Hank Dagny (nice name) finds an appalling article called "Is 'early' retirement ... well, unpatriotic?"

When I hear my fellow baby boomers gleefully talk about their plans to retire ASAP, head for the Tuscan hills or otherwise continue their lifelong quest for "self-actualization," I have to bite my tongue.

It's not that I'm all work and no play. But there's just something -- lots of things -- wrong, in general, with retiring at 55, 62 or even 65. I would go so far as to call it profoundly selfish and unpatriotic.

For individuals, working longer can mean more income and savings and something to bequeath to one's children. For the nation, if millions of us worked until 67 instead of 62, Americans' wealth and consumption would increase appreciably, fueling stronger economic growth.

That added income would provide about $800 billion in additional tax revenue and reduce government benefit costs by at least $100 billion in 2045, according to Urban Institute calculations. This alone would cut the projected deficit in 2045 by 159 percent.

Well then, call us unpatriotic, because my husband's goal is to retire from the Army at 42 and be retired. Done. Finito. I don't know if that will stick because he might get bored being at home, but at the rate he's planning now, he will have the option of making it so.

And I dare some communist to say that what he's doing is "unpatriotic." He doesn't have to keep working an additional 25 years so he can fund social welfare programs. It's his responsibility to provide for himself and his family, nothing more. And as much as we've scrimped and saved and done without for the past six years so that we have the financial flexibility to do whatever he wants when he retires, I'll be damned if someone says that he has to work longer to help out deadbeats who didn't scrimp and save and do without.

Yes, we're selfish. I daresay the US would be a better place if everyone were a little more selfish, taking care of their own needs and doing what needs to be done to maximize profits and reach their goals. The Invisible freaking Hand.

Blood. Boiling. Calm. Down.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:55 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Neal Boortz was talking about the lottery earlier today as I drove home from the commissary, and I couldn't believe my ears. He said he had read a study a while back that said that 50% of respondants said they planned to use lottery winnings to retire. I've been searching and cannot find this study, but I did find this:

Twenty-one percent of those surveyed said a lottery would be the most practical strategy for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars, and that percentage was higher among lower-income people, with 38% of those who earn less than $25,000 pointing to the lottery as a solution.

Some Americans "both greatly overestimate their chances of hitting a lottery jackpot, and greatly underestimate their ability to build six-figure wealth by patiently making regular savings contributions over time," said Stephen Brobeck, executive director of CFA, in a telephone press conference.

Knock me over with a feather.

This ties in nicely with a blog post AirForceWife sent to me yesterday. FrugalDad wrote a blog post called Language of the Perpetual Poor, which contained this gem:

If you are ever around a gas station on Friday night you see them lined up at the counter forking over $20 of their hard-earned paycheck for their chance at financial glory. And just try telling them that $20 a week in a mutual fund averaging 8% growth for 30 years adds up to $130,000. Who can afford to invest in mutual funds?

So there you go, there's your six figures. Shoot, you'd be better off putting the money in a coffee can, as one commenter said she started doing instead of going on on the office pool.

In searching for these shocking lottery statistics, I also came across this anecdote to put it all in perspective:

"'Suppose you have one friend in Canada. If you put the names of everyone in Canada in a hat and draw one name at random, you are 2.5 times more likely to draw your friend's name than you are to win the Big Game,' according to Cal State-Hayward statistics professor Michael Orkin."

Heh.

A big problem is that people are so mathematically ignorant that they don't even understand these odds. Here's how bad it is:

The study also identified a strong relation between financial literacy and retirement planning. Persons who understood finances more were more likely to take charge and plan for their retirement. Financial literacy was judged on the basis of being able to answer simple financial questions including:

“If the chances of getting a disease are 10 per cent, how many people out of 1,000 would be expected to get the disease?” Answer: 100. (Percentage of people answering correctly: 84.)

“If 5 people all have the winning number in the lottery and the prize is $2 million, how much will each of them get?” Answer: $400,000. (Percentage of people answering correctly: 56.)

“Let’s say you have $200 in a savings account paying 10% per year interest. How much would you have in the account at the end of two years?” Answer: $242. (Percentage of people answering correctly: 18.)

This is just basic stuff, people. Yikes.

