Six Word Saturday (5/25/13)

Well, I Really Hate Being Sick

On Mother's Day I had a sore throat but I thought it felt neat.  Then the rest of that week I had a runny nose so I figured it was just a cold.  But so far all this week I've had this really bad cough and congestion, and my chest and stomach hurt from coughing.  I've been trying different medicines and Thursday night I got scared because I thought I had taken a different medicine less than 4 hours from the previous one and I was worried I was going to overdose and die.  My husband was really nice about it and was taking care of me.  Last night, however, I coughed about five times in a row, and my husband yelled at me that I should be able to control it, that it's all in my head.  He also doesn't think I need to go to the doctor but I said if my ears start hurting I'm going to, no matter what he thinks.  So I put a pillow over my face really hard every time I had to cough after that and I was kind of hoping to die.  About 3:00 a.m. this morning I woke up and my chest hurt so bad and I cried in the bathroom and prayed for God to help me, and I took an Advil for the pain and one cough drop, and when I woke up later this morning I did feel improvement.  Still coughing though but it doesn't hurt as much.  I just hope I'm not so lethargic because I've really slacked on the housework this week.

I finished Self-Compassion:  Stop beating yourself up and Leave Insecurity Behind by Kristin Neff.  I really liked this book.  You know how you wish someone could help you feel better when you're depressed or disappointed or worried?  This lady is that person.  I loved her explanations and I loved the exercises she gives.  I only wish I had had more time to ruminate on her words and actually do ALL the exercises in the book.

Monday night we went to my daughter's dance class recital.  I didn't recognize a single song.  They didn't even play any Michael Jackson this time.  Each of the girls in her 7th grade group had a "solo" dance during their song and my daughter did great on hers.  Is it me or does "dancing" nowadays look an awful lot like Dallas Cowboy cheerleader routines?

Wednesday in counseling I was telling my therapist how nervous I was about my anniversary the next day.  I didn't know how my husband was going to feel and I was annoyed that he was acting like it wasn't that big of deal and told me I should tell him exactly what I wanted.  This, after we had always wanted to do something kind of big for the 15th anniversary like go to Vegas again.  I was wondering how I could fix it so my husband would be more thoughtful, and my therapist showed me that my husband's reaction is HIS responsibility not mine.  

Turns out that my husband just got me a really funny card and some candy, although he really loved the present I got him.  He had to work Thursday night so we couldn't go out to eat till the weekend (which was fine because I was sick) and the rest of the night was like a normal day, nothing special.  And since I wasn't feeling well yesterday, my husband said we could postpone the anniversary dinner to next Saturday.

Today my husband's taking the kids (and a friend) to play paintball in El Paso so I have the house to myself for the day!

Six Word Saturday (5/18/13)

We're Counting Down to Summer Vacation

My kids have school Mon-Wed and half a day of school on Thursday and then they're done for the year!  I know for sure my son is looking forward to lazing around all summer and I hope my daughter finds enough things to keep her from being bored.

I don't know what to think about Dr. Gosnell being found guilty and having to spend life in prison.  I think the media's all too glad to put the abortion industry back in the closet even though there is information about another Gosnell-like doctor in Texas.  Unfortunately, I don't think abortion will ever be banned outright no matter how many atrocities get exposed.

In counseling Wednesday we were talking about how most of my paralyzing fears stem from people thinking I need help and can't do it on my own.  For example, after my first divorce everyone would basically nag me that I needed to go after my ex for child support, insinuating that I couldn't make it without the extra money.  I wish I hadn't let their nagging bother me.  I should have told them how he couldn't hold a job for more than a couple months when we were married and drank the money away anyway, so it was only my income that was used to "make it."  Trying something new always paralyzes me, and people aren't helping when they tell me to be careful or tell me to take someone with me or whatever.

