Friday, March 30, 2007

happy birthday jujy!


happy birthday to my sister! (juj and i turn 40 on sunday.)

can you tell which one is which???

by the way, our parents need to be severely punished for those haircuts. and for cryin' out loud, why didn't someone teach us how to sit like young ladies when riding on swings?

geesh. :)

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

that girl read my mind

i just had to post this ~ all the mommies out there will understand...

i said in this morning's post that i couldn't wait to change the sheets on my bed. (kate's sick and has been sleeping with me.)

as soon as i put up my new post, i walked in to check on kate, who was lying in my bed watching tv.

she took one look at me, said, "uh-oh", and promptly threw up all over herself, the pillow, the sheets, and the comforter. (she had just drunk some red gatorade.)

needless to say, the sheets have now been changed.

lesson for today: be careful what you wish for. :)

selective multi-tasking

kate's home sick. i'm pretty sure it's the flu (we are heading to the doctor's in a couple of hours for confirmation). i am staying home with her today, which is a very good thing. as her mommy, i believe that no one can take care of her the way i can. this includes her daddy.

leo stayed home with kate yesterday. and i love him for being such a hands-on daddy. he really is a wonderful father. (he's also a wonderful person; he's just very selective about who he lets in on this fact.) he has no problem staying home from work to help with the kids. but in actuality...he didn't stay home from work.

he worked. at home. on business stuff. nothing else. never mind that it looked like my house had imploded. he was even still up at midnight, reading. business stuff.

arggghhhhh.....

now this is gonna sound like i'm tooting my own horn, but i gotta tell ya, it's only 9:15 am and i've gotten a ton of stuff done this morning already. three loads of laundry have been taken care of, the kitchen and laundry room floors have been swept and mopped, dishwasher unloaded and reloaded, beds made (except for mine, which kate is lying in...i can't wait to change those sheets!), and i could go on. and i've done all this while going in to kiss kate every three minutes or so and tell her how much i love her.

she's already tired of me. i'm walking in to check on her now, and she's rolling her eyes and going, "i know, i know. you LOVE me."

indeed, i do.

Friday, March 23, 2007

i just ordered this dvd...

and i can't wait to get it.



one of the homeless people interviewed during father mychal's funeral was quoted as saying: "that priest didn't stay in the sanctuary. he brought the sanctuary out here to us."

that quote reminds me of a t-shirt that i think marty was wearing one time...on the front it said "don't go to church", on the back it said "be the church".

i need to do a better job of that.

Monday, March 19, 2007

saw this on another jodi's blog...

and thought that any one of you, my friends, might concur:

Jodi is the best person ever. With Jodi in your life, your hair will apear thicker and more lustrous. Jodi can get you a mortgage for only 6% and no points on closing! I'm friends with Jodi and my life's never been better. You should be her friend too. Thanks Jodi!

hee hee hee hee...

y'all feel free to add any other talents you think i might possess!

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Friday, March 16, 2007

how do you fix a gay baby?

oh my.

every friday in history class, our 8th grade students are required to look at articles in the newspaper and write a brief description of what they've read. it keeps them current with events in the world and hopefully helps to inspire a life-long desire to read. most of the kids love this activity...no big deal...they read the sports sections or find out what's on at the movies...

so imagine my surprise, when today, a 14-year old teenage girl raised her hand and asked me, point-blank:

"mrs. gillen, how do you fix a gay baby?"

"excuse me? could you repeat that?"

oh my. you've GOT to be kidding me.

the girl came to my desk and showed me the article in the columbus dispatch. have you read this one yet? unbelievable. i mean, come on. SERIOUSLY.

in short, the rev. r. albert mohler, president of the southern baptist theological seminary, said he would "endorse prenatal hormonal treatment — if such a technology were developed — to reverse homosexuality. he said this would be no different, in moral terms, from using technology that would restore vision to a blind fetus."

he then went on to state that "we should have no more problem with that [treating homosexuality] than treating any other medical problem."

i honestly don't know what to say about this article ~ it disturbs me in so many ways.

i happen to be one of "those people" who believes that a homosexual person can be a christian and absolutely be assured of their place in heaven. i didn't alway think like this. it was much easier to say gay = evil = doomed to hell. as i've previously stated, i used to be "into" labels. they are cheap, and thoughtless, and don't take into account the whole person. and they involve judgement. but, honestly, who am i to judge?

