November 8, 2012 10:11 pm

+1 Productivity

Today I:

  • Changed the sheets on our bed. We got these new flannel sheets from Target that are ivory with teal ticking stripes and they’re adorable.
  • Did two loads of laundry (but didn’t fold any of it because UGGGGHHHH FOLDING LAUNDRY)
  • Deposited paychecks in the bank
  • Dropped off a check at daycare
  • Visited Daniel at work (Wesley swept some rugs with this electric sweeper thing and LOVED IT.)
  • Discovered my lost iPod at the bottom of the washer after the second load of laundry :|
  • Made Wesley a shape-matching worksheet that he seemed to have fun with. We practiced writing his name and drawing lines from a shape on the left side of the page to its matching shape on the right.
  • Had a meeting with a freelance client
  • Badly bruised my middle finger while opening my car door to head to the above meeting. It was ridiculously windy outside and the wind blew the car door at me and it hit my finger really, really hard. It puffed up right away and is now all bruised.
  • Watched the latest episode of Supernatural on Hulu. I don’t know how people manage watching television shows while they are actually on television. My favorite thing about discovering a new book series or TV series or band is when all their books/episodes/albums are already out and I can just gorge myself on their entire body of work. Waiting a whole week between episodes feels like an eternity.
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November 7, 2012 3:41 pm

Cup of Water

The other day, Wesley asked me to refill his cup of water. I got up and walked to the sink, turned on the tap, put a little bit of water in his cup and handed it off to him.

He took a drink and made a sort of scrunchy face. He held it out and said, “I want colder water.”

I took the cup back from him, laughing but sort of indignant, like sheesh kid, sorry the water is not chilled to your optimum preferred temperature, and then I tested the water with my finger before pouring it out.

Unbeknownst to me, Daniel had recently used the sink for hot water, so when I turned on the cold water and filled Wesley’s cup, I had actually filled it with the hot water still in the pipes.

NO WONDER he did not want to drink it. Ha! I was laughing so much that it was hard to explain to Daniel what happened.

Wesley and I both thought the whole thing was really funny so every time he’d request more water that day, I’d ask him if he wanted it hot or cold and he’d laugh and say “cold.”

Two-and-a-half is a fun age. Trying sometimes, for sure, but definitely fun.

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November 6, 2012 6:51 pm

Election 2012

I, like many others in the USA, am glued to an election map watching the updates.

My state (Idaho) is pretty much a guarantee for Romney, which is disappointing, but hey – left-wingers do exist in Idaho and I did my part!

I didn’t receive a sticker for voting, which was also disappointing to me as this is the first election where I’ve voted in person – Oregon is entirely vote-by-mail. I loooooved vote-by-mail and I think we should adopt it nationwide as a method of improving voter turnout. It’s so much easier to vote in the privacy of your own home than it is to try to find time in your work schedule to physically make it over to a polling location. (I think the voting ballots should come with “I voted!” stickers though.)

……

For your consideration:

How I Lost Faith in the Pro-Life Movement

As I sat there in the student union reading over my lunch, I found that making birth control widespread and easily accessible is actually the most effective way to decrease the abortion rate. Even as I processed this fact, I knew that the pro-life movement as a whole generally opposes things like comprehensive sex education and making birth control available to teenagers. I knew this because I had lived it, had heard it in pro-life banquet after pro-life banquet, had read it in the literature. The pro-life movement is anti-birth-control. And opposing birth control is pretty much the most ineffective way to decrease abortion rates imaginable. In fact, opposing birth control actually drives the abortion rates up.

As I mulled this over, I realized how very obvious it was. The cause of abortions is unwanted pregnancies. If you get rid of unwanted pregnancies the number of people who seek abortions will drop like a rock. Simply banning abortion leaves women stuck with unwanted pregnancies. Banning abortion doesn’t make those pregnancies wanted. Many women in a situation like that will be willing to do anything to end that pregnancy, even if it means trying to induce their own abortions (say, with a coat hanger or by drinking chemicals) or seeking out illegal abortions. I realized that the real way to reduce abortion rates, then, was to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. And the way to do that is with birth control, which reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies by allowing women to control when and if they become pregnant.

This post articulates so many of my feelings on the subject of the “pro-life” movement – it’s well-written and level-headed, and I would wholeheartedly recommend reading it, no matter what your position on the issue is.

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