Anger

I spent a good deal of yesterday being angry. I definitely had some #GayRage going on, and I’m definitely still angry, but I can feel the anger giving way, slowly, into tears and grief. 

49 gay, lesbian, and straight allies died Sunday morning at the hands of a man whose story is continuously changing. 

At first, he was a Muslim extremist and an ISIS supporter. And this was just another senseless attack on Americans who were targeted because they were infidels. 

Then, his father revealed he wasn’t a practicing Muslim. His ex-wife revealed that he was an abuser. And some people at the club revealed he’d been there… More than once. 

His father said he’d gotten angry at two men kissing sometime earlier.

From there, the investigation discovered that he had LEGALLY obtained two assault riffles. 

And from there, he went and shot over 100 GLBTA+ people, killing 49 of them (so far because some people are in critical condition in the hospital still). 

He’d apparently been investigated by the FBI twice but they couldn’t find anything condemning, and he was a security guard with a permit to carry. 

I woke up that Sunday morning to the news and immediately text two of my friends who live in Orlando. 

Kelly, a long time friend who is a pharmacist, immediately wrote me back and said she was fine but that she couldn’t confirm some of her friends, and Nikki, an ex-girlfriend of mine who suffers from PTSD after a stint in Afganistan that I’m still friends with who works as a chef at Disney, who didn’t immediately write me back. 

Lucky for me, I heard from her a couple hours later:

Nikki: I’m okay. I was sleeping. I’m mad you used my full name though. 

Me: Thank goodness! And that’s how you know I’m serious. Are you okay?

She and Kelly, while not directly involved, were both shaken up. Kelly eventually found all her friends alive and safe. 

I think it’s fairly safe to say that an attack on the GLBT population is an attack on all GLBT people. There are a lot of GLBT folks right now who are fearful for their lives more so than usual. 

And there are plenty of straight people who are trying to not make it a gay issue. I lost a “friend” yesterday because she made it about #AllLivesMatter and said guns aren’t the problem and that this wasn’t an attack on gay people, it was an attack on Americans, and to say otherwise was to create division. 

Except it was an attack on gay people. This person chose a gay club to attack out of hate and anger towards gay people. 

Except that guns are a problem. The US has nearly one gun for every man, woman, and child in circulation right now. And we have more mass shootings than any other country in the world. Australia had eight mass shootings in the 1980s. They responded by increasing gun control. They haven’t had a problem since then. Not one single mass shooting. (Source)

I hear people shouting about the second amendment, but our government can’t stop a suspected terrorist from LEGALLY obtaining a gun, an assault rifle at that, but they can stop them from getting on a plane. 

After 9/11, we banned liquids greater than 3oz on planes because they might cause explosions. We banned nail clippers and nail files and knitting needles for their suspected use as a weapon.

But a man walks into a gay bar with two legally obtained assault rifles and murders 49 people, injuring even more, and we can’t see the correlation enough to ban assault rifles?? What. The. Hell???

And to everyone trying to make this about #AllLivesMatter and “They were Americans,” just stop. That diminishes them and what happened. These GAY Americans were killed because of homophobia. And taking the gay out makes that part of the discussion disappear. 

If all lives mattered, then we wouldn’t see night like last night happen. If all lives mattered, we wouldn’t need to have a discussion on the hate and violence that GLBT people face every single day. 

All lives, according to our homophobic society, don’t matter because GLBT people are sick and disgusting sinners worthy of death and hell. That’s some #AllLivesMatter shit right there. 

And I told my “friend” as much. Some white straight Christian male came to her defense and called it offensive that I pointed out that taking out the homosexuality of the victims diminishes what happened because it removes the GLBT directed hate from the discussion and turns it into a perpetual islamophobia argument instead. 

I called it offensive that he was trying to hijack a conversation about homophobia with a war  on Christianity. I called it offensive that he refused to acknowledge a fundamental aspect of these victims lives. I called it offensive that he was refus by to have that conversation. 

And then he told me he had “his own Christian opinions on homosexuality,” and I deleted her, my “friend,” for liking his nonsense and not my criticism of it. 

Because that is perpetuating violence against me and the rest of the GLBT community. 

I spent a lot of the day angry.

I spent a lot of the day reading about the victims over and over again. 

I spent a lot of the day seeing a lot of my “We are Paris” and “We are Charleston” friends not be “We are Orlando,” and I spent a lot of time calling them out on it. 

I spent a lot of the day in thought, alone because Erin was at work. Thoughts about potential copy cats. Thoughts about the LA guy who was arrested with his legally obtained weapons on his way to LA Pride. Thoughts about the families of the victims or the emergency staff hearing the phones go off over and over again and being unable to stop them. 

Thoughts about how there was a call for blood donations to help the victims, but how gay men and trans people were still barred from donating to their fallen comrades. 

Thoughts about how it could be me or my wife next. Or any of our friends. Because violence against the GLBT people isn’t just something that happens in Orlando. It happens everywhere. 

Honeymoon Part 4: Grand Turk and Orlando

Whelp, we’ve reached the end of the honeymoon updates.  Number four is the final one… Then it’ll be back to your unregularly scheduled updates!

Unfortunately for us, we had to get back on the ship at 2pm in San Juan.  We decided to spend the rest of that day ordering room service, reading, drinking, and chilling out.  I took a long nap after lunch and woke up in time to get ready and go to a late dinner.  Thus began the three day adventure of eat, drink, and be lazy.

We didn’t have an excursion for Grand Turk either.  Mainly because they seemed rather boring from what we saw and were extremely expensive at the same time.  I’m super glad we didn’t though.  Everyone on the ship kept saying how Grand Turk was a beach day.  When we were in St. Martin, one of the women who works in the spa told us there was nothing in Grand Turk except a very long stretch of beach and that theme was pretty well played out every day after that.

Since it was a beach day and we had the entire day there, we decided not to really rush to get off the ship, so by the time we got up and out of bed, we’d been docked at port for awhile.  When I looked out, I saw a lot of people on a perfect white sand beach in chairs and these little clam shell looking cover tents.

“We should get one of those.”  I said.

We got a late breakfast and managed to get off the ship around 10:30.  The first thing I noticed when we were off the ship?  The water was the clearest and bluest I’d ever seen.  You could easily see 20 feet straight down through it.  And there were lots of tropical fish swimming around.  It was going to be a good day. 

We get down to the beach only to find out that they don’t take credit cards at the rental booth and the closest ATM or store that does cash back is well into town.  However, the ship had an ATM, so Erin ran back to the ship and I found us a couple of chairs.

When she got back, we rented one of the tent things, which was actually called a clam shell, and set up shop.  We pulled what I am now calling the H**** Myrtle Beach Maneuver  where I filled a water bottle partially with rum and partially with coke, buried it in my bag and walked out.

We had some really good luck in that our stewardess messed up our cabin with another cabin and delivered two large water bottles to our room.  We left them there for a couple of days to see if she’d take them back, but she didn’t… So we drank them and then started using them for alcohol instead.  Save money, drink happy.

We then took our goggles out into the water and started “snorkeling” without the snorkel…  I really wish I had an underwater camera and could have gotten pictures of what we saw because it was absolutely amazing: schools of fish swimming past you, patches of coral all around you, clear water as far as you can see.

