…at this comment by Eric Scheske regarding the Muslim violent uproar over the Pope quoting a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as “evil and inhuman:”

That’s like a person protesting allegations about his drunkenness by drinking a bottle of whiskey.

I am blessed to live in a neighborhood with a plethora of teenaged girls who want to babysit. When it was only 4 kids to watch, they all pretty much told me $5 an hour. That’s a really good deal for 4 kids! Of course, if it was much more than that, I wouldn’t be able to hire them very often, since the bank account has been known to run dry.

One girl charged $6.50 an hour, but she washed, dried and put away all the dishes, too. Definitely worth paying extra money to come home at 10 pm to sleeping children and a clean kitchen. Most of the girls haven’t figured out that putting the dishes in the dishwasher and the toys on the shelf will almost always guarantee repeat business.

Now that I often leave all 5 kids, I pay at least $6 an hour. Pete can be a handful. He still wants mommy and has the toddler-stamina to be miserable for hours on end.

The girl I’m having watch the kids on Saturdays for dog school is the oldest of 5. I chose her mainly because her 3 younger siblings are close in age to my kids and the youngest is only months older than Pete. She’s pretty experienced at distracting fussy babies. And she knows that moms don’t like messy houses. When the kids found out who was coming they said, “No! Not her! She makes us clean!” Hehe.

Because there are so many potential babysitters, I feel badly for any new girls who are trying to move in on the market. On Friday, about 530 pm, our doorbell rang. A middle school girl from down the street was selling stuff from a catalog as a fundraiser for school (I guess the government handout just isn’t enough). As I was browsing the catalog of scented candles and wrapping paper, she looked around at my kids.

“Five kids, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lot of kids.”

“Yeah.” (I suppose.)

“Do you ever need a, uh…”

“Babysitter?”

“Yeah!”

“Sometimes. How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Have you ever babysat a bunch of kids before?”

“I babysat three at one time.”

“Mmmmm…” (If you can do 3, you can do 5 – at least my 5 who are usually well behaved for babysitters, except for Pete.)

“Once I babysat a 2 month old. But he slept the whole time. I was lovin’ that.”

“Yeah. I’d be lovin’ that too! (I don’t happen to have any sleepy 2 month olds who need watching, though.) Hmm…how ’bout I write your number down and I’ll maybe call you sometime? What’s your number?”

“Uh, I don’t know…”

“Did you just move in?”

“Uh, about 2 months ago…I can bring it over later?”

“Ok. How much would you charge?”

“$5 per hour…well, that would be for 2 kids. I’d have to charge $2 per kid.” (Well, now, $2 x 5 = $10 per hour. Hmmm...)

“Mmmm…well, here’s the money for the wrapping paper.”

“Thanks. Do you guys homeschool?”

“Yes, we do.” (Do I have a scarlet H on my shirt or something?)

“Is it math time?” (This briefly puzzles me, since by Friday evenings all of the school stuff is totally cleaned up – woo hoo – TGIF – party time!!! And then I realize that my kids are playing with pattern blocks which had only arrived via UPS an hour before.)

“No. They just do this for fun.”

“Oh. I’ll bring my number over later.”

“Buh-bye.”

If I ever pay a 13 year old nearly twice the minimum wage to watch my kids, I swear I will withhold all the necessary taxes, social security, etc that I can as a private employer. Jeesh. These kids are so clueless. The babysitting supply is high. Prices should be pretty low. And you can make more money under the table, so to speak, as a babysitter, than you could flipping burgers at Mickey D’s. But don’t push it by expecting more than the fair market value.

For now, I’ll stick with Miss Oldest-Of-Five-Who-Makes-My-Kids-Clean. She still owes her mom $40 for the Palm Pilot she needed for high school. At least her mom made her pay for it.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
September 14, 2006
Army Fights To Gain Troops

U.S. military leaders seek strategy to boost wartime size

Gen. Dan McNeill, head of Atlanta-based Forces Command, said Army officials want to be able to use National Guard combat units more frequently. Those units are under the control of individual state governors.

“If we are going to prosecute this long war, we need relatively
unencumbered access to the citizen soldier formations,” said McNeill, whose command oversees training and mobilization for all Army forces in the continental United States.

It may go even farther than that, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy group that focuses on national security.

“There is speculation among Pentagon insiders that [President] Bush may mobilize the National Guard after the elections,” Thompson said Wednesday.

“This war has gone on so much longer than anyone anticipated and the demand on our troops in the field are so great that the Army is just wearing out,” Thompson added.

To mobilize the entire National Guard is, in effect, drafting over 330,000 people. These are people who have real lives: police, firemen, accountants, factory workers, IT technicians, teachers, clergy. Many of them make more in their civilian employment than they do in their part-time jobs. Yes, they all signed up to be “civilian soldiers,” and they signed up to help the country in a time of war. But the vast bulk (75%) have already done a deployment within the last 3 years. The vast bulk have already served more than was ever thought necessary.

Thank goodness this means little to my family personally. Bill is already full-time National Guard. We chose this life. We budgeted for this life. But I am outraged at the possibility that every National Guard soldier and his or her family may be thrown into complete chaos and fiscal hardship involuntarily. And they’d still have the audacity to call it an all-volunteer force.

Young officers attending the conference were told by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, second in command at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which oversees recruiting and training soldiers, that “the rest of your life will be spent in this war.“

And that’s the official opinion about when this will all end.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong. I support wiping out bad guys the world over. I don’t want to live in fear of terrorism, fear of traveling, fear of opening my mailbox, whatever. I don’t mind fighting for our freedoms. Just come up with a better plan, boys, than screwing up the lives of 330,000 people without their true consent simply because it’s an easy solution. And don’t risk a domestic crisis by removing National Guard soldiers from their home state and leaving that state unable to deal with a natural disaster like Hurrican Katrina.

