7 (Really) Quick Takes

1. We are unexpectedly moving sooner than I had dared to hope... tomorrow, in fact.  And I have my drug-addicted (and apparently parole-violating) next door neighbor to thank.  So thank you, Bob the Buffalo... though you probably had a rough night in the drunk tank after the cops busted down your door at midnight, I promise you, you slept better than we did...

2. We are moving into a house.  A HOUSE!  A house of our very own, with a yard and space to plant a garden that I can watch die and, and... even set up a wading pool.  God has a funny way of answering prayers sometimes.

3. My son loves to hear anyone burp, or even pretend to burp.  I don't know how he knows that as an eventual adolescent boy he will be required to laugh at said bodily function, but let me tell you, he thinks it is hilarious.  Hilarious.  Don't even ask how we discovered this.

4. Yesterday me, the boy and the Bob jogger stumbled upon a coyote on our mid-afternoon stroll across the burning wasteland of open space behind our apartment complex.  Technically I was on a multi-purpose path through one of Denver's many lovely greenbelts ... but the coyote was in clear, flagrant violation of Denver's leash law and didn't seem one bit sorry.  But I bet he was sorry after I growled at him and flailed my arms in most threatening manner.  FYI, coyotes are like uglier, dirtier and skinnier versions of wolves... and a lot less aggressive, apparently.  Though I am, admittedly, fearsome in my workout gear.

5.  90 Shilling.  Go out and buy a 6 pack of O'Dell Brewing Company's  90 Shilling Ale.  Tonight.  We have rediscovered our affection for this brew after a long hiatus spent dabbling in cheaper, lesser imitations, but no more.  If you happen to live in North Pennsylsota and can't get your paws on it... well, that's a shame.  A crying shame.  Craft breweries are one of Colorado's greatest contributions to this fine nation, and I pity the fool who hasn't imbibed.

6. I am reading this right now and loving it.  Every page is causing me to drop the book and sigh and reflect on how very far I have to go in the spiritual journey still... and how very large and wide is God's mercy.  I love St. Francis.

7. The following items are necessary to have on hand for any major relocation effort: Sharpies; discarded produce boxes from the grocery store which smell of old bananas; Target bags, scraps of paper towels to wrap delicate items in and then to use to dry tears upon discovery of remains of said item upon arrival; copious amounts of coffee; goldfish crackers to toss on the floor to distract any children who may be present during the operation; wine. Just plenty of wine. Did I miss anything?

Be sure to visit Jen over at Conversion Diary!

When Yo Mama is Yo Pimp...

... then where else can you go but down?

Thank you

The lovely woman who distracted me with conversations about baby gates while cutting me yesterday says she is 99.9% convinced that the mystery guest in my knee is 'not anything weird' which is, I believe, the scientific terminology for 'not cancerous.'

Thanks for the prayers, we sure felt them. 

AMDG

Give Us This Day

So I hate asking for help.  Even from God, but especially from other people.  I'm a d-i-y bootstraps kinda girl, which can get me into trouble every now and then when it turns out I can't manipulate the fabric of reality by sheer force of my will.  Ever have one of those days?  Anyway, probably with the express intention of inviting me to grow in holiness through trustful surrender, God's thrown me a curve ball, and I wasn't expecting it and didn't ask for it and - wouldn't you know it - that doesn't seem to matter to Him.

One. Bit.

Harumph.

So I am having a very minor surgery today that has me a teensy bit concerned, mostly for the subsequent lab results.  Having had very little experience in the world of medical issues, (thanks, God) the past week has been a tad unnerving, so I'm asking for your prayers for us.  Mostly that we'd be surrendered to His will, and of course for any necessary healing.  Ya'll are fabulous. 

AMDG.

Heroic News

I have been a bit - shall we say, infrequent in my online presence these past few months.  At least 'round these parts.  But I haven't been luxuriating on the couch eating bon bons all day.  I've been working for an amazing company called Heroic Media, running a new outreach of theirs called Heroic News.  It's a news aggregator, and for those of you not familiar with the concept, it's basically an online clearinghouse of sorts for headlines, articles and links to web resources, all gathered into one, convenient location  for you fine people.

The mission of Heroic Media is to harness various forms of news and entertainment media - be it television, internet, print advertising or radio spots - and start conversations about the most pressing issue of our times: life.  They run outreach campaigns to women in crisis pregnancies, they fund abortion awareness campaigns in major media markets, and they provide tangible, life-saving and life-affirming assistance to women and families in desperate need.  In other words, they are authentically pro life.  From the moment of conception onward.  So there's no room for the predictable, shallow criticism of pro-lifers 'dropping the ball' once the child emerges safely from the womb.

