For Lydia

Do they have birthday parties in Heaven?
For the little ones, at least?
So you don't miss your six-year Princess party
dressed in Barbie pink with a purple tiara?
Who is invited, I wonder?
Other children, who never knew earth?
Other littles who left here too early,
their shattered mothers left wondering?
Do you run through the spring fields in Heaven?
Chase butterflies with silk and gold nets?
Are there dandelions to blow in a wish,
fluffy heads riding the breeze?
Is there summertime in Heaven?
Catching fireflies and sipping sweet tea?
Are there porch swings where one day I'll rock you,
as I should have already so often?
How old will you be when I see you?
Or is there even such a thing as age?
Are you a peach-faced little girl now?
Or forever a baby, a little whisper?

The Twilight Zone

I almost bought it a few months ago, fresh from hearing a friend gush about the book series beginning with the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I was at Borders and had the hardback in my hand, it's spooky monochrome cover calling to me. I knew this series had a huge following, enough to warrant a movie version. As it happened, I decided then that I just didn't quite want to fork the money over for it at the time.

But as I was in Costco Sunday, eyeing that inviting bibliophile's paradise, the bargain book table, I spied a copy of Twilight for just $6.89. I decided to see what all the commotion was about. I bought my copy and envisioned myself being drawn into a fantasy tale that some have called, "The Next Harry Potter!"

Well, at the risk of offending droves of pre-teen girls, Pu-lease! The book is lousy! I barely liked any of it.

*FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVEN'T YET READ IT AND DON'T WANT IT SPOILED, DON'T READ ON*

For starters, the first-person point-of-view was not effective. I felt like I was trapped in this silly girl's myopic brain for three days. There was no opportunity to appreciate other characters, or to really even care about them.

Secondly, the book is essentially, a romance novel. Now, I realize I should have known this. I hate that genre. I was banking on the fantasy element, but really, it has all the sappy crap I hate in romance novels. The mercurial moods, the silly he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not shifting that doesn't do a thing for me. Also, if I had to read one more description about how carved-out-of-marble, Adonis-like, impossibly gorgeously, dazzlingly, breathtakingly, sparkly, beautiful Edward was, I was clearly going to chuck the book in the fireplace.

Also - setting. Okay, I know it was important that they were in this awful, rainy town, but how many times can I really read about yet another version of rain? Now it's a mist, now it's a drizzle, now a downpour, now a wet snow, merely overcast today, but back to a drizzle the next day. Seriously, every time Bella looked out the window, I was inwardly pleading, "Don't say it! I don't want to know!"

The climax of the book felt so manufactured. It's not enough that Bella's supposedly in constant peril because she's in love with a vampire and she's fraternizing with his family of vampires, but what do we need to bring the story to it's climax? ANOTHER VAMPIRE! Only this one isn't civilized; he actually does what vampires do; he hunts her. And then, the vampire family does just what you would expect a family of vampires to do for the human girlfriend they met only once - they fly and drive all over the west to protect her. HUH?! Yeah, that would happen.

God, please let Rowling write us another series. Desperation is the only thing that could drive someone to hope Twilight is "the Next Harry Potter!" It was only slightly better than the paperbacks in the supermarket next to The Enquirer.

Why Socialism Doesn't Work

Socialism is a buzz-word now, especially among conservatives. I am against socialism. I am Libertarian, which means I believe in personal liberty and free markets. Personal liberty and socialism are antithetical to one another.

I'm sure you've heard about the lady who had the octuplets, in addition to her current six children. You have learned that they were all conceived via IVF and that the mother is without a life partner, living with her bankrupt parents. Here's what I think is interesting: It's not the first time we've heard of extraordinary multiples. There were the septuplets, of course, and the Dilleys with their sextuplets and now the blossoming of tv shows like John and Kate Plus 8, with their twins and sextuplets. Any of these multiple births seem pretty crazy, but none have attracted vitriol the way the octuplets have. Why? Because this woman intentionally brought these babies into the world without the ability to raise them on her own dime. She was on public assistence already, to say nothing of the expenses of raising the octuplets as well.

This is what is inherantly wrong with the socialist model. You wouldn't see the same level of anger about the octuplets if the woman were very wealthy. For point of fact, how about Angelina Jolie, whom the octuplet mom admires? Sure, people think she's a little nuts to give birth to and adopt many children in rapid succession, but nobody gives a hoot what the tab is going to be. Why? Because Jolie is not paying for her children through your money and mine.

