair either because we hardly spent a dime on baby stuff until recently (aside from diapers and wipes and a few other things). Every time I put Jenna in a new outfit, I remember who gave it to us and marvel that so far in our lives most of our luxuries have been provided by very nice and generous people. The pots and pans that I use EVERY.DAY. were given by my very generous old bosses for our wedding, ditto on the changing table (for the baby shower). Our stroller/carseat was a joint effort between our two moms (and Jamen and her grandmother and wow. that was an expensive stroller but worth EVERY PENNY that other people spent on it - in our minds anyway) and nearly all of our baby-related possessions are gifts right down to bottles and pacifiers. People are VERY VERY nice to us and I'm very grateful. But the point still remains...if there are arms and legs for the taking, Lullaby Lane will have them, regardless.

2006-11-04T19:46:00.000-08:00

Halloween (hate it) is over and the next morning, my local Walgreens store was magically transformed into Christmas-supply central. On TV, they're playing commercials with Christmas music and suddenly I'm itching to make apple crisp and light cinnamon candles and wear wool sweaters (which, I don't own and even if I did, they probably wouldn't fit me because, ick. Baby weight.).

So yes...2006 is almost over. How weird.

I will probably shut this blog down soon. We may set up something more private, but I've become very self-conscious about putting all of our business on the interweb where anyone can access it. I promise that family and people we know can have the new site. Will update more soon.
PS - Jenna is 14 lbs, 24.5inches and her head is in the 74th percentile. I'm afraid she's inherited my large head, but on all other fronts she's a miniature copy of her daddy.

4 months

2006-10-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a mushy little post about how time flies and how I can't believe how different Jenna is from the baby we brought home four short months ago...but I think I'll save the weepiness for when she's at least 6 months old. Suffice it to say...with all of it's challenges (ahem, sleep, hormones, steep learning curve), this is the happiest life I can imagine and I wouldn't change it for anything. Jenna is adorable and open and curious and loving and I love her more than I ever thought possible. How could I not?

Friday

2006-10-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

Monday morning I woke up sick, sick, sick. Puking, fever, the works. So fun. Learned a new lesson about mommyhood. Sickness and having a baby are not a good combination. I am so grateful to have had some help from my mother-in-law and hubby (he was sick too, but not quite as bad). Still, breastfeeding when you have the flu is yucky.

I'm crossing my fingers that Jenna won't get what we had; she seems okay right now, just a little cough. It's one thing for me to have the flu, I cannot bear the thought of my preshus baby being sick (not to mention the prospect of the howling, miserableness of a sick baby).

Anyway...the worst appears to be over, but I'm still really tired. Jennacake (her latest nickname) refused to go to sleep until 3:30am, and that was only after three feedings in two hours, two foot massages (she's so spoiled) and reading Goodnight Moon three times. By the way, I've known Goodnight Moon since before I can remember and read the story countless times. However, the other night, Jenna and I were reading it and studying each picture oh so carefully (she loves the pictures) when I noticed something I've never noticed before. In each colored illustration (not the black and white ones), the little mouse appears. For someone who loved "Where's Waldo" as a kid, this was like candy! I'm 22 years old and I was totally excited about this discovery. Seriously, look for the little mouse, it's tons of childish fun.

Now that I'm figuring out how to do this whole stay-at-home-mom thing (ie - keeping the house reasonably clean, taking care of baby, etc), I'm realizing I have a good amount of time on my hands. Lately, I've been spending too much of that time thinking totally neurotic thoughts about everything under the sun, or web browsing (that makes me sound like a total loser and sloth). Since there aren't a lot of opportunities for working from home for someone with my current skills set, I've realized that I really need some hobbies. Aside from trying to learn more web design stuff, I think I'm going to teach myself how to crochet. I'd really like to be able to make some cute baby stuff. We'll see if I have the patience to get past learning the chain stitch thingee (I used to know how to do that). :-)

Oh yes, things I love right now: Burt's Bee's Soap Bark and Chamomile Deep Cleansing Creme and Radiance Day Creme; the cute new detective on Law & Order and Facebook (holy cow, facebook is awesome!).

I hate those Lunesta commercials (also, the post in which I write about my baby's rash)

2006-10-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

That sleep, in those terrorizing commercials with the lilting little butterfly, that's the sleep I want. If there's one thing I've learned about this whole stay at home mom thing, it's that instead of working eight hours a day, I get to work 24 hours a day and the few hours that I'm in bed supposedly sleeping, my brain is still working. I HATE those commercials, they're so darn relaxing and they make me SLEEPY. And all that stuff about "do not use unless you have at least eight hours to devote to sleep." Yeah. Right. That probably means that mothers who have to handle babies in the middle of the night don't qualify. Hi, do NOT drop the baby during the 2am diaper change.

Not that I'm complaining or anything. I barely have a memory of sleep before baby. From day one of my pregnancy I didn't sleep well, what with the getting up to pee every hour and then later on the enormous belly and then again, the getting up to pee every hour.
Being a stay at home mom is a luxury I am very grateful to enjoy; despite the increased work hours (and large pay cut), I don't miss a single little moment with Jenna, I'm free to blog, email, cook during the day (when she sleeps), I can work out, go for walks in the middle of the day. These are all little pleasures that I did not have when I was working. So, on the whole, this arrangement is definitely easier on me. It's just that the lists go on. And on. And on. I finally collapse into be and it's "Oh, no, I didn't write that thank-you note" or "I forgot to put that on the grocery list" or "I want to blog about XYZ tomorrow" (I know, pathetic). I'm adjusting I guess. But those commercials. Oh how they torment me.

So on to other news, we took Jenna to her cousin's baptism today. It was her first big outing after that wedding we went to several weeks ago (which she pretty much slept through and was an angel until the ride home...ahem). Now, since she is my first child and I am inherently germaphobic to a certain extent (I am entitled to most of it, we decided not to immunize her so she's more susceptible to things) it's very difficult for me to take her out around other people and allow them to fondle her (you just never know where people's hands have been). Of course, we usually survive these sort of encounters with the third kind but she howled much of the time (Tired. Unfamiliar surroundings. You got me to sleep in it now WHERE IS MY BASSINET WOMAN?!). And of course, in honor of my paranoia (you don't believe me? I kept wipes in my pockets all day and wiped her down compusively) she got a nice red rash on her neck. She's happy as a clam right now and doesn't have a fever so I'm sure it's nothing.

Still. Have spent the last hour browsing internet flow charts on childhood rashes and the pictures, on Google. Oh my. Our poor pediatrician knows us all to well from my bi-weekly phone calls and please. Someone stop me.

Anyway, it was a nice weekend and on the way home from the baptism we got to see the end of the Blue Angels show flying over the Golden Gate Bridge. SO cool.

The post that I started at 1am last night

2006-10-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

I missed it altogether but happy two-year blogiversary to me. I've been blogging since September 4, 2004.

I've spent the last few days taking a crash course on CSS (aka stealing other people's blogger templates and tweaking them. Why create when you can simply copy? - of course, I did give credit to Zoot for her original design, so it's not stealing, it's just borrowing - but I digress) and Photoshop. All I've really figured out so far is how to read CSS templates and how to use the magic wand tool in Photoshop (hence the c hange in colors in my template) and also, how to use Palette Man to get my colors from HEX to RGB. Eventually, I will make my own templates from scratch and I will rule. :-)

Anyway... I'm sitting here at nearly 1am with a very slobbery, wide-awake baby on my lap (oh, I am the MASTER of one-handed typing these days). She's decided to move her bedtime from 2:30am to somewhere around 3:30am (or, like on Saturday night, 4am). Oh joy. My only thanks is that when she finally does go down, she'll go down for about five hours (sometimes, when she really likes me, seven hours); until then, it's 30-45 minute catnaps all evening long. Usually, the way it works is: Daddy gets home, plays with baby while mommy finishes dinner. Mommy feeds baby and then baby naps so mommy can gobble down a few bites and maybe wash a dish or two. Then baby wakes up to play for awhile. Baby goes down AGAIN about 2 hours later and just as mommy gets into her work-out clothes and onto the elliptical (I have to lose this baby weight someday, right?), baby wakes up. Thank God I have a husband to help with all of this - the single mothers out there who are faced with parenting by themselves are amazing (at least, the ones who do it successfully. And I realize that my not being able to work-out every night does not even come close to a hardship compared to what some of those women go through).

Some of you may be wondering about the “gurp” in my title. I can’t imagine you’re not able to figure it out, but gurp is our family term for spit-up. My transformation into motherhood is definitely complete now that every single one of my shirts (at least the ones I can still wear) has been gurped on at least once; I bounce and sing to the music in Walgreens (baby soothing techniques), and sometimes I do it unconsciously even when I’m not holding Jenna; I write about myself in the third person and more often than not, refer to myself as “Mommy.” I call my husband “Daddy” and most of all, I simply cannot imagine my life without this precious little human being. All of my good memories before her are still special, but they’re all qualified by a sense that my life is so much better and more fulfilled with her in it.

Today, we took a nap (not really something unusual). As she lay next to me in nothing but her enormous cloth diaper (I am such a good mother), I felt a little sad because it won't be long before she's too big, too active and too old for us to enjoy that kind of snuggly, skin-on-skin naptime. I love her soft little baby-fresh smell and her marshmallow chubby arms and hands (oh, the dimpled hands! Yum!) and…can I talk about her feet? The bottoms are so soft (and flat, just like mine…poor girl) and the tops are so mushy. I will miss all this.

This morning I was reading Proverbs 3 to Jenna; it completely encapsulates what I pray she will keep in her heart for the rest of her life. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. Honor the Lord with all your possessions…Happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than profits of silver and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.”

--> Wednesday Morning <--

Of course, once I got into the groove of that post last night, little Miss Miss had her nightly meltdown and I had to leave editing and finishing it for this morning. And now it’s almost time for morning nap (oh my goodness, we’re actually behaving like a NORMAL mommy and baby today – we didn’t sleep in until 12:00!!).

So yes, there’s your big juicy, pointless post of the day. I’m out. :-)

***That sweater which we LOVE and want more of, was handmade for Jenna by my "Grandma" April. ***

Mushy Mommy Love

2006-09-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

I struggle very often to put into words exactly what I mean; exactly what I'm thinking. Frequently someone else does it far better than I could hope and today is one of those days (read this post!! Bring kleenex). I've been reading Amalah's blog since October, right after she gave birth to her son and right after I found out I was pregnant with Jenna. Sometimes her language is abrasive (even though she's pretty much always gut-busting hilarious) and I don't necessarily see eye to eye with her on life, but today, her son is 365 days old. Tomorrow he will be one. Today, we are both mommies who love our children more than we ever thought was humanly possible to love.

When Jenna was about a month old I wrote in my journal (something I rarely do) that I wish I had some magical recording device that could record not just little snapshots of Jenna, but moments; how she smells, the way she would look at me curiously like she was studying my face, how it felt to hold her as a tiny little newborn, the little sounds she was making at the time. Even now, just two months later, she's an entirely different baby. She no longer grunts like SheHulk, she looks at me and smiles now as if to say "I know you"...when we brought her home from the hospital she was short enough that I could hold her in my arms and her legs would barely pass the edge of my torso; now she can practically wrap around me. The things that used to calm her down now frustrate her, now her daddy is better at calming her than me. She no longer fits into most of her first batch of baby clothes.

