Steve Skojec

…Please offer a prayer for my uncle, Catholic father of 10, grandfather of 2, and a personal role model for me as a young man. I honed my interest and skills in debating religion and politics around his dinner table, and I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be writing here (or anywhere else) on these topics if it weren’t for that.

For all of my life, he’s worked in construction, and for as long as I can remember has owned his own business. I just got this note from my mom:

[He] fell from some scaffolding yesterday….about 20 ft. He is all right!! It could have been pretty bad, but he hit the scaffolding a couple of times on the way down which broke his fall a bit even though it buffeted him around some.

He wrenched his knee, back, neck, and bruised his ribs. He broke no bones, has no internal bleeding, no concussion, or anything serious! Isn’t that great? He also has NO  insurance.

Thank God he didn’t need hospitalization, just an ER visit.

He told me he will go back to work on Friday, probably, and can’t afford not to be doing the physical work. So, if you could, ask God for a little assistance in healing for Chris, a man who asks for so little from anyone and gives so much to everyone!

When I was speaking with him, I mentioned someone he knows who was in need of prayers and he immediately said he would offer his pain for them. What a guy!

I’m certain that even a quick Ave would be appreciated. Thanks.

After years of trying to find a mattress that was comfortable for both of us, my wife and I finally buckled down and spent the small fortune on a Select Comfort bed. Our size difference is substantial - she’s half my weight and 14 inches shorter - so the ability to adjust each side was critical.

In the time that we’ve had the bed, it’s been a rarity that swarms of toddlers haven’t entered into it to crawl on our faces and kick us in the throats at some point during the night. In the past week or two, we’ve won a couple of battles in this regard, and I’ve actually gotten several nights of semi-uninterrupted sleep.

What I’ve found is this - when I set the bed at my sleep number, or even in its general vicinity, I get dreams. Lots of dreams. Weird dreams.  I told you about the dream I had the other day. I’ve had others since, equally strange, one involving a co-worker who somehow manifested as two people and fired herself.

Last night, I was surviving some sort of zombie apocalypse. The zombies in this case were rather lethargic, and would play dead until you got close to them. Taking a page from vampires, if they bit you, you’d be infected. The dream featured colleagues, characters from the show Lost, and probably friends and family members. I managed to work an Irish pub into the dream, which fortunately was still abandoned and had Guinness on tap for the taking.

Somehow I don’t think Select Comfort will be contacting me to do a testimonial.

I’m sure by now you’ve read about it. A California appeals court case has made homeschooling by non-certified parents illegal. The shockwaves are spreading.

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

“At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.”

We’ve been discussing the case today at the Inside Catholic blog. Check it out for more.

We got home from the hospital a little while ago, and Jamie is on bed rest, but recovering. Everything went well, and while we have to wait for the final pathology report the hope is that all the abnormal cells have been removed. We’re fortunate to be working with doctors from the Tepeyac Center, an unflinchingly pro-life organization that truly cares about the women who are their patients.

Thank you for your prayers.

It’s her birthday today. She’s been turning 23 every year for several years now, just don’t ask me how that works. Of course, she’s Chinese and will age more gracefully than this large white man could ever hope to. She’ll still be stunning in her sixties while I’m tooling around in a nitrous-oxide assisted electric wheel chair. (The NOS won’t be primarily for turbo boost, but rather so the thing can overcome gravity and haul my massive bulk around.)

I love you babe. More than life itself.

As the flu gradually lessens its grip on the house, we face another challenge tomorrow. We found out in the days following Christmas that my wife has a condition known as dysplasia, a disordered cell growth that ranges in her case from moderate to severe in advancement. This is a cervical cancer pre-cursor, and as such needs to be treated and monitored to avoid the onset of this cancer.

For a family that welcomes new children the way that ours does (we’re about due for another pregnancy) this is a bit scary even beyond the immediate implications for Jamie’s health. The older procedures done to treat this condition often led to problems in pregnancy later on, leading to the possibility of miscarriages and bed rest throughout parts of the second and the entire third trimester. Aside from the miscarriage danger, bed rest during an extended period of a pregnancy is obviously not very doable for a mother of three with two under the age of three.

In worst case scenarios, if the condition were to develop into cancer itself, hysterectomy is the remedy.

The good news is that new procedures like the one she’s getting are less invasive with fewer complications, and if treated aggressively and thoroughly, this should hopefully not develop any further.

Her surgery is tomorrow morning, provided she doesn’t get this damned stomach bug that so far she is the lone survivor of. The procedure is common, I’m told, and should be routine. All the same, my wife means the world to me and I worry about her excessively (even though she is far tougher than I will ever be) so I’m concerned that things go as well as possible.

Your prayers for the success of the surgery and a quick recovery would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve often wondered what the heck the deal is with books for the “I like to rip pages” age group. The books weigh about five pounds and hurt like hell when your kids smack you in the face with them, but there’s really not much going on inside…

Today mark’s the first birthday of my first-born son, whom you may recall bears the striking title of Ivan Joseph the First of Ashburn, terror of heretics and defender of the faith. (As an interesting aside, he was born four years to the day from the occasion on which I proposed to my wife before the Blessed Sacrament in the Crypt Church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C.)

Here he is striking fear into the hearts of of his enemies with his well-practiced sneer:

I also realized that I never wished a Happy Birthday to his sister, The Jade Empress, Her Imperial Majesty Sophia I, who turned two on November 28th:

My little munchkins are growing fast, but I enjoy every single day of it. People tell me all the time, “Don’t take it for granted.”

 Yeah, right. Like I could.

(P.S. - Happy birthday to my baby sister Alicia, too, who I still remember looking a lot like Sophia, but with curls. She’s 19 today. Scary.)

This one, at least, takes a critical look at the trend toward sexy costumes for young girls. Sadly, it’s indicative of the ignorance many parents have about the culture their children are growing up in: 

For Cheryl Cirenza, that’s what Halloween is still all about. But for her daughter, she’s not so sure. “I really don’t know why these kinds of costumes appeal so much to her,” she said. Cirenza knows that prepubescent sex appeal is rampant. But the family doesn’t have cable, and she limits Gabby’s TV time. There are no trashy teen or celebrity magazines in her home. And they keep an eye on her Web surfing. “I don’t know if it’s just in the air.”

Umm, try public school, Cheryl, if you’re looking for a culprit.

As many of you know, this past summer was a tragic one for our family. My wife’s mother was discovered to be missing in mid-June, and as we began to get involved and press for an investigation, details emerged that led us to believe she would not be found alive.

Only a couple of days after we got the call that she was missing, she was found murdered, left in a trailer out in the Arizona desert on land that she owned but did not use.

It is the unfortunate reality of the harsh climate in the desert that forensic evidence survives for only a very short time. Over the past few months, it began to seem increasingly likely that what few leads there were would be insufficient, and an arrest might never be made.

A few days ago, however, we received a call. One man had been arrested, and another was in custody. There was a confession. Things were moving more quickly than they had in quite some time.

Today, the Arizona Daily Star published some details from the confession. They aren’t pleasant, but they are certainly preferable to an unsolved murder of a helpless old woman.

To those of you who have offered prayers for us, for Mamie’s soul, and for justice for her killers (and their conversion, God willing) - thank you. This isn’t over, and your continued prayers are something we are always grateful for.