See, socialism only works if everybody does their life equally. If they work equally and consume equally. The moment anyone seems to be getting an unfair piece of the pie, socialism generates animosity. Someone who has ten children is using far more resources than someone who only has one, so the person who only has one feels that they are getting cheated.

This attitude is also visible regarding the recent bail-outs. Before the bail-outs, nobody cared if a few CEO's flew all over the country in Leer jets. But once government money was in the mix, once you and I became unwitting supporters, suddenly it mattered a lot! Because we wonder why they can't just fly coach like everybody else and save a few hundred grand of OUR money. If they are in such dire straights, we rightly ask, why should they go to a spa in Vegas for a lavish party? But if the company was left to stand or fail on its own merits, the CEOs would have to either decide for themselves to fly coach or drive or else watch the company crash and burn on their expense accounts.

What I love about teaching history to my kids is all the great stuff I learn along the way. Take Captain John Smith, for example. Captain John Smith was such a strong leader was because he rejected the socialist systems that the first settlers had put in place. They were trying to create a "commonwealth". Everyone would raise the crops and then everyone would use the resources. Nobody owned their own personal land; it was all owned in common. (Actually, it was own by the natives, but that is another soap box.) John Smith rightly saw the trouble with the system. If the land wasn't their own and if they could just get food from the common store anyway, nobody particularly cared if the lot they tended grew well or not. I love this quote from my kids' History book "A History of Us: BK 2", where John Smith says,

"When our people were fed out of the common store, and laboured jointly together, glad was he who could slip from his labour, or slumber over his tasks, he care not how; nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true paines in a week, as now for themselves they will do in a day."

That, my friends, is the secret of capitalism. People take pains if they will directly benefit; they take naps when it doesn't matter how hard or little they work. Once people had the freedom to work towards ownership of their own personal plot of land, they put in the work necessary to make it prosper.

The Duggar Thing

Everyone has been talking about it, so I might as well, too. Now that Michelle Duggar has recently given birth to her eighteenth J-named offspring, the Duggar family again crops up in (mostly negative) conversations everywhere. Arriving just in time to be Christmas party small-talk topical probably only increased the popularity of the Aren't-The-Duggars-Totally-Nuts subject. So, I might as well express myself too.

First, I will say I share the sentiments of many. I can barely get my head around what that would actually be like. At our family Christmas party, all thirteen of my Cumberland nieces and nephews, plus my own three kids posed for a picture. This is what the Duggar family actually is all the time, plus two more! It is simultaneously fascinating and slightly horrifying to contemplate.

The Duggars, along with a small sliver of the population nicknamed "Quiverful" families, believe that they should have all the children that would naturally occur in the course of their fertile years. They reject birth control and sterilization.
Many people - even Christians - utterly hate the Duggars. The interesting thing to me is that people like the Duggars are the only Christians who actually carry their beliefs about God's sovereign plan in creating life to it's full and logical conclusion. Here are the Christian beliefs that apply:

1) God intentionally designs every single person for His express purpose.
2) God's will is always superior to human will.

Is any person accidentally created by God? Are there people God would rather not create, but since the silly humans fail to use birth control or become sterilized, He just has to go along with it and make another person? Does God need people to intervene and make it impossible or improbable that they will bring another life into existence?

The argument against it, I've heard, is this: "Don't you think God means for us to use our brains?" This is a condescending way of saying, shouldn't we intelligently avail ourselves of medical means of limiting children? Actually, I would say the answer is No. The Bible gives constant examples of how God wanted people to do what made no sense to their human intelligence. What happened to Abraham? He started to think maybe God must have meant something else when He said He would be the father of many, because God surely didn't mean it would be with Sarah! She was way too old! So, Abe worked out a plan to conceive with Hagar, Sarah's servant.(Actually, I think Sarah nagged him about and then later regretted it.) Anyway, none of that worked out too well. God actually did mean he would be the father of many through Sarah after all.

As unimaginable as I think it is to have a family like the Duggars, and frankly, I don't envy Michelle, I think they are right to put their money where their mouth is. It's better than being one of the majority of Christians who simultaneously believe two incongruent things: that God purposes every life and yet, that they must control their childbearing. Besides that, the Duggars have serious nerve. I don't think I'd be a big fan of holding my extreme beliefs up for national criticism. More people hate them than admire them and even people who admire them in some respect still tend to feel, "Better them than me!"

