Tired of being politically correct and not wanting to offend anyone

I think at some point in blogging you have to come to the realization that you can't please everyone. There will be those who think you are closed minded, intolerant or downright stupid. Some realize this when they start their blog and others take longer. They plant their flag in the dirt and declare that THIS is their space and in their space they have the freedom to say what they want no matter who it offends. I get so tired of being polite and cowering in the corner afraid that I will lose readers because I am a conservative Christian.

I wasn't always conservative. I didn't always go to church. I actually didn't step foot in a church for over 7 years after leaving high school except when I went home to visit my parents. I even used to be pro-choice and I used to shake my head at the people who picketed the Planned Parenthood when I drove by. But somewhere along the way in getting a job, paying taxes, buying a house and starting a family I found my priorities and views shifted.

This week in light of the Democratic National Convention people have been circulating some videos that caught my attention and broke my heart.

This one about Oprah.

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. - John 14:6

And this one about Obama and late term abortion posted on Mommy Zabs

Psalm 139:13-16 (New International Version) - For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

The Women

I saw the previews for this film recently and added it to my must see list. I love the actresses involved and the entire premise of the movie. So, when I was contacted by Dove's marketing agency, Rocket XL, about an opportunity to see this film and receive some great Dove items I was really excited. They asked me to spread the word about Dove's film project The Women Behind “The Women”.

According to the promotional website, "This short film follows 16-year-old teen journalist Cammy Nelson behind-the-scenes of The Women to learn, first-hand, how Hollywood creates the images we see on screen, highlighting the work and people involved in making a major motion picture come to life."

Please stop by Dove's website to:

-View exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of The Women & The Women Behind “The Women”
-Read the Director’s Diary, written by Diane English
-Go Behind-the-Scenes with Dove teen journalist Cammy Nelson
-Download self-esteem building tools for girls, moms and mentors
-Enter for a chance to win one of 100 pairs of movie tickets each day between 9/3 and 9/19

Here is the great swag they sent me for my trouble. Did I mention how much I love Dove?


I'll make sure to update with a movie review as soon as I get to go see it. It is due out in theaters September 12, 2008.

Another post where I complain about helping people..

My date on Friday with my hubby was lovely. Wonderful. Everything I hoped for. I forgot how much we need that us time. No picking up sippy cups or inhaling our meal before a major meltdown. We got to sit through a 3 hour movie (Batman). What luxury.

Saturday I woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose. Thank you Texas allergies. I made it through the weekend and spent yesterday nursing myself back to health. Today I needed to drop off Bear's MDO paperwork so he would be ready to start next week. At 5:00 yesterday a friend of mine called and left a message but I didn't check it because I was still feeling pretty crappy. She called again at 9:45 so I thought it must be important.

She needed me to watch her 2 1/2 year old today so she could go to a doctor's appointment. No problem, the appointment was at 1:45 I don't mind helping out. The first red flag should have been when she said she wanted to drop him off at 12. The doctor's office is only 5 minutes from my house but something about it was his nap time and how she didn't want to bring him over in the middle. She would bring him here at noon and get him settled in so he would nap until she got back.

Imagine my surprise when she calls at 11:25 today saying she is right down the road so why doesn't she go ahead and bring him by so he can eat and get settled in? At 11:30 she is on my doorstep with him and his lunch. At 11:35 she was out the door, mind you her appointment was at 1:45. She explained that she was going to bring her husband lunch to work so he could use his lunch hour for the appointment? This is 2 hours and 10 minutes before the appointment and her husband works 5 minutes from my house.

I feed her son and put him down at 12:15 for his nap. At 1:45 he is up and ready to play. Her husband calls at 2:05 and says the doctor is delayed so they may be later than they thought. At 4:00 she calls to say she is dropping her husband back off at work. At 4:10 she is back to get her son, 4 1/2 hours after she dropped him off. I explained he only took an 1 1/2 hour nap and she said that was normal which is not how she represented it when she called yesterday evening.

I don't mind helping people out. I understand it is hard to get people to watch your child in the middle of the day but I really think you should set the right expectations and perhaps even give people more notice that you need a babysitter. The appointment was scheduled weeks in advance. I just felt taken advantage of when she left. She thanked me several times but it just seemed like a case of asking forgiveness later being easier than asking permission.

