Seven Quick Takes -- About my week

Seven Quick Takes is hosted by Jen.

This has been a different sort of week for me, so each take is going to be related to that theme.

1) We had our Memorial Day cookout on Sunday, since some of the kids who were in town needed to leave mid-day Monday. One thing that didn't move to the new house with us was our old and battered picnic tables, which have not yet been replaced. I miss them. It's easier to eat in the dining room, but ribs just taste better outdoors. SIgh.

2) Monday after everybody left we had a new experience. We could stay up as late as we wanted, because nobody had to go to school the next day. (The last day for seniors, including Kelson, was last Friday.) The last time that happened, Arwen was four, Branwen was a toddler, and Miriel was a baby. Not that we DID stay up late, you understand, but we could have.

3) Tuesday morning I woke up and "called in sick" to my much-loved Bible study because my right shoulder hurt so badly. It hurt to try to move, and although I could get my arm above waist height, I had to lift it with my left hand. It felt like my shoulder was dislocated, and I couldn't get it back in. (I've never actually been diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder, but I have very loose joints -- probably BJHS -- and have been able to pop my shoulder in and out at will for as long as I can remember.) No matter how much I twisted and turned and stretched (and moaned and groaned and whined...) the shoulder still hurt. A lot. So I resorted to the "Mike prescription."

Mike is a Physician's Assistant we know, and his recommendation for anything musculo-skeletal (and not obviously broken/bleeding/urgent ) is "three ibuprofen three times a day for three days." And you know what -- it worked. Wednesday was better than Tuesday, Thursday better than Wednesday, and several times today I noticed myself doing things that would have been impossible on Tuesday. But I certainly hope this whatever-it-was doesn't happen again.

4) Wednesday, sore shoulder or no sore shoulder, I participated in PAC interviews. As I've mentioned before, I'm very involved with our local Right to Life chapter. One of the things we do in election years is interview candidates for various local offices and evaluate their credibility and electablity as candidates. (Their pro-life credentials are evaluated by their answers to a questionnaire mailed out by the state PAC.) By law only the state PAC can endorse candidates, but we can do interviews locally and recommend for or against endorsement. We interviewed five candidates for four different offices, and on Monday I get to drive to another town and help interview five more. I'm an active participant in the political process!

5) Also on Wednesday, we got a call that Miriel had been offered the job she was hoping for. It's a terrific fit for her interests and abilities, and she will love it. Unfortunately she'll be almost 600 miles away, but with the internet she'll be much more in contact than I was when I went 75 miles from home for college. "It's a new world, Golde." (Name that quotation.)

6) On Thursday (assisted by Roger for the heavy lifting), I did MAJOR grocery shopping. In our area it's the custom for HS graduates to have open house type parties, and Kelson's is on the 13th. (This date was arrived at by checking his Google calendar and eliminating the dates on which his friends had already scheduled parties. And most of the invitations went out on Facebook. See quote above.) We're expecting probably 100 people, and although not all of them will eat much -- since they will be jumping from open house to open house -- that's still a lot of food. The non-perishable ingredients are all stowed away -- I'll pick up the perishables next Thursday -- and after graduation on Tuesday the preparations will begin. If you're in the area, come on over on the 13th between 3 and 7!

7) On Friday I blogged. That is all.

Itchy Kitchy Koo

My mother had something she always told me whenever I skinned my knees as a kid -- "When it starts to itch, it means it's getting better." Man, do I hope she was right. Because currently I am (almost seriously) tempted to scratch the front of my face right off.

There is a remote possibility that I am having a reaction to adhesive, since I have been cushioning the nose pads of my glasses with the tape from Sport Strip Band-Aids. I have just removed that, and for the last 30 seconds it's felt better. But I'm pretty sure that's not the whole story, since I woke up this morning already itchy, and I don't wear my glasses while I sleep!

Actually I think my mother was probably right. I am already showing other signs of healing; the two black eyes I was promised have not materialized, but I have gorgeous yellow circles underneath. It sure looks like the yellow you get when a bruise starts to fade. At any rate, here's hoping!

I am really looking forward to tomorrow, when Arwen arrives with Blaise and Camilla. (Bryan is spending the weekend at his dad's deer hunting "ranch.") And Miriel is coming with them! She has a long Thanksgiving break from the John Jay Institute, and is flying back to Michigan today. Only Brandon won't be here for Thanksgiving, but he's already put in for his Christmas leave, so we'll all be together then. In the new house, DV.

The original plan was that Branwen and her family would come for this weekend, too, and we'd get some good work in on the house. But we still don't have a closing date, so that is off. Everybody is going to come back here Thanksgiving weekend, though. (Arwen and Branwen wanted to cook this year, so we are going there for Thanksgiving itself.) At least we will be able to pack boxes in this house, though I have myself nearly convinced that cleaning is not an "alteration" and that nobody can object to some vacuuming and scrubbing on the new house even if we don't yet have title. But we'd certainly appreciate prayers that we'll be closed by then!!

Well, it appears that typing is a good mechanism for keeping scratching from following itching. But I need to go do some other things, so here's hoping that I can stand it. Bye!