I had many other plans and ideas for my life before she came up on our radar. I can see now, like I've seen so many other times in my life, how much greater and more delightful are God's plans for me compared to my own. Becoming a mom has been a refining fire. It has forced me to be more loving, more gentle, more organized, more efficient with my time (never been a big fan of time management), less contentious and more submissive. Now, it's not just the two of us, there are alwaysbe those two little eyes, watching and learning. I am overwhelmingly conscious of the fact that Jenna will grow up watching me as an example of womanhood, learning either what she aspires to be as a woman, or what she hopes not to be (although, I pray that since it's guaranteed to be a little of both, it will be more of the former). I think of how much I love her and am confounded by the fact that my Heavenly Father loves her even more. I have great hope for her when I remember that His promises to me are also to her - the same faithfulness, the same unfailing love and loyalty. These promises...

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord..." (Jer. 29:11-14)

Little Miss Uncreative

2006-09-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

In the last year, I've started reading more and more "mommy blogs" (with a few dad blogs in there too, but mom blogs are more fun). The more I look at those blogs, the more I have flashbacks of my desperately uncreative childhood.

When I was a kid, my older sister wrote great little stories from the vastness of her wild imagination; I liked playing with Lincoln Logs. When we got older, we had the same piano teacher who taught from a method that placed composition in very high importance. Of course, I HATED composing because I sucked at it big time. I simply wanted to play music - Debussy, Rachmoninoff, Chopin. Of the two compositions that I can remember, one was awfully simplistic and boring; the other was the subject of much teasing from other students because it was a forced piece and I ended up (unknowingly at the time, although it was probably a subconcious thing) rehashing another piece of music we had recently learned. Yes, I sucked. My older sister on the other hand...great. She woke in the middle of the night sometimes to write down music that popped into her head. She waged an all-out war of letter-writing to try and convince Thomas Newman to release the soundtrack from Little Women in piano sheet music (she actually transcribed tracks from the movie herself by ear and sent them to him). She wrote music and started a mini-vocal group to sing that music.

I tried watercolor painting for awhile and I enjoyed it, but my paintings were simply copies of photographs. The only artsy thing I really took to was scrapbooking and, lets be honest, that comes with pre-made stickers that say everything for you.

The point is, I am not a creative person. Hence, this entry. All the mommy blogs I've encountered seem to have cool names like "Dooce" and "Miss Zoot" and "Fast Times at Homeschool High" or "The Little Zygote That Could" (think that's a blog about fertility issues, much?). Mine...changes daily, almost always to something more stupid than the previous title. Help me, oh creative interweb people. I need a name!!

That is all.

Reflections

2006-09-25T01:43:00.000-07:00

Jenna is three months old now. We've made it through the famed "fourth trimester" and she's still alive. Now that there's sufficient distance between me and that day, I thought I'd post a few reflections on her birth day.

They're not joking when they tell women to relax during childbirth. I went full-throttle through labor until 7 or 8 cm (cool! I can do this!), and then got "stuck" because I couldn't relax any more. Stuck for 6 hours, stuck. When childbirth classes and books mention transition (the period from 7-10cm), they talk about it like it only lasts an hour. I was stuck there. For SIX hours.

Those pretty pictures of just-delivered women and their newborn baby and glowing husband; NOT my delivery. Also, they probably had very good drugs (I was drug-free for 11 hours of labor and then got a 45 minute respite thanks to a shot of fentanyl, the rest of most definitely unmedicated). My face was already excessively wide from swelling due to pre-eclampsia and when they stuck an IV in my arm because I was getting very dehydrated, things went from bad to awful. I'm so embarrased by those pictures I doubt that anyone will EVER be allowed to see them. Also, I brought my make up to the hospital thinking maybe I could put on some mascara in between contractions. Clearly, I'd never done this before. I'm a dork.

Dignity. What dignity? Aside from the obvious...Hi, exposure. I puked on my husband 4 times during that 6 hour transition. If there was ever a question before, he really, really, really loves me (that and the fact that he didn't leave my side for a second during those 13 hours of labor and delivery and coached me through each and every contraction like he'd been coaching all his life).

I'd do it all over again. Going through labor without drugs wasn't just a decision I made because I felt it was best for my baby; it was also a personal challenge for me. It hurt more than I ever could have imagined and in some senses I feel like I could have done better, been more prepared, more centered, etc. One thing is for sure, every second was worth it and as young as she is, I can't help but look at those pictures and think just a little bit that I can't wait to do it again.

None of it matters. The pain, the exposure, the pushing (wow. and wow.); it all became completely irrelevant the moment Jenna slithered out into this world. The way I felt the first time I saw her, slime and all, it defies description. I was looking through all of my L&D pictures (labor and delivery, duh) last night and I still get all teary when I look at her cute little newborn face. It is a combination of a deeper love than I ever thought possible and an enormous sense of responsibility. One dad told us when I was pregnant that you think you know love before having kids, but when you meet your child, you realize you didn't have a clue. That about sums it up.

In case you're wondering, yes, that is the "hello world" program in C. Daddy's little geek-in-training.

Updates

2006-09-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

We got seven (count them, 7!!) hours of uninterrupted sleep on Saturday night with Jenna in her bassinet. I'm not holding my breath for a pattern, but...seven delicious hours. I almost felt normal again!

I'm finally back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. Okay, they're still a little snug, but the important thing is that I don't have to wear sweats or maternity pants any more! Hurray! Now it's on to the bigger weight loss goals I had set for myself before getting preggo and blowing up like a balloon ((seriously...I think I must have put on 5 pounds of pre-eclamptic water weight just in the last week. Not pretty.))

I quit my job. Actually, I don't like to call it "quitting" because it wasn't over anything bad, it's more just deciding to not go back. We weren't able to make a final decision until a little over a week ago, and then I sent notice to my boss. This will be the first time since I was 17 that I won't have a job. Although, this stay at home mom thing is a big job in and of itself. Now that I'm home, there's no excuse for the house being messy or other things not getting done so I have to become one of those organized people who does different chores on different days. With all the hard work, I am so blessed that God has given us the means for me to be at home right now. I can't imagine missing these precious months with Jenna, but I know that there are many mommies out there who have to go back to work at 6 or 12 weeks to help pay the bills. I am truly blessed to be home with her.

Sunshine

2006-09-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

That is all.

Victory is Mine (or The $50 Night Light)

2006-09-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

The post I wrote previously about Jenna's sleeping (The Pacificier), was originally intended to describe our battle with the bassinet, but I got off on a different tangent and now I want to finish the sleeping saga.

When we brought Jenna home from the hospital, we had her sleep in her bassinet for the first few nights, but each time we looked at her all snuggled up in her swaddling blanket, it just felt so wrong to stuff her away in a cradle. So, we let her sleep with us; buying into the idea that babies won't get too attached to anything before six weeks. Hah! Not. Almost instantly she refused to sleep in her bassinet, and finally after several sleepless nights, we gave in and she started sleeping with us automatically. Around six weeks, we decided it was time to put our foot down and set up some boundaries (Hi. We'd like our bed back. Thanks.). Of course, Jenna had entirely different plans and again refused to sleep for more than 20 minutes in her bassinet. To complicate things, I'm a total pushover and can't bear the idea of ferberizing my baby.

We discovered one night that she will happily fall asleep in her bouncy seat (I'm sure there's a special place in heaven reserved for the inventor of the vibrating baby seat. Well, actually, I don't really believe that...but something like it). In desperation, we let her sleep there and for awhile, all was well (with the pacifier assisting), but this last week, it's become evident that she's just too big to sleep safely in the seat so it was back to the drawing board.

Previously, I'd sent away for a little device called the "Snuggle Nest" which is designed for co-sleeping. The thing had rave reviews from other parents and people I'd personally talked with, so I put up the fifty bucks and ordered it. Of course, since I paid that much for the thing, Jenna hated it; but she does love complementary the little blue night light that came with the Snuggle Nest. Maybe #2 (whenever that happens) will get some use out of the rest of the contraption.

The last few nights, we've managed to convince her to sleep in the bassinet by letting her fall asleep and the moving her. The first few nights she was deeply suspcious of the whole arrangement and made quite a fuss when she would wake up and realize she wasn't in bed with mommy, but the last couple nights, we've been able to get a couple more hours each night and last night, she slept for over five hours straight in the bassinet. Hallelujah!

So...in the immortal words of Stewie "Victory is mine!"

Also this: she figured out how to roll over.

Daily News and other things

2006-09-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Jenna's 11 weeks old. She won't smile for the camera these days because she's more interested in staring at it than me. She started giggling just a little yesterday when I played "belly drums" with her. Too. Cute.

Also, she talks. You know the adorable baby talk where the whole face moves and they're just starting to figure out how to make sounds.

She likes to hold hands when she's going to sleep and she loves it when I read Margaret Wise Brown's "Little Fur Family" and make all the little sounds ("kerplunk" "kerchoo" "ssip")...motherhood turns you into a children's story-memorizing, bouncing-to-the-music-in-walgreens (to keep baby content), undignified creature.

It's funny how some things stick with you forever...I loved Fur Family when I was really little and I still remember the little lullaby tune that my dad sang to me at the end "Sleep Sleep my little fur child, out of the windiness, out of the wild, sleep warm in your fur, all night long, in your little fur family, this is a song." I'm still not exactly sure where he came up with that tune, but years of watching Mr. Rogers probably heped the creative process immensely. The first time I read Fur Family to Jenna, the tune came to me without even thinking about it....

OH wait...you were expecting REAL news? How's this:

Puhleeez. Brad Pitt says he and Angelina (who no one believed would get married anyway...it doesn't fit their liberal, hedonistic schtick) won't marry until everyone who wants to (read: gay people, me and my pet gerbil) can marry. Brad, don't kid yourself, she'll be moved onto her next victim long before you start thinking about proposing.
This whole business about ABC's 9/11 movie is a sham. We all know what this would be like if the shoe were on the other feet and it was conservatives saying the movie was "defamatory" (ABC execs: "What's that, did you hear something? I didn't hear anything. Nope, this is great, put it on the air!"). But noooo, since the Democrats have their panties in a bunch over the movie's portrayal (admittedly dramatized, by the way, artsy liberals just have no appreciation for drama when it puts them in a bad light), ABC and friends are running around like crazy trying to appease the wrath of Sandy Bungler and Madeline Halfbright (I used to listen to Michael Savage in my pre-Baby Mozart days). Another blogger with a much longer reading allowance than I have these days posted some great tidbits from the 9/11 report rebutting the dems claims.

Sorry, that's all I have for today.

Mad skills

2006-09-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

I actually did take a semester of HTML back in the day but I've forgotten nearly all of it, so any time I want to change things in my blogger template, I'm forced to wade through the cobwebs in my mental filing cabinet for "things I learned in college and forgot." I remembered and was able to hand program an extra sidebar with the little birth announcment AND change the fonts and title/description section so it's more to my liking. Yay for me...

Not that ANYONE wanted to know.

Just when we were getting comfortable...

2006-08-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

The date is August 29, 2006. Jenna weighs 11 lbs, 1 oz; she's almost 22 inches long and her head circumference is in the 60th percentile.

The Pacifier
Last week she slept for a good four to five hours every night, with little two hour naps after that, meaning mom actually got to sleep for a little bit. Heaven! No more feedings every two hours all night long. Now...the extra sleep may be due in part to the fact that we finally caved and gave her a pacifier (for nighttime only!). Of course that comes with all the attachment parenting guilt that giving your child a pacifier may sentence them to a lifetime of idiocy (pacifiers = lower IQ?), and the fear that once you give it to them, they'll be permanently attached to it until death do they part. I am not nearly well-adjusted enough to admit to the general population how long I had a pacifier because whenever someone mentions in shock the older child they saw in Nordstrom gnawing on a pacifier, I am still older. So yes, it also came with the fear that she is genetically predisposed to walking down the aisle with a pacifier. Alas, the potential for actually sleeping more than 45 minutes straight at night proved to strong for those fears. Pacifier 1, attachment parenting 0.

