This & That

** spoiler alert ** I thought this was a chick-lit book, happy and carefree. Boy was I wrong! As a mother I can relate to being pulled in a million directions and finally asking yourself, "What's the important things in life?" 

 I was confused, and annoyed, with the business plan in this book. Too much lingo and jargon made some pages hard to follow along. But the actual business proposal was somewhat amusing so I'll look past that.

 But more so, I related to the health issue of a parent in this book. Because it happens...we will all probably have to say goodbye to our parents in our lifetime. Reading about Alice's father brought back memories of my own father. I stayed up until 1:30 am to finish this book and bawled through the last 1/4 of it. I think Egan wrote these feelings/emotions/issues out perfectly and made it all so believable. Because the father in this story had no voice (due to a cancer operation) I think it made it easy for me to imprint my own father into the story. Any book that can make me cry is a good book. 

 “When you're a kid, you think you're going to have this deep well of time with your parents when you grow up and you're all on equal footing. When I had kids of my own, I thought that time would come when my kids grew up and I had a little more freedom. I imagined myself as a fifty-year-old woman, strolling around the duck pond with my eighty-year-old dad. I might have looped my arm through his.
Now I knew, this was not to be.”
A Window Opens  by Elisabeth Egan

*Remember all the rainbow profile pictures in support of gay marriage on Facebook? Well, September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and I would love to see people "go gold" in support of that. And please read this article to learn more about Childhood Cancer. We need more awareness, more funding, more support!!

*I've heard people say "Why bring a child into this horrid world?"
I think, "What if that child changes the world?" 
I loved this picture on Humans of New York. This boy brightens the world around him, like so many others do in their corner of the world.

* This article makes me feel sick to my stomach, and quite confused as I don't really see the authors point. She's glad she has her daughter now but wishes she had had the chance to abort her? She didn't sign up for a child with health challenges and doesn't think other parents should have to parent a child with varying health ailments? 
Becoming a parent to ANY child means the possibility of parenting a child with issues...autism, cancer, child falls down the steps and gets brain damaged, teen gets in a car accident and is paralyzed. What would we think of a parent who walked into a hospital room after that and said "I didn't sign up for this!" and walked out forever.
 That's what parents do - love their children no matter what, take care of them no matter what. This women, holding her child in her arms, feels angry that she didn't know beforehand when she could have done something about it. This is so, so sad. What happened to our society to make some people "less than"?

*On a happier note, some blogs of family and friends that I enjoy:

~A DIY blog with fun projects Laura Ann's Home 

~A book blog for bookworms Pursuing the White Whale

~My mom and her co-author's blog Mary & Me 

~Another stay-at-home mama blog The Space Between This and That