Bonus Points Day

(We do not have Sonic up here in Maple Leaf land. That fact alone almost kept us in Texas...)

Friend of a Friend of a Friend of a Friend...

Blogland is a funny place. Funny in a "small world" kind of way. A link to a link to a link gets you straight to a blog worthy of stalking.

My friend Andrea, who has a daughter with CP, has a great blog. In one of her posts, long ago, she mentioned her friends, Amy and Josh, who were on their way to Africa to bring home their son Silas. A few months later, I noticed that my Bama-friend, Laura, had MET Amy at a bloggy-get-together for those who have adopted children from Ethiopia. Fun times!

I usually like to keep my blog-stalking on the down-low, for fear that the author will think I'm a freakshow, but today, Amy has lured me out of my crazy shell. She's enticed me with a PRESENT. Oh, materialistic and weak am I!

BUT, it's clothed in the premise of a "good cause". So, I feel a bit better. Amy and Josh are in the process of adopting their second baby from Africa. They are naming her Olive, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE. They are also trying to raise a bit of cash for their travel expenses (I hate how expensive adoption is, grrr). The creator of this AWESOME jewellery is giving a portion of her profit to the Bottomly's, to help with adoption costs. LOVE IT.

Amy, bless her heart, is going to give away a necklace to a blogger who mentions Junk Posse Jewellery on their site. I want the necklace. Tee hee!

The stuff is AMAZING:

I love it all. And I love the precious babies that have come into my life as a result of adoption. My heart is smiling.

See, sometimes a little stalking can be good for the soul.

Send it!

This is definitely being sent to our (okay, RICHARD'S) federal representative. LOVE this!



Dear [ Representative / Senator ]:

More than 47 million Americans— disproportionately African-Americans, Hispanics and the working poor— are uninsured. As a result, they lack ready access to care, which causes unnecessary deaths, increases morbidity among the acutely and chronically ill and results in higher costs. This situation is immoral and intolerable.
I call upon the U.S. Congress to enact bipartisan legislation that assures access without barriers to affordable, basic, quality health care for all.

Specifically, I urge Congress to:

Support a health care system in which risks, costs and responsibility are shared by all. There is enough for all, if all share health care resources, recognize limits and seek to be caretakers of health. We can learn from the experience of countries with exemplary records of assuring access and controlling costs. In these countries, health care is seen as a human or social right that helps bind a society together. Those with means help to shoulder the cost for those without, and costs are controlled with cooperative bargaining power.

Eliminate financial and health status as barriers to health care access. My faith tradition teaches me that special care is to be extended to the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Health care for all joins the United States with all other developed countries in providing basic, affordable health care for all.

Strengthen public health systems in order to help create healthy communities. In order to effect long-term improvement in our nation’s overall health, increasing access to health care must go hand in hand with improving public health and reducing poverty. Public health measures will help eliminate unhealthy environmental factors, provide education and incentives for healthy life-style choices and inform the public about the effectiveness and efficiency of health care measures.

Support and strengthen public insurance programs for vulnerable populations while comprehensive reform is being enacted. Programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) currently provide health coverage for more than 50 million individuals— including children and adults in low-income families, the elderly and the disabled. Still, many people who need coverage do not qualify and many states and programs don’t cover needed services.

Openly address issues of quality, efficiency and limits. The quality of health care delivery is profoundly uneven— even for those with insurance— and sizable health care costs are due to advertising, administration and redundant tests. No system can afford to give everyone every medical procedure or treatment that they want or from which they might benefit.

As a Christian, I believe that a biblically-compatible health care system will celebrate God’s generous provision of resources, assuring enough for everyone when shared equitably by all; promote the flourishing of the whole community, including each of its members; and protect the well-being of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

Sincerely,
[ Your Name ]

Braid-y Bunch

I cannnot express how much I love my childcare provider. LOVE her. Here is just another reason why:

When I dropped Ellie off at 8:00 in the morning, her hair was strewn into a quick (read: kinda ugly) ponytail. This is what she looked like when I picked her up:

PRECIOUS!!

The Day After...

