Well ok, ONE picture. But it’s totally cute. And yes, you have to log in to see it because I have this thing about posting bath pictures for the world to see.
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Entertaining: Iron Man on DVD. Good stuff. This is my idea of a Friday Night.
Infuriating: Windows Vista. Specifically, how it only recognizes my external hard drive SOME of the time.
Amusing: My daughter’s Mother’s Day Out program is really ambitious about teaching these 2 and 3 year old kids. We’re only a few weeks into the year and she can already recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They study a different letter of the alphabet each week and this week was “E.” Now, I might expect her to come home with a craft or piece of artwork that says something like, “E is for EGG.” But no, these teachers shoot for the sky. Yesterday she brought home an art project with the caption, “E is for EXSTINGUISH.” We also found it amusing that they misspelled “extinguish.”
Boring: Our current website design. I think it took almost as long for me to get tired of it as it did for me to build it. Meh. Fortunately a redesign will be a lot easier than building the website from scratch like I had to the first time.
Confusing: My right eye is still swollen. It’s been almost two weeks now. It used to just happen in the mornings, but now it doesn’t fully go away during the day. Does anybody know what could be causing this? Today I’m fairly certain it was the reason for the headache on the right side of my face.
Guiltifying: I wanted to post a bunch of pictures today to give you guys a break from all the political posts. But when I pulled my camera’s memory card, I realized to my dismay… I don’t have any.
Adorable: Koren is trying really really hard to talk. He babbles in conversational rhythms and loves it. He talks to us, to his teachers and babysitter, and to the people on TV. When we wakes up and for some reason at about 4:00pm every day is Chatter Time. BLAH BLAH BLAH. Looks like we might have another early talker on our hands.
Katie Couric recently asked Sarah Palin about her position on Plan B, the controversial pill often referred to as the “Morning-After Pill,” or in some circles, an “Abortion Pill.” Palin’s answer, though shrouded in her trademark non-specifity, indicated that she does not condone the pill because of her pro-life position - though she is supportive of contraception.
I was curious about the actual effects of this pill, so I did some research. Emergency Contraception is branded as a form of pregnancy prevention that can be taken up to 5 days AFTER intercourse. For many non-biology majors, that doesn’t really compute unless it implies that the pill terminates a pregnancy that has already had the opportunity to begin.
Here is what I found…
Plan B prevents ovulation. So, if you have any lingering ... um ... “gentlemen callers” in your system after the fact, taking the pill will prevent a new egg from coming out to meet them, thereby preventing fertilization.
Plan B does NOT dislodge a fertilized egg from the uterus - so unlike RU-486, it does NOT cause an abortion in this way. So if you’re already pregnant when you take it, it won’t help you. It basically won’t have any effect.
ECPs do not interrupt an established pregnancy, defined by medical authorities such as the United States Food and Drug Administration/National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as beginning with implantation.*
But there’s a missing link in the chain. Eggs that have not been released won’t be. Eggs that have been released, fertilized and have made their way into the uterus to attach to the lining are not at risk from the pill. But what about an egg that has already been released, gets fertilized, and is still on its way toward the uterus (a process that takes about a week) when the pill takes effect?
The jury is still out on whether the pill prevents implantation of a fertilized egg. Many scientists don’t think it affects implantation, but admit they don’t know for sure.
The reduced efficacy with a delay in treatment, even when use is adjusted for cycle day of unprotected intercourse, suggests that interference with implantation is likely not an inevitable effect of ECPs. If ECPs did prevent all implantations, then delays in use should not reduce their efficacy as long as they are used before implantation.*
Clinical associate professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Pharmacy, Don Downing, promotes the theory that Plan B does not interfere with implantation. When he is questioned on the assurance of his data, his response is typically, “Do you have 100 percent proof there’s a God? Or that the lunch you ate yesterday or the Tylenol you took this morning didn’t interfere with implantation?”
I know. Not the most convincing answer.
