“Mama, when a woman has a baby, it makes her get big chest’is so her baby can eat. When the baby gets through eating from her big chest’is, then her chest’is get little again.”

Too true, my darling. Too true.

A couple mornings ago, I woke up thinking, “Y equals MX plus B”. I swear. No joke.

Last night, I dreamed all night about forgetting my book when I do my reading in Speech class this coming Monday. I am planning on reading “Wodney Wat” but, when I got to Speech class, I realized I had brought the wrong book.

Should school be interjecting itself into my dream life quite so much?

Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!
Ok-lahoma where I laugh and laugh about the crazy antics on the stage!

Me, Stephanie, and my mom went to see Roane State’s production of Oklahoma last night. It was great. I had no idea what it was about. I had never seen a theater production nor the movie version. It was really funny. Just to give you a little insight into my personality, my favorite character…by far…was Ado Annie, the boy-loving, good time having, Persian goodbye/Oklahoma hello receiving floozy. She was hilarious. It was all good, though. Other than Laurie’s singing and speaking voice…she drove me up the wall. Curly was great, though.

I left my three small children in the hands of my two cousins, Punky (Tiffany) who is 15 and Kiah who is 12(?), as well as my brother Seth. We were only fifteen minutes away at the college, and I told them to call me if they needed anything at all. I just turned my cell on vibrate. I checked in on them at intermission, and they were fine. After the performance, Steph shared with me as we were walking to the car that in the middle of the second act she received a text message from Punky that said, “How do you make him quit crying?” Steph texted her back and said, “Bounce him.” When we got home, all three of my kids were sound asleep. Can’t beat that.

Now, I just have to write a little bit about the Oklahoma experience for my Speech class, and then I am going to write a concert report about it for extra credit in my Music class.

I listen to a lot of talk radio. On the way home from the grocery store, I was listening to a little bit of the Neil Boortz show. He is a conservative talk show host. When I first started listening, they were talk about the politicians who have announced that they are going to run for the Presidency in 2008. They were talking, in particular, about Rudi Giuliani. The guy who had called in to the show was saying that Giuliani should try to get the conservative Christian vote. He then mentioned that Giuliani was pro-abortion. Immediately, Boortz was all over him. He was saying that Giuliani had never said or done anything that indicated that he was “pro-abortion”. He ranted and raved for a few minutes. He said that the issue was not “pro-abortion” and “pro-life”, but instead he insisted that it was “pro-choice” and “against choice”. He was trying to say that people who are “pro-choice” are just against the idea of government being so powerful that they can force a woman to have a baby that she doesn’t want. I quit listening to the show at this point, because it made me mad.
I don’t understand this argument at all. I am pro-life. 100%. I think that every baby that is conceived has the right to be born, whether the biological parents want to take care of it or not. I think I am pretty pro-choice, too. Not in the mainstream way, though. I don’t think that a woman should have the choice to abort a baby that she has conceived. How can I be pro-choice then? I’m pro-choice because I believe that every woman has the choice whether or not she wants to have sex. I think that if you choose to have sex, you are choosing to risk getting pregnant. Even if you are using contraceptives and get pregnant when you don’t want to, you are still aware that there is a chance of pregnancy each time you have sex. That is a woman’s choice. All of the high profile psychologists tell us in their talk shows, books, and websites that to choose a behavior is to choose the consequence. One of the “consequences” of having sex is getting pregnant. There are, or course, instances when a woman has her choice taken away from her by being raped. In those cases, I think women should be encouraged to do what’s right for the baby. Have the baby, and then let someone adopt it if you don’t want to raise it. No, you didn’t choose to be raped, but you can choose to let a baby live. The baby didn’t choose to be conceived by an unwilling mother. Should the mother then be allowed to take the baby’s choice away from it? I’m sure most people would ask to live being given the choice of life or death. Why do we advocate for the rights of women, yet deny the rights of the women (and men) who have yet to be born?