There are only two tricks to investing for long-term financial success: early and often. The lottery doesn't enter into it.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:03 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Just this morning, I was thinking about that mom who got arrested for leaving her child in the car while she put money in the Salvation Army bin. I watched a mom strap her kid into the car at Walmart, take her groceries out of her cart, and then leave the cart right in the middle of the parking lot instead of pushing it to one of the cart corrals. I hate when people do this! But I got to thinking, would she get in trouble for leaving her child unattended as she put her cart away? That's the same distance as it was to the Salvation Army bin.

I seriously thought about this all day, about moms who don't stray from child's side. I thought a lot about my own childhood, and about CaliValleyGirl's (she should regale you with tales of her childhood independence), and about leaving a child alone in the car for a few moments.

So I was fascinated to find this article this evening:

Would you let your fourth-grader ride public transportation without an adult? Probably not. Still, when Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote about letting her son take the subway alone to get back to her Manhattan home from a department store on the Upper East Side, she didn't expect to get hit with a tsunami of criticism from readers.

"Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence," Skenazy wrote on April 4 in the New York Sun. "Long story longer: Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating—for us and for them."

I honestly think it's cool that she let her kid ride the subway. I was only a little older than he when I rode my bike to school, an event which I immortalized when I previously wrote about letting kids have freedom:

On my last day of fifth grade, my mom let me ride my bike to school. Some of my friends who lived closer to the school got to ride their bikes often, but we lived in a neighborhood that was further away and so I was a bus-riding kid. (Oh, and every day my brother and I walked down the street to the bus stop and waited alone.) But finally my mom said I was old enough to earn the right to ride my bike to school. I just google mapped it, and it seems I rode roughly two miles. And I felt SO COOL. I was one of the big kids now. I was independent. I had Done Something Awesome. And without a helmet.

My mom and I talked about that not too long ago. She says looking back she can't believe all the parents let their kids ride bikes to school. And she's not sure she'd let me do it today. Even she has a hard time remembering when cartoon characters didn't need helmets.

I needed to ride that bike to school. Heck, I still remember it. As a crowning achievement, as a milestone, as a step on the way to Growing Up. The thing that scares me is wondering if I will be able to let my kids take those steps too.

The Newsweek article says this:

Back in 1972, when many of today's parents were kids, 87 percent of children who lived within a mile of school walked or biked every day. But today, the Centers for Disease Control report that only 13 percent of children bike, walk or otherwise get themselves to school.

My husband is pretty adamant that we won't be driving our kid to his bus stop. And likely we won't have to; the local bus stop seems to stop every 100 feet to let a new kid out right in front of his house. We want to have a relaxed and groovy approach to parenting. (Ha, the last thing Sarah is is relaxed and groovy.)

Of course, these feelings are all theoretical. I want to be a cool, independence-fostering mom. But I've also been plagued by hovering thoughts.

I know a couple, they tried for eight years to have their daughter. She was born dangerously premature, and she ended up being their only child. She's now 30, and when I think about how hard it was for them to have this child, I wonder how they ever let her leave the house. How did they let her ride a bike or start driving or go to college? How did they ever let her out of their sight? She was irreplaceable. Literally.

Since having a baby has proven so hard, I can imagine it will be even harder to let my kid become independent. I will have to really work at not smothering the kid.

I will have to remind myself how I felt when I rode that bike to school. My kid needs to feel that too.

UPDATE:

Oh good heavens: I Left My Son in San Francisco.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:29 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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John Stossel echoes a point I was trying to make via email to Sis B:

Politicians love a "crisis." John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who are paying their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further.

Why?

Because "crisis" justifies making government bigger.

It's why we now have a global warming "crisis" and in previous years we had "crises" over avian flu, the Y2K threat to computers, imaginary cancer spikes caused by pesticides, killer bees flying up from Mexico, and uncontrolled population growth leading to a "Population Bomb" that will bring "riots and mass starvation" by the year 2000.

In my email, I mentioned the HBO series John Adams and remarked how deeply it struck me when John Adams told Congress that it wasn't his place to give his opinion when they were deadlocked. Imagine any politician today saying it's not his place to give his opinion! Nowadays, politicans tie millions of dollars to their opinions and give both out freely. And imagine telling our early presidents that they need to help people pay for their homes or stop the spread of disease. No way that was the government's job back then. But it sure is now. Hurricane hit your city? Free trailers for everyone. And here's a voucher to go buy a new Gucci purse.

The term "predatory lending" just gets my goat. Forced lending? Ha. You can't make someone borrow money from you. If you make $30,000 a year and bought a $400,000 house, it's no one's fault but your own. I wish John Adams could be here today to stare incredulously at those people's faces and tell them to get real.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:48 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Once again, I have the perfect set-up to rave about my husband. The internet makes it too easy, I swear.

