Just say "no" ... to vaccines!

"Love them. Protect them. Never inject them."


I LOVE it! :D It's a excellent and clever alternative to the absurd propaganda: "Love them. Protect them. Immunize them." See more about it here.

Props to Wendy Callahan of Hawthorne, FL, to whom the slogan is credited!

Actually, I should mention that I do not believe that parents who choose to vaccinate their children are not loving them or protecting them. I was just really irked by the original slogan and the amended version made me chuckle.

Katie is 6 now. She had a birthday at the end of May. My parents and grandpa were here and we went to the Mall of America and rode some rides. The kids had a lot of fun. We also had a little party in the back yard with some of her friends.

I bought a paper journal for the first time in a long time. I thought it might be nice to have a hobby I could practice away from the computer. It might help me organize my thoughts a bit and be relaxing, hopefully therapeutic, as well. I will continue to blog, though I know I have not been very good about updating, as it is!

We had a bit of a problem with discussions about Santa, recently, between Katie and the neighbor kids, who believe. She told them Santa wasn't real. Oops! I talked to her about it and she agreed to not say as much about it next time, but she mentioned it again today. :-o She said she forgot and I believe her. I'm stressing to her the importance of allowing their family to participate in those traditions, but I am not responsible for her behavior, either. I'm doing all I can by reminding her. Hopefully, she will remember next time.

I wish I could take a looong nap! Maybe Luke will nap in a bit. That would be nice!

I'm going to end now. I hope you all are having a good week!

Breastfeeding "Rights"

Tennessee health officials and lawmakers actively support breastfeeding mothers. Tennessee passed a law in 2006 protecting a mother’s right to breastfeed a child 12 months or younger in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are authorized to be present;
prohibiting local governments from criminalizing or restricting breastfeeding. Another law requires employers in Tennessee to accommodate breastfeeding mothers at work. The Tennessee Department of Health and WIC program, along with hospitals and health providers, stress that workplaces and communities can work together to protect this important practice by establishing a breastfeeding-friendly environment.

Quote is from http://health.state.tn.us/newsreleases/080107.htm - bold mine.

That is a joke. Actively supporting breastfeeding mothers by protecting a mother's right to nurse in public until their baby is 12 months? Obviously, the people who wrote and passed this law were not familiar with breastfeeding relationships or facts. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends nursing until at least 2 years of age and beyond that as is mutually agreeable to the mother and child. There are nutritional and emotional benefits to nursing past one year of age. So, the Tennessee lawmakers really need to be educated in this area and the law needs to be amended to remove the limit on the age of the nursling whose right to breastfeed is protected.

Ugh. Blah. Blech.

I am not having a good day. In fact, it's a pretty bad day, although I feel better than I did earlier. I'm so very tired and my back hurts badly (I strained it and it keeps getting aggravated) and I missed two days of my anxiety medication. So, basically, I feel like crap and am having a lot of trouble handling things today.

Maybe once Brian gets home, I'll take a nap. Not sure. I just want the day to go away. I want everything and everyone to go away. Blah, blah, blah. I just want to hide and rest somewhere - all alone for a long time.

I need to call next week to make an appointment with the psychiatrist to see if I need my meds changed.

Maybe more later.

I forgot to say that I feel very lonely sometimes. I love my kids and Brian and he is my best friend in the world, but I really, really want a best girl friend. I have a friend that lives near me, but we're not super-close. Maybe getting closer, but I don't know. Some people are just easier to get close to than others and I often wonder if I like other people more than they like me. I feel so blah and "whatever" right now, but I would love to have some females here to have a very close relationship with. We don't even have any family around here, though it's really close friends that I'm wanting. OK, I'm done whining now. Sorry. *blush* *shrug* :) :-/

We had a full day today, but it was a lot of fun. We ate at a wonderful Indian vegetarian restaurant and went shopping at a huge thrift store. I bought two books (Match Game and The Handmaid's Tale, Reader's Digest Natural Disasters), a couple shirts for Luke, 3 shirts for Katie, a few stuffed animals, some books for the kids, a kitchen gadget for Brian, a little wooden train for Luke, and I think that's it. Can't think of anything else right now.

My sleep study is on Monday night and my mind is consumed with worry about Luke and whether he will cry and call for me all night. :( I don't think he will because Daddy has a fun night planned for the kids, complete with new movies, Luke's favorite stuffed kitty, and Luke's favorite hemp shake, which I will have ready in the fridge. And Brian has lots of great ideas for distracting Luke if he is distressed at my absence. He's a very compassionate and kind daddy! :D If I didn't feel this was very important to my mental health and that it would improve the daily life of my family and myself, I would not go. I would wait until Luke was older. However, I feel that this is the first step in finding out what is going on with my moods and mental state. To that end, I'm glad to be going and I think it will be an interesting and different (therefore, fun) experience. What will it be like to not have anyone waking me in the night? I'll probably lie awake since I'm not used to long, uninterrupted sleep! LOL They told me that they do have a sleeping pill available to help you fall asleep. I may need it b/c of my anxiety and possible discomfort from all the wires. I will be sure to check on its compatibility with breastfeeding. I hope I don't leak breastmilk on the sheets! Probably wouldn't be the first time it's happened!

Oh, we also stopped at Whole Foods before we came home. We haven't been there in quite a while (a year or more) because it's too far from where we live now. We all had dessert(s)! :-o

Need to go to bed now. Stayed up too late playing Fashion Solitaire (fun!) from Big Fish Games.

Uuuuuunnnnnnggggg!

I wish the real world would just stop hasslin' me
I wish the real world would just stop hasslin' me

I don't understand it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do and I don't know how to do it. I'm just falling, failing, losing, faltering, drowning. Sometimes, the world just feels like a horrid, inscrutable mess and I want to run away from it.

Blah.

Outing

We went out together on a shopping trip for the first time in quite a while. As we started out, I was thrilled! And it was a pretty good trip, all in all, but I certainly get tired out more quickly than I used to and the mall doesn't have *quite* the draw, either. I really must be getting old, eh? Hehe. I don't mind, though, really.

I'm happy because we got the kids up quite a bit earlier than we have been getting up. :D Here's hoping that we're moving towards getting on a little earlier schedule!

We bought a large dry erase board to hang on the wall of the lower landing of our stairway to help us organize our housekeeping tasks. Maybe we can finally digourselves out from under all this clutter. That would be wonderful! We also bought a new computer chair, which we have been needing for a long time. The back on this one is broken, so I can't lean back, which can get to be really uncomfortable. We found some fun stuff there for the kids, like a crayon holder tower and a couple computer games.

I have a headache now. I really want to go to sleep. Once we start getting up at the same (earlier) time every day, I'm going to try really hard to institute a bedtime routine starting at the same time most nights. Our days really need a little more organization. I guess everything in my life does! :P Going to stop writing now and take some Tylenol. Will try to update again soon. G'night!