Perhaps I should post these! After weeks of hearing, “are you sure it’s not twins?” I got a definitive answer: NO. It’s ONE baby, thanks.

It is, however a big baby already. From charting, I know exactly the day I ovulated — a date that would have made me 11 weeks, 2 days pregnant at the time of the ultrasound. My doc’s estimate (based on LMP) put me at 12 weeks, 3 days. The ultrasound put the baby at 12 weeks, 5 days — 13 weeks for the head (gulp)! So, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens by my next ultrasound in mid-October…will the baby measure even farther ahead? Will short me be completely round by the time I’m due? Will I look ready to pop any day when I’m only 6 months along when we likely move?

Inquiring minds want to know.

.

Smile for the camera! Baby seemed to perpetually face toward the screen — making the side view for the Nuchal Translucency test a little bit of a challenge. The sonographer was amazing, and she got it, no problem. Everything looks normal, by the way.

.

Look at those little toes. Just precious!

.

The beautifully strong heartbeat ranged from 163 to 171 bpm. Old wives’ tales would say this indicates a girl. The Intelligender test I took says this is a boy. Mid-October’s ultrasound will, I hope, give us a more definative answer. Either one is good — I just want to know which, so I can prepare.

Rather than coming up with a title on my own, I’ll steal the title of the post I’m linking. Via Carnival of the Godless, I came across Holy Smoke at A Load of Bright. He compares quitting religion (as I did through December, then formally announced as of the first of 2007) to quitting smoking (which I did almost instantly in January 2004, even before I knew I was pregnant). It’s a striking comparison to me — one that resonates with me.

A sampling:

One question that is often asked of atheists is, “how are you going to replace religion? People need religion. If you take it away, what are you going to put in its place?” Many atheists answer this question on face value, normally with an outline of secular humanism. This is correct in a sense, but the question is actually heavily loaded. It assumes that people need religion. Do they really?

I used to think I needed cigarettes like I needed food. At times, when I was broke in university, I would scrape pennies from the floor of my car and the backs of couches to buy cigarettes while my cupboards were bare. “I need a cigarette”, I’d tell my bemused housemates, “I need one”. When you smoke, you are imbibing poison into your body. If there is one thing that, by definition, your body never needs, it is poison. I didn’t need a cigarette. I needed food. If you don’t eat, you die. If you don’t smoke, not only do you not die, you live longer! It’s easy for me to say that now, but at the time I was convinced that it was an essential.

Just as we are all born atheists, we are all born non-smokers. Do people really need religion, or do they just not know any better? Obviously, not all people need religion – the existence of happy atheists proves that. So why would some people need it and not others?

Over time, I’ve found myself filled with nearly zero angst about my walking away from religion in general, Christianity in particular. When I first even contemplated (not out loud, even — just in my head) the idea that God might just not be, the emptiness wasn’t unlike the craving for a cigarette — a loss that, had I not fed an addiction, I wouldn’t have ever recognized.

These days, when I consider religion, it’s largely in relation to how I’m raising my daughter, and how I can coach her to think critically about everything she encounters, even “truths” that I might tell her. Someday, she might be atheist/agnostic. She might be Christian. She might be Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or a New Age flake. Whichever she becomes, my wish is that she will have spent time genuinely considering *why* she believes what she does.

Whoa, long travel days are rough! I got up at 2:15am to leave my folks’ house in Monument, CO at 3:20am for Denver International by 4:30. Flight was at 6:30. Got to Houston by 9:10, just to sit on the tarmac waiting for a spot for our plane to park (by about 9:40, yawn). Met Mike — my flight arrived exactly across the corridor from the gate for the flight to Narita — grabbed some food, and we were back onto a large aircraft for the next 13+ hours! From there, we caught a bus for another 1-1/2 hours to get to Omiya Station and a hotel. Even though it was only 6:00pm (on Sunday, mind you), we crashed and completely missed dinner, just to find ourselves wide awake at 3pm.

Let’s see…awake from 2:00am Saturday until 6:00pm Sunday (3am, Colorado time) — so that’s a good 24 hours of travel. Ack.

