Thursday, September 22, 2011

One year already?!


Whew.  That was fast!

Sitting here with my little man running (cruising) circles around me as I 'work,' and reflecting on the goodness that has been his first year of life outside the womb.  Joseph Kolbe, I love you more than I thought possible.  Thanks for being here, bud.

And yes, this is his birthday present.  A blog post.  Or a blog paragraph, more like it, with a link to his birth story.  Eh, we did cupcakes last weekend.  Enjoy it kid, you're not an only child anymore...

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Weekenders

Coffee: check

Baby delightfully taken by his Daddy's unaccustomed presence during the morning hours: check

Uninterrupted time to sip coffee and peruse the news: check

Life is good.  Hope your weekend treats you accordingly.

Food for thought:

To enrage: just say 'no' to spray tanning.  Especially if you can't spell the word 'no' yet...

To illuminate: the reality of an 'open' liberal mind

To encourage: because we can all use a little good news now and then

Monday, September 12, 2011

Just wondering...

I woke up early (EARLY, Joey.  TOO early!) this morning and as I lay in bed, listening to the gentle noises of my almost toddler caterwauling like a suffering tabby, I allowed my mind to wander over the various and sundry mysteries of my (admittedly) small universe and came up with the following:

How much liquid should my almost-one-year-old be drinking each day?  Does coffee count?  I think he's been drinking my coffee...

Why am I incapable of meal planning?  Why does 5:00 pm come up and slap me in the back of the head everyday and leave me stunned and stupid over the impending reality of dinner and the sorry truth that I have to make it.  Again.  Why can't men live on cereal like we can?

Is there a wittier ripost I might have offered to the Kaiser nurse who heckled  me over the phone whilst scheduling my first prenatal visit for this little bug and WHISTLED at me that I've been 'busy?'   "Heh heh heh.  Somebody's been havin' themselves some unprotected sex!" (I swear I could hear her internal monologue)

Why am I so fat already?  Why do I keep asking my husband if he thinks this is so, when I know well and good that for the sake of all that is holy the man is never, EVER going to answer in the affirmative to this one, even should I gain 2.3 million lbs like last time and start stealing his extra-large Kirkland's Best t-shirts to fashion into 3rd trimester mumus.  Even then, he knows the right answer to THAT question.

Why are boots so expensive when ground beef is so cheap?  Aren't they fashioned from the same creature?  Why the markup?  WHY?!

vs.


Come on.  Seriously?  A 1,700% mark up? That ain't right.

And finally, is it so wrong that after 28 years of searching, I've finally discovered the real motivating factor for exercise, and it turns out it's childcare?

I've calculated it carefully, and it turns out that in an average month I can score a maximum of 60 hours of babysitting courtesy of my local 24 Hour Fitness.  You can bet those girls in the Kid Zone have me on a first name basis.  Irony of ironies that my newfound exercise fanaticism is not going to help me get any smaller any time soon...

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

What's love got to do with it?

Well, everything, at this point.  I'm teetering on 8 weeks pregnant as I write this and have been sick.as.a.dog. this time around.  I don't know if it's the fact that I'm actively engaged in biological warfare with an 11 month old all day long or that this baby on board is perhaps of the fairer sex (just a guess), but I feel awful.  Like, shouldn't-a-had-that-last shot-of tequila-ohmahgawd-where's-the-trash-can awful.

Such is the price which new life demands.  I can't see this little one yet - though I do have his/her sweet older brother to look to for a sneak peak of what may be to come - but I already feel such love for this child.  Fear, certainly.  An overwhelmed sense of responsibility, that too.  But over and above the other emotional responses there is love.  And the sense of gratitude and wonder that 'I get to do this again!' coupled with 'I'm doing this again?!'

So there it is.  Joey's a big brother, and our lives will never be the same.

God is good.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Picking Rotten Fruit

What do contraception, pedophiles and gay 'marriage' all have in common?  (Besides the ability to make one's stomach churn.)

I'll give you a hint: trees.

Three different species of rotting fruit, all plucked from the same evil tree of selfishness. 

Three wildly variant forms of sexual deviance, one root sin:

Pride.

Pride that asserts one's subjective reality over objective reality.  Pride that places personal happiness and 'fulfillment' ahead of the good of the other.  Pride that seeks to subvert, destroy and remake truth for the sake of an imagined personal 'good' at the cost of real goodness.

At first blush, predators who seek sexual encounters with children and homosexual adults who seek to enter into 'marriages' with same sex partners might not seem to have too much in common besides an uncommon sexual appetite, but an honest examination of the motivation behind both behaviors reveals an uncomfortable truth.

When we attempt to redefine reality, we have to expect that others will do the same.  Gay 'marriage' may be promoted as all about tolerance and love... but in some circles, (widening circles, I might add) so is the notion of 'love' between an innocent child and an adult. 

In a disturbing report issued earlier this week, a reporter shed light on a curious conference taking place outside our nation's capital right now.  Pedophiles are seeking to destigmatize their deviant, criminal sexual behavior by lobbying the American Psychological Association to declassify pedophilia as a mental illness in the forthcoming edition of the DSM - the 'bible,' if you will, of the mental health world.

This is relevant because it is the same path homosexual activists started down in the late 70's when they lobbied to have homosexuality removed from the third edition of the DSM as an identified psychological condition.

And where exactly does birth control factor into this all?

Well it turns out that everyone is after their own version of 'no strings attached' sex.  And if straight, married couples can go on the Pill - which many did for the first time starting in the 1950's and '60's - then why not straight, unmarried couples?  Sex, no longer prudishly bound to the constraining, tired and traditional 'construct' of marriage was now fair game for anyone, provided they were 'in love.' (I am well aware that the invention of modern contraception did not single-handedly fuel the sexual revolution.  People have been sexually active outside of marriage from time immemorial.  The difference is, now it's openly acknowledged and even applauded by a global majority)

Once sex was effectively divorced from marriage by its sterilization, homosexuality - nothing new except in its growing social acceptability - began to creep from the shadows.  If sterile, fruitless sex made sense for straight people, than why not for two men?  Or two women?  Sex, no longer inextricably linked to the possibility of bringing forth new life (in addition to pleasure), became just another method for communication between companions.  And who are we to tell anyone with whom they may or may not communicate?

When sex ceases to be primarily about the gift of self, (and, consequently, the gift of life) it becomes primarily a means to self-gratification.  And everyone deserves to be gratified.  To be satisfied.  To be happy.  It's one of the last remaining 'virtues' we seem able to agree upon as a culture: happiness.  Except sometimes one person's version of 'happiness' turns out to be tantamount to another person's version of 'hell.' 

The young girl whose body is used by an older cousin for unspeakable acts of sexual abuse.  The toddler whose two 'mommies' special ordered her using hand-picked sperm and cutting edge IVF technology, but who will never know her father.  The teenager whose parents divorced during his freshman year of high school, dumping him with relatives while they set out on solo journeys of self discovery to 'find themselves' at a time when he is poised on the precipice of adulthood and in crying need of parental guidance and support.  Each of these are the unwilling victim of someone else's pursuit of happiness.  

So where does it end?

I would imagine that bestiality and incest will be coming down the pike as the next agenda items in our glorious cultural pursuit of equality.  Because if anything goes, then everything goes.  And who are we to say otherwise? 

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
Bl. John Paul II

Pray for us.