Okay, now I've gone over the philosophical point of my post, but I still have lighter things to say about the Duggars. Although I watch the TLC show with deep fascination, there's still a lot I would love to know. So, here is my Top Ten Questions to Ask the Duggars:

1) How can Michelle's body parts actually hold up for all that? I don't mean this in a rude way. I've had four babies and I know what can happen to relevant muscles, organs, skin, etc. I'm actually surprised she hasn't suffered serious pelvic collapse.

2) How in the world does the homeschooling work? Seriously. I'm wondering if the younger kids' "buddy" is responsible for teaching reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Because how could Mom ever spend the individual time with what has to be at least six or seven pre-fluent readers?

3) How does medical care work? Do they all go, say, for six-month dental checkups, or are they crisis-only in their approach? I just took three kids to the dentist to the tune of four hundred bucks. The next week, Collin broke his front tooth and I spent another four hundred plus getting that fixed. How the dentistry of 18 kids can work out is unimaginable.

4) How do you mentally keep abreast of eighteen kids? I mean things like who's at what stage of adolescence, who needs to start potty-training, who needs more kisses and hugs, who really needs some personal time with Mom, and so on?

5) What do they do for birthdays? Do they give Christmas gifts? I'm figuring there has to be a month or two that holds three or four birthdays. Do they celebrate each child? Or would that just be totally unfeasible?

6) Do they have toys? Do the children get to have personal possessions or is everything just group belongings?

7) Why no dancing?

8) Does Michelle ever lose her patience?

9) How in the world would anyone ever get a husband to go along with this?

10) Why, having exhausted all those J-names, haven't they had a Julia? Come on! Dad was rooting for Julie Grace for this most recent baby and I was all, "YES!", but no, they went and picked out a hyphenated name with a weird middle name. Darn it. Should have listened to Dad. Oh well. Maybe the next one will get to be Julie. So, Michelle, go with Julie next time. Let me enjoy this one vicarious pleasure with your prodigious procreation. Julie Faith.

Big Brother

Imagine this: Suppose you had your first baby six months ago. In the mail, you receive a postcard from the county government. You have been scheduled for your first parenting assessment. Now, in this imaginary scenario, you are not surprised, because you know there is a state law requiring you to meet with a county official twice-yearly to assess your child's progress, but you still resent the implication a little bit.

You arrive at your appointment and meet a fairly attractive middle-aged lady with very bright lipstick. Before you have even sit down, she politely, but probingly, asks, "So, do you follow any particular parenting program?" Since you are the embodiment of all things antithetical to a parenting program, you smile and say, "No, I'm eclectic. I go by feel."

She skootches a three-page document across the table at you and, along with general questions you knew she would ask, there are also quite a few pretty intrusive questions, questions that far overreach what you are legally obligated to provide. The official wants to know if your child has their own bed and bedroom and if they sleep in it always, sometimes or never and where they sleep if not their bed. She asks you to provide a sample menu of what your child eats in a given week. You tell her you engage in a lovely evening activity of reading bedtime stories and she tells you next time she needs a book list and receipts from the library, indicating that you actually have checked out books. When you tell her you take your child to Kindermusik, she asks if you have brought any cancelled checks to verify that. You find yourself annoyed with these questions and you know she is going outside the bounds of the law, but you also don't want to rub her the wrong way, because she has the power to declare you unfit.

She wants to know if your child has hit all the appropriate milestones for her age. She's dismayed that you admit the child does not sit on her own yet. And she would like to know just how long you intend to breastfeed because, while a year is encouraged, clearly anything beyond that would be unusual. And it goes without saying that she expects a verification form from your child's pediatrician, stating that the child appears to be healthy.

You may chuckle at the absurdity of the government intruding so thoroughly into family life. But if you are a homeschooler and have reviewed through your county Board of Education, you may not find it so absurd. For those of you who don't know, in Maryland you must either homeschool under an umbrella who sets the educational policies or you must be reviewed twice-yearly by a representative from the county Board of Education. This is only the second time in my homeschooling career that I have chosen the county option. Finances drove my decision, as this "service" is provided by the government, but the umbrella is paid out-of-pocket. Both of my county review experiences have been parallels to my analogous story above.

