So...

when I first saw the smoke I thought, "The chicken boiled over on the stove, so now there's some smoke." I turned the fan on over the kitchen stove. But the smoke got thicker.

And there wasn't any in the kitchen.

So I go out into the living room to open the windows when I smell something burning that isn't chicken stock on the stove. As I walk across the room I smell the smell of burning paper and wood and something else. So I opened the window to let it out and go smelling the rest of the house. My mother-in-law is walking around smelling too.

I say to my fourteen-year-old, "Go see if you smell smoke in the basement." I hear that the basement is full of smoke. I go running down and when I inhaled I started to cough and choke. I handed him the box of kittens (our cat had kittens earlier this month) and I yell upstairs for everyone to get out of the house, there's a fire.

The smoke appears to be coming out from under the door to my husband's office, which is full of kindling...I mean books. I always thought I'd grab my Daddy's trumpet or pictures, but faced with the reality of a house fire, I got the kids out of the house, called 9-1-1, shooed out the animals, and grabbed my cell phone so I could call my Bear.

My father-in-law showed up about five minutes later. He found the source and put it out. A mouse had chewed through an extension cord. There was short. Some of the exposed wire was touching a piece of cardboard and a piece of wood. He unplugged the extension cord.

The fire department showed up and said that it was a good thing we were home. He said that the cord was burning and would have reach the electrical outlet it was plugged into and that would have been that.

I was pretty good for the first ten minutes the firemen were here. Then it hit me that had we gone to the park like we had planned to do, we would have lost our home and everything in it.

Of course, the only thing I was concerned about when facing the possibility of loosing my home was my family and the pets.

I am very blessed that God was watching over us. I'm so eternally thankful that my father-in-law forgot to get something at the store so he had to go back. I'm thankful that we got a late start this morning. I'm thankful that my FIL and children had meandered at the store to begin with. All these things made it too late to go.

But I am thankful, most thankful, that God allowed the short while we were here to stop the fire before it occured, instead of letting it go last night while we were gone or tonight while we were asleep.

I am very thankful, God, and I wish I could find the wight words with which to tell you what I feel in my heart at this moment. But I can't. So thank-you through tears will just have to do.

My apologies to Batman who will be seeing this twice...

DNA Clears Man of Two Child Murders

In short, this man was convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend's two children twenty years ago. He has now been exonerated using modern technological advances.

"It is better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man stands convicted" - Thomas Jefferson

It would be nice if our system made it impossible for an innocent man to be convicted of a crime he did not commit. However, our system is run by men who are by nature flawed. Therefore, our system cannot help but have failure in it. As reprehensible as it may be, there are and will continue to be innocent persons who are punished unjustly. This, not the willful act of the people, but one which simply cannot be avoided.

When this travesty does occur and a person's life has been destroyed, one cannot help but feel remorse for the one imprisoned wrongly, and their loved ones. I feel that it is incumbent upon us to do our best to restore said person to the best of our abilities and also pay restitution for the hardships they were forced to endure.

Apparently the government agrees … and has set that amount at $25,000 per year. (This is where I start to rant…)

Let's start with the fact that this money isn't paid automatically, he must APPLY for it. Well, I feel that time in prison by an innocent man is application enough.

Also, $25,000 a year isn't NEARLY enough for what this man has lost. After twenty years in prison he is eligible for a mere $500,000. If the U.S. Government gets to tax it, he might walk away with a little over half of that. But I'd like to examine what this man endured, his trials, over the last twenty years to determine if the $500,000 is truly a worthy number:

20 years of the title "Child Molester and Murderer";
20 years of the stigma that goes with his title;
20 years of confinement;
20 years of sexual assault (let's not bury our heads in the sand and pretend we are unaware of what happens in prison, particularly to rapist and child molesters);
20 years of prison fights;
20 years of prison food;
20 years without daily physical contact with those he loves;
20 years without vacations or respite;
20 years of hell most of us would not even want to IMAGINE, much less live.

I look back over the last twenty years of my life and at age 36 I am heavy-hearted of what he missed out on:

Love and commitment;
children;
first steps;
first words;
family picnics;
family vacations;
grandchildren;
respect;
education;
a career;
the chance to take what he has earned and invest it;
a home to call his own;
a life in general.

Does $500,000 really provide any justice at all for what this man has been through and what he has lost?

Let's see, the woman who foolishly opened a containing of hot coffee in her car as they pulled away from McDonald's received how many MILLION in compensation for her own irresponsible act of stupidity?

I realize that in reality, we as a society can never repay this man for what it has cost him, but we could at least put forth a serious effort. How much is a man's life worth when it has been stolen from him?

I would say that $500,000 isn't nearly enough. Yes, we need to set a limit, but what is that limit knowing that it will never be enough? Realizing that money can never restore to him what was stripped of him, we should at least see to it that he can live comfortably for the rest of his life. We owe him that much.

Too Funny! I'm sure I'm on some government list for being there.

So we have rapists, child pornographers and child molesters running around all over our country and THIS is what the government is spending my tax dollars on???

Yet, Hugh Heffner has three whores actually living with him, which he's been doing for decades, and no one says a word to him. Believe me, they're getting paid for their, uh, SERVICES, but I don't see any of them being prosecuted. "It's their lifestyle, how they choose to live."

Yeah, okay, so as Bear pointed out, Heff can live with three women having sex with each and they get a television show. BUT some guy in Utah who's willing to commit to three women for a lifetime and have children with them and raise them, yeah, HE goes to jail. WTH??? Evidently here the issue is with the commitment. Maybe those guys out in Utah need to stop marrying these women and just live with them all instead. Then they could have an entire damned harem and the government won't care. Just. Don't. Call. It. Marriage. and they'll be okay.