In Search of Myself

This jumped out at me

I alternate between a Christian radio station and NPR when I'm driving, and when I heard this excerpt from a recent Obama speech on NPR, it was an aha moment for me:

It's the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us, the assumption that young people are apathetic, the assumption that Republicans won't cross over, the assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor and that the poor don't vote, the assumption that African-Americans can't support the white candidate, whites can't support the African-American candidate, blacks and Latinos cannot come together.

We are here tonight to say that that is not the America we believe in.

Ava's rule

Ava was a beautiful 3 year old who died tragically because she got into a parked car looking for candy, and fell asleep.  Please talk to your children about the danger of parked cars, keep your cars locked, and do NOT leave your children in the car alone.

(temperatures are in celcius in this image, but you get the idea.)  Click on image to enlarge.

click here to read her story.

This is sad

We were in Indiana for a long weekend and came home on Monday.  Mid-way through Kentucky, we came across a major traffic jam, and eventually got around it by getting off at a rest-stop exit and then getting back on the interstate.  The accident had happened right next to the rest stop.  As we passed, on the interstate we saw a VERY crushed car (with a tarp over it, so we suspected someone had died), a jack-knifed semi, and a few others with fender benders.  Our theory was that the semi had crossed the median and hit the car, but I see from this traffic report that it was the other way around.  So very sad.  And it REALLY makes you realize how important it is when you're driving to leave PLENTY of room between you and the car you are following, so that you have time to slow down in case something random and tragic like this happens.

Heartbreaking

I think that every person in every college campus across the country is talking today about what happened yesterday in Virginia.  Any school, for that matter.  I know that a lot of policies and communication issues are going to be revisited.  How do we plan for reacting to something like that?  It's so sad that we have to.  My heart is broken for everyone involved in Virginia, and for the fact that the world we live in can be so broken and ugly.

Great quote

I was just blog hopping, and found this quote on the always inspiring Ali Edwards' blog:

R.J. Baughan : We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are... Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.

From the church bulletin

just a little something that caught my eye during worship service and made me stop and think.

Words for Meditation
The temptation to attempt to discover the end of the story thwarts the ability of a believer to trust that God will influence us by providing light for one step at a time.

A reading from the Epistles
II Corinthians 4:16 - 18: Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Deep thoughts on mothering.

You know, very early this morning, I got to thinking.  (In that space between wakefulness and being fast asleep, all sorts of random things fly through my head.)  I started thinking about how, as a mother, you constantly have to be asking yourself questions about your child: is he breathing? is he cold? is he hungry?  does he have to go to the bathroom?  Even if it's 2:15 a.m. and you happen to be awake, you have to go through the checklist.  Because until a certain age, the bathroom and food thing he certainly can't deal with 100% on his own.  And the breathing and cold thing -- well I have a hard time not checking if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night.  Jake has a bad habit of not sleeping under covers -- but he's so hot natured, warm p.j.s are really uncomfortable for him.  He won't wear socks, and that doesn't help.  But laying still in a 76 degree house, you get cold after a while.  And it IS a mothering responsibility, regardless of how progressive your relationship with your spouse is -- when you hear on the news about something that's happened to a child, your first thought is "WHERE is that child's mother?!" not "gee, why wasn't his dad watching him?"  And I think this is one of the reasons mothers get stressed -- because in addition to the cooking and cleaning and laundry and scheduling and driving and shopping, we're also responsible, 24/7, for our child's well-being and every little need, right down to breathing and staying alive.  Especially when you have multiple children, that's overwhelming (or so I hear.)

Just my deep thought for the day.

Some awesome articles

I'm part of a Yahoo group for mothers whose children are autistic -- because a lot of the issues that Jake has are the same that autistic kids have.  He's not autistic, yet he has many behavioral symptoms.  I can't tell you how much I'm learning from these mothers!  And they are so sweet and have welcomed me to the group, even though Jake's diagnosis doesn't technically fit the group.

One of them sent out a link today to the website of an author, Susan Senator, whose book she has been enjoying.  The book is called "Making Peace with Autism."  Within the website are articles the author has written for various publications.  They're about her experiences as a parent of an autistic boy.  You can read them all in their entirety on the site.  They are well-written, funny, touching, and a few made me cry (but this is me we're talking about.)  Even if you don't have a child with "issues," I think that reading these articles will help you to understand children you might come into contact with that DO have issues.  It's really hard to understand just WHY some children act the way they do.  Reading these articles might give you some insight.  Autism Articles.

Walmart takes over the world.

Does this freak anyone else out?  Watch this slide show at Forbes.com for some scary numbers.  (It will probably be easier to hit "stop" once you're there and click through "next" manually, 'cause it goes pretty fast.)

Interestingly, there is a blog called "Walmart is Pure Evil" (it looks blank, but you have to scroll down for the content), click here for a blog article with a similar thought, click here for another interesting article.  What's REALLY funny, is if you Google "Walmart is evil," you will get 2,540,000 links to wade through.  So if these links aren't enough, you can keep browsing and reading.

Oh, and here is a link to the movie that explains why Walmart is evil.  Good times.

Close call.

Last night when I went to pick Jake up from my mom's, she and Jake were at the door as I pulled into the driveway.  Sadie (my sister's dog, and Jake's best friend) somehow worked her way between them and bolted out the front door.  Now my parent's driveway isn't ALL that long, and they live on a busy street and people totally go too fast up and down it. 

Jake totally understands the whole you go in the street you get run over thing, and how serious it is that we keep Sadie inside or in the fenced back yard.  So the SECOND Sadie got out the door, he started screaming and crying like someone had actually run her over already.  I was getting out of my car as this happened, and Sadie was coming toward me, looking scared out of her mind 'cause she knew she was in trouble. 

Now beagles are FAST dogs, and there's no way I could outrun her.  So I took a few steps forward as I dropped to my knees (silently praying the dog wouldn't bolt), and acted really nice to her and patted my legs and told her to come see me.  Jake meanwhile is screaming bloody murder.  Like he's seriously FREAKING OUT.  My mom is holding on to him to HE doesn't bolt after her.  (Dude, he's pretty fast, too.)  Luckily, Sadie inched close enough to me that I was able to grab her and carry her inside.  Jake kept crying for a while because he was so freaked out.  I think he literally would never get over it if something traumatic happened to Sadie, so I was REALLY glad that all worked out.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

I have a TON of Jake-isms to catch up on.  It makes me really sad that I'm so busy I haven't been writing about him -- because he is SO funny lately.  He makes me laugh -- HARD -- every single day.  Such a goober.  Hopefully I'll get to that soon.

LOVE YOU ALL.