Always Wear Protection.

Life lesson 2491: Wear gloves when preparing something containing Capsaicin.
On Wednesday I made green chile.  I did not wear gloves while cutting the jalapeño peppers the recipe called for.  All was fine, I washed my hands and got ready for bed.  Before bed I put lotion on my feet.  Thursday my hands were on fire, Friday my feet were on fire.  Today is okay pain wise, but my feet are still recovering.  I literally could not walk like a normal person yesterday (or today, although I'm better now).  I was a cripple.
I never, ever want to be sprayed with pepper spray.
So that is why I am posting a day late: pain.

Anywho.

I realized the other day that the opinions I held before becoming Catholic (or pregnant for that matter) were things I had heard from others, or came across in some form of media.  These are usually not reliable ways to form opinions.
Some examples of this are as follows:

I used to be pro-choice.  I had never looked into exactly how an abortion is done or how a baby develops in the womb.  After finding those things out my opinion was changed.

My old roommate purchase infant ibuprofen for my cat when he was injured (by her cat).  It turns out that it could have killed him if I had given him any more than I felt slightly comfortable giving him.  I will now always ask a veterinarian first.
She also told me that cod liver oil is something you shouldn't take during pregnancy.  This is very similar to people who tell you not to drink chamomile tea or have a foot rub while you're pregnant.

I am now way more distrustful of the medical industry.

What I came to find was that the opinions that had no research behind them were easy to change.  Those opinions formed from sensationalized news stories that I was too blind to identify as hyped, and those that I just heard from a friend and took to be true.  Those are the ones that are most often altered.
Sometimes, though, I thought things that were wrong but still hard to change.  Generally I had formed some sort of attachment to these because for some of them, changing my opinion meant that I had spent X amount of time doing something that I now viewed in a negative way.  These opinions were the slowest to change for the reason that I had a sort of inner battle with myself.  It usually took me realizing that I wasn't happy while doing those things to get past the hurdle.

I'm still changing.
Expecting a baby changes you.  As our baby has grown, so have I.  In an effort to make the best decision for this child and myself I have discovered a lot of new things, my priorities have shifted, and I've learned some valuable skills (like learning how to not care about frivolous things).
I'm still me, but a new me...if that makes any sense.