At any rate, the clinical definition of pregnancy begins with implantation, so in scientific terms Plan B never causes an “abortion” even if it does interfere with implantation. Incidentally, implantation is also the medical definition of “conception.”
So the real question for any anti-abortionist forming a position on Plan B, is when you believe life actually begins. Many conservative pro-lifers believe life begins at conception, and that true definition of “conception” is fertilization. This has been the traditional viewpoint since science first shed light on the egg-sperm process. If a fertilized egg is a human life, then anything that interrupts the implantation of that egg effectively terminates that life.
However, it is somewhat difficult to assert the significance of a fertilized egg as a human life, when the human body naturally discards up to half of all fertilized eggs. Most of these implant-failures go completely unnoticed.
It may seem like splitting hairs to debate the exact moment that human life begins, but the issue is critical to the millions of Americans who see a sacred value in that life. At some point, you have to be able to say, “This counts, but this doesn’t.”
So what do you think?
*”Emergency Contraception” by James Trussell, PhD and Elizabeth G. Raymond, MD, MPH, September 2008
I’m re-posting this because a server blip seems to have eaten it the first time around.
Economics is one of those things that just doesn’t compute to me. I think because so much of it is intangible. I get mortgages but once you get into buying mortgages, securities, all this stuff that doesn’t equate to an actual product, I get a little lost.
Regardless, I’m trying really hard to wrap my mind around this $700 billion Bail Out Plan (or Rescue Plan, depending on your persuasion).
But no matter how much I hear and read about it, it still sounds like when your credit card company sends you blank checks so you can pay off your other credit cards. Transferring unmanageable debt from one lender to another. Not an actual solution to the problem - just a way to buy a little more time. But that time always comes with a price.
So ... if I’m hearing this right, the way to get out of a debt-caused crisis is to acquire more debt?
But the bill is having a hard time making it through Congress.
So the way to pass a bill that increases the government’s debt by $700 billion is to add on a bunch of “sweeteners” (pork barrel projects) so that the bill now totals $850 billion?
I just don’t get it…
Bullet time! Because I can’t seem to string a thought together well enough to create a real post.
I have learned that reality is often times colored by perspective, to the point that it can completely change from one person to the next. Two people can observe the same event or meet the same person and walk away with such completely different ideas of reality that it’s unbelievable they witnessed the same thing.
I find myself consistently second-guessing my perspective to be sure I’m not misleading myself into seeing something that isn’t there, whether in politics, written communication, impressions of people, whatever. Although we would all like to believe that our attitudes are shaped by reality, the truth is that reality is almost meaningless until it passes through the lens of perspective.
For instance, here are two accounts of my day yesterday. Both are true. But they have very little in common.
Koren went on a sleeping strike, starting at about 1:00 am. I spent a good portion of the night getting up with him every hour or so.Then Kaelin woke up entirely too early, which can result in disastrous mood swings. She starts every day with 5 M&M’s, and each time she disobeys or is disrespectful, she loses one. At the end of the day, she gets to eat the ones that are left. Yesterday, she lost all 5 of them while taking her morning bath. Then she decided to throw an all-out, no-holds-barred temper tantrum, that resulted in being carted off to her room and left there to scream it out for at least half an hour.
Koren continued to refuse sleep throughout the morning and early afternoon. As a last resort, I piled the kids in the car and drove to 3 different locations to get various parts of lunch, thinking surely a long car ride would put him out.
No such luck. He did not sleep. Have I mentioned he hates the car? He fussed every time we would roll to a pause.
When we got home, I set about fixing lunch for Kaelin and myself when I suddenly realized that Koren had been pretty quiet considering that I had left him strapped in the car seat (on the couch, not in the car). I looked over to see that he was FINALLY. ASLEEP.
After doing my victory dance, I proceeded to fix Kaelin’s lunch only to look over again to find my daughter, on the couch, trying to CLIMB INTO THE CAR SEAT WITH THE SLEEPING BABY.
That was the end of Koren’s nap.
Approximately five minutes later, Kaelin managed to dump her entire plate of food onto the floor.