I have watched her son several times over the past 2 1/2 years and this is the longest she has left him with me but I really don't want to set a precedent. She said as she was leaving that she has another doctor's appointment next week but she will try to get someone else to watch him since it is at 8:15 in the morning. I wanted to say I would help but I didn't.

Am I just being overly sensitive?

This week went by fast. I didn't do a lot but it just flew by. I did find time to enroll Bear in Mother's Day Out though. Well I still have to drop the paperwork off but I did go by and give them my deposit check. Yay! 6 hours of freedom per week for the low monthly price of $81.00. Which isn't all that low in my opinion but still totally worth it. I'll admit I am a little nervous. I think I still have a little Post-tramatic stress from daycare. Which is why we are only starting off with one day a week this first semester. I might bump it up to 2 in the spring.

Tonight my inlaws are supposed to be coming up and staying the night so they can watch Bear for us while we go on a date. I am so excited. We haven't been out alone since our anniversary in May. I am in dire need of a date night. Is it sad that my whole post revolves around leaving my child? I promise he is still wonderful despite his new found love of temper tantrums.

He has started learning all kinds of new words and phrases which crack me up. Yesterday we were walking past the toy aisle at Target and he kept pointing and going See! See! Ball! So of course, the enabler that I am, I totally bought him a ball which he forgot about as soon as we got to the car.

Poor planning

One of the girls in my Wednesday night church group had a baby a couple of weeks ago. As is custom, the other girls from church signed up to bring meals every other night for approximately 2 1/2 weeks. Today marked the 2nd week of this. I signed up to bring tonight's meal. Other people had sent stuff like a pizza but I wanted to do something special and homemade.

I went to the store yesterday and bought all the ingredients for my homemade lasagna and garlic bread. I spent over an hour preparing it yesterday and put it in the fridge so I could take it over today and they could just heat it up and eat it. I spent the whole day today running around doing grocery shopping, stopping at Walgreens, getting a much needed mani/pedi so 6 p.m. rolled around before I knew it.

I flew in the door at a little after 6 and explained to my husband that I needed to take the meal over. Of course I should have called first but I was running late and since this is the 2nd week of this I thought she would be expecting me. Especially since someone had arranged all these meals and sent out reminder emails, etc. My husband wanted to come along so we could pick up dinner while we were out.

We drove the 20 minutes across town to her house and of course she isn't there. I try calling the girl that leads our group to get her phone number since they didn't put it on the sign up sheet or the reminder email with the directions. She doesn't answer. So frustrating. Then my husband is lecturing me about how you should ALWAYS call, blah, blah, blah. I leave her a note on the door and we go to eat. She doesn't call for 2 hours.

Then when she calls she is all, I'm sorry but I didn't know you were bringing anything tonight. Then she and asks if I can just refrigerate it and bring it tomorrow. I can but it is just frustrating because I spent all this time shopping, preparing the meal and driving it over just to have to drive it over again tomorrow. People have been bringing meals every other day for over a week and will continue to for the next week it seems she should have known. Obviously someone dropped the ball. Now I have my husband telling me that he doesn't want me wasting the gas to drive back over there tomorrow.

Grrr...

Flashing by...

THEN: Bear swimming in my Mom's pool last summer

NOW: Bear swimming in my Mom's pool last week


He is growing up so fast. My mom and I went shopping last Friday and picked up a wooden growth chart at Steinmart to hang on his wall. I've always wanted to track his growth visually but I had a hard time finding a growth chart I liked. We proudly marked off his height on Sunday when I got home and got it hung. We'll check it again in 6 months when he turns 2. Just saying that freaks me out a little.

Pain

Bear and I are in Houston visiting my Mom's house for a few days. This afternoon I decided to take him into the backyard to play a bit while my Mom was out running errands. In the course of play he picked up a small decorative rock in the flower bed and before the the thought of him dropping it on his foot had finished crossing my mind he dropped it on his big toe. This caused a small cut on his toe which started bleeding.

I picked him up and tore through the house looking for bandaids and Neosporin leaving a tiny trail of blood droplets. He had stopped crying before I even got him bandaged up. It just one of those millions of tiny accidents that kids have but yet it still shook me up.

