Playing the Game, Part Deux

Ok today it really is about the Cubs, so sorry 'bout your bad luck girlies if you're not into sports! HOLY COW (to quote the late Harry the Great) they had the Cubs rally at Daly Plaza today at noon and it was all over the tv. Seriously right up there with the economic bailout. And who can blame us? We've got to have SOMETHING to cheer about, and right now it's all about the red and blue baby:) I wanted to be there so bad (in spite of the windy city cold...it's only 60 in Kouts today, I can't imagine Chi-town) with my Skylar who is SO INTO THE CUBS this year. She gets on their website to check the score! Sa-weet, that's all I'm sayin. She's gonna be a Cubs player for Halloween!!!!!! That's my girl!!!!!! Alas we did not make it to the rally today; but not all was lost. When they had Harry Carry on the jumbo screen leading the Daly Plaza crowd in an old-school rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," I was able to shed a tear here in my store in front of the tv just as easily as I would have in Chicago. So I did. Seriously. s e r i o u s l y.

To Eat or not To Eat... Use or not To Use...

There's a documentary by Lisa Ling on ABC about a family (FAMILY.) addicted to heroine. Mom, dad, two teen boys all addicted. Started with dad who had a great job and beautiful home, getting hurt at work and being put on legal pain pills, became addicted to the pain pills but after so many days the perscription ran out so couldn't get them, so he went to the street. Where they were CHEAP. Cheaper still was heroine, and it was stronger. So he switched, and brought it home, and now his family lives in a homeless shelter and the kids are even addicted. This was such a sad story to me; I grew up in the home of an addict who almost died from bad choices. And yet when that family member of mine finally did get help the doctors gave a wonderful example of who's "to blame" with addiction: The disease of addiction is like diabetes. You're born with it, it's in your brain and in your body and you can't help it. But a diabetic chooses whether or not to eat a brownie after dinner he/she knows is forbidden...and the addict chooses whether to reach for the forbidden substance. So there is the "No this is not your fault" aspect, but there's also the responsibility factor of "But you can have some control over it, let us teach you how." What a beautiful way to enable people who feel helpless and hopeless. After all, couldn't we all be addicted to something? What if doritos or pepsi or biting our fingernails or drinking coffee were illegal and we had to sell our possessions to do those things anyway? Would we then be any different? Would we be on Lisa Ling's next documentary?

The Great Guinea Pig Debate

Ok I would joke about how we haven't had a good vax/unvax debate in awhile, but I just had a guy in my store who reminded me that this topic is SOO serious. He sat here for an hour and told me his story about how his daughter died as a result of complications from the smallpox vaccine, and how now he's on the bandwagon about vaccine education. He's WAY LESS politically correct about it than I am; I'm one of those "I don't tell parents not to do it I just say be educated." Of course I've never had a child die either, and this guy has way more reasons than I do to be way more educated than I am. He had names and dates for scientists, government officials, and lab tests. He had the names of politicians and who's for/ who's against. Perhaps most pertinent to the readers of this blog here, he had an article on the eighteen kids who've died from the Gardasil vaccine and the other 8000 reported adverse reactions just in the couple years it's been on the market. (Couple years is like, 600-700 days? Even if you add another 100 days it's been on the market for a conservative estimate of 800 days, you've got 10 reports EVERY DAY of a kid hurt because of this shot.)

Sooo... as usual my advice is this. Read the ingredients, research those ingredients. Then decide.

Playing the Game

In spite of the title, this post will not talk about the political game of Bush-bashing (I know you all are surprised). Nor will it talk about the Cubs games that, in case you live in a cave and don't know, get better every day and have them with the best record in the National League and are their Division Champs. No, the game I'm referring to is the dating game. That's a fun post! I have lots of guys that I hang out with, or have hung out with since the divorce. I had one actual relationship that lasted about 7 months, have guy friends that I talk to or who come visit me at the store (hi Bryan and Eric!), have guys that I liked that didn't like me or said they did but never called (Mike and Rick), several that I've dated once or twice, and one that I liked a lot and dated a couple of times and then he just quit calling. Seriously. Just quit.

Soooo.... here are a couple of rules I've learned so far. If a guy calls right away the next day after a date, he's in a hurry to get to the next date. Sometimes too much of a hurry. If a guy says "Come over so I can cook for you" he really means he's ready to make out. If a guy says he'd like to go out in a group, he's really saying he's ready for his friends to meet you so they can tell him later if they think you're hot or not. Just to name a few examples!

So now I'm in the situation of yet another guy that I've only been out with twice and it's been with another couple, but he does have my number now and we're in the middle of the countdown "how many days til he calls?" (FYI it's been three days and, in my experience, three to five days seems to be the rule). So it's that ambiguous period where, if anyone asks if you're in a relationship you say no. If anyone asks if you're seeing anyone you still say no, but there's a "No, but..." If anyone asks you if you've dated anyone lately you say yes, but it's a "Yes, but." Oy!

Any weird dating "rules" you guys ever had to learn along the way?