We decided we wanted to explore a little bit more of the beach so we went to the other side of the pier, which was less crowded.  One of the guys walking back from that side told us the snorkeling was a lot better on the other side because it was less crowded and the coral was a lot more abundant.  We snorkeled around for a long time, seeing all kinds of fish and crabs…

Took this just now… sun in my eyes… biggest shell ever.

…And that’s when I saw it…

The single biggest conch shell I have EVER SEEN.  It was literally THE SIZE OF MY FACE and in PERFECT condition aside from being covered in plants.  I dove down and picked it up off the bottom of the ocean floor to better examine it.

“What is that?”  Erin asked me as I swam up to the beach with it in tow.

“The single biggest conch shell I’ve ever seen.  I thought the ones like this were all fake.  I didn’t know they actually got this big.”

Better yet?  It wasn’t alive.  Something had eaten it and it was just an empty shell.  Erin took it back to our tent and stuck it back under our chair.  We were going to attempt to smuggle it back onto the boat.

On the way back, Erin found a whole sand dollar.  I examined it for a long time to make sure it was dead, and when I finally convinced myself that it was, I stuck it in my bathing suit pocket.  We then swam, snorkeled, and walked down the coast line until we got all the way to the end of the island (which isn’t as impressive as it sounds).  It was conch city.  We found four or five that we really liked and lugged them all back to the tent.

The entire time, we made plans to come back here some day and spend a week… or just move entirely.  It was, by far, our favorite place out of the four ports we went to.

We shoved the shells into the bottom of our bag, wrapped towels gently around them, put stuff in my purse, and headed back to the ship.  They scanned our bag and sent us on our way.  We got quite a few shells off that island and no one said anything to us.  Later, we we told my mom about it, she was surprised that they let us do that.

That night, we put all the shells out on our balcony because they stank like crazy.  I couldn’t wait to get them home and get them in some bleach!

Last Day… so sad.

Something else happened during that day… Erin and I both lost our sea sickness patches.

My dad is a doctor, and he hooked us up with some sea sickness patches that you put behind your ear.  I wasn’t really worried about it for myself, but Erin gets motion sickness easily, so we wanted to make sure that she had them for herself.  I wore them too because it is better to be safe rather than sorry.  I figured we’d be okay since we only had a day left…

 

…But I was wrong.  Erin spent most of the last day on the ship sleeping off the nausea medicine we had in case we ran out of patches, which we did.  I did a lot of reading and then wandered about the ship some, checked out a couple of places, got a drink, relaxed and read some more, went back to the room, took a nap.

It was our last night in the dining room, and even though neither one of us were very hungry, we went and had dinner anyway.  We wrote our head waitress a thank you note, gave her an extra tip, and got a picture with her.  We’d been requesting to sit in her section all week, and by the end of the week, she knew our dining habits pretty well.  We always enjoyed going to dinner knowing that we’d have her to entertain us and make the extra long experience that much more enjoyable.

Last day… so sad.

They gave us two options to get off the ship: early or late.  If you chose early, you had to take all your stuff with you when you left.  If you chose late, you left your bags outside your room the night before and they would come and pick them up. We chose early because even though the cruise was over, we still had three days left of our honeymoon, and the debarkation day was very packed.

We got up early, ate early, finished packing our last bits of stuff and then lugged all of our stuff out of room to the fifth floor to wait for our floor (the tenth floor) to be called.

At breakfast, we saw a water spout… the second one we’d seen in the last 48 hours.

It didn’t take very long, and we were completely off the ship by 10am.  I left Erin on the sidewalk with our stuff to go and grab the car.  The parking fee for those eight days? $120!  It was FIFTEEN DOLLARS A DAY FOR PARKING.  We spent almost as much on the parking as we did in spending money for the whole cruise.

We got the car loaded up and started heading towards Melborne, Florida.  As everyone is pretty aware at this point, Erin has been doing an online graduate school program through the Florida Institute of Technology.  It’s a pretty rigorous program, but she’s enjoying it and learning everything she can about her chosen field.

In planning out our travelling, I noticed that we would be driving through where her school was.

“You should contact the Dean.  He always said he enjoyed meeting students that are in the online program since he rarely ever gets to.”

She e-mailed him and he sent her back a confirmation and an address.  We got to his house, which is one of the single largest houses that I’ve seen that doesn’t have some sort of tour attached to it.  I’m pretty sure that my parents house could have fit inside it twice, and if you know my family, that’s saying something.

He had three garages…  Not a three-car garage… three different garages that would each house at least three cars.  He was in the process of building on an addition, and his house was on a preserve, so 70% of the land he owned had to be undeveloped… and boy oh boy… if his house was the 30%, this man owned more land than I can imagine.

He showed us around in his addition.  We walked into a large room that looked like your average biology lab, but without any of the equipment.

“This must be where he keeps all his research,” I whispered to Erin.

“Is this your lab?” Erin asked him.

“My lab?”  He looked out into the room.  “It does look like one, doesn’t it?  Oh no… This is my music room.  Each of these drawers is filled with CDs and over here… in these cabinets… are my vinyls.”

If they could, my eyes would have popped out of my head.  I’ve seen music stores with less music.  I wanted to take pictures, but I didn’t want to seem nosy or awkward, so I didn’t.  His collection, though, is easily worth MILLIONS of dollars.  Easy.  The music room has closed circuit monitoring and every door is key coded and armed.  Attached the the music room is a home theater that when completed, will seat 20.  It is completely sound proofed with a 162 inch screen and four speakers that are between 8 and 9 feet tall.  The seats are all going to be leather and they’ll all recline.

He took us and his three student assistants who were helping him move out to lunch at a seafood place on the river.  The students drove separately, but since we didn’t really know the area very well, he drove us… in his lexus…  He paid for everyone’s meals as well.

We chatted and enjoyed our time, thanked him for meeting with us when we got back, and he invited us to come and stay with him if we were ever in the area again.  When we got back into the car, I sighed heavily, took one last look at the house and said, jokingly, to Erin,

“You’ve got some catching up to do.”

She laughed, “Right?  I mean, if this is ABA, then we need to move to Florida and start hanging out around here more.”

“Or you could just because BFFs and start what he does up in South Carolina or some other state and make a fortune up there…”

We drove the rest of the way to Orlando and listened to Harry Potter on CD.  As we got closer, I decided to figure out the plan for the day.

I texted Kelly, our friend with whom we were staying.

“Hey, we have an ETA of 4 or so… When will your flight be in?”

“Shit, my flight has been delayed… I won’t land until 10:30pm.  You can stay with me, but it’ll be late and my house is a wreck.”

“We don’t really care about the house, we just want to see you and get mexican food and hang out.  We can find something to do until you get in.”

I frowned at my phone before looking at Erin.  “She’s delayed.”

“By how much?”

“She won’t land until 10:30.  What should we do?”

“It’s Orlando… Downtown Disney?”

So we went to Downtown Disney, got ice cream, walked through the lego store, took way too many selfies, ducked out of a storm, got a turkey leg, and made plans to go see a movie while we waited.  Then my phone goes off.

“My flight was delayed again.”

“How bad?”

“I won’t be landing until 12:30am, and it’s going to take me an hour’s drive to get home from the airport.”

“It’s okay, we’ll find a place to hang out or something.”

“I have a spare key with my girlfriend.  I’m going to call her at work and let her know you’re going to come and get it from her.  Is that okay?”

“That’s better than okay.”

So we finished our turkey leg, got the key, and went to Kelly’s.  We decided to “take a nap” before going out to our late movie… but when it came time to get up to go to our movie, we were so tired that we both just went to bed instead.  We had an early morning the next day anyway.

