dang it

Last night around 4:00 am I somehow moved in bed and woke up to a popping sound in the back of my neck, on the right side. I was in so much pain, I woke up Michael who then helped me to the bathroom. I couldn't move my neck or hold my head up and I seemed to be making it worse whenever I moved my right arm, so I was pretty much a mess.

Seriously, am I this old?

 A few hours later it was time to go to work and I wanted to go but knew I couldn't drive in my state so I stayed in bed. I called Lucas and he suggested I go to urgent care. So later Dave took me to urgent care. I had a muscle spasm in my neck so big the doctor could see it and all the muscles on my right side were pulling on it when I moved. Anyway, I am to ice it for 2 days and then heat it tomorrow night. Right now I feel OK because they gave me muscle relaxer drugs and vicodin. So I should feel really good in about 20 minutes. I can't believe this happened.

i think in a former life i was black

I love bad ass people. I LOVE THEM. Probably because I am such a dork with a dream of being tougher. I love the latest Flo Rida song- Right Round. I love Flo Rida. I love hip hop. I love chris rock. I love angelina jolie. I know she's not black, but I still love her. I love sexy rock videos- not the sketchy nasty ones, but just the cool ones that show people who look so, well, cool. I love the rock star, shakira, sexy, bad ass look. I try to look like that sometimes, although it usually back fires and is not such a good thing.  

I think this blog entry will shock some of my friends. First of all, I usually perfect what I say by writing and rewriting and rewriting all day long. I think it's good to do that for most of my blogs, but this one I just kinda threw up on the page. Second, I am a very conservative person. But every once in a while I fall in love with a new song or music video and want to look like that. Third, most people now that I love angelina and brad, so maybe it's not that big of a shook. Anyway, this is a late night, raw, unedited blog.  A little different than my usual, but still me. 

movies and kids and rating and protecting

Michael and I are sorting thru all of our DVD's and it's brought the same question to both of our minds- Which movies will we let our kids watch? We don't have kids but we talk about parenting all the time, so this wasn't that off the wall. We've talked about it for a while now and haven't come to any real conclusion. It goes back to the age old parenting dilemma of how much should you shelter your children. 

At first I thought we should use the the rating to determine what our kids watch and don't watch. Any kid can watch G, kids under 13 must have our permission to watch PG, kids under 13 cannot watch PG 13, and must be 17 to watch R. This makes it simple for us but I think that we will constantly be changing those rules because we  feel it's ok for them to watch certain movies outside the rating system and I want to be consistent with rules we give our kids, so at the end of the conversation we decided that might not be the best option.

 

I want my kids to be street smart, to have common sense about the world. I also want them to hold onto their childness as long as possible. Any parenting ideas out there on how to do this? I'm not sure where my conclusion rests, which is OK since we don't have kids yet. I'll just keep plugging away at trying to find the middle ground. 

hair

I found this old picture of me and realized that I like my hair that length. I don't think I'm quite ready to cut it but I like it this length. I like it longer than I have it right now though too. I'm just in this discontent place of my current hair length- I'd rather have it longer or shorter than it is now. I'll probably grow it out but if I get really bored this weekend I might cut it. 

Portland's Mayor and the Situation.

The Oregonian posted this today- “With an official investigation looming and calls for his resignation mounting, Portland Mayor Sam Adams changed his story Tuesday about when his relationship with a teenage legislative intern turned romantic, if not sexual. In an interview Tuesday with The Oregonian, Adams acknowledged that he and Beau Breedlove, then 17, expressed an attraction toward each other at a 2005 lunch that Adams, 42 at the time, previously had described as purely professional.”

The Portland Mayor is openly gay, won by a landslide when elected, admitted he lied about a sexual relationship in 2005 (he previously said he didn’t have one and now says he did), the person in that relationship may or may not have been under 18, and the Mayor will not resign.

Hmm.

I don’t know what to say about this one. My first thought is that we should not judge the mayor, not for being gay nor for any other potential offenses. Judging has a way of boomeranging back to us and well, none of us have a right to judge. My second thought is that he lied during the middle of a campaign. If the truth had come out, would he have won? We don’t know. But he did win and here we are now. My third thought is that there are consequences to actions and he should pay those. Since we don’t know if the person involved was a minor or not (the Mayor says he was over 18 during the relationship) and since when both consenting adults are above 18 there is no law against a relationship, the only thing that he did wrong was lie. Should he be forced to resign because of a lie?

