I’m stopping Netflix instant play about halfway through an episode of Frontline called, “The Suicide Tourist” because the whole thing is greatly disturbing me.

It’s not the subject matter of what I’m watching, which centers on a middle aged man suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease who decides to end his life with the help of an assisted suicide group in, I believe, Switzerland.

It’s not the fact that he’s so calm about setting a date to die. It’s not even the fact that his wife doesn’t seem to care all that much (yet – as the date draws near that may change). It’s that I find myself wondering what I would do in the situation, and when I play my answer to that back in my head I don’t know that I like what I hear.

Now, I’m not going to get religiously preachy – Thor knows you hear enough of that, and if someone has a valid, sane (yes, sane) reason for wanting to let go of an unbearable life – I wouldn’t recommend it, I’d try to talk them out of it, but if they had to do it I would understand.

No, my reason for thinking that I’d want to endure the pain and humiliation of a life with ALS isn’t noble, moral, ethical or anything like that – I flat out don’t want to go. I’m the kind of person who finishes the last drip of Pepsi in the bottle, even if it’s warm and flat. I find I approach life with the same greed, even though my life is absolutely horrible. It’s still my life, you can’t have it, I’m not done playing with it yet.

Set aside that I’m an Odinist of sorts and that giving in to an easy death doesn’t win you brownie points if you’re trying to make it to The Twilight, just want the last drop of life in the bottle – even this life. I feel for the man in the story, he’s expressed the want to live and go on though he seems determined to end it all. He’s braver than me.

Posted by Faith on at 1:44 am

I’ve been caught in some kind of mad baby rush month! Helen is expecting again, and Jon and Nan are trying for another bundle of joy to add to their already sizeable family, and the girl two doors down from us just had her baby shower. I swear, I’m a minority what with my life being blissfully free of the responsibility of children (actually, I intend to chat about that in a later blog post).

It’s not that I don’t like children, I do but I don’t have room for them in my life and I doubt I would be a very good mother due to lack of finances and patience.

Besides that, Laota and I have our hands too full taking care of our grown mother and step father to worry about things like buying the right bed for the baby, hospital fees, parenting classes and baby names.

Especially hard are baby names if you lean towards very manly names for boys and very girly names for girls. In fact the gender of the child can be a big problem if you don’t know far enough in advance whether your bit of bliss is a Boy or Girl.

But, thanks to modern technology, at least that part’s solved. There’s a gender test you can take that’s apparently faster than a pregnancy test. The urine gender test works pretty much the same way as a regular pregnancy test, only a bit more controlled in it’s application. It’s a pretty good gender predictor that can tell you as early as 6 weeks into your pregnancy what gender your little baby’s going to be.

Modern technology never ceases to amaze me. Little advancements in practical science change the way we live in the most profound ways. Imagine knowing for sure that you’re going to have a baby girl 100 years ago, only 6 weeks into the pregancy?

Tagged with: Gender Predictor • Mommy • Pregnancy

Posted by Faith on at 1:30 am

I’ve been absent from my blogs for a bit, but I have a really good excuse – I’m lazy! More like my work life becomes more and more time consuming every day, or that’s how it seems at least. And then working for family’s a lot worse, because my mother thinks she can call me at 2 in the morning or 4 in the morning to give me research assignments for her radio show at 9 the same morning. Dude, let me sleep!

She absolutely does not understand that I’m a person, too. Doesn’t understand, doesn’t care to. She doesn’t even use the research I give her! Her radio show ends up sounding like gibberish, she refuses to structure it and she reads my copy during the show in bits and pieces so it doesn’t make sense. Worse, then she ad-libs things like, “Eleanor Roosevelt was the eyes, ears, legs of her husband.” or “World War II, which took place during the war era, was a war like, I mean, unlike any other war.” and “During World War II African Americans were just starting to make it into music.” – remind me to never let her write a speech for me, lol.

I’m annoyed because I had loads of good stuff for her to use, from the differences in wartime homefront households in America vs. Canada, Australia and England to ration recipes and weird but cool sayings and urban legends that come from the first and second world wars that made their way into popular consciousness. Screw it, I may just use that stuff on Sugar Push Live — if she ever lets me have enough time to sleep AND work on my own projects.

Because of her erratic what-not, I’m now (at 4:45 AM) researching something I know she won’t use the research for and I’m tired, and achy and all I want to do is sleep. I had to take two doses of headache meds to get any results at all and my brain is crushing right now. I swear to the gods, I hate that woman. It’s wrong to hate your mother, I realize, but it’s wrong-er (new word!) to lie – I think? Lol!

Tagged with: 1930s • 1940s • I hate my mother • Radio Show • Vintage Lifestyle • WWII Home Front • WWII Homefront

Posted by Faith on at 3:48 am