The Bib
Just when we were starting to get comfortable with this whole baby thing...you know, she sleeps a little beter, I've sort of figured out what I can and cannot eat to avoid giving her miserable gas (Italian food, contraband, tomatoes, definitely not. Sriacha chili sauce, NEVER. Oh, and brocolli, which was previously my mainstay source of calcium, will keep us up all night with her), she's smiley and cute part of the day, and she's starting to play with toys...comfortable. It was nice. Then BAM. She cried last night, for a long time. Three hours long, in fact. Of course there were little lulls, no one can cry non-stop for three hours. It was awful. She didn't want anything, not nursing, not pacifier, not rocking. There are few things worse than being powerless to console a crying baby. No symptoms of sickness (congestion, pulling at ears, diarhea and so on), just crying. And...drool. LOTS of drool. According to all the frantic internet reading I did last night (after she finally collapsed into a tearful, sleepy little bundle), it is technically possible for a baby as young as 10 weeks to start the early stages of teething. Lord help us if that's what that was...She's much better today, back to her cute, happy self and permanently attached to a nice, absorbent bib to catch the torrent of drooliness that's emitting from her toothless mouth.

Grown-Up Time
Every once in awhile, I get a few seconds to do grown-up things (other than washing dishes, doing laundry and, luxury of luxuries, take a shower) like reading. I recently started reading a great book called "Do As I Say (Not As I Do)" by Peter Schweizer. It's a great book of "profiles in liberal hypocrisy" and pretty much decimates the myth that hypocrisy is a uniquely conservative/christian disease. So far, I've read three great profiles on Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Al Franken. While nothing in the book is all that surprising (so far), the fact that liberals are getting away with inconsistencies on such a massive scale is astonishing, disgusting and typical all at once. Read it, it's good grown-up time.

Note to Liberals - Have more babies

2006-08-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

It seems that all those abortions are catching up with the Democratic party. Arthur Brooks writes in the Wall Street Journal, "It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party." Read more here.

Happy Two Months Old

2006-08-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Jenna is two months old.

Blogger in training. :-)

2006-08-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

Oh

My

Goodness!!!

Better than pictures of the alledged Suri Holmes-Cruise...The official photographs of Jenna's first big smiles. The tabloids should be paying me gagillions for a glimpse at cuteness of this magnitude.

**Update** Two more pics...I went a little overboard when I discovered that our new camera has a thing called "continuous mode."

2006-08-09T17:32:00.001-07:00

Mommy and Baby

2006-08-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

With Auntie Aurora

2006-08-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

Picnic!

Newness!

2006-08-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have a new blog design courtesy of Miss Zoot. May still have tweaking to do with font size, etc, but the big news is my hot new Flickr account. Flickr is awesome. I strongly encourage you to check out my museum of baby bragging and possibly set up your own account with them. Fun photo sharing for the minivan crowd (no...we don't have a minivan...but we have graduated from little camera to the big kahuna-style camera with video capabilities).

No news, just pictures

2006-07-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well...a little news, she's now a little over 9lbs and according to the Dr. now there's "nothing small" about my baby. Yay, more chubbiness for me to enjoy.

2006-07-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Showing off the only pink stuff we own :-)

Too much cute

2006-07-23T01:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in love... And yes...I've turned into one of "those people" who can't get over their own kids' cuteness and probably wouldn't know if their kid was ugly in the first place. :-)

But honestly...how could you not love that face? Or this...

:::Note::: Since I now hold the title of super-over-protective mommy, please ask before re-publishing these pics on other websites. Thanks.

:::Note II:::Yes, it is 2am, and yes, she is asleep and yes, I should be asleep and am blogging instead. I am ashamed.

Baby Mine

2006-06-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

Jenna Jane, born 6/20/06 4:32pm

6lbs 5 oz, 19" long

Jenna "One who loves peace"

Jane "God's gracious gift"

I can't take credit for choosing her name because of it's meaning. We decided on that name 30 minutes after she was born with no idea what it meant. :-)

We knew we loved this baby from the second we found out he/she/it was on the way - there's simply no describing how in love with her we are now that we've seen her face to face. And, as an added blessing to the fact that she's totally healthy and arrived here safely, she's a really happy baby.

More City lunacy

2006-05-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Reading things like this send my very-pregnant self dangerously close to pre term labor. My husband and Irecently had the *ahem* pleasure of standing ten feet away as our wonderful mayor, Gavin Newsom, who extolled the wonderful diversity of our city and grandiously described how hard he's working to "keep our city safe" (this while there are homeless people sifting through my garbage cans, hosting dog-fights in Golden Gate park and leaving free needles littered all over the sidewalks). I guess when Mayor Newsom thinks of diversity, he's thinking in the myopic and racist terms of a typical liberal - diversity equals lots of different skin colors. Heaven forbid we have true diversity in this city; that would mean voters being able to chose between more than liberal or ultra-liberal when they go to the polls (Democrats in my area are running virtually un-challenged for all offices and the whole concept of political dialogue between anyone outside the liberal club is pretty much...well..dead).

So anyway - just the latest in a string of absurdities from City Council was this on-going saga reported by the Chronicle. According to the people who "matter" in San Francisco the US military is a "discriminatory institution" which "should not be running programs" in our school districts. This is not really a big surprise coming from the City that refused to allow the USS Iowa to open as an exhibit in the Bay.

Banning JROTC from the SF school district will accomplish only one thing: robbing San Francisco students of one more opportunity to succeed in life. The state is battling right now over exit exams with lawyers and judges fighting hard to protect students' rights to graduate as illiterate morons and still have the same "opportunities" as literate students. And meanwhile, SF is working equally hard to ensure that students will also NOT have the opportunity to learn valuable lessons like discipline, respect for authority, honor and courage and maybe even (horror of horrors) go on to serve their country in the military. But according to the people who want to ban JROTC, it's just another diabolical plot by the US military to get a "foothold" on young people and encourage young people to enlist for service after high school.

I wonder if they all realize how fantastically STUPID this sounds. The US military serves to protect idiots like this from the enemies who would like to see them destroyed. To suggest that it's a horror for young people to aspire to serving their country in this way just reveals the deep delusions of liberals and the hatred they bear towards this country.

I guess this is why I took a break from blogging in the first place. I get too worked up and start having contractions. :-)

On a lighter note - the baby is very healthy and getting bigger and we still can't wait to meet him/her.

2006-04-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

today i feel....
Ready to not be pregnant any more. Don't get me wrong, I love being pregnant. It's wonderful feeling baby move around in my tummy and I sure like all the great perks of being pregnant (clear skin, people being nice to you - for the most part). But after freaking out last night when baby didn't move as much as normal (and then rushing to work in the morning to get my hands on the Doppler to find the heartbeat - which was, inevitably - just fine) - I feel like: enough already, pregnant is nice, can I just have the baby now? I want to meet him (her?? we don't know) and snuggle him and talk with him.
Maybe it's just a downside of working at an OB/GYN (where we see the worst case scenario everyday) - I'm a constant spazz if I don't keep my head on straight. The whole pregnancy has very much been an exercise in walking by faith, because none of this is in my hands.

In other news...for those of you who were smart enough to avoid King Kong in the theater - congratulate yourselves on your good sense. The movie was...well...most.ridiculous.movie.ever. (not quite, but very close). First off, ape with confused sexuality - not so interesting. THAT was not an insurmountable problem however. The worst part about the movie is that the entire middle chunk (lost of skull island, fighting for Anne, etc) was one drawn out CGI game sequence after another. The scene of Kong fighting the dinosaurs went on FOREVER (we get the point, he's defending the girl, how sweet) and if that weren't enough, how about that awful creepy crawly jar scene. Peter Jackson could have merely hinted at the presence of awful human-sized cockroaches and the movie would have been just as effective. Spending five minutes of fight scenes on giant head-sucking leaches was just annoying to watch (and disgusting). It seemed like far too many scenes were made for easy Xbox game translation (bugs, Kong vs. Dinosaur and Kong chasing taxis in New York). So, final verdict, don't waste your three hours on King Kong.

Taking a Break part II

2006-02-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

The real reason:

Yes - that's right, I've been kept very busy lately preparing for a new addition to the family. Baby is due sometime in July and will continue to be referred to only as "baby" or "him" because we decided not to find out if it's a boy or girl, but I'm convinced it's a boy. Therefore - he moves a LOT, seems to double in size (or at least double the size of mommy's belly) weekly and has a heartbeat that sounds like a little train (chug chug chug chug chug).

I have known I wanted to be a mom since I was two years old, it's always been my greatest hope and dream, as silly as that sounds. Even when I had visions of law school or policy studies, ultimately I knew I would put it all away to simply be a mother to my children. So, despite the surprise timing of this whole event, next to meeting and marrying my husband, it's the best thing to ever happen to me. I'll never forget asking one patient at work about her new baby (she'd just given birth to her first at 43). She told me she'd lived the women's career life and had her high-powered job and that nothing in the world could compare to how wonderful it was to be a mom. She said - it's the best thing in the world and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Anyway - If I let myself I'll be a total cheese and ramble on forever about how I am madly in love with this baby and cannot wait to meet him/her and hold his little hands and kiss his little cheecks, etc etc ad nauseam.

In closing - Pregnancy cravings:

Weeks 7-12 (the morning sickness phase, which for me involved nausea and a complete loss of appetite): potatoes. More specifically, my mom's "heart attack on a plate" potatoe casserole made with onions and cheese and sour cream and goodness knows what other forms of saturated fat. A major problem for me because...well..I don't eat dairy any more. I tried preparing every other imaginable form of potato anything and nothing satisfied that craving.

Week 9: Stollen - that European marzipan-filled bread thingee that people give you at Christmas time. I, being the non-dairy queen that I am, made the whole thing by hand the day before Thanksgiving. And ended up in the ER that night with a probably unrelated attack of kidney stones (yes, that adventure happened while I was pregnant).

Week 14-15: Mediterranean food (something I love anyway) - we ate a lot olives and hummus and tomatoes and pita bread during that phase. At least that craving was remotely healthy.

Other cravings:

Pickles (of course - but not just any pickles, it had to be the one's a I grew up with, the expensive Clausen pickles. Very yummy)
Frosted Cherrios - which made me VERY sick.
Anything Salmon (or all fish for that matter - which is pretty much off limits because of mercury) - E&O Trading Co. by Union Square serves up this AMAZING Salmon satay with ginger pineapple sauce and pickled vegetables. It's heaven for the vinegar-craving pregnant woman.
Grapefruits, Pink Lady apples (organic of course) and avocado
Mexican food - which became fajitas made special by hubby, which also made me...very sick (ie - up all night with terrible indigestion)
Strawberry lemonade
Japanese food - chicken yakitori, miso soup, oshidashi (this amazing spinach creation with sesame oil and rice vinegar)

Things I have NOT craved:

Chocolate
Thai Food
Watermelon
Chinese food (Except for sizzling rice soup)

hilarious

2006-02-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

I'm a Porsche Boxster!

You're stylish, nimble, and good-looking. When it comes to having fun, there are few who can surpass you. And yet, you suffer from a lingering inferiority complex. Maybe it's because you have an older relative who is always in thelimelight?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Taking a break

2006-01-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

In the last several months, I haven't had much time or desire to maintain this blog as I once did. It's not that I don't want to blog, just not about the same things. I never wanted this to be a personal journal/diary type blog so I won't change courses midstream and start blabbering on about my personal life. :-) So the short version is that I'm taking a brief hiatus from political blogging (occassional updates may be posted depending on my whims). If you're interested, I will be keeping a more personal blog but you can email me for that link (lgottlieb@gmail.com).

I hope you are all (all three of you ;-)) having a wonderful year, I know that God has especially blessed me this year and I am looking forward to lots of new and exciting things to come!