Beware of Dog...and Christian Liberals:)

I can say that because I am one. A Christian Liberal that is-- not a dog. (At least I don't think I'm a dog...A little heavier and frumpier than high school maybe but not a dog)! Anyway, here goes and consider yourself forwarned. Bill Clinton was on The View this morning, and despite the fact that we all hated him and his flirtatious shananigans (did I spell that right?) while he was in office, and while we complained that gas at the time was a ridiculous $1.34 a gallon and it was all his fault, and his economic policies were selling us out to China and all that, he talked this morning in a way that made me want to marry him. I. Love. Bill Clinton. He talked for the whole hour in an informed articulate manner that was KIND, philosophical, and well thought out. His ideas on humanitarian and global relief are brilliant. He spoke in complete sentences--without a speech writer!--and was funny in the right places but was also reverent and serious when necessary. I was so impressed I yearned to have him back. I know he's "slick Willy" and can deliver a line and all that, but we had a budget surplus and we weren't at war with anyone and unemployment was down and welfare was down and schools were better. I sat there this morning feeling like HE LISTENS TO PEOPLE. Niether candidate right now seems to be listening...just talking and mudslinging.

To wrap up my rant, consider his reply when Barbara Walters asked him who he thought was going to win the election: "I hate it that we live in an ideology that says you have to dislike the person you're not voting for." Accuse him of dodging the question if you like...(he did say he wanted Obama to win, of course) but he went on to say how many beautiful conversations he's had one on one with both candidates and how considers each of them friends. Sigh...

Ugh!!!!

Let there be water...

Pics. Of the "trickling" stream in my backyard, the "ditch" near my house that climbed a 12 foot concrete slope and almost covered the arched culvert that tried to contain it, and the parking lot at church (the stream broke over the banks for the first time since we moved into that building 13 years ago. You can't tell where the parking lot stops and the stream begins)!

Wait...What's a Cubit?!

By this time yesterday I was ready to take up Ark-building. If you're in northwest Indiana right now you were probably contemplating the same thing sometime this past weekend! I'll post pics in the next day or so, but to give you an example of how much rain was in my backyard: there's a drainage ditch that runs along the north side of my property that usually trickles pleasantly by, that the girls and I occasionally walk alongside in the summer time looking for tadpoles. Yesterday it was raging by our houses like the Amazon...to the point that my neighbor girlfriend's teenage boys put their BOAT in it. Dave came to pick up the girls for the afternoon and questioned, "Anyone see any animals marching two by two?" Apparently not; no one could figure out how to build the Ark after all and as a result, the kids don't even have school today. Can anyone remember northwest Indiana schools being shut down for FLOODING?!

Fallacies of Adultery

This was on Oprah today, so women all over America will be confronting their husbands at dinner tonight on those grounds alone!!! Having been through it though, I thought one particular segment on the show was particularly important. There was one couple on there who were best friends, had sex every day, had been married for decades, laughed and had hobbies together. He still had an affair. So that's the fallacy: they said on the show there is a misconception that affairs only happen in marriages where couples fight a lot or don't have sex anymore. THIS IS NOT TRUE. It's also a misconception that men who have affairs are bad guys, or that an affair is always premeditated. In fact a man may be a great guy with a great marriage and still cheat. There are hundreds of reasons for this, and hundreds of books explaining those reasons! I'm not here to talk about what the reasons are; I'm here to point out what the reasons AREN'T. I was in a good marriage with a good sex life; we were best friends, didn't fight, and not only did we just "never fight" but we held hands and laughed and tickled and all those things that are friends envied. He still cheated. So Oprah says this: no one is immune! That's a scary thought...but a true one.

Baseball, Apple Pie, and Offshore Drilling... ?

Guys. I was so excited to hear about the choice of Sara Palin, and wanted to listen to the speeches at the Republican convention last week hoping that the Christian in me who is basicly a pro-life Democrat would hear something NEW to cling to with the conservatives. N O P E. When Giulliani started the chant of "Drill Baby Drill" I had to turn the channel. More drilling, more money poured into nuclear power...these ARE NOT THE ANSWER. My sister, for example, has a natural gas pipeline running through her backyard right here in Kouts THAT IS A GOVERNMENT PIPE, and that IS NOT USED. It's for "an emergency." We have oil refineries all over this nation that already exist and do not drill...because we're "saving them for an emergency." THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! Let's take advantage of the resources we already have; not elect people who are gonna hurt our planet even more researching "new" ways to create independence. In a nutshell: Jenny is still a democrat! If only I could find a politician who is a democrat that doesn't kill babies. That'd be great.

WPF

World Pulse Festival is held in South Bend every year, and was a Christian festival I'd never heard of until a few weeks ago. Several people at our church had free tickets, and Toby Mac and Mandisa (in addition to Skillet who I LOVE and also Casting Crowns) were playing. I have children who are big enough to have their own CDs--and have music in their DNA anyway!--and they were VERY IMPRESSED that I trusted them in their big-girl-ness to embark on an adventure like this. 50,000 people descended on this Indiana town to mark the last weekend of summer before school started, and it was amazing!!! Sunny and hot and crowded, but we loved it! And all you girlfriends who know me know that a day of cutie tattooed musicians screaming onstage about how much they love Jesus is just about as good a Saturday as you can get:) The best parts: going through the World Vision tent called "The African Experience" and having my Hannah writing notes to these forgotten African babies about how Jesus hasn't forgotten them. And my Skylar, watching her dance and worship and sing these loud songs, just like the preteen she is, excited about being big and being at a concert. People may think I"m lame for just wanting to hang out with my kids all the time, but I know I'll look back on these days with them THANKFUL that the three of us have created so many good memories!