The first note to start of my unorganized random thoughts edition of today’s blog, I’d like to point out that I enjoy shamelessly promoting my first venture into sucking it up and publishing a story. You should enjoy buying it too, and for only $0.99 you didn’t really lose more than the equivalent of what change falls out of your pocket weekly without you knowing. Enjoy!

My first random thought brings me to the school shooting. I didn’t want to read the list of names of the victims. It’s not that I didn’t want the event to be humanized to me, as what the real intent of releasing those names to the public. It’s partly because it seems to me like it should be private, that these people should be allowed to mourn without having it all over the internet that their kid died. The reminder of those Christmas presents under the tree should be bad enough, they shouldn’t have to see the names everywhere they look. Plus, the selfish part of me admits I didn’t want to look and see my son’s name on that list because that would make it more real, and I didn’t think I could handle it. Against my better judgement I did look, and I did see my son’s name. I read the little note about him, I saw the picture. From then on, I realized more and more that could’ve easily been my son’s school and that could’ve been my son. It wasn’t though, and you can’t help but to feel guilty by being extremely happy for that. Sending him off to school made me be a little nervous, but unfortunately you can only do so much to protect your children, even if you are there every second.

My second random thought also is bordering about the shooting. I can’t help but be happy that Anonymous decided to hack into the Westboro Church member list and make it public to us. I won’t feel guilty if one of those bigoted loud mouths gets hunted down and killed, and I know I shouldn’t say things like that aloud but I mean I can’t be the only one who thinks that. It’s bad enough they go to our soldier’s funerals to protest for no other reason than to make themselves relevant, to protest these innocent children makes me wish that they had to go through the pain. Maybe it isn’t that God hates gay people, maybe God hates intolerance.

The Patriots were terrible last night and I fell asleep at halftime again. Apparently they became less terrible but not quite good enough to make up for all the terrible. The refs are terrible too, but I won’t blame them for the loss. The terrible calls by the refs didn’t make up for all the bad the Patriots did to themselves. I still love my team though, and they’ll do better next week.

My baby is growing up, rolling around on the floor like a champ and lunging forward. He’s a strong little bugger, and it’s hard to keep him down. It’s both awesome and sad to watch them grow so quickly. I love every second, and know that he’s doing so well because he has the love and care of people around him. There are worse things than growing up too fast. He’s very well mannered and just as perfect as his brother. So far (knock on wood), I’m 2 for 2 in the angelic children category.

In the end, you can’t protect your kids or shelter them forever. They are eventually going to find themselves in a position that is scary, they are eventually going to hear things on the news and they are eventually going to ask questions or be told things at school that go against our beliefs. You just have to make sure that you did your best to prepare them mentally for anything that they might come across on the news or in life. That’s our jobs as parents, to protect and prepare.