John Hawkins found the most horrific article about why men don't do housework. Now there's room for complaining about my husband and his violent toothbrushing (the man brushes his teeth so hard that he sprays everywhere, showering the bathroom in white spots), which I have been known to gripe about on the phone with certain valley girls from Cali. But this article, it's just too much.

And yet everyone acts as if Jeremy deserves some kind of medal just for making a run to the supermarket. No one has ever suggested that I’m a heroine for doing the things every mother is expected to do. I admit that my husband helps out more than many men, but here’s another news flash: It isn’t because he’s such a fabulously enlightened being. Left to his own devices, he would doubtless park himself in front of the TV like some sitcom male-chauvinist couch potato while I did all the work. The reason Jeremy “helps” as much as he does (an offensive terminology that itself suggests who’s really being held responsible) is simple: He doesn’t have a choice.

Wow.

OK, I'll say it. My husband does deserve a medal for helping me around the house. I do most of the housework, and I'm darned lazy at it. Right now I am blogging in the middle of the day with election coverage on the TV, and I just set down my crochet project to pick up the laptop. La-zy. I did do several loads of laundry earlier, cleaned out my husband's dresser drawers, took out the trash, weeded the front flowerbeds, and unloaded and loaded the dishwasher. But really, I still had time to watch two Laws & Orders, make a preemie hat, talk on the phone with Erin, my mom, and my mother-in-law, and eat several pieces of candy on the sofa. The fact that my husband helps make dinner, change the sheets, and load the dishwasher is indeed a sign of his sainthood. Because he woke up at 0430 this morning to spend more than 12 hours at work and then will come home to study for an economics final.

I'm the one who would doubtless park myself on the sofa all day, watching cop dramas and knitting to my heart's content. I clean up the house because I don't have a choice. It's my job since I don't have a job. And once he deploys, I won't have anyone around to shame me into doing housework. The house will probably be a disaster. Charlie sure ain't gonna pull his weight.

I'm lucky my husband puts up with piles of yarn, laundry, and dirty dishes at all. He could easily chew my butt for not working harder around the house while he's at work all week and getting his MBA on the weekends. But he doesn't care, as long as food's on the table and his socks are clean. And he'd have every right to ask me to do more. The oven needs cleaning, as do the windowsills.

I am the one who counts my blessings around here.

My husband is a dream.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:16 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 Lazy housewomen (I'm not a wife) of the world, unite!

Posted by: Anwyn at April 21, 2008 01:32 PM (dzxw9)

2 See...the funny thing is, if this woman changed the oil in their car, she would believe she deserved a medal and accolades too. However, she doesn't seem to think that Jeremy deserves any props for doing his chores...it's like she acts like he doesn't do ANYTHING in their relationship. I mean, does he maybe pack the car, when they go on a roadtrip? Book their travel plans? Hook up their new DVD player? Figure out the digital sprinkling system? I mean, there have got to be loads of things the guy is doing that she is too blind to see, because she "takes them for granted", just as he might be doing with her housekeeping...

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at April 21, 2008 02:15 PM (U2RJu)

3 I've never wanted to have a wife who did not have her own career. I've always wanted to be in a marriage where we would each juggle our jobs, housework, the kids, everything. That being said, if one of the partners is not currently employed, then the other partner has every right to expect the vast majority of the housework to be done by that unemployed person. She may be right. She may contribute more to the relationship than her husband. However, it seems unlikely to me that if he works and she doesn't, and if he contributes (whether through intimidation or through generosity) around the house, that the disparity is so great to be worthy of a newspaper column telling the world how bad her husband is. It sounds to me that they need to get some counseling to get an outside perspective.

Posted by: Rob Howell at April 21, 2008 06:19 PM (eRTMi)

4 I am the housekeeper by default, too, for the same reason--I happen to be here. My frequent bouts with domestic laziness never gets comments either, like you, and also promotes the hubby to rock star status. Lucky for me, he has an immense amount of patience. The DH has his chores and I thank him every time he does them, just so he knows that I notice and appreciate that he does it in addition to working, taking online college courses, and now coaching little league. Rock stars, I tell you!

