Things That Annoy Infertile Girls (or Maybe Just Me?) - Flashback Friday

This was actually one of my more popular posts when it was first published, but I still thought I would share it again.  Any additions to the post are in pink, as usual :)

• Accidental Pregnancies - So I have been trying for years to get pregnant, you go slut around and accidentally get pregnant?
• Immediate Pregnancies - You quit taking your birth control last month and now you are pregnant?
• People Who Give You Retarded Advice -

           - Just stop trying and you will get pregnant
           - My friend adopted a baby and got pregnant right away, you should do that
           - Get drunk, people always get pregnant when they are drunk (Yes, they do. Because they are
             intoxicated and forget to take precautions.)

• Whiny Girls That Pretend They Are Infertile - Trying for 5 months is not suffering from infertility. It takes a year on average to get pregnant.  I get that it might FEEL like infertility but it just isn't.  After YEARS of trying, I can't even remember what trying for 5 months is like.
• Stupid Pregnancy Announcements on Facebook These can be cute, but they still really annoy me, and unless you are a best friend of mine, I will totally hide all your updates after you do this.
• Pregnant Girls That Don't Research Pregnancy - If you are having a baby, and I can't, at least have the decency to care about your pregnancy and birth OK?
• People That Have Kids And Are Awful Parents - I am not one of those people that thinks you should have to have a license to breed. But seriously, if you are giving your kid a baby bottle with soda in it and letting your 2 year old climb up the shelves at Wal-Mart, I can't help but think "Seriously, you can reproduce and I can't?!?!"
• Pregnancy Tests - Because they are ALWAYS negative, but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

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On a Sewing Binge!

My craft room was finally in somewhat useable condition, and Michael has bought me an iron, so it was high time to get sewing!  I never just sew one thing, so I have actually made three things this week.  All of them are for the little girl that I baby-sit, because I grow a bit weary of making baby clothes for imaginary babies.  Since we are in the process of getting certified to be foster parents I might have a baby to sew for soon, albeit temporarily, but since I have no idea of the age/gender of child(ren) we will get placed its kind of a shot in the dark as to what to make.  I don't much like sewing for myself because I am a bit deformed when it comes to my body shape, so stuff doesn't necessarily fit me well unless its made of stretch knits, which I kind of hate to work with.  Well I have actually only tried once, but it was a disaster and I gave up on them.  Plus clothes for me take a lot more fabric which means it is more expensive if it turns out like garbage.

 

 

Anyways, I started with a "lovely" pillowcase-style dress that I made without a pattern.  The picture does NOT do it justice as to just how bad this is.  I am sincerely hoping it gets worn as a nightgown, not a dress.  It was supposed to be reversible, but somehow I screwed it up royally and its just lined instead.  I literally made it out of a pillowcase I got at a yard sale for 50¢.

 

Then I moved on to some shorts.  When I showed them to Michael, he told me they are "old school".  I told him that is to be expected when you are using a pattern from 1983.  For these I used the back half of the first dress I made, which was a disaster, not due to my incompetence (although I am sure that didn't help), but due to the fact that the dress was HUGE!  These shorts are a much better use of the fabric.  I originally wanted to do the tie shorts, because they don't use any bias tape, which I seem to go through like crazy when I sew.  Then I realized that Miss Hadlee wouldn't be able to use the bathroom on her own in those shorts so I moved on to a different pair.  I had her wear an old tank top of mine to try on the shorts, and since I had already had her try on a dress I was making she was tired of changing clothes and decided she would just wear that to go feed the ducks.  So that is why the tank top is tied back with a rubber band, because while it is REALLY, REALLY stretchy, that doesn't change that it was cut almost to her belly button.  She was quite disturbed by the process of tucking it into her shorts, because, well when you think about it, tucking shirts in is a pretty rare occurrence these days.

Last, but most certainly not least is another dress.  This one is not a fail like the first dress.  In fact I think it is pretty awesome if I do say so myself!  This dress is the first time I have ever done a zipper, which was (thankfully) quite easy, although its not nearly as well done as it could be.  I did the first sleeve perfectly, then I managed to put the second sleeve on inside out, so I had to start over on that.  But the end result was quite worth the 5-6 hours the dress took to make.  I used a pattern from 1967, but made the dress a little longer than the instructions said.  I love the vintage look of the super short dresses for little girls, but since it is getting warmer I wanted her to be able to wear it without tights or leggings underneath, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what little girls in the '60s wore under their dresses so that their underpants didn't show every time they bent to pick something up or reached for anything.  The top picture is the dress with the inside out sleeve, but the color of the dress is much more accurate in the mistake picture than in the completed project picture.