~Laura

Re: Golden Globes and "Best Foreign Film"

2006-01-17T22:06:00.000-08:00

Note to America:

Something is deeply WRONG with our country when we dole out awards to movies about suicide bombers, made by suicide bombers. In case you had forgotten - here's a quick refresher: on September 11, 2001, 3000 Americans died in an attack led by people like this, on our own soil. In the years following, countless more have been ruthlessly beheaded and murdered by the same folks in the name of "Paradise Now."

Great job, Hollywood. The Islamofacists won't hate you less just because you hate your country and give awards to other people who hate your country. They still think you're the Great Satan and want to destroy you. Phoney self-deprication won't help you on this one.

2005-12-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

This is an older article, but so well put, I have to recommend it. The author, Christopher Flickinger, says it best - "Let the dead teach the living."

Speaking of which, we watched Amistad last night. **Our Christmas tradition thus far (this was Christmas #2 in the Gottlieb home) is to open presents (if there are any) days before Christmas because neither of us can keep a secret; sleep in to absurd hours of the day, cook dinner together and then watch a movie. Christmas cookies are prepared in advance to ensure there will be no shortage of provisions. Peaceful, alone and relaxing. I love it. We plan on continuing this tradition until the arrival of child/children makes it impossible. :-) **

So on to Amidstad: this was made when Dreamworks could actually turn out a good film and it certainly lived up to the legend that follows Steven Spielberg (I usually think he's undeserving of that legend - but that's judging by recent flops like War of the Worlds - which was collosally horrible). It's a violent movie, but so tremendously moving and in it, Anthony Hopkins (as a weak and elderly John Quincy Adams) gives a beautiful and solid defense for constructionist constitutional interpretation. I don't want to write a review of the movie but it's worth seeing (if you haven't seen it already - I sort of lived under a rock during my teen years when it came to movies so these older films are new and exciting to me).

Other than that - Merry Christmas to everyone (that's the whopping three people that still read this silly outlet of mine), I hope you were able to avoid the holiday shopping craze. I personally gave up on gift-giving until at least after New Year's after getting stuck at Nordstrom's in a power outage (the moral of the story: every woman should have a flashlight in her purse for such emergencies). The unfortunate souls who worked retail at Stonestown Mall this season were delighted by the outage because it meant they got to close up shop and go home a full three hours before normal closing hours.

Anyway - Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, happy birthday to the half of my family that has birthdays in the next week (my mom, my sister, my husband, me - all grown up at 22).

Three Cheers for Morgan Freeman

2005-12-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

According to The Dish Morgan Freeman is one of the people in Hollywood with fully functional mental capacities:

Actor Morgan Freeman has attacked the decision to dedicate a month to black
history. The Oscar winner claims Black History Month, held each February, is a
"ridiculous" concept. The 68-year-old says, "You're going to relegate my history
to a month? I don't want a black history month. Black history is American
history." In an interview on CBS, which aired on Sunday, Freeman points out
there is no "White History Month" and claims the only way to eliminate racism is
to "stop talking about it." He says, "I am going to stop calling you a white man
and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

Objectivity: 0, Media Bias: 1,000,000

2005-12-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

Coverage of the entire Stanley "Tookie" Williams execution and/or anti-death penalty frenzie has been blatantly slanted from day one, but this piece really caught my eye (hello - I'm blogging after...two months of near-complete silence). According to AP, Europeans are furious with Arnold for refusing to grant clemency to Williams because they have a "deep aversion to capital punishment sustained by the painful memory of state-organized murder during the Nazi era."
So, aside from the fact that our pre-occupation with what the rest of the world thinks of our policies is childish and dangerous; you have to love the way AP sees fit to compare the execution of a convicted murderer-gang-founder-menace-to-society with the merciless elimination of millions of innocent people (on the basis of race alone). And PSA: writing a childrens book does not attone for the lives of the people Williams murdered, or the havoc he single-handedly wrecked on much of California.
Williams critics were more verbose in proclaiming his remorse than Williams himself, who never once apologized or even admitted to the killings. One Cardinal said: "The death penalty is a negation of human dignity." Correction: shooting an innocent person in a convenience store is a negation of human dignity, especially that of the person committing the murder.

Have a happy Christmas. :-)

Look what's going on in the U.K.

2005-11-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving everyone. I celebrated my holiday with a fun trip to the ER on Wednesday night and the rest of the week flat on my back fighting off a nasty infection. No turkey and mashed potatoes for me this year :-(.

I just had to repost this article from the UK Timesonline. We know this kind of thing is happening here in the U.S. and the same lack of accountability for late-term abortion providers helps them get away with murder.

"Paul Clarke, a neonatal intensive care specialist in Norwich, has treated a boy
born at 24 weeks after three failed abortion attempts. The mother decided to keep the child, who is now two years old but is suffering what doctors call “significant ongoing medical problems”. “The survival of this child was not recorded in any official statistics,” Clarke said. “There is nothing at the moment to force abortion practitioners to account for their failures.”
The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks. Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers.
“If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked. “If people are going to talk about abortion, then it’s important for them to know that these are babies that can be born alive and survive.”

it's about time

2005-11-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

I know I've been absent for awhile from this place, but I promise I have good reason (trying to stay afloat in trigonometry being the main one). This drew me out of the vow of silence however.

GOP mulls ending birthright citizenship

FINALLY

Surely he must be joking

2005-10-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Mayor Newsom (aka - Any Twosome Newsom) declared today that wireless internet access is a "fundamental right." The absurdity of this statement is exponentially magnified by the fact that 2 years ago, WiFi technology was barely available to homes and 10 years ago, few homes had the internet at all. How did city-wide, free (meaning taxpayer extorted) wireless access suddenly become a natural right of all beings? Probably in the same form that free IV needles and free abortion on demand became natural rights: liberals imagined them, ergo, they are.

Mayor Newsom, hundreds of years ago, people agreed with you that the right to information was a universal - that's why Gutenberg developed the printing press and people opened libraries. The right to information only exists to the extent that individuals have a fundamental right to pursue information. This in no way could be construed (except by a liberal) to mean that other people should be forced to pay for that information. We already pay for education so those people can read and we pay for the libraries so they can rent books, what next? Will we be forced to pay for laptops so those without access to computers are guaranteed "access to information?" Will the high-court of Newsom declare that it is a fundamental right of all individuals to have a Pentium 4 processor, touch-screen laptop? Where does it end, Mr. Newsom?

And speaking of the fundamental right to information...if you truly believe that all individuals have a fundamental right to have "access to information" why is it that you're in the process of trying to suppress information on the US military by prohibiting recruiters on SF public school campuses? Isn't this robbing San Francisco high schoolers of important information regarding their possible career choices?

If the Mayor really wants to help make the City more business friendly, free WiFi is not the way to go. Big businesses can afford their own internet service. Lower business taxes, clean up the park and fire some of the blatant anti-capitalists currently entrenched in City Hall. Talk is cheap, put your money where your mouth is and stop the punitive business practices.

Depressing Monday Morning Wake-Up

2005-10-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

While conservatives waited with baited breath for what we all hoped would be a solid, legally conservative nominee, George Bush was conferring with his close personal friends and checking Harriet Miers off his list of obligatory Presidential hook-ups. This is cronyism pure and simple and George Bush has let us down on what would have been his single most important legacy as president. The incomparable David Frum has much better words for this than I do: Mistake.

2005-10-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

It's official: San Francisco is governed exclusively by closed-minded socialist idiots. Oh wait, that was official when they elected Harvey Milk.

Well, at any rate, the ballot measures before SF voters represent a fast-pass to urban hell if approved. Proposition H is a classic gun-grab measure. It would ban all residents of San Francisco from owning handguns. I don't think I have to get into the statistical analysis of the success rates of similar measures. Bottom line: ban guns, crime goes up. Lawbreakers break laws. We know that laws banning gun ownership only affect those who prefer to own legal firearms. The few remaining good souls who live in San Francisco despite the insanity will probably at this point either move, transfer their official residency to another county or just keep their guns illegally. As Mr. Heston so eloquently put it: "You can have my gun when you pry if from my cold, dead hands."
Exemptions from this handgun ban will include members of the US Military, police officers (really?!) and Sean Penn who has a permit from Marin county because of a "fan" who was "stalking" him.

Also on the ballot is Proposition I, a measure that would allow San Francisco anti-war zealots to take their idiocy to a new eschalon by banning military recruiters from schools. There are several problems with this: first of all, liberals love to condemn Bush by pointing out that military recruiting is at an all-time low. OF COURSE IT IS!! Anti-war trostkies across the country are banning the military from schools and college campuses. We have no way of reaching potential new recruits! Second, SF public schools accept federal money for some of it's operating costs. Accepting this money also requires SFUSD to allow military recruiters at their schools. By banning recruiters, we will lose that money; we all know how important money is to public schools. The possibility that SF schools will have to close due to this new lack of funding is not far-fetched. What happens when schools close? Lower standards, bigger class size and increased drop-out rates.

All totalled, if these measures pass we'll have an unarmed city plagued by high school drop-outs in possession of illegal handguns.

For a little good news: CA Prop 75 would institute the long overdue requirement of paycheck protection for public employees in unions. More on this later, but the terrorism of union leadership against dissenting employees needs to stop and the first step is requiring unions to get the approval of their members before spending mandatory dues on political campaigns. Opposition to prop 75 claims that no one can be "forced" to join a union this is just a silly thing to say. First, this elevates a union to the level of a political action committee or an organization designed purely for political purposes. A union's original task is to be a representative of the workers (I personally think that unions are communist organizations that engage in nothing short of economic terrorism but that's a different story) so it is foolish to say that people can't be forced to join. They shouldn't have to worry about choosing between their personal political affliations or their job security. Second, some jobs simply require union membership; it's against every reasonable principle of participatory democracy to force union members into a sub-class of citizens who have no say in the use of their money for political purposes.

So - it's about time public employees got some relief from the political oppression of their union bosses. Vote YES on prop 75.

2005-09-25T18:16:00.000-07:00

I typically try to leave the fashion commentary to people with more time on their hands, but I couldn't resist this picture. Doesn't she look like Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her (a horrible movie by the way, I don't know why TBS runs it all the time)? It looks like her head is twisted around so her face is over her back. Eww...

2005-09-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

The adorable iPod Nano, my new toy. Definitely like so far. :-)

This Could Get Ugly

2005-09-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

EU says Iran fails to comply with non-proliferation treaty. Marx-club buddies China and Russia abstained from the vote...as usual.

How I love my National Review

2005-09-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

The editors are right on target in their piece about Bush's recent nomination of Julie Myers to be head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. President Bush, who was faithfully supported by millions of hopeful conservatives in the last election, continues to turn further and further away from his base, just like Bush Sr. It seems as though our President has sucumbed to the seductive game of Capitol Hill politics and American will suffer continue the consequences of his bad judgement. I have no idea what he's thinking any more; clarity of vision used to be one of his strong points as a President. Whatever mandate he had in the 2004 election, has surely faded into disillusioned bewilderment and there can be little "political capital" left to expend on nominations like this.

During his first term, President Bush lent strenth and tenacity to our nation during a time of terrible loss. His legislative endeavors, his push for freedom in the Middle East and even his judicial nominees spoke of a determined and sincere man with clear ideas. Now, we have a bungled national diaster relief effort (and I DO NOT blame Bush for Katrina, just for nominated someone who's only qualifications for the job were running horse shows); a slightly shady Supreme Court nominee (don't get me wrong, I like Roberts, but I'm not ecstatic about him and I certainly don't feel a great assurance that he'll protect and defend the Constitution against all ACLU lawyers - ahem - enemies); an exploding problem with debt (sheesh - I sound like a Democrat); we've turned our back entirely on Israel, encouraging the evacuation of the Gaza Strip and betraying a country of great biblical importance; and the country we were supposed to liberate (Iraq) is now leaning more and more towards a new hardline gov't as opposed to the blossoming democracy that was so optimistically predicted. Meanwhile, Iran and N. Korea are still hard at work developing weapons that represent a clear and present danger to the country, and our borders remain entirely unprotected against the entrance of terrorism (not to mention the non-terrorist illegals that pour across the border every day, spitting in the face of those who honorably seek to obey the laws in this country).

