The Little Mister (small, 7-lb brother to the Little Miss) made his appearance at 11:30 a.m. on June 30th.  As with his older sister, it was a bit of a bumpy ride getting him here.

Pre-eclampsia runs in my family.  My mother suffered from it during all 3 of her pregnancies; which is atypical.  Usually, women who have pre-eclampsia have it during the first pregnancy but not during subsequent pregnancies.  If they do show signs during subsequent pregnancies, it generally emerges later and is milder.  This was not Mom's luck.  Fortunately, it was mine.

I had been retaining fluid (bigtime foot and ankle swelling, with some finger and arm swelling) for probably a month or so when my blood pressure finally started to rise.  The symptoms of pre-eclampsia are 3-fold:  Swelling, raised blood pressure, and finally kidney dysfunction with protein in the urine.  I made it to week 36 before the second symptom showed up.  The doc wasn't pleased, but he wasn't altogether surprised either.  I had 3 days of bed rest, followed by amniocentesis to determine if the Little Mr's lungs were well-developed.  When the amnio, performed at 8:30 a.m., came back showing good lung development, it was go time.  By 11:15 I was in the OR and by 11:30 the Little Mr was out, screaming and urinating on the doc.  C-sections are painful to recover from, but they are very, very fast.  However, there are some things that could be done to make them more pleasant.

When C-sections are performed, there is a large sterile blue drape separating the parents from the doctor.  This is great, because you can't see what's going on.  C-sections are generally performed under epidural anaesthetic, which is also great because you don't want to feel what's going on (you feel pressure, but that's all).  Unfortunately, you don't get to bring an iPod or wear headphones, so you still get to hear what's going on.  In a classic example of the effectiveness of sound effects, you get to hear the wet-vac sucking sounds and the cutting sounds and the doctor sawing through the scar tissue of your first C-section sounds.  Icky.  But, when this is crowned by the sound of a very peeved young person protesting loudly in that characteristic "WAH, WAH, WAAAAHHHHH!" it's definitely worth it.

And speaking of that characteristic sound, I've gotta go.  The Little Mr needs some lunch, or a diaper change, or just a cuddle. :)

Ever heard of Walter Rothgery?

He should be on your mind, because if you get arrested in Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, or Virginia you could be him.

Walter was mistakenly arrested for carrying a gun while being a felon.  The mistake had its roots in a computer database which wrongly showed Walther as a felon, when in fact he is not.  Because of Gillespie Co, TX's interpretation of when 6th Amendment protection and right to counsel kicks in, Walter was not provided with a lawyer at his first hearing, when it would have been easiest for an attorney to provide documentation and get the computer database corrected.  Instead, he was left in a steadily worsening situation for 6 months...6 months during which Gillespie County continued to prepare its case against Walter, while he had no legal recourse.  Walter eventually ended up in jail over 100 miles from his home, all on the basis of a flawed computer record.  Help finally came not in the form of the legal counsel to which all citizens are entitled, but in the form of a sympathetic jail warden who helped Walter find an attorney.  The attorney was able to provide the necessary documentation, leading to the dismissal of the weapons charge and Walter's release.  Walter then sued Gillespie County for violating his constitutional rights.

Sadly, Gillespie County refused to admit it had done anything wrong, and a federal court and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear the case.  The case finally had to go to the US Supreme Court, where the justices passed down their common sense ruling. "We merely reaffirm what we have held before and what an overwhelming majority of American jurisdictions understand in practice: a criminal defendant's initial appearance before a judicial officer, where he learns the charge against him and his liberty is subject to restriction, marks the start of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion.

Has this made a difference in Gillespie County?  Charles Frigerio, who is handling the case for the county, cavalierly stated, "He was released from prison".

Read about the story online at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_re_us/scotus_no_lawyer;_ylt=ApLkaDdhakKtlaOH493Kxz1vzwcF

I learned something today:  Most parking spaces are too small.

