Pro-choice is NOT Pro-abortion....

I am pro-choice - which does not mean PRO-ABORTION. I have to put it that way because some people still believe pro-choice means pro-abortion. It does not. It means that I believe that each person's body is their own, under their own control and affected by their own decisions. No person is owned by another nor should any person be under someone else's thumb or subjected to someone else making decisions for them against their will. Therefore, I have to support freedom and that freedom of choice. Each person has the right and responsibility to choose their own outcome, even if someone else doesn't agree with it.

Now personally, I do not think I would choose to do it. I don't think that I could. I believe that life begins at conception, plus it took me around ten years to finally have ONE baby. She is five now, I cannot imagine life without her. She was very very very wanted. Birth control is not 100%, no, but the only way around that is abstaining, who in their right mind is going to turn down their spouse lol? Either way, if we had another, it would be meant to be, since I also don't really believe in accidents. I'm not even sure I'd be capable of it if we found out there was something wrong with the baby and he or she wouldn't live. It just doesn't feel right to me... for me. I have had friends who have struggled with this decision, and some who have had abortions, some who have given babies up for adoption, and some who have raised the baby. All I have hoped for each of them in regards is peace and strength in whatever decision they ultimately made. In every case when they shared the struggle with me, I have always told them to trust their own hearts, and to make sure that whatever they choose THEY can live with. I love them no matter what, I don't judge my friends, and it isn't MY decision. It is hard to become a parent, and it is hard to decide not to. It must be awful thinking about a child you gave up too, even if you knew it meant that child gets to have a better life.

I was raised Christian and I am now an agnostic. I do not think my religion nor lack of it has anything to do with how I feel. Many decisions and struggles people face are extremely personal and extremely individual, and NOT up to others to have any say, influence, or jockeying for position. Just my two cents on the matter.

My music box

I often wonder what draws people to their listening preferences... their 'music box'. I hear various people say that their influences are this person or that person, this artist, this band, that sound. I admit I don't always hear whatever they are talking about. What I focus on instead is the feelings invoked for ME, thoughts, memories and yes... questions. I suppose I am a hard sell, most of my favorite songs have much more going on under the surface than meets the eye. I am not a mathmatician, I like words. Of course since I have a little girl this also equates to 'itsy bitsy spider' tossed in with a slice of 'So What'.

My playlist is eclectic, a combination of genres, decades. I have tried without success to create things such as 'driving audio' or something to play when doing distasteful tasks like cleaning my house. I have found lately that it's better just to turn on whatever sounds good to me at the time. I listen to a lot of different things, familiar as well as new just in case something jumps out at me. Is that what you do... or do you stick with tried and true? I do not love everything, I'm not even an artist addict, religiously following someone like Deadheads did or the merchandising nightmares that plague parents of most teenage girls....oh wait, YES I did belong to that group in the early 90s =P These days I guess I am more selective, what speaks to me might not mean anything to the majority of people I rub elbows with but that doesn't matter. I always believe in taking the good in something and leaving whatever doesn't apply - and this makes sense in music and most other parts of life itself. I do believe now more than ever that messages present in music connect people to each other, sometimes beyond this life. At the end of last year someone I hadn't known very long was suddenly gone.... but what he listened to made a difference for me.

As a recent avid watcher of youtube, I have been seeing a lot of user created videos and I'm fantasizing about making some of my own.... but how do you make a tribute of seemingly unrelated things? One of the coolest things I saw lately was a vid done for a contest (long over) combining Peter Petrelli (from Heroes) with 'Godspeed' (a song from my favorite band Anberlin) and I thought it was brilliant. Too bad I didn't think of it... but that's what I get for discovering the draw of youtube so late. Of course if you want to pick things apart even more, that's not the only thing I discovered late.... but that's for another episode.