Since I missed the showing of the Mother Teresa movie at San Albino two months ago, someone loaned me the VHS tape and I watched it Thursday.  Mother Teresa acted like Jesus to people, taking care of them and loving them.  She also explained that she and the other nuns do everything as an act of love to God, like treating everyone like they were Jesus.  I thought it was a pretty good movie.  I didn't realize she actually wasn't FROM India but was just "sent" there.

And then yesterday, after two days of my daughter complaining and acting like she was going to die, I took her to the doctor's again.  My husband thinks she's just being dramatic so he acts really impatient with her.  She screamed at me that she wanted to feel better and I felt helpless because she vetoed everything I was suggesting she try.  It really makes me feel like a bad mother when I don't know exactly how to make her feel better and everyone blames me.  The doctor tested her for strep again but thinks it's just allergies, so she's supposed to take Claritin.

Six Word Saturday (5/11/13)

Work Problem, Presents, and October Baby

Every Monday my supervisor emails me the job numbers for all the assignments I typed the previous week so I can put them on my invoice and email it back for payment.  One Monday about eleven months ago I didn't get the job numbers emailed to me, so I waited till the next week thinking I'd get them for sure then.  But the next Monday I got only the job numbers for the previous week like usual, so my supervisor had to "figure out what happened."  When I finally got the numbers, it was sent by someone else because my supervisor got fired.  Anyway, two weeks ago I didn't get the email for my job numbers, my "new" supervisor had to figure out what happened, and somebody else sent me the numbers.  I hope my second supervisor didn't get canned.

Me and my husband's anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks.  I ordered something from Personalization Mall and also ordered a personalized card.  The present is a canvas art:

For our personalized fill-ins, I listed most of our vacation destinations for the past 15 years.  I also put our kids' names, our current dogs' names, my husband's website name, and M*A*S*H (since we watch an episode every night).  I'm hoping he will like it.  For the card, it says "Happy 15th Anniversary" on the outside, and inside I quoted something from "Taxi"!  Louie (the lovable-but-awful dispatcher) had the chance to see his ex-girlfriend Zena before she left on her honeymoon.  Alex (the "smart" cab driver) was annoyed that Louie missed her wedding and said he (Louie) could've said something classy to her like "Happiness is hard to come by in this life and you've given me more than my share."  Louie barges in Zena and her new husband's room on the cruise ship and at first starts fighting with her husband so Zena tries to kick him out.  He ends up doing the right thing and dejectedly tells her that sweet line.  So that's what I quoted in my card, because I know my husband will remember that episode.

Thursday night I went to San Albino Catholic Church in Mesilla for another pizza/movie night.  The movie was "October Baby."  I had heard a little about the movie (a girl who was born from a failed abortion attempts to find her birth mother).  Even the KnockTV series "Surrender the Secret" included watching the movie and included some clips from it in that episode.  I came away from the movie thinking it felt really short!  I also wish there had been more of a story about the "abortive mother" because she wasn't in the movie very long.  Also to me the movie didn't imply that the abortive mother and the girl had any more connection after the initial one.  I had kept a napkin with me in case I cried during the movie but I never even teared up.  I will say that John Schneider looked AMAZING in this movie - HOT even!!  Oh my goodness.  He plays the adoptive dad of the girl in the movie.  I remember him from his Bo Duke days on Dukes of Hazard in the '70s and then his country star mustache days in the '90s.  But now!  Hummina, hummina! 

Six Word Saturday (5/4/13)

Triangle Meal, Anniversary, and Dr. Gosnell

A week ago I went to the monthly gathering of past Rachel's Vineyard retreat attendees for lunch.  The theme was "triangle meal," i.e., all the food was in the shape of a triangle.  They had ordered pizza from someone who made low-salt healthier pizza (and it wasn't that good).  Triangle-shaped crackers and cheese.  They also served a half a dozen different kinds of cheesecake.  I didn't talk much.  After we finished eating, we prayed a rosary and then went home.

