Why Not Be Happy?

This is something that was passed on to me through MySpace. Some Food for thought…



Made in the USA : Spoiled brats- author unknown

The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some
poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source,
right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy
with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is
unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the
citizenry just ain't happy and want a change.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I starting thinking, ''What we are
so unhappy about?''

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7
days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the
summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these
unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery
store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the
last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the
Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move
through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we
would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having
thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just
not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency
workers show up and provide services to help all involved. Whether you are
rich or poor they treat your wounds and even, if necessary, send a
helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You
may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of
trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to
extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or
if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or
prowler intrudes , an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest
will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss. This all in
the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or malicious raping and
pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own
cell phones and computers.

How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we
enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67
percent of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the
world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. , yet has a great
disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed
people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have ,
and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live
here.

I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has
no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval
rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days
after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of
recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the
book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled brats safe from terrorist
attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there
defending you and me?

Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have
volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom.
There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They
are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an
''other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a
''dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of
Americans? Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it
leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with
blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The
media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer
what sells , and when criticized, try to defend their actions by
"justifying" them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a
murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book and do a TV special about how he
didn't kill his wife, but if he did � Insane!

Stop buying the negative venom you are fed everyday by the media. Shut
off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your
bird cage.. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is
exponentially more good than bad.

Stay-at-home moms

Let’s face it. Stay at home moms take a lot of heat. I always cringe when somebody asks me what I do. When I tell them that I’m a stay at home mom, I get that look. If you’re a stay at home mom, you know what look I’m speaking of. It’s that “oh, you don’t work” look, or the “wow, that must be easy” look. It’s the look that makes me feel as if the non-stop job of raising children and caring for a family is not work at all. It’s the look that makes me feel as if what I do is easy and entails nothing more than sitting around and relaxing. When did motherhood become so frowned upon? Since when did raising your own children become “the lazy way out”? Feminist, Linda Hirshman said on “Good Morning America” several years back that a competent, educated woman’s place, is in the office. Does that mean stay at home moms are uneducated and incompetent? I’m pretty sure that you have to be quite competent to care for children. Hirshman believes that feminism has failed in its goals due to the large amount of mothers who stay home with their children. Women fought hard for their place in society; for their right to vote and hold jobs that were once meant for men only. But don’t we also have the right to choose what we want to do with our lives? If I decide to bring children into this world, shouldn’t I be able to decide whether or not I want to raise them myself? Why do people who hold jobs believe that caring for your children is not work at all? The only difference between their job and mine is that I don’t get paid, and I don’t get time off. Anyone who believes that being a full time mom is not a real job has not actually been one. According to salary.com, if a full time mother were to be paid for the work she does, she’d be making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Unfortunately, we don’t get a paycheck for what we do. I do not get money for changing diapers, doing laundry, cleaning up messes and wiping away tears.
I do not criticize mothers who work. In fact, it’s hard not to have two incomes nowadays.. But when I decided to become a mother I took on the responsibility of doing what I felt was best for my children. Until they are both in school, I will continue to let the criticism roll in. I will shrug off the looks and let people think what they will. I know that my children will benefit the most by having their mother around during their pre-school years. Hopefully, one day, being a stay at home mom will be accepted once again.

If you’re interested in reading an article about Linda Hirshman’s arguments against stay at home moms, visit http://www.albertmohler.com/?cat=Commentary&cdate=2006-02-24

In the Words of Ben Stein

As a parent I am increasingly aware of the decline of America. We went from worshipping God, to worshipping movie stars. We are so concerned with little issues that we fail to look at the world we are creating for our children. Many might have heard or read the following, but I thought I'd post it here anyway. Ben Stein's statement reflects what many feel, but too few say:

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.
Herewith a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?
I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.
If this is what it means to be no longer young, it's not so bad.
Next confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.
And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are:
Christmas trees.
It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (Regarding Katrina)
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.
She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we aid OK.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.
My Best Regards... honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein

The Truth About Being Pregnant

When I was pregnant, I read dozens of magazines and books that told me what it would be like to be pregnant. There is nothing more deceiving than the commercialized image of what we’re lead to believe about what is ultimately the worst nine months of our lives. Let’s start with the biggest misconception:

(1) You are pregnant for nine months.

Now, I may have failed college statistics twice, but I can still add. If you have a baby at 36 weeks, it’s considered a preemie…babies are estimated to arrive around 40 weeks. So, consider that there are four weeks in a month. Now divide 40 weeks by 4…that’s right, you get 10. To make matters much worse, many times babies hang in there for an additional two weeks…making most people’s actual pregnancy to be 10 ½ months long. That’s almost an entire year that you’ll spend feeling like a bloated, hormonal zombie.

(there may be those who argue that there are more than four weeks in each month, therefore 40 weeks actually equals less than ten months. However, when you're fat and bloated, crying your eyes out...two days will feel like a week. Nine months, ten months...it may as well be a lifetime...

Let’s move on to misconception #2

(2) Pregnancy is a great time for partner bonding.

That’s right. We’re meant to believe that hormones actually help the bonding process. We all know that tears scare men, so when we break down and cry for absolutely no reason for 10 ½ months straight, we can’t exactly expect our partners to know how to react. But let’s start at the beginning. If the pregnancy is your first, there is a lot of adjusting to do. Before getting pregnant, you and your partner probably lived the life of two childless people. You probably went out together for drinks, met friends for dinner, spent Friday nights at the local bar or club, stood outside together to smoke cigarettes. In most cases, whatever you did, you did it together. Then you get pregnant. Now, just because you can no longer go out for drinks, or step out for a smoke, or hang out with friends at the bar, it doesn’t mean your partner cant. Don’t forget…he’s not the one who’s pregnant. He doesn’t have a baby growing in his belly, so he’s not the one who has to change his lifestyle. So he’ll go on living the life that both of you once shared, while you sit at home crying yourself to sleep. It isn’t easy. You don’t want to ground him just because he decided the two of you should have a baby, but don’t the words “Let’s have a baby” mean that we’ll both have to share the suffering? Don’t be fooled ladies…there is nothing like being pregnant to make you feel alone and abandoned. This may sound harsh, but when you have so many additional hormones running through your body, this is exactly how you may feel. Two people who were once on the same page become two people on opposite sides of the fence. Did I say fence? I meant a mile high stone wall.

