Where's My Freaking Parental Handbook?

It's amazing how parents can try their hardest to do what's best one minute, and the next minute, not be so sure in their decision... but what sucks is that our kids are the ones that have to deal with our decisions... regardless of whether our decisions are right or wrong...

Last night, Jayruh's flip flop broke.. No big deal, right? yeah........ not so much.

A little bit of backstory.. black is Jayruh's favorite color. These flip flops were black. They were a rather nice pair too, not the flimsy kind you can buy at Walmart. She's had these shoes since WAY before she could fit into them. I can't remember where I got them.. come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I found them somewhere or they were a "hand me down." So not only has she had them forever, they're also her favorite color and "go to" pair of flip flops (she has like 4 diff pairs)... My Jayruh is extremely sentimental. She hates to throw ANYTHING away. She cries like you wouldn't believe- not because she's being a brat, but it's traumatic for her to know she's never going to have them again... no matter what the item is... I understand, I was the same way as a kid.

Anyway, when it was time to leave church last night and her shoe was broken (beyond repair, I might add) I made the quick decision to toss the shoes away. I couldn't find the broken one, and I wasn't going to bring home the one that wasn't broken. My house is SOO cluttered from the move, I didn't want ANOTHER single shoe with no match.

Jayruh lost it. She was sobbing. She was traumatized. I've never seen her like that before. In the car on the way home she kept repeating "you can't throw it away" in between sobs... She wasn't telling me I'm not allowed to throw it away, she was repeating it in disbelief. Like I said completely traumatized. Why didn't I just bring them home and throw them away when she was asleep, or next week, or next month? They were already too small for her anyway...

In my mind, there was a bigger picture. It wasn't just about a shoe. It was about losing something that you love. It was a life lesson. It was teaching her that nothing lasts forever, that things of this world are not eternal. We love things, we lose things, we mourn things, but then ultimately life goes on. I thought, it's better she experience that first with the shoe than with a parent, grandparent, beloved pet ... etc... It was about the difference in material things and things that actually really matter.

This wasn't my intention when I threw it away though.. I didn't expect that intense reaction from her. As I held her in my arms on the way out to the car everything inside me wanted to go get her shoes and bring them back to her... it's just a stupid shoe, why not? All the way home I was seconds away from turning around and getting them out of the garbage. When I got home I held her and loved on her until she fell asleep in my lap, which was no easy task.. she cried herself to sleep. I kept repeating over and over the "life lesson" which I mentioned above. "baby, we have things that we looove. And we cherish them and take good care of them while we have them. but not everything lasts forever. It's okay to cry and be sad. You miss them very much, I know. That happens in life sometimes. We lose things and it hurts us, but everything will be okay. You cry as much as you need to, my love. Everything will all be okay." I rocked her to sleep like this.

Maybe I'm a horribly harsh parent. Maybe I made the wrong decision. it sucks that my kids have to suffer the consequences of such decisions. I'll never know whether or not I did the right thing. She was okay this morning, but I can't just erase the image of her in so much pain last night... damn I wish parenting could be more black and white. I'm beginning to hate grey more and more.

An email that made me laugh :)

The densest element in the known Universe has been found!

Pelosium:
A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.
These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
The symbol of Pelosium is PU.

Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes.
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass.
When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnausium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium.

Brigitte Gabriel- expert on the Middle East

"We gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.

(homosexuals hung for their "crime")

I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators shouted, 'Allah Akbar!' My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word 'infidel.'

I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13, dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York, or Britons in London. We were Arab Christians living in Lebanon.
( Two year old child beheaded in the name of Allah)

As a victim of Islamic terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves 'Why do they hate us?' The psychoanalyst experts were coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and the West were paying attention to the Middle East they would not have had to ask the question. Simply put, they hate us because we are defined in their eyes by one simple word: 'infidels.'

Under the banner of Islam 'la, ilaha illa Allah, muhammad
rasoulu Allah,' (None is god except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) they murdered Jewish children in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India, and expelled almost 900,000 Jews from Muslim lands. We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference and shortsightedness.

Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamist's are leading us to our demise.

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Cahaba and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the picturesof the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper.
From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those who mock Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared for another holocaust, those pictures have given us a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News pictures and video of these events represent a canvas of hate decorated by different nationalities who share one common ideology of hate, bigotry and intolerance derived from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its wrath against the infidel and dominate the world. An Islam which has declared 'Intifada' on the West.

America and the West can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental disease are starting to attack the body, and if they don't take the necessary steps now to control it, death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand the nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry of snakes. They slither and they hiss, and they would eat each other alive, but they will unite in a hideous mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam on the world.

This is the ugly face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting a powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic human instincts. An ideology that can turn a mother into a launching pad of death. A perfect example is a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian Territories who raves in heavenly joy about sending her three sons to death and offering the ones who are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that is capable of offering highly educated individuals such as doctors and lawyers far more joy in attaining death than any respect and stature life in society is ever capable of giving them.

(Hindu man begging for his life before being murdered for his beliefs)

The United States has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred and terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East ring with shrill prayers and monotonous chants calling death, destruction and damnation down on America and its people. The radical Islamist deeds have been as vile as their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis, more than three thousand Americans have died in a terror campaign almost unprecedented in its calculated cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide. Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well the deaths of their victims. This intentional, indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American citizens is justified and glorified in the name of Islam.

(Rabbi and wife assaulted and murdered in the name of Islam)

America cannot effectively defend itself in this war unless and until the American people understand the nature of the enemy that we face. Even after 9/11 there are those who say that we must engage our terrorist enemies, that we must address their grievances. Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process where the rule of law comes from the voices of many not that of just one prophet. It is the respect we instill in our children towards all religions. It is the equality we grant each other as human beings sharing a planet and striving to make the world a better place for all humanity. Their grievance is the kindness and respect a man shows a woman, the justice we practice as equals under the law, and the mercy we grant our enemy. Their grievance cannot be answered by an apology for who or what we are.

(Man and child after being stoned to death)

Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30 years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to launch a full scale attack on the very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of life on our civilization.

(Common sight. A boy parading around a severed hand and foot from an infidel)

If we don't wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action against the terrorists within it, if we don't believe in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to, we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America's learning curve since the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect."

- Brigitte Gabriel

(Brigitte Gabriel is an expert on the Middle East conflict and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject. She's the former news anchor of World News for Middle East television and the founder of AmericanCongressforTruth.com )

Please see hissheep.org/islam/pictures_of_islam.html

Some interesting quotes from the Qur'an:

"Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends." (Surah 5:51)

"Slay them wherever you find them...Idolatry is worse than carnage...Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme." (Surah 2:19...0-)

"Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it." (Surah 2:216)

"If you should die or be slain in the cause of God, His forgiveness and His mercy would surely be better than all the riches..." (Surah 3:156-)

"Seek out your enemies relentlessly." (Surah 4:103-)

"Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God's religion shall reign supreme." (Surah 8:36-)

"Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them." (Surah 9:121-)

"Fight against such as those to whom the Scriptures were given [Jews and Christians]...until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued." (Surah 9:27-)

"If you do not fight, He will punish you sternly, and replace you by other men." (Surah 9:37-)

"Prophet make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home." (Surah 9:73)