A Little Morning Chuckle

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is cracking me up this morning. My morning radio show, Brian and The Judge, played a recent clip from Saturday Night Live's recent parody (the one that poked fun at how little Obama has accomplished thus far) followed by the news that our president had been awarded the prize.

Is that not hilarious?!? You could be a die hard Obama supporter and still appreciate the humor in that sequence... I'm assuming.

Listening to more liberal news networks' responses to this announcement was a bit shocking. They seemed to be as surprised by the news as I was, some of them stating that their initial reaction was "for what?" BUT... the Norwegians cleared up the seemingly widespread confusion by explaining their reasons for awarding our President the Peace Prize. He is a man of peaceful vision and intent. Duh!

I laughed the hardest this morning when I read through the list of past winners to discover that our president has joined one of my personal heros, Mother Teresa, on the list of winners.

Editorial

It's usually not the case, but sometimes it's good to know that someone's got your back...

Local Firm Should Have Gotten Contract

Housewife Rambling

Preface:  Everyone is entitled to lead their life in the way she chooses.

This time of year is a time when a lot of my friends get busy and therefore are, for all practical purposes, unavailable.  Ironic that while they are swamped with their activities, I am in the midst of simplifying mine.  I had been feeling of less worth than those around me for giving up the contributions I make outside my family, but I'm thinking that it's o.k. that I can't do my best as a mother/wife/housekeeper while still juggling a handful of outside volunteering.  Society's reaction to housewives makes me feel selfish for not contributing a ton of time to my community, but I'm reminding myself that this is the same society that supports and even encourages cohabitation out of wedlock, the society that believes in abortion as a form of birth control, and the society that believes that children will fare just as healthily when raised in institutions such as day care instead of by their moms and dads.  I profoundly disagree with so much that society deems acceptable and preferable that it's crazy to think its value of housewives should be taken into consideration.  Unless my volunteering is directly related to my children or my God, it has been officially cut from my life.  Unless this volunteering only requires my time when my husband can keep my children, it has been cut from my life.  As I get older, I realize that the contributions I made through my volunteering were truly selfish.  I felt as though I needed to nurture the "me" that I was away from my family.  My real obligation to my community is to parent in a way that produces healthy, responsible, mature adults who will make the world a better place.

There was a time when I thought I would have no choice but to go back to work.  Between student loans, legal fees, tuition, gas bills, etc., we just didn't see a way to ever gain footing over our finances.  I began to search for openings in schools and get my resume and portfolio in order.  Then it dawned on me-- even if we never make headway on our finances, I made a vow to God to do my best to raise my children in The Faith.  How could I call working 40+ hour weeks my best effort at raising responsible Christians?  How could I even claim to raise them when I would be leaving them in another person's care for almost half of their waking hours?  Instead, I prayed, waited, budgeted, cut back, and focused on my housewife duties.  A few months later, God showed us a new path that would allow us to take more control of our finances sooner.  Yes, if I went back to work, we would be debt free except for our house in just a few years rather than an decade, but working would cost much, much more than we would earn. 

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http://www.komu.com/satellite/SatelliteRender/KOMU.com/ba8a4513-c0a8-2f11-0063-9bd94c70b769/95903676-80ce-0971-0068-80139e602a04

This article is highly amusing.  First, I believe that Rep. Still is confused about what a stay-at-home mom is.  I find it hilarious that she makes the statement that we need to move women into the workforce rather than out of it.  No one is suggesting that women be pushed out of the workforce; at-home-parent does not encompass women with no children.  Second, I'm failing to see how $600 a year is going to ensure that those mothers return to work when their children are grown.  Third, as far as I am concerned, 16 years old is not grown.  I'm not sure how I feel about balancing the child-care tax credit with this measure.  I'm really not sure that either are wise.  

Enough Said

There is no better way to spend a cloudy day than crazy dancing with toddlers and pairing Norah Jones with the pages of a book.  

Epiphany

This post may be more intimate than usual, but I had this epiphany that I feel like needs to be shared.  

There is an incredible difference between sex and making love.  Until recently, I was one of those women who felt a husband had a right to sex.  It was something that a wife was semi-obligated to provide.  Women like this combat SO many emotions because of that mindset.  When sex is something a woman is obligated to, and wives feel this obligation, they will treat it as such.  The obligation creates feelings of being treated like an object, of guilt if the frequency lessens, of self-loathing as a result of acting outside of one's personal desires. Sex as an obligation makes women feel similar feelings to those that frequently arise from having sex out of wedlock.  It doesn't feel right.  Sex can leave a wife feeling justified for selfishness because she has paid her due to her marriage.  Now she can ignore her husband because she did his this incredible favor.  I'm not sure if husbands feel the full effect of these emotions, but I have to believe that husbands of such wives also feel guilty because they are made to feel like they are taking advantage of the women they married.  