Posted by: Ann M. at April 22, 2008 11:07 AM (HFUBt)

5 As usual, the Bible has something to say here: "...for no man ever hated his own flesh." If my wife is doing nothing but chores all day and I don't lift a finger to help even though it's not my responsibility and my work/chores are done, then I know better than to go fondle her breasts and grab her rear and expect her to hop in the sack with me when she's finished (cuz women are so turned on by that, anyways). But if I go out of my way to regularly help, she knows it's not something I have to do but I do it because I value her as a wife and not as a maid. And quite often it means I get fondled while helping out. And being a man that IS a turn on. So I enjoy helping with 'her' chores for intrinsic as well as selfish reasons. And the end result is a happier and cleaner household.

Posted by: Lame-R at April 22, 2008 12:03 PM (nt98J)

6 I'm in agreement that she didn't go about this in the right way. I do, however, sense some exhaustion and frustration in her voice that I've felt myself from time to time. In my lifetime so far, I've been a stay-at-home mom who did 99.8% of everything around the house, even when my husband was home. And, just this week, I finished three years of law school in two years with two kids, a couple of dogs and a household as well. It is not fun to try and pull something like that off for the betterment of your family's bottom line only to realize you still have ALL your household responsibilities whether hubby's on vacation from work or what not. It's even harder after that same husband was deployed for a year and you singlehandedly kept a full-time job, ran the house, etc. and the kids were much younger. I know it isn't a peeing contest or that someone should be keeping score, but there has to be a balance of some kind agreeable to both or that frustration can turn to resentment and rot a marriage from the inside out.

Posted by: Guard Wife at April 23, 2008 05:26 AM (BslEQ)

7 I think the problem is Leslie Bennetts attitude and emasculation of her husband, rather than her irritation that he is not chipping in enough. Every family dynamic is different, and she may be run ragged by her job and kids and housework. She also lives in midtown Manhatten and has more than enough money to hire a maid two or three times a week. So she's also not the best example to set forth of a woman who is oppressed by her husband's lack of cleanliness, she's just the bitchiest example.

Posted by: airforcewife at April 23, 2008 10:02 AM (mIbWn)

8 I suddenly feel the need to give my husband a big hug when he walks through the door at whatever time today. (Rotation began this week) We both work long hours - yet mine are spent at home in front of a computer and his are spent training soldiers and defending our country. Somehow, he still comes home and sweeps, mops or does a load of laundry all without a harsh word, complaint or even a mumble. He doesn't do it because he has to, but because he wants to. We take pride in what we have and since WE earned it WE both take responsibility for keeping IT clean.

Posted by: Vonn at April 24, 2008 07:29 AM (gNLi0)

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I don't understand stuff like this at all.

Officials with Marriott International have agreed to meet with pro-family leaders to discuss the hotel giant's policy of selling in-room pornographic movies to consumers at some of its properties.
...
The letter stressed that pulling the plug on pornography would be in keeping with Marriott's public statement of "promoting the well-being of children and families."

What a bunch of meddling busybodies. If a businessman alone in his hotel room wants to pay outrageous sums of money to watch a dirty movie, why is it anybody else's business?

I mean, don't get me wrong, buying those movies at a hotel is dumb. They're expensive! Shoot, all in-room movies are expensive. Last week the Red Roof Inn wanted to charge us $5.95 to watch an episode of Dexter. Uh, no. But people have the right to spend their money however stupidly they choose. And if they want to spend it on certain types of movies, that's their business.

I just don't get how offering these movies, for a fee, harms children and families who stay in the hotel. This is like the easiest way to prevent your kid from watching dirty movies. If you share a room, there's no way the kid will see it. If the kids have their own room, you'll know about it immediately the next morning when you settle your bill. That's easier control over your kids than you have at home, where any kid at school can hand your precious baby a DVD to take home and hide.

And they're the easiest thing in the world to avoid. Don't want to watch them? Don't buy them! What a novel idea. Just skip that selection on the menu. It's not like the dirty movies are on every channel for free. That will only happen when you take your kids to Europe on vacation.

This kind of stuff drives me nuts. If you don't like sex/violence/nudity/Nip Tuck on TV, don't watch. Change the channel. But seriously, don't try to pressure advertisers and hotel chains to make it so no one can watch. That's manipulative and pathetic.