I know that some would say the review process is an important "safeguard", so the few wackos can be identified. But, if that is true, why aren't all parents being supervised by "officials"? How do we normally identify someone who is neglecting or abusing their children? One or more people who know the abuser will report the family to the authorities. Why the big fear that homeschooling couldn't be done this way?

It strikes me that the homeschooling review has a "guilty until proven innocent" feel to it. We must prove our children are being taught math. We must document that they are learning science. (Which is the one that peeves me the most, by the way, since science is not about filling blanks in a worktext, but is about doing things and having actual experiences.)We must give evidence that they have learned history. I swear we could build a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks, but if I didn't give them a damn piece of paper to fill out about France, it would mean nothing to the county reviewer.

The irony is that, as annoying as I found the review to be, Maryland has some of the most agreeable homeschooling laws of any state in the northeast. Its Pennsylvania that sends shivers down the spine of the even the most dedicated homeschooler, with their onerous portfolios and evaluations and attendance logs. Attendance logs? What a ridiculous concept to learning! I haven't attended school in a couple of decades now, but I daresay I haven't stopped learning. But I digress. Better Maryland than Pennsylvania. And better now than prior to 1980 or so, when homeschooling really started to gain status as a valid choice. But even with our fairly easy-to-comply-with laws, the idealistic Libertarian in me does taste bile at the thought of another county review. I resent being treated with a skepticism usually reserved for ex-convicts.

Undone

I'm going public. I'm just going to throw it out there, so you'll all know. At my age, and with all I've been through concerning bringing life into this world, and seeing how I have the requisite 3 children, I know the expectation is that I'm "done". Finished with bringing up babies. Certainly my husband has said that he's done, which does tend to make me done by default. But in my heart I am so not done. I'm actually coming undone.

I know all the arguments as to why I should be done. They are even good ones. I've tried to come to appreciate all the perks I'm supposed to be so happy about. Everyone sleeps through the night around here now. Everyone uses the toilet. My ass is reasonably firm again. Travel has gotten easier, if not any less expensive. I even have a few hours a day to just do whatever I like. There's room in the car for groceries AND kids. Everyone has their own bedroom. I've tried to savor all of these benefits. But none of them is as lovely as raising another child would be. I could postpone all of those fringe benefits another three years for the joy of having another child to raise.

I know I'm a terrible candidate for having another baby. But that's not the only way to bring another child into our lives. I fantasize about adopting; I dream in Chinese and Russian. I literally had a dream last night about a little Eastern European girl named "Dasha". Over and over I kept saying "Dasha" in my head and when I woke up, I could not forget that thought.

I was just reading a book called "Comfort" by Ann Hood. A gripping memoir about the sudden death of her 5-year-old daughter, I sobbed and nodded the whole way through. Towards the end of the book (spoiler, here), she had endeavored to have another baby, but was not successful conceiving. I had this sense of coincidence building and thought, "Watch. I bet she adopts a little girl from China." Which is just what she did.

I asked Kelly if he would consider adopting. Unsurprisingly, he said no. I cried and cried, though, as if I thought he might just say something totally off-the-wall, like, "Wow! I was JUST thinking that! Lets print off the I-600A right now!" But no. He said no. It wasn't a strident no. But I do think he really just wishes I would get on with my life and stop wanting another child.

I would even do that, if I could just do that. I've tried. It doesn't work. Now I'm starting to feel a little desperate about it, because we really are running short on time. I've even felt I should stop ignoring God and plead with Him, since that's the only shot I have. I try to pray about it, but I get all tangled up in that whole "God's will" issue. I've prayed for a baby before and look at how that ended up.

I think there are people for whom it never works out. They never do wind up with the family they had hoped for. So, why should I be any different? But I hope I am. I hope I am right to still want children. I hope I am right to not be done. I might as well hope because in the end, that is all I have anyway.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Hi. I'm back. I'm sorry I've let my blog lay fallow, if there are any people out there in cyberspace who rely on my whining and kvetching to lift their spirits. "At least I'm not as bad as her!" Misery loves...someone who has it worse.

Anyway, it could only be so long before I would be pissed off enough about something to make time to spew it on my blog. And so I am. I hate Verizon. I loathe that monolithic, greedy, bureaucratic monopoly inside-out.

Our phone lines at Kelly's office have never been optimal. They have failed many times. But waaaayyyy back in June, one line failed completely and the other was spotty. After several attempted repairs, finally a repairman told my mother-in-law, as I listened, that Verizon would have to come and lay new cable. There was no way, he said, that these lines would work.

