You Say It's Your Birthday?

It's true. Today is my birthday.

To be fair, it's a bit of an anticlimax, because my wonderful darling Mr. Oram gave me my present on Monday (he can't wait - neither can I - we have impulse control problems, thank God we don't gamble). I got a beautiful lovely MacBook Pro! I'm thrilled, and so so blessed. Since my old computer died, I had been fretting about how to study for the Bar (I'm doing online classes) and been feeling isolated, since everytime I wanted to blog or send an email, I had to either go into work or ask my husband if I could borrow his computer when he was home (when all I wanted to do was spend time with him). This is a huge blessing. Thank you Apple for selling refurbished computers!

Yaaaay

I have so far discovered my favorite part of this Mac, which is Kindle for Mac. Even though I have a Nook, not all eBooks are available on Nook - nor are they very cheap! And I have Amazon giftcards, not Barnes and Noble. So it's nice to be able to go back and forth between the two devices, reading what I can on both (and of course all my print books, which take over my house daily). 

With this, I finally read local girl Kelle Hampton's book (now #11 on NYT Best Seller List!) Bloom. I like Kelle's blog and was interested to learn more about her and her journey with this book. I thought there were great parts about it, and I was happy to read a honest account of how a person deals with  discovering their newborn has Down Syndrome - that at first, it's not treated like good news, even though you love your child so much. 

But at the same time, I was disappointed that Hampton felt the need to begin her book with talking about her parent's divorce, which came about in no small part because her father is gay. She writes about the hurtful things people in her church said about her father, how they warped her relationship with him, and how in the end she ditched church and went back to loving her father. I'll be the first one to talk about the problems that churches have in their treatment of gay people - it's most often wrong and at worst, sinful. But I have a problem too with people who write off the entire concept of "organized religion" because of their experience with their one parish. Of course, it's her experience and her book - but I was sad that she started this way because for the rest of the book, I resisted being drawn into the story. It was a really bad first impression - and I'm not sure why it was necessary. Was she trying to connect acceptance of her father to acceptance of her daughter? That link wasn't made very explicitly (or maybe I'm just dense), so it felt like putting that huge chunk out there, right at the beginning, instead of letting it slowly come out through the telling of the rest of the story, was like this huge disclaimer: BY THE WAY I TALK ABOUT GOD BUT I DON'T LIKE CHURCHES OKAY? Okay, okay - I get it! Thanks. 

I'm getting ready to start Stephanie Nielson's "Heaven is Here." Have you heard of this woman? I don't know how I haven't before today! She was in a plane accident with her husband, suffered major burns across 80% of her body, and had to learn how to love her life again. She's a mother of four and part of that cadre of Mormon mommy bloggers that has astounded the world, and I fell in love with her today. I'm betting her book will be awesome. 

Later today Mr. Oram and I will be heading over to Ave Maria town for a chant conference (like liturgical chant...Gregorian...that kind of thing). Tom calls it my birthday present, because I do enjoy Ave a lot. I'll be glad to get away, even if it's just for a night. Besides, since it's my birthday, I have every excuse to go crazy in their bookstore...and they have plenty for me to go crazy over! 

I hope you all have a blessed weekend and a fabulous Friday the 13th.