You too, Jill and readers! Don't really have any special plans, I just got off work so I'm getting ready to go to bed, then will get up and eat some dinner, spend some time with hubby, then back to work tonight.

I'm going to work at my pro-life agency, where our team of volunteers will be working hard saving mothers and babies from abortion and offering them ongoing care and support (Aussies celebrated Labour Day on March 2nd.) I hope all my US friends enjoy the long weekend and the last flickers of summer. Have a hotdog and a rootbeer float for me!

We've had a busy weekend, and it's not stopping!

Daena flew home Thursday night from Dallas, so we spent Friday visiting her grandparents (my mom and dad) and the Cedar Lake Staneks.

Saturday we threw a birthday party for 5 family members, including Daena, who have birthdays between September 1-7. The weather was gorgeous!

Yesterday Rich, Daena, 9-yr-old grandson Gabriel, and I visited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield. Gabriel had been wanting to see it for some time, and now that Daena works for the GWBush Library Foundation (scheduled opening: 2013), she was interested in seeing it, too.

Afterward we stopped by Lincoln's Tomb and then Bloomington to have dinner with son Tim, wife Lisa, and grandson Jack.

This morning we're getting ready to leave to catch up with son Michael, wife Bernadine, and grandsons Shane and Raph (Gabe's bros) to watch the Labor Day parade in Lowell, IN.

Daena flies home tonight... boo hoo....

But still, the weekend has been packed with lots of family, down-homey stuff, and I love it!

Ohh, Jill, you would have gone right past my old home town! Small world. I hope the kids all rubbed Lincoln's shiny nose. I think it's funny that all the noses get rubbed, not just the one on the big statue outside his tomb.

It's wonderful to hear that, in the midst of all your work vigilantly defending the unborn, you still fit in plenty of fabulous family time.

If you're ever looking for a moderator who gets up when the rest of the team are going to sleep (or vice-versa), I'm your girl!

Gonna vacuum and wash the family cars which my three year old is very excited about. Then off to dinner at my in-laws house!

And then you'll be refreshed and ready to go back to blogging bright and early tomorrow morning, right Jill?

Happy Labor Day to you, too! :)

I have to clean my room (I can't move the door anymore; there's too much stuff piled around it; and it takes me a long time to get to my bed because I have to find a blank spot in the floor), finish calculus, and then attempt to teach my puppy how to play fetch- again.

Have a good break, everybody. :)

Gotta work today since the wife has the day off and can take care of the kids. Job applications and cover letters don't write themselves! God love all of you!

Goin' fishin!!

Gotta work today since the wife has the day off and can take care of the kids. Job applications and cover letters don't write themselves! God love all of you!
Posted by: Bobby Bambino Author Profile Page at September 7, 2009 10:03 AM

I'm writing cover letters too! Good luck and you're in my prayers to St. Joseph, patron saint of workers and men!

Count me in as another one who's working! No cover letters, though.

The fun day was yesterday -- went to an annual craft fair upstate with my whole family. It's so rare that we're all together these days; usually just my mom and I go. Dad and I work strange days (ie, often work on Christmas, Thanksgiving; rarely have Sundays off, much less Saturdays), younger sister lives in Massachusetts, older sister sometimes lives in Slovenia, and then Mom and Mr. Alexandra work normal, somewhat school-type schedules. So it was really nice that we all miraculously had the day off at the same time AND were in the same city/state/country!

Buying a car. Maybe. It's the car buying saga that never ends, but hopefully today will end with a car.

working....

I was about to clean then my stomach starting hurting and now I have a headache....I'm sending the kids outside to play so mommy has a leart one moment of silence today!

Happy Labor Day Everyone!

Baking cookies, and going to a BBQ. Happy day everyone!

Working from home today but willing to drop everything and go to Janet's to volunteer my services as a taste tester for those cookies.

Vegetate. I caught a cold last week which turned into a slight ear infection in my left ear and asthmatic bronchitis (though I don't have Asthma).