Discovery Cove and our dolphin experience was the next day.  We got up early because check in started at 7:15am.  Unfortunately, we didn’t make it there at exactly 7:15am and ended up in the back of this really long line.  A woman came down and asked how many people were in our party.

“Two.”

“Step this way, please.”

Not having children pays off again.  We got bumped to the front of the line because our party size was small.  We got checked in, got our vests and other equipment, got our locker, and got our breakfast.  They served you breakfast and lunch there, and it was soooo yummy.  Breakfast sandwiches, fruit, french toast, pancakes, you name it… they had it for breakfast just about.  After we ate, we found a spot with an umbrella next to the reef and talked talked about our plans for the day.

Once 8am hit, we were able to get in the water… and holy cow… The water was FREEZING.  I had a time trying to get mine to not leak, but once I did, we snorkeled for a long time before heading over to our dolphin experience, which was one of the first ones of the day.

Apparently, at Discovery Cove, if the dolphins don’t want to work that day, they don’t have to, and a whole group decided to take Monday off, so the others were working double time to make up for it.  Our group was delayed by an hour, so the manager comped us a DVD of the dolphin experience for free.  Definitely worth the extra wait time.

We got a dolphin named Dexter who had just moved up the ranks enough to start breeding, so he was super flirty with the girl dolphins around and kept trying to show off for the girl dolphin next to us.  We got to feed him, pet him and then swim with him.  The whole experience lasted about 30 minutes, but it felt like it went by so much faster than that.

Afterwards, we went to the lazy river and got out at the aviary to feed the birds.  It was a lot larger than I remember it being, but the whole place had been expanded since we first visited, so I wasn’t really surprised.  We wanted to go before lunch because we didn’t want the birds to be full by the time we got to them later if we waited.  I’m glad we didn’t wait because they were everywhere.  At one point, I had one land on my head.

We got lunch, went and saw the otters and monkeys, and then Erin took a nap while I went back to the reef.  After about 30 minutes, two of the educators that worked there took a shark out of the small “wading pool” and gathered a bunch of people around for an impromptu lesson about baby sharks.  They needed to film them playing with this shark in a small group, so we all got to benefit from it.  Erin woke up and walked over just in time for everyone to touch the shark, so that was an awesome experience.

After they put the shark back, they started to feed the rays.  I have no idea how they tell them apart.

“This is my dream job.” I said.

“What is?”

“Working here… directly with the animals… in a teaching capacity… Where I could do tours or small groups and then go home a night and be done.  And get to spend all my time working with exotics… It’s just amazing.  I wonder what it takes to get a job in a place like this.”

“Only one way to find out,” Erin said plainly.

We spent the rest of the day just enjoying the reef, drinking the included alcohol, and sneaking snacks back to our locker for our drive home the next day.

We got dinner (Mexican food) with Kelly and a couple of her friends that night, woke up when we woke up the next morning, and made the trek back home.  It was such an amazing experience.  We’re already making plans for our next vacation to take place in the Keys in Florida or some other place, but school might be a problem… because…

WE’RE BOTH IN GRADUATE SCHOOL!

I got my acceptance letter while I was in the middle of writing this blog!  I start this month!  So excited!

Grand Turk

Grand Turk

Grand Turk

Grand Turk

Grand Turk

Downtown Disney

Downtown Disney… Legos!

Downtown Disney… Legos!

Downtown Disney… Legos!

Downtown Disney… Legos!

Downtown Disney.. Legos!

Downtown Disney.. Legos!

Downtown Disney.. Chocolate and Ice Cream

Downtown Disney.. Chocolate and Ice Cream

Downtown Disney.. Chocolate and Ice Cream

Downtown Disney.

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove. Underwater Reef

Discovery Cove… Cave

Discovery Cove… Waterfall

Discovery Cove… Waterfall

Discovery Cove… Waterfall

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Discovery Cove… Feeding the birds!

Wedding Video

Big Honeymoon update still to come… but here’s a glimpse at our wedding to hold you over until then:

I Can’t Believe It’s FINALLY Here!

It is technically Thursday at this point. The last few days have been rather crazy. I’ve spent a lot of time running around and getting stuff done with Alex. 

We had to get car paint, wedding sparklers, picture frames, and a bunch of other stuff. I took Alex to the tuxedo place to try his on and he looks soooo good! I am so excited!

Today is the rehearsal at 5:30pm followed by the rehearsal dinner. We are filling out all the paper work for tomorrow and we’re going to bring the cords to practice tying them. 

People have started showing up today and yesterday. Kenny and Jason came in from Michigan today. They’re staying with us as well. Most everyone else comes in tomorrow. 

At this point, I’m past trying to stress details. I’m just ready to get married, party, and go on our two-week honeymoon. My mom is taking care of the fans and the water bottles for the ceremony.  

The only problem right now? The weather. It’s on the fence. I’m hoping it pushes back, but the reports keep going back and forth. Luckily, our venue has a beautiful indoor back up plan if it rains, but hopefully it won’t. 

My. Brain. Is. Fried. I can’t even begin to explain how wonderful it was to just cook dinner and have a drink with Erin and our friends tonight. It was amazing. 

Erin’s car goes in for an oil change at 8:30 in the morning. We have to finish shopping, I need to practice my dance with my dad, Erin’s family is getting into town, we need to wrap presents, Erin needs to buy presents, we need to finish our hand fasting cords, and then we have the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. 

Shit’s getting real, y’all. Shit. Is. Getting. Real!!!!

It’s My Wedding Month!

Welcome to June!  The month of the Kel and Erin wedding.  Wedding festivities have already started to kick off and we’re definitely excited about every step in this process, taking the time to savor every moment and new experience.

This last week and the next couple of days have been extremely exhausting and trying.  Between the death of a young soul in the community and all the animals being sick, it’s been rough.  Elijah, our eldest ferret, goes to the vet for a wellness check up tomorrow.  We’ll see if he’s relatively healthy or if his time has come.  We’ve switched up his diet some, so we’re hoping that it will be a good checkup.

As for the wedding planning… We currently have 118 RSVPs, and I think that number may only go up to 120.  This is a big wedding, and feeding all these people that amount is going to be the biggest cost for us.  I didn’t know this, but food and alcohol costs are nearly half the budget… It’s more than our flowers, photographer, DJ, dresses, and cake… combined.  It’s really insanely expensive.

This past weekend, my cousin and aunt threw Erin and I a bridal shower.  It was really awesome.  We had BBQ and beans and Mac N’ Cheese.  There were games.  We had Bridal Shower Games.  It was amazing.

It started Saturday at one.  Erin and I were going to wake up and shower and go, but that didn’t end up happening.  We ended up waking up at 8am, having breakfast, watching Star Wars Episode V and just relaxing before getting ready to go.

We got there about 12:30 to check everything out.  There was an area for “Recipes for a Happy Marriage” where people could put their marriage advice.  We got a lot of cute ones, but some of them were absolutely hilarious.

We had drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic.  My dad and aunt started the party before we got there, as is traditional in my family, I think.  My dad started telling all kinds of stories about his work and past weddings and us growing up.  He entertained the guys pretty much the entire time.  The girls all sat around and talked about the wedding.  Except that we couldn’t use the words “bride” or “wedding.”

