I have just listened to one of the most inspiring stories I have heard in a long time.  Gianna is the daughter of a woman who had an abortion.  However, the instillation abortion did not work and Gianna was born alive.  Her 17 year old mother put her up for adoption.

Just watching this video was so beautiful.  My thought at the conclusion of the video was, “this beautiful, well spoken woman was almost never given a chance to live her life.  How many other people like her have had their lives snuffed out”.

I highly recommend watching these videos:

http://www.withpurpose.com/2008/10/04/she-survived-abortion-and-tells-about-it/

I am fully aware that it is not typical for feminist to be pro-life and I do not expect this post to be popular with anyone.  But as this is my page I will speak my mind.

for more information on Gianna and her work:

http://www.giannajessen.com/EPK/bio.html

http://www.bornalivetruth.org/

I’m an AUNT!  There are so many people having babies right now!  Maybe it’s just this stage in life for me and most of my friends but my best friend just had a baby a few weeks ago, my sister just had a baby, my other best friend just found out she’s pregnant…. ok to make this list easier – I only have one married friend that is not pregnant or just had a baby.

I don’t understand the desire to get pregnant RIGHT NOW.  I do want to have children someday, but I have so much stress with just living life that I know I am not prepared to have that kind of responsibility.  My husband is getting ready to deploy within this next year sometime.  It would kill me to go through a pregnancy without him.  We are not financially stable right now.  We are living in different cities because of our jobs.  Life is just too complicated right now.  Not to mention that I work swing shift and wouldn’t be able to take care of my baby as much as I would like to.

Everyone keeps telling me I need to get pregnant before I get too old… ok 24 is not that old.   Of course I keep hearing the fear from my friends,  “what if you wait too long and then have trouble getting pregnant”.  Well, I’ll deal with that when the time comes.  Why worry about something that hasn’t happened yet.

I love children.  I want three.  My husband wants two.  But whatever we decide, we know that we need to wait a few years before we try to bring a child into our crazy lives.

But anyway, as I started say… I’M AN AUNT!  I couldn’t be there because, again, I had to work.  But I have a beautiful little niece!  I can’t wait to hold her and spoil her like crazy!  It’s so amazing to have a new little girl in the family.  I’m so happy for my sister and brother-in-law.

Recent observation – Guys loooove to gossip.

There has been so much drama at work the past two weeks because two of my co-workers love to talk about each other behind each others backs.

Going to dinner with the guys is like being at lunch at high school.  “did you hear what happened yesterday?” “you will never believe what so and so said yesterday”

Seriously, what happened to guys talking about sports and hunting?  cars and work?

I have to admit they are great at telling the stories and they often have the most juicy gossip.  But hello, we have to work together and depend on each other… so lets not start any drama.

]]> http://brainsandbeauty.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/guys-gossip/feed/ 0 brainsandbeauty http://brainsandbeauty.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/need-a-laugh-today/ http://brainsandbeauty.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/need-a-laugh-today/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:41:19 +0000 brainsandbeauty http://brainsandbeauty.wordpress.com/?p=65 ]]>

Just one of those day where I needed something to make me laugh and then I got these in an e-mail:

A cop was on his horse waiting to cross the street when a little girl on her new shiny bike stopped beside him.
“Nice bike,” the cop said. “Did Santa bring it to you?”
“Yes Sir” the little girl said, “he sure did!”
The cop looked the bike over and handed the girl a $5 ticket for a safety violation.
The cop said, “Next year tell Santa to put a reflector light on the back of it.” !!!
The young girl looked up at the cop and said, “Nice horse you’ve got there Sir. Did Santa bring it to you?”
Playing along with the girl, he chuckled and answered “Yes, he sure did” !!!
The little girl looked up at the cop and said, “Next year tell Santa the dick goes underneath the horse, not on top.”

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, “When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah”.
The teacher asked, “What if Jonah went to hell?”
The little girl replied, “Then you ask him “.

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family’s 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a couple of dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the two dollar “pay” she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, “I worked last week with the crew building the house next door to us. “My goodness gracious,” said the teller, “and will you be working on the house again this week, too?” The little girl replied, “I will if those assholes at Home Depot ever deliver the fucking sheet rock…”

A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work.
As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.”
The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.”
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds.
After explaining the commandment to “honor” thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, “Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?”
Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, “Thou shalt not kill.”

One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head.
She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, “Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?”   Her mother replied, “Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turn white.”
The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, “Momma, how come ALL of grandma’s hairs are white?”

The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.
“Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, ‘There’s Jennifer, she’s a lawyer,’ or ‘That’s Michael, He’s a doctor.’
A small voice at the back of the room rang out, “And there’s the teacher, she’s dead.”

The Sermon this Mom will never forget….”Dear Lord,” the minister began, with arms extended toward heaven and a rapturous look on his upturned face.
“Without you, we are but dust.” He would have continued but, at that moment, my very obedient daughter (who was listening) leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her shrill little girl voice, “Mom, what is butt dust?”.

For example: Yesterday, he admonished a woman for not listening to her husband.  Another time, a man had asked me a question and I started to answer him.  Evidently he did not hear the other man ask me a question and said “look at this woman thinking she can speak before a man asks her to”.

He makes similar statements pretty much every time I am around him.  My reaction every time has been shock that a man really just said that.  I just shrug it off as ignorance on his part and go along my way.  However, my husband was outraged when I mentioned it to him yesterday.  He said that he cannot believe that I haven’t made a complaint against him.

