Ash Wednesday-The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

OK, I have to admit, I waited until the last minute to think about this post. So, needless to say, it will not be the greatest. Currently I am reading the book The Tipping Pointby Malcolm Gladwell. It's possible that it has previously been mentioned in this blog but it deserves a second mentioning. I recommend it to you, definitely. It really gets you thinking. I would love for someone to read it and start a little discussion on it with me. That would be really fun. Just saying.... OK, that's all I have to say this Wednesday. Sorry.

Oh and by the way I love getting comments. Keep 'em coming.

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Economics, Oil, Politics, and the Future

Regular New-Think readers know that we enjoy prognostication. Please allow us to clear up a few things for you regarding the next decade or so.

First, let’s get our credentials out of the way. Way back before oil was above $40 per barrel we predicted that oil prices were set to skyrocket on the basic principles of supply and demand. Way back when the Dow was up in the 14,000-15,000 range New-Think told you it would fall below 10,000 (and probably much further) within the next year. Since we are going to spend the next few posts talking about macro-economics and energy (in the most interesting way possible) it is important that you keep these things in mind. We have not been wrong about calling the shots before they happen in the past.

Now, here is a disclaimer. This is NOT investment advice. My only investment advice to you is to get out of debt. The world economic situation has entered a VERY volatile phase and my prognostication is going to be full of “if-then” type statements. New-Think clearly sees the dominoes, set up and ready to fall, but seeing which domino will fall first is a bit of a guessing game at this point.

These posts are written in response to two sentiments I have heard expressed by ordinary citizens (non-New-Thinkers) in the past few weeks.

1. No one could have seen this coming (in reference to current economic downturn).
2. Gas is under $2 a gallon! We’re all saved!

Tune back in daily for the next few days to get a taste of the future.

The Birth of Asa Kayil Johnson

Our first son, Asa Kayil, was born January 4th of 2008. This is the story of his birth from his father’s perspective.

Millicent was born in January of 2006. She was born in our bedroom with only Michelle and I present. No doctor, no midwife. Just us. After that uplifting and beautiful experience we were convinced that we should never do it any other way. When Michelle became pregnant with Asa we calmly (since we were not longer rookies to unassisted home birth) began preparing for his birth. This means digging out the old birth supplies, getting a new birth pool because that’s how Michelle likes to deliver…in the water, stuff like that.

Toward the end of October I began to notice that Michelle’s face seemed fairly swollen compared to when she had been pregnant with Millicent. After doing some research I began to regularly take her blood pressure and test her urine for protein (a sure sign of preeclampsia). Her blood pressure was very high…so we agreed that she would go on bed rest until it came down. It never came down. The week after Christmas (2007) she began to pass protein in her urine. On the 2nd of January I took a sample and the amount of protein present was so much that it was off the scale of the strips I was using! I was very concerned for the health of Michelle and our unborn baby. Michelle wanted nothing to do with a trip to the doctor, though. Since the conception of Millicent we had done our own “prenatal” type care and felt very confident and self reliant in this area. I promised her that we would just go “consult” with a doctor and I would bring her home, as we suspected they would want to admit her and give her a c-section or some other asinine thing like that. We were correct.

We consulted with the doctor who was, admittedly, as cool as could be expected when present with a preeclampsic woman who is 39 weeks pregnant, had no prenatal care, and is not open to the option of any medical intervention. Anyway, after some discussion, the doc wanted to cut the baby out. I said no (as I had promised Michelle). We did agree to come back the next day however, so Michelle could be induced.

As a side note, I told the doctor a number of things about Michelle’s condition including gestation, amount of protein in her urine, even her exact dilation and amount of effacement (I don’t usually check much, but sometimes toward the end we get curious). I think we scored some points, when the hospital tests confirmed us correct on every prognosis.

In order to get Michelle and I to agree to inducement we had the doc and nurses agree to a long list of requests (more like demands).

