AessaMenevrah

I had my only other child 15 years ago by c-section. The surgery was botched and I had 3 Dr.s tell me I'd never have another child because there was too much scarring. For years I felt like half a woman watching all the other girls around me having baby after baby.

By some stroke of luck I am pregnant again, 5 and 1/2 mos now. But I can't stop rubbing my tummy. If I'm not busy doing something, I'm rubbing my baby belly. I catch myself doing it public sometimes and then I feel embarrassed (over my clothes, of course, I'm not walking around the grocery store with my hands in my pants). I don't know if it's a bonding thing, or if I'm doing it subconsciously because I'm reassuring myself that I am actually pregnant again. I don't remember doing this when I was pregnant with my son, but I was 19 then and didn't really know what being a mother was.

Am I weird or is this normal behavior, especially for someone who has been trying to conceive without success for a long time?

I know this isn't really religious in nature (although if there's a math god I can pray to, that would be great) but this section gets the most traffic and I've spent enough time here to know there has to be someone here who can help me out.

I just started Spring Quarter classes and I'm scared to death to go through math (pre-algebra) again. I signed up for it last quarter but it was lab based and there wasn't a professor around to help so I panicked after about 2 weeks and never went back to class. This quarter I'm taking it in a normal class with a professor. But I'm still terrified of this subject...

My main issue isn't that I can't do math, it's that I have this terrible tendency to turn numbers around or mix them up. Like if the answer is 45, I tend to write it as 54. I don't want to tell the professor, because I'm afraid he'll make me get tested for dyslexia and I don't want anything like that to show up on my transcript (the job market is competitive enough as it is). I'm a dean's list student, I don't want to blow my GPA over a bad case of nerves...

So my main question is - Do you guys have any ideas for how I can get through this class without having a nervous breakdown? Any tips on how to aid with dyslexia and numbers?

A question that was asked earlier this evening (about dress codes and religion) has my curiosity piqued...

I don't know if these people are part of something you only find here in Ohio, or if it's a national thing but we have this group, cult, sect, whatever you want to call it where the women aren't allowed to cut their hair and they have to wear denim skirts all the time. No pants allowed. They never seem to wear dress shoes either, always denim skirts with socks and tennis shoes.

I thought someone had once told me they were an off-shoot of Baptists, but can't remember for sure anymore.

Anyone know who these folks are? My neighbors belong to it, but I don't want to seem rude by asking them...

Is there a set rule to how the religion of Wicca perceives Deity?

Cunningham and few others I've read insist that there is first The One, then

that is split into two aspects - Goddess and Her Consort, and that every other

God and Goddess are simply aspects of these two aspects. This is also evident in

"The Charge".

But doesn't this seem a bit Christianized? Or worse yet, is it harkening back

Margaret Murray's now debunked idea of a lost Goddess worship culture in Europe

that never actually existed?

In many of the old religions on which we base our faiths - Greek, Celtic,

Egyptian, et al - They were very distinct, separate individuals. If you were

making an offering to Bast, it was to Bast not the Bast aspect of a many-headed

Goddess form. Thinking hard back to other religions I've studied, I can't think

of any, other than Christianity, in which other god forms are considered to be

just aspects of a singular god form.

So which is right? The old religion polytheistic "every God is an individual"

view, or the new religion "My Gods have multiple personalities" view?

What are your thoughts on this?

I feel like I'm missing something here - Is the new past time for our beloved R&S trolls to post questions in such unintelligible English that we have no idea what they are saying? Or is God/Satan/Allah/FSM just twisting their words so I can't comprehend the devout (sarcasm to keep it religious)...

Have you ever seen answer posted by someone of your own religion that was so inaccurate, so misinformed, so completely ridiculous that despite the teachings of your faith you just really wanted to reach through the monitor and slap them with a fish?

No need to name names - just curious if anyone else has ever felt the frustration I'm feeling right now...

Your driving on a country road at 5:30 in the morning. There is an intersection ahead of you with a four-way stop. You can quite a ways to the left right and straight ahead and there isn't another vehicle on the road as far as you can see. Do you:

1) Run the stop sign since no one is going to know anyways...

