It's all about product placement!!!

Dear Dillons Supermarket Manager,

The other day while on my weekly grocery shopping expedition, I noticed something in your store that I found a bit disturbing. It has to do with product placement. Are you aware that you stock your pregnancy tests on the bottom row of the same section as you stock your many forms of contraception? Not only that, the top few rows are filled with lubricants, followed quickly by contraception.. and then at the very bottom the pregnancy and ovulation tests.

Hmm.

The placement of these products made me wonder... Why don't you place pregnancy tests in the baby aisle? Or even the feminine products aisle? In fact... I'd be satisfied if you would place them in almost ANY OTHER AISLE besides the directly below the contraceptives.

Perhaps you think the placement of this product makes no difference. But I assure you it does. Your display seems to say "Hey... here's all the things that make sex more fun... followed by all the things that make safe 'safer' (or at least less productive)... and lastly, if those things screwed up, we also have some pregnancy tests for verification of results of your sexual encounter." Not a very life-affirming display, huh?

Why not give your consumers a happier trip to get a pregnancy test by placing them next to the sweet little baby bottles... or bibs... or toys? Why not remind your consumers of the great things a baby brings... like joy and giggles and smiles that melt your heart? Instead you seem to be reminding us that we could have prevented the little creature all together if we had just used those products located directly above the tests.

Perhaps these are not ideas you had ever thought about. But from a young mother of one who happens to be a big customer of yours, I ask that you please consider changing the location of your pregnancy tests. What joy you can bring to your customers with just a little switch of product placement! After all... that's what marketing is all about.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Consumer

Let that be a lesson to me...

So about 3 days ago Mia discovered that she had a little golden book bout how God is bigger than the boogie man. And it happens to feature her favorite VeggieTales characters.

Well... ever since her discovery she will sort the book out of the 25 or 30 books she has, and with much trepidation (as the book is a bit bigger than things she's used to carrying) she will crawl over to me or her daddy and cry until we read it... and I mean CRY.

I'm getting really sick of this book... and at the same time I'm pretty excited about my daughter's joy for reading!

Mia turns 1!!!

Here's a little clip of what fun we had yesterday! My baby girl is already a year old... that's crazy.

By the time we started taking video, Mia had already flipped the cupcake upside down and began picking at it. But she makes at least one great face during the video...

fur meinen leibe

Andrew sprecht gern deutsch. Er ist lustig. Heute bringt er ein buch auf deutsch fur Mia von bibliothek. Es ist das ende weil es schwer zu schreiben deutsch ist.

Gracias.

**Disclaimer** My husband helped me write this and I DO NOT KNOW GERMAN... so if it butchered, I apologize to any german-speakers who may be offended. :)

PS I tried to write the same thing in Spanish and found that I had forgotten most of what I've learned. So much for 2 semesters of college Spanish!!!

Thanks be to God.

Hey kiddos!

I'm back and I'm feeling SO MUCH BETTER. The retreat this weekend was just exactly what I needed. It was fabulous to have a little time to get back on track with my spiritual life and to just try to figure out why I've been so out of sorts lately.

Here was my "ah ha" moment of the weekend:

[begin"ah ha" moment]
"I realized that three years ago, I was living in a super awesome Christ-filled house, with some super awesome Christ-filled roommates, and tons of super awesome Christ-filled friends and nothing really to fret about other than my rather awful job and the fact that I was busy with ministry stuff all the time (like chaperoning the M4L, or volunteering for Sojourn, or being on the YAM board, or travelling to the National Catholic Singles Conference). But notice what all of those things have in common... they are things I CHOSE to be involved with... and they are also things that I could STOP being involved with. On top of all that I was going to daily Mass (or mostly daily at least), and adoration, and praying with my roommies, and we had weekly rosary night... and had just all sorts of opportunities for spiritual growth not to mention the large amount of evangelization-type discussions that I had with my coworkers at the time.

