Duct Tape Alert!

I don't know if he still does it, but when I first started listening to Glenn Beck's radio show about 7 years ago he often spoke of the need to wrap his head in duct tape to keep it from exploding. Well, I am looking for the duct tape today!

I just read an article on Catholic Exchange about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments about the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger. In addition to describing herself as "in awe" of Sanger, she said, "The 20th century reproductive rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race. She also said that Sanger’s work "is not done." Really? The most transformational? Well, I guess I can agree with that -- but not in the positive way that Mrs Clinton sees it. New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith questioned Mrs. Clinton saying, "Sanger’s prolific writings dripped with contempt for those she considers to be unfit to live. Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist and racist, who said, and I quote, ‘The most merciful thing a family does for one of its infant members is to kill it.’ She also said, on another occasion, quote, ‘Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.’" Congressmand Smith then asked her in regard to the undone work of Sanger if the Obama administration seeks "in any way to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries, either directly or through multilateral organizations, including and especially the United Nations, African Union, or the OAS, or by way of funding NGOs like Planned Parenthood?" What do you think Mrs Clinton's answer was? Of course she confirmed that the Obama administration’s definition of "reproductive health" includes abortion, and that, "We are now an Administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproductive health care."

So in other words we are an Administration that supports women who choose to murder their offspring. Great. Of course none of us should be surprised by this. Didn't we know what we were getting when we (as a nation, not me personally) elected Mr Obama?

I think the worst part of this article is the fact that Mrs Clinton gives so much praise to Margaret Sanger and to eugenics. I seriously doubt that Mrs Clinton would stand up and say to us "I support the extermination from the human race of the poor, poor, disenfranchised, weak, disabled, people of color, and the unborn child." But isn't that what she says when she speaks so highly of Margaret Sanger? I for one am very worried about the state of our nation with regard to human life, especially with Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama as leaders.

On March 28 Mrs Clinton was awarded the Margaret Sanger Award by Panned Parenthood. This was right after she made a trip to Mexico's Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Did you know that Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the pro-life movement?

Here's a picture that absolutely turned my stomach --
Do you see the caption on it?? If I remember this news story correctly she also asked during this visit to Mexico who that lady was in the pictures -- it was Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe. I can only pray that Mary turns Mrs Clinton's heart and helps her repent for her support of abortion as a "reproductive right".

Technology is driving me batty!

OK...I admit it. In many ways I'm a luddite. According to Merriam-Webster a luddite can broadly be defined as a person "opposed to technological change". It's not so much that I'm opposed to it; I just can't handle the encroachment of technology on my everyday life.

1. I have a cell phone but it's pre-paid (at a rate of 25 cents per minute) and I very rarely use it. I bought it for emergencies. I almost never give out the number and don't answer calls unless I recognize the name or number on the caller-id.

2. When I want to listen to music I turn on the radio in the van or the radio in the house. I don't have an I-Pod or any such device. I'm not entirely sure I could download songs from the internet even if I wanted to.

3. I don't have a Palm Pilot; I have a calendar on the wall next to my desk.

4. Speaking of desks...I do have a computer. It's a desktop computer that's probably outdated but it works for me. We do have a laptop computer that we bought used from my brother-in-law but it mostly stays in the closet.

5. Speaking of outdated, I LOVE the version of Quicken that I use to keep track of our bank accounts and investments but it's from 1999. I haven't bothered to update since then because what I am using works just fine for me.

6. We finally caved and got high-speed internet through AT&T. Really, the only reason we did that was because it was bundled with the cable channel package we wanted. Before that we had dial-up internet because there wasn't any DSL service available in our neighborhood.

As much as I do love certain aspects of technology, I find that it can easily get in the way. I've recently signed up for Facebook and before I knew it I had over 100 friends there. I didn't realize that I even knew that many people! I have to limit the time I spend on Facebook because I know that I could easily become addicted to it. In fact, I have several friends who have given up Facebook for Lent. I like Facebook because I've been able to reconnect with friends from high school and am able to keep up with people easily through the website. E-mail is another part of technology that I really do like. I do business for my organic meat co-op through e-mail and also find that it's easier to send someone a quick note rather than call them and sometimes end up on the telephone for 20 or 30 minutes. But at the same time the e-mail is so informal and seems to distance us from each other. Hmmmm....that's an entirely new blog topic and I think I'll save it for tomorrow.

I sat down a little while ago to check e-mails and saw that I have 588 unread e-mails! How does that happen? Well, I don't always have a lot of time to sit at the computer and read/respond to them so I will skan the subject lines and only open the ones that I think need to be dealt with right now. Sometimes I will open one, read it, and then mark it as "unread" so that I will remember to respond to it later. I do that because I often am nursing the baby while checking e-mails and have a hard time typing one-handed!

Back to my original point...technology is driving me batty! Too many e-mails, too many electronic devices, too little time spent just playing with the kids and reading books to them. It's probably not driving you batty...it's probably just me. I think I'll write more later on the idea of technology putting us in our own little bubbles. Right now, though, I want to to and read books with my kids.

My Birthday Project

Yes -- I chose a project for my birthday. Don't most people do that? No? OK...I never claimed to be like "most people" anyway. I chose to empty out my bedroom and paint it today. Then I went ahead and pulled up the carpet so I could decide what to do with the floors. I thought I might like to live with the concrete floors and even considered painting them. Now that I've had bare concrete floors for a few hours I'm already planning on saving up for laminate floors. LOL! I am just so tired of dealing with carpet that I would rather deal with the concrete for a while until I can get the money together. Below are a couple of BEFORE and AFTER pictures of parts of the room. Before we painted, the walls were white (except for inside the windows which my dad had already painted when I replaced the blinds) and the carpet was 11-year-old cheap builder's grade tan. Now the walls are sort of a slate blue and the floors are...well...concrete. The blue showed up much brighter in the pictures than it actually looks on the wall. The best part about the paint is that I am now ALMOST DONE painting the entire house! I still have one more coat to put in our bathroom and a little bit of touch-up here and there. We had the builder just paint all the walls white when we built the house almost 11 years ago and finally started painting about 2 years ago. I was so tired of white walls that I have created a very colorful (some would say too colorful) house. But I like it and I enjoyed my birthday project. I especially enjoyed having a babysitter come over and keep my 4 children occupied for a good chunk of the day while we worked!

