And having so much fun.  I haven’t had the time to blog lately, and haven’t had any “inspiration” on a subject… I usually get my ideas while taking a shower and just haven’t had any lately (not showers, ideas!)… 

We’re in the process of cleaning out and our finished basement to make it more child-friendly, more of a playroom.  The original decor was medieval.  Really really cool.  We have several cheap suits of armor, lots of very expensive swords and knives mounted (safely) on the walls, castle flags and other period pictures hung.  The walls are a gunmetal gray to mimic a castle wall, the floor is a deep green to represent lush grass.  There’s dragons, gargoyles, wizards, all watching us.  We chose a rich red felt for the pool table, representing a royal color, and the bar in the corner was always fully stocked.  There’s even a real slot machine down there, straight from a Las Vegas casino (yeah, okay, that’s not medieval but it sure is fun).  The 60″ TV always broadcast the football games, and was used for the boys’ video systems.  Two plush black leather couches finished the look. It was the ultimate in party rooms.

But we’ve found, in the past 5 or 6 years, that the desire to have a dozen friends over and spend hours down there drinking and staying up late has disappeared.  We just don’t enjoy that anymore, at all.  We were never big drinkers anyways, but we had the annual New Year’s Eve parties, we were the house that always had the mixed drinks and the pool table open for business.   But as we get older, we find the most memorable moments are spent with family.  There’s simply nothing better than everyone sitting around the kitchen table shouting JENGA or playing a loud game of Sorry!… even the teenager gets involved.

Gnip Gnop.  Bring back memories?  I think you have to be of an older decade to even recognize that game name… this is what I’ve been doing with my 3 year old and my pre-teen.  And anyone that DOES recognize it also knows I’ve been taking my fair share of Tylenol.

Perfection.  This game is so “classic” I had to order it off of Ebay.  My three year old is now faster than I am at it.  Now I know senility is setting in, or she’s a genius – but I don’t think it’s the latter because she still gets distracted by shiny things.

Our family also has several “newer” games, like Fact or Crap and Apples to Apples (thank you Glenn Beck for making me go buy the Apples game – LOADS of fun for any family, I tell you!).  

Yup.  We think it’s time to close up the Adult Playroom and open the Family Playroom.  And I’ll bet it’s going to be thousands of times more fun – and have many more precious memories.

I had promised Autumn a picnic in the playpark today, but we woke to a rainy rainy morning… so we had one in the living room instead!

It’s our “tradition” to have Taco Bell or KFC at our picnics (yummy!), so I made cheese wraps for the girls and a burrito for me… salsa chips and juice rounded it out.  Autumn carefully placed our Picnic Blanket on the floor, and we all sat in a circle and had our promised day “out”.  We missed Daddy, though. 

  If Ayla ever gets teeth, she’s gonna be able to eat glass… girlfriend can CHOW!!

 

And Autumn, as usual, is my little ham…

 Ah.  Days like these are one of the many reasons why I’m a mom.

Yay!  The costume and decor catalogs are arriving… our family’s favorite holiday is around the corner!

I can feel my heart beat faster as I open the catalogs to shop for costumes for the girls this year… quivering in anticipation to see what’s new… let’s see… um… butterflies.  Ladybugs.  Dora??

Kill me now.

Let me explain something.  Halloween, to us, is not rainbows and Care Bears.  It’s not Bunnies and Diego.

Halloween is zombies, skeletons, screams, and blood.  And it’s fun.  Halloween is watching the candy-buzzed children jump when the sound effects machine warbles a choked shrieeeeeek at the bottom of the driveway (cleverly controlled by remote, to blast at just the right second).  It’s the fog machine, masking the motion-activated shrouded mechanical figure that will jump out at the closest person to be fated to walk in it’s path.  It’s the howling of the ghosts from the upper window of our home, where the speakers are set to blast a full two hour’s worth of frighteningly eerie noises.

There’s no room for Princesses here.

It’s the seemingly inert man in the corner who jumps to life (yes, that’s the hubby) as soon as someone braves the front porch steps, which are mysteriously lit by a flashing strobe light.  It’s giggling at the bigger kids who jump at the Frankenstein face that begins to sing a ridiculous, and not by any stretch scary, song when they walk by.  It’s trekking to the sidewalk to drop the Snickers bar into the bag of the toddler too afraid to come near enough to reach into the bowl that I hold.

Yeah, it’s that good.

It’s watching the kids that cross on the other side of the street because they remember us from last year.  And it’s watching the kids line up at our porch because they remember us from last year.

It’s not about cute ballerinas.  Not here.

