Issues of Conscience and Arrogance

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Great Falls Tribune: Pharmacy draws fire for stopping the sale of birth control pills.

OK…Â? the problem at hand is that the new owners of the pharmacy feel that stocking oral contraceptives is detrimental to their consciences and plan to stop stocking them… AFTER THEIR CURRENT SUPPLY RUNS OUT!!!

Yeah… I can understand making the decision not to stock them and it’s their right.Â? However… after putting an ad in the newspaper on Mother’s Day announcing this and claiming that it’s because such meds are sinful, isn’t it a bit hypocritical of them to keep dispensing the meds regardless of their supply?

I read a story about a pharmacist who just felt it was wrong that he was selling these expensive cancer meds while his pharmacy also sold cigarettes.Â? So… he took all the tobacco out to the parking lot and ran over it until it was all smushed.Â? He lost at least a few thousand dollars in stock but he made his point and stood up for his beliefs.

So should the Andersons and Depners take their supplies of Ortho-Cyclen and Levlen and grind the pills into powder?Â? Not necessarily but they should just take the loss and stop selling it immediately if their consciences are so burdened by the sale of these meds rather than putting a self-righteous ad in the Trib and acting like capitalist morons.

(Thank you to Jack, my wonderful independent pharmacist who chats with me about my cats and researches drug interactions for me in addition to answering my many questions.Â? You rock my world.)

Grrrr. Stampa Stampa!

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They put me BACK on niacin, telling me to take it at night when I go to bed so that the flushing will happen while I sleep.

Uh… no.Â? It happened while I was GOING TO SLEEP, causing some very unkind things to be thought as I had to adjust myself into a position which would keep my leg hair from stabbing me and my skin from touching anything that wasn’t light or soft.

(I also wasn’t particularly happy about having a cat walk across the flushing areas but Edda is a love so she is forgiven.)

Lack of Actual Parenting

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**This isnâ????t necessarily in response to teaching VBS or about parishioners or anything like that â???? itâ????s been brought on by general observations and conversations that Iâ????ve had with people.**

Itâ????s been really bugging me lately that parents arenâ????t… well… parenting anymore and that itâ????s become all about life being convenient for them instead of them training and teaching their kids how to behave. You have the Gary Ezzo fans who talk about putting your baby on a schedule that works for you instead of nursing by demand, the parents who refuse to teach their kids that not everything they do is cute, the parents who leave their kids in daycare so that they can go out and pretend not to have kids (not anyone here in Montana or anyone I know online or in real life), and the parents who just tell their kids that “Mommy is ignoring [them]” when they’re out in public and misbehaving.

Emeth blogged a couple days ago about mothers who tell her to let her daughter cry herselfÂ? to sleep or to put her on a feeding/sleeping schedule.Â? I can’t help but think that the advice is to make it more convenient for Emeth which she feels is pretty cruel toward her daughter.Â? I think it’s pretty cruel too — the methods are supposed to make your baby more independent but seriously… this is a baby, not a toddler.Â? It’s not like babies can “use their words” to tell their mothers what they need.Â? The sleeping/eating schedule also sounds like it would disrupt the bond between mother and child.

My second gripe: parents who fail to teach their child that not everything they say or do is cute.Â? It’s a pain for those of us who have to teach them in Sunday school or when they get to school because they tend to be the ones who require the most time of the teacher and who fail to take the feelings of others into account.Â? There are seriously kids that I’ve taught that I would duct-tape to the wall if I could because they cannot listen, cannot sit still (not talking about kids with ADD or ADHD here), and think that they have to have the last word on everything.Â? Grandparents can be in the same boat, especially when their grandkid is misbehaving and they just stand there beaming like their grandkid has done something worth praise.Â? Maybe both the parents and grandparents are just lazy.

Third gripe: parents who put their kids in daycare and then go out to be socialites.Â? Sorry… those people don’t deserve to breed.Â? (I’m not begrudging the parents who get a babysitter from time to time to have a nice quiet dinner or the mom who has someone babysit once a week so she can go do errands.Â? I’m talking about the ones who drop their kids at daycare everyday even though they don’t work.)Â? If you’re going to have a baby, you need to step up and not do it for looks.Â? Parent your child.Â? Care for your child.Â? Don’t drop them in daycare all day so you can go shopping and have coffee at $tarbuck$ with your friends.Â? It’s a waste of money and a waste of your kid’s childhood when they should be looking back on the time they were spending with Mommy and Daddy.

Last gripe: This is related to the first one but… what is with the braindead parents who just refuse to discipline their kids???Â? I swear… I am going to call Child Services on the next mom who lets her brats run wild around the grocery store or coffeeshop and tells them “OK… Mommy is ignoring you now.”Â? These idiots also don’t deserve to breed.Â? If you’re going to have kids, discipline them.Â? I’m not saying that you have to spank them but you need to at least set boundaries!!!Â? TELL THEM that they need to stay with you and stop running around and knocking things off of shelves.Â? PUT THEM IN TIME OUT when you get home if they act out in public.Â? REMOVE THEM from the store if they keep acting up.Â? I heard a mom talking at a church gathering a few years ago about how she’ll just leave her cart in the store and ask the manager to keep it for her and then escort her kids out of the store if they’re misbehaving and throwing tantrums.Â? It sounded pretty gutsy as I know that she’s a working mom and her time for errands is pretty limited.Â? However… it sends a message to the kids that if they can’t behave in public, they aren’t going to be allowed to go do errands with their mom.Â? (I happen to know that it took three times of this happening before the kids started behaving.)