1. Minimal “internal” exams.
2. Amount of inducement drug (pitocen) will be controlled by us. We wanted to slowly increase the amount to “kick-start” labor and then back it off, so Michelle’s body could do the work and not the drugs. Typical practice is to overwhelm the mother’s body with the drug and get the birth done quickly.
3. Absolutely no c-section.
4. Absolutely no breaking Michelle’s water.
5. Keep all medical personnel and machines as far away from us as possible.
6. As much privacy as possible.
7. Leave baby attached to placenta until the umbilical cord “dies”. Common hospital practice is to cut it very soon after the baby is born.

There are more…but you get the picture. We had envisioned how we wanted Asa’s birth to go down. Obviously, being in the hospital was a huge blow to that, and we were doing all we could to keep the rest “our way”.

I have said all of this, but I have not expressed how much of a bummer going to the hospital was for Michelle. I mean, I wasn’t happy about it. But, Michelle, it was a really big deal to her. When we drove into the hospital on the morning of January 4th, it was a very sad thing.

Most of the morning was spent with Michelle hooked up to a pitocen drip to get labor started. Since we insisted on going slowly it took a few hours for much to happen. My parents hung out with us for much of the morning and helped take care of Millicent. Ashlea also was with us and that was a huge blessing. Kori and Kati were out of town visiting relatives, but were able to make it to the hospital that evening. My sister, Carol, and her 3 children spent a few hours with us in around lunch time. By the time Asa arrived the lobby was full of our loving family…both our blood family and our brothers and sisters in Christ. Asa had a huge welcome party…but more about that later.

Everyone is Waiting to Meet the Baby

In the late afternoon Michelle’s contractions became more intense. I ran her a bath and she had a bath…then got back into bed…then got back into the bath. Every 5-10 minutes she was telling me how hot it was and asking if I would turn the air down. After a few hours the room was really frosty.

The labor significantly intensified. It was just Ashlea and I in the room with Michelle. We were not talking (except to pray) so that Michelle could concentrate. I prayed with Michelle through most contractions, thanking God that the birth pains would soon be gone and that Michelle would forget about them as she looked at her new baby. One of the things God showed us with Millicent’s birth is how intensely spiritual birth is. We definitely approach birth as a time of worship and communion with God.

The labor got pretty intense and Ashlea decided to go check on everyone in the waiting room. Delivery of a baby is definitely something you have to prepare for mentally ahead of time. The nurse came in to check on Michelle. She was acting so peaceful and calm that the nurse did not realize that Michelle’s water broke while she was standing there in the room. Of course, we did not want to be inundated with doctors and nurses…so we kept that information to ourselves.

Michelle knew the baby was coming soon and wanted to go get into the bathtub to deliver it. I told her no. I later explained that I knew that the sound of running water would bring the nurses in who had already expressed concern that she was getting up and down too much this late in her labor. Seriously, I don’t know if all hospitals are like that…but my opinion is that they really have things backward. I realize letting laboring women walk around is an insurance liability…but that is part of the problem. Anyway…it is really hard not to soapbox about all of this stuff….

Millicent had been fully born just a few minutes after Michelle’s water broke, so I put my finger to my lips to remind Michelle she had to be quiet if we were going to do this. A shot of adrenaline ran through me as I realized we were going to be able to deliver this baby by ourselves. I pulled the covers back and could tell that in just a few pushes we would meet our new son or daughter. Sure enough, Asa shot out so fast that I had to jump back to avoid being splattered by the wave of amniotic fluid he surfed out on (I know, I know…this birth story is pretty biological…hope you can handle it).

I gave Asa to Michelle and we both were thanking God and weeping. About a minute later she told me we had a son, but I already knew.

The nurses came in when they heard Asa cry and told us we had cheated. They hung around for a few minutes until it became obvious that we didn’t have any intention of handing Asa over for their inspection. He was clearly a healthy boy. They kindly brought us the materials we needed to cut the cord and then left us alone.

Our tradition is to let the youngest sibling of the newborn cut the cord. Kati cut Millicent’s and the plan was to let Mill cut Asa’s. Millicent’s first words upon seeing Asa were, “that baby’s oooowwee”. She did not want to touch the slimy little fella so we let Kori cut the cord. The doctor was a little freaked and said if she had known that was the plan she would not have let us. Oh well….too late.