When I checked in with family this morning, they asked for my impressions so far of Japan. As bleary-eyed as I was on the bus ride, my impressions were so far limited. This morning didn’t add much, except that the hotel’s cafe had deco reminiscent of a 1980s salad bar (pale peaches and cream, green carpet, faded houseplants) and played the worst music. Take any overwrought love song from an American movie. Add Muzak. Oh, and the eggs here are runny. Please tell me that runny eggs aren’t going to be an ongoing theme!

Whine, whine, whine…packing again now, because we’re going to wander around Saitama/Omiya station, buy our tickets to Misawa (only a 3-hour trip this time), and immerse ourselves in northern Tokyo, pretending that we don’t look very, very pale, chubby, and tall compared to everyone else here.

Thanks, all, for the encouragements about my own personal growth and my marriage. It’s a challenge — the marriage, that is — and honestly, it’s better at 6-1/2 months than I probably could have even expected. Maybe we’re just stacking the getting-to-know-one-another with the horrific-first-year?

I’m heading out of town for a bit to grab a bite of sushi. In Japan.

Well, really, Mike has business that takes him first to the small town of Misawa, then later to Tokyo. It’s 10:11pm, and in order to get to the airport in time to check my baggage for a 6:05am flight, I have to leave here no later than 3:30am. Ah, joy. I plan to keep myself up for a good while now, and then tank out on the long flight from Houston to Tokyo.

Oddly, this trip might (but I’m not promising) give me more of an opportunity to write. Mike’s working, but my agenda is semi-empty, at least the first week, since I haven’t found much to do in Misawa yet. I’ve been reading Parenting Beyond Belief as I’ve had time and hit the mood for deeper thoughts, and really do plan to scribble some of said thoughts down some day. Otherwise, I have a couple Jodi Picoult novels (thanks, Joy, for the loan!), some mystery/thriller brain candy, and the recent release of Carl Sagan essays.

Have a great couple of days, everyone, and I’ll be in touch!

I’ll take the Bass & Beyond. You can keep the Bud, thanks.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Parenting Beyond Belief, and it’s been available for a bit, but Hemant Mehta’s I Sold My Soul on eBay only released today, so today I ordered both, plus a bit of fluff. What can I say? I (heart) Clinton & Stacy.

Hooray for my accidental purchase of Amazon Prime — these will arrive Thursday!

Okay, but I’ll make one anyway. The other day, on the phone with my Dad, we had a very brief (like barely touching on it) conversation about a political article I sent him — one that I told him helped me to perhaps have a slightly better understanding of the culturally conservative mindset. He admitted that he hadn’t read the article yet because if I read something, then I’ll really have to think about it and come to conclusions about it. At a later point in the conversation, this same logic applied to religion, and how he was completely unwilling to even speculate about whether there’s a God — because where could those kinds of thoughts lead???

Oh, the horrors. But then, I know this quite well. I remember clearly the first day after I first questioned whether God existed. I felt somehow let down and lonely — like I just found out a friend had died. I quickly tried to shove that Pandora’s box closed again, but it had been opened, and eventually, I arrived to where I am now. Non-religious whatsoever. I still have a spiritual component to my life, but it has nothing to do with the Christianity with which I grew up.

So, I guess the point is this: his fear is somewhat justified. But is it worthwhile to ignore what might be real, just because you might not like the answers?

Yeah, yeah…I’m around here somewhere.

I do have things to say. Someday, I might even make time to say them.

In the meantime remember, things that seem magical and mystical usually have *some* sort of rational explanation. Really.

Grrrrrr.

I just came home from renting An Inconvenient Truth, so I could FINALLY watch it. I know, it’s sad to be so late to the game, but hey, I have a 2-year-old.

I opened the box, thinking that I’m cool with watching a documentary with Maya over dinner. They. Didn’t. Remove. The. Security. Device.

Grumble. I have a pizza arriving in minutes, so I guess we’ll see this one another time. Instead, I may still watch Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (or whatever it’s called)…but that likely will need to wait until after Maya’s bedtime.

A friend on an e-mail group recently asked us this. I’m going to be 30 soon, and I feel like it’s too late… Many of us responded to her that 30 is not even remotely close to being “late,” and gave ideas for how to make a decision. This response, though, struck me enough that I asked the author permission to post it:

Honestly… I’m gonna be 38 in March… I still don’t know :) But I have learned something. Knowing what you want for the rest of your life isn’t for everyone. I happen to be a person that doesn’t need to know what I want to do forever as long as I can take stock of my life and be content with it. Sounds weird, I know. But it’s true. Every once in a while, I stop and look. Like when [husband] was sick. I realized that being on the fast track to a corner office was NOT where I wanted to go with my life. So I looked for something to do out of my house. I taught myself web design. I look around now…I’m not thrilled with my health, I’m happy with my work, I’m happy with homeschooling. So, I’m changing my ways so I can be happy with my health.