Ah, the emotional and physical exhaustion left from yesterday has passed (I love me some Tylenol PM!), and it's time to start a new week.

Several people have asked me how our fundraiser went. Some have been bold enough to ask how much we made, and the more "polite" folk have been hoping I'd give up that information without being questioned.

So, drum roll....

$7200.

GOD IS GOOD!

It still overwhelms me. A couple bowls of a soup and a piece of pie. That's all we gave people for lunch. And they gave us so much more. SO MUCH MORE.

I opened one envelope last night. It only took one for me to realize that I couldn't do it. I could not open each envelope, take out the check, read the name on the upper left hand side, then view the dollar amount. I couldn't separate my head from my heart, the numbers from the names. I didn't want to know who gave what.

So, I made Richard do it. All of it. He's amazing that way.

I just know the final figure. And I know I am thankful. Thankful for the person who folded up a $5 bill into a teeny-tiny piece that fit perfectly in the bottom corner of the envelope. Thankful for the people who probably wrote checks for hundreds of dollars. So very thankful.

Here's what a church-gym full of love looks like:




And here's why they love:

Beyond Thankful

Fundraiser-lunch today at church. I'm feeling so very overwhelmed with gratitude. There are no words. So, in lieu of, here is the video montage I made for our little "sharing time" in the church service this morning.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I'm going to exhale now...

Saturday Stories, Part II

Ellie was not a “good” baby. Oh, she was insanely cute, but she was reminiscent of that nursery rhyme character, Curl-Gurl:

There was a little girl who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead;

When she was good, she was very, very good,

And when she was bad she was horrid.

Except she didn’t actually have hair until she was 2 years old. Otherwise, though I loved her with every fiber of my being, she WAS pretty horrid as a baby.

(I am certain that someone will read this entry and sigh with indignation, as they judge my mothering as unfit. Oh well…)

Ellie cried A.LOT. And she slept VERY.LITTLE. It was a terrible combo. So terrible, in fact, that my Stay-At-Home-Mom job lasted all of four months. I went back to work and just about kissed Carlin, our fantabulous nanny, every time she walked into the door. She was so wonderful with Ellie and *I* was a much better mother after “escaping” to the adult world for a few hours each day.

The problem was that Carlin wasn’t around at night. She wasn’t there to take over at 3am, when Ellie had been crying for an hour and no sign of tiring was in sight.

Richard and I were REALLY tired. REALLY, REALLY tired.

So, one morning, after an extremely tough night, I came up with a brilliant idea: Let’s call in sick to work (because lack of sleep can definitely count as sickness), and when Carlin comes to the house, let’s go to a hotel room and sleep.

Yes, SLEEP.

Richard was game. So, I got on the phone. I called the Comfort Inn near our house, thinking it might be the cheapest local option. The front desk clerk answered and I said,

“Do you rent rooms for half-days? We only need a room for a few hours this morning.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Eventually, the clerk replied with,

“Um, I’ll have to check on that. Cuz, we’re not really THAT kind of hotel, you know.”

Not only will sleep deprivation make you crazy and sick, it will also make you clueless. It wasn’t till after my glorious nap that I realized what he meant.

I guess his manager didn’t care how they made a buck that day, because we were allowed to rent a room for the morning at half the price. Richard checked us into the room and I remember the clerk looking down at our hands; at our ring fingers. OF COURSE, it just so happened that I wasn’t wearing my rings that day. My fingers were still afflicted with the “pregnancy puff” , and my rings were too small.

Once I put it all together, I realized that the front desk clerk (and most likely all the staff who heard his story) thought that I was a hooker-mistress, and we were renting the room for a few hours on our illicit rendezvous.

Tee hee.

‘Course, the clerk would have been really shocked had he walked into our room at any point during the morning. He would have seen two people, each on their own bed, fully clothed, sound asleep. I’m not even sure I got my shoes off before hitting the pillow.

It was a great nap. And I’m sure we gave a few Comfort Inn employees some good, juicy office-gossip laughs. So, win-win.

And, just for the record, Ellie grew out of her horridness a few months later and was replaced with straight-haired sweetness.

The End