As the Olympics approach I always tell myself that I won't watch them but then, like many others, get lured in. To the suspenseful world faces. To the competitive drama. To the shiny uniforms. To the euphoric winners. To the tearful losers. To viewing the best of the best.
And somehow the sound of the Star Spangled Banner never gets old...
The more I think about NYC Mayor Bloomberg "locking up baby formula" at the hospitals, the madder I get. Who the HELL does he think he is??!! How dare he tell these women that they need to breast feed. I thought he was a liberal! Don't they believe in "a woman's right to CHOOSE?" Yeah, what happened to personal choice?? I think it's preposterous!
My older daughter, Alex, just had her first child in March, and after 3 days was so stressed out in trying to nurse, that she gave up and went to bottle feeding. Which is just fine, thankyouverymuch. She was stressed out enough with a new baby, and new schedule, and no sleep, that it just sent her over the edge. And she has said many times since then, that there is such a HUGE pressure from society, other women, and even the doctors, to breast feed. And yes, there are radical activists for this cause. They are in La Leche and they disdain anyone who doesn't breastfeed, and want you to do it for a long time.
If you think about it, it's backasswards, since feminists are FINE with abortion and killing your child, but then once you have one, you're supposed to go immediately back to work AND nurse your child. Say what?! None of that makes sense.
As a Baby Boomer, my mother bottle fed me, and I made straight A's all my life, and went to the University of Texas, so I think I turned out okay. In my mother's generation, she said there was pressure to bottle feed and that it was considered lower socioeconomic to breast feed. When I had Alex and her brother, about half chose to breastfeed and half to bottle feed. And then when I had DD fifteen years ago, breastfeeding was encouraged but no one made a big deal either way. But now? Young women are shamed incessantly if they choose to bottle feed. But it is still the mother's CHOICE. (May I also add that spanking is now strongly discouraged, and young mother's are told that is archaic. If you spank your child, someone may call CPS on you, so hardly anyone does.)
Anyway I digress.
Mayor Bloomberg is creating a nanny state with smoking, transfats, salt, soft drinks and now breastfeeding. Oh, and guns. What a jerk. What a pompous dictator. He INFURIATES me. It makes me never even want to VISIT New York City. What an ass. I guess I'm fortunate to live in Texas.
Because we would run his pansy ass out of our state...
Yes, I've been to church today but that helped for, well, about 15 minutes... I guess it's all of the little things that are adding up to big things. And then I click on Drudge and, I don't know, it just all seems depressing. And then I think to myself, well then I just wont read the news, I'll just be uninformed. You know, "Ignorance is bliss" sort of thing. But then that drives me crazy too because I like to know what's going to happen -- or at least guess.
Drudge says, "Scalia warns, guns may be regulated" and that Homeland security is gearing up for civil unrest prior to the election. Yes, I'll bet they are... We are a nation out of control. It's like the family who didn't discipline their children, and now that they have grown up, there's nothing they can do but watch it play out.
And speaking of pissy, my 15 year old was supposed to go to our cousin's wedding last night and asked her boyfriend a month ago, and he cancelled at the last minute, and then today her closest friend had asked her to go to a state park swimming with their family, and they weaseled out at the last minute because her sister's boyfriend wasn't back from Houston yet....
Why don't people do what they say? Why are people so selfish that they will disappoint others just because they changed their mind? Half of my family weaseled out of the wedding last night and made some excuse why they couldn't go last minute. Aren't we supposed to be loyal to family? Aren't family the first ones asked to the wedding and expected to be there? I thought blood is thicker than water, or is it?
I'm SØ tired of everyone disappointing me...
Just read on Drudge that nearly half of high school students admit to having had sex. This did not surprise me... My youngest daughter is going into 10th grade next year, and I have heard over the course of the year from her of how many are bragging about it. One of her good friend's mother was telling a group of moms the other day that it was eye-opening for her husband when he started teaching at the high school a few years ago. She said he came home and said, "There's not a drug problem in this high school, there is a sex problem." Seems our local high schoolers are having lots of sex and with lots of people.
What with all of the media 'messages' that they hear incessantly, it is no wonder. It's in the majority of the songs they listen to, and in 99% of the rap songs, which are ever so popular. But they also see it on television, hear it on their radio stations, see it in movies, in magazines, in advertising, on-line (porn, ugh), on billboards - you name it. As a matter of fact, things have deteriorated a LOT since my older two children were in high school, and they went to our same small town high school too, here in a conservative area of Texas. MTV shows about teen moms don't help the cause either. Right now there are four or five sophomores in our small high school that are pregnant, and they are not from the poor families. Even the high school fashion magazines like Seventeen and Glamour are descriptive in their stories about sex techniques for their young readers. My mother never had "The Talk" with me, so I never had it with my older daughter, but I felt it very necessary to talk to my youngest. Even in our church-going town, morals are disappointing, to say the least. I can only think of one really great role model for this age group, and that's Tim Tebow. And he's mocked and ridiculed constantly. Heaven help us.