My cousin, who is getting married on September 5th of this year, had a game where we each got three rings and every time we used words with bride/bridal in them or wedding, we lost a ring.  At the end, the person with the most rings would win a prize.  I ended up winning this game. 

Like I said, my dad pretty much entertained everyone.  I heard from my friends afterwards that he was hilarious.  At one point, he went outside to see some friends at the pool (this was at the neighborhood clubhouse) and he told them that there was a bridal shower going on in the clubhouse.

His friend asked, “Oh, how do you like you’re future son-in-law?”

He said, “Oh, I’m not gaining a son-in-law… I’m gaining a daughter-in-law.”  It made me smile.

Another game my cousin had going was a “guess that spice game.”  You had to smell the different spiced and try to guess what they were.  I sucked horribly at this one.  My mom ended up winning.  I think she only missed one of them, and it was a weird lemon spice that almost no one had heard of before.  I had no idea.

The last game we had was a “She said… She said…” game where it could be something about me or Erin or both of us.  We weren’t allowed to play this one.  My mom ended up winning this one two, but she gave her prize to the second place winner, which was my ex, Carol.  I found that amusing.

My mom said she probably shouldn’t have played that one, as she thought it was an unfair advantage since she knew me as well as she did and was able to get most of them because of process of elimination.

The decorations were amazing.  My cousin said Pinterest had been a thing at her house the last couple of months while she was planning everything out.  We had a ton of food left over, and I am actually going to head over there after I get off work and pick some leftovers up for dinner tonight.

I think the coolest part of the whole event was what happened while we were opening presents.  We went through all the gifts and then my cousin pulls out one more gift…  She says, “This was a special gift that was sent to me.”

I look at the card that says our names with a heart in between them.  Then Erin says, “Are you serious?”  I look at her and she’s looking at my cousin, who’s grinning from ear to ear.

I say, “What is it?”

Erin says, “That’s my mom’s handwriting.”

I look down at the card, “Really?”

This is a big deal.  Erin’s family hasn’t been 100% supportive of the gay, but her mom has been coming around.  I opened the card and Erin read it aloud.  It was filled with loving words, and ended with “I hope you enjoy this gift that I made for you.”

Inside was two candles, some napkin rings, and handmade napkins and place mats.  They matched our dining room, which she’s never seen.  It was the single most awesome gift we got that day.

Decorations

Prize Baskets

Talking and Hanging Out

Some presents!

Menu

Wine

My “Crazy Aunt Dede” and Erin

Spice Game Answers

Decorations

Story Telling

Magnolias from my grandmother’s house

Food!

My mom and my brother

The next day, Sunday, was spent at church, shopping, and cleaning.  I taught the morning service and then went to the second service.  We had a guest speaker today and he talked about the Law of Attraction and how if we want or need something, we have to believe that it will come to us as if it already has.  I decided that I wanted to create a vision board, so after service, we went to the veggie stand and then to my parents house where I picked up a cork board from my bedroom.

We went to Costco, took stuff home, and then went to TWO DIFFERENT WALMARTS trying to find two small kiddy pools.  We wanted one for the dogs and one for the ferrets.  We ended up getting a medium one for the dogs and a storage bin for the ferrets.

Our outside spigots don’t work, so we had to buy an indoor hose converter to fill the pool up on the deck. It worked extremely well, so we ended up letting Yukon out into the water that evening before just sitting on the deck and watching the storm roll in.  It was nice.

The ferrets storage bin was filled up with the 50lb back of rice that we picked up at Costco.  It turned into a huge mess, but they loved it so much that it was definitely worth it.

We also got all the supplies that we needed so that I could make laundry detergent again.  The last batch I made was just before THANKSGIVING OF 2013 and it just rain out this week.  This batch should last us until the start of 2017, if not longer.  And it only cost us $30 bucks.

If you’d like the recipe, click here.  But my suggestions would be to get the Zote bars early, cut them up, and let them dry out.  The grating part takes the longest and if they aren’t dry, the shavings will clump together.

Mix the ingredients a little at a time instead of throwing them all into the storage bin at one time.  It will make mixing everything together a lot easier.

The purex bottles make a good laundry detergent holder.  You can use the big bin to store everything and keep smaller amounts in the purex containers.  I have used this for well over a year and it is absolutely fantastic.  I will probably never buy laundry detergent every again.

Here’s a video of the ferrets in their rice pit:

And here’s Yukon and Bentley trying out their new pool:

 

Making of Handfasting Cords

So this time, when Erin and I took the supplies out of the bag, we actually opened them and got everything we could done without the ankhs that I ordered through Amazon.

We started the day out by going to the Greek festival.  We stuffed our faces and toured the church.  I was reading the pamphlet they gave out and one part really struck me, “The Theotokos (the Mother of God) with the Christ Child teaches us a fundamental truth of Orthodoxy-that is, that Christ is to dwell in each of us.  Saint Ambrose expressed it well: “Every believing soul conceives and gives birth to the Word of God; Christ, by means of our faith, is the fruit of us all, thus we are all mothers of Christ.”  Thus, the same Christ that condescended to dwell in the Virgin Mary comes to be born in us, that we too may say, as did Saint Paul, “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God (Gal 2:20).”

I showed it to Erin and said, “It’s a Unity Principle.”

It made me really want a statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.  I still don’t call myself a Christian, and I never will I don’t think, but I’m still connected to that past and still connected to that faith, and drawn to it from what I’m learning at Unity, which teaches us that the Christ presence, the spirit of God, is within all life and that we are to connect with it how we can and share that light and presence with the world.

The understanding that the spirit of creation, of the Gods, is within all life was just a real eye opener to me in how I treat other people and how I react to situations in my life, and I’m starting to see that idea translated everywhere I go and in everything I read.

After that adventure and with full bellies, we drove up to the pagan store in Hendersonville.  I got a meditation CD and Erin got some candles and stones for her work with chakras that she’s going to start soon.  We came back and decided to start working on our cords after I booked Discovery Cove for July.  Honeymoons =/= Cheap!!!

 We started out by cutting one of each of our ribbon colors into six foot long stretches.  We tied a knot in one end about three to four inches in and then attached them to carabiners to hook them to the table for some pull.  We braided them all the way down and then tied a knot in the other end.

This part took a little longer than we expected it to because the cords kept flipping upside down on us, which meant we had to stop braiding, back up, and try again.  Finally, we got that part finished.  Erin and I kept thinking about how pretty they were going to look and the cats kept playing with them, so they have lots and lots of positive and loving energy in them.  We tied a second knot on the other end to leave ribbon lose like on the other end.  Then we went back and double knotted both sides because the ribbons are silk and we didn’t want them to fall apart.

Mine are the blue a purple, and Erin’s are the green and orange.

Next, we started working on the tassels.  We wanted to take back any supplies we didn’t need, so we cut open only half the of the beads just in case we were able to return any unused supplies.  We lined up the patterns that we wanted, picked out the charms that we wanted to add in the middle and on the end, then cut the wire and started to bead.  We used bowls to keep up with everything so it wouldn’t roll all over the place.

The next part was a little tricky.  We used wire because it was sturdy, but sturdy things can sometimes be more difficult to work with.  We started by taking the charm we wanted on the end, running the wire through it so that about an inch was through the hole, then we twisted the end up the rest of the wire tightly to secure the charm in place.