Then came February 28th, 2005 when I went on my first date with Andrew. Slowly but surely life with a boyfriend starting making those other things look not as important. Then I got a less-awful job but I was working 50 hours a week which lent even LESS time to the spiritual stuff. Then Andrew and I were engaged in July 2005... so wedding planning took precedence over other stuff... then came the wedding... and suddenly we were pregnant... and POOF there was Mia... and new parenthood... and moving... and phew... it tires me just thinking about it."
[end "ah ha moment"]

Well needless to say... where I was spiritually 3 years ago is soooooo very far from where I am spiritually now. And it took this weekend for me to have enough time to stop and really figure out why. And it was kind of a "DUH" thing when I realized that my life is 180 degrees different than it was back then. My obligations now, though they are still choices I have made, are no longer optional. I AM A WIFE. I AM A MOTHER. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR PEOPLE OTHER THAN MYSELF. AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PRAY WHILST BEING ALL OF THOSE THINGS.

But after 5 conferences, lots of prayer, some silliness and a good heart-to-heart chat with our retreat leader Fr. Shane Tharp, the coolest young adult priest in all of the OKC diocese, I finally feel like I have a direction to move in order to regain that relationship I once had with God. And it's such a huge weight off my shoulders because I am already seeing the fruits of having that prayer life back just a little. I sooooo missed the joy that comes with spending time with Him and now it's welling up inside again. Thanks be to God.

And thanks also too all of you who had such kind words after my last post. It's good to know I'm not alone... and it's great to know that still I have friends even though life is SO different now.

Fill 'er up!

Remember back in the dizzay when you (or perhaps your parent) would drive up to the gas pump, and some nice (or sometimes scary) looking man would come bee-bopping over to talk... and you'd say "FILL 'ER UP" and you'd never have to get out of your car to get gas?

Yeah... well, that's not really what this blog is about. Except maybe metaphorically speaking.

I am in desperate need of a fill up. Maybe it's mommyhood... maybe it's lack of sleep... maybe it's finally hitting that "almost married 2 years" mark... or maybe it's just a teeny case of depression, but I'm feeling rather empty these days. Life is going well... and things are mostly good, but inside my head looking out, it all looks a bit sad and boring. I need a fill up to go back to being my normal, silly, happy self.

This weekend I'm going on a retreat in hopes of rekindling some of that old me.

This retreat is my way of saying to God that I'm pulling up to the station... can you please just "Fill 'er up?"

A Different Perspective.

Well, Andrew and I just finished watching the debates on ABC. After their conclusion I made a statement that the me of 3 years ago would definitely not have made. I'm not ready to disclose that statement, but I'll just say it was much more liberal than anything this blog has ever said.

What has happened?

All of the sudden (...that's not completely true as it's been changing ever since I met Andrew...) I've become a lover of political debates. A connoisseur of candidates. I thirst for knowledge on what these people think about major issues... and those issues go so far past what I thought they were three years ago that I feel sorry for my former self.

I think it's fairly obvious that the hot-button issue for me has always been abortion. And there's a lot of other social issues that divided me from the democratic party.

But now... I'm beginning to wonder if these "social" issues are just a way of distracting people from being the democracy that we should be. Think about it. Republicans have been fighting Roe V. Wade since it was passed in the EARLY 70's. If they were to reverse it (which they haven't in 30 years), why would anyone continue to vote for them? Don't they tend to pander to the richey rich of the society? Are the poor... or for that matter... the middle class even on their radars as people who need a leader who will help them???!!!

And wouldn't the legalization of abortion be a moot point if we could heal the culture that sends it's young girls to the legalized murder mills anyways? Let's eradicate poverty. Let's increase education. Let's support one another and become a nation of people who care about one another instead of live in fear of one another. Why not eradicate the NEED for abortion instead of outlawing it?

Don't even get me started on healthcare... do you know that Andrew and I have had to shell out like $5000 OUT OF POCKET for having a baby last February? That's on top of what insurance paid. What the heck is insurance for anyways when we're having to use like 10-15% of our yearly income on medical expenses??? And on top of that we're still paying into the stupid insurance companies with each paycheck. DUMB. (By the way, we watched SICKO last night and despite your opinions on Michael Moore, you should DEFINITELY see the movie).

Sigh... you wouldn't think I was so fired up about all these things by reading my blog lately. Where have the debates been? Where has the excitement been? Where have my passions gone? Well... for the good or the bad, they seem to be changing dramatically. And I've decided I either need all of y'all who used to argue with me to bring me back or all of y'all that used to argue against me to cheer me on.

The delirium has returned.