My inner European.

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

Who's Your Inner European?

It's been a long time.

It has been a long time since I have posted. It has also been a long time that I have been waiting to take RCIA. While I can't promise I will be posting very regularly any time soon, (mostly from lack of writing inspiration) I will be starting RCIA in January and I can't wait. Even the sobering, and somewhat scary, idea of my first confession is but a minor obstacle to my enthusiasm. Meanwhile I would love any book recommendations to help prepare me to become Catholic.

Several things...

Wow time flies! Work is quite busy and will be all through next month I am afraid, so probably not much blogging between now and November. I have been going back and forth about posting the second part of my conversion story and have decided, for the time being, not to. There are several reasons for this. First, I am not completely satisfied with part one so until I am there is no point in continuing. Second, I haven't actually converted yet so it seems more appropriate to wait until after I finish RCIA in the spring. Finally, I simply don't have the proper time:energy ratio lately to embark on this written down quest for self knowledge. I am still on the path but writing it down seems difficult at the moment. Some things have to be lived first and written about in retrospect in order to be fully articulated. So, while I do plan on making this blogging thing a more regular hobby, it is just going to have to wait until I can put enough time and energy in to make it something I am pleased with. In the meantime I will be reading other blogs when I have spare time and have just recently discovered a couple new ones to peruse.

Friendship

Well things here have settled down and settled in for the most part. The move is done, school and work started for my husband and I, and I am starting to get back into blogging. In my perusal of other blogs I came across this post which led me to another post. These posts really struck a chord with me. I don't make friends easily and have a hard time keeping up with the ones I have. Until I read these posts I thought it was just because I was a bad friend. I thought that other people must somehow be able to connect better and have better "social skills" than me. Then, after reading these posts, I started to think about my friendships (or lack thereof) present and past. I realized that most of the people I have been friends with don't share many (if any) things in common with me (or I with them, however one looks at it). So maybe my problem isn't that I have bad social skills or am a terrible friend, simply that I haven't found that commonality with another person, aside from my husband, that fosters good friendships. In many ways the last couple years have been enormously trans-formative for me spiritually and intellectually and I hope that carries over into the way I relate and connect to people. Perhaps soon I will be able to find and cultivate the kinds of friends that are true, unforced, and enduring.

Please Pray...

For my cousin's family, he died in a car accident last night.

Moving

Isn't usually much fun... Until you get where you are going anyway. I am sure I will be blogging more about our new adventure as soon as we get settled in.

Happy Anniversary

Well I am a little late but I will say it anyway. Happy Anniversary to the most wonderful man in the world! (for the record I wasn't late in real life, just in the blogosphere.)
:)

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Yesterday was my last day at my job. We are moving to a new state and I will be starting a new job in September. It is a better paying job in a nice place and my husband will be in a very good school this fall. I am so thankful for all of the blessings we have received this past year and I know my prayers, one after another, have been answered. It is amazing how I used to be so cynical and felt that life was either only a product of chance, or destined to be miserable. I used to have a very deep seated notion that I didn't deserve good things in life and if things were going well, it was simply too good to be true. These are self fulfilling prophecies, if you expect everything to go poorly in life, chances are things will. I am so grateful to have found the power in hope and joy in my life. Hope and joy awakened in me by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is as if, in opening my heart to God and what the Church teaches, a garden has begun blooming in my soul. Thanks be to God!

To Post or not to Post.... Part II

OK so I know I was going to post my conversion story (I am working on it, I swear!) but I was just perusing some of the blogs on my blog roll when I came across a link to this article over at kris thinks... Naturally I had to stop and think, does this mean I am a narcissist? Am I over sharing details of my personal life on the Internet? Perhaps I should think about taking down that post on NFP? Well, at least for the moment, I am leaving it up because, on the whole, I enjoy reading about other peoples lives via blogs. It is good to read another person's point of view and I find other people's life experiences fascinating, even the mundane ones. Maybe that makes me weird but I really think it causes me to look at my own life differently. Blogs have helped me to be thankful for all of the blessings in my life and have shown me that I am not alone in my life circumstances. So for what it is worth in this vast landscape of technology, I will still post my story, well, maybe the edited version. ;)

To Post or not to Post? That is the question.

I have thought of posting my conversion story in the past but it seemed such a large thing to do I put it off. It is a bit intimidating in a way, to post pieces of your life on the internet. However, it is also a searching, not unlike placing a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea. So if anyone finds it, I hope it helps you in your own journey in some small way. I will probably post it in parts in order to better organize my thoughts. Stay tuned...

How not to worry?