What’s wrong with skeletons, zombies, or Bloody Mary for toddlers?  Nothing.  As I hear the collective gasp of every I’m-on-the-bandwagon-by-the-book-OMG-you’re-wrong-to-dress-your-toddler-up-in-anything-but-a-commercially-approved-happy-flowers-out-our-arse-costume mom in the world that’s reading this, who wouldn’t dream of dressing their cute little girl in anything short of Strawberry Shortcake, lemme ask… why not?  Why is there not a market for scary costumes for little people?

Don’t get me wrong – butterflies and ladybugs are cute on toddlers.  But it’s just not for us.

This girl is adorable.  Oh yeah. 

 Yeah.  And she had a GREAT time.   

Now… what shall they be this year?  Hmmm…. the fun is just beginning.

Hello, my name is Sandra, and I have Lossofphotophobia.

It’s real.

After losing three harddrives due to various mishaps, thus losing hundreds (possibly thousands) of photos and documents, I have developed Lossofphotophobia.  Or maybe it’s Harddriveohcrashyitis.  Or Theseareallofyourmemoriessoontobewipedoutemia.

I don’t care what you call it.

So now I try to put all of my photos, client’s and personal, on CD frequently.  This is nice, except I still can’t get myself to delete them from the computer.  I really need to.  These are taking up a LOT of room.  So yesterday, I backed them all up on discs (again).

And then uploaded them to a file on my web server.

And then used a free photo storage site to upload them to.

And I still can’t get myself to click the “delete” button on this folder, with it’s 3002 (exactly) photos.

Is the 12 step program simply making a dozen backup copies, perhaps?

I was thinking about this in the shower.  Don’t ask.

Anyways, I was raised by a non-voting politically-disinterested mother, and a Democrat father.

Mom’s an atheist, Dad’s an agnostic.

I’m a Christian Republican. 

So this proves that two wrongs DO make a right (whoops – did I just go there…  Yes I did… my mom and dad are wrong.  They can’t punish me now, so I can say this.  They probably know it anyways.)

This quote, quite frankly, gave me chills:

 

Sarah Palin, at the GOP on Wednesday:

And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, “fighting for you,” let us face the matter squarely.

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you…

 

Makes me proud to be an American, even more proud to be a Republican.

 

Huckabee gets an honorable mention from me:

“Barack Obama’s excellent adventure to Europe took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don’t even vote or pay taxes here.”

Wow… I just came across this and I’m stunned.  This is scary information!  I didn’t write it, I cut and pasted it… very interesting.

http://hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com/

Saturday, August 23, 2008

120 Babies and 120 Hostages: Their common link is Fentanyl

Since 1990 epidural anesthesia use has become widespread and promoted as safe. Women WANT to believe this, so much so, it is considered “natural birth” because now the definition of “natural” is vaginal. Women will resist sharing with other women that they are not going to use epidural because of the shock and pressure from other women. “Why would you want to go through all of that pain?”

One of the considerations of doing birth at home is to not have a medical person constantly badgering her to use epidural. What has happened to these medical people? Educated, caring, compassionate people who are supposed to protect our health and our baby’s health.

Since the prolific research of the late 80’s and early 90’s clearly indicating the dangers of epidural anestheia (namely bipuvicaine) to both mother and baby, Fentanyl, another unresearched and dangerous drug has been added to the cocktail. Fentanyl is a synethetic opiod being considered as a weapon to use in Iraq and has been added to the epidural mix to counter affect the complications of bipuvicaine. Research on birthing babies determined the “appropriate” dosage. Fentanyl is responsible for the deaths of hostages in 2002 in Moscow and is dangerous for children. In the US the same drug could be used on our sweet, precious babies AND terrorists.

Reports yesterday from Moscow about the gray gas that was pumped into the Moscow theater bear out the assertions of American medical experts that Fentanyl is dangerous to children under 12. Survivors and relatives of victims said that at least 10 of the dead were children.

U.S. Suspects Opiate in Gas Used in Theater
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD© New York Times, October 29, 2002
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/knockoutgas2.htm

So, Fentanyl is the drug that the obstetric whizs decided was good to counter-act the detrimental and dangerous complications of bipuvicaine in epidural anesthesia. Where are the ethics committee who consider the rights of the birthing baby? What is going on that women who will use no drugs whatsoever during pregnancy will, without question, denying the long term impact on their baby, will demand their right to take Fentanyl during birth. And, some will allow their baby to be treated with less ethical care and consideration than a lab rat.