Misconception #3:

(3) You may feel nauseous for the first few months.

I think by a few, they meant 10 ½. I was throwing up for the entire duration of my pregnancies. The only difference is that after the first five months, you stop throwing up before you actually eat. After that you’re able to eat, but it will probably come up anyway. As gross as it sounds, I learned that throwing up wasn’t so bad if I drank a chocolate shake with my food. That way everything tasted the same coming up as it did going down.

Misconception #4

(4) Pregnant women are beautiful. Well, this is what my partner kept telling me. I’m pretty sure he was lying though. I mean, I can’t think of a single time I caught him checking out a pregnant woman. But I can’t just assume he was lying to me. I mean, there’s nothing more appealing then a fat belly, unattractive clothing, and a tear streaked face, right?

Misconception #5

(5) You’ll feel energetic and happy

Energetic and happy? How about nauseous, fat and miserable? First comes the intensified sense of smell. You start to pick up smells that you’ve never noticed before. This doesn’t help much with the nausea. You’ll start feeling sick when you do the dishes, and the smell of the laundry will bring you to tears. You’ll notice people’s perfume as if they’ve bathed in it. You’ll smell cigarette smoke as you drive down the street. This amplified sense of smell will make you turn away from people who are talking to you, hide your face when you walk by the trash and rush to the bathroom while cooking dinner. The smell of garlic always made my stomach curl, and onions made me cry in more than one sense. This made it very difficult to be close to people, and even more difficult to eat or venture out in public.
Once you start gaining weight you begin to get insecure. Insecurities and hormones do not make a nice couple. The two clash like nothing else and cause a great amount of heartache, tears and arguments. You’ll notice that you snap at your partner more, trust him less, and blame him for your feeling the way you do (he is, after all, mostly to blame). You’ll be so miserable that nobody will want to be around you, and your partner will start looking for more excuses to leave the house. This makes you feel even worse. In the beginning of your pregnancy you’ll be falsely accusing your partner of not wanting to be around you. By the end of your pregnancy, these accusations will carry much truth. You’ll feel unsociable and isolated and it will be as if you are living in a bubble, watching from behind foggy glass as the world around you goes about their business. When you become pregnant everything changes. You feel different, you look different, and you act different. It’s as if your body has been taken over by a puppet master. You cannot control your feelings or outbursts and you’ll resent all those around you who live their lives as if nothing has changed. Their lives, after all, have not changed. But this is a hard concept to grasp when you’re pregnant. People look at you and treat you as if you were “special”. When you become pregnant you become something less than human. This is how you’ll feel, and this is how you’ll be treated. You become a species of your own. Your friends (who have no children) will not understand and will start to treat you differently.

Aside from getting fat and overreacting at every opportunity, you’ll also start to experience the aches and pains associated with being pregnant. Your back will hurt, your legs will ache and your head will pound. You’ll be exhausted all of the time, but will find it difficult to fall asleep. You’ll be hungry but won’t be able to eat. When you get to the point where one more day might actually kill you…that’s when the baby comes. Unfortunately, by this time you’ve lost almost a year of your life and when you finally have that baby and step out of your bubble, you’ll realize just how much has changed around you. It’s like stepping out of a time capsule. But we’ll save that for another time…





Now, don’t believe that all pregnancies are like this. There are those women out there that have nausea-free, hormonal free pregnancies. There are women who sleep like babies at night and feel beautiful as their bodies grow larger. There are those couples that bond greatly during this time, couples who have never been closer, and couples who absolutely adore this time of trial. I have never actually met anyone as I’ve just described, but there’s no doubt in my mind that freaks like this exists.

Now that I’ve pointed out the downside of being pregnant (which hardly took time at all), let me list the upside of being pregnant.

(1) You can eat all of the junk foods that you want. Let’s face it; you’re going to get fat, so you might as well eat what you want. Chances are you’ll just throw it up later anyway.

(2) People actually go out of their way to open doors for pregnant women, even if it’s due to the frightening, menacing look on your face. Looking and feeling like a zombie may actually cause people to be more polite. They’ll help you with your groceries and let you cut them in line. Just pretend that they’re being kind rather than feeling sorry for you. Its okay if you live in a delusional world while pregnant…it helps you to cope.

(3) Being pregnant allows for an excuse to hide in your bedroom when company comes over. After all, saying you’re tired or feeling sick is never far from the truth.

(4) You aren’t expected to stay on top of everyday responsibilities. People will offer to help out and actually run errands for you. Don’t get used to this treatment however, it doesn’t last forever.

(5) Your boobs will get bigger. Of course, this is a short-lived joy. It won’t be long before your belly outgrows your boobs and you just look fat.

(6) You never have to lift heavy objects. This means there are fewer chores that you’ll have to do. (This actually goes along with number 3 and 4, but I’m running out of ideas for the positive side to being pregnant.)
There’s so much more that hasn’t been covered (about the downside, of course). All in all, for anyone thinking about having a baby, don’t let my post deter you. After all, you might be that “freak” who I mentioned above. Your pregnancy might be a happy one :)