I don’t think so. I don’t take homosexuality lightly, but I believe in the right of every person experiencing freedom and prosperity regardless of their personal decisions. I don’t take casual sex between two consenting adults lightly but everyone has free will and should be able to live free of guilt (from themselves or others) regardless of their decisions. I don’t take the Mayor lying in office (or during the campaign) lightly either. But I must say that Willamette Weekly brought this out and he has confessed. I like that. I think he strategically did it while the inauguration was going on so he wouldn't be front page in the press, but whatever.  

I think he should stay on as Portland’s mayor, but it really doesn’t matter what I think, I live in Vancouver.  

my latest quilt

I made this quilt for one of the patrollers on the mountain, Nicole. She always lets me borrow her skis, so I thought she'd like a quilt. I made the design myself, so there's no official quilt name for it. I wanted it to resemble ski patrol, so I made certain the white crosses stood out and that the only other colors were red and black. 

funky pics

Michael and I are on the mountain this weekend and I'm a little bored. We spend a lot of weekends up here, so I often have a lot of time for myself to work on projects. I ski, but not much. I usually only ski when the conditions are perfect outside. It hasn't snowed up here in 10 days, so needless to say, the skiing is awful out there. Last night there were only a few people skiing and I think they were only skiing because they wanted to get the most out their lift taken that they had paid for. So I was playing around on my computer and made some funky pics.

This one is just me listening to Itunes. 

I kinda like this one- it reminds me of some of the music videos in the late 80s. 

This one is with a 'warm' font thing. I like this one too. I like the colors it adds. Especially since I was trying look like I felt earlier- a little tired and bored. 

I don't really like this one, it's just too weird. 

This one reminds me of a pic of Jesus I once saw. 

I really like photography. I'm not any great at it or anything, but I love a good picture. I like playing with the photo to create different looks. Anyway, I better get back to some of my projects. 

our modern titanic- human trafficking

In the movie Titanic (the one with Kate & Leo), at the last scene, the Titanic has fallen into the ocean and several hundred people are screaming and swimming around where the boat once was. Nearby there were 20 boats, but none of them helped the people that were in the water. The people in the boats were afraid that if they went back to help the people in the water, they would be swamped and they would die as well.

I realized today that I would not have gone back for the people either. I don’t want to die. Going to help a large mass amount of people would only lead to certain death. I really wish that I was the type of person who would go back to the people and risk their own life to save some lives but that is not me, at least, not when it seems pretty certain that I will die in the process. I’m not that brave.

This has all come about in my mind as I become more aware of the human trafficking issue in Vancouver, Washington. The teen girls caught up in human trafficking are just like those swimming around after the Titanic sank. They are doomed and everyone knows their fate. I am like the passengers in the small boats. I am safe from drowning or freezing in the water and I don’t want to go help them because I know that if I do, I could easily lose my life.

In the Portland/Vancouver metro area there are 3-4 new cases of underage prostitution each week. If we had someplace to put the girls, law enforcement estimates they could pick up over 80 girls tomorrow to help them start the healing process. Minors engaged in any type of prostitution are not considered criminals but victims of human trafficking. Portland/Vancouver is a hot spot for this because of the two cities next to each other that are in different state jurisdiction. The traffickers only have to cross the bridge (either way) with the girls to frustrate and confuse the police.   

What’s really disturbing with these girls is how closely their souls seem to be tied to their pimps. Even if we can find them (which is difficult) and even if we can tear them away from their jobs as prostitutes (in which they do not want to leave) and even if we can unite them with a loving family (nearly impossible), research estimates it takes 2 full years of constant working (and forcing) the girls to heal them. After those two years, many of them will still return to their pimps. 

I don't know what to do about this and there isn't much that one can do, but I've just been thinking about it so that is why I blogged about it. 

i am so tired

Hester woke us up last night at 1:00 am and i am so tired because of it. I can barely keep my eyes open. I just set the dinner for tomorrow evening, made the dinner for everyone, set up the kitchen for Bible study, completed 2 Bible Studies with Michael, went grocery shopping, and now I am headed to bed. Good night. 

facebook

I am kind of a late bloomer on facebook. I've been there the last few days instead of here. 

Somehow I immediately had 64 people waiting to be friends with me. I'm think I'm at 73 or so friends today which is fun. It's been fun to talk to some old friends and to hear what's going on with them. It's taken some extra time to get use to facebook but I like it. I might be there for a few more days until I get more situated with it.