i know what the Bible says about homosexuality, but i also know what it says about love. real love. jesus's kind of love. agape love, as my friend jen reminds us .

we are Christ's beloved. all of us.

in psalm 139 david says that: "you [God] created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

enough said.

post script:

by the way...

if you have never read about
father mychal judge, the fdny fire chaplain who died on 9/11, please take some time to do so. he was an amazing man who exemplified Christ's perfect compassion and lived his life accordingly ~ a saint indeed. he was also a homosexual and a recovering alcoholic.

i hate copyright law

you tube has just pulled all of the bob ross joy of painting episodes due to copyright infringement.

gosh darn it, anyways.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

a "ho-ho" 'ho no mo'

i'm truly bummed. i don't think i will ever be able to eat another "ho-ho" again.

when i was young ~ and heck, even when i was in the early years of my teaching ~ i felt that either a hostess ho-ho or a chocolate hostess cupcake was a necessity when brown-bagging it. and i mean a necessity. buying these sweets with my own money was proof of my adult-hood. forget about buying alcohol when i turned 21 ~ "heck yeah, i can buy a box of ho-ho's whenever i want...does life get any better than this?"

eventually i expanded my dietary horizon to include little debbie products, specifically the swiss cake rolls (ho-ho wannabes) and fudge brownies. yummy. i mean, really. yummy. or so i thought...

a few days ago, i read this article in newsweek: "decoding the 39 ingredients in a twinkie".

egads. gross. barf.

i've been ruined.

now, first of all i must state that i never liked twinkies. no chocolate in a twinkie = no interest from me. but now i know that the industrial strength chemicals in a twinkie are also in my beloved ho-ho's.

i.e. ho-ho's aren't even real food. they're a manufactured pseudo-confection that contains ingredients that are used as weed killers, postage stamp glue, and disinfectants. oh no.

so now, when i go to the store, and the hostess items beckon me, i have no problem dissing them.

i read another article which stated that if you are craving something sweet, make it at home, from scratch. it may not be entirely healthy...but it will be healthier than the preservative-infested goo that is on the shelves at the market. makes sense. i guess.

hmmm...

i have a bag of chocolate chips in my cupboard that are just dying to be mixed with ingredients such as flour and sugar and eggs and vanilla...who needs that sodium stearoyl lactylate anyways?

Thursday, March 8, 2007

just a little thing

i love margie ~ our school's art teacher.

yesterday at lunch i mentioned how much i loved the cherry-lime flavor packets that are added to water, have zero calories, and contain aspartame. (i throw in the aspartame comment because i forgot where i parked my car twice last saturday, and i'm blaming my aspartame intake for that!!!). if you have not tried the cherry-lime flavor, you're missing out. they taste exactly like cherry mr. mistys (i'm channeling 1970s at the dairy queen here).

so anyways, yesterday i was lamenting the fact that i couldn't find any of the cherry-lime packets at wal-mart. and low and behold, i walked into my classroom this morning and there they were...four boxes of them! i knew right away it was margie ~ she's remembers the little things.

after all, it's the little things in life...right? they're what make life worth living.

small things done with great love do change the world.

Monday, March 5, 2007

throw some songs at me!

okay, i am now into my third week of officially working out. it's a jesus thing...don't ya know?

leo (my devoted and humble Catholic hubby) and i were trying to decide what to sacrifice for lent. last year, leo gave up tv. it was amazing. right in the middle of ncaa march madness...of course catching up on footage and scores on his laptop didn't count as watching tv, but i digress...

so this year, we decided to give up being lazy. i.e. start moving more. after all "slothfulness" is one of the official seven deadly sins, certain to toss your rear end into purgatory at least for a little while. so we joined the Y and the whole family is now becoming more healthy.

i've also been downloading songs like crazy onto my mp3 player so i can exercise to them. trouble is, i tend to get tired of the same songs over and over again. does that ever happen to you? you absolutely adore a song, then download it, play it to death, and it loses its zing?

i hate when that happens.

so, my dear friends, and whoever else reads this blog, i need some good workout music. something peppy ~ i don't care what decade it's from. give me your suggestions and i will "yea" or "nay" them.

just don't recommend "eye of the tiger" or some inspirational crap like that. :)

thanks guys!