On the other end, we started to put the beads through and then push them over the twisted spot to really put a good hold in on the bottom charm.  If you decided to do this, make sure that your wire is small enough that twisting it will still be able to get through the hole in your beads.  The end result was really nice and the wire didn’t show very much.  We used a nice gold colored wire though so that even if it did show, it would still look nice and pretty.

The next part was just as difficult: figuring out how to attach the tassels to the cords.

We ended up pushing the end of the wires through the knots at the end of the cords and then wrapping the loose wire around the end of the cords to help secure it.  To tie it in, we pushed it back through the knot in the cords and then down through the first two or three beads.  Finally, we wrapped it around the wire between the bead a couple of times before cutting off any extra.

I can’t promise that no fingers were hurt in the making of these cords.  In fact, it sorta hurts to type this right now.  Silly index finger!

  After that, it was wash, rinse, repeat for the next four tassels.  We watched chopped and laughed and talked while we worked.  I’ve read about people praying as they do them, but we put positive energy into them in our own way.  It’s whatever works for you.  It was a lot of fun.  I really can’t wait for our last charm to get here.

We created (or really, will create) six completed tassels.  We got the first five done today, and hopefully we’ll finish the last one next week when it gets here.

We plan on keeping them tied and then placing them into a shaddow box to hang up somewhere in our house to remind us of the bond we share.  41 days from now, I’ll be able to call Erin my wife.  And I’m so unbelievably happy and excited about it.  You can definitely plan a wedding in six months, just plan to work really hard for six months to get everything done!

Speaking of getting things done, I don’t think I mentioned this in my last post, but Erin and I went and applied for our marriage license on Friday.  I get to go pick it up on Monday and then we will put it in a safe place until June 26th!

Anyway, the almost end product that we have is beautiful.  Here’s a small gallery of what we completed today:

Our tassels combined

Erin’s cords

Combined tassels

Our cords mixed together

Our cords mixed together

Our cords seperated

My cords

The tassels again

The Making of a Handfasting, Part Two

We have 53 “official” replies with approximately 80-100 “yes” responses total, so far.  Every day we are getting more and more response cards in the mail.

We still need to finish up the DJ survey, the photographer survey, and tell the caterer what our final thoughts are on the food.  We have to guests who aren’t going to be eating because they medically can’t eat anything (Eosinophillic Esophagitus.  It’s a bad one.).

I went around to about four different places after I wrote my last blog and none of them hand an ankhs.  The only other place I could check would be the Unity Festival that is on May 30th, but the bridal shower is that day, and I’m worried that we won’t have time to do both.  I ordered them online.  They’ve shipped and are supposed to be here on the 26th, but I imagine they’ll  be here mid-to-late next week.  That’s the final piece to the puzzle.

I took all the rest of the supplies that we got, laid them out, took a bunch of pictures and then put them all back in the bag.  We will hopefully be working on them more this weekend.

My side is has the purple and blue ribbon with the cream that ties the two of ours  together.  I have two types of beads for each color and some charms that we’ll hang in the tassels and on the end.

As far as matching charms go, we have the three, the infinity trinity knot, the ankhs once we get them, and our initials.  My mom gave us a K and an E for a gift at one point, and we weren’t sure what to do with them up until now. They’ll go on our cords, and it’ll be fantastic.  We also have pentacles, but they’re actually hair bows from Hot Topic, so we’re going to have to basically cut the pentacle off the bow and attach a loop for our cords, but when you’re pagan, you have to do what you have to do.

My cords have a couple of crosses that are significant of my past and my recent “coming to Jesus” moment. I also have a small ankh and an eye of Ra that will go on there as well.  And a paw print, for my insane love of animals.

Erin’s cords will be green and orange, tied together with the cream.  She has some native american charms, a puzzle piece for autism, a Star of David for her attachment to Judaism through  her past, and some other nature charms (a feather, owl, etc).

It cost a little over $100 for all the supplies, so we’re going to only open up the beads as we need them so we can take back anything extra that  we have.

My mom bought wedding favors: a votive holder with “Love” and our names and the wedding date on them.  We ordered the candles for them yesterday, so  they should be here next week. She also got a ton of bubbles. We spent the evening yesterday putting stickers on them while drinking wine from our new glasses and Erin fixed the jam she made without the addition of pectin (that didn’t set because the recipe we used sucked) in our new sauce pan.

Last weekend, we went strawberry picking with one of Erin’s friends from work.  It was a lot of fun.  The field had a ton of berries and they were all huge.  Some were even weirdly shaped.  We have one that we called the Apollo berry because he has extra toes and it sorta looked like his paw print.  I’d never been strawberry picking before, and I wasn’t sure about going this time because I didn’t know if I wanted to intrude on Erin’s time with her friends, which we value, but she really wanted me to come, so I did.  And I’m glad we did because….

We ended up picking a whole heck of a lot of strawberries.  We didn’t want them to go bad because the experience wasn’t exactly the cheapest thing we’d ever done, so we ate half of the bucket, froze the other half, and I looked up a crock pot jam recipe that didn’t use artificial pectin because we figured that it would be easier and less chemical-y.

Unfortunately, it didn’t set.

So then Erin did a bunch of research to see how she could make it set, and fixed the jam (pun intended) that we found ourselves in.  So while it was on the stove boiling, we drank a glass of wine, put the new wine stopper in the bottle (which was why we decided to have the wine to begin with), and put stickers on things.

We’re still not done with the stickers.  It’s a lot like invitations… Do some as you go so you aren’t up late the night before trying to finish in a panic.  It’s getting there.  Erin go three boxes of the votives done and I got two boxes of bubbles done before we were both done with the whole thing for the time being.

Eventually, Erin deemed the jam complete and set it aside to cool.  It was at that point that the only logical thing to have for dinner was breakfast, so I cooked eggs and pulled some biscuits that I’d made and frozen and heated  them up.  We had vegetarian breakfast for dinner over white wine.  It was lovely.

 

As for the rest of the stuff, we’re in the process of finalizing the rest of the honeymoon.  It started out with a day trip to Miami the day before we boarded for our 8-day cruise, and it has turned into a full blown two week event.  We’re leaving two days before to go explore Fort Launderdale and Miami, we got a room through AirBNB, which I highly recommend doing for all vacations.  That website is amazing and so much cheaper than hotels.

We’re getting on the boat and then going on our cruise for 8 days, then driving to Orlando and spending a day at Disocovery Cove, swimming with dolphins, before coming home and having a day to “recover” before Erin and I get back to the grind.  We’ll probably do a lot of name changing stuff on that Monday as long as our license has come in.  I’m so freaking excited, it’s unreal.  Somewhere along the way, our honeymoon went from an 8 day adventure to a two week adventure, and I’m not complaining.

I had my first dress fitting on Thursday.  They have to shorten up the hem and adjust the top so that I don’t fall out of it and it needs five freaking bustles in the back to hold up the train, but it’s absolutely amazing.  I was worried I wasn’t going to like it anymore, but after I put it back on, I didn’t want to take it off.  It’s a lot of dress.

Erin, do NOT click on these links… I mean it… don’t do it!  It’s pictures of my dress for the masses, and if you click on it, you’ll ruin the surprise and then you’ll be sad and I’ll be sad… so don’t do it!  P.S. – I LOVE YOU!!! (here and here)

We still have two remaining invitations to give out, plus the ones we’re sending to random celebrities, like President Obama, Ellen, and Mickey Mouse.  Today, as soon as I get off here, we’re going to start working on our cords while watching a movie.  I’ll take lots of pictures and talk about the process and what we did in case anyone is interested in it for their own use.  Blog soon!