In this study by addition of fentanyl we tried to minimize the dose of bupivacaine, thereby reducing the side effects caused by higher doses of intrathecal bupivacaine in cesarean section.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1159169

Study was performed on 120 cesarean section parturients divided into six groups, identified as B8, B10 and B 12.5 8.10 and 12.5 mg of bupivacaine mg and FB8, FB10 and FB 12.5 received a combination of 12.5 ?g intrathecal fentanyl respectively.

Women trust the medical profession. They would never allow harm to their baby if they were truly informed of the full risk; if they were informed that these drugs were never shown to be safe for their baby — in any dose. Neither of these drugs were ever tested for safety for the birthing baby and certainly no research is being done to show the long-term impact to the human being.

The 120 babies in this particular study were not able to chose or be informed about their participation in this study. This is characteristic of all research done on laboring and birthing babies. It is a travesty that “ETHICS” committees and society do not regard the human baby in their research … research that happens AFTER the use of technology and substance, not before using on babies. And, then to deny the need for research to see what the long-term impact is.

Fentanyl is considered a potential chemical weapon and has been studied for use on terrorists.

And on February 5th, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went a big step further. Rumsfeld, himself a former pharmaceutical industry CEO (1), announced that the US is making plans for the use of such incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq (see News Release, 7 February 2003).

The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) and the US Army’s Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) are leading the research. Of interest to the military are drugs that target the brain’s regulation of many aspects of cognition, such as sense of pain, consciousness, and emotions like anxiety and fear. JNLWD is preparing a database of pharmaceutical weapons candidates, many of them off-the-shelf products, and indexing them by manufacturer. It will choose drugs from this database for further work and, according to Rumsfeld, if President Bush signs a waiver of existing US policy, they can be used in Iraq. Delivery devices already exist or are in advanced development. These include munitions for an unmanned aerial vehicle or loitering missile, and a new 81mm (bio)chemical mortar round.

Many of the Pentagon’s so-called “nonlethal” (bio)chemical weapons candidates are pharmaceuticals. Different names are used for these weapons (“calmatives”, “disabling chemicals”, “nonlethal chemicals”, etc.). Used as weapons, all minimally aim to incapacitate their victims. They belong to the same broad category of agents as the incapacitating chemical that killed more than 120 hostages in the Moscow theater. That agent was reported to be based on fentanyl, an opiate that is also among the weapons being assessed by JNLWD.

In the US, pharmaceutical fentanyl is sold by Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica. Remifentanil, a closely related drug, is a GlaxoSmithKline product.

WHO is allowing the field obstetrics to go unsupervised? WHO is allowing the same drug to used on terrorists to be used on our birthing babies?? The FDA has approved this? Or, any drug is ok as long as an OB want to use it?

I don’t know who wrote the following, but I did find some references that are listed at the end.

Russia’s top health official Yuri Shevchenko reported that the gas used in the storming of a Moscow theater held by Chechen gunmen was based on fentanyl, a fast-acting opiate with medical applications. Shevchenko said the deaths were caused by the use of the chemical compound on people who had been starved of oxygen, were dehydrated, hungry, unable to move adequately and under severe psychological stress.

Injected, skin-patch and oral doses of fentanyl sold in the United States carry warnings that the anesthetic can be fatal if administered in too high a dose and that doses must be customized, taking into account the patients’ size and any previous exposure to similar drugs.

Fentanyl was among drugs that Pennsylvania State University researchers suggested two years ago that the U.S. military explore as weapons to subdue angry mobs. The Pentagon has put such research on hold, however, because of worries that it would violate the international ban on chemical weapons.Fentanyl is one of the drugs used in epidural anesthesia for childbirth (“hungry, unable to move adequately, under severe psychological stress” sounds familiar). It certainly has worked wonders on the women of this culture as a chemical weapon in the war against spontaneous, unimpeded, empowered birthing.

http://www.sunshineproject.org/publications/pr/pr110203.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/world/main527614.shtml

Oprah says we should be uprising over the dismal state of our education system. We are 25th in the world science and math. Oprah also still promotes epidural anesthesia and drugs in birth — she does so as most women do, laughing and saying it is the only way to give birth. No regard for the human baby. Oprah gave birth at age fourteen, reportedly she was pregnant by rape. No amount of drugs will help a woman give birth in that circumstance. Her experience is not the correct measurement of what is scientifically wrong for babies. She does not even crack her psyche an fraction to allow the possibility that our failing schools … failing children … struggling children are the consequence of the rising use of induction of babies and the use of narcotics, opiods for the birthing brain. As the incidence of drugs in birth and cesarean birth rise at an alarmingly similar rate as the failure of our children in school, we need to rise up and say no more.