People say when you have kids you will feel every heartache and pain as acutely as they do. I believe you feel it even more so. Long after they have moved on you still feel that shaky terror that you felt when you first heard that hurt cry. Whether the pain is big or small you take it on as your own and you nurse that memory long past their physical pain.

Another sleepy Monday..

How is it that at the end of every weekend I am so relieved it is over? I used to love the weekends. Look forward to them. Savor them even. The past few weekends have just been such a whirlwind that I feel like I can't catch my breath.

I didn't think me or my husband would survive Friday. He spent from 5:30 a.m. Friday morning until 9 a.m. Saturday laying on our bedroom floor with a few pillows and blankets moaning in agony. It was awful. I wanted to help but there was nothing I could do but fetch him food, ice and Ibuprofen while trying to keep my child from using him as a jungle gym. His last spasm hit around 7 p.m. causing him to throw up the pizza I had delivered for dinner all over him, the floor, and the blankets and pillows. I ended up throwing away the pillow and sending him to the shower so I could scrub the carpet. Friday night was the night the Fabreze came to die in my bedroom. Ugh.

Saturday came around much too early and I ran around trying to get Bear ready for a pool party at 10:30 and making sure my husband was settled. My parents called and said they were in town and would swing by while I was at the party and keep my husband company until I got back. The party was fantastic. This country club has the best pool I have ever been to. It has a huge kiddie pool part with a beach entrance that goes no deeper than 2 feet. It had little spouts of water for the kids to play in and tons of pool toys. The only downside was that it was already in the mid-90's at 10:30 in the morning and I was playing in 1 ft deep water which isn't really all that cooling.

I got home from the party and my parent's wanted to take us to lunch before they went home. My husband was up moving enough to come along. We did that and then I took my husband over to our Urgent Care center so they could check him out since he was in too much pain to go in on Friday. They gave him a shot and some muscle relaxers. As soon as we got home and I got Bear down for a nap my best friend called and said their apartment countertops had been varnished or sprayed or something and the smell was about to kill them. With the 100+ degree temps it wasn't an option to open the windows and let it air out so could they please come over and stay the night with us?

I barely had time to straighten the house before they showed up. My friend and I ran to Target to pick up a new pillow for my bed and look for a new lamp to replace the one that died in my living room. Then we swung by Taco Cabana and picked up dinner to take back to the boys. We stayed up watching movies that night.

The next morning we got up and made pancakes and visited before they left. I got everything cleaned up and then it was off to the grocery store. I am tired...

And the winner is ....

Cheryl of Gibson Moments! Congratulations Cheryl. I will be contacting you by email regarding your $20.00.

You may be an unsympathetic wife if...

...you debate taking pictures of your husband lying on the floor to post on your blog.

I kid, sort of. I slept very poorly last night due to watching Cloverfield. Cloverfield didn't scare me but apparently it brought back bad flashbacks of I am Legend and the virus infested zombie people. So I spent the night tossing and turning running from zombie people. I was awakened at 5:30 by unholy moaning and groaning from my bathtub. Luckily it wasn't a zombie person. It was however, my husband having back spasms.

He spent this whole week at work moving incredibly heavy equipment and apparently it caught up to him. So I got up and tended to him rubbing his back and bringing him drinks and blankets. He was certain it had to be something more and insisted on going to the hospital. Bear was still in bed and I was in my jammies. My husband was in...well..less. He called his uncle who lives nearby and asked him to come get him so I wouldn't have to take Bear to the hospital.

His uncle arrives at 7 a.m. and convinces my husband that yes, it is really just your back. He went and bought us a couple of bags of ice and helped get my husband settled on the floor of our bedroom. We gave him Ibuprofen and have been putting ice on for 12 min and off for 20. I also made him breakfast and served it to him on the floor. Brought him his laptop and movies....doing all the things a good wife should.

I got him all set up and Bear and I went to run a few errands. I told him I would bring him back lunch. I get back from my errands an hour later with his lunch and I see a tell-tale open pantry door and peanut butter out on the counter. The kitchen counter. The kitchen counter in the kitchen which is on the complete other end of the house from our bedroom. Uh huh. So now his back is hurting badly again and the moaning and groaning is back. Grrr....If men had babies we would all be an only child if the population didn't die off completely.