I’m Beyond Ready…

… For the end of the school year. 

I spent the last two days finishing up the invitations to the wedding.  I can now happily report that they are ready to be mailed out TOMORROW!! We wrote 81 invitations, but all but maybe two or three are for at least two people. I think our head count is at 160 right now if everyone shows up, and we’re catering a buffet dinner with an open bar, so that’s pushing the limit of what is affordable. 

This process (and those of you here that read my other blog know the whole back story) has made me realize that I’m a lot like my mom. When we were going through everything and talking about the arch we’re having made for the ceremony, the designer kept talking about twigs and branches on it….

And I was like “nope.”  I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what my issue was with it until recently: it was too country. And I am NOT a country gal, just like my mom (even though she was raised on a farm, she’s sooooo not country).

So the invitations are going out tomorrow. Erin is taking them to the post office to have them weighed a second time just to be sure and then they’re off!! They’re so pretty. We gave some out by hand already and everyone kept bragging about how nice they were. And we’ve started getting response cards back already (everyone’s a yes so far!).

Shit is getting real, y’all. Everything is coming together. Everything is paid for. I have no idea what our budget looks like, but I know we have to be around the $22,000 mark, for real. Or we probably will be by the end of it since my mom upped the dinner package to the next level at the tasting. 

My cousin got the bridal shower invitation list, so we have that to look forward to at the end of May. I think it’s a “stock the kitchen” party, so that’ll be fun. And my Aunt (other side) got the bridal party luncheon list, and she wrote me back today saying my other cousins had been visiting that week and were helping her plan it. We still need to figure out the rehearsal dinner because half our people are from out of town, and I feel like that’s a lot of people to invite. 

My mom’s all about formality, so all the out of towners get invites to it. 

In other news, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw where my local news station posted an article about the woman who used a turkey baster and a known donor to get pregnant and the donor sued and got partial custody because “medical instruments” (aka, a doctor and a proper facility) wasn’t used. 

She said that they had a verbal agreement about how things would be and then they fought over the baby’s name…

I’m sorry, but that woman and anyone else who uses a known donor in the privacy of their own home without prior legal paperwork done up by a lawyer is an idiot and asking for trouble. She didn’t think he’d be involved? They verbally agreed?

Whatever. I don’t care how much my “known donor” (which we thought about having one, we’re talking to a guy who is an awesome friend of ours, then decided against it to protect him and us) says he’s okay with not being involved, if that’s what he says, I would pay the lawyer whatever I needed to just to be on the safe side. Why would ANYONE EVER put their family at risk like that??

In home stuff starts blurring lines without a lawyer. So and so could come back and claim different things went down and then it’s my word against his, and his DNA is half my kid, so it looks pretty damning to me. So foolish. So stupid. 

“Maybe she couldn’t afford the lawyer.” Then maybe she shouldn’t have had kids with that guy. If you can’t legally protect your family and you decide to have your family anyway, you deserve every fucked up thing that happens to you. 

We use a bank because they take care of legalities for us. And we use a doctor for added protection (and for fertility reasons) since they’re the only ones a court would consider in the whole “medical tools” bit or whatever. 

I’m sorry, but protect your family. No excuses. That story just got me fired up. 

69 Days… TeeHeeHee

The end of the school year is so unbelievably stressful.  There’s so much going on (and to top it all of, I’ve been sick for a week and now have laryngitis worse than I’ve ever had it before), and now that I’m the Youth Education Coordinator for Unity Church, there’s even more going on.  Right now, I’m in the middle of finishing up all the stuff I need to finish up with my Biology classes so that we can get into review mode for their final, which is at the end of May.  Totally freaked about how soon it is.  So on top of making sure they are ready and making sure I have enough grades, I’m also doing lesson plans every week for Unity for the elementary school kids.

I need to get ahead on those too, because I won’t be around a whole lot in June (wedding) and July (honeymoon).

Speaking of wedding planning, we’re 69 days away from the big day!!  It’s really hard to believe that we’ve manage to get everything planned out the way that we want it to be planned out in just six-ish short months.  Originally, we wanted a fall wedding because we wanted it to be outside when it wasn’t so hot.  We were thinking over labor day weekend, but then we decided Thanksgiving would give us more time to plan and more people would have the time off.

But my mom said that my sister might not be able to get both that and Christmas as times to come back here from Japan, so we changed the date… and we kept backing it up until we reached June.  I’m glad we didn’t go with Labor Day weekend, though, because my cousin got engaged and September 5th is her wedding day!  I’m super excited about going to that one with my wife when the time comes.  Also, I found out that a friend of mine from high school is also getting married on that day, so it turned out to be a popular day for weddings!  Fall usually is.

We split our invitation list into “locals” and “out-of-towners.” The list in front of me is only one of those lists….

Anyway, we are having a summer wedding in 69 days, and it’s absolutely unreal the amount of work and planning and time that it takes to get everything done.  Every time we turn around there’s one more thing we have to do.  For example, our save the dates went out to out of towners awhile back so that they would have the wedding website address… Next week, we send out our INVITATIONS!  So guess what I’ve been doing the last two or so weeks?  ADDRESSING THEM!

We used WeddingPaperDivas.com for our wedding invitations.  They’re amazing, and they even specialized ours more than they had too.. We wanted different colors than they offered and we wanted them upside down… Then they went through and changed all the sons and hes to daughters and shes, so it worked out really well.  I highly recommend them.

I’ve also handed out quite a few invitations to local friends that I see on a regular basis and we’ve already gotten response cards for a lot of them: all of them are yeses!  Every time I see that little card in the mail, I think about how shit’s getting real!

My dress should be coming in early next month so that I can do my first fitting.  I’m so nervous about it fitting properly!  Erin’s dress is already in and perfect.  She didn’t need any alterations, so my mom picked it up and hid it in their house.

What else have we done?  We ordered the guest party favors.  They’re little votive holders with our names and wedding date on them.  We’re going to get vanilla scented candles to go in them because the vanilla candle story is how I found out that Erin liked me in a “more than friends” kind of way.  She’d gone way out of her way to find me a woodwick candle (my fav) in vanilla (also my fav) as a housewarming gift, and I was so happy and internally upset because she was “so amazing” and I was all like, “why, why, why doesn’t this perfect girl LIKE ME like I LIKE HER!  This is soooo unfair.”

That was the first night she spent the night (on the couch, her choice because she didn’t want to move too fast), and we shared our first kiss.  I was on cloud nine and smiled myself to sleep that night.  Hard to believe that was my first kiss with my future wife!!! Not that I’m excited or anything.

We also had our cake tasting with our baker this past week. We’re doing a four tiered cake… with vanilla buttercream icing and a green strip of fondant around the base of each tier… Then there’s dark purple sqiggles in five different spots where we’ll put fresh calla lillies (the flower of our wedding).  The bottom layer is lemon, and then the one above is key lime, then lemon again, and key lime on top.  We’re not saving our top layer… From all reports, they end up pretty gross by the first anniversary.

Instead, our baker does “Anniversary Cakes” where they will remake the top tier for us at a discounted price.  It’s apparently a new trend, so that’ll be fantastic. 🙂

Today we took all our “Bridesmen” and my dad’s measurements to the tux rental place and got them reserved.  My dad will have to go over there sometime soonish to get his coat size measured (because we just went off what we had, and that wasn’t enough, apparently).  They’re medium gray with white shirts.  Erin’s guys have an emerald vest, tie, and pocket square.  My guys have a plum vest, tie, and pocket square.