Wednesday (May 1) was my son's real first wedding anniversary.  They pretended to elope on Halloween before he left for USAF basic training and my husband had insisted they were lying and he kept checking for a marriage license online and finally found one for May 1, 2012.  Her parents signed as witnesses.  They married in a park in town and left me out.  (Maybe if my husband wasn't such a PRICK we could've been included, right?)  The other really strange thing about that is May 1st is my son's ex-girfriend Somara's birthday.  I wonder if he did that intentionally to get back at her or something.  At any rate, I went to counseling and talked about his "real" anniversary and how much I miss Somara, and I actually felt comfortable enough to cry.

Another "anniversary" of sorts on May 1 was the first day back on the internet for Paul Miller of tech site TheVerge.com.  He gave up the internet for a year - no email, no YouTube, no Google!  He wrote articles about it and put them on a zip drive for his employer to upload.  I followed the whole Offline series and it was pretty good.  He summed up his experience by saying, "The internet doesn't make me who I am; I do it to myself, thanks."  In other words, he thought the internet had been a big time-waster for him, but when he didn't have access to it, he found other stuff to waste his time on.  That just inspires me to be more aware of what I was doing online myself.

This trial of Dr. Gosnell is driving me crazy, I tell you.  Granted, the media supposedly isn't covering it very well but I can (and do) find plenty about it on the internet.  I bet you he'll be acquitted or at least just given fines.  I feel that shedding light on other clinics that admit they leave babies in failed abortion attempts to just die is actually helping the defense in Gosnell's case, as sick as that sounds, because to me it seems like saying "everyone's doing it so it must be okay."  Anyway, I found a transcript of a nurse's testimony at a 1996 hearing about "partial-birth abortion" (where everything but the head is delivered and then ensuring demise), and even as a LEGAL procedure, "I saw the baby move in the pan.  I asked another nurse and she said it was just 'reflexes.'"  Sound familiar?  Well, as I said, I bet this jerk walks free till he has to answer to God.  When he dies, he'll be in hell with the asshole who performed my abortion.

Six Word Saturday (4/27/13)

Is It Ever Going To End?

Last Saturday my daughter went to a teen lock-in at a pizza place overnight.  By Monday, surprise, she was sick and complaining her throat and chest were burning when she breathed.  Well, ever since the kids went back to school after Christmas, she has stayed home from school pretty much one day a week (with a "headache," "stomachache," "someone's bullying me," "I'm tired," etc.), so I intended to make sure she was genuinely sick so she wouldn't get in trouble so I took her to the doctor.  She has a bronchial infection so the doctor ordered her to stay home the rest of Monday and Tuesday, and take some antibiotics.  Wednesday she cried and said she still felt horrible so I called the school and said I was keeping her home.  She did go to school Thursday, and they had a "snow day" yesterday.  Then yesterday, after not complaining all day and my husband went to hang out with his friend that afternoon, my daughter starts screaming like she's being stabbed to death.  It scared the hell out of me because five minutes before that she was laughing and watching a movie with her brother when my husband left.  She screamed that her ear hurt really bad.  I put some drops specifically FOR ear pain in her ear, she still screamed.  I was THISCLOSE to calling an ambulance!  My son had some painkiller leftover from when he got his tooth pulled and I gave her 3/4 of a dose of it.  It started working about 20 minutes later and she fell asleep for four hours, and I kept going in every half hour to make sure she was still alive (because the prescription wasn't for her and I felt guilty).  I was sure my husband was going to be mad at me for giving it to her, but HE didn't hear that girl screaming!  He actually wasn't upset except to chide me for believing her "drama queen" antics.  At any rate, it looks like I'm getting to take her to the doctor again on Monday if she's too sick to go to school.