Heroic News' part in this mission is to deliver breaking news, up to the minute global coverage on wide-ranging life issues including abortion, contraception and sterilization, euthanasia, human cloning and embryonic stem cell research, and the sanctity of marriage.

So tell your family!  Tell your friends!  And visit every day... because I'm culling through allllll the crap that's out there on the internets ... so you don't have to ;)

Because he's so.darn.cute.

My boys in blue.

 

 The last (sniff) photo of Leonardo Stargazer Gallileo Jesus Christ Superstar (I swear that was all on his pedigree papers) before his untimely and suspicious death.  And Uncle Patrick.  Who now has 2 kittens and doesn't even remember the dog's name.  Youth is a beautiful thing...

My sweet boy sunning himself in ... a Rubbermaid container.  What?  Have you seen the prices of wading pools in this economy?

Well?  Have you?

Moving on then...

The Redneck Yacht Club

Such Great Joy

Today has really been one of those days where I can see His hand at work in the mundane and ordinary details of housewifery and motherhood.  My little man is growing up so quickly - and so very slowly - all at once.  Every night waking, every diaper change, and every bowl of cereal mixed and spooned into his needy, open mouth causes me to wonder ... "when will this ever end?" ... while simultaneously causing my heart to seize up with the fear that it will end, and sooner than I can possibly imagine. 

Nobody told me that motherhood was going to be such a careful tightrope between fierce love and paralyzing fear of loss, intermingled with moments of sheer tedium which my working-girl-self could only have imagined on the longest days of board meeting prep and Excel spreadsheet creation.  (And even then, it would have been a stretch.  A mighty stretch.) 

Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of adult company and conversation, Hulu comes all too readily to the rescue to fill the void with ... further vapidity.  Can I get an 'amen,' fellow WAH/SAHM's?

Now I realize this all sounds like complaining... but it's not.  I swear it's not!  It's just that, darn it, I didn't plan on being so bored with my day to day existence when I was dreaming about white picket fences and sweet, cooing, dewy-eyed newborns who smelled of linen and baby Gap couture. 

Or so terrified that it might be taken from me, either in the inevitable future or in a terrifying, tragic instant.

There is such a mighty daily tug-of-war for my heart, for my attention.  Such rapid vacillation between  contented fulfillment and wild, grasping tedium.  So many little victories of scrubbing floors, dishes and diapers for the Kingdom... followed by slumping afternoons of wasted web-crawling and idle online 'shopping*'

(*no credit cards were harmed in the posting of this blog... nor by my occasional, pathetic, virtual window-shopping binges).

I'm so hot or cold. 

I'm still that way as a mom, it turns out.  As a 'grown up' who has, shall we say, arrived at her vocational destination.  It's all or nothing for me, still.  I'm either serving God joyfully with the sweat of my brow and the foaming dish soap of my kitchen sink... or I'm flopped on the couch reading People.com's Style Watch and watching the clock tick down to my husband's return home, 20 minutes prior to which I will begin frantically scanning Foodily.com for, ahem, poultry inspiration.

And yet I have the audacity to write about the glory of family life?  The splendor of motherhood?  The evils of contraception and the closed-mindedness of our anti-life, anti-family culture. 

Well, yeah. 

I'm still a crappy sinner, after all.  And just because I 'get it' intellectually and, more rarely, spiritually, doesn't mean I live it well.  Or at all, some days.

And I don't mean crappy sinner in a snow-covered-dung-hill-Martin-Luther kinda way, just in a realization of my own brokenness and need for ongoing conversion and formation kinda way.

Make sense? 

No worries.  Not so much to me either.  But sometimes I've just got to 'talk it out' on paper.  And when it comes to blogging, maybe somebody else sees it and gets some sliver of insight from it. 

Or maybe not.  But it did keep me off Hulu all morning.  So there's a start. 

St. Therese... pray for me.  Seriously girl, I need it.

Some days are tougher than others...

... and tomorrow will be no exception.  Keeping my heart fixed on Heaven and my eyes comforted by this view,

and the knowledge that the current resident-in-chief wasn't too pleased when he was tapped for his new job, either. 

