Wednesday, February 14, 2024

 These two girls are what make life worth living.





They may be all grown up...  but in my heart, they are still my babies.  My job was to raise two independent, intelligent, caring, thoughtful, and capable young women so they would be able to take care of themselves after my husband and I were no longer around.  

Nailed it!

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Covid-19.

I am lucky that I am very comfortable staying to myself.  I've always been a bit of a recluse, since I am basically an introvert.

And so far, I've not had any depression or feelings of loneliness.  Having both your daughters and a husband in the house lends a little help in that arena.  But I have always been comfortable in my own skin.

We have the internet, phones, tv, movies, deliveries from Amazon (although they are not doing as well as they used to...  even the simplest deliveries are S L O W.  People using Skype or Zoom if they need to be face to face.  We have contact if we need it.

But every time I listen to our governor YET AGAIN hold another tv update at 2:30 EVERY DAY, I am over it. Every time I have to go to the store and they play over their intercom a recording about social distancing and how you are expected to cough or sneeze into your arm or a tissue, I am over it.   Every time I watch a show and the endless public service announcements or commercials with supposedly famous people in it (I have NO idea who these people are - which says more about my social networking skills than anything else) telling me "We're all in this together,"  I am over it.   It sounds like George Orwell's 1984 - the voice droning over a speaker system with propaganda and brainwashing diatribes.

Other parts of this scenario remind me of the movie I Am Legend.  If you don't know the movie - watch it.

I'm not saying this isn't a serious issue.  Covid-19 can be deadly for the people who are compromised in the first place.  That would be me.  I meet most of the criteria for it.  But the government is finding out how easy it is to control people through fear and giving the same messaging over and over and over and over....   I don't want fear to be a part of my life.  God tells me FEAR NOT, FOR I AM WITH YOU.   And I believe that.

My heart breaks at how quickly we have become a police state without even thinking about the circumstances around the situation.  Governments and police banning drive-in church services - that is wrong. No one is close to each other when you are sitting in your car, and being social creatures and lovers of God, we need some camaraderie and Godly guidance.  Arresting a father for playing ball with his 6 year old daughter and wife in an empty park...  the cops should be furloughed without pay for a month over that stupidity.  A surfer being arrested for surfing on a deserted beach.  I can go on...  

So wondering where everyone stands on this.  If one of my daughters were to get sick, it is my understanding that I would have to drop her off and I would not be allowed into the hospital - yet they are minors.  What mother or father would simply give up their child entirely to strangers in any situation?  I don't think any of us, as parents, are okay with that.  Whatever happened to personal responsibility in these matters?  Am I not allowed to take my chances?



So, where is the balance?




Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Thoughts for the future...


So much has been on my mind.  

I have been heartsick to see how young people are embracing abortion as if it is a wonderful thing - something to brag about and revel in.

The people who are doing this consider themselves enlightened and the "kind and caring" ones.  But I  can't fathom how one gets to this point in their lives and not understand they are devoid of love, compassion, and are so out of touch with their soul.

Because I believe you can't kill your baby and not feel like you are dead inside - just as dead as the baby you had ripped from your body.  It changes you.

People have been lied to by Planned Parenthood.  They are told that even at 3-4 months old, their baby is just a blob of tissue - not even recognizable.  However, that is just not true.  By the time the baby is one month old, it looks like a baby - not a mass of tissue.  But if you still want to believe that fallacy - then here's a cold hard fact...  if that formed baby is a blob of tissue, then so are you.  

You might say that you are a higher form and more biologically advanced than a fetus.  But I looked up stages of development online, and surprisingly, at a very early stage.  The word fetus (Latin for offspring) is used technically for when the child begins to look like its mature form - in humans, that would be by the end of the 2nd month.  Here is an excerpt from the Cleveland Clinic website "Fetal Development: Stages of Growth".  


