Oct 31, 2008

More Deep Thoughts...

*last night*

God loves me. I know because my skirt fell off in the middle of the parking lot at night, and not while I was onstage singing.

*on the drive home*

(I'm parked outside Carl's jr waiting for my congratulatory fried zuchini, watching a man stumble across the parking lot, sway on the curb, and hobble towards my car.) That guy looks a little drunk. I think I'll roll my windows up.

*a second later*

(watching as he adusts his pantleg over his huge, gargantuan leg-cast) I'm a complete jerk.

*This morning* I wonder if leprosy is related to chicken pox. I can't imagine anything more unsightly and disgusting.

My poor, poor babies. What would they think of me if they knew I made them suffer like this on purpose?

*at about 12:30 pm*
(standing in line at the city administration building)
Look at all those fairy princesses. Too bad they aren't old enough to vote yet.

Wow. I didn't know false eyelashes could have rhinestones.

That guy's counting the line, saying maybe McCain will win Utah before November 2. I wonder what he'd think if he knew I'm voting for the other guy?

I wonder how many of these people are voting for the other guy? It can't be just me, can it?

*at 3:24 pm*

is it a sign of immaturity if I adore any candy that has a radioactive grape flavor?

My kids will look back on today with fondness, even though right now they probably can't imagine a worse form of hell: unbearable itching and having to stay home from trick-or-treating.

Luckily, only the 6 year old really knows what she'd be missing. And she's well, so she can go. Thank goodness.

I've got to get some taffy flavored cookies before everyone else panicks and there's a run on the grocery stores.

Oct 28, 2008

another perspective on same-sex marriage

another very good argument expressing why we need to protect marriage.

Great games and activities for littles!

A website devoted to activities and games to make preschoolers happy and keep them busy during sacrament meeting, at home, or just fun ideas if you're drawing a blank on something to do to spend time playing with your kids one day. (happens to me a lot.) This website was recently put up by a friend of mine who is VERY good at these kinds of things...I already love it! There are all sorts of links to great free resources all over the internet. I've been looking for something like this for years! All those organized moms who have tons of special, spiritual stuff in sacrament meeting for their kids to play quietly with have made me jealous... no more.

Oct 24, 2008

Arguments for Prop 8: New Cool Thang

some compelling arguments for proposition 8 can be found at this site.

I have a hard time with this issue... this article helped me a lot. Thank you, new cool thang.

Oct 22, 2008

on natural healing and motherhood

My mother is an LPN (one step down from RN... she quit nursing school 2 weeks before graduation because my little sister wasn't tolerating childcare.) She is a skilled healer, and she just as liable to use ibuprophin or benadryl as she is to whip out the echinacea and tea-tree oil. When working on us, she used herbs and suppliments as carefully and judiciously as she used the allopathic medications, and I grew up appreciating the value in both.

That being said, I have a low tolerance for that which has not been proven, medically, to work... or that which just seems waaaay out there. For instance, I don't believe that a radiating ball in a pool of water can tell me which essential oil I should purchase (through the guy doing the treatment, of course.) I don't believe in muscle testing, except as an exercize of the preconceptions and prejudices of the subconscious mind (in the cases where it really seems to work for some oddball reason). Maybe I'm intolerant, or maybe I just want to make sure I don't subscribe to quackery because my kids' health is more important to me than loyalty to a certain philosophy of healing and its hypothetical diagnoses and cures.

But then there are the in-between things, which I have struggled to keep myself open minded to. Here are my experiences there:

1) I was getting recurring ear infections, and after three courses of antibiotics, a health-nut friend of mine reccomended I try going off of milk, because a "milk allergy" is common in almost 100% of adults, and colds are often a result of irritability due to allergic reaction. I was at the end of my rope, so I tried it...

I have been ear infection free (and largely, milk-free) ever since.

2) Essential oils. I have personally benefited from essential oils: peppermint oil has often provided me relief during a nasty sinus infection or cold. It's a natural decongestant; I can say that it works because it has helped me sleep through the night.

3) The humidifier. My baby contracted RSV one week after he was born. We suffered through a month of intermittent Doctor visits. Each time we went, he was on the edge of needing help, oxygen wise. We started keeping the humidifier on him full blast at night, with an essential oil in it, and he breathed much easier while he slept. He also had a markedly rapid recovery after we started. He, a newborn, never had to be hospitalized.