All of our bridesmaids except for one of mine have their dresses now too.  My last girl is going to go get hers next week.  I may have to harass her and remind her every day until she does.  We’re getting so close to crunch time!

We finished the ceremony and sent it to our minister, who wrote me back and said he was super excited about being there.

We still have to figure out the videographer.  My parents aren’t sure about the price tag for the entire day ($1,350), but I told them that all we really wanted was the ceremony because we’re dancing into and out of it.  We’ll see what they say.  They said they had to look at the budget.  I’m not terribly worried.

Funny side track:

I was talking to my mom the other day about how insanely busy wedding planning is making me and how I don’t understand why there’s all this stuff that goes along with it.  She laughed and said, “What did you expect?”

I said, “I don’t know, something simpler?  I mean, I’m not complaining but it’s just all a bit overwhelming sometimes.  You get to a point where you can’t invite everyone and so you think about who will or won’t be offended by a lack of invite, and then you wonder if you should cut others to make sure.”

She laughed again, “This is what y’all signed up for!”

I said, “I guess I’m not really surprised, I am a H**** after all and we don’t do anything less than extravagant.”

We still have a long list of things to do… Erin and I both need our accessories for our dresses.  We have to buy our bridal party gifts.  We have to get our wedding rings.  We need to go through our DJ request list and the long list of questions that the photographer sent us about what we were doing and who all was going to be there…. And once we get responses back, we have to finalize the meal, get our seating chart together, and do 500 other things, I’m sure.

Sorry for this post being some sort of long ramble.  I know it’s not spiritual based, but I just wanted to talk about everything we’d accomplished so I didn’t feel so bad about sleeping and being laid up for the last almost week from this stupid sinus infection that has escalated into my throat and lungs…  Writing it out helps. Tootles!

Homosexuality and Obesity: A Response

Let me preface this by saying three things: 1) I am not a Christian.  2) I am not straight.  3) I am overweight.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up, like I usually do, and checked my Facebook, like I usually do, only to find something that I don’t usually find: A friend had either liked or commented on a post by Perry Noble, the head minister of NewSpring Church in South Carolina.  The blog post was titled “Ten Convictions I have About the Church.”  NewSpring has always fascinated me.  Perry Noble is a good speaker.  I’ve listened to some of his sermons online and I’ve toyed with the idea of checking out the Anderson campus.  Not because I plan on converting to Christianity or attend on a regular basis, but because the church fascinates me.

I, of course, read the blog.  It had what I expected it to have, with one exception: conviction number eight read, “8 – The world would change in an unbelievable way if the church would attack the issue of obesity as relentlessly as it attacks the issue of homosexuality! (It would also be way more relevant to the church!) ”

I thought, wow.  I might be able to get on board with that.  The church should focus on the health of those in it rather than the sexuality of those not.  Apparently, this statement really bothered a lot of people because Noble decided to expand on this idea in a new blog titled “Homosexuality and Obesity.”

He starts by stating his beliefs on homosexuality: “I believe God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman — period. … I do not hate people who are gay.”

Let me start by prefacing my belief about Perry: I don’t believe that he is homophobic.  That implies that he fears gay people or homosexuality, generally due to a lack of understanding or knowing any gay people.  But he proves in the next line that this isn’t the case, “I actually have friends who are gay.”

This is my first problem with what Noble says in his blog.  I’ve heard this same argument used to justify that a person who makes racist jokes or comments isn’t actually a racist, “I have black friends.”

He continues on, “I do not have to believe the exact same way a person believes in order for me to accept them.”

First, let’s define the word “accept.”  According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accept means, “to receive willingly; to give admittance or approval to; to endure without protest or reaction; to regards a proper, normal, or inevitable.”  This definition points out the contradiction in his first statement because in order to accept a person who is gay, one must first believe that they are normal and they must approve of them.

What Noble means to say here is that he doesn’t have to believe the same way a person does to not treat them poorly or attack them.  He does not, by any means, accept gay people.  He refuses to treat them poorly like other churches, but this doesn’t mean he accepts them as they are.  I have a coworker who I love dearly.  She doesn’t accept my homosexuality or my lifestyle, but she’s still my friend.  She doesn’t treat me like shit, but she’s not going to vote for my legal right to marry my fiance either.  She’d come to my wedding, and I’d let her because we’re friends, but she’s still not going to think that my homosexuality is okay or “right,” and that’s fine.  Her faith says that, and mine doesn’t.

“If that were the case, I would have zero friends who are Democrats, Carolina Fans or own cats!”

This implies that homosexuality (along with obesity, but I’ll get to that in a moment) are choices.  I won’t try to convince anyone who is reading this that homosexuality is genetic.  We see it running in families, but in the decade that the Human Genome Project has been completed, we haven’t found a specific gene that definitely causes homosexuality.  This doesn’t mean that there are quite possibly multiple genes that make it harder to identify or that genes haven’t been linked (although nothing found has been the case for all people).

No one is born a Democrat or a Carolina fan and no one is born with a love of cats (although, who knows, right?).  Being a Democrat is a political statement that occurs in one of three ways: you get it from your parents being democrat and being raised in that environment OR you research and make the decision to be democrat OR your friends are all democrat and you become democrat to fit in with them.  The same can be said for being a Carolina fan or owning cats.

The majority of gay people in this day and age are raised in heterosexual homes, including myself, and all of my GLBT friends… except one.  Their heterosexual influence in my life didn’t make me straight, and it didn’t drive me to being a homosexual.  I didn’t do any research and decide that being gay was a better choice than being straight, and the majority of my friends growing up were all straight… until I realized that I was gay and went about finding people I could relate to.

He accuses the church of attacking the gay community “because it is easy to lob scriptural grenades at a situation that we have never had a personal struggle with.”  He admonishes the Church by saying that being hateful to gay people who have been “hateful toward [them] and attack [them]” is “not justification to treat people who are gay in an un-Christ like manner.”

Then he hits the nail on the head: “It is completely possible to love someone and respectfully disagree with them at the same time.”  This is different than accepting them.  You are disagreeing and agreeing not to treat someone poorly, not accepting them for who they are.

He then continues to say that others will say that gay people don’t go to heaven.  He counteracts this with two statements:

“One – The ONLY people who don’t go to heaven are people who do not know Christ—period. When we begin to tell people they have to place their faith in Christ AND be heterosexual then we have officially added to the Gospel, which is highly problematic.

Two – The passage that people use when trying to justify their hatred of gay people is found in I Corinthians 6:9-11, which does say that a homosexual will not inherit the kingdom of God. “

He’s right in that Jesus never said anything specifically against homosexuality.  He did say things about the one-man-one-woman (Matthew 19: 3-6).  I realize that he’s talking about divorce here, but you can’t have a divorce if you don’t first have a marriage.

He’s also right when he continues to say that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 calls out others and not just homosexuals.  The ESV version of this verse states:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

He continues by saying that everyone fits into this Bible verse, that we are all sinners, and that it’s only through Jesus that we will get to go to heaven.  He says, “JESUS essentially power washed our soul and made us brand new. Which does not mean we will never wrestle with who we used to be…it simply means that our new identity is in Christ.”

Which does not mean we will never wrestle with who we used to be…

Who we use to be.