Month 1
As the fertilized egg grows, a water-tight sac forms around it, gradually filling with fluid. This is called the amniotic sac, and it helps cushion the growing embryo.
The placenta also develops. The placenta is a round, flat organ that transfers nutrients from the mother to the baby, and transfers wastes from the baby.
A primitive face will take form with large dark circles for eyes. The mouth, lower jaw, and throat are developing. Blood cells are taking shape, and circulation will begin. The tiny "heart" tube will beat 65 times a minute by the end of the fourth week. By the end of the first month, your baby is about 1/4 inch long – smaller than a grain of rice!
Month 2
Your baby's facial features continue to develop. Each ear begins as a little fold of skin at the side of the head. Tiny buds that eventually grow into arms and legs are forming. Fingers, toes and eyes are also forming.
The neural tube (brain, spinal cord and other neural tissue of the central nervous system) is well formed. The digestive tract and sensory organs begin to develop. Bone starts to replace cartilage.
The head is large in proportion to the rest of the baby's body.
By the end of the second month, your baby is about 1 inch long and weighs about 1/30 of an ounce.
At about 6 weeks, your baby's heart beat can usually be detected.
After the 8th week, your baby is called a fetus instead of an embryo.
Month 3
Your baby's arms, hands, fingers, feet, and toes are fully formed. Your baby can open and close its fists and mouth. Fingernails and toenails are beginning to develop and the external ears are formed. The beginnings of teeth are forming. Your baby's reproductive organs also develop, but the baby's gender is difficult to distinguish on ultrasound.
By the end of the third month, your baby is fully formed. All the organs and extremities are present and will continue to mature in order to become functional. The circulatory and urinary systems are working and the liver produces bile.
At the end of the third month, your baby is about 4 inches long and weighs about 1 ounce.
Since your baby's most critical development has taken place, your chance of miscarriage drops considerably after three months.

By the end of the THIRD MONTH the baby is FULLY FORMED.  Let that sink in for a moment.

At no time in its development does the baby look like a blob of tissue as Planned Parenthood says the fetus looks like. It will be a clump of cells only in the first 2 weeks, and quickly develops into a recognizable form - one that begins to resemble a human baby.  Here is a picture of the embryo at 8 days - attached to the uterine wall.  It has purpose as a living thing.  This photo was taken by Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson, who spent a good part of his life photographing the development of babies in the womb.






Lennart Nilsson shows us an 8 week old baby looks like this:



Not a blob of tissue. And yet this is what is removed from a woman's body.  There is video of an 8 week old baby moving its arms and legs.  You can find that video HERE.

I can tell you that the strongest instinct in all living things is the will to live.

I am forever grateful to my Chinese daughters' mothers who did whatever they had to do to give birth to them.  They gave our daughters life, and I pray that God blesses them every day.  And I can tell you that my daughters are forever grateful for that life.  They know that their mothers, being in China, could have had forced abortions.  Not sure how they kept from getting into trouble with the authorities - but GOOD FOR THEM! 

My youngest, when in middle school, would argue with high school students that abortion was wrong.  And she did so fearlessly and with logic.  She has had discussions with classmates who are willing to listen to her point of view (and they will have a discussion not an argument) and she would be minding her own business, when someone in the class will overhear and begin to argue with her.  However, she listens and then points out their contradictions they make as they say one thing and then another that is totally opposite of their original statement. She isn't mean, just not afraid to point out their inconsistencies.  Fearless.









Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Back to blogging

Facebook sucks. 

There, I said it.  I get on nowadays to check on friends and post annoying things like what my kids are doing now...  but I can't stand Zuckerberg's hypocrisy and blatant censorship of anything he doesn't like or agree with, and it has just made me say "I'm over it."  It's no wonder his stock has dropped.  

We moved into a new home, and it has been nothing but headaches.  The builder never completed projects that he promised to do and now we are left with doing it ourselves. It's been expensive and I am seriously thinking I need a lawyer to sue his ass into oblivion.  I believe that a person in business should stand behind their work, but evidently he believes in "take the money and run." 

Enough of the bitch fest.  For now - it's done.

On the brighter side - there are my daughters.  They are the bright spots in my life.... the very ones who make my life worth living.  Don't get me wrong - it is frustrating sometimes.  But they are teenagers - and I actually have it pretty good.  With few exceptions, they are loving and respectful.  They work hard in school and want to maintain their good grades.  One has no clue what she wants to be in life, the other has her life planned out.  I just ask them to stay flexible - life doesn't always turn out the way we want it to.  Me, for example.  I wanted to be a paleontologist.  But I ended up after all was said and done a stay at home mom.  

However, it has been the very best job of all. 





 

Friday, May 30, 2014

Growing up

One child is still this precocious little girl we adopted.  June will make 10 years we traveled to  China to adopt her, and I still see that little baby in the things she does...  she is in the between stage of a little child and a young woman...  and she moves back and forth between the two as she pleases, because neither persona is "her" at this moment.  Or rather, both personas are "her".  But she is definitely finding herself, at the same time just being herself.  


Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Monday, January 06, 2014

My daughters are growing up.  I haven't posted in a loooooooong time. Time to catch up. And I'm going to become even more active as time goes by.

I have been off to take care of many issues here at home.  In the meantime, the kids are growing and becoming quite the little ladies.