I realize that I am supposed to be giving my cares and fears and anxieties up to the Lord but umm..... how exactly does one go about doing that? I feel like we (meaning my husband and I) are at a crossroads of a sort in our lives right now. We are getting ready to move to another state so that he can go to a better and less troubled school (check out FUMARE on the blog roll if you are interested but be prepared to do a lot of reading, on second thought maybe avewatch.org would be easier to navigate, but I digress.) And just when we think things are set to go, he gets scheduled for a brain MRI for a worrying difference in the size of his pupils. If anyone reads this please send up a prayer for my husband's health. In the meantime I should get back to trying not to worry. :(

In a Schlump.

Maybe it is all of the goings on at home lately, maybe it is not knowing where we will be yet again this fall, or maybe it isn't any of those things but I am in a bit of a schlump lately. I feel sort of lost... well maybe lost isn't quite the word. I guess I feel like someone who woke up in the dark, can't fall back asleep, and is counting the seconds to sunrise. I am speaking of the state of my spirit. Having woken up to so many truths in the last year, I find myself restless and imperfect, searching for God.

Blogging... or lack thereof.

Wow, it has certainly been awhile since I have posted anything. Things have been busy around my house with weddings, in-laws preparing to be first time parents, and my husband's quest to find a different law school this fall (in addition to me working). Hopefully things will settle down soon and I will have more time to blog! In the meantime enjoy the summer weather.

If I knew then what I know now...

I never would have started taking birth control. For the record I no longer do. My husband and I started using NFP almost a year ago due to my frustration with the side effects of hormonal birth control. As a side note, I believe those NFP classes ,(my interest in which was fueled by a tape my mother in law gave me, as well as our Precana classes a year or so earlier) as well as a book I mentioned in an earlier post, were God's way of whispering in my ear, calling me to him.

A Good Article

Hat tip to Et Tu, Jen? for recommending this article.

Lethal Injections Humane or Not?

I am still undecided where I stand on the death penalty, however, I definitely think that if someone is going to be sentenced to death it should be quick and painless, without suffering. Lethal injection is supposed to be just that, right? Well.... maybe not in all cases or all of the time.

"In cases where the injection was botched and drugs were delivered into muscle or under the skin rather than into the veins, prisoners would be fully aware as the paralysis took hold and the potassium chloride was administered, said Teresa Zimmers, who led the study.
"It would sort of be the equivalent of slowly suffocating while being burned alive," Zimmers said.

That was likely the experience of Florida inmate Angel Diaz, who took 34 minutes to die in December after the needles were inserted improperly."

Theoretically people getting these injections shouldn't feel anything at all. They are given an anesthetic, thiopental, that is supposed to "render the inmate unconscious while the other drugs do the job." as well as potassium and pancuronium. However, sometimes they don't dose the anesthetic appropriately for the person's body size which could leave someone conscious when they should not be (according to the linked article above).
Now let me tell you a couple things about potassium: first of all it BURNS going in. Even in lower concentrations than I imagine they must use for lethal injection, patients will tell you it hurts... a lot. Second, the only time I have heard of potassium effectively stopping the heart 100% of the time is in the operating room where open heart surgeons fill the heart's circulation with a potassium solution in place of the patient's blood. Now, I am by no means an expert on such things, and I know people can and have died from getting IV potassium but, efficacy aside, if they feel the potassium going in, that doesn't exactly qualify as painless in my book.
The last drug, pancuronium bromide, is a paralytic. That means it paralyzes all of the muscles in your body. It doesn't render you unconscious but it will prevent you from moving and breathing. This isn't necessarily a problem when you are giving it to someone who is going to die anyway but... if you are awake when this drug is affecting you, you will be able to feel yourself slowly suffocating to death. So much for not suffering.

The most beautiful story....

is the story of life. Specifically a story of the miraculous life of a little boy. This is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read. I will remember this family in my prayers.

** WARNING **
If you are prone to crying, better grab a box of tissues!

I also added this blog to my blogroll list. Thanks to Kris over at kris thinks... for spreading this little boy's message.

In The News....

High Court Upholds Ban On Some Abortions

A victory in the fight against destroying human life.

"The administration defended the law as drawing a bright line between abortion and infanticide. ...It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how — not whether — to perform an abortion. "

Sadly enough, it is just a small step. Quoted from the same article:

"... an alternate method — dismembering the fetus in the uterus — is available and, indeed, much more common."

