Suicide should never be an option!

I listen to 97.1 ZHT Morning Zoo every weekday morning. I love the DJs and the stuff they talk about is interesting. Yesterday they talked about a friend of the show who was in a therapy session with her daughter and the therapist said something horrible to the daughter. The daughter is in her 20's and was sexually abused by a family member when younger. She has attempted suicide on multiple occassions. The therapist was prescribing her some medication to help her and she asked him "What do I do if this medication doesn't work. " The therapist completley serious tells her "If they don't work then you take 20 of these pills and kill yourself." WHAT!!!!! This girl is now inpatient at some mental health facility on suicide watch. That "doctor" should have his license revoked!!!!!

When I was 9 my cousin committed suicide. He was 30 years old and he died the day before his 31 birthday. Since I was so young my mom didn't tell me the actual cause of death. She told me a few years later when I was a teenager. I also have other family members that have attempted suicide. I myself have contemplated it in the past. Suicide is a permanent solution for temporary problems. I wich no one would ever put their friends and family through the pain and anguish of a suicide.

Because of this issue that recently came up on the radio station's morning show I am going to tell you about an upcoming event that I am participating in that is both very important and very exciting to me. It is NAMIWalks for the Mind of America, NAMI’s signature walkathon event that is being held in Salt Lake City, UT at Spring Mobile Ballpark (was Franklin Covey Field) on September 26, 2009.

I would like to ask you to come and walk with me or to donate to support my participation in this great event. Visit my personal walker page to sign up: http://www.nami.org/namiwalks09/SLC/Raegans. It features a link to my team's page there where you can see who else is walking with me. There is also a link so you can donate directly to me online. Donating online is fast and secure, and I'll get immediate notification via e-mail of your donation.

NAMI, the Nation’s Voice on Mental Illness, formerly the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, is the largest education, support and advocacy organization that serves the needs of all those whose lives are touched by these illnesses. This includes persons with mental illness, their families, friends, employers, the law enforcement community and policy makers. The NAMI organization is composed of approximately 1100 local affiliates, 50 state offices and a national office.

The goals of the NAMIWalks program are: to fight the stigma that surrounds mental illness, to build awareness of the fact that the mental health system in this country needs to be improved and to raise funds for NAMI so that they can continue their mission.

NAMI is a 501(c)3 charity and any donation you make to support my participation in this event is tax deductible. NAMI has been rated by Worth magazine as among the top 100 charities "most likely to save the world" and has been given an "A+" rating by The American Institute of Philanthropy for efficient and effective use of charitable dollars. NAMI has also been given 4 out of 4 stars by The Charity Navigator for short-term spending practices and long-term sustainability.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Portland

As a preface to my next entry I have to apologize to everyone who reads this that loves or lives in Portland.

I HATE PORTLAND!!!!! I have had a bad relationship with Oregon for most my life, mostly Portland.

In the 90's my best friend and her family moved to Tillamook, Oregon.

Then about 5 - 10 years ago my mom's cousin Sharon and her family moved to Portland. I was really close with Sharon and used to babysit for her and her husband all the time. I would drive by just to visit with Sharon all the time, which was easy when she lived in Sandy. Portland is a bit of a drive.

At the end of May some really close friends of ours (Steve and I), who also happen to be Steve's cousin, Cheryl, and her husband , Mitch, moved to Portland also.

My best friend, Andrea, always talks about moving to Portland since her mom lives there and also she loves it there.

Now Portland has began stalking me! For Mothers Day Steve and Hunter got me a gift card to Deseret Book. When I went to use it they had their discount Lagoon ticket promotion if you bought specific items. I bought a Rachel Ann Nunes (one of my favorite LDS authors) book that would give us 3 tickets to Lagoon (we did use them and had a lot of fun with Hunter). When I started reading the book I realized it was about a girl who was moving to.......PORTLAND!!!!

If anyone talks to Portland, can you please ask it to leave me alone and return all my friends and loved ones it has stolen from me?

Thanks!

I promised my friend Sam I'd update

I've been so busy lately with vacations (Bear Lake and Camping at Tanners Flat in Little Cottonwood Canyon) , working overtime, and getting ready to move.
We are finally moving closer to my work! We weren't planning on moving so soon, but our landlord let us out of our lease early. We were able to find a two bedroom two bathroom apartment in Sandy about 1.5 miles from my work. I am happy about the move but I will hate to leave the neighborhood, ward and my in-laws. I currently live about a mile away from my in-laws and it's awesome being so close to them so we can go over as often as we like. I will miss that but I wont miss the over one hour commute everyday to work and the over an hour and a half commute on the way home.
I hate moving and wish I could pay someone to come and pack us up and move us all in to our new place. There are companies that do that but unfortunately they charge way too much money. I will be SOOOO happy when we finally settle in to our new place.