* * *
Yesterday morning my husband graciously watched the kids from 7:00 to 9:30 so I could sleep in and recover from a few lost hours of sleep.Due to lack of sleep, Kaelin chose a form of ... expressing herself ... yesterday morning that would have ruined any nap Koren could have attempted. However, he fortunately seemed unusually content to go without sleep and remained remarkably happy much of the morning.
I am blessed that the biggest health concern I have about my kids is whether or not they get enough sleep.
After getting all her pent up energy out in her room, Kaelin’s mood improved dramatically. I am blessed to have a house large enough that I can send my daughter to her room when she needs to yell something out, and it really doesn’t disturb the rest of the household.
We read a story and then she went to tell Daddo that she was “ready to be a sweet girl now.” And she was a sweet girl for the rest of the day. I am blessed to have a daughter who is generally so good natured that the occasional toddler temper tantrum catches us off guard because it’s so rare.
I am blessed to have the ability to leave the house with the kids when I need to, and money to purchase “easy food” when I don’t feel up to cooking a meal. We went to get lunch and had fun mixing and matching our lunch combinations from various drive through restaurants. I learned that Chick Fil-A actually has a pretty decent fruit cup.
I am blessed to have a daughter that adores her brother. She loves to cuddle with him and talk to him, even when he’s not awake. When he’s fussing, she gives him the pacifier and I often hear her cooing things to him like, “It’s ok, little guy, just take your passy. Suck on your passy, it always makes it better. You know it does. It’s ok, I’m here.”
Since he didn’t sleep much during the day yesterday, Koren crashed pretty hard at about 4:30 and didn’t wake up for several hours. Kaelin also took a 3.5-hour late afternoon nap to catch up on some sleep. That gave me the chance to run an errand and Jens was able to stay home with the kids but have some time to himself after running an errand for me earlier in the day. The evening ended on a peaceful note and both kids slept better the next night.
So I finally watched the presidential debate. I don’t have a lot to say about it, though I thought it went well. I thought the candidates were pretty evenly matched, and that the verdict depends on what you find most convincing: logical, eloquent professorial speech, or lots of experience with appeal to the emotional.
I know that Foreign Policy and Defense are McCain’s strong points, but I thought he did better than I expected him to, considering his lack of time to prepare. He refrained from his two debate habits that normally drive me insane: a) Picking some minute point of his opponent’s and hammering it into the ground even though he’s completely off base about his opponent’s actual position on the issue, and b) that smug little “you are so beneath me” grin.
It’s funny, one of McCain’s attacks on Obama is that he’s little more than a good personality… but I don’t really see that much personality in Obama. He seems logical, even-tempered, considerate. But I don’t feel like I know who he really is, compared to the other candidates. That said, I do feel like I could predict his response to things much better than McCain’s, after some of the stunts McCain has pulled recently. I know he’s trying to be a “Maverick,” but I feel like I don’t know what to expect from him (or why he does the things he does) and that sort of makes me uncomfortable in a President.
I’m hesitantly looking forward to the Vice Presidential debate. I’m interested in it, but I’m not so confident in Sarah Palin’s grasp on world issues, nor her grasp on the position she’s “supposed” to have on those issues. And I just don’t enjoy seeing anybody get slaughtered in this kind of thing. Her own campaign doesn’t trust her behind a microphone, as evidenced by the fact that John McCain will cancel his campaign before he lets Palin head it up in his absence.
Perhaps she’ll surprise us all.
When I picked Kaelin up from Parents’ Night Out tonight, she was using the popping-rolling-lawnmower-thingy that we all had as kids but can never come up with a sufficient name for.
When she saw me, she let me know that she had to finish the task at hand before meeting me at the door. She then did a couple more sweeps with it as though it was a vacuum cleaner, and ran over to tell the teacher, “There you go. I cleaned up all that poop for you.”
...Our little helper.
Jens just informed me that I was “so bitter” about the fact that our pets have suddenly, and seemingly without cause, decided our house is one giant toilet. Ya think?
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