You Won't Believe This -- I Don't!

So my post for today is on hold, as is most of the other stuff I meant to do today. Roger and I were walking the dog, I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk or my own feet*, and then we spent three hours in the emergency room. Diagnosis -- broken nose, plus face brush burns out the wazoo. The good part (??!!) -- once my face feels better (they said a couple of days) nothing to prevent me from working on moving stuff. Stay tuned, possible gory picture to follow.

In other news, Roger had a lovely birthday.

* I've been tripping over my feet all my life. I sprained my ankle for the first time when I was 5.

It's Not Really about Politics

As my sidebar "About Me" section says, I live in Michigan. We're the 11th largest state, and the eighth most populated. (If our largely-unoccupied Upper Peninsula was as densely populated as the rest of the state, we'd be fifth.) Unfortunately, we are also the state with the highest unemployment rate, which means that many people are moving elsewhere to find work.

The "Big Three" automakers are responsible for much of the employment slump here. But some people also place blame on the state government, which is currently run by Democrats. Of course, when we had a Republican governor, people blamed things on him. I'm not a student of economics; I even avoided taking a class in it in college, which was unusual for math majors. And I have never liked dealing with the political process -- in fact I was over thirty when I voted in my first presidential election. But over the last twenty-odd years I have become very well informed on Michigan (and national) politics for a very simple reason: I'm pro-life.

My husband, who grew up in Michigan, remembers his parents working hard to defeat a ballot proposal which would have overturned Michigan's laws against abortion. That proposal went down to defeat by a two-to-one margin. Unfortunately, that was in November of 1972, and the following January the US Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which overrode the abortion laws of all fifty states. Since we have been married, Michigan has dealt with votes on taxpayer funding of abortion (not anymore!), informed consent (yes!), parental consent (with the mandated judicial bypass), assisted suicide (NO --70 to 30%), partial birth abortion (still being fiddled with), and more.

I know some people for whom working on these campaigns is a challenge but a joy, because all this political stuff is right up their alley. Me, I do it because it's right, not because I like it. And this year I get to do it again.

In all the election years when Michigan didn't have some kind of a specific vote going, I still worked hard for the election of candidates at all levels who believe that life and death should be in the hands of God, not a doctor or any other individual. And this has been on both sides of the political aisle; my current state representative is from the "other" party. And he knows me by name and face, even though we disagree on just about every issue but this.

But this year Michigan pro-lifers have a bigger challenge. Yes, we will work to get candidates elected. Our main focus, though, is on the innocuously-named Proposition 2. Prop2, for short, has an attractive website called "CureMichigan". You can go there if you want (it's dot com), but I won't link there because I refuse to inflict the half-truths you'll find there on anybody without a warning. The crux of the matter is that the proponents of Prop2 are claiming that if only Michigan would relax its archaic (passed in 1978) law banning research on embryos which is not for the therapeutic benefit of the embryo, lots of other non-embryonic people would be cured of everything from diabetes to Parkinson's disease.

The facts don't bear this out. This site shows the large number of cures achieved with non-embryonic stem cells, while so far embryonic stem cell (ESC) research has come up empty. But leaving that aside, (and also, if you like, the morality of ESC research), the most dangerous part of Prop2 is "in the fine print."

Prop2, which is a proposal to amend the Michigan constitution, says in part :

All stem cell research and all stem cell therapies and cures must be conducted and provided in accordance with state and local laws of general applicability, including but not limited to laws concerning scientific and medical practices and patient safety and privacy, to the extent that any such laws do not:

(i) prevent, restrict, obstruct, or discourage any stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures that are permitted by the provisions of this section; or

(ii) create disincentives for any person to engage in or otherwise associate with such research or therapies or cures.

That's a bunch of legal language which boils down to "and nobody's allowed to make any new laws which might stop us from doing any of this, or even make us fell bad about it." So this would be a constitutional amendment that could never be changed. Even scientists found out we didn't need to do any of this stuff. Even if the culture changed, and most people agreed it was wrong.

History shows that at least some laws always need to be amended. As far back as Biblical times, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo wound up in the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the lion's den, because the king couldn't change the laws that put them there. And the American constitution has needed to be changed. When my mother was born, my grandmother had no legal right to vote. When my grandmother's mother was born [she's the one for whom I'm named] African-Americans weren't even citizens. Those things needed to be changed, even though they were "sensible" at the time when they were enacted. But Prop2's framers figure they're wiser and more enlightened than America's founding fathers.

So this election season I'll be out there dealing with yard signs and get-out-the-vote phone calls and fund-raising and all the other stuff of a political campaign, and hating it. But I'll be doing it anyway, because it's not really about politics -- it's about Life.

If you live in Michigan and are interested in helping -- or even if you think I'm off-the-wall --log on to MiCause.com and see where you fit in. And for those of you who live somewhere else, all prayers are appreciated!

FLU!

I hate it! I thought I was exhausted before, but then flu hit our household, and I haven't been able to do ANYTHING for 48 hours. Just typing this is exhausting. I'll be back when we're better.