Who we use to be.  Meaning gay.  Meaning we use to be gay and then we were “power washed” and made “brand new,” aka straight.  We will continue to struggle with being gay, but because we are “made new” and have our “new identity in Christ,” we will be straight.  We will change to be straight and fight the sin that is being gay.  If this isn’t enough evidence to the subversive message in this blog, it keeps going:

Which brings me to the issue of obesity…

Most of the people reading this article have most likely never heard a sermon on the issue of obesity.

The very fact I would categorize it as a sin is quite offensive to some.

However, I believe obesity is one of the most prevalent struggles in our nation today, and there are way more people in our churches wrestling with obesity than they are homosexuality.

First of all, yes, there are more people struggling with obesity in the church than homosexuality because homosexuals usually aren’t welcome there.  Also, the majority of homosexuals probably wouldn’t say they are “struggling” with their homosexuality.

He lists obesity as a sin.  He previously listed homosexuality as a sin.  This is called parallelism.  We are comparing the “sin of homosexuality” to the “sin of obesity.”  Now that this is established, we can start to see what Noble is really saying in his blog.

After listing a few statistics about obesity from the CDC, Noble says, “Obesity is killing people.  Our country is literally eating itself to death, yet the church chooses to remain silent about the issue because it seems to be too personal.”

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and the reason that I decided to write this blog.  Noble shows his ignorance of medicine and medical disorders.  There is a difference between being obese or overweight and being unhealthy.  There are multiple, multiple conditions that either prevent people from losing weight, gain weight too quickly or too much, and there are times when no amount of proper diet or exercise will get rid of someone’s weight.

Yes, inactivity and poor diet can cause obesity.  They can cause type two diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and all the other things the CDC links back to being obese.  But you know what else can cause obesity?  Low thyroid function, arthritis, Prader-Willi syndrome, Cushing’s syndrome, PCOS, and others.  You can watch your diet, and you can exercise all you want, but that doesn’t mean the weight will go away into what is considered “ideal.”

My BMI classifies me as obese, but aside from cholesterol that is less than ten points high, I’m healthy, according to my internist.  My fertility specialist diagnosed me with PCOS, and stated that losing some of my weight will make the condition better.  He told me that PCOS isn’t necessarily caused by being overweight because some people who are thin have it and people who are larger than me have it, but losing weight can sometimes help.  Funny thing about PCOS? It makes it extremely difficult to lose weight.

Noble continues on by talking about gluttony.  He has equated obesity with gluttony, and if there is one thing I know for a fact is that there is a difference between being a glutton and being obese.  You could be like my fiance, Erin, who can eat whatever she wants and as much as she wants and doesn’t gain a single pound, or you can be like me, who eats a single candy bar and holds onto every little bit of it ten-fold.  I have PCOS, and this is a side effect.  She does not.

He says, “There are people who have objected to me talking about this issue in the past and try to use the excuse that they are genetically predisposed to being a glutton, yet when people in the gay community try to say they are genetically predisposed to being gay, Christians push back and say “there is no way.” So why does the argument work for one side and not the other?”

I would fight this statement by saying that people aren’t genetically predisposed to being a glutton, but that’s not really the case.  Prader-Willi syndrome is a genetic disorder that causes a person who has to to feel hungry constantly.  They are prone to obesity if their diet is not strictly watched.

Gluttony is defined as “habitual greed or excess in eating.”  Again, there is a difference between being obese and being a glutton.  You can eat to excess or be greedy with food and be extremely thin, or you can be a healthy eater and very conscious about food and be very overweight.

I’m not saying that this is the case for everyone, but Noble doesn’t say that it’s not the case for everyone either.

He then continues on to tell his testimony about how he use to be overweight and how he struggled, and still struggles, with body image, but how he ultimately over came all of this to lose his weight and become healthy, which is great.

Except that this isn’t possible for everyone, which is what he states when he says, “I also know that Jesus in you allows you to overcome ANYTHING.”

But what happens when it doesn’t?  Does this mean that the person in question is simply not a good enough believer?  Or that they are somehow not “good” enough to overcome the causes of their obesity?

Or maybe it’s the fact that there is some other underlying cause for that person’s condition that can’t be overcome simply by not overeating.

Noble says, “Overeating is simply a lack of self-control, something we are promised by The Lord we have (Galatians 5:22-23).”  Is it?  Is it always?

Is overeating even the cause of obesity in all cases?  Is it just overeating or could it be unhealthy eating? Eating food that isn’t good for you? Or maybe a lack of exercise?  Or maybe something else entirely?

Then he says, “You CAN win the battle with weight!”

Except that some people can’t.  Except that some point don’t need to.  Except that weight isn’t the problem, health is.  And weight isn’t always the cause of health problems.

Perry Noble makes a couple of points in this blog:

First, he says that homosexuality is a sin, but that everyone suffers from sin.  He then says that just because a person sins, that doesn’t mean that they can’t get into heaven.  It just means that the need to cultivate a relationship with Jesus that will then cleanse them of their sin.  They’ll still have to fight it, but they’ll have Jesus and that’s what matters.

Secondly, he says that obesity is a problem in the church and that obesity is caused by gluttony, which is a sin; therefore, obesity is also a sin.  He then says that obesity, like with all sin, can be overcome.

There’s so many problems with this.  The first is that obesity automatically = unhealthiness, which isn’t always the case.  If a person is healthy, who cares what pants size they are?  And if they aren’t healthy, then that needs to be the first concern.  Maybe they need to lose weight to make themselves healthy, but that doesn’t mean they have to be inside their ideal BMI to be so.

And they should definitely not be told that they’re a sinner and therefore unable to enter the kingdom of heaven if they never get the weight off (aka, they never overcame their sin).  Maybe these people are completely healthy other than their weight (for example: my weight wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t trying to have children), but not people will see them as a sinner and a glutton because of their weight.

There’s a word for this: fat-shaming.  Perry Noble is fat-shaming and body-shaming whole groups of people, including many who are in his church.  He makes no mention about the health of individuals except to point out that being obese makes people unhealthy (when it’s really an unhealthy lifestyle), and then points that being obese is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle (read: gluttony) when gluttony is not always the case.

To take this one step further, when he compares the “sin of homosexuality” to the “sin of obesity,” we can assume that the way he handles the sin of obesity would be the same way to hand the sin of homosexuality: fight it constantly.  He said that the cure for gluttony is self-control, then it is safe to say that he would say the cure for homosexuality is also self-control.

When he quotes 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, he says, “You were a person who acted on these sins, but when you were saved by Jesus and the spirit of God, you were given the self-control necessary to not act on these urges.”

It’s okay to come to church if you’re gay, as long as you work on not acting on it.

It’s okay to come to church if you’re obese, as long as you work on not being obese.

This isn’t acceptance.  I would go as far as to say this isn’t even tolerance (showing the willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with).

Fat-shaming is making a person feel bad for their size.  And Noble does this, using the Bible as evidence.  His blog isn’t focused on health.  It’s focused on size.  It’s not focused on accepting people of all shapes and sizes, it’s focused on telling people who are obese that they are sinners due to gluttony and that they should not eat as they do because that is a sin.

Heterosexism is believing that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation.  Perry Noble does this as well, using the Bible as evidence.  His blog isn’t focused on accepting homosexuals into his church as they are; it is focused on getting them into the church and then changing them from being gay (sin) to being straight (not a sin).

When we talk in absolutes, we start running into problems.  And this is exactly what Perry Noble does.