4) Colloidal silver. All three of my kids (newborn included) had ear infections this last winter. I have heard so many things lately about how antibiotics ought to be saved for dire situations, so that there are more options to try to treat a serious illness if it ever comes, but if the body has adapted to these other drugs it's less likely to be effective. So I thought, before I picked up the prescription for antibiotics, I'd try a particular brand of colloidal silver for a day. My neighbors had raved over it to me, and I had read a few anecdotes that seemed genuine. So, I put it in the affected ears and let them take a nap. I am not making this up when I say that, in each case, the ear infections did not last 24 hours. They were completely gone, as far as I could tell, a few hours after the application of the colloidal silver. After this worked with my girls, my newborn got ear infections in both ears, and was obviously very uncomfortable. I took him to the dr to get a prescription just in case, and tried the colloidal silver, putting it in each ear and lying him on his side for 15 minutes each, after he settled down for the night. When he woke, he showed no signs of irritablity.

5) Cranberry pills. My daughter was complaining that it burned every time she urinated. Other symptoms lead me to believe she had a urinary tract or bladder infection. As she wasn't feverish, I thought before I took her in I'd try cranberry. I got capsules at the Heatlh food store. I opened them up and gave her half-doses straight, having her drink water afterward. her complaints dissappeared within a day.

5) Dietary change and probiotics: My toddler has had recurrent diahhrea ever since she got old enough to have grown-up bowel movements. I noticed that she'd be all right for a few days, then have a long spell of awful diapers and stomach pain, then she'd be all right again. I thought the most likely cause would be dietary. Because the usual culprit is too much sugar, I tried that first: didn't work. The next most likely was dairy: tried that with limited sucess. I took her to the dr, who is an osteopath and more friendly to natural remedies: He prescribed a powerful probiotic and instructed me to give her a half-dose with her food every day. He told me it was likely that all the diahhrea had removed important flora from her intestines, and that this would help get her back on track if I made sure we didn't aggrivate her problem by giving her the foods that had continued to make her sick.

For about a week, I gave her the probiotic on her peanut butter sandwiches. I watched the dairy carefully. She started having normal diapers after a week of treatment. One day we went to a friends' house and she had cheese, and some diahhrea occurred for a day or two, now she's back to normal bowel movements.

So, from one mother to another: Don't dismiss everything that your doctor doesn't tell you as quackery. If it's not going to hurt anything (for instance, silver suspended in water isn't something you can easily overdose on, and acidophilus in probiotics is found in the food we eat every day, and cranberry can't poison you no matter how much of it you eat or drink)— try it. It just might work.

But also be careful: herbs ARE medicines, and there are some that you can OD on and get very sick. Do your research, and ask for help from a knowledgeable practitioner along with your natural healing.

Oct 9, 2008

What is feminism?

When I hear the word, "feminist," images come to mind of bra-burning, hillary clinton, a black-and-white picture of women marching with pickets, scenes from "stepford wives", Sheri L. Dew, Carol Lynn Pearson, Emmeline Wells, and a florid radio commentator spouting blustering rhetoric. You get the picture. Very conflicted.

The other day I met with a group of friends; other homeschooling moms, and one of them asked me, "Are you really a feminist, or are you just teasing us?"

I guess I have a hard time with the idea that feminism means femi-naziism, pro-abortionism, anti-stay-at-home-momism. To me, I have developed a view of my own views as feminist, because I have a passion for womens' issues. I feel so very strongly that women are Satan's primary focus of attack in our society right now, and we need to educate our girls so that they can become strong, self-assured, whole people who don't devalue themselves by thinking of child-rearing as demeaning and limiting, who don't think that they have to be a size two to be beautiful.

I'd like my daughters to grow up to become women who think of strength and health and vitality as their goal for their physical appearance. I'd like women in the church to see themselves as the supreme force for good, for motivating things like welfare and missionary work and strong families. I'd like women all over the world to realize that educating girls and women has an astronomically further reach (statistics show that children with educated mothers are healthier, more likely to do better in life, and that the families tend to stay together more.) And that limiting education to boys and men actually has a detrimental effect on society.

Women are so powerful. They have such a potential for influence in the world. Being a mother is not limiting or demeaning, it is the ultimate creative act: you are creating a person, helping them to create their worldviews, their values, their emotional stability and perceptions. The emotional climate of a home is far more influential that the physical climate of the geographical area in which a family lives; thus, motherhood is even more powerful than nature.

And even if your lot in this life is not to be a mother, women are intrinsicly capable of that kind of creativity, of that kind of influence for good in the world, the ability to nurture and teach and help those around us. Not just children, but anyone within our sphere of influence. Heavenly Father created us with those talents and capabilities.

This is why I consider myself a feminist. Women's issues are fascinating and vital to the well-being of the entire human race.

The idea that feminism is wrong, to me is offensive and sad. Let's not limit ourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Let's not let people like Rush Limbaugh tell us what we believe.

Oct 2, 2008

Race Across Azeroth

I had to laugh at this one, having known one or two video-game enthusiasts in my life...