Sleeping...

I've somehow gotten worse at it. I remember, though it's rather hazy, the completely sleep deprived days of the the girls' newborn days/nights. I remember thinking 3 hours in a row was a marvelous achievement and how Randy and I used to switch over every 3 nights for bottle duty once they starting mostly sleeping through the night. But, over the past two months I've forgotten what it feels like to feel rested again.

I think it's mostly because I'm not in my own bed. My in-laws are amazing people, who have opened their home to us, but apparently I was much more tied to my own bed than I realized, becuase this one just doesn't cut it. And the couch isn't wide enough, so I don't sleep as well.

Ah well. It's a minor sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. And I am able to take naps most every day, which is great. So, maybe I need to think this whole bedtime thing and go to bed earlier. We'll see.

I haven't upheld the writing every day things, so I'm starting with writing about the mundane in the hopes that it will lead to bigger and better things. :)

Reboot Version 900.2

So, I have lines and lines of wonderful topics to post about, however I always forget to post. So, in an effort to get back in the habit of writing, I am going to make a concerted effort of writing every day during the girls' nap. From 1:00-1:30 p.m. every day I need to write. No matter what. I'll have this blog and another new one about chastity and etc. for MS and HS students and then jump from that to my fiction novels. Whew. Sound good. Go!

period pieces...

So, as of Thursday last week I am single and childless....for about three weeks. And I'm keeping very busy, for the most part. However, I have started watching a lot more movies, since from the time I get home from work until bedtime I have no one to chill with.

While watching some of my movies that I don't generally inflict upon Randy I realized that in my top ten list are the following movies:

Casablanca
Remains of the Day
Sense & Sensibility
Separate Tables

All of these deal with unrequited love and three of them end unhappily. Also, they're all set before 1960. So, when I tried to fill out the remaining spots on my top ten list it looked like this: (in no particular order)

Casablanca
Remains of the Day
Sense & Sensibility
Separate Tables
Up
The Return of the King
SW IV:A New Hope
Sandlot
Beauty & the Beast
Robin Hood (Disney version)

Now, of that list, all but one deals with some sort of unrequited love or a great longing for love (Sandlot). And only one (Up) is set in modern times. Everything else is fantasy or before 1960.

I think that reflects my own imagination. I very strongly prefer film to be an escape. Gritty, modern films don't let me escape. They make me uncomfortable and having to face things I'd rather not. Now, I've seen some heart-breakingly beautiful films set in modern times...The Constant Gardener comes to mind. But film should take us where we cannot travel, to places and times either long gone or far, far away.

Hmm, which movie shall I watch tonight? :)

About 20 missed ideas...

THis weekend I had about 20 fabulous ideas for short blog posts. Just little cutesy, smart, clever posts that would showcase my wit.

Sadly, they've mostly escaped. I'll write them down next time so everyone can begin sharing in my wry observations of life.

That is all.

Enjoy the sunshine.

How I have changed...

A few years ago...we'll say a decade and less, I was a huge supporter of NOW (National Organization of Women), because it put itself out there as a promoting of equal rights for women, for cracking down on abuse against women issues, and in the fight to end discrimination against women of all colors, sexual orientation, etc. which I was totally on board with and was excited about!

But, the whole abortion thing hurts. They now talk about having to win the fight against "fetal personhood". Because if we call a fetus a person, abortion will be murder.

Abortion is murder.

Even when I was pro-choice, I always was able to acknowledge that it was yet another form of murder, since we have so many legal ways for murder available in this country.



But, to read the language taken from the website:

"If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's [Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.

In other words, if opponents can convince the Supreme Court that "times have changed" since Roe was decided and that a fetus should now be recognized as a "person" under the Constitution, then abortion would immediately become an act of murder in every state across the country."



The thing is, regardless of what the law reads...a fetus is a person.

When it is wanted, pro-choice people refer to it as a baby. As in, "Surprise, we're going to have a baby!"

When it is unexpected, unwanted, suddenly it doesn't count as one, for unknown reasons that break my heart.

No baby is a mistake. No baby did anything wrong by being created. Perhaps the circumstances leading up to conception were bad choices, perhaps even violent ones (though that percentage is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR lower than pro-choice organizations would have you believe). But the baby itself has not done anything wrong.

That is why it is murder. Cold-blooded murder.

To hear about a baby being talked about so coldly hurts me so deeply, because I look at my two wonderful girls and I think about my little Adi who didn't get very far. And even though she was only eight weeks old in my womb when she stopped developing, I know she was human, that she was a person, that she was not just a random clump of blood and tissue. I saw her. I held her little body in my hand and she had arms and legs and a head...she was a person.