Under these circumstances, President Bush must be receiving some bad counsel indeed to nominate someone so entirely unqualified as Ms. Myeres to head Immigration Enforcement. I'm not the only one saying that immigration is going to be a figurehead issue in 2008 and if the Republicans don't pipe up and say something against this nominee (and more importantly - on the larger issue of open borders), someone else will - and they will win.

On that dark note...

2005-09-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

So what I wanted to say but didn't about two days ago when Drudge first reported that N. Korea said it would stop nuclear production was this: funny how that announcement came out right about the time previous news reports predicted they would be finished with full-fledged nuclear weapons. So today here's the drudge headline: "N. Korea Accuses America of Plotting Nuclear Attack, Vows Retaliation." nice...so apparently they haven't quite stopped production, they're certainly ready to fire back.

I do like the fact that the Pentagon is in the process of revising our national war doctrine to include the posibility of pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

ooh goodies!

2005-09-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

A link on Newsweek from my previous post about the Iranian president. Yay.

In other news, the striking "healthcare workers" are still out in full force this morning. How annoying. It should be noted that I spent all of last week from Tuesday on trying to find enough time to finish the last three sentences of the post on union strikes, so it's not as comprehensive as I would have liked.

Happy days are here again. It's sunny outside.

Daily News

2005-09-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

Iranian President - Back-peddling on the nuke program
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new President of Iran. He created a reputation for himself as a hardline, anti-reform, old-school kind of guy. In Middle Eastern terms this means he's a big fan of wife-beating, ritual rape, honor killings and jihad. There's also considerable suspicion that he was involved in the 1979 hostage situation. During his campaign for President, he spent some time defending Iran's nuclear program (see Slate and BBC). His tune seems to have changed according to a recent Newsweek interview (just as a side note - I have no idea how these Newsweek, Time, US News people sleep at night interviewing terrorists like this. See Time's Terrorist Mind interview post). According to Ahmadinejad (try pronouncing that one in a professional conversation), it's against the Iranian religion to have nuclear arms. Yeah, kind of ike the Koran forbids murder.

"How do you dispel the impression that Iran is making a nuclear
weapon? Our religion prohibits us from having nuclear arms. Our religious leader has prohibited it from the point of view of religious law. It's a closed road. We even don't need it; we can guarantee our security in other ways … During the past two years, more then 1,200 inspections have taken place in our country. More than 1,030 documents have been given to the IAEA. All the IAEA cameras are fixed on our facilities, and the IAEA supervisors can control every action within our facilities. We have proven amply that we are conforming to regulations.
You are making a counter offer to the European-3 where
Iran will pursue uranium enrichment but assure the international community that it will not divert it for weapons use. But if you have the nuclear know how, isn't this a danger to the West? Why would the fact that we have know-how constitute a danger for you? Wouldn't it be more rational to worry about those who systematically violate international law?"

He makes several jabs at the US for not following 'international law' and this was the most obvious dig. I myself prefer Ann Coulter's take on international law: "International law and Santa Claus are a lot alike, except Santa Claus exists in the minds of small children whereas international law is fixed in the imaginations of law professors."

Another deeply troubling aspect of this interview with Ahmadinejad is the close resemblence between his rhetoric and that of the ACLU slime lawyers that are crawling through our courts these days. In response to questions about his involvement in taking hostages in 1979 he says, "Obviously, no. Even the people who were responsible for that act say I was not there. If you want to understand this event, the right question to ask is not who did it, but why did this occur? This was a natural reaction of the people against the actions of the United States. When a people are oppressed, they will show some kind of reaction. " Sound familiar? In response to the 9/11 attacks, a man who is surprisingly still allowed to reside in the US said this:

"As to how to react, we have a choice. We can express justified horror; we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators. If we choose the latter course, we can do no better, I think, than to listen to the words of Robert Fisk, whose direct knowledge and insight into affairs of the region is unmatched after many years of distinguished reporting. Describing "The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people," he writes that "this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have lovely discussions over afternoon tea, bemoaning American empirialistic jingoisim, etc.

Among other whispers of change in Iran, it is rumored that Ahmadinejad plans to institute separate walkways for men and women. As the mayor of Tehran, he required all male city employees to wear beards and cover their arms and he got rid of all the fast food restaurants (poor Iranian kids, no more McDonalds). It appears we soon have another Taliban on our hands and if Iraq's Constitution continues to go down the dangerous path of Islamic law, we may have fought ourselves into a very ugly corner with two converging hotbeds of terrorism.

The problem with strikes

2005-09-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last year, I wrote a little screed about the nurses striking at the hospital next door to my office. It's that time of year again, only this time, it's not the nursese on strike - it's the hospitality staff (the people who serve re-hydrated eggs in the hospital cafeteria). Essentially, the SEIU (the Healthcare workers union) is demanding a 7% raise in addition to increases in their - get this - pension plan. I have a pretty good job, definitely stable, pays just fine and includes health insurance for me and my family. I do NOT have a pension plan.

So here's the skinny (from non-striking workers). The picketers hear that they're paid $2-3 less than all the other hospitals in SF. And they're striking "for the patients." (my ass) Again, the demands are: beef up the pension plan and give us the 7% raise. Now. The strike is indefinite.

Now - here's what bothers me so much about the whole event. 1) The media coverage. SF Chronicle and Chron4 News have been all over this loud, distruptive picketing (started on Tuesday, through today - drums, yelling, blocking the ambulance entrance - all complementary). NOWHERE is the Sutter Health Hospital's side of the story covered. Just the whiney baby picketers rattling on about how they're striking to improve patient care, blah blah blah.
2) According to one hospital worker I spoke with this morning, most of those workers on strike are already being paid (at least) $18-23/hr, NOT INCLUDING their pension fund. I make less than this! And I do a lot more than serving eggs and hot coffee! People at McDonalds do the same thing, for less than $8 an hour!! We don't see McDonalds workers on strike, do we now? 3)Finally - union workers are forced to pay absurd amounts of money for annual dues. They're required ostensibly to cover "collective bargaining" costs. Basically - they're supposed to spend the money working with the employing corporation to ensure that workers are kept under agreeable working conditions. Instead, millions of dollars go to overly-inflated union boss salaries and absurd publicity stunts like this strike.

You can find more information about the strike here. This is Sutter Health's side of the story which is being tragically under-reported by the doting liberals over at the Chronicle.

Stealing the pennies from a dead man's eyes

2005-09-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

Proving once again (it's been proven to the point of scientific law by this point) that Howard Dean is low, self-agrandizing, slithering worm who will take advantage of any situation to repeat his mantra about the evils of the white man and the virtues of the (white-man-run) Democrat party: "We must ... come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not," Dean said. " more

This is partially true, which is precisely why the well-laid plans for emergency evacuation in New Orleans included specific instructions that those without the means (vehicles or money) to get out on their own were to be taken out of the city, by direction of city officials (Read: That's YOU Mr. Mayor), on public vehicles. Due to the incompetence and unfortunately misplaced comfort of city officials, hundreds of school buses that could have potentially saved thousands of lives, went unused.

Gay Marriage and other niceties

2005-09-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have a whole world of things to say about representative (or...here in California and more specifically, San Francisco, I should say non-representative) government, but unfortunately I find myself (finally!) in front of a keyboard at an hour far to late to engender long, drawn out posts on this issue. Suffice it to say...I call for a redress of grievances over the following offenses - mostly related to taxation without representation.

1. Another increase in bus fares, ostensibly only to give the already overpaid MUNI drivers another raise, to which they respond by making ME - THE CONSUMER - wait an additional half hour in the cold San Francisco night while they spend their money on a new pair of Gucci glasses.

2. Another increase in parking fees for downtown San Francisco, whether this will or will not be used to provide free Starbucks cards for the rent-a-cops they call "meter maids" is unknown.

3. Excessively high taxes on San Franciscans - businesses and citizens alike - used to pay for Gavin Newsom's absurdly expensive suits, Pride parties, and free needles for drug addicts. NOT used for: keeping campaign promises - IE, ensuring that Golden Gate Park is clean enough so that children can play without the risk of being pierced through the foot with an HIV-contaminated needle obtained through the aforementioned free-needle program. The Park, once a beautiful respite from the cars and smog and traffic that are SF, is now little more than an overgrown waste dump infested with mangy dogs and dangerous homeless individuals (think I'm exaggerating, one very pregnant woman I encountered recently was punched in the stomach by an angry homeless man).

4. An entirely incompetent state legislature that cannot seem to make the connection between a 63% majority vote to define marriage as between *now listen carefully boys and girls* a man and woman (Only. Period.) and the will of the people. More on that later, thank heavens Gov. Schwarzenegger values his political career dearly enough to veto the bill, even if his statement was a half-hearted crumble to special interest, un-civil rights groups.

Okay...so with that off my chest, I would like to direct a few comments to the well-meaning man on the street in front of my friendly neighborhood coffee conglomerate. Today he was paid to gather petitions for a ballot measure (what is this, the 12th consecutive year for this proposition?) for "universal" "free" "voluntary" preschool for all California children.

__________________________________________________________

"Universal" "Free" "Voluntary" - otherwise known as the lexicon in governmental oxymorons.

These words are all oxymoronic when used in the context of a government program. Just FYI. Hopefully these tips will help next time you go out to mobilize the troops for this little John Lennon scheme of yours.

1. "Free" really means: "We (the gov't) will add this on to the tab for your 'room' here." You won't have to write an additional check for the "service" but that doesn't mean it won't cost you a lot of extra money. Unless of course, Gavin Newsom and co. are planning on buying their suits from JC Penny instead of Georgio Armani and sacrificing the money saved on economically disadvantaged children instead of additional hair dressers.

2. Let's talk about this word "universal." In one sense, this preschool (or any other "universal" gov't program) may be offered to al but so are all ER's in Norway (of course, it will take them 8 days to treat your broken leg - no lie - but at least it's "free"). Not to mention, so is all public education. Universally low-standard public education, that is. "For the free price of billions of wasted dollars per year, we will take your tender young children, put them in a high-pressure environment wherein we will teach them how to be sensitive, sexually aware, illiterate, government-trusting citizens of the People's Republic of California."

3. Finally, we have our placating friend "voluntary." Government programs are voluntary kind of like paycheck protection in unions. Contribution of dues to Democratic campaigns are voluntary but if Vinny gets word about your views on paycheck protection, it's advisable to invest in some serious double-bolting for your doors. All gov't programs of this nature (schools, etc) are only optional in the sense that you can choose not to partake of their so-called benefits. Paying for them is exactly - not voluntary.

Bottom line - reading, writing and arithmetic may be on the top of your archaic and patriarchal list of priorities for your children but you are not exempt from paying for the education of the offspring of your enlightened (and government-dependent), more progressive peers.