 

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Abortion - Flashback Friday

Additions to the original post will be in pink :)  Please, please, please keep in mind that I WILL NOT publish anything that is disrespectful to me, my readers, or my religion. 

I was inspired to write about this controversial topic because of a post on Birth Without Fears Facebook page. Usually I attempt to be civil, polite, respectful and courteous when I discuss this (or other controversial) topic(s), but since this is my blog I am going to say what I think and why I think it. I won't insult people, or call people names, but I won't sugarcoat it either. Not that I think it will be a problem, but I won't publish comments that are insulting. I only have 16 followers, but I want to warn you ahead of time.  I think I have 53 followers now! 

I think that abortion is wrong. Plain and simple.
I don't care if you* got raped. Two wrongs do NOT make a right. Just because someone did something horrible to you doesn't mean you should kill an innocent person. If you don't feel that you can love the baby because of the circumstances that is reasonable, give it up for adoption. 

I don't care if the baby has Down's Syndrome. It is still YOUR CHILD and God trusted you with it. You can't kill it for being retarded once it is born, so there is no reason to kill it before. In fact it would probably be better (still horrendous) to kill it after birth as it would be done more humanely and you would actually know that the child has something wrong with it. I hate to break it to you, but the tests can be wrong, and you might have killed a perfectly healthy baby.

I don't care if you cheated on your husband and now you are pregnant with a baby that is obviously not his. Or if you had a one night stand, or if you are sleeping with a married man, or if you are fifteen, or if you are poor and can't afford it very well. You made a bad choice, now you have to live with it. Living with it might be keeping the baby, or it might be giving the baby up for adoption, but it certainly isn't killing the baby.

There are two instances where I do approve of abortion. These instances are rare. One of them is if you have had a miscarriage and need a D&C to remove an incomplete miscarriage. The other instance is in an ectopic pregnancy. This does involve ending a life, but it is (as far as I know) unavoidable. If the pregnancy continues both the mother and baby die (again, as far as I know).

Sometimes something will happen where the baby will kill the mother if the pregnancy continues. Still not a reason for an abortion. The solution is to deliver the baby at the earliest possible point of viability. Give the baby a chance at life, while preserving the life of the mother. Yes, this could be unbelievably expensive way of doing things, but what price can you put on the life of a child.  I do realize there are very few instances (I mean VERY few) that could involve the mother perhaps dying before the baby reaches viability.  In this case I still think that it is wrong to kill the child, but if I were, for instance having repeated strokes through my first trimester, continuing on and seriously risking my life would be a hard choice.  I cannot with certainty say what I would do.  I like to think that I would trust in God to lead me through it, but I can't say for sure. 

There are some people that disagree with abortion, but feel it should be kept legal to avoid desperate women going to back-alley doctors or using coat hangers. I disagree. If you are doing something to intentionally kill someone, why should it be relatively safe for you? Does anyone care if a man goes into a store and shoots someone, then the bullet ricochets and kills him? As my brother-in-law once said about the matter "The captain goes down with the ship." Callous? Yes. But is is any more callous than killing your own flesh and blood? 

I don't think abortion will ever be illegal here. So my solution is that after you have an abortion, you have a mandatory hysterectomy. If you are not willing to parent a child when it is given to you, you may not have a child when it is convenient. Women would have to make a life long choice to either have the baby that is inside them, or to never have children. 

I have ALWAYS been Pro-Life when it comes to abortion (the death penalty is a different topic, about which I have no real opinion). In high school I skipped all the speech days (have I mentioned I didn't graduate?), except one, where I gave a speech on the horror of abortion. However I have became even more Pro-Life since I have been struggling to have a baby. More for selfish reasons then anything else. It used to be easier and cheaper to adopt a baby, before Roe v. Wade. Because there were lots of "unwanted" babies that were available for adoption. Now many of those babies are killed. I would LOVE a baby, and millions of women are literally throwing theirs away.  3500 babies are killed in the United States everyday.

One thing I HATE about Pro-Life people is their tendency to parade pictures of dead babies around. I know that its wrong, so please don't show me graphic pictures of why its so horrifying.