That Baby's Ooooowwee!

The kids and I examined the placenta and sure enough it contained the tell-tale calcium deposits that are a dead giveaway that the mother had preeclampsia.

We let all of the kids have some time with Ace before we invited everyone else in. I didn’t count, but for a while I think we probably had about 30 people in the room. We love our family…but thankfully everyone had a look at Asa, said congrats, and said see you later.

Much to the nurses’ disapproval we announced that we were ready to leave about 2 hours later and headed home with our first son. As you can see in the picture below…he is doing very well.

9 months old

Ash Wednesday

Hey, I'm Ashlea and today is Wednesday. Hence the title, Ash Wednesday. The owner of this blog doesn't blog nearly enough, you may have noticed, so I decided to help out. Now every Wednesday(ish) I will post. Today I'm just filling you in on what's going to go down. Once it gets started though I will post about a variety of things. Sometimes about what's happening in my life. Things like school, church, work and so on. Sometimes it will be just something funny. A quote I find funny, a video, or something funny that happened in the week. Sometimes it might just be a picture with or without words. And sometimes I'll even try to post something serious. You may not like it. That's ok with me. Just remember, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

Now I'll just tell you some random facts about myself.

I'm a senior in highschool. I will be attending Oklahoma State University in the fall of '09. I already got accepted and everything! I love watching OSU football, I NEVER bet against my team. I currently take classes at Cameron University.... It's very difficult. I have a waitressing job at a little restaurant in my town. I have a wonderful youth group at Gatlin Baptist Church where I am currently the second oldest. So, needless to say, I have a fairly large standing in a youth group. Right now my parents are the Sunday school teachers because our former youth pastor (My uncle. Go figure) got a new job out of town. So they stepped up and decided to attempt to teach the teens of today. It's not an easy job, either. There are only 9 people in our youth group so, it's pretty noticable when one of them sleeps, or texts, or talks, or well.. you get it.

Ok, I think that is plenty long for my first post. I promise to not always be so long winded. Talk to you later. Oh, and here's a picture of me. Just in case you were wondering.

This is Me, Millicent, and Jo. Millicent is my little sister. There is stuff about her throughout the blog and Jo is my very best friend in the world. I love her to death and she is as close to being a part of my family as you can possibly get.

New-Think is Back and More Nutritious Than Ever

The Texas Tech grads around the office are predictably very boisterous these days. If you have watched Oklahoma State play at all this year you have no doubt noticed the colorful play calling "cue cards" on the side line. A tech grad sent me this rendition of the OSU sign after Tech creamed the pokes this weekend. It would be funnier if it wasn't so true.

Get it? Someone cover Crabtree please! Someone needs to cover the Smurf too. Or do they call him Elf? Oh well, it doesn't matter now.

I haven’t blogged for a while…because, among other reasons, I haven’t felt like it. But there were other reasons. We took a much needed family vacation and got out of town for about 9 days. Shane and Carol moved to Oklahoma City and I have begun teaching the youth (Shane used to do it) in addition to leading children’s worship. Also I took the professional engineering exam in late October and have been putting the finishing touches on a 3 year long project at work. So… the main reason I haven’t felt like blogging is that I haven’t had much time. But I feel like it again.

Here are some VERY random thoughts and some Very random things to check out.

1. New-Think’s early summer predictions about the economy have all come true.

2. The Mango Times is a good blog I have been into lately.

3. Every little thing is gonna be alright.

4. Some tips to help hone your self discipline:

a. Become discontent with messes in general.
b. Make a schedule and learn to conform to it.
c. Wean yourself from entertainment. Do productive things with your excess time.
d. Be on time…even for non-important events.
e. Keep your word. Always. Especially in little things.
f. Always do the hardest task first.
g. Finish what you start.
h. Practice self denial, for the sake of self denial. Remind yourself that you’re in charge.

5. Here is a pic of some of the kids.

6. Here is a pic of my love.


7. I’m back baby. I’m back.