I don't mean too small for vehicles to fit in them; there's plenty of space that way.  I mean, too small to allow the driver to get out.  Particularly the pregnant driver.

Picture this:  I have strep throat and didn't want to cook for anyone, lest I inadvertently share the joy.  So I took the Little Miss to Pizza Hut for supper (Papa is working tonight).  The plan was to have supper, window shop for wardrobes for her room (our old house doesn't have closets in either of the upstairs bedrooms), get a snow cone for dessert (providing she was good), and go home.  We almost didn't make it.  Why?  The parking lot was full, and the parking spaces are so close together I very nearly couldn't squeeeeeeeze out.

In defense of the folks who chose the size of the spaces, I do drive a minivan, which contributes to the problem.  But, seriously, thank God I don't drive an SUV, or am carrying multiples.  People, I'm 9 months pregnant and I weigh over 200 lbs because of the baby and excess water and so forth.  But geez, I'm still A LOT smaller than some of the folks I see walking around.  How do these people get around?  I mean, even at my girth I still look tiny compared to the customers in the Home Depot parking lot (those guys are BIG, and they drive REALLY BIG TRUCKS).

I'd be more tolerant of the problem if I really believed it would go away in 3 weeks.  But it won't, because then I'll be trying to tote a child seat everywhere I go.  Those things are way wider than I am now, and much less malleable.

All I want is a little space...just a few more inches...please?

As most of you know, we've had some pretty serious tornado damage in the area lately.  One of the recipients is a co-worker of mine, who was renting a house from his father.  The 2 of them had worked out a really good deal:  The father bought the house, which was much larger and closer to work than the son could afford; and the son paid the mortgage payment as his rent and took care of the house.  The plan was that the father would move there with the family when he retired, by which time the son would have enough savings built up to buy his own house and make a decent down payment.

The father is a college professor, and as such he doesn't have much free time.  Over the years he had built up a good relationship with his insurance agent, and felt that the agent was trustworthy.  Consequently, he in good faith handed the job of insuring the house off to the agent.  "Choose what we'll need to be covered," he told the man,"and we'll take your recommendations and consider it done."  This, apparently, was misguided.

The agent insured the house using rental insurance, not homeowner's insurance.  It is unknown if he did this in order to better cover the son's family, or just because he wanted to sell this particular product.  At any rate, the two are apparently not equivalent.  Additionally, he didn't provide gap insurance.  If you're wondering what gap insurance is, it works like this:  You have your house insured through your homeowner's policy.  If something happens to your house, the policy pays up minus any property depreciation.  Consequently, you don't necessarily get enough back to cover all your losses.  Gap insurance covers the gap between the depreciated value of the house and its contents, and what it will actually cost you out-of-pocket to replace your house and all its appliances and furnishings.  Since the father doesn't have gap insurance, he and the son are looking at some difficulty in replacing all the appliances plus rebuilding the house, let alone refurnishing it once it's built.

If you're wondering where the Christian Businessman of the title comes in, I introduced it to ask a question.  Do you know any Christian Businessmen?  Anyone who, if trusted implicitly, will do only what's right for the client or their employees and not try to cut themselves a slice?  I am not saying that all businesspeople are unethical; however, it seems that many of them are more likely to worship Mammon and less likely to adhere to what would be considered Christian business ethics.

In reading about the dealings of these folks, I am increasingly reminded of the H. L. Mencken quote, "If Christ were here today, there is one thing he would not be; and that is a Christian."

Some months back, the Little Miss and I discovered the Cheeseburger Cats.

These are captioned pictures on the website www.icanhascheezburger.com. They're lolcats (consult Wikipedia if you don't know what this means), and they really appeal to both our senses of humor.

I don't know what is so funny about cats.  Maybe it's their nonchalant way of pretending they had nothing to do with the havoc around them...

Or, it could be their total dedication to the cause...

At any rate, we're hooked.  If this meme encourages some good mom-daughter bonding, I'm for it, no matter how stupid it may appear to serious Web users.