My husband and I watched a Primetime special last night on television. It was part of a series called “The Outsiders”, which is a series about people who live abnormal lives or on the outskirts of society. I had watched parts of the series before, one of which was on polygamy, so I was interested to watch it again. This episode was about cave diving. The cave that was featured was Bushman’s Hole, a remote sinkhole in the Northern Cape province of South Africa and the third-deepest freshwater cave known to man. It began by telling the story of a young man named Deon who had died there in 1994. He had been a support diver who had blacked out during his dive and sank to his death. Primetime interviewed Deon’s parents, who had a hard time getting closure with their son’s death because his body was never recovered. At this point, it began telling the story of two divers who were close friends, Dave and Dan. Dave attempted setting a world record by diving down to the bottom of Bushman’s Hole and then, once he reached bottom, swimming around to explore a little bit. When he did this, he found Deon’s body lying on the bottom. He had a dream or premonition before the dive about finding Deon’s body, and said that, when he actually found it, it was exactly as he had dreamed it. After returning from his record setting dive, Dave was determined to attempt another dive to recover Deon’s body. When he made his attempt, he did it with a camera attached to his helmet and a body bag in tow, for containing Deon’s body. His friend, Dan, was going to be a support diver, diving nearly as deep as Dave. Everything went well, until Dave actually got to Deon’s body. When he tugged on it, the body came loose and began floating toward him. They had expected the body to just be skeletal remains, because Deon’s head and hands, that Dave had seen before because they weren’t covered with his wet suit, were exposed to the water and decayed to just the skeleton. However, that wasn’t the case. Deon’s body that was inside of the wet suit had not decayed away and floated up toward Dave. When this happened, Dave’s light that was attached to him by a line became entangled with all of Deon’s dive gear. At that great depth, Dave’s mind was unable to function properly, and he was not able to free himself. He died. Dan, who was swimming a good distance above Dave, saw his light not coming back. He tried to swim down to rescue his friend, but a gauge on his equipment busted from the pressure of the water. He had to abandon his friend and attempt to return to the surface. Because of the risk of the bends, he had to ascend over a ten hour period of time to de-pressurize. He had to try to regulate his air supply on his own, since his equipment was messed up. He developed a bad case of the bends which was making him disoriented, sick, and in great pain. When he finally returned to the surface, he was incredibly sick, and suffered ill effects for a couple of weeks. After a memorial service for Dave the next day, divers were going in to retrieve the rope that was the guide down to the bottom. When they did this, they happened to see Dave and Deon’s bodies, still entangled, had floated to the surface. Dave died in the process, but he did retrieve Deon’s body.
That was a long way to tell the background of my thoughts, but it was astounding to watch this special. My husband and I were both engrossed in the story. Because of the camera that was mounted to Dave’s helmet, when his body returned to the surface, the footage told everyone exactly what happened. It was eerie to just watch the footage. I can’t understand why anyone would want to go so deep underwater. That is like a nightmare for me. To be deep underwater, in pitch blackness, with no one near….I shudder. Even if you were to panic and want to reach the surface, you could not just swim up. You have to be disciplined enough to ascend very slowly, spending the greater part of a day de-pressurizing. It’s unfathomable to me. The things that some people do for fun are so foreign to me. At the same time, I love to watch documentary type specials on television about the same things that scare me in real life. I guess it truly takes all kinds. I reap the benefits every day of courageous and adventurous explorers who have risked life and limb to go farther, go deeper, climb higher, and think outside of the box. Without the explorers of the world, our knowledge and understanding of the world around us would be much more narrowed. So while I shudder on the couch with vicarious fear and excitement, I tip my hat to those who are braver than I.

We have the opportunity in my Comp class to keep a journal for extra credit. We can get up to twenty points of extra credit for writing about whatever strikes our fancy. I thought I would post some of mine here. The next couple of blog posts will be things that I have thought and wrote about for class. Feel free to start a discussion in the comments section if you want to. I’m open to talking about things other than my kids every now and then.

Last night, UPS delivered a movie for the kids that Chris had ordered. It was Happy Feet. Chris was fixing to put it in for the kids to watch, when Kyra said, “I don’t want to watch that movie. It ignores my ears.” She meant to say, “It annoys my ears.” She changed it to “annoys” the last several times she said.

It’s kind of turned into a catch-phrase with me and Chris now. Everything annoys our ears.

I’m finally getting around to writing about our weekend. I posted some pictures already on my photo blog. Make sure you check them out.

Elijah’s party Friday night went well. He had fun, I think. He got lots of superhero presents. I had a good time, too. The guest list was really small, since we were going to Alabama the next day, so that took most of the stress away. We just ordered pizza, so, other than making his cake, I didn’t have to put much work into the food. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday, Chris had to take a test before we could leave. So, I hurried up and packed our stuff before Claire, my friend and neighbor who has been acting as proctor for Chris’ tests, came over. Chris took his test while the kids played with Piper and Collin and Claire and I visited. Once he finished, Mom came to stay with the kids, and we hit the road. My cousin, Ron, had given us excellent directions to Huntsville, but I was too busy talking to Chris to follow them, apparently. I let us miss our exit, and we went about fifteen miles out of our way before realizing it. So, we pulled out a Tennessee map, and followed a different route. We ended up getting there about forty-five minutes behind schedule. On the way there, I realized that I had forgotten to pack Chris’ belt to hold his suit pants up. We checked into the hotel, and were going to go and find a Walmart or somewhere to buy Chris a belt. Not wanting to have to do that, Chris was going to try on his suit pants to see if they would stay up without a belt. The only problem was, when he looked on the hanger, there were no pants. I nearly burst into tears right then and there. It was my fault, because I packed for him. I grabbed what I thought was his suit out of his closet, but it turned out to be just the jacket on the hanger…no pants. So, we took off to a mall, and got him a pair of dress pants and a belt at Sears. He went without a jacket, and everything was fine. In all of the rush, though, we didn’t have time to eat. We got to the concert hall right on time. Unfortunately, since we were running behind, I didn’t have a chance to get one of my aunts to take a picture of us. Sorry, Joy, but I have no picture of me in my pretty dress.

