Category: Life

So my mom did something fun this year – instead of giving the boys an envelope with money, she put the money in a plastic stocking ornament thingie and hung it on their tree. The boys then had to hunt for their stocking.

(I’m asking mom how old I am in this picture):

Also. The boys are wearing the skull caps that mom made them.

Mom also made me some fingerless gloves – the girls at work are going to be jealous. Our hands get really cold!

There are no words – NO WORDS – for what happened at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on Friday.

But let’s not lose sight of what’s most important here: the victims and their families. Please pray for them. And if you don’t pray, then please keep them in your thoughts and if you can find it in your heart, please donate to the community. This is a tragedy, it’s especially heart breaking when this happens around the holidays.

I’ll tell you one thing – please don’t focus on banning guns. Guns weren’t the problem, they were just an instrument in the disaster. This person, who shall remain nameless because he’s not important enough to put a name to, was sick, and I believe, in my heart, he was possessed by a demon spirit because I have a hard time believing that a mentally challenged person was THIS so far removed from reality. You can’t cure crazy – this WILL happen again. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s true – we HAVE TO BE REALISTIC. We live in a fallen world and there are evil people out there.

So what can we do? We can protect ourselves and take steps to make this sort of stuff HARDER to pull off. If this person hadn’t used a gun, he might have used a knife, or a bomb or … whatever. Sick people are creative when it comes to destroying other human beings.

Taking our defenses away will not stop the evil – it will only put more people at risk WHEN IT HAPPENS.

Reading articles about the horrific shooting in Conn. – here’s an interesting comment on one of the articles:

Instead of taking away law abiding citizens rights to own guns to defend themselves from perpetrators, let’s talk about homeschooling where children are protected in gun protected homes. Let’s talk about bringing God back into a hateful society that excludes God. Let’s talk about self defense and armoring schools with armed guards.

It all boils down to accountability and responsibility for one’s actions. Who’s to blame for this tragedy? The gun didn’t shoot those people, the person pulling the trigger did. You can’t stop crazy, especially in an increasingly God-less nation, all you can do is protect yourself.

Also?

I know the media are just doing their jobs, but I think they’re so disrespectful sometimes.

Here’s Morgan Freeman’s a wise person’s take on what happened on Friday :

“You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.

It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.”

I have to agree. We have to stop giving these sick people public attention. Because then the next sick person comes along and thinks of ways to trump the previous horrific incident and more people needlessly die.

The sooner we open our eyes and accept the fact that there are sick/possessed people out there and take steps to defend ourselves, the sooner we send a message to those sick/possessed people that if you try it, you’re going to have a harder time achieving your goal because we won’t be slaughtered like so many helpless sheep – we’ll go down fighting and defending our families.

ADDED: And for those Christians struggling with this on a faith level, maybe this will help: Where is God When Tragedy Strikes?

How many of you read the title of this post and thought, “Pasties?!? Karen is wearing pasties??”

Um. No. Perv.

Apparently, I get more stressed out than I think I do. I mean, I’ve always thought I’ve handled stress pretty well – I think quick on my feet and I somehow get through it.

Sure. My heart pounds against my rib cage, I develop this very attractive sweat mustache and I suddenly can’t remember how to breathe properly, but … I handle it.

It wasn’t until Kevin had his motorcycle accident, (don’t worry, that was two years ago, nothing recent. The man has been FORBIDDEN to ride anything less than four wheels), that I discovered another physical reaction to stress – I lose my eyelashes.

Attractive, right??

Well. In case you’re just tuning in, my job stresses me out. A. LOT.

I work in health care. I’m a scheduler for neurosurgeons. Which, on the surface, might sound easy. But my job goes WAAAAAAAY beyond the simple inserting a patient name into a slot duty. Oh contrare – the schedulers are the dumping ground for all new procedures, regulations and really, any thing management can think up in a given day.

I help the patients in the clinic all day. I have to return voicemails. I have to answer nurse’s flags (which is an internal messaging sort of system). I have to pre-authorize radiology testing with insurance companies. I have to check, sort, file and respond to my faxes (which are a lot of VA patients actually since I work for a doctor that works closely with a VA doctor in Arkansas). I have to print medical records and refer people to other doctors … and all of this MUST BE DONE within a 24-hour period.

