A sweet, sweet child . . .

Ryann left this world today at only 1 and a half years old.  I remember holding her in church.  I can't imagine what loss her parents must be feeling right now.  I'm a firm believer that no one should ever have to watch their children die.  I'm not sure of the details, but it was sudden and unexpected.  Ryann was a happy bubbly little girl, all smiles as I remember, very mild mannered and easy going.  There was something very contemplative about her too, as if she has some special intuition.  I know her parents thought the world of her and were so excited to bring her into the world and give her their love. Her mother, Damie, started a blog detailing their adventures which I loved reading.

Please, keep this family in your thoughts and/or prayers. Please, hold tight and treasure the children and family and loved ones that you have.  Life can be all too fleeting on this earth.

Lastly, I take comfort in the thought that our extreme loss at losing someone is our best and most poignant reminder of how precious and loved that person was.  The deepest grief always sprouts from the deepest love and we should acknowledge the strength of our love for others in our own way.

Love to you Damie and Jared.

Love to you Ryann.

Haiti Trip . . .

Yes, the following is an appeal for money.  Do not feel guilty if you cannot contribute.  I have several family and friends who read this blog though and I figured I'd at least keep them informed and give them an opportunity to help if they so wish.  New post about my wedding coming up later this week!  And here is the appeal:  ;)

Hello everyone!

Joni, Justice and I (members of Bellevue SDA church) are going to Haiti with an organization called Helping 4 Hurting Humanity to provide relief and aid to the people there. I will be mainly acting as a translator and we all will be helping to build wells, helping to run a medical clinic, helping to distribute food and supplies to outerlying villages, and helping at an orphanage while there.

I'm so excited about the opportunity to go on another mission trip where I can speak one of their languages (they speak French and Creole)!

We are fundraising through the Bellevue SDA church who has set up a mission fund to help us to be able to go and to help provide funds so that we can buy much of the necessary supplies while on site as this is the much more efficient way to give aid to those in need.

If you would like to be a part of this effort, there is a way to donate online and receive a tax deduction. :) Anything you can give would really help. We need to raise $2,000 apiece, which covers airfare, food for team members and for distribution, lodging, transportation, and purchasing medicines and other supplies for the medical
clinic and for the villages and orphanages we visit.

Here's how to donate online:

1. Go to www.bellevueadventist.org

2. In the "Main Menu" section at the upper left of the home page, click "Online Giving."

3. Follow the instructions. They will lead you to a page which has a list of offerings on it. First you'll see "Tithe," and then "Local Church."

4. Five items down under "Local Church" is "General Mission Trip Donations." Follow the instructions.

If you check the e-mail option you'll get an e-mail with confirmation of your gift. Then, early next year, you'll receive a paper copy of the documentation from the church accountant.


We deeply appreciate anything you can do. Feel free to comment/email me if you have any questions!

~Jillian Lacey
redheadjoa@hotmail.com

Love to all my wonderful readers!  You are very appreciated for making us bloggers feel listened to. ;)

Rabid Dog? I'll handle it . . .

Yes, that's right folks, I'll handle it because I'll be prepared!  I'll have my rabies shot, yes that would be the vaccination we all heard about in science class, but yet is almost never insured, even if you get bit by a rabid dog and sure as hell won't be covered if it's merely "preventative".  Who cares about preventative anyway?  It's so much easier to wait until a patient is dying of some prevented condition and then paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills right?  I'm getting sidetracked.

I'm going to Haiti and, evidentally, rabid animals (especially bats *shivers*) are rather common and the rabies shot is recommended for all travelers.  I'm thinking that it'd be best to get it.  But, will my insurance cover it? I asked myself.  The insurance that I get for working part-time as a teacher?  If it doesn't, the shots are anywhere from 500-1200 dollars.  Yes, that would mean I could buy a really old, still running car for the same price as a rabies shot. Ridiculous!  So, I call around, like between 10 and 100 million times trying to find places that will take my insurance AND give me rabies.  No such luck until I found a travel clinic that my insurance works with.  I talk with them and they assure me that travel vaccinations are hardly ever covered, the consultation fee will be 100 dollars, and that there was no way in hell that my insurance would cover the rabies shot.  I tell them to call my insurance because my insurance people assured me that it was covered.