Just remember the rest of your life is a very long time.

(emphasis added)

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it’s *okay* to not always know. I have a general idea of where I want to head, but don’t feel that I can really do anything about that until after we’re done having children. (That’s a big change that’s come from getting married. Given the chance to actually have another child or two, I want to do so while I’m still young enough.)

As my husband and I discussed my career path (I snorted, “career? I don’t have a *career* — I have a job.”), he commented that there seemed to be many things that I was willing to consider. My online friend summed it up for me very well when: as long as I can be content with my stock in life, THAT is what’s important.

Just thinking…

I’ve touched on this subject before, and now that I’ve formally declared as agnostic, if not outright atheist, it’s something I feel even more strongly about.

One does not need to have a religion in order to behave in a moral, ethical manner.

Here’s a little reading on the subject, since I’m lacking time for a comprehensive post at the moment:

Living in America, this discussion usually plays out in terms of Judeo-Christian beliefs. The most common criticism about atheists is that without belief in God, we have no ethics or morals. A recent letter to the editor said, “No system of ethics … can stand alone. To make [ethics] understandable to a child, it must be clothed in religious terms, such as having an omniscient, omnipotent father in Heaven.” I completely disagree.

When a child hits another and the second child cries, the first one doesn’t need to have read the Bible or gone to Sunday school to know his action was wrong. Nor does he need to fear eternal damnation to discourage him from doing it again.

I try to teach my children right from wrong with a simple principle that most Christians will recognize. “How would you like it if Johnny took all the toy trucks and wouldn’t share them with you?” It’s not as eloquent as “do unto others,” but the message is the same and it gets the point across.

hat tip: Friendly Atheist

Okay, I should have written this yesterday, but I didn’t.

Yesterday was a crabby, crabby day — one of those in which I was irritable at my husband (hence no F&A part 3, oops) and throwing a pity party with a guest list of one. Well, two, really — a good friend of mine got to bear the brunt of my grumpitude. As Mike has told me before, “man, she must be a REALLY good friend.” Um yeah. Thanks, Joy.

On to the post:

Blogging for Choice Day: Why am I pro-choice?

If you’ve read me for a while, you might know that my daughter was most assuredly *not* a planned child. On January 21, 2004, I peed on a stick and immediately started spewing a litany of expletives. The first person I told was a friend in California, one who only knows me online. My first words after she answered the phone? I’m FUCKING PREGNANT. This was followed by a lot of sobbing and wailing, which I proceeded to, well…flip out.

After that fateful pee (hee hee…that was fun to type), I spent some time contemplating something I would have never dreamed I’d consider: having an abortion. You see, I’ve always considered myself pro-choice. Even if I were against the idea of abortion, per se, I simply don’t think it’s the government’s place to force a woman to carry an unwanted child to term. Now, for myself, I’d *never* have one. But I wouldn’t tell anyone else they couldn’t do it.

Yet there I was, thinking of having an abortion. My cousin (she’s more like my sister, really) had already said that she’d hold my hand every step of the way, no matter what I decided. It was certainly an option.

On January 22, 2004, I remember heading out for lunch, and stopping at Barnes & Noble on my way to On the Border for a little fajita salad (mmmm. salad.). I bought a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting (no link, because frankly, the book sucks), and wandered over to OTB. You see, it wasn’t that I’d decided yet; I simply wanted to ensure that *if* I decided to keep the pregnancy, that I didn’t screw things up in the meantime. While I sat and ate, a man walked by and commented on my reading. “Oh, we loved those books. Congratulations — it’s an amazing thing to become a parent.” Never mind that I didn’t look pregnant, and that he was making some (admittedly correct) assumptions. Instead of getting my hackles up, I found that I glowed. And I realized that I’d already made a decision, whether I’d admitted it to myself or not.

On that day three years ago yesterday, I made my choice.