Making Love is almost the opposite.  Instead of being able to "take it or leave it," a wife longs for the emotions that come from the truly sacred expression of love.  Making love provides feelings of safety, of gratitude for the husband God has provided.  Until a couple has experienced love making, intimacy in all aspects of their relationship are lacking, even if they are unaware of the depth that has not been explored.  A wife who is blessed to make love to her husband looks forward to the connection she will find.  She does not worry about the physical aspects of sex but rather is eager for the emotional intimacy that will be created.  It is no wonder this intimacy is one that God created and intended for the holy bonds of marriage.  Making love provokes a desire within a wife to find fulfillment in all aspects of her marriage and provides the map to that gratification.  

Commoners

Like royalty would view peasants, our D.C. politicians view the general public of the United States.  How dare Congress and the president assume the mentality that they do not need our approval to spend trillions of dollars over the past 5 months!  Perhaps worse is the supposed belief that we, the "commoners," do not care how our money is being spent.  If the current stimulus is passed, taxes will potentially fund new schools in local districts, dog parks, renovations or expansions of city zoos among other agendas that should be left to local tax levies and propositions.  I, for one, do not find Milwaukee's school districts to be a valid debt for MY children to assume.  I, for one, care about the bills that will come due 30 years from now.  Shocking that a commoner would care about her financial future and that of her children!  I, a commoner, am smart enough to understand that getting in over one's head means years and years of crawling out from hole that was dug even if it was dug for valid reasons.  I learned today that a trillion dollars is like spending 1 million dollars a day since the birth of Christ.  Seriously??  Perhaps the leaders of our nation believe that if they pick a number large enough, it will be over the heads of the commoners.  Maybe we'll all throw up our hands and turn a blind eye to the uncomprehendible amount of debt that we will be stuck with long after the majority of today's decision makers have left the nation's capital.  Whatever happened to the responsibility to give our children a better life than we had?  

I believe that it is our responsibility to speak up to our representatives.  This site provides contact information to Congress members and Senators.  

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

While I'm sure that their inboxes are saturated with emails similar to this blog entry, prehaps mine- or YOURS- will be the one that resonates with a D.C. decision maker.

Decisions, Decisions

It seems like a bazillion women in my life are prego right now.  Every time I hear about a new pregnancy, I feel incredibly excited for the moms in my life, and their happy news makes me very antsy to make a decision about our own family planning.  For the moment, my husband and I have decided to finish remodeling our new home, move in, and then re-assess our life. Almost tripling our living space, the move will hopefully be a sigh of relief because we can breath and move around without stepping on each other.  It will hopefully mean an easier housekeeping job because we'll have storage space and a washer and dryer in our home.  God willing, it will mean graduation from a 2 bedroom house to a 4 bedroom house with plenty of space for another baby.  HOWEVER, I am completely aware of the possibility that this house could will mean higher bills, more floors to vacuum, more bathrooms to clean, and more lawn to keep.  I am certainly not confident enough to set my heart on a baby yet.

One of my weaknesses is not being able to tolerate decisions that have not yet been made.  I don't like my life to be up in the air.  Waiting for my first marriage to play itself out made me crazy.  Not knowing where I would teach after college was torture even though I only spent about a month in the application/interview process.  When I was pregnant, waiting for the gender ultrasound took all my patience.  I am a preparer.  As soon as I knew I would be a single mom, I set to work finding a way to support myself and my daughter.  When I was hired at OHS, I spent months familiarizing myself with the content, literature, and school.  When my husband was hired post-college, I assumed the duty of replacing his fraternity T's with business attire and re-budgeting our life to take a commuter's huge gas bill into account.  When I found out the sex of my babies, I immediately began clearance shopping, crocheting, and decorating in the appropriate colors.  

Not knowing if my family is complete drives me nuts.  Hopefully we'll finish the house in a timely manner and either clean out the baby items that are in storage or start examining a the timeline for a spring or summer bundle of joy.  Even though I'll be sad for a while if we don't have another child, I think that I'll be relieved to have the uncertainty decided- whatever the decision may be.