The dresser where we usually have a 10 gallon fish tank.

The corner of the room right next to me VERY yellow bathroom.

We messed up the vinyl a little pulling up the carpet tack strips.

The blue in this picture is fairly accurate. I can't wait to get all my books back on the shelf!

The Slippery Slope of Reproductive Rights

"It's my opinion that a woman's right to reproduce should be limited to a number which the parents can pay for," Charles Murray wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Daily News. "Why should my wife and I, as taxpayers, pay child support for 14 Suleman kids?"

Wow! So if I follow his logic out just a little farther will I get to the point where the state will be in my bedroom telling me to use birth control because they don't think that we can support any more children? What about the family with 2 or 3 or 4 or 10 or 11 children who is supporting themselves just fine but then tragedy strikes in the form of a job layoff? Suddenly they are at the point where they are having to choose between the mortgage payment, the electricity bill, or groceries.

"From the outside you can tell that this woman was playing the system," host Bryan Suits said on the "Kennedy and Suits" show on KFI-AM. "You're damn right the state should step in and seize the kids and adopt them out."

According to Mr Suits, where is the line that needs to be crossed before the state steps in and seizes children from families who have fallen on hard times? Maybe he's only talking about families who, in his opinion, are "playing the system". But who decides that? There are so many families with any number of children who are only one or two paychecks away from disaster.

These opinions scare the living daylights out of me. Maybe that's because I have 4 children so far and hope that we are blessed with more. In this new world of "hope and change" should I someday expect to have to apply for a permit to have another child? Will I have to justify that choice by providing tax returns for a few years to show we can afford to raise another child? And who decides the cost of raising a child? If I am to believe the media reports I've read in the last few years it will cost in the neighborhood of $250,000 to raise each of my children. That certainly makes me laugh! Either we live in a totally different world from the people who calculated those numbers or my poor children are completely deprived.

What I find interesting about the recent case of Ms Suleman, the mom who just gave birth to octuplets, is that it seems to be the most rabid pro-choice people who are spewing hate all over the internet. She CHOSE to give birth instead of "selectively reducing" the number of babies. She CHOSE life over death. She CHOSE to use the embryos instead of allowing them to be destroyed, used for medical testing, or donating them to another couple. As a rabid pro-life person myself, I commend her for choosing life for the babies. I'm just saddened that she put herself in that position to begin with by creating life in a petri dish.

So to answer Mr Murray's question, "Why should my wife and I, as taxpayers, pay child support for 14 Suleman kids?" Maybe because you have a vested interest in ALL children succeeding and being able to support themselves some day. Maybe because you don't want the state in your bedroom telling you whether you have permission to conceive a child. Maybe because those children didn't do anything wrong and deserve the basic human rights of a safe place to live and safe food to eat. Maybe because those children will someday make great contributions to our society. Maybe because it's just the right thing to do.

Watch THIS VIDEO and think about it.

Obama defends life. Really??

According to the White House blog, here is an excerpt from President Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast this past Wednesday in Washington DC.....

"There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all. But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know." (I added the emphasis on the last 2 sentences.)

Really Mr President? Those are very kind words. I'm impressed. But I have a question. Is there any human life more innocent than that of an unborn baby living in its mother’s womb?

I'm getting new living room furniture!

No, it's not "new" but it's "new to me". I'm so excited about it! We were able to get a great deal from a local guy who was selling it on CraigsList. He's even going to deliver it tomorrow afternoon so I don't have to go rent a truck.

It's all leather and includes a sleeper sofa, a dual-reclining loveseat, a rocker/recliner, and a large ottoman with storage. It's originally from a high-end leather store that custom makes furniture at their facility about 30 miles north of here so it's MADE IN THE USA and not in China. I think that might be the best part for me. I looked at some furniture at Haverty's a few months ago and asked the salesman where it was made. He actually laughed at me and told me that no furniture is made in the US anymore. Guess he was wrong.

We paid cash for the furniture that is only about a year old and paid about 30% of the retail price. My point in writing about this is to show that if you "live like no one else" as Dave Ramsey says then later on you can "live like no one else". It does take patience, though, to save up the money and wait for the right deal to come along.

Here's a picture of the entire set that he posted with his CraigsList ad.

It's lighter than we had planned to buy but it was such a great deal that I was willing to compromise some on the color.

Paying down the mortgage

I am working on our monthly budget for the new year in my Quicken program and just realized something. In a few months we will have more of our monthly mortgage payment going toward principle than toward interest! That's never happened before!! We used to have a 30 year mortgage and only about $200 each month went toward the principle...way less than what was going toward interest. We refinanced last year to a 15 year mortgage and I'm so amazed at how quickly the numbers are changing.

Another exciting thing for us is that my husband just got a sort-of promotion at work and will be getting a raise along with it. Since we have a fully funded emergency fund (baby step 3 per Dave Ramsey) and are already putting 15% of our income into retirement (baby step 4 per Dave Ramsey) we will be able to dump all of his raise onto our mortgage every month. I'm excited to see those numbers go down even faster!! Take a look at your own budget and your mortgage and see if you can do the same thing. What a great feeling it will be when we can finally say that we OWN our house!