Based on what we know, the routine epidural anesthesia during labor is not the right of a woman over than of a baby. I don’t care what Obama says.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28314

There has been a lot of talk during this campaign about percentages. In his acceptance speech the other night, Barack Obama got big applause when he said that John McCain had voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time and that he didn’t want to gamble on a 10 percent chance for change.

What Obama didn’t tell you is that he has voted 95 percent of the time with liberal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. That would be the same Harry Reid, who along with uberliberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, head up a Democratic-led Congress with a sensational 9 percent job approval rating. Obama is part of that liberal Congressional leadership of which 91 percent of the American people disapprove. Obama votes with them 95 percent of the time.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to gamble on just a 5 percent chance on change from that.

And then there is McCain’s new running mate, the Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. The fact that Democrats are jumping all over her (albeit haltingly because they aren’t sure exactly HOW to attack her), tells you how worried they are. She’s a tax-cutting, pro-drilling, environmentalist, gun-toting, ice-fishing, hockey-playing, pro-life mom of five, with a son about to be deployed to Iraq. She’s one incredibly relatable person. Cool, too.

The Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have tried to attack her for being “inexperienced.” I certainly hope they continue down that path, considering the guy at the TOP of their ticket was approving dog license fees in Chicago 3 years ago.

Her response to criticism that she lacks foreign policy experience should go like this: “I intend to surround myself with the best and the brightest, the sharpest minds, and finest advisers, and I intend to listen to all — including dissenting — viewpoints.” That ought to shut ‘em up. After all, it’s worked for Obama.

And I also hope they continue to criticize her mothering skills (“will she be able to raise a Down syndrome baby AND be vice president?”), her hair, her fashion choices (loved the ginormous flag pin she wore at her VP debut — take THAT, Barack!), and her ability to lead (the silence from the feminist groups is deafening — Where’s NOW now?!). If they continue down this road, they will only further irritate those disaffected women still irritated Hillary isn’t on the other ticket.

Speaking of Hillary, watch her closely over the next few weeks. She will say and do all of the right things in support of Obama, of course, but she also won’t be able to hold her tongue if sexist criticisms of Palin grow louder. She will point out the sexism as something she suffered herself, and thereby forge something of a sisterhood bond with Palin — and with a lot of other women across the country. It’ll be Hillary’s way of helping the McCain-Palin ticket — and her own cause.

A final thought on the Palin choice: for any undecided, moderate, or Independent voter who felt the pull of Obama because of the historic nature of his ascent, you now have another place to go. Palin’s placement on the Republican ticket allows you to vote for another historic run. It allows you to vote for McCain without feeling guilty about dissing “a first.” Now you don’t have to choose between “tastes great, less filling;” You can have both with McCain-Palin. 

In a campaign of dueling percentages, Sarah Palin has one that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, even President Bush would walk over their grandmothers for: as governor, her job approval stands at 80 percent. Even apple pie doesn’t have 80 percent approval.

She is McCain’s secret weapon: solidly conservative, living family values, attractive, warm, and — what do you know? — NORMAL.

She’s also stealth: underestimated, under the radar, dismissed. And therein lies her power.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kdWN5WllGc&NR=1]

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIlS0_rArks&feature=related]

Dear Praying Friends,

 I appreciate all of you that have been praying for my mother and our family.  It is wonderful to know that our Christian brothers and sisters are concerned about how we are doing during this hard time.  The unsaved world is truly missing out on such wonderful blessings. When they go through trials like we are they do not have so many hundreds of prayers giving them strength to move forward. Our family is at one of the most difficult times we have ever faced and your prayers mean more to us than ever.

 My mother, Carol, has been told by her doctors to go home and do what makes her happy. The cancer has not been slowed much by the intense chemo treatments and is aggressively attacking.  She will be starting hospice care in just a few weeks. As we go through this time with her we know that God’s timing is perfect, but there are times that knowing this will not make losing our mother any easier. My brothers and I are heartbroken, and only those that have lost a spouse know what our father is going through.  I beg you all to pray more for us than you ever have before. 

 My father’s name is Joe. My brothers are Dan, Don, and Bob. If you would lift up all our names individually it would comfort us very much. My oldest brother has five children who love their grandma very much. Their names are Andrew, Russell, Joseph, Madison and Whitney. This will be very hard on them.  My oldest son, David, will be very confused why his grandma is not around to give him wagon rides and such anymore. Please pray for my mother’s grandchildren, for they will miss her tremendously.

 I thank you all again for your prayers and love for my family. Our own church family is doing a wonderful job at making us feel loved. There will be many people close by for us to turn to when we need them.

 I am so glad that saying goodbye on this earth is not permanent with those that know the Lord. We will see her again, and to her it will be like she just left us.

 In Christ’s Love,

 Holly & Justin

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