Liz...I feel your pain. Get well soon! (I had asthmatic bronchitis before as well, and I don't have asthma.) And I'm suffering from bronchitis again right now, too. :(

I am spending this Labor Day with my family, who are still in partial quarantine with some sort of virus. We are praying that the new baby stays virus-free!! Ugh. What a time we've had.

Jill, you were so close to our house, you could've come by! Though the time when we're all sick is probably not the best, huh? ;)

Labor Day has for many years been very special! I am one of Jerry's Kids (an 'older' kid)! In the past few years a group of disabled advocates (Not Dead Yet Org)have protested many aspects of the program's sob-philosophy. They object 0 to the filming of our health plight in order TO ELICIT MORE FUNDS FROM YOU. There is little doubt that very often our health is severally affected.

The problem is not that we do need the money -- we do, because most of us are not capable of work! The 'problem' arises that we are in fact our disease so we are as 'horrendous' as our disease process and proy dismissed . How this works out is that we are marked as disabled ... which silently means 'unwanted'. Do I know what this means?

A few wears ago, I fell in love with a very pretty lady, so I wrote her a letter saying so [I have struggling speech issues] Her response was to get angry, very angry. She wanted me to understand that she was not amused. So she sat me down and proceeded to tell me that I had 'insulted her, for ever believing she could be interested in a handicapped man'. The words just replaced a slap-in-the-face.

Perhaps this is what abortion is - a slap in the face toward we who embrace life/living, given by people who wish not to be inconvenienced by love.

So she sat me down and proceeded to tell me that I had 'insulted her, for ever believing she could be interested in a handicapped man'. The words just replaced a slap-in-the-face.

John McDonnell, I'm so sorry about that. I agree with a lot of what you said in that comment.

I once loved (still love, but you know what I mean) a man who had a prominent physical disability. I broke things off with him because I felt I was not ready for as serious a relationship as I felt was coming, and because I did not trust myself to maintain the distance I knew I needed at that point in my life. He was older than I was at a time when age is a big difference, and I knew that we "needed" different things from each other at that point. It was hard to let go of him and I always worried that I had hurt him. Some time later we got in touch and he told me that he still remembered, fondly, the day I told him why I couldn't be in a relationship with him. He told me that it was wonderful to be rejected for "real" reasons. I cried so hard that day; I couldn't believe anyone would ever reject him for "fake" reasons. It had never occurred to me before.

I'm sorry that woman was so cruel, and too blind to see what a wonderful person you are -- EXACTLY as you are.

John, you are most certainly wanted here! It's very obvious that even though that lady was very pretty on the outside, she was quite ugly within.

Alexandra,

You have a good heart.

Chillen out!

To a fabulous park for playtime and picnic lunch. Then mom to the thrift store for 50% savings!! :)
Corn on the cob feast tonight.

Jasper, thank you. I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic or not, lol, but I've been feeling very unappreciated this past week in some ways, and that actually made me feel a bit better. :)

Alexandra,

No, I was not being sarcastic..lol

I know I have the tendency to be sarcastic, but I was not that time :)

John, I think that woman obviously wasn't good enough for YOU! One of my dearest boyfriends was a quadriplegic (he had been in a diving accident). So many people couldn't believe I would date him. We ended up being just really good friends in the end, we weren't "the ones" for each other, but we had a blast together anyway (and holy cow, could that boy kiss!)

Today the boys and I emptied out the very overstuffed garage and got all the junk out for "bulk trash pickup" starting later this week. Got it swept out, moved in an extra fridge and a full size freezer (with two teens, one a boy and a preteen boy we need the storage!) and started getting it ready to turn into a school room for homeschooling. The baby was a jewel today and let mommy and big brothers get a lot of work done while the girls cleaned up all the garbage that blew into our yard during the storms we've had the past few days.

Hi, Carla. I haven't talked to you since the triathalon, but here goes what I was thinking:

[cheering, chanting crowd]
Carla! Carla! Carla! Carla! Fist pump! Fist pump!

And I agree with Elisabeth, John. If she turned you down for those reasons, she definitely wasn't good enough for you. You're a good man to be advocating on behalf of equal rights. :)

Hey John:

You're awesome in my book and very intelligent.