Or

2) Stop at the stop sign just because you don't want to break the law (or if your religiously inclined, because your god form might be watching)...

You don't have to state your religious affiliation if you don't want to.

Need a good laugh right now so everyone share you favorite religious joke. Here's mine to kick it off...

An old man is sitting in his house and the rain is pouring down. The Weather alerts are predicting a massive flood. There's a knock at his door and his neighbors offer to take him in their car and get him to a safe place out of the flood path. He tells them "No, I'll stay here, God will save me."

The rain keeps coming down, the waters rise and start to come in his house. Some people in a boat pull up to his window. "Crawl out the window and we'll take you in our boat to a safe place". He says "No, I'll stay here, God will save me."

The waters keep rising. Finally the old man is forced to climb out a second story window onto his roof. A helicopter comes by and hovers over his house. A rope ladder is lowered down to him and someone shouts "Grab the ladder and climb up, we'll take someplace safe.". The stubborn old man again refuses "No, I'll stay, God will save me"

The house is finally washed away and the old man is drowned in the flood waters. Upon arriving in Heaven and being taken to God he asks "God, I had faith in you - why didn't you save me?" And God says to him "I sent you a car, a boat and finally a helicopter, what more do you want?"

Why isn't "dismembering" forgetting?

For those who actually believe in the tarot - since that's who I'm directing this at:

Do you believe that the tarot can actually "predict" the future?

OR

Do you believe the Tarot works on the sub-conscious mind through symbolism to force you gain perspective on events that are taking place in your present so that you can make better decisions - No actual information on the future other than common sense "If I keep doing this, this is probably what is going to happen".

I personally side with the second option...

And if you don't believe in the Tarot and still feel like answering - Make it funny, I'm here to be entertained...

Need to find a site that can give me a value on a 2009 upper deck "Ultimate Loyalty" signed Randy White card...

Many churches have those signs with the changeable letters that have a different little saying every few weeks. Most are lame, some are actually quite witty.

I think my favorite is "Lying in bed yelling 'Oh God' does not equal prayer"

If you were Stephen Hawking, would you give up half your intellect for the ability to walk and talk again?

Has anyone ever done any studies on Ultram/Tramadol as to its use in controlling anxiety and moderate mood swings? I was prescribed this drug (50 mg) for migraine pain recently and found that not only did it not leave me feeling "dopey" but it also evened out my moods and kept me from getting as stressed at little things like I normally would. I would like to start taking it for this purpose along with the occasional migraine pain because I don't want to experience some of the side effects that I have heard regular anti-anxiety meds can produce.

The link is to a video of an interview with Colin Powell stating that there will be some kind of "crisis" on January 21st or 22nd...

So is he claiming to be psychic now or is he giving us a sly "heads up" to something he knows about? Kinda has me wondering, what with the new prez taking office and all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPOeQZdHYw&feature...

Is it still sinful if you do it for your husband or wife's viewing pleasure? At that point wouldn't it just be part of a normal married couples' sex life and not a sin? And if it isn't a sin within a marriage, then why is it a sin when you are single and alone?

Was the abomination known as the "spork" (that weird combination of spoon and fork) created as a result of the sin of fornication between a fork and a spoon?

Why are so many people freaked out by this?

The Mayans were not the only people to ever predict the end of the world (in fact, that isn't even what the calendar predicts, simply the end of an era). Perhaps what amazes me even more is why people of a certain religion are so concerned with it when their own holy book states that no one knows when the end will come...

Would you really want to know when the end of the world is coming anyways? Wouldn't it suck trying to live out the rest of your days on a "countdown"?

...rosaries made from rose petals as opposed to those made from glass or plastic beads? Or is it simply a novelty item?

Just got home from a sucky night at work and I need some entertainment so - 10 free points to the person who can give me the funniest example of Pascal's Wager, Occam's Razor and Poe's Law all in the same answer (but you'll have to come up with the question on your own, my brain is too fried to think of a good leading question right now... I'm sure any of the usual ones that have been done to death will be fine...)