Because there absolutely, positively MUST NOT BE any overtime!! (*GASP-HORROR-MELTING-FACE*)

So yeah. There are days I’m so stressed that I fall asleep at 7:00 p.m.

No joke.

And when it gets really, really bad, like all I can do is grip the steering wheel in my car, stare straight ahead and wonder if I’m coming or going, my body reacts by losing eyelashes.

So, I’ve been experimenting with false eyelashes – because giant gaps in your lashes is just scary.

I put them on, for the first time, last Sunday. And it was a hot mess. But I picked up a trick or two and decided to bite the bullet – I wore them to work last Monday.

I felt so … WEIRD. I just knew everyone that looked at me would KNOW I was wearing false eyelashes. But no one said a word.

I made frequent trips to the restroom to check on my lashes because I had this fear of one of them coming loose and lying at a weird angle on my face.

But nothing happened, no one was the wiser, they were surprisingly comfortable and I thought, “COOL! This is going to work out.”

Until Tuesday.

I put them on, used way too much glue and then, to try and cover that up (though the glue dries clear and you honestly can’t see it), I used liquid eyeliner to try and make it all blend together.

And that was the day my eyes started watering.

My eyes water – A LOT. Like, “oh my gosh, are you crying” a lot. Some days, they just do that. I’ve learned that I can sometimes freeze them in the morning (place an ice cube on them), then put eye drops in them and THEN take a shower (if I do all of that after my shower it actually makes it worse – I’m telling you, my eyes have been “an issue” my entire life) and that would sometimes help the watering factor.

But I didn’t do all of that on this day and they watered – A LOT.

And my liquid eyeliner smudged and I was once again making frequent trips to the restroom for damage control. But even though I wiped the black streaks away, the eyelash glue held (thank God I had the foresight to buy a waterproof glue).

And I finished the day thinking, “COOL! They stayed on.”

And then I took them off that night. And I guess the build up of the salt from my tears just gunked the ever loving holy crap out of the lashes. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know that if you’re careful, you can reuse false eyelashes several times – like close to ten or twelve. But there was so much gunk built up on these lashes that I just tossed them.

I haven’t worn falsies since then.

But I’m not giving up. Because I really like how they make my eyes look and they really aren’t that hard to put on, or take off (I bought this new eye makeup remover per the advice of one YouTuber and OMG – where has this product been my entire life) so … I’d like to experiment with more dramatic lashes, but save those for parties, date nights, whatever – definitely not for work. The lashes I wore to work are called “perfectly natural” and they did look natural – at least, I thought so. But anything more than that and I’m pretty sure people would have been looking at me funny.

You know, if my body would just cooperate with me, I wouldn’t have to go through all of this drama to compensate.

We got rid of Satellite Dish.

I KNOW.

But honestly? No one ever watched it. Save for Kevin and that was generally for the NASCAR station. Everything else he watches was on PBS. So it was getting harder and harder to justify paying $60 bucks (SIXTY BUCKS) every month for … what exactly?

Exactly.

So. Kevin fought himself for several days before deciding we needed to get rid of it.

I could honestly care less. BUT. Right before he made this decision, I discovered the music channels. And one channel plays nothing but traditional Christmas music. And I ADORE it. For two reasons, really, 1. I LOVE Christmas music and 2. I didn’t have to fool with changing discs every 30 minutes.

But I still wasn’t willing to pay $60 dollars for just Christmas music, so I gave Kevin my full blessing – get rid of Satellite Dish. I would stick with NetFlix – I’ll deal.

We canceled our account. But I’m pleasantly surprised to see the Christmas music station is still available, for some reason.

And every time, EVERY TIME, this song comes on, it stops me in my tracks. I have to sit down, no matter what I’m in the middle of (one time I sat down with a toilet brush in my hand), and simply absorb the beauty of it.

This song takes my breath away. It’s always been one of my ALL-TIME favorite songs. I adore it when Julie Andrews sings it, but it gives me goosebumps every time I hear Barbara Streisand sing it.

Enjoy.