It's our only answer...
It's time to make a stand on what we believe in. On twitter, I have tried to remain above the fray and not reply if someone says something rude to me. The other day I retweeted something about Chick-Fil-A and their traditional marriage stance. This guy went off on how he wasn't going to go there because they hated gays, and aimed it at me. I responded that they don't hate gays, they are just standing up for traditional marriage, between a man and a woman. This guy continued to spew his hatred but I remained kind and firm. It's all we really can do. Agree to disagree I suppose.
In my family tree, there are a lot of early deaths for the women and the men remarried their first cousin to help them with their children. I always thought it weird that this was true for my father's grandfather and my mother's grandfather. Both lost their first wives very young (one from pneumonia and the other from childbirth) and both had my family line with their first cousins. And there was also some divorce, so my family tree is strange, and there are some holes that we just don't know. But I do have a tree, an ancestral tree. And how are kids with 2 mommies or 2 daddies supposed to do this? They track the sperm donor. Wow. How fun is that?! They can't say, I have Grandma's eyes and Uncle Ted's toes. And this is even in addition to the moral aspect of how God intended it.
We've just got to take a stand on important things like traditional marriage. It is the fabric of society. Yes, in my little town in Texas, most children live in traditional homes. But it's still a lot different than when I moved here in the mid-nineties. My high schooler does know kids growing up in homes with two moms and two dads. Things are changing quickly. We don't hate gays. The Bible says to hate the sin but love the sinner. That's impossible unless you are a practicing Christian. The Bible also says we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Anyway.
Good for the Chick-Fil-A owner. He's taking a stand. He's drawing the line in the sand. And he's evidently willing to lose customers over it. And some day he will stand before his Maker and account for all of his words and actions.
We all will...
Just got my cable/internet back tonight.... it's been 3 weeks since I ordered it at our new house we just moved into, and Time Warner couldn't come install for THREE WEEKS, and THEN set it up for 8:00 am on a SUNDAY! Ridiculous!! THEN, when they got here this morning at 8:15 am, they said that it was too big of a job and they would have to come back... I had to politely, yet forcefully talk to a "superviser" who promised me he would call back within an hour. He did not. So. I had to call back and inquire if they were, in fact, even going to come back today, and was assured that the technicians would make it their last call of the day. They arrived at 5:30 pm and were dog-tired. But we were nice and DD made them cookies, so... we have cable & internet. Ugh.
This is the reason I have not posted in a few days. I tried to post from my phone for a few weeks, but that gets real old, real fast. And another thing, silence is NOT golden... We are so used to the background noise of the news, or some tv channel, that they become familiar. It's always a "growing experience" when I don't have cable or internet, but this time it was 3 full weeks, and that was - well - depressing somehow. No one seemed to stay very long. DD and friends rented lots of movies, but somehow it's just not quite the same.
The one thing I missed, for better and for worse, was all of the media coverage about the Colorado Dark Knight massacre. I had read a lot on the internet, but videos are more informational and have learned quite a bit in the few hours I've had tv. Once you see all of the young victim's faces, you realize how fleeting life is, and that none of us have any guarantees. Truly so very sad. And the gunman? It's all of the problems of his generation, all lumped into one guy. Too many video games. Lonely. Crazy. It's like he just popped one day and decided to go out in a blaze of (infamous) "glory." It seems pretty simple really. On the day after it happened, I was listening to talk radio and the DJ asked some doctor, "Is there any way to prevent this?" and I turned the radio off.
The answer is no. An emphatic no....
Okay, I'll admit it. I feel sorry for Demi Moore. Yes, she's a "movie star" but she's STILL a human being and is clearly falling apart after her much younger husband Ashton Kutcher left her. Her three daughters (by Bruce Willis) are so spoiled and rotten, that instead of supporting their mother and trying to help her, are bothered by her constant phone calls and are considering a restraining order against her. This is beyond sad to me. I can't imagine being an actress, where you are judged on your looks 24/7, and reaching 49 years old, and starting to age and lose jobs. She's now been left by her husband AND her bratty daughters who are so selfish about their own lives that they cannot help their MOTHER in her time of need. Demi did not do movies for many years, to take time to raise her daughters as a single mom after her divorce from Bruce Willis. Yes, she has not been the model mother, but she's still the only mother they have, and in my view, they owe her more than this.
Where is the love??
It's time to wake up America!! Just read that an armed group of gang members beat, robbed and raped an American church youth group on a mission trip, just outside of Mexico City in a park. Over several hours on Friday night, a group of twelve armed gang members beat, abused, and robbed the 90 youths, and also raped seven young women.