A Quote-worthy Blog Post

I know many women. I see women everyday, hear them call in radio shows, and fill up the tv with all kinds of images and words. I read the paper, blogs, and generally follow the trends of pop culture. I have watched The Oprah Show, and seen and heard her loyal followers worship at her altar. The religion of self-love and personal fulfillment reigns supreme. The mantras of "celebrate you" and "personal-empowerment" have attached themselves to women like leaches sucking every natural instinct and impulse right out of them, leaving behind self-centered, pleasure gluttons!

Sad but true!
(Hat tip to Paul, just this guy, you know? for the blog reccomendation!)

On Easter and Conversion

This Easter was the first time I have ever had an inkling of what Easter really means and hopefully the last one I will be unable to fully participate in. I hope to be enrolling in RCIA this year. I say hope because my husband is planning on transferring schools, which would mean a move for us in August and I have no idea when these things start. I tried to enroll in RCIA at the church we currently attend last November but it was too late in the year and they said to come back next summer. In the meantime I have been doing a little reading on my own ("Catholicism for Dummies" was very informational, especially regarding the whole church hierarchy and whatnot.) and plan on doing some more. I have always loved reading and it is perhaps unsurprising that this whole spiritual journey started with a book I read early last summer ("50 Questions on the Natural Law- What it is and Why We Need It"). It was a required summer reading for my husband's first year of law school. I don't know why I picked it up or why it interested me (heaven knows nothing else he has to read does), but somehow it did and when I read it, the book very subtly changed something in me. Somehow so many things I had wondered about all my life were explained in a perfectly logical and compelling way. It was the beginning of a journey out of darkness. The path is long and winding and sometimes I go so slowly it seems I am standing still, but something is changed in me and I feel I will never be the same again.

Miracles do happen

Every once in awhile something happens that the medical community simply cannot explain.

The American Wedding Story

What a strange place to find a voice of reason in this day and age. I was perusing a copy of The New York Times Women's Fashion Spring 2007 that happened to be lying around at work during my dinner break. I know, I know, what would a woman such as myself be doing looking through such a magazine. Well, for starters, it's been a busy day and I needed to de-stress a bit with some mindless flipping of pretty pages. And, secondly, although I find most fashion trends to be highly impractical and un-wearable, I do like to keep a sort of idea of what the current fashion is in the vain hope that for once they might have actually designed clothing that can be worn by real people. But I digress... (hey I am allowed, it is my blog after all!)
As I flipped idly through the ad's and the blurbs about this designer or that, my attention was caught by this title: "The Wow Vows: When it Comes to Weddings Has Every Modern Woman Lost Her Mind?" If you haven't read the article (click the above title if you would like to) it is an overview of a book titled "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding" by Rebecca Mead that (the article says) will be available in May. I have to agree that weddings in this country are extremely out of hand. And maybe, as the author suggests, it has become so because of the horrible failure rate of marriages in this country. As she states "No one can blame the younger generation for seeking talismanic protection against committing the mistakes of their elders, and the fantasy that the future of a marriage might be secured by the conduct of a wedding is a poignant and persuasive one." Maybe... I tend to think that the reason weddings are so extravagant is because people in our culture have become so selfish. Women want men to be perfect fairy-tale princes for them (I am not quite sure what the men are looking for in these princesses quite honestly, not being a man and all). To many women, true love means never having to compromise their wishes, never having to sacrifice or deny themselves for the sake of anyone or anything. It is very much a "Sex and the City" kind of attitude. As the article goes on its author touches on this point and leaves the reader with a short blurb about the poor groom. I especially liked the last few lines: "Is he thrilled to be cast in the role of the Prince? Is he congratulating himself on having won the fair heroine? Or is he wondering what he's gotten himself into and whether his wife will grow up anytime soon? Is he asking himself how hard it's going to be to make a princess happy? I sure hope he had fun at the stag party."

Chocolate good for the brain?

It is only within the last few years that I have developed more than just a passing appreciation for chocolate. As a child I associated chocolate with Hershey's Kisses, Snicker's bars, and various other popular treats. Oh they were good, don't get me wrong, but nothing to go gaga over and certainly nothing I wouldn't pass up for black licorice or wintergreen flavored Lifesavers. After reading a food blog or two I recently began experimenting with various, more exotic and rich, kinds of chocolate (the kind you break a tiny piece off, pop it in your mouth, let it slowly melt on your tongue, and sigh in pure bliss!) So, to get to the point of this post, I read a little news blurb about the beneficial effects of flavanols found in some kinds of cocoa. The only part about this article that bugged me a little was that the study was sponsored by Mars Inc. While I am a fan of good chocolate, I am not in favor of tampering with things chemically (or otherwise unnaturally) for the sake of "improving" beneficial effects. But maybe I am reading too much into things here...