And for the love of Cora: stop feeding your kids McDonalds every freaking night and actually cook dinner.Â? There are so many things that are nutritious that you can make from scratch in under 15 minutes that are so much better than the hormones and sugar and fat you find in fast food.Â? And if you’re going to feed your kids crap, stop whining about their behavior.Â? If you give your kids soda and sugary snacks, they’re going to be running around like little buzzed ferrets.

/end rant

VBS This Week and My Saturday Morning

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I just got done with a week of teaching/helping with VBS. It’s the first time I’ve had to take a serious nap after VBS in the morning and that I’ve been asleep before 10:30 in a long time. The program last night was good — I just would have preferred to leave the reception earlier. Unfortunately my laptop was being used for the slideshow of pictures and I don’t trust just anyone with it.

VBS was fun — just really tiring. Yesterday, my job was taking pictures of the preschoolers and just being with them (only 4 kids but enough energy to power a small city) for an hour had me ready for a long nap. The rest of the days were just kind of intense, especially Wednesday when my camera batteries died and I had to run to town (in the middle of road construction no less) to get working ones. I got the day’s pictures taken and the Powerpoint presentation done but it was pretty crazy. (My job was “Spotlight Drama” where I took pictures of the kids in certain poses and plugged them into Powerpoint.)

Yesterday, I was a bad Jen and had a coconut crunch shake thingie in town and had some neapolitan ice cream at the reception. (It was just two scoops unlike the 6-8 that the kids were eating.) Let me just say that it was the best ice cream I’ve had in forever and I actually felt *good* after eating it. I think I might need to relax a little bit on the “diabetic diet” if both of those actually made feel normal and not cranky or like I wanted to go to sleep. (Then again… I haven’t exactly had the most normal and quiet two weeks here.)

I got to sleep in until 10 this morning for the first time in… 2 weeks. It was so nice to not have an evil beeping thing wake me up. I finally got to watch the episode of Mythbusters that kept putting me to sleep (grenades, self-hypnosis, and exploding stomachs) as well as “Saved!” for the first time. (I think it was Oxygen or one of the women’s networks that was showing it all week.) “Saved!” was… kind of freaky. It was like “Clueless” but in a freaky born-again Christian way.

My Day

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Apparently, my LSAT got postponed until 12:30 (which I didn’t realize until I read my admission ticket last night) so I could have come down this morning instead of staying with my peeps in Great Falls last night.Â? Oh well… I had two exceptional tomcats to love up including one who is starting to get his fur back after being attacked by an owl a week and a half ago.

This morning (after getting to seriously sleep in until… 9), I got some grocery stuff at the local store (which is better stocked than anything on the Hi-Line), went to Famous Footwear to pick up some sandals for Jon (Columbia Sportswear had some for $30 — serious SCORE since they’re normally at least twice that), and to Home Depot to copy the keys for the Grand Prix because Jon’s had snapped.

While on my way back to my relatives’ house to pick up a water bottle for the test, I overheard the following exchange when one of the “HELP” buzzers went off.

Clerk: What pump number are you?
Idiot: 23.Â? It’s not pumping.Â? What’s wrong with it?
Clerk: [Insert company name] is doing some work on that pump.Â? If you go to one of the other ones, you shouldn’t have a problem pumping your gas.
Idiot: You mean this pump’s not going to work???
…..

To her credit, the clerk was polite in responding and saved the laughter for after she was done.Â? I and the customer ahead of me didn’t.Â? It was a nice moment of levity and one that got quite a bit of mileage today as I told my aunt, the nice people at Taco Del Mar who gave me extra food because I was polite to them last night, as well as Jon.Â? (Oh yeah… I also posted it on Livejournal.)

The LSAT wasn’t that bad — I ran out of time on the logic games so I filled in 3 random bubbles at the end.Â? The rest of it was fairly straightforward and easy.Â? I think I did much better on the logical reasoning portions this time and the extra section was reading which was fairly easy.

I got dinner at Taco Del Mar as I didn’t want to impose any more on my aunt and uncle (who would have made me a really nice dinner but I had to get back home ASAP) and then hit up $tarbuck$ for my “I-sat-a-four-and-a-half-hour-test” reward (after getting myself across town from $tarbuck$ because I’m a moron and got on the wrong ramp), then Wal-Mart for those things I couldn’t find elsewhere, the carwash next door where the guys spoiled me, and finally gassed up before heading home.Â? I got home around 8:30 and we went to get the Grand Prix from Church #1.Â? (Someone gave Jon a ride home.)

So… after this posts, I’m going to bed!Â? I have VBS for the rest of the week and that’s going to be pretty tiring!

Banishing Niacin From My Life

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Well… it’s Day 2 of not taking the niacin and I haven’t had a “flushing” episode since Friday.Â? At the burial service yesterday, one of my church ladies exclaimed, “Jen!Â? You look normal!”Â? Uh yeah… if it hadn’t been so uncomfortable, there could have been some humor in the flushing episodes, especially watching peoples’ eyes widen and their jaws drop as they watched it spread across my face and arms and legs and being like “What?”

I see my doc on Monday and I think we’ve established that it was the niacin and NOT the Metformin (as her nurse was claiming).Â? I don’t think she’ll put me back on it, or if she does, it will be on a significantly lower dose.