I’m not sure that there is even a point in making a “formal” complain because, while it does offend me that he is so ridiculously chauvinistic…. it is just seems a waste of time to spend my energy getting upset when he is an asshole to everyone and is unlikely to change.  I just don’t see how he cannot see how offensive his petty comments are to the people he is around.

I have decided to put together I formal letter of compliant and we will see if anything comes of it.  I have little faith that anything will happen.  Perhaps I’m pessimistic.  Or perhaps I’ve just seen too many complaints against others go ignored

Yesterday I was with my best friend looking at pregnancy books at Books-a-million.  (she’s the one pregnant not me!  lol!) I was upset to realize that EVERY book they had on adoption was about adopting overseas.

Why is it that Americans seem more likely to go around the world to adopt a baby than to adopt right in thier own country, or even thier own state?  There are thousands of children in thier own state that are desperate for homes that need them desperately.  “

“Almost 70 percent of the children waiting to be adopted had been in continuous foster care for two years or more; twenty-five percent for five years or more.”

I grew up in a family who took in dozens of children who were in need of homes.  It is amazing how many children in your own town who need a loving home.  Some children can go their entire lives and not know what it is like to have a mother who really cares about then; who will hold them when they get hurt, who will listen when they have a bad day.

Perhaps I’m wrong in my very strong opinion, and if I am I hope someone will speak up and say so, but I believe that the reasons people do not want to adopt American children are:

Some people like the attention of having a child that is from another country.

Some do not want to deal with the emotional baggage that some children who have been in foster care or from difficult homes could potentially have.

They may not want to adopt a child that may be a little older.  One who may have a little harder time with attaching to them the way an infant may.

Basically, it comes down to people looking for a baby to fulfill THEM.  They want something to make their lives more complete rather than looking to make someone elses life better.

Because women’s work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we’re the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it’s our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a “real” man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we’re neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we’re selfish and if we stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and “unfeminine” and if we don’t we’re typical weak females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re unnatural and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and…for lots of other reasons we are part of the women’s liberation movement. ~Author unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987

As I’ve stated before, I am very independent and so I really didn’t think it would be terribly difficult.  It was one of the most challenging ordeals of my life.  For those who have no idea what I’m talking about I’ll give a few examples:

~ spending weeks waiting for a phone call or an e-mail just to hear “I love you babe”

~ dealing with the snide comments from people who don’t even know you telling you “you know every man   overseas cheats on their wives”

~ watching the news not knowing where he is or if he’s in the middle of the latest crisis overseas

~ missing holidays like Christmas, Valentines Day, and Birthdays year after year

~ when you finally break down from weeks of holding in the sadness…. your family saying “well you knew what you were getting into.  suck it up”

I say all of this to applaud the amazing women that I have met over the past few years who are the rock of their families.  Those who are married to a man in the military and are loyal and faithful to them through the long deployments, through the times they are away for training, and any of the other seemingly endless times the military takes our men away.  You are not recognized often enough for what YOU give to your country… the love of your life!

I’ve been having a struggle lately with ideals that I’ve held for most of my life. I’ve always believed that women were and are equal to men in most all things.  I know that there are degrees that certain men and women are stronger at but then that goes with everything.  Yes, as a whole men tend to have more physical strength than women.  However, there are plenty of women that are stronger than a lot of men so it is all relative to the situation and the person.  I also have thought that women and men have or can have pretty much the same goals in life: to be well educated, to have a good job, to be successful in that job, possibly at some point get married and if both parties agree then have a family.  Which is reasonable.

That doesn’t mean that the woman will necessarily be the one responsible for the children or the household.  That the man will be the one to have a job.  I truly believe that both spouses can work and they can STILL have a family.

Here is the source of my difficulty:  I work in a profession that is still ninety percent male.  My two best friends and I have struggled to earn respect among our male peers and succeeded.  We have thrown our entire lives into to achieving where we are at work.   Within the past year my two best friends have gotten married and pregnant.  They are now trying to decide if they want to continue with their careers or quit and get a less demanding job or stay at home with their babies.

I do not in any way want to sound like I respect them less for this dilemma.  They are still two of the most amazing, intelligent women I have ever met.  But, I can not imagine throwing away all that education, training, and their dreams!

Is the desire to be a strong independant woman natural or is it taught to us by society?  I would have scoffed at this possibility in the past.  But, when I see people change like this right in front of me…. from following their dreams with everything in them, to wanting to stay at home with their children and keep house.  What am I to believe?

Maybe women are natural caregivers who want to have babies and keep house.  This doesn’t mean that they do not still have brilliant minds that they use to raise their children to be some of the greatest minds in our country.  They are still amazing women.  They are just different than the women I saw that were pursuing careers and moving forward an a male dominant world.

I know precisely where my thinking that I can do anything I set my mind to; regardless of my gender or size.  Growing up on a farm and a family owned construction business I was continually working around men and required to work just as hard as they did.  I could push myself to do the same manual labor as any man I was working around.  So, when I went to college I did not feel limited to choose a profession that was typical for women.  I knew I could do anything I set out to do.

I do not feel that I will change when my husband and I choose to have children.  I still plan to work.  My husband even jokes about being a stay at home dad!  Who knows, maybe he will!