Time to stir up some controversy. One thing I don’t understand is why cigarettes, which kill hundreds of thousands of people each year, are legal, while marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and so many other drugs that kill a small fraction of that number are illegal. While some illegal drugs could have legitmate medical uses (marijuana for glaucoma patients, for example), I can’t think of a single medical use for cigarettes. In light of the lives they destroy both directly and indirectly, the billions of dollars in health care costs, and the general nuisance they present to nonsmokers, I propose making all tobacco products illegal. Discuss.
Category Archives: Social Issues
On Treating Yourself Well
Right before December finals at Baylor, one of my favorite English professors (Dr. Wendy Allman, in case you know her) gave us a handout called Treats for the Soul, or something to that effect. Well acquainted with how stressful and busy life can be during finals time, she wanted to remind us of the value of being nice to yourself in small, realistic ways – indulgences, if you will. Suggestions included reading a poem just for fun, a special cup or tea or coffee, and taking a walk with a loved one. The point was to do something impractical simply because it made you happy. A treat for the soul strikes back at the stressors around us, reasserts control of our lives for a time, and helps keep us sane.
I got to apply this principle yesterday morning. I’d stopped at Einstein Brothers after work to pick up bagels for the staff at our apartment community. While there, I noticed that they were still selling candy-cane shaped bagels made from red and white pieces of twisted dough. I decided it was time to be nice to myself and bought two, one for myself and one for my wife, still hot from the oven. I also bought a pound of their wonderful vanilla hazelnut coffee. I’m normally on the practical side, especially in terms of spending money, but it felt good to do something nice for myself in the midst of a busy season.
Tell me, loyal readers, how do you like to treat yourself? A massage? A night away? A glass of wine and a hot bath? Curling up with a good book before bed? Post a comment so we can share ideas.
What I’ve Learned So Far
We’ve known we are pregnant for almost a week now. I’ve learned/confirmed a lot so far, including:
- Weird things happen to a woman’s body when she gets pregnant. I’d read that women feel “different” in ways they can’t explain. I was hoping MY wife, the brilliant woman that she is, would be able to explain it, but she can’t. She does, however, have bouts of SuperNose. At a luncheon this week, in a room full of the smells of various cooked meats, she could smell the salad. Apparently salad has a smell. It’s also amazing how a baby the size of a grain of rice can make a woman so tired AND hungry.
- As expected, everyone has their own ideas about what pregnant women should or should not do and theories about how to predict the baby’s gender or how many babies will emerge. Sample prohbitions include alcohol, exercise, lunch meat, sushi, sex, lifting anything weighing more than 8 ounces, traveling, and getting out of bed altogether. Some people claim multiple births follow your mother’s side or father’s side or skip a generation every time. Some say if you’re carrying low, you’re having a boy. Many believe that raising a woman’s arms overhead will wrap the umbillical cord around the baby’s neck, as if the arm bones and cord were connected somehow. Google pregnancy myths and see what you find. Generally all this advice is something the advisor “heard” somewhere, or is based on a single instance that the advisor is extrapolating into a Law of Pregnancy. Some of these ideas have medical validity. Many are utter hogwash. The amount of misinformation, and contradictory information from seemingly reputable sources, is amazing. I do my best to smile politely, but I am a skeptic about anything I hear other than your personal experience, which I would LOVE to hear about. I want to be a good BabyDaddy and appreciate help as long as it’s accurate! Leave comments if you have any advice.
- Pretty much everyone, even our friends who can’t stand children, gets excited when they hear about a new baby on the way. In our case, some of the excitement results from our long journey toward these happy days. But even people who don’t know how hard it’s been for us still rejoice. I like to think it’s because they believe we’ll be good parents, but the truth is probably much simpler: babies are hope for the future. Imagine a world that had no babies, like in the movie Children of Men that I mentioned several weeks ago. The human race would be maybe 80-100 years from extinction. Through babies, we combine two different lineages into a new life that will (we hope) live on after we have left this world. They are also a clean slate. Despite their inherent propensity toward sin, they still have an innocence that they will never regain. They haven’t made all the mistakes that we’ve made or been through the pain we’ve endured. They also have a tremendous amount of potential. All the “grownups” around them wistfully speculate about who they’ll become, but only God knows for sure. They’re like Christmas presents that take a lifetime to unwrap.
Guest Blogging!