To deny that a fetus is not a human is so hard for me to understand. Yet, these are often times the same people who argue against capital punishment, war, torture...but somehow, a little, tiny, completely innocent baby is not worthy of being protected or respected.

That disconnect sends me reeling sometimes.

I don't know how to fix it. Well, that's not entirely true. I work with young people, teaching them how to respect themselves and others and to remain chaste outside of marriage. I work with young women, teaching them that saying 'no' to physical advances by young men is difficult, but shows how much they respect themselves and WOW - guys do respect that...at least, the guys worth spending time with respect it. Of course, I do all this 'ground work' within the teachings of the Catholic Church, so I am immediately discounted by people, which is a shame.

Although the Church is made up of sinners, some of whose sins are atrocious and hurt me deeply, the Church herself is perfect. Christ founded the Church, so it is perfect. That we are all sinners is something of a comfort to me because it reminds me that when I fall - so has everyone else, including Peter, and he's the ROCK of the Church.

So, although my voice, and those like mine will always be a quiet whisper in the din, I keep speaking, because if even one life may be inspired, even one life saved from abortion, one life given guidance to walk closer to the right path....a beautiful, wonderful, amazing thing has happepened.

More randomness

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see. (I got 46!!!)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I don't have this capability here, so if there's a * by it I loved it)
4) Reprint this list in your own so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 *The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 *Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 *To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 *The Bible (just wanted to mention this isn't meant to be read like a normal book, cover to cover)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 *Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (stopped after one chapter...the sentence structure couldnt' draw me in)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 *Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (isn’t this under no. 33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 *A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 *The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 *Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Something to distract me...

1. One Movie that Made you Laugh: French Kiss

2. One Movie that Made you cry: The Constant Gardener

3. One Movie that you loved when you were a child: Newsies

4. One Movie that you've seen more than once: Jaws

5. One Movie you loved but were embarrassed to admit it: Maid in Manhattan

6. One Movie that you hated: Cloverfield

7. One Movie that Scared You: Silence of the Lambs

8. One Movie that bored you: The Weatherman

9. One Movie that everyone loves but you don’t see why: The Godfather

10. One Movie that made you miserable: Seperate Tables

11. One Movie that you weren't brave enough to see: Passion of the Christ.

12. One Movie character that you've fallen in love with: Elinor Dashwood, from Sense and Sensibility (I love Emma Thompson)

13. The Last Movie you saw: Sherlock Holmes.

14. The Next Movie you hope to see: Clash of the Titans

15. Your Favorite Movie: Casablanca

I am so tired of being in pain. And today is even a good day, relatively speaking. Only my right wrist is really bad today.

But, constant, chronic pain. I forget what it's like to be without it. Both ankles, both knees, my hips if I've had a few bad days with my ankles, both shoulders, and my right wrist.

I know people deal with much worse. But pain meds are doing much right now, my PT doesn't seem to be working and any time I have a "normal" day of movement I'm laid up for 2-3 days and then spend the next week or two on what I consider normal movement, which is almost none compared to a healthy person.

I'm not even 30 years old, I'm overweight, in constant pain and right now I don't see a stop to my situation. Oh...this is a bad day. Tomorrow will be better.

tired again...and probably cranky

I think I overreact immediately to things when they go against my own mindset. I, sadly, take them in the wrong direction and begin thinking negative thoughts.

Turns out my own presuppositions were incorrect in this case and I need to check my mental ramblings and rantings before they get out of hand.

I need to focus more in myself and my opportunities and my responsibilities. Enough of this casting stones at others. There is much I need to do to improve. As I am aware of that, there is not excuse when I do not take the time to accomplish it.

I know this is rather vague, but, it will continue to be so, unless I'm talking about family.

Ok. Out.

disenheartened...

by the apparent lack of understanding. The Catholic Church, among it's many myriad of things, is supposed to be a center of social activity for the parish family.

If we start eliminating events, activities, trips, simply because they are social in nature we risk relagating ourselves even further to the 'Sunday-morning-only' mentality.

Even in the context of a social event one begins and ends the evening with prayer and does activities and games with a faith twist. But to inject fun, socialness, and that sense of community that used to have dances held on the weekends at churches, families milling about, kids playing games now seems more commonly reserved for a few special weekends a year, rather than the norm.