Now This

Gay 'marriage' is sooo yesterday.  The hottest new trend in progressive social justice today is polygamy.  That's right, ladies!  Now you too can have it all: live-in 'sisters' to share everything with... clothes, household tasks, child-rearing responsibilities...even your husband! 

No more dull, drab dual-spouse marriages where one measly person is expected to fulfill all the needs of the other.  No more tiresome monogamy.  And no more worrying about whether your husband has been sleeping around on you... now you know for sure that yes, he has!

Coming soon: pedophilia and bestiality: The final frontiers. (That is, until we think of something worse.  Like people getting really, really attached to their Prius' ... really, really attached.)

In Vitro Violence

I've never given much thought to the post-implantation violence begotten by the process of IVF, but after a heart wrenching discussion with a dear friend last night, I've had my eyes opened to a hidden world of incredible loss and unimaginable evil.

The process of in-vitro fertilization is intrinsically evil in its commoditization of human life by the intentional creation, manipulation of and, far too often, the destruction of designer embryos, purchased by desperate, misguided parents and coaxed into existence by truly mad science. 

What I failed to realize was that even after the creation of 7 or perhaps 9 tiny babies, 3 of whom would perhaps be lucky enough to be considered 'viable' and implanted into their mother's womb, these 'chosen ones' were still far from home free.

My sweet girl friend lost one of her precious twin daughters at birth last year, and has been attending a grieving group for mothers of multiples who've suffered similar losses.  Except, as it turns out, they have much less in common then one might imagine. 

For starters, of all the member couples of their group, my friend and her husband are the only couple with 'natural' twins.  All the other parents resorted to IVF to conceive their double (or triple) blessings.  What was sickening, however, was the process by which those 'lucky' children were selected for implantation into their mother's wombs.

IVF is known for its practical application of eugenics, whereby the medical team identifies the 'highest quality' embryos for consideration, taking into account the parental preference for health, strength and even gender.  Practically speaking, parents can custom-order their children from a sampling of 7 or 9 embryos yielded from a successful round of IVF.  What the medical staff will usually downplay, however, is the fate of those unlucky 'extra' embryos - children who end up frozen in sterile labs for an indeterminate number of years at best, or at worst, discarded as so much laboratory waste.


I thought this was where the heartache of IVF ended, but I was wrong.

As the grieving parents went around the group sharing their tales of loss and struggle, a macabre theme began to emerge, as couple after couple recounted choosing to 'selectively reduce' the number in their brood following a successful embryo transfer.  Too successful, it turned out.

One couple remembered the feelings of 'relief and certainty' which followed the selective elimination of one of their triplets at 20 weeks.  (Note: selective elimination = mid term abortion) The mother shared her certainty over the decision being 'just so right... and that rightness was confirmed when the doctor told us that the remaining twins were one of each gender!'

As my girlfriend recounted the story through her own tears, I gripped her counter top as my head spun, trying to process what I was hearing. Her own loss of a daughter was so raw and recent, and here she was, face to face with another mom in her grieving group who had willingly ended her child's life.  But why her participation in a grieving group?  Had she been moved to remorse and conversion by her violent choice.

Not exactly.

As the result of her 20 week abortion of baby #3, the perfect, remaining set of twins were compromised when her cervix failed to close completely following the 'procedure.'  She was ordered onto strict bed rest and required to lay at an awkward, inverted angle to maintain the pregnancy, but sadly she lost another baby at 27 weeks.  A few months later she delivered the surviving triplet, a little girl.  Incredibly, this woman went on to share with the group that she and her husband had tried for another child 'just to be fair' to her daughter, now an only child, but were forced to abort baby number 4  after an amniocentesis showed possible evidence of Down's.

In summary,  thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, this infertile couple was able to conceive, select, freeze, destroy, and eventually deliver one perfect 'product' of conception into this brave new world...  No word on whether surviving daughter came with a warranty or a return policy.

Isn't progress grand?

Whew

Well that was a long Lent.  Ahem. 

Let's see if I remember how to do this thing called writing for leisure.  Between work and, well, lying prone on the sofa watching Hulu'd episodes of the artfully cast gymno-epic 'Make it or Break it' (don't judge me) while my tiny tornado naps in the afternoons, it has been preeeeetty busy round these here parts. 

So those are my excuses, pitiful as they might be.  And here I am, back in the blogosphere, ready to rock and roll. 

Except the tornado just woke up.  So until tomorrow, gentle readers, I bid you buonanotte.  And I'm glad to be 'back.'