"The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn't learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want."-Mother Teresa


If you have had an abortion and are hurting, I have searched for a resource to share with you.  Please visit Rachel's Vineyard.  I know there are people that have abortions, and that choice haunts them for the rest of their life.  For those people I have compassion and am not passing judgement.  I cannot imagine how much the consequences of that action would hurt.  I pray that those people find some way to heal.


Dumb reason not to kill babies: Look how cute they are! Why isn't this baby pixelated? Because she is me!

*You is a hypothetical person


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Dressing Like a Girl - Flashback Friday

Additions to the original post will be in pink :)

"A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God." (Deuteronomy 22:5, NKJV throughout)

Do you realize that you can get off an airplane in any country in the world, and if they do not speak English and you do not know their language, you will know which bathroom you were supposed to go to. Go in an airport terminal, go to the bathroom and you will see a picture on the bathroom door. It doesn't matter if you are in Russia, France, Portugal, the United States or Mexico, there will be a sign on the door it will have a picture on it. It will either have a picture of someone in slacks or someone in a skirt. Now, if you are a lady, which of those two doors will you walk through? And if you are a man, which of those two doors will you walk through? I doubt that even the rankest feminist would walk into the bathroom that would have the picture of a person in pants. Common sense tells us that pants are a man's apparel. It amazes me that a woman would be appalled of just the thought of a man wearing a dress, but yet, men and women think nothing of a woman wearing pants. There was a fashion designer a few years back who decided he was going to come out with a line of dresses for men. The idea wasn't very popular, so he gets himself an appearance on the Phil Donahue show. Phil brought all these male models out, wearing the dresses designed just for men, they paraded them around the stage on the show, and all the women thought this was vulgar. And, when Phil went into the audience with a microphone, many of the women made statements that they though it was preposterous that a man would want to wear a dress. "Don't these men know any better? Don't they have any self-respect? Don't they have any concept of manhood, that they would parade around in a dress?" And Phil Donahue said something that showed that he had more spiritual discernment than most Baptists do. He said, "Well, they said the same thing fifty years ago, when women started wearing pants."    

In First Timothy 2:9, we read that women should adorn themselves in "modest apparel." In the Greek, the word for modest is the word katastolh (katastole), and it means a long flowing garment. In the Bible days, men wore a short tight skirt and women wore a long and flowing robe. That was a katastole. The Bible in First Timothy 2:9 tells women to adorn themselves in a long flowing garment, not a short, tight garment. That is what modest is, long and flowing. Pants do not flow. I have never yet seen a pair of pants that flow.* Therefore, even if "long," they do not qualify as a long flowing garment. And since they are not a long flowing garment, they are not a katastole. Katastole is translated modest. Therefore, if a modest garment is a long flowing garment, and pants do not flow, pants are not modest. Source

I didn't write the bold part, please see the source for more information. I feel like I have posted this before, but I looked back and couldn't find it. Besides its good to be reminded right?  This time I know I have posted it before. 

Anyways, I really want to dress like a girl. Just like I want to wear make-up and have pretty hair like a girl. Although the reasoning behind the dressing part is half religious and half wanting to be pretty and girly, and the hair and make-up is just shallow.

Even though I know it is right, and I don't think I would regret it, I can't bring myself to give away my pants (I never throw anything away). Its because I am not lady-like. Right now I am sitting with my legs up on the chair, one folded under me, and the other one with the knee towards the ceiling. If I were not wearing sweatpant shorts under my skirt, it would be a bit inappropriate (well I am the only one home and awake right now, so no one would know, but you get the point). I also sit Indian style on the floor alot. These are not okay to do in skirts or dresses unless they are floor length. 

I also want to get a bike. I think that everyone will see my underpants on a bike if I wear a skirt. And I take the kids to the park. You can't climb on the play structure in a skirt, because everyone can see up it. I am pretty sure that bloomers are the answer to my problems, or the modern day equivalent of bicycle shorts.  I have a bike now.  But the tires are flat so I have not actually gotten to ride it yet...

I think that once I have a few more dresses and skirts to wear I will be more inclined to wear them all the time, and maybe then I can get rid of my jeans. Or better yet, transform them into skirts!  So far, I wear dresses less often now then I did when I wrote this.  I seem to be moving in the wrong direction...


*Gauchos and culottes are probably an exception to this, and might also help me solve my pants needing crisis.



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