Well. A week or two went by, but no repairman came out to lay cable. At this point, I can't begin to relate all the phone calls and repairs (or "repairs") that began to happen, but the end point was this: The fax line was dead as Arizona road kill for six weeks and the phone line had several periods of no service. However, I was completely and totally unable to get anyone in that despicable company to reduce the charges in a corresponding way. Apparently, right around the time that the repairman came and said they would need to lay new cable, they closed the file as a done deal. So, according to their records, they only have something like a week in June and one in July written down as no service.

I've wasted an astounding amount of time on the phone with Verizon during these months, either trying to get someone to come fix the line for certain and for good or trying to get an appropriate credit to our bill. In the first place, they have that maddening voice-activated routing system, "Say 'repairs'; Say 'pay bill'; Say 'purchase services'..." But never will they tell you how to reach a person. Here is a tip: Say "Customer Service". They won't ever offer that as an option, but it does route you a little more quickly to a person. During one call, I asked the clerk if there was a direct line I could call to get her again, so I would not have to continuously re-explain this whole story and she said, "No." During another call, the billing department said I would have to speak to repairs if I had a discrepancy about how long the phone line was out and when they transferred me to repairs, guess what they said? "We have nothing to do with your bill. If you have a problem with your bill, you have to speak to billing." Explaining that they just sent me from there helped not at all. Back I went, only to be told again that billing cannot adjust a bill unless repairs agrees that the line was out during that time.

I called when my first bill arrived while the line was still broken. I said I wanted credit, since the line had been broken for this entire billing cycle. That's not how they do it, I was told. I am to pay the bill and when the line is fixed, then they will issue the credit. Say what? I told them I would not do that. I am not going to pay in advance for a service that was not rendered, only to have to call back and beg for a credit. And as it happened, they didn't issue the correct credit anyway.

The bill went unpaid. I told my partners that I was just going to pay it and accept that they screwed us. It was not worth the aggravation. It was worth the $40 to not have to mess around with it any more. Well, my partners were not thrilled. What about the principle involved here? You're just going to pay what you don't rightly owe so you can be done with it? Yes, I confirmed. I care about the time I'm wasting and the emotional toll it takes more than I care about fighting for the principle and forty bucks. So, my partner said he would try and get a decent credit back.

But he didn't succeed. And he really didn't have the time to waste on it, either. One call, he asked to speak to a manager and they hung up on him. Another, he asked to speak to a manager and they wouldn't transfer him.

So, last week, I said to him, "We have to pay this damn bill or they are going to turn off the phone." Two minutes later, Kelly calls me and says, "What is wrong with that stupid fax now? I tried to have someone send a fax and it says it's disconnected!"

Oh. Great.

So, today, I open the mail and there is a notice of termination, saying they will terminate service this coming Saturday if they don't receive payment. Interesting, since service is already terminated. So, through my seething anger, I have to call this god-forsaken company yet again and try to get the service reinstated. (I paid the bill last week.) Again with the passing around. Again with, "I don't have anything to do with that if financial services still has a disconnect flag on your account." And then passed back, "We show your balance at zero, so it's up to repairs to reinstate your service now."

After this going on for about twenty minutes, I finally got to the only human being with a soul that works for that tyrannical behemoth. Mrs. King. God, I love Mrs. King. Although she was not much more able to do anything than anyone else had been, she seemed to be trying, a first in my experience. And she seemed to care, another first. Bless her heart, she told me that she would try the number herself first thing tomorrow morning and if it had not been reinstated yet, she would personally call my cell and tell me there was still trouble. Miraculously, they did come through and reinstated the line today and Mrs. King left a message on my cell, just letting me know.

This is my tale about the danger of monopoly. What option is there for phone service that does not include that despicable company, Verizon? Don't they own all the cable, all the repairmen, all the trucks, all the lines? (Someone out there might now be screaming "Vonage!" and maybe that is the answer, but I'm still too techno-stupid to be sure how to make that happen.)

So, Verizon - Can you hear me now? You are the lowest of dust-eating vermin. I am convinced that you make it so difficult to get appropriate customer service on purpose because you know that people will come to the conclusion I did - that it is better to cut my losses and pay your damn bill than to waste literally hours trying to get an unjust charge settled. I spit in your face. You are what is wrong with humankind. You are greedy and insensitive. May it all blow up in your smug, rude face.