We got to the concert hall, as I said, right on time. We met my Aunt Bobbie (Ron’s mother) and my Aunt Sue at the door. We found our seats, and I told Bobbie that it was like “Ma and Pa Kettle Go to the Opry” for me and Chris and our series of unfortunate events on the way there. The opera itself was fantastic. I didn’t expect to enjoy it so much. I was fully expecting to enjoy the experience of getting dressed up and going, but I didn’t know how much I would like the opera itself. Going with an open mind, though, paid off. I really enjoyed it. They had supertitles above the stage translating what they were singing into English for us. (They sang in Italian.) It was great. It had some really funny moments. Ron was great. Who knew there was such talent in my family! He sang the tenor role of Arturo. He was hillarious. It was great.

After the performance, I got to meet all of the singers back stage. Susanna Phillips, the star of the show, was great. She is only two years older than me. She was phenomenal. We all walked over to the Art Museum afterwards for the gala. It was somewhat amusing to see Ron in his element. These people were just falling all over themselves to tell Ron how great he was and how proud they were of him. He is a celebrity among the theater people in Huntsville. I was really proud of him. He introduced us to everyone. We ducked out after about forty-five minutes and walked with my aunts back to the hotel. We never did have a chance to eat, but decided to just go back and enjoy our hotel room.

Speaking of our hotel room, it was great. The bed was awesome. It was the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. I think that was the first time I’ve slept completely through the night in like five years. The comfortable bed combined with no kids in the bed was the perfect formula for the most restful sleep I’ve had in a long time. We had an awesome view of the park out our window.

Sunday morning, we met everyone downstairs for breakfast. Our breakfast came with our room, and it was fantastic. It really was! We had cooked to order omelets, plus lots of other good stuff. After not eating since breakfast the day before, Chris and I were ravenous. We ate and talked and laughed with everyone for a good while. It was so much fun.

After checking out of our hotel, we visited Redstone Arsenal. It is an Army base there in Huntsville. Chris was actually sent there after basic training for his AIT school. Now that he has a military i.d., he was allowed on base. NASA uses the base as well. We saw lots of cool things. We stopped at the PX and looked around, and he showed me the barracks that he stayed in years ago, where he played basketball, where he ate, and where he did PT. It was really neat.

After Redstone, we headed home, stopping briefly in Chattanooga to drive by the Tennessee Temple campus. Chris saw where the Seminary was located. Now, he knows how to get there when he goes for a modular class.

We got home about five o’clock Sunday. We were really tired, but so glad to see the kids. I can’t tell you how much I missed the baby. I missed the other kids a lot, too, but I knew they were in good hands. All of you breastfeeding mamas know how much I missed Owen, though. I’ll just leave it at that.

Yesterday, we had doctor’s appointments in the morning, and after that I tried to do schoolwork. I didn’t get much done, though. I took a three hour nap with Owen, and then spent the rest of the day feeling tired. I have lots of schoolwork to catch up on today. Mostly Algebra. I hate this graphing stuff. It’s so not my thing. Lori, could I pay you to do it for me? Just kidding!

I need to find a babysitter for this weekend, because I need to go to the Roane State production of Oklahoma. It’s required for Speech class to attend a Roane State event and write a paragraph about it. I would much rather go to a play than to a ballgame. So, I need a babysitter. Any volunteers?

Well, gotta go. Don’t forget to check out the pictures I added to my photo blog! Be good, people!

I get the biggest kick out of Chris reading his deep, theological books out loud to Kyra….and she listens!

This is Ron, Aunt Sue, Aunt Bobbie, Chris, and me. While I am as fat as I look in the picture, I am not quite so lumpy. I was turned funny. I’m just sayin’.

Me and Ron. I felt like I was with a movie star or something. Ron is something of a local celebrity. After the opera, people were lining up just to shake his hand and fawn over him. Everyone was singing his praises. He really was great!

The view from our room was spectacular. It looked out over downtown Huntsville.