I guess today is just a day for complaining.

Promise: I’ll take a soothing bath tonight after the kids are in bed, and the jolly Michelle will be back.

Billy: Mooooommmmm! My mouth hurts.

{He doesn’t have his third set of molars yet, and I checked inside his mouth to see if he was sprouting anything. Nope. And he kept pointing to his cheeks instead of his gums. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, and began to assume he was delaying his schoolwork.}

Me: Well, I think it’s really bad here, Bill. I’m pretty sure this condition will kill you in 80 years.

Billy: Eighty years! I’m going to die in eighty years! Ooooh, nooooo! I’m going to die….Fritz, did you hear that? I’m going to die in eighty years!!!!

I tried not to fall off my chair from laughing.

Me: Billy, do you know how old you will be in 80 years?

Billy: No…

Me: Older than Grandpa.

Billy: Which one?

Me: Both of them.

Billy: (finally laughing at the joke) Oh! Oh! I’ll be older than Grandpa! Oh! Ha ha ha.

Dying is ok, as long as you are older than old.

In contrast to the Duggars, who fall in the “Quiver-full” category, are the Shakers, who believed in celibacy, even for married members.

Of course, celibacy means no intercourse, which generally means no children either (one notable exception!). Hence, the number of Shakers in the world today is seven (down from a peak of 6,000 in the 1830s).

My point is this: if you don’t procreate, you are relying on converts to carry on your values. Chances are, your values will go the way of the Shakers.

But that’s ok, my kids will support you in your old age: they’ll pay their taxes and social security tithe; they’ll be soldiers and defend your freedom to live how you want; they’ll vote and ensure you have the freedom to say whatever you want to say (even if you fling hateful diatribes in their direction); and hopefully, they’ll have the Christian fortitude to love you despite how you feel about them.

Because that’s the way this evil Catholic mom is brainwashing them to behave.

{Note: blogger doesn’t like me today, and I can’t link to my post from yesterday about the Duggars…in case you want to know what in the world has set me off.}

Here’s Pete with no cast. What a big boy. I have to take him back in a month for another torturous session with the X-ray machine to check the healing, but so far so good.

Fritz: Mom, can I have some more chicken?

I’ve waited over 8 years to hear that.

Lemon Chicken with Thyme for dinner tonight.

Bill sent me an email asking me if I remembered the family with a bunch of kids and a website about their life…

…of course I remembered the Dugger family with 15 kids. But I couldn’t remember their names or other details, so I went to ProLife Search (which is powered by Google), and started typing in things like “family with 15 kids,” “mother of the year with 15 kids,” “one big family,” “TV show about a big family,” etc. One of my searches gave me this link, which is a thread discussing the show that aired on Discovery (?) Channel about them.

The vast bulk of the writers (one of whom nicely listed a link to the Dugger’s website, which is what I wanted, so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time being there) were incredibly, hatefully, judgmental. I just don’t get it.

I mean, why the hate? Why the leaping to conclusions about what kind of people they are? I don’t expect everybody to think this is a great thing (I personally don’t desire to have 15 children myself, but maybe I would feel differently after I had another 5 or 6!). But this family is labeled as ultra-conservative, scary, religious freaks, bad bad bad bad bad. Basically, the accusation seems to be that by the very fact that they have “irresponsibly” had so many children, they were guilty of child abuse, neglect, and the ultimate sin of failing to expose their children to real life.

Now, I don’t want to characterize all these people who used choice curse words and other impolite speech in their diatribes about the personal decisions made by one family as hypocrites, but I would like to point out that many of them salivated at the idea of exposing these overprotected rugrats to alternative lifestyles including homosexuality. Again, I just don’t get it.

I mean, please just take a brief glimpse in the mirror, folks. How can they spit venom, call them all these names, accuse them of abusing their children…and then get even more mad that these conservative, religious nuts don’t accept alternative lifestyles with open arms? Um, to each his own, as long as the Highest Power you follow is yourself? If God commands it, and you follow it, you are wrong, but if you do something because it makes you feel good, then the rest of us should happily accept your personal choices?

I’m not trying to judge the Duggards one way or the other. I know lots of people (some are fundamentalists Christians, some are Mormons and some are Catholics) who do happen to feel that having as many children as possible is God’s Will (I don’t even know if this is truly the Duggard’s position or not). I don’t happen to agree with that. Being open to life does not mean seeking pregnancy as often as possible. Most women achieve a natural infertility due to breastfeeding, and that seems to me to be part of God’s plan. I disagree, but I don’t hate the Duggards for their beliefs. I’m not threatened by their beliefs.

Is all this hatred out of fear? I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how the criticizers can also be upset with what they assume is hatred on the part of the Duggards to others not like them. It’s ok for me to hate you, but not ok for you to hate me?

Billy: Mom! I forgot about Saint Nicholas!

Me: Mmmm? (As in: where are we going with this?)

Billy: Mom! Is Saint Nicholas Santa Claus?

Me: Yup. (Seriously: where are we going with this?)

Billy: Mom! Saint Nicholas is in Heaven!

Me: Yup. (This isn’t looking too good…)

Billy: That means Santa Claus is in Heaven!

Me: Yup. (Wow, good logic there, kiddo. There are some adults who can’t manage that.)

Billy: How does he get down here with all our presents?

Me: Do you believe in miracles? (Can we talk about this in December?)

Billy: I don’t know how he does it, but he does it…

My neighbor’s son got in big trouble the other day at school.

He was running…

…at recess.

He’s a kindergartener.

Yeah, I think he’s borderline hyperactive…some Ritalin will fix that up right quick.

And then they’ll complain about childhood obesity…