About an hour later . . . they tell me that yes, vaccines a covered in FULL, yes the insurance will help pay for the consultation, and YES, they will even pay for those spendy rabies shots.  HALLELUJAH!  I will not be coming back from Haiti with malaria, thyphoid and rabies if I can help it! :D  And I have my awesome AWESOME insurance to thank.  Insurance that clearly realizes the value of keeping their teachers alive with cheap preventative care as opposed to astronomical hospital bills when I return with thyphoid, malaria, and rabies. :P

On a sober note, legislation has threatened to completely redo our insurance benefits within the education system, so the decent insurance may not last long for us educators.  I think I'll schedule my appointment for this week . . .

And, while in Haiti, I will bravely protect all those who don't have the practical insurance that pays for travel vaccines . . . I WILL take on that rabid dog or bat (however it may be).

Thank you premera combined with Washington Educators Association.  I love you.

Sarah says it all!

Sarah, one of the blogs I follow, has posted about the US food industry and I completely agree!  Check it out!

http://becomingsarah.com/index.php?/becoming_sarah/comments/its_time_to_start_talking_about_food_industry/

We need to be more aware and fight for our right to at least know what it is that we are eating.  Then, we need to get a system in place that actually provides truly healthy, chemical free food.  These days we're even getting scammed by words like "free-range" and "organic" because such words are not regulated or patented by the food industry.

Our diets link to all of the health problems that are so common today that didn't use to be, such as cancer, autism, asthma, obesity, you name it.  We need to do something about this!

Awesome new blogger!

I just found a blog done by an incredible writer.  She's simply brilliant with her analogies, word-pictures, and insight.  Her blog is somewhat spiritual, more reflective and incredibly uplifting to read (for me at least).

You should check it out if you're interested though I will warn that those with a penchant or commitment for more traditional religious ideas might disagree with some of her points.  :P  I suppose you can't please everyone though and be truly authentic . . .

Here it is:  http://rescuejesus.wordpress.com/

Hi . . . hello . . . can I wipe my nose on you?

Warning!  The following includes somewhat graphic grossness.  So, you have been warned.






Seriously, I'm a snot-faucet right now and what's so frustrating is I'm not technically sick, I'm just suffering an unusually annoying bout of allergies.  I can only go so many minutes of snuffling without having to blow the snoz. Not to mention I hate the feeling of snorting up one's own snot and only do so in the most DIRE of circumstances.  Besides, when you have an actual cold, snorting only keeps the germs inside your nose and prolongs the illness, so remember the phrase "blowing is best". :P

Anyway, I bought a generic allergy medicine which has done all of jack squat up till now so I went and got Claritin 24 hour.  I've been waiting 45 minutes now at least with little to no result, hard to tell so far. :(

I'm only hoping that once I get over this bout of nose drainage, it'll taper off as it usually does. *crosses fingers*

Yes, I did a whole post just to complain . . . I'm not that remorseful though, I'm thinking about going to blow my nose and make it a little redder from resorting to TP after running out of kleenex . . .

Cheers all, avoid the allergies!

I have been a lazy blogger!

It seems in the blogging world, we all have our times when we procrastinate, or get too busy, or simply don't have the motivation to post. Then, when we finally post, we apologize to our readers.  I figured I'd keep up the tradition! :P

Anyway, life has been busy.  If it weren't for me working only part time I don't know how I'd get it done, or I would get it done and just simply have permanently raised my blood pressure up to 200. ;)  I'm planning to go on a mission trip to Haiti.  Nothings final in my mind until I buy the ticket, but I rather short on funds and just started fundraising.  I will be a translator and I am totally relishing the idea of finally going on a mission trip where I know the secret language.  I've been the Philippines and the Dominican Republic, but French just didn't seem to serve me any better than English for some reason . . .  Anyway, so I'm trying to make plans for that and I need to get rabies shots and malaria pills and the whole shabang and my insurance is alright, but not wonderful, so we'll see how that works.