Hi there – it’s Jenny, Andy’s very own guest blogger and wife! Hi guys! Andy wanted me to write a little about something I did right before we left on vacation. Andy found this website called www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org – it’s a very neat organization that takes used wedding dresses and sells them to other brides to raise funds for breast cancer research. They were having an event in Irving on October 20th, so I took my boxed up wedding dress, and handed it over to a very nice lady who just got married this April, and found out in June she had cancer. This organization is very near and dear to her heart!
The event was at the Las Colinas country club, which is a beautiful place not too far from home. I was all cool and nonchalant about the whole thing until I walked up to the doors, then I had a moment of freaking. “I’m just about to hand over the most expensive, most beautiful piece of clothing I will ever own to a group of complete strangers and walk out. What am I thinking?!?”
God is so good, though. As I’m having my minor freak out, a young bride and her mom walk out carrying a dress to buy from the thousands in the ballroom. Guess what it was? It was MY dress in the cream color! She was oohing and ahhing over this wonderful dress that she could now afford because of this group. I leaned over and said “that’s my dress!” and she sort of jumped in surprise. I think she thought we were about to have to arm wrestle or something over that particular dress, until I explained that I was donating that very dress in white to the group. She asked me how I liked mine, and I told her it was the best dress I had ever owned. We had a moment.
So, I highly recommend doing this if you haven’t thought about it before. Some of you sentimental peeps out there are probably having a panic attack and thinking “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE TO YOUR FUTURE DAUGHTERS? HOW COULD YOU?”, but I have saved my veil and headpiece, and those are the sentimental pieces for me. I want the experience of taking a daughter someday to try on dresses at the shop – that’s the memory I want someday. Check out the website for more details – they also take old/stained dresses and bridesmaid dresses and turn those into quilts! How cool is that?
Stay tuned for more info and pics of Disney – we haven’t even gotten to that part yet!
Knowing Where to Tap
I love the story about the owner of a broken machine who called an expert to fix it. The expert showed up, took out a small hammer, and tapped a piece of the machine back into place. Just like that, the machine was fixed! The owner was overjoyed until he saw a bill for $1000. “This is outrageous! All you did was tap one part into place! I want this itemized!” The expert calmly wrote it out for him: “Tapping part: $5. Knowing where to tap: $995.”
I found a plumber online to fix the faucet. He showed up Tuesday afternoon, on-time, and assessed the situation. Then he pulled off the top of the faucet (just like I’d tried to do and failed), changed out the $0.25 washer that I’d been trying to reach, and put it back together. Problem solved. The actual work took maybe 3-4 minutes. Then he helped me pull off the faucet handle I’d broken so I could replace it myself. Total bill: $39 just for coming out plus $80 for “rebuilding the hose bib” for a total of $119. He left off the $9.95 fuel surcharge that his company wanted him to collect.
Morals of this story: 1) Learning home improvement techniques can save you a lot of money. 2) It’s a darn good thing that there are people who know more than I do about many different topics. 3) One way to make a good living and improve job security is by knowing where to tap.
We Have a Deal!
Our buyers countered our counteroffer, and we have verbally accepted. Finally this long journey seems to have an end in sight! I’m trying not to think about how much less we’re getting for the house than we’d hoped. The important thing is that we have a deal hammered out with a closing date of Nov 1. To anyone considering a home purchase, hear this advice: never get a 30-year mortgage unless you plan to stay in the house for several years! Our sales price will be almost exactly what we paid for the house. When you subtract the realtor’s commission and other closing costs, we’re losing a lot of money. So we’re considering our first homeownership experience a rookie mistake. Learn from us!
I must also give a shout-out to Craigslist, which helped us find a buyer for my old bedroom set within 2 HOURS of posting! We’re also selling a sleeper sofa and breakfast table with chairs. We don’t want to move them and won’t have room for them in a two-bedroom apartment if we get picked for Apartment Life. Craigslist is pretty low-tech, simple to use, effective, and FREE! It’s kinda like EBay except it’s not an auction, and it’s mainly for goods sold in a particular area so you can pick them up directly from the seller. Great deals abound on good stuff, so check it out! It was a little weird to watch my bedroom furniture ride away in someone else’s truck, but it’s going to a good home.
And finally, I found a great new blog by a local leader named Larry James. Check out this story and the rest of his site, which offers a Christian perspective on the human side of poverty.