Happy Canada Day to all my readers in the Frozen North!
Category Archives: Life in Big Sky Country
Issues of Conscience and Arrogance
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.)
VBS This Week and My Saturday Morning
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.
2007 Synod Assembly Redux: The Good, the Bad, and the “What Did They Just Say???”
I’m fairly blissed out on Benadryl at the moment so beware of weirdness caused by my antihistamine-induced haze. 😛
The Good
[-] Staying with my aunt and uncle and having two excellent tomcats at my disposal.
[-] Some of the worship music (particularly “Canticle of Turning” from the first night)
[-] Meeting new people.
[-] Conversations with friends (especially those who admit to reading this blog — you know who you are. 🙂 )
[-] Good food at Mackenzie River Pizza Company on Friday night.
[-] Getting some cross-stitching done on my 1st project in 15 years.
[-] Electing an AWESOME new bishop and being able to give her a congratulatory hug.
[-] Meeting friends of my father-in-law and having them figure out who I was by my credentials tag. (All of us had name tags with our name, parish, and geographic location on them. Let’s just say my last name is fairly unique.)
[-] Schmoozing with important people like the president of PLTS. (She sat with us for the Saturday morning plenary.)
[-] The privilege of being asked to be a communion assistant for the closing Eucharist. (I’m not clergy and I’m not incredibly special in the synod so I was pretty jazzed to be asked and gave a BIG hug to the person who asked me.) It was humbling to say the least.
[-] Talking with the college kids on Saturday and asking them what they were going to do with their idealism and energy.
[-] My aunt and uncle’s most excellent tomcats. (They deserve another mention, especially Fredd who has parts of his back shaved for stitches from an owl attack.)
[-] Getting to talk to Bishop Omland and having him actually KNOW who I am and remember the first time he met me. (Let’s just say that the bishop inviting a candidate’s wife to have coffee with him and tell him about herself was a welcome change from the normal ELCA attitude that the clergy spouses are baggage. It’s the reason I trusted him as bishop — I’m an actual person to him, not just a name on a paper.)
[-] My travel equalization paying for my $tarbuck$ habit during assembly.
The Bad
[-] The new worship settings in the ELW — can we say “mass-produced inclusivist crap”?
[-] The inclusivizing of the Psalms in the ELW. See above.
[-] The omission of “Jesus In Thy Dying Woes” from the ELW. You guys suck. It’s THE Tenebrae hymn for Good Friday. Get it right.
[-] The re-writing of the Lord’s Prayer for the service on Friday night.
[-] The serious lack of air-conditioning in the main assembly chamber.
[-] The reflux and gas bubbles caused by dinner on Saturday night.
[-] The orange creme and vanilla bean fraps from $tarbuc$ — the first was over-rated and the second had a nasty aftertaste.
[-] Not giving the youth decent sound for their offertory.
[-] Getting an allergic reaction to whatever pollens were on Loogy’s fur. (Mr. Apex Predator was apparently hunting in some kind of weed or grass to which I’m pretty allergic.)
[-] LOOOOOOOONG days.
[-] Being utterly Laeodicean on the sexuality resolutions. Can we actually STAND for something instead of tabling it until next year?
The “What Did They Just Say???”
[-] The “amending of the amending of the amendment to the resolution”. I’m not even sure what that actually entails and if it’s even possible in the English language.
Montana Synod Assembly
Well… we have a new bishop and…
IT’S A GIRL!
(OK… LikeÂ?Pastor Jessica Crist *wasn’t* going to be elected?)
She’s quite awesome and I’m looking forward to the next 6 years here.
I’ve also gotten a ton of cross-stitch done while resolutions have been parsed up and debated.Â? Best line so far:
“I’m a recovering English major.”
The Joys of Small Town Life
I went to the pharmacy to get my Allegra refilled and found out that I had no refills left.Â? They let me call down to my doctor’s office and I left a message for one of the docs that I see (not the prescriber — he’s out today) to ask for a refill on it.
After going over to the local coffeeshop and spending some time reading letters and the paper, I came back to the pharmacy not expecting to actually *HAVE* them refill it.Â? Well… it turns out that the doctor’s office called and asked about my history with the drug and my pharmacist told them that I’d had it for at least the 18 months he’s known me and to please fill it.
So… I had to wait another 5 minutes but I at least got my Allegra today.Â? It’s nice to have a pharmacist who knows me enough to advocate for me.Â? 🙂
Home… With Some News
We got home about an hour ago after being on the road for about… 13 1/2 hours.Â? (Take out some of the time for a nice lunch at Olive Garden in Idaho Falls and stops for gas in various places and dinner in Great Falls and you get about 10+ hours of driving)
I’m headachey and tired from getting only 4 hours of sleep as well as about 60 miles of catnapping in the car.Â? (No worries… Jon was driving.)
The concert was amazing.Â? Well worth the 10 hour drive.Â? She played a couple pieces from An Ancient Muse as well as much of Book of Secrets and some pieces from earlier albums.Â? Two encores and some lovely stories.Â? Her musicians were so cool.
Meeting Loreena McKennitt after the show, telling her I’d been a fan for 15 years, and getting her autograph?Â? Let’s just say that I get seriously verklempt when talking about it.
I seriously *have* been a fan since 1992 when “The Lady of Shallott” was played on NPR and my mom got a tape of The Visit.Â? In the last 15 years, I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs in life and I’ve literally been to hell and back several times.Â? Through all that time, her music was a unifying factor in my family (my brother and I have replaced my mom’s CD’s several times because they keep “disappearing”) and it was what I listened to when I needed to be pensive and ponder my life.Â? in addition, her research on the Celts (which translates into her music) has been part of my quest to figure out who I am and the poems she has set to music are among my favorites.
So… after reading that she occasionally signs autographs at the stage door, I decided to something incredibly un-Jenlike and try and get one.Â? (I’m actually really shy in person and I also feel really guilty about invading the space of others which includes waiting at stage doors after concerts for artists who really deserve to get a breather after a concert.Â? It comes from living in a fishbowl myself.)
I ended up being the first person she went to when she came out and seriously… I’m still just in awe that I actually got to meet her.Â? She was so congenial and put up with me trying to be articulate despite being a complete fan girl.Â? (She’s also not much taller than me which was kind of cool.)
I’m still honestly very tongue-tied about the whole thing (believe it or not) and although I know she abhors the “cult of celebrity”, I still felt so unworthy in her presence.
So off to bed with me… though I have one thing to say:
For I am thoroughly convinced that Montana is the most beautiful state in the nation and I have no desire to be anywhere else because no other state can compare in terms of sky, land, and water.