Harry Potter saga

I was one of the MILLIONS of people who saw "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I went with my mom, sister Missee, niece Hailey and Missee's friend Stacey. We went to Jordan Commons in Sandy to see it, and they had a party beforehand that was supposed to be Hogsmeade. The Hogle Zoo was there with some animals (I saw a snake --EWWWW and an owl - really cute owl that lost one eye while in the wild and was resuced by the Zoo). There were people who had tables set up who were selling "wands", charms, buttons and more. They had a room wherer you could buy butterbeer (cream soda with butterschotch) and cauldron cakes (chocolate hostess type cakes).

I really wished I had taken my camera as there were so many cute and funny costumes that people were wearing. There was a girl who wearing all gold and then had a swimmers cap on (also gold) that had some small wings on it - she was the golden snitch. She was with a guy who was wearing a normal outfit but had felt letters going sideways down his shirt that said firebolt. Then he had on these elastic grass "skirts" that went around each leg. It was HILARIOUS!!!!

The movie was AWESOME!!!!!! It was soo good and I am so excited for the two movies about the seventh book. It should be really good. I did cry - A LOT - at the end of the sixth movie. Even though the movie was not extremely close to the book and there were a few things I wished they had done differently in the movie.

The movie started at 12:20 am and it got out around 3 am. We got out of the parking lot pretty quickly and got back to my parent's house by 3:30. When we got to my parent's house we realized that neither Missee, my mom nor I remember to bring keys with us. My dad had locked the door and gone to bed. Missee tried to break in the the house the way my brother's Derek and BJ did when they snuck out while teenagers. Unfortunately one of them damaged the way to sneak in so Missee was not able to get in that way. Luckily my dad heard my mom pounding on the door so he was able to wake up and let us in!

It was a long day that started around 6 am Tuesday morning and ended about 4 am Wednesday morning. I had a hard day Wednesday at work as I had only gotten about 3-4 hours of sleep. It was all worth it -- seeing Harry Potter on opening morning.

Aging SUCKS!

My birthday is getting closer and closer and I'm dreading it more every day. Last year, when I turned 30, it was just about my worst birthday ever. I only had 3 people wish me a happy birhday - 1 co-worker, my mom and husband. It was almost 2 months after my miscarriage and I was mourning that loss. I was hoping that I would be pregnant by then and when I wasn't it just made me more depressed.
Every year as I grow older I am getting less likely to get pregnant. It gets more and more difficult to get pregnant every year after 30. I've wanted to be a mom since I was 5 and the chance that it might never happen really scares me.
I hate getting older.

Not wanting it to end......

I just finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book. I started from book one and read them all to book seven. The first time I read book seven I went through a grieving process as I realized that there would be no more Harry Poter books to look forward to reading, no books to stay up all night reading from front to back, no more exciting adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermoine. I just felt a little like that again after finishing the book again. I remember that my mom, sister and I would wait everytime a new was being released and becoming more and more excited for it to be released. Then we would have to decide who got to read it first, second and last. Missee was supposed to read the sixth book first but she had started reading the series over again and was not even halfway through the fifth book. I decided to read the sixth book right when we got it so I could finish before she was ready to read it. Missee and I picked up the book at the midnight sale and got home with it by about 1. I started reading the book as soon as we got home and read through the night/early morning (only falling alseep for a few minutes at a time but not too often). I ended up finishing the book around 11 am the next morning. That was the first time I had ever had an energy drink. I was so tired but knew I couldn't sleep until that night or I would throw off my sleep schedule. Dustin and Mindi bought me a LARGE energy drink. I drank it with some difficuly (too sugary) and stayed awake until that night when I was able to sleep.

I miss Harry Potter......

Big Love

I don't subscribe to HBO or watch the show "Big Love" but my dad and sister do. When I heard about the episode that was to show parts of a Temple Endowment ceremony I was understandably upset, being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I didn't want to watch the show, but since my sister TiVos the show she had my mom and I watch the parts in question.

I felt sick to my stomach watching it. They showed parts of a VERY sacred religious ceremony that is very dear to myself and other members of my faith. HBO said that showing the Temple ceremony was important to the storyline. I felt that it wasn't. If they wanted to show the things but not have any words it may have offended me less. One funny thing was that the character who went through the temple (Jeanne Tripplehorn's character) and her mother and sister were told that their 15 minutes in the Celestial Room were up.

The major problem I had with them showing parts of the ceremony was that for non-members it would be out of context. The show wasn't able to convey the feelings you get while in the Temple.

I've thought a lot about this and realized that it is similar to a part from the movie "My Cousin Vinny". In it Ralph Macchio's character is asked when he shot the clerk and he replies in disbelief "I shot the clerk? I shot the clerk?" When that statement is read into record during the trial it sounded like he was confessing. His words were taken out of context the same as the Temple Endowment ceremony could be taken out of context by non-members.