Stick to the Bratwurst and Beer

2005-09-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Germans can't seem to contribute anything else of great value to the world, especially when it comes to public policy ideas. While home schooling families and Christians are fleeing the religious persecution of the agressively secular German gov't, the German media continues to pelt America with inhumane and disgusting expressions of glee at the aftermath of Katrina. See Greg Sheffield's comments on this at Newsbusters. Better yet, read Davids Medienkritik blog for the full story. "

Yet joy and sympathy beat simultaneously in my chest. I am, for example, joyful at the moment that the latest hurricane catastrophe hasn't again hit some poor land, but instead the richest country in the world.Yes, I even see in that a form of balancing justice for that which the inhabitants of that country have done to others through their war in Iraq.I would, however, be even more happy, if I knew that only the houses of Bush voters and members of the Army had been destroyed. I feel genuinely sorry for all the rest."

Nice. So, anyone with a different opinion that Mr. Phillip Mausshardt is....subhuman? Inferior? Yes, the view that not all humans are equally worthy of life is a view that is alive and well and being preached from the rooftops in Germany. The same people who brought us the gas chambers and the Arian Race doctrine are hard at work to keep the world aware that non-liberal people are just not worth keeping around.

The plot thickens...

2005-09-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist passed away Saturday night after battling thyroid cancer. Read more about his stellar legacy of Constitutional defense here. His passage marks another opportunity for George Bush to do the right thing by America and appoint a replacement who will continue Rehnquist's legacy of constructionism. Rehnquist firmly opposed Roe v. Wade and was the last member on the court to have voted on that decision. He wrote about Roe: "Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."
His death leaves a vacancy on the court which means that Bush can appoint someone to fill his place until a nominee can be confirmed by the Senate. This is a prime opportunity to appoint someone like Miguel Estrada, who endured absurd and unethical treatment at the hands of Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearings for the DC Court of Appeals.

President Bush seems to be floundering (much like his father) recently and is losing the confidence and support of many of his former dedicated fans (myself included). He needs to prove that he has the kind of backbone and courage that he demonstrated during the aftermath of 9/11 - not just abroad in leading a campaign to democratize the Middle East, but also at home, in preserving the future of our freedom by appointing good judges and moving forward with a solid legislative agenda. I could get onto the illegal immigration rant now, but I'll save it - I'm not in a ranting mood. All I can say is that whoever capitalizes on the fact that illegals are pouring across our borders, jeopardizing our national security, destroying the rule of law, and damaging our culture (and the salient fact that we NEED to do something about it) will win in 2006 and 2008. The odious Ms. Clinton has already quietly slipped references to the problem into her rhetoric and I would hate to see her become the disingenuous champion of this cause.

The President can begin his spinal cord transplant with a solid appointee to the Court to replace Justice Rehnquist. Whatever the commotion liberals cause over a constructionist justice, the fallout cannot be worse than the deadly consequences of refusing to do the right thing when the opportunity so clearly presents itself.

Trying something new

2005-08-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

For media related commentary...you can find me at the brand-spankin' new Newsbusters.org. It's a project of the Media Research Center (MRC) and has already been mentioned (not me though!) on several major news programs. Hurray for making the liberal media 'fess up to their dirty, rotten tricks.

Earth To Cindy

2005-08-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

I hate to harp on the Cindy Sheehan issue...Okay, so maybe I don't.

Her antics are too good to pass up and in the absence of energy to write about the other things that are disturbing me these days (how about a trip to the ER because of Mexican lettuce grown in sub-standard, NAFTA-protected health conditions), I can't resist.

Anti-War Protester's Husband Files for (dun dun dun) Divorce
Now I tend to be of the opinion that when it comes to marriage, divorce is not an option so I don't dare celebrate that her husband finally got fed up with the insanity and quit. What irks me about this article is her exchange with the President over the justification for war and the justice of the cause.

"From her roadside outpost, Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey, an Army
Specialist, was killed last year in Iraq, has become the face of the U.S. anti-war movement, telling reporters that she will not budge until Bush meets with her and explains "why our sons are dead." Noting that Bush has referred to the war as a "noble" pursuit, Sheehan told Reuters, "If it's such a noble cause, why aren't his daughters over there?"

Like I mentioned in previous posts, she completely misses the point of our military. The whole point of the military is that it is voluntary! Bush's daughters aren't in Iraq because they didn't want to be soldiers! Her son died because he wanted to be a soldier and a good soldier at that. Instead of following his mother's cowardly influence, he was a man and died honorably in the name of freedom. This is a common argument in the anti-war group. "If this war is so just, why aren't there more children of billionaires out there in Iraq?" I'm not sure it's so important that there are equal representations of various socio-economic castes in the military, but then we are dealing with people who are so absolutely obsessed with money they can't even see their obsession, the kings and queens of identity politics.

Nevermind that the Reserves have opened up vast options to minority and lower-income young people who have been paralyzed by a Democrat-run school system and find their chances of being successful in life severely limited by their lack of education. The Army Reserves opens the opportunity to go to college where they might not have been able to afford it before, and an excellent career. We could, of course, institute the draft and make sure it has a provision so that rich people's kids are called up equally, but then the anti-war monkeys would have something else to picket about, wouldn't they?

Cindy Sheehan is either clinically demented as a result of her grief, or she is truly one of the most maniacally opportunistic activists the liberal political movement has encountered. Either way, her days at the Bush ranch trample all over the memory of her son's courage.

Thank you God for letting Howard Dean be DNC Chair

2005-08-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

With insanity like this coming from the mouth piece of the party, we're sure to enjoy a few less Democrats in the 2006 election.

" Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday, the fiery former Vermont governor said, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq."

I'm sure more than a few women's rights groups would have a word or two for Mr. Dean if he thinks that women were better off being suspended upside down on meathooks during their menstrual cycle, or maybe it was the ritual gang-rapes they endured at the hands of the Saddam Jrs. Here's a great article from iFeminist documenting those attrocities.

"Amnesty International has documented the brutal executions of Iraqi women accused of prostitution. For example, Najat Mohammad Haydar, an obstetrician in Baghdad, was beheaded in October 2000 after criticizing corruption within local health services. According to another report, in October 2000 "a group of men led by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, beheaded with knives 50 young women in Baghdad. The heads of these women were hung on the doors of their houses for a few days." The Iraq Foundation joins Amnesty International in chronicling human rights violations, such as the methods of torture in prison, which include rape and "bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee."

Compare that to the astonishing turn out of women voters in the January 2005 Iraqi election, the first time women were really given a voice in Iraqi policy, not to mention, the fact that women are now serving in places of authority in the Iraqi government. Howard Dean should learn that he's not on the kindergarten playground any more. Just because his rival's name is on something doesn't make it inherently bad. The fact that the Bush administration was the first to have the nerve to stand up to international criticism and free the Iraqi people doesn't mean they're worse of because it happened to be a Republican who triggered the process of liberation. Again - the liberals I say - Go sell crazy somewhere else.

Go Sell Crazy Somewhere Else...

2005-08-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

We're all full up here...

"Anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq, is calling for Bush's "impeachment," and for Israel to get out of Palestine! "You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," Sheehan declares. Sheehan, who is asking for a second meeting with President Bush, says defiantly: "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

Cindy Sheehan is living proof of the liberal ethic - Imagination is more important than knowledge. What a lovely dream world she must live in to think she can use her son's death as an excuse to break the law. Note to Cindy Sheehan: Your son was a soldier, risking his life was part of the job description and he choose to be an honorable and courageous soldier, serving next to his buddies and paying with his life to protect our freedom. The rest of the country remembers your son with reverence and gratitude while you traipse around the country pimping his legacy for your own political purpose.

From Iraq The Model

2005-08-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

A moving note to Cindy Sheehan from a blog called Iraq the Model

Ma'am, we asked for your nation's help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation's act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity.Our request is justified, death was our daily bread and a million Iraqi mothers were expecting death to knock on their doors at any second to claim someone from their families.Your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours.Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not get to see again.We did nothing to deserve all that suffering, well except for a dream we had; a dream of living like normal people do.We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over.We practiced our freedom first by kicking and burning the statues and portraits of the hateful idol who stole 35 years from the life of a nation. For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom.The mothers went to break the bars of cells looking for the ones they lost 5, 12 or 20 years ago and other women went to dig the land with their bare hand searching for a few bones they can hold in their arms after they couldn't hold them when they belonged to a living person.

ETERNAL VIGIL and other costs....

2005-08-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

For those of us who read "Year of the Rat" and hung on every word uttered by the venerable Chris Cox back in the 1990's, it's not big surprise that '98-'99 were tragic years for the security of this country. More specifically, the entire Clinton presidency was a full-scale rape of our national security. It shouldn't be that suprising then, that the objectively biased 9/11 Commission completed winked over the highly relevant contents of a super-secret operation from '98-99 called "Able Danger." Here and Here, the man of the hour, Congressman Kurt "will-you-please-run-for-President-NOW?" Weldon documents what may go down in history as one of the worst mistakes in intelligence history. From his letter to the 9/11 Commission:

"Yesterday the national news media began in-depth coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al Qaeda. According to individuals that
were part of the project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI. These details are understandably of great interest to the American people, thus the recent media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and at various speaking engagements. "
And from his testimony to the US Congress:
"But I learned something new, Mr. Speaker, over the past several weeks and months. I have talked to some of the military intelligence officers who produced this document, who worked on this effort. And I found something out very startling, Mr. Speaker. Not only did our military identify the Mohammed Atta cell; our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring the FBI in to take out that cell, the cell of Mohammed Atta. So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell. And they made that recommendation because Madeleine Albright had declared that al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization, and the military units involved here felt they had jurisdiction to go to the FBI. Why, then, did they not proceed? That is a question that needs to be answered, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask, Mr. Speaker, with all the good work that the 9/11 Commission did, why is there nothing in their report about able danger? Why is there no mention of the work that able danger did against al Qaeda? Why is there no mention, Mr. Speaker, of a recommendation in September of 2000 to take out Mohammed Atta's cell which would have detained three of the terrorists who struck us? "

It's a LOT of information to process and you have to get used to the obscenely small font on his congressional website, but the contents will make your blood boil. More on this later...you can be sure.

Media Bias...yet again

2005-08-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

By now, Cindy Sheehan is an unfortunate household name. It's said that this media hound is receiving this much attention, but she's just too good a sob-story for the liberal media to pass up.
She lost her son in the Iraq war. Listening to her now, you'd think we lived under a mandatory draft and he had no choice to go and serve his country honorably in the armed forces. Woman Changes Her Story Dramatically On Meeting w/ Bush
One of the most irritating aspects of this whole situation is that no one in the media has really pressed her on why her story changed so dramatically in the last year. Nothing like a little investigative reporting.
Meanwhile, liberal news outlets can't find enough touching epithets to shower on her as she continues her insane "vigil" in front of the President's ranch. Today's headlines included: "Grieving Mother's War Protest Draws Supporters" (MSNBC), "Grieving Mother's War protest gains momentum" (CNN) The front page of the SF Chronicle featured a woeful and smugly victorious "A Mother's Vigil" (Chronicle)
The most recent piece on MSNBC calls her "soft-spoken" and states how her eyes "well up with tears" at the mention of her son.
The Chronicle lists numerous the stories of numerous Sheehan-groupies who came to show their support. Incidentally, most of them have lost children, and few (if any) have lost their children to war. It is undeniably heart-breaking to lose a child. I have no children of my own yet but I can see how that kind of lose would send me out of my mind with grief. But this is war we're talking about. Ms. Sheehan's son took a vow to serve and protect his country and he honored that vow even at the ultimate price. In the midst of her pain, I would think this mother's heart would well with pride that her son was an honorable, valiant man of his word. When she offered the cowardly route, he remained courageous. "I begged him not to go," she said through tears. "I said, 'I'll take you to Canada' ... but he said, 'Mom, I have to go. It's my duty. My buddies are going.'" We can all empathize with the pain of losing someone so loved, but to so horribly twist and abuse such a loss for a political cause is decidedly un-loving in my opinion.