The violence in Mexico is getting much much worse and as a lifelong resident of Texas, I can tell you that it is starting to come over the border and is affecting the United States more and more. Gone are the days when we can take vacations over the border in Mexico because it has become much too dangerous to do that now. As a child, our family used to go to border towns once or twice a year, but the drug cartels have taken over. Why isn't the mainstream media ringing the bell about this?! Here a church youth group goes to Mexico to try to help those people and they were not protected from these evil gang members. Even mission trips will have to be banned now. What will happen with Mexico? Will anarchy continue to rule? Will an evil dictator come in and try to take over the country? We should care about this, they are at our southern border. Are we going to erase the borders and just have one big America including Mexico and Canada?
Is that what we want...?
Hmmmm, just read that a new study says that New Yorkers have five times more sex than the national average. They have sex 156 times a year on average and have slept with more people than all other cities except Atlanta, admitting to an average of 25 lovers in their lifetime.
I'm just wondering if this was an accurate study. I've never been to NYC but have always heard how fast-paced the lifestyle is there, and am having a hard time understanding how New Yorkers even have time to sleep, much less have sex. But maybe the city attracts the go-getters, and they are doing just that.
Some things never cease to surprise me...
On a very personal note, I was devastated when I had a miscarriage in the nineties. I was past the end of my biological clock but asked God for a miracle. I used to go to this cemetery in the children's area and weep, knowing in this "ocean of tears," other mothers had cried too when they buried their child. God had mercy on me, and gave me my third child, one of the three greatest gifts of my life.
He can give you your miracle too...
As a Baby Boomer, I have a lifetime of watching relationships and have decided that once in a Blue Moon, people receive "THE Gift." THE Gift is your soulmate, the one you have such wonderful chemistry with, that it's euphoric, it's heavenly bliss. It's so wonderful that some are jealous, some are happy for you, and ALL want it. But not all receive it.
I'm not sure why these select few receive THE Gift, but they do, and they seem to know just how rare it is. The ones that don't receive THE Gift try to figure out what's different about that guy and that girl, that they would be so blessed to have this. But alas, there is no figuring it out. I WILL say that it's always really nice people that it happens to, and that the male and female are equally nice. There's not one giver and one taker in the couple, but both are givers. Maybe that's part of the secret, but there's no other rhyme or reason. There are only a few people in my life that I have known that have received THE Gift, and I am truly happy for them.
It's a little bit of heaven on earth...
Right on Texas Governor Perry!! He says Texas will NOT implement Obamacare, as it will bankrupt the state. Wow. Common sense.
It's refreshing...
Get this.... Louis Farrakhan praised "the integration of SCIENTOLOGY into the Nation of Islam theology" saying that whites should use it to become civilized and to avoid being Devil Christians & Satan Jews."
I think this man is extremely dangerous with his rhetoric and constantly attempts to incite violence.
Talk about a hater...
Today was moving day so while everyone else is at the coast or lake this week, my ONE week of vacation I spent packing and moving all week. Yes, it's a brief pity party but things could always be worse so... I guess I'll try to stay positive.
Evidently Brit teens have decided to follow the American trend of extravagant proms... They are making entrances as they arrive in helicopters, vintage Rolls Royce's, Union flag Mini Coopers, ice cream trucks, vintage VW buses, tractors, and even in life-size replicas of Barbie boxes.
Wow. We're a great influence, aren't we...
Just a quick post because I'm packing.... Yes, if you've followed my blog for very long, you know I moved a year ago. But, as I've explained, I'm on straight commission in advertising sales, and sales are down, so my paycheck is too. I have to go back to renting because there is no security.
Anyway.
As I'm sitting here packing, and sweating in the Texas heat, I do have time to ponder just how far off America has gone in the past 20 years, since Reagan was president in the 80's. And all the news is bad... As a born-again Christian, my theory is that it's going to keep getting worse worldwide, which will then set the stage for the Antichrist to come in and say that he will save the day. But how do I tell that to my children? My two children in their very early 30's want to lead normal lives with jobs and spouses and children and homes - the American dream. And my 15 year old? She wants to fall in love, and get married some day, and chase her dreams too. I can't tell them what I really think. I just say that I'm praying and that we will be okay. As a realist, I don't lie and paint a great picture, but I also try to stress that God promises to take care of His children because He does.
Tomorrow is the 4th of July here in America. It's a time to celebrate being free in the best country in the world. But that haunting feeling is still there, that the enemy is among us and is trying to steal our joy - our very way of life...
The headlines read, "DC to be dark for days." Wow. Think of the possibilities!! All those smarmy politicians will have to head out of town! No laws will be passed! No smoke-filled rooms (yes, even though they say they have all quit smoking, they still smoke when writing these stupid things.) And families? Gosh, they can give their electronics a rest, and actually talk to each other. This could be a really good thing.
I think God knew what he was doing...