By deigning ourselves above such nonsense we are creating an even wider gulf between those who understand and embrace their faith and those who have a passing interest. We need to reach out to those and show them the wondrousness of the church - and, to be honest - we need to do some of that as a purely social part.

If the people on the sidelines start socializing with their fellow parishioners they make friends; their kids make friends and soon everyone starts relating their faith ona daily basis based upon the make up of their gorup of friends and they have a vested interested in the faith because it intrudes on every aspect of their lives, as it is supposed to.

But, instead there is a growing idea among certain people that if it isn't truly, authentically, 100% Catholic at all times, forget having fun, what's the point. It hurts me. My own participation in the Church my entire life has been on all levels - the social, the fun, the faith, the learning, the worship.

We cannot effectively separate out the parts. When we do we lose so much.

One year and counting...

And so we've officially entered their second year of life, having completed the one-year check-up.

Wow. Over one year of having twins. Pretty soon I'll be that mom offering encouragement to new moms of multiples b/c mine are graduated from college. What a wonderful life this is, with two of them.

It hasn't been easy. In fact, I think it's getting more difficult as they become more mobile, especially as I lose mobility. My tendonitis struck with a vengence this past week, causing me to lose the ability to walk for three days b/c of my left ankle and right knee. I kept thinking it would get better as it had in the past, but eventually, but Sunday morning I could not move, I could not sleep, I had to crawl to get anywhere and even that was painful I realized I needed to do something.

Making the trip to urgent care by myself was probably one of the most bone-headed decisions I made, but I survived. I sat in the car for two minutes before going in, because although I had parked as close as possible without using handicapped spots, it was still probably 300 ft to the entrance and I wasn't sure how I was going to make it without help.

I cried, I prayed, I rubbed a rosary through my fingers, and finally forced myself out the door. I barely made it to the entrance and the very kind security guard plopped me in a wheel chair and got me to the desk. Once there, things moved very quickly and I was ordered to take steroid pills for a week to decrease the inflamation and do a follow-up with an rheumologist. At least it's not MS. What a frightening thought. Though, as with all things, managable should it have happened. But steroid pills are amazing. There is still a hint of pain and stiffness, which is a good thing, but I am able to get up and move around, for which I am very grateful. I'll be doing more rounds of tests and physical therapy and hopefully, before too long, this super cold weather will disappear and I can get better.



My girls are amazing. Today they had their one-year check-up. Skinny-minny Mae is in the 7th percentile for weight, but over 75% for height. She's such a monkey. She climbs up on everything, including out couch. She's walking everywhere and love to explore and meet new people. Eve, squishy, snuggly Eve is 50% for everything. She loves to look at books and play with our dogs.

25 Things I love about Mae:

long skinny legs
'are you watching what I'm about to do' face
troublemaker laugh
enthusiasm for french fries
the way she picks up slices of cheese
the way she holds her bottle nonchalantly with one hand
when she walks around with her bottle
when she yells when we put her down for a nap (not a cry, mind you)
the way she splashes in the tub
how she walks around the play mat
that she can stack three blocks together
the way she holds her hands to her chest while walking
the way she clasps/unclasps her right hand when she's concentrating
her side-smile
when she shuts her eyes because her smile is too big
that she loves talking on anything phone-like
when she steals her sister's nuk, just to steal it
her hurt face was a toy is taken from her
how she stands on the fence at the kitchen to yell at the dogs
how she always seems to have a runny nose
how pink her cheeks are when she wakes up
that she wakes up grumpy from naps
she enjoys rubbing lotion on her hands
when she randomly shrieks in hapiness
the way she reaches for strangers out of sheer joy


25 things I love about Eve:

her soft belly
the way she snuggles when she's the first one up in the morning
the way she puts her nuk in her mouth
that she still prefers someone else to hold her bottle for her
she can eat half an orange in one sitting
how she says "yaw, yaw, yaw"
she loves the dogs SO much
her deep belly laugh
that she plays with her hair, just like her momma does
she can walk, but only when there's something big and bulky in her arms, like a suitcase
how she hates to have hard soled shoes on
the way she melts when she's upset
the way she smiles around her nuk
how she hugs stuffed animals
watching her crawl through her tunnel
the way she sits on toys for minutes on end
the way she pulls piles of clothes apart and whips them onto the floor
when we look through books together
her greetings of "hey" in a very mellow voice
that she's a little shy sometimes
her birthmark on her big toe
how round her eyes are
all her teeth (ten at last count)
how sensitive her little baby feelings are
that she prefers just a diaper to clothes, even in winter when the house isn't that warm