2005-07-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

This is genuinely terrifying. I have a healthy distrust of some reports on World Net Daily (previous inaccuracies have been identified and they lean towards sensationalism) but this still concerns me greatly. When will we stop playing politics and take seriously the threat of terrorism on our own soil. CLOSE the borders and start enforcing immigration laws, President Bush (and Congress)!

2005-07-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Conservatives defend their right to buy and carry a gun because ownership keeps the gov't in check. We're called paranoid for agreeing with the founders that a well-armed population prevents tyrannical government. We warn that open, porous borders allow terrorists to skip into our country with bombs to kill us in our sleep. We're called paranoid.
Paul Begala gives a profanity-filled lecture on how Republicans want to kill him so they can keep tax cuts for the rich and he's a celebrated hero of young liberals. Talk about paranoia. First off, who sold this guy on being that important to the conservative march for lower taxes?

"Republicans, he said, "want to kill us."I was driving past the Pentagon when
that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said."They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."

If you needed additional proof that liberals are entirely divorced from reality:

"Franklin Roosevelt got us in World War II. They dragged the Republicans kicking
and screaming. They didn't want to get in that war. They didn't have any problem
with Hitler. I won't go so far as to say they thought Hitler rocked. But there were people in America who did, and they didn't want us to get in that war. Democrats have always been just as tough as Republicans once they're in office,"

- Thomas Frank, Author "What's the Matter with Kansas" also lectured at Begala's event

Once again - we have to remember that to liberals "Imagination is more important than knowledgee."

Speaking of Live8

2005-07-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

Jim Farber offers a humorous recap of the event at NY Daily News.

"Maybe you couldn't blame some people for lapsing into a bit of overstatement
during yesterday's marathon Live 8 pile-on. "This is the greatest rock show in the history of the world," trumpeted an announcer at the start of the London concert, which kicked off AOLmusic's global feed of this extremely long event. This is "the single most important concert ever," gushed a deejay on XM Satellite Radio, which carried the world's concerts on seven distinct channels. Not to be outdone, Coldplay's Chris Martin announced from the London stage, "[This is] the greatest thing that's ever been organized in the history of the world." The people behind the moon landing and the creation of the Sphinx might beg to differ with that."

More of the same from the people who think Sean Penn is more qualified to assess the situation in Iraq than Congress and the Department of Defense.

Incidentally, for such an important event in world history, Live8 did not raise a penny for people starving in Africa. The performers however, walked away with gifts worth enough to feed a small country.

"Organizers of the concert, designed to raise awareness of crushing poverty in Africa, will show their gratitude to dozens of celebrities with a Hugo Boss duffel bag chock-full of high-fashion trinkets and designer drinks, valued at roughly $3,000. In addition, the performers giving 15 minutes of stage time will be able to personalize their bags with big-ticket items including: Hugo Boss suits, valued between $800 and $1,000 each; XM satellite radios and subscriptions, $500; Seven jeans, $180 for men, $150 for women; Gibson guitars, $2,000; Borgata terry-cloth robes, $100; Boyd's ties, $125; 76ers garment bags and T-shirts, $330; Mitchell & Ness sweat suits, $330; and Bertolucci watches, valued between $1,500 and $6,000. All told, a celebrity could walk away with a bag of gifts worth as much as $12,000."

It's nice to know these people are really committed to their cause.
Sarah McLachlan's video for "World on Fire" made a better statement for stopping world hunger than this huge concert ever could. I highly recommend you check it out. If these self-righteous celebrities really want to raise awareness amongst apathetic young people, they ought to cast off the out-of-touch, over-indulgent lifestyle and truly put their money where their mouths are. Performing for free at a concert where publicity alone is sure to make major bank is hardly charitable. How many eager fans attended those concerts on Saturday? Charging $1 per ticket and donating the full dollar would probably feed several villages for months. Think about it Bono, you have the power to fight world hunger, probably more power than George W. Bush has, entangled with Congressional rules and electorate frugality. Putting on a global concert just isn't enough and I'm sure the people of Africa who still see their children starve with your "heightened awareness" feel the same way.

One more thing!

2005-07-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

Forgot to mention the heap of absurdity that was Live8.

First off, I have nothing against working to stop poverty (::cough::whatever that means) - in other words, I support efforts to feed the hungry and minister to the needy. That said, I think goverments are about the last known entity worthy or capable of managing those kinds of efforts. Live8 was nothing more than the latest efforts to turn stoned and ignorant young people into useful idiots for the left's quest for global dominance (read: controlled economy). One guy aptly described the situation, "I don't think the awareness thing is working," said Sue Kim, a 22-year-old student, in Philadelphia. "There's going to be a lot of drunk people and what are they going to remember?" Bono said "We're not asking you to put your hand in your pockets but we are asking people to put their fist in the air." Yeah, we'll leave the reaching into pockets to the Washington and UN Burecrats, we promise, you won't notice.

The whole problem with this whole concept of increasing foreign aid to poor countries like Africa is that it simply DOES NOT WORK. Sudan is a perfect example - we have poured money into relief efforts for that country, but the money has only gone to bolster an entrenched and corrupt government. We have to look at the leaders into whose hands we would deposit this money. If you consider that over half of Africa is considered hostile territory for Christianity and human freedom, we're not exactly looking at a bunch of reasonable, democracy-loving leaders full of integrity who have simply fallen on hard times. These are oppresive leaders and often guerrilla regimes. Somehow I'm not so sure they're going to be any more concerned with the welfare of their people than they are right now.

The root of the problem is not that we are not forgiving debts or offering more money but that these countries haven't been able to build their economy. They need education and industry. Remember, msot of Africa is still populated by bush-dwelling, spear-throwing tribes. Not exactly icons of economic prosperity. The age-old adage rings true: "Give a man a fish, feed him for one meal. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."

No, I haven't given up all together

2005-07-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

I seem to have temporarily lost my spark for raging against current events - hence the lack of recent posting. My laptop passed away awhile ago, and that has futher discouraged me. Additionally, I've had many other things keeping me busy - work, trying to keep house and mostly a summer English clas that I clearly underestimated. I am trying to ease back into the habits of being a student and instead this class has been a painful reminder of everything I despised about my old college english classes. Vacuous and empty attemtps to re-interpret the mediocre writings of perverts and pedophiles masquerading as sub-standard writers. I loved my critical thinking and composition class because we dealt with real issues like the treatment of women in Islamic-rule countries and legal doctrines about special rights. In this course, the only work we're reading that might be partially useful is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Anyway...On to more important things, I think I've almost forgotten how to blog.

Supreme Court
A few incidents have caught my eye lately and stirred some of my old passions. Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the United States Supreme Court on Friday. This will ensure that Bush will have a shot at doing the right thing and nominating a solid Constructionist to the Court. O'Connor has certainly damage in her wake on vital decisions about abortion and racial preferences. The important thing now is that President Bush use this oppotunity to appoint the right individual. There has been much talk about appointing Alberto Gonzales to the Court, but this would be an enormous mistake. Gonzales would have to recuse himself from some of the most important decisions ranging from abortion to the Patriot Act. Ramesh Ponnuru over at National Review wrote an excellent piece on how silly a Gonzales nomination would be.
We should expect a hard fight for the right man on the Court and if the liberals don't put up a fight we need to be worried. I say that our President absolutely must invest the "political capital" to appoint a Constructionist judge to the Court and if that means a long and drawn out political battle, it is worth fighting - he can recess appoint someone in the meantime (and I hope he would just appoint another Bork - watch the liberals shudder in horror).

I actually paid a dollar for a copy of the New York Times the other day (I was so embarrassed I couldn't let my eyes meet those of the Starbucks Cashier selling me the filthy rag). Overcoming my guilt, I discovered a very lengthy feature on none other than the traitorous Anthony Kennedy (who had us all hoodwinked over his conservative voting record until **blink** he became an activist judge, infamously citing the laws of other countries as guides for US policy). Former Justice Bork offered one key insight: "...the solution is one hell of a battle for judges who stick to the actual Constitution." Amen, Mr. Bork.

Happy Independence Day (or The Relevant Insights of Time Magazine)

For it's 4th of July week edition, Time Magazine offered two features; "Uncovering the Real Abe Lincoln" and "Inside the Mind of An Iraqi Suicide Bomber." The Lincoln feature was innocuous enough, although I never really trust any mainstream historical accounts these days. What caused my blood to boil was the article on the suicide bomber. It was an interview with a young man who is on the waiting list to be sent on a suicide mission for the insurgents in Iraq. In the opening sentences he says, "First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans." I still can't read those words without feeling a blinding rage surge through my body. The young man is part of what used to be the ruling Sunni minority in Iraq, well educated, wealthy. He said once Saddam fell, he turned against the Americans. "We expected them to bring Saddam down and then leave. But they just stayed and stayed." The article continues,

"He also [embraces] the jihadist worldview of one global Islamic state where there is, in Marwan's words, 'no alcohol, no music and no Western influences.'"

Now isn't that charming! You bet your ass we stayed, to keep people like you from turning a liberated country into an oppressed outpost for international terrorism. Marwan is at least truthful about his religion.

"Yes, I am a terrorist. Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Koran] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim."

This is just another tragic example of how American journalism has become a self-serving monster with no morals except good ratings and no allegiance except getting the story. Just as CNN turned a blind eye to the attrocities of Saddam's regime so as not to lose their rights to covering Iraq, Time Magazine just issued a first-person interview with a known enemy of the United States. Sometime in the near furture, this young man will yse himself as a human detonator and kill American soldiers and most likely innocent Iraqis. Time should feel blood on their hands when the mothers of these soldiers weep.

War of the Worlds?

We saw this movie a few nights ago (actually, we snuck in after watching another movie). Please, spare yourselves the $10! The original book by H.G. Wells is great (as is "Time Machine"), the movie was a tragic resort to every alien-movie cliche in the book. Tom Cruise has embarrased himself so much in recent days with this whole chest-pounding Katie Holmes act that he was completely unconvincing (he would have been unconvincing in the first place so they had to make him a deadbeat dad instead of a strong father-figure looking out for his family). Dakota Fanning is deceptively played in the previews as the helpless girl; in the movie she is an annoying, shrink-wrapped brat. And the screaming, she has this horrible blood-curdling scream that won't quit. NOT CUTE. As if this was not enough, Tim Robbins makes a brief and alcohol-bloated appearance in the film. The only politically-charged line in the film was unsurprisingly reserved for Robbins: "Occupation never works." In the only gratifying moment of the film, we are allowed to know that Tom Cruise kills Robbins but not given the satisfaction of seeing the deed. The ending was weak, offering few answers to questions and bringing the whole story to an uncomfortable and screaching halt. Sad, sad, sad.

Finally
In closing, have a fabulous Independence day (enjoy the freedom while it yet remains)! It's our 1st anniversary next Sunday so I'm taking the week off for a little R&R. Yay!

2005-06-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted in...a long time...mostly due to the untimely death of my beloved laptop. I had to share this. Sometime soon I will regain my usual spark for politics, for now I'm trying to not go postal over the inane nature of English 1b.

2005-05-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

You see!! Lies, lies, lies! All lies!

John Bolton, the very first issue we turned to, we got what looks to me like a filibuster," Frist said. "It certainly sounds like a filibuster ... it quacks like a filibuster.

Moral Flea Market

2005-05-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

Generally bargaining with Democrats is much like bargaining with the Devil, you're likely to get the short end of the stick. The new "deal" made with Senate Democrats today is no new story. While the usual suspects are hailing it as a "dramatic reach across party lines" people who know a smidgen about current (so-called "venerable") Senate filibuster rules know this is not a really big change; they have just agreed to give an up or down vote to selected nominees.