Incidentally, one time when I was in like high school or something, my family was at a hotel and tried to order an in-room movie. We hit the button, and the movie started, but something wasn't right: it was grainy, and the music was...funny. And then the name of the movie showed up, and gosh I wish I could remember what it was. Something erotic. Obviously the wrong movie had shown up on the screen. So my mom calls the front desk, but she's left the movie playing while she's dialing. My dad was like, "Uh, I think you might want to stop this from playing," while my younger brothers are shushing him and staring intently at the screen. Ha.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:19 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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My husband is on block leave right now, using his vacation days before he deploys. Three guesses as to where he is right now. Yep, he's at work, just like he was yesterday and just like he will be tomorrow. But in civilian clothes, cuz he's on vacation. Whoopity doo. Then he gets to come home, take an economics final, and work on a group project.

You know your life is particularly stressful when the pep talk you give is, "The next few weeks are going to be insane, but you just have to make it through them. And then you leave." When deployment is the light at the end of the tunnel, you have too much on your plate.

Poor husband.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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We had our mail held while we were on leave, and it just got delivered today. Some interesting pieces in there. First of all, via the university my husband is about to graduate from, there's a letter urging him to consider joining the Army. Heh.

Secondly, our 2008 Census Dress Rehearsal. Wanna know the choices for race?

• Mexican, Mexican Am, Chicano
  
• Puerto Rican
  
• Cuban
  
• Other Hispanic, write in Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard
  
• American Indian or Alaska Native (print name of tribe)
  
• Asian Indian
  
• Chinese
  
• Filipino
  
• Japanese
  
• Korean
  
• Vietnamese
  
• Native Hawaiian
  
• Guamanian or Chamorro
  
• Samoan
  
• Other Pacific Islander, write in Fijian or Tongan
  
• Other Asian, write in Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian
  

Oh yeah, and White or Black.

Christ on a cracker, where to begin? These are not races; these are national identities! We're really going to let Asians self-identify as Japanese, Korean, or Laotian but white Europeans can go f themselves? Oh, and remember, Arabs are considered "white." So we'll lump Swedes, Sicilians, Bulgarians, and Arabs all together, but heaven forbid we don't know whether you're Fijian or Tongan living in the US.

This makes me so mad I can't even see straight.

Who cares about any of this? You know what prevents us from moving from the color of one's skin to the content of his character? This bullcrap. I have the audacity of hope that one day we won't have to check stupid effing boxes like this, that one day we'll just all be called Americans.

Is that too much to ask? Really? Because otherwise I want a write-in tally for German-Irish-English-Native-American-American.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:32 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 I thought the same thing when I got the census today. Where's the "other" category?

Posted by: Green at April 15, 2008 05:12 PM (6Co0L)

2 So now you're on Rachel Lucas' blogroll. Congratulations!

Posted by: Oda Mae at April 16, 2008 01:54 AM (6zvrq)

3 This has bothered me FOREVER... I remember having a discussion with a Frenchman (he was not carrying a white flag.) Explaining am German, English, French, Lakota... DH is Austrian, Irish, German, Scottish.... the Collective...the mind boggles... The Frenchman thought it was disgusting...

Posted by: AWTM at April 16, 2008 04:49 AM (xa7ES)

4 I am (where to begin!) from my genealogy work: Swiss, German, Dutch, Belgium, More German, More Swiss, Spanish, Brazilian (Dutch East Indies era ), French Hugenot, English, Scotch Irish, Scottish, Irish, more German, Mexican or Spanish, more German, Irish, etc and so on and so on. I'm sure I've left some out. It is ridiculous, Heinz 57 as they used to say. Do you know how many ancestors there are when you really do them? My ancestors were here in 1648 and 1748 and 1848 when I can trace them to the shores. What do I check? I, too am looking for strictly American, or other.

Posted by: Ruth H at April 16, 2008 06:45 AM (FAgoX)

5 Out of four grandparents, two were directly off the boat from Europe. The other two were first generation Americans. They were all extremely proud of not just their heritage but the fact that they made themselves part of this country's culture. They'd be insulted that I don't get to check the "American" box, or not having one of those, the "European American" box.

Posted by: Ann M. at April 16, 2008 07:10 AM (HFUBt)

6 When I joined the British army in 1940, I was interviewed by a sergeant who, while taking down all the relevant particulars, asked, "What is your race?" Well, nowadays, I would say "white" or "Caucasian," but at the time, that wouldn't have occurred to me. In England, we never spoke about race. I knew what the Germans meant by it, however. So I asked the sergeant whether I should put "Jewish" in that category. "Nah," he dismissed. "That's your religion, and we've already got that on another line." At that point, I was completely mystified. "What, then," I asked, "am I supposed to put?" "As far as the British army is concerned," he replied, "there are four races: English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. You are clearly English." So, I went to war with documents that said that I was British by nationality, English by race and Jewish by religion. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204546415778&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at April 16, 2008 09:48 AM (SEEcB)

7 I guess I'd really be screwed. I know I am an American and will gladly check that box, when if ever offered, but for now what do I do? Black AMERICAN father - German National mother - born on German soil in German hospital. Gone are the days of check what you look like. PC crap! Where is Archie Bunker when you need him?

