October 2006

The time change has zero effect on babies.? The baby does not notice that the clock says it is 7:00am and we don’t plan to wake up until 8:00am because it is a Sunday, after all.? All the baby knows is that it’s roughly the same time we get up every Sunday, in fact it even seems like it is 8:00am so it must be time to wake up.? Right?

So therefore it seems like a pretty bad idea, in retrospect, to stay up an extra hour later last night hoping to use the time change to sleep in the next morning.? Yeah, won’t be making that mistake again soon.

I know you’ve all gotta be sick to death of hearing how happy I am… but damn.

I was just watching Oprah today (I know, I know…) and she had the Dixie Chicks on there talking about “the incident” and how that’s affected them, etc and so on.? Now, this isn’t a political blog and I never want it to be one.? I understand we are a nation divided and I can honestly respect people who have different political views from myself as long as they are not trying to push those beliefs on me (this goes for many issues, not just political ones). That said, this is a subject that I feel pretty strongly about and I wanted to mention it here, if not for anyone else than for posterity’s sake.

What happened?? I mean, maybe I’ve been ignorant for most of my life, but this isn’t the country I’ve always thought it was.? At least, not lately.? Ten years ago, I could NEVER have predicted the turn we’ve experienced.? I can’t comprehend how divided our country has become.? Was I just closing my eyes to the reality?? I always thought our country stood for something more.? The land of the free, home of the brave.? Free speech, and if even if you don’t agree with what someone is saying that you will defend their right to say it.? Open minds and open hearts.? What HAPPENED?? And why can’t we seem to fix this?

I never really liked the Dixie Chicks before, in the 90’s.? I’ve never been a huge country music fan (much to my husband’s disappointment), and they seemed ditzy and trashy to me.? Mostly, I just didn’t pay them much mind.? Then, “the incident” occured; they dared to speak against the president and the war during a small concert in London.? And all of the sudden they were branded as traitors.? Their music was yanked from radio stations.? They were sent DEATH THREATS.? Are you kidding me?? Seriously?? Who ARE these people??

Does anyone else not remember the 90’s?? When everyone’s favorite pastime was to bash Clinton in some way, shape or form?? Heck, I didn’t like it (being that I was a Democrat), but I didn’t think anyone shouldn’t be able to speak out against him because it was somehow un-patriotic.? It was their right, like it or no.? But NOW… now you can’t say boo about the president without it being some sort of treacherous action.? Suddenly, in the wake of 9/11, we can’t even think about questioning our government because that would be BAD.

What the HELL??

I don’t get it.? I’m sorry, but that’s not my America.? I’m hoping this is a phase.? That we’ll “outgrow” this nonsense.? That’s just what it is, nonsense.? And I hope that happens soon because there are SO many more important issues out there that we need to be worrying about.? Don’t you think?

We’re really very good about getting to church every weekend.? In fact, some weekends, it’s the only time we do get out.? Since we live so far from everything in town, we often plan to do all our errands, shopping, etc on Sundays because we’ll already be on that end of town for church.? We make a day of it; go out to lunch and I bring along a pump so I can let off the pressure during the day.? It works well for everyone and we get to go to church, which I’m actually enjoying these days.

Well, we’re a little low on funds these days.? I haven’t been working as much since Liam was born and we’ve had a lot of expenses lately (paying off bills and registering both vans, etc).? We knew we didn’t have enough money to both go out to lunch and do the grocery shopping we needed to do yesterday.? But church gets out after 12, and since we eat breakfast around 8 or 9, we’re pretty hungry by then.? So we were looking at being hungry while we shopped for groceries (NEVER a good idea), or going home first which also didn’t seem like such a hot idea since we’re also trying to conserve gas. I was of the opinion that maybe we should skip church this week.? We would be going down there anyhow on Wednesday for MOPS.? Which meant we could probably only afford one week of church before payday on the 31st.? I would rather go next weekend, but Kile really wanted to go.? Grudgingly, I acquiesed.

So both boys got piled into the van, I was on my way out (where IS that other shoe?? Oh, it’s in my hand.? Duh) and saw Kile getting back out of the van.? What was the deal?? Oh, nothing.? Except that the battery was DEAD.? Now, tell me that God wasn’t trying to give us a sign or something there.? Here it was, 20 after 10 already (church starts at 10:45 and it takes 20 minutes to get there, at least), and we had a dead battery.? We didn’t have car seats set up in the other van or else we could have taken that.? Besides, it was VERY low on gas.? Luckily, we have a super-charger that you just plug into an outlet and it’s supposed to charge up your battery in record time.? So we got that going.? By then it was about 10:30 and I told Kile, “I don’t think we’re going to make church.”? He agreed.? We decided to just go do some grocery shopping.? We’d even make an event out of it and go over to Walmart (where we could browse the toys for Harry’s sake, look at holiday goodness and play with the electronics).

I told Kile that when something like that happens, it becomes obvious we’re just NOT meant to go.? Who knows, maybe a bomb was gonna get dropped on the church or there’d be a 15 car pileup on the interstate and if we’d gone we’d been toast.? I sure wasn’t interested in tempting the fates.? So we got the battery charged up and drove over to the store (with the charger in the van, we aren’t stupid) and parked next to an outlet, just in case.? And you know what?? The day turned out okay.? We were starved by the time we got home about 1:30, but at least we had a good supply of groceries with which we could make lunch.

Mmm… hot dogs.