This deal will not create new filibuster rules nor will it force Democrats to extend normal human decency to Bush's future nominees for the courts. It also will not prevent snakes like Harry Reid from opening classified FBI files related to court nominees to the general public. Naturally Mr. Reid considers this great progress - a win-win situation, make the other side think you're reaching a deal (because they really are that stupid) while having your cake and eating it too. Sen. Reid stated today:

"We have sent President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the radical right of the Republican party an undeniable message ... the abuse of power will not be tolerated."

Pardon my honesty Mr. Reid but if anyone is guilty of an abuse of power, it is you. Making public statements about a nominees private FBI file is an abuse of the access you have as a Senator and a mockery of the due process system.

It does give the exact same "extraordinary circumstances" exit clause to Democrats that they have used to filibuster current nominees, leaving it up to their alarmingly flexible consciences to define the (relative) meaning of "extraordinary." It does give lukewarm politicians like John McCain and Joe Lieberman the ability to grandstand about the "center" holding and the power of moderate Senators. In the only hard and fast promise of the "deal" Republicans promised to oppose future efforts to change filibuster rules, pulling the short straw - again.

This supposed compromise is nothing more than another back-handed Washington deal between self-serving politicians. Rest assured ladies and gentlemen, despite the reports, it is "politics as usual" in D.C.

In other news...

Refusing to learn from the Jayson Blair scandal (again), the NYT admitted today that they published a piece on a protest again Sen. Bill Frist by a freelancer who actually participated in the rally against him. It's time for Newsweek and the NYT to come out of the closet to the world in all their lying, liberal glory. No more of this tired charade about "All the news that's fit to print."

Speaking of Newsweek's journey to fantastic self-destruction: it is coming out that their foreign editions feature archly anti-American covers. I think as these stories come outNewsweek will find the same truth that Natalie Maines discovered when she dissed America after 9/11: capitalism's a bitch when you offend the consumer.

Fabulous! Now we have N. Korea scolding us for our religious intolerance! Guys, we know communism has set you back a few centuries in the technology sector (with the exception of building nuclear weapons, but we can credit Bill Clinton for that) so we can forgive you for being a little out of step with the daily news. Newsweek admitted their story was wrong. They retracted it!

Minju Joson, in a signed commentary for the government news agency, termed the incident "a direct product of the U.S. policy of abusing human rights. Nothing is more intolerable insult to the personality of the Muslims and more unbearable encroachment upon their human rights than this profanation of their holy Qurans."

If it weren't for the fact that Iran and N. Korea both represent our two biggest enemies today, this would be hilarious. Did they issue this statement before or after the daily execution of Christian prisoners? Oh, but it gets better!

North Korea, considered one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, and a nation that persecutes people for practicing their faith, scolded the U.S. for not recognizing "religious freedom is an elementary right granted to a human being."

I guess birds of a feather flock together and dictatorships are always partial to other dictatorships and institutions which foster dictatorship. Islam and Pyongyang make very compatible bedfellows.

On the immigration/public health front...Yet another risk to the American public from illegal immigration: infectious diseases! In a world where epidemics can be stopped by modern medicine, where genetic tests allow us to detect "defects" in utero at fetal ages of just 11 weeks, it's high time we update our requirements on disease screening for immigrants. Without new regulations to curb entry of infected immigrants who have not received proper treatment, the risk of a comeback of archaic diseases like TB and leprosy is clear and present. With all the liberal committment to free healthcare, there is no excuse for their silence on this issue!

One fabulous blog: www.redstate.org Visit it people!

2005-05-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

A French study just released confirms (again) what we've been saying for years: abortion creates increased risks for future pregnancies.

"[Dr. Caroline Moreau's] study compared the medical histories of 2,219 women with babies born at less than 34 weeks with another 618 who had given birth at full term. Overall, women who had had an abortion were 40 per cent more likely to have a very pre-term delivery (less than 33 weeks) than those without such a history. The risk of an extremely premature baby - one born at less than 28 weeks - was raised even more sharply, by 70 per cent. Abortion appeared to increase the risk of most major causes of premature birth, including premature rupture of membranes, incorrect position of the fetus on the placenta and spontaneous early labour. The only common cause of premature birth not linked to abortion was high blood pressure."

"A spokesman for Marie Stopes International, which is the largest provider of abortions outside the NHS, said that women seeking terminations were not told of
increased risks of premature births "because so far, they have not been established".

This is patently false. Women who have miscarriages and subsequent "D & C" procedures to remove the "products of conception" (ahh yes, the creative terms we use in the medical field) are monitored very closely in later pregnancies precisely because they are placed in a higher risk category because of the miscarriage and the procedure. Obviously the doctors would inform that woman of her higher risk. The only difference is that it would be politically incorrect to bring up the fact that prior abortions make future pregnancies more risky.
Tragically, many women are robbed of their ability to have children because they are not given all the information up front before having an abortion. One woman I encountered a year ago decided with her husband that they were not ready for baby #2 yet, their new house was requiring a lot of attention, the excuses went on. She chose to terminate the pregnancy, early on (8-10 weeks) but due to complications, she will never have baby #2.

Sadly, just like information on the salient links between abortion and breast cancer, this information will be suppressed by the same medical and political community that continues to insist that abortion is a "painless procedure" and that there are "no psychological side affects" to abortion. Astonishing isn't it, how a massive group of people can rhetorically define themselves around women's rights, and yet be so opposed to a woman's basic right to make an informed choice.

Along the same lines...

This picture, taken by Prof Stuart Campbell, shows the image of an unborn child at 12 weeks. This is just tissue?!

It seems our friends on the other side of the pond are going through some cultural turmoil over these new pictures.

"[Campbell's] pictures showed that at 12 weeks, unborn babies looked like they were "enjoying jumping off the womb like a trampoline". At 14 and 15 weeks they sucked their thumbs and at 18 weeks they opened their eyes. Experts had said babies did not open their eyes until 26 weeks."

In a recent issue of my favorite magazine, National Review, Daniel Oliver makes the argument that we should use the "precautionary principle" when it comes to abortion.

"We have to make a choice, while not knowing whether the fetus is a human being. Those who do not oppose abortion should ask themselves how they can be sure the
fetus is not a person, and why they are willing to risk being wrong on such an important matter. And those who oppose abortion should spend less time talking
about being pro-life and more time asking how we should decide how to behave in
the absence of certain knowledge about the humanity of the fetus. "

I am not as ambivalent about the presence of life in an unborn child but I think this kind of argument should be made, especially to undecided mothers and abortion providers. Even Planned Parenthood has agreed that life begins before physical birth. It begs the question - who are we to decide when that unborn group of cells because a human being with a right to life independent of it's mother? If there's any chance of "it's" humanity, how can we sleep at night if we do not protect it's life.

Hurray for the Weekend!

2005-05-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

I was in a very domestic mood tonight, and usually that means certain doom to any culinary efforts of mine. These moods are usually followed by patently awful food and then despondency over my lost kitchen skills. Tonight was my vindication however. Apparently there is some Italian influence in my blood because I've discovered that I can make fabulous turkey meatballs.
It's great what you can do with toasted sourdough batard, parsley, lots of garlic, onion and a little salt and pepper. Add some linguine, pasta sauce, a salad with homemade croutons (my speciality: fresh sourdough, cubed and tossed with garlic, olive oil and sea salt - yummy) and a good glass of red wine.

I am a kitchen goddess tonight. I even washed the dishes afterward.

Stingy pro-lifers?

2005-05-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Nathan Tabor over on Chronwatch had some intriguing and eye-opening comments this morning about pro-life political contributions.

"Last year, Susan B. Anthony [a pro-life congressional PAC] took in a meager $484,324 and disbursed $360,742. The PAC now has roughly $171,310 cash on hand. By contrast, EMILY's List took in over $34 MILLION during the same period and disbursed $34,175,207 to fund their pro-abortion agenda. Their PAC still has $402,153 in cash on hand."

I don't entirely agree with his premise that PAC's are the way to go with reforming America's culture of death. I place very high importance on pro-life legislation (ie - ending partial birth abortion, banning embryonic stem cell research, protecting the lives of the elderly and physically disabled from attack by their self-serving spouses [Michael Schiavo!]), however, I think that we face more of a cultural battle. This battle is fought by great organizations like First Resort and the Alpha Pregnancy Centers. Whereas Planned Parenthood offers a bandaid approach to unplanned/unwanted pregnancy (birth control, usually abortion), FR and APC's offer life time preventative treatment by helping girls and women face the problems in their lives that have led them up to the point of that pregnancy. By treating the root cause of the problem (worldview, self-esteem, etc), instead of just the symtpom (pregnancy), these centers arguably provide more valuable services to our culture than one pro-life Congresswomen.

Changing the lives of a few women forever, helping them to gain self-respect and a better outlook on life is far more valuable in my opinion than electing one (or two or three) congressional representatives who will serve for a limited number of years. Remember, we've had a legislative majority for over ten years now and it was only two or three years ago that they finally found their collective spinal cord and passed a ban on partial birth abortion. They still can't manage to help President Bush appoint sensible judges. I'm not convinced adding a few more pro-lifers would help Congress that much!

Statistics on pro-life political contributions (perhaps appropriately) do not include contributions to organizations like these, but just because NRLC or SBA don't receive as much money as EMILY'S List, doesn't mean the pro-life cause isn't putting it's money with it's mouth. Centers like APC and FR are non-profit and run entirely from contributions; I think that's truly where the heart of the pro-life movement lies.

Want to see REAL discrimination?

2005-05-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

Check out how the liberals are all over the possibility that PBS may be trying to include more conservative perspectives in it's programing. Congressmen David Obey (D-Wis.) and John Dingell (pardon my tittering...funny last name...sorry...um. D-Mich.) "called recent actions taken by CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson ``disturbing'' and ``extremely troubling.''

I see, so it's FINE for PBS to openly promote NPR, the self-proclaimed socialist radio hub of the United States; and it's OK for CBS to openly run issue-advocacy programs for John Kerry. But hire more conservatives...Oh no! That's a violation of federal law. We must investigate!

I say, if we're going to require hiring preferences to encourage diversity, those preferences should go beyond the bounds of race and gender to also include ideological diversity. Unfortunately for liberals, this would mean exposing their ideas to thoughtful counterpoint, which is usually fatal.

The Girl Who Cried Bigot

2005-05-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

The rest of this article is over on ChronWatch (here)
In San Francisco, the local news this weekend announced that a student at Tamalpais High in Marin was the victim of her own hate crimes. The student, a wrestler and open lesbian, had claimed that she was the victim of a string of “hate crimes” including vandalism of her car and locker, egging in front of her home, and “hate speech.” “The teen, who heads the Gay-Straight Alliance, admitted to authorities that she was the perpetrator of the incidents, which included vandalizing her own car with derogatory graffiti, police said.” (So much for Gay-Straight Alliance; sounds like a declaration of war to me.)
Of course, the benevolent and concerned citizens over at Marin Spectrum (an organization that focuses on the concerns of gay, transgender, bisexual, lesbian and “questioning” individuals) were on hand for the candle-light vigils held before the student admitted to faking the whole thing. They were obviously less than pleased when everyone was informed (as was their right) of the fraud. Executive Director Paula Pilecki sounds downright p.o.’d in fact. “It is unfortunate that this information is being released to the public in this manner,” she said. “The next few weeks will no doubt be difficult for everyone involved, and I hope the community reacts with compassion.”

I’d like to have a candle-light vigil to plead with liberals to stop lying!

Read More

2005-05-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here we go! Thanks to my dear hubby for getting this image put together.

Yay!

2005-05-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

www.yaf.org
Blog of the Day Laura C. Gottlieb
woohoo.
I can't figure out how to upload the image from work without Hello, but I'll do it tonight.