Posted by: Vonn at April 24, 2008 07:05 AM (gNLi0)

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Today is tax day, the craptastic-est day of the year. Well, OK, it wasn't tax day for us; we filed months ago because we were owed a ton of money that the gov withheld from my husband's retention bonus.

Anyway, today is the day for Boortz to shine. Read here.

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My husband deploys in about a month and I haven't given it any thought at all. In fact, it just now kind of hit me. We've been so wrapped up in trying to have a baby that we haven't had time to think about any other emotions. We haven't even talked about his leaving.

And all of a sudden, I am sad. I am really going to miss him while he's gone.

I went and read the things I missed about him last time he was gone. Ha, they're all still true. Mostly this time, I will miss his company. Last time, I had many good friends whose husbands were deployed with mine, but now...well, I don't have any friends here in town. All of my friends are internet-based, and when the husband won't be coming home at the end of the day, I fear time is going to drag.

But anyway, enough about that. My husband is signing out on block leave today, so tomorrow we're headed across the country to visit his parents before he deploys. And while everything is up to date in most of the city, they haven't gone as fer as they can go at his parents' house. My in-laws don't have internet access, so I will be taking a week off of blogging. Don't have too much fun without me...

Posted by: Sarah at 09:32 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Have fun! We'll all miss you

Posted by: Ann M. at April 05, 2008 07:08 AM (HFUBt)

2 I am thinking that I may need to come see you once your husband deploys so you can teach me to knit, I can take Charlie for walks, and we can work our way through some of your awesome cookbook collection. We could make some meals to put in your freezer for later, if nothing else. But, I SERIOUSLY need to learn to knit. Or, you could come here & teach me AND GBear to knit as we live so close. LOL Have fun @ the in-laws!!

Posted by: Guard Wife at April 05, 2008 09:24 AM (BslEQ)

3 Have a great time and a safe trip!

Posted by: Butterfly Wife at April 05, 2008 09:43 AM (K0acE)

4 Hey! I'm here in town too! We just have to drag our friendship off the internet for lunch or something when you get back. You can teach me how to knit

Posted by: Green at April 05, 2008 11:44 AM (6Co0L)

5 It's funny how our love and desire grows so strong for our spouses with each deployment. Civilians will never understand the strength and committment that develops. Look forward to his return and making your bond that much stronger.

Posted by: Vonn at April 15, 2008 07:00 AM (5ZDPj)

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I considered writing about Obama and his "I donÂ’t want them punished with a baby" comment. Then I considered not writing about it because I am weary of thinking about other people having unwanted babies. But I will just say a couple of things.

As much as I want a baby now, that's how much I did not want a baby previously. I can't say that I would've used the word "punished," but I would not have been happy if I had gotten pregnant before I was ready. Not happy.

Right before my husband left for Iraq the last time, he was out on a training exercise for a month. During that time, my grandmother died. I was stressed with his upcoming deployment and being half a world away while my mother was losing her only living parent. And I was ten days late for my period. Even though my husband was in the field and there was no possible way I could've been pregnant, I was freaked out. I did not want a baby. I had been married for a year and a half, we had the same good relationship that we have now, and yet I did not want to have a baby yet. Not at all. I know we would've gone on to be OK with it and been a great family, but still I'm glad I wasn't pregnant back then. Even knowing what I know now -- how hard it's been to start a family -- I still can't honestly say I would've wanted it to happen four years ago.

Much less before I was married. No freaking way.

So that's my thoughts on that. I don't think "punished" was the right word to use, but I completely understand Obama's idea that a baby isn't always a blessed miracle. And while today it is really hard for me to think about all the unwanted babies in the world when we want one so badly, I still can't say I think it's appropriate to saddle young girls with a baby they don't want. Having to have a baby you don't want is the flip side of the coin to not being able to have a baby you desperately want. I wish no one ever had to live through either scenario.

Rachel Lucas has more thoughts on the matter: Reality always trumps idealism.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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