When the pro-life side talks about pro-choice folks, then tend to paint them as pro-abortion. I know that in my case, nothing could have been further from the truth. I dreaded the idea. If I’d gone through with termination, I wouldn’t have told a soul, ever. It would have been my own secret. I was definitely *not* pro-abortion.

That said, every day I am thankful that I got to make a choice. There has never been a reason for me to look at parenthood as something that was forced upon me. I made a decision to become Maya’s mother, and as a part of that, I relinquished the right to resent her. It helps my own emotional health to always be able to see her as something I decided to do, not as a burden I was handed. Instead of feeling childishly put-upon, I can step up and become an adult — and the parent that I know I can become.

It’s with great pleasure that I can look at my daughter and tell her that she is the best choice I’ve ever made. I would never dream of taking the ability to make that decision away from anyone.

Found via Stardust:

Here is a beautiful excerpt from Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), anthologized in African-American Humanism: An Anthology edited by Norm R. Allen Jr. (1991)

. . . Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.

I post this not because it illustrates my reasons for becoming an ex-Christian, but because it was how I realized I already was one. This is not to cast aspersions on those to whom prayer is still an important part of their lives…this merely reflects what I found in my own experience, and what I have seen in others. When I relied on God and prayer to meet my needs, I became lazy about meeting them myself. When a stumbling block appeared in my path, I didn’t see it as a challenge to overcome, but instead as a “sign” that perhaps I was on the wrong path (compared to what was meant to be).

For me, there is a great deal of strength in taking responsibility for my own behaviors and choices.

Better late than never!

Just before leaving for our honeymoon (Costa Rica…ah…), we finally got our wedding photos — including full 12MP electronic files, complete with copyright! Keep in mind that these are all untouched; they’ve only been converted from RAW to jpg, but otherwise left alone.

The entire set is here. Enjoy!

As promised, here are some answers to the questions the freelancer posed to me. I’m still debating whether I’m willing to have a profile published.

Updated: I decided that the only good from allowing the interview would be to provide some fundie preachers with strategic ideas for how to convert folks like me. No thanks. I’m still keeping my answers here, becuase it was a pretty damned good exercise in remembering from whence I came:

Read the rest of this entry »

Since The Zero Boss linked my coming-out post on FTLOG last night, I’ve gotten quite a bump in traffic — more than I’ve likely seen in months (considering my laziness of late re: posting). One of the people who stopped by to visit is a freelance journalist who emailed me:

Hi Allison,
.
My name is [redacted] and I’m a Chicago-based freelancer who writes brief profiles of people with a emphasis on their spiritual journeys.(The profiles appear in the San Diego-based magazine Outreach.) I found your blog this morning with your moving posts about your journey away from a Christian faith and I would love to interview you. Today if possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re here, it’s likely (at this point, at least) that you’ve wandered over from Oh, for the love of God… — my blog home until just recently (today, in fact). Give me time, and I’ll have some real content up here. If nothing else, I have all kinds of thoughts bubbling up about how it feels to be newly-married at the ripe old (read: set in my ways) age of 35.
.
What I expect this blog to be: As with FTLOG, IIWII (nice, eh?) will be my space for thinking aloud. Especially since I’m married to an introvert, I find that I often need to bounce things around for a while before even *I* know what I’m thinking. I expect my topics of conversation to be as eclectic as before, with perhaps an emphasis on current events, psychology/mental wellness, life as a parent, and life within a couple.
.
What I *don’t* expect this blog to be: Even though I am newly “out” as an ex-Christian, I’m not planning rants and complaint sessions about my former faith. What I might discuss, however, is the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) mind shift that I’m noticing as I view the world through a different paradigm. Let’s just say that the Christmas season has been eye-opening to me this year in many ways.
.
Another change: It’s possible — likely, even — that my husband will take up keyboard and contribute here and there. He takes no credit (or blame) for my writings, nor do I for his. We may be married, but we’re still most assuredly individuals!
.
However you’ve arrived, welcome! Have a seat — the sofa’s soft and warm. Enjoy a cup of cocoa…or a dark beer…or a glass of fine red…or whatever you prefer. After all, this is the virtual living room; the sky’s the limit for your virtual bar tab!
.
Finally, pardon the dust. Right now, I’m working with a chilly winter theme “out of the box,” which feels mightily appropriate, considering the 2 feet of snow that recently blanketed Santa Fe. Eventually, I’ll have something that looks and feels a little more like home.