I had a great day with family. Grilled steak and the trimmings. It was great to be all together although the guys were "busy" doing their Fantasy Football Draft picks for a couple of hours but we had fun talking and eating after. God bless.

John,

Yes, I'm a skeptic. Born that way, I suppose.

I have a couple of questions regarding the "lady" you fell in love with:

1. You posted, "A few wears ago, I fell in love with a very pretty lady, so I wrote her a letter saying so [I have struggling speech issues] Her response was to get angry, very angry. She wanted me to understand that she was not amused."

What could you have possibly wrote to upset her so much? You said she was agry, very angry. You also said that she was not amused. Maybe you wrote something, not realizing it, that was offensive to her. This just isn't a typical response to a letter of one professing love.

2. My other question, is that if she was really that into herself, and was that evil, how on earth did you fall in love with her in the first place? It sounds, from your post at least, that she had absolutely no heart at all. Did you fall in love with her because of her looks? Or did you really fall in love WITH her (for all of her)?

curious...

Marie, sometimes women might feel irrationally angry when a man they care about as a person and as a friend, but not as a life partner, brings the relationship to a "fork in the road." They may feel angry because now they are forced to confront the issue of the man's feelings, which they don't want to do, because it runs the risk of ruining the friendship they enjoy. They may be angry at being put in a position where they have to hurt a friend's feelings. They may be angry because confronting the issue means confronting something in themselves that is "not right" or that they do not like. They may, in anger, lash out and say something awful; or they may, in anger, finally verbalize feelings they know deep down are awful. People aren't always rational, and they don't always have satisfactory answers to the question, "Why?"

Or they may simply be emotionally immature and be stuck in some permanent version of middle school, where you giggle when the guy you like asks you out but you get angry when the guy you don't like does. Sometimes such immaturity is not visible until it has the opportunity to present itself.

People do cruel and ridiculous things. Good people do them. People who are loved by good people do them.

There are many reasons I trust John McDonnell, and the frequency with which people seem to hurt those who love them is pretty low on the list -- but it is an unfortunately undeniable fact of human interaction. I don't know the specifics of his situation, but I don't need to -- I know enough about him, and enough about people in general.

That said, I hope you had a good holiday weekend. :)

Alexandra,

Your first paragraph: I would think disappointed, but ANGRY...vey angry..not amused?

I've read several of John's posts regarding "love". He seems to have an in-depth knowledge of "love" and what it really means. He seems to study the subject very extensively. From his posts, love is intense and deep...not superficial. That being said, the question was more for him, than you (although I appreciate your input!).

I agree that people can be very cruel and immature. Even if they didn't know each other well, that is a horrible thing that she said to him.

My holiday weekend was very nice. I hope yours was as well.

"It was great to be all together although the guys were "busy" doing their Fantasy Football Draft"

Prolifer,

I did my picks for fantasy football last week, I think I have a pretty good team. Fun game..

thanks for all those questions and thoughts about this event. Part of the problem was no doubt mine. I used to believe (still do, I guess) that a pretty face is usually accompanied by an even more wonderful inside.

It has ended all pursuits from that time on. It is very difficult knowing what I do about loving, but I still hear the echo of a person calling my affection - insulting. So what I know is theory and not practice. It has also skewed my normal sense of trust with great hesitation to become a reclusive person.

Much damage has been done to m psyche. I can only weep for the women who abort their own children. How can another be so alienated from their own humanity?

"How can another be so alienated from their own humanity?"

John McD,

That's a question for the ages. Those of us who are "sensitive" see and feel things that others don't. A little nature, a little nurture.... I'm convinced it is a mixed blessing, but a blessing, no less. God doesn't make mistakes.

God bless you, John. So glad you are here!

John,

We all have some sort of handicap, and we all have been rejected sometime or many times in our lives.

You have two choices here: Either you can continue to do things "your way", and you will fail every time. Or, you can trust in God for His purpose in your life and let Him lead you.

I Thessalonians 5:18 (New American Standard Bible)

in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Thank Him for every situation you go through. He is making you stronger for the purpose He will fulfill in your life. Trust in Him, John. Our ways are not His ways.