Other than the previous, I'm also on the job hunt again.  I'm on what's called a non-continuing contract, so they only hired for the school year and then they're opening the position again to all applicants for the next year.  Wheeeee.  It's alright though mostly, because I'm hoping to land a full time job this time around if possible.  I've applied, but only one interview so far for a school in Bellevue (which is a little bit of a commute and I don't really wanna move . . . ).  C'est la vie.

Other than the previous (again), we're doing well.  Our biggest issue is our cat who insists on yowling at 5:30am.  The hubs got annoyed enough he went searching for solutions on the internet.  It is working . . . sort of, but by no means completely successful and I highly doubt it will last.

On a good note, the weather is finally springish and the pool will be opened in a week and a half!  I reeeeeallly hope its heated because Micah swears he will throw me in if I don't go voluntarily.  And, I'm such.a.wimp when it comes to cold water, or even cool water, or slightly tepid . . .

I will update more about Haiti and job news as I get things figured out.

I shall end with a cute photo:

Inspirational Person of the week . . .

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

By Michael Moore Thursday, Apr. 29, 2010

When Brazilians first elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva President in 2002, the country's robber barons nervously checked the fuel gauges on their private jets. They had turned Brazil into one of the most inequitable places on earth, and now it looked like payback time. Lula, 64, was a genuine son of Latin America's working class — in fact, a founding member of the Workers' Party — who'd once been jailed for leading a strike.

By the time Lula finally won the presidency, after three failed attempts, he was a familiar figure in Brazilian national life. But what led him to politics in the first place? Was it his personal knowledge of how hard many Brazilians must work just to get by? Being forced to leave school after fifth grade to support his family? Working as a shoeshine boy? Losing part of a finger in a factory accident?
No, it was when, at age 25, he watched his wife Maria die during the eighth month of her pregnancy, along with their child, because they couldn't afford decent medical care.
There's a lesson here for the world's billionaires: let people have good health care, and they'll cause much less trouble for you.
And here's a lesson for the rest of us: the great irony of Lula's presidency — he was elected to a second term in 2006 and will serve through this year — is that even as he tries to propel Brazil into the First World with government social programs like Fome Zero (Zero Starvation), designed to end hunger, and with plans to improve the education available to members of Brazil's working class, the U.S. looks more like the old Third World every day.
What Lula wants for Brazil is what we used to call the American Dream. We in the U.S., by contrast, where the richest 1% now own more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined, are living in a society that is fast becoming more like Brazil.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984864,00.html

Sounds like a good President to me, how about you?

Honorary person of the week . . .

Elizabeth Warren:

 is an American attorney and law professor. She serves as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She is also the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she has taught contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law. In the wake of the 2008-2011 financial crisis, she became the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to investigate the U.S. banking bailout (formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program). She has long advocated for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau^[3][4], which was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010.

Basically, her job is to help set up a program that increases financial stability for people and the government by making government and private agencies transparent and accountable to the general public.  It is designed to eliminate loopholes that exploit citizens, regulate where gov. and private funds go and how they are used, etc.  Something this is long overdue in the US.  We need some accountability!

On an additional note, she's quite the lady in other ways:
Warren was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009 and 2010.
In December 2009, the Boston Globe named Warren the Bostonian of the Year.^[32]
The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Professor Warren as one of the fifty most influential female lawyers,^[33] and she has been recognized for her work by SmartMoney magazine, Money magazine, and Law Dragon.
In 2009, the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Leila J. Robinson Award.
Warren has been recognized for her dynamic teaching style. In 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's teaching award twice. The Sacks-Freund Teaching Award was voted on by the graduating class in honor of "her teaching ability, openness to student concerns, and contributions to student life at Harvard." Warren also has won awards from her students at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of Houston Law Center.

In short, she's a pretty amazing lady and seems genuinely concerned for people like me, which I highly appreciate because lately, it seems very little people care about the "petty" concerns of the working class.