In counseling, my therapist's cell phone keeps going off.  It distracts me.  It also "triggers" me to remember when my ex-friend J got a phone call once during our Bible study and she laid on the couch for 25 MINUTES talking to someone (who actually turned out to be my therapist since she goes to the same guy).  I hate my ex-friend, so now I just feel like running out of his office when his phone goes off.  Even if he doesn't answer it.  Even if he just glances to see who it is.  (When my ex-friend had talked for so long, I ended up leaving her house and peeling out of her driveway.)  I just can't do this, and I brought it up a couple weeks ago and his "solution" is to work with me on dealing with my reaction to his phone.  Get that?  It feels rude and abusive to me for his phone to keep going off during my session, so HE wants ME to learn to tolerate the abuse.  (Oh, by the way, he "can't" turn his phone off because it might be someone like his elderly parents having an emergency.  What the hell is his SECRETARY for?)

Lastly, commenting about the Gosnell trial.  Adding to the comments I made here last week, I agree with the comments by Lauren Kathryn McCall on the American Thinker website (her piece called "What difference does it make?"), which basically states that everyone is appalled that Gosnell's clinic was filthy and the staff was unprofessional but post-abortive women (like herself, and even myself) went to a clean clinic with a professional licensed doctor - but what difference does it make?  NONE!  All of us were scared and told an abortion would fix everything and we could go on with life as normal, but it was a LIE!  We will never be the same.  I also agree with another column I just read this morning by Matt Barber of WND titled "Much ado about nothing," which is full of complete sarcasm but actually made me feel better.  His tagline was "What do you think abortionists do, heal people?"  I wonder if maybe God is using Gosnell to wake people up.

Six Word Saturday (4/20/13)

Comments on Things in the News

1. Saturday night I found out the author Brennan Manning died on 4/12.  I had just gotten his book "Ragamuffin Gospel" from the library since I enjoyed reading "Abba's Child" a couple years ago.  He had been in poor health for a while so I can't say I was shocked to hear this.
   
2. The Gosnell trial, about that abortion "doctor" in Pennsylvania with the filthy clinic and performing late-term "abortions."  The details are horrible and it's been a ping-pong game of media finger pointing because the trial barely got any coverage but now it's getting a little.  Even if I agreed with my Facebook friends who post comments about it, I feel like I don't have a right to an opinion because I've had an abortion before.
   
3. The Boston marathon.  One of the two guys responsible is dead and the other is in custody (so we get to hear about him through all his trials for the next five years).  I wonder why the city officials told everyone to stay home cowering in fear.  Now the next dopes who decide to do something bad will know there won't be any resistance then either.  After 9/11/01, the people in NYC were told to go on with business as usual, and there are a lot more people there than Boston!

Six Word Saturday (4/13/13)

Not That Much Is Going On

Last Saturday night my husband took me and the kids (plus my daughter's friend) to Uno's for dinner.  We had wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse but there was a huge wait.  I still got a steak and a couple glasses of wine at Uno's though.

Monday we went to the library and there was road construction en route.  It was scary also because it was really windy that day.  My daughter ran the books in for me and helped find an alternate route home so I wouldn't be so nervous.  I didn't request any new books.

In counseling we're kind of doing "empty chair" therapy (where you pretend a certain person is in a chair).  My therapist's cell phone vibrated and I could hear it, so we talked about that, how I forgot I was supposed to ask him if I was important as the caller was.  I think it's strange that I have to alter my behavior like that for him instead of him just turning the stupid phone off and leaving it on the floor in plain sight (because he claims he's scared he'll forget to turn it back on when my session's over). 

I finished the assignments every day of Week 1 of the Mindfulness book I'm reading.  The short meditation focused on your breath, the routine activity I made myself fully aware of was taking out the garbage, and the "habit releaser" I used was sitting in a different chair than normal when I ate.  I read this week's chapter and the meditation is twice as long but I only have to do it twice a day for six days instead of all seven like the first week.

Right now my dog Hershey is at Petsmart getting groomed.  I don't know why they say his appointment's at 10 because we got there and they told me he'd be there waiting for three or four hours.  Next month after Princess gets her rabies shot, she will be getting groomed too, but maybe I will have it done during the week and there won't be such a long wait for her.