#LoveWins

Amazingly, I've only had to unfriend one person on Facebook tonight.  I don't do it often, and I like to think I'm a pretty tolerant person.  But I won't deal with hatred on my own page.

I know some people aren't happy about today's ruling.  I get it.  The analogies will come out that now we can have plural marriage (what the person on my page had to say about my "rainbowed" profile picture).  Or marry dogs.  And of course, WWJD?  It's a sin!  It's a behavior!

Well, I'm pretty sure Jesus would tell you to love those people anyway.  Jesus would tell you not to judge those people.  Jesus might tell you that we are all made in his image, and this includes EVERYONE, not just you.  

I don't know.  I'm not Jesus.  And pretty glad I'm not.  That's probably a lot of pressure there, what with the miracles and the constant people praying at you and all.

Everyone is welcome to their opinion.  It's one of the things that our country is built on.  If I care about your opinion, I'll read it.  If I don't like it, I'll not read it.  But I certainly don't expect you to come over to my Facebook page and spew your hatred (and yes, it's hatred IMHO.  And on my Facebook page my humble opinion is the only one that matters).  If you don't like that, you are welcome to unfriend me.  I'm ok with that really.  I might miss you.  But it's ok.  I'll get over it.

My biggest question is, besides the "moral high ground" and the "I don't want to have THAT conversation about THOSE people with MY child", how does this ruling affect you in anyway if you aren't LGBT?  Really, as a straight person who is married, and does have gay friends, I'm thrilled for them, but either way, I'd wake up tomorrow and the world would still be turning.  Tomorrow, we'll all wake up and the world will still be doing it's thing for everyone.  Some of the same people who claim it's time to move to Canada said the same thing in 2012, and here they still are.  And the world is still turning, degraded moral compass as some see it and all.

But for my friend's that this directly affects:  It matters.  They're life is changed.  If you don't like gay marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex.  It's ok, I won't judge you.  That's not my job.

I personally feel that the world will be a better place with more people able to love and marry each other.  More love can't hurt, right?

Book Review: Gramma Nancy's Animal Hats (and Booties, Too!) by Nancy Nielsen

I received this book for free from bloggingforbooks.com.

I reviewed the book, Gramma Nancy's Animal Hats (and Booties, Too) by Nancy Nielsen.

I didn't want to blog until I actually made some of the hats, and I was pleasantly surprised.  The hat instructions are clear and can be used for all hats.  Then you embellish the hat to make the animal whatever it is (I made the chicken hat for a friend's baby).  The other nice surprise is that the hats aren't just for babies, and are easily sized to fit everyone.

I made one of the hats for my daughter, who is 9, and it did fit a little snuggly.  I will go up a size next time I make them.  The other knock on the book is that some pieces were to be hot glued and stuffed with styrofoam, which was not attractive or safe for a child.  I know that the directions were written that way so that all skill levels of knit/crochet can do the embellishments, but I would have liked to have seen instructions for knit/crochet embellishments, or at least something that would have been safer for a child/baby (considering that this is the dynamic the book is marketed for).

Overall, the book is worth a look at the local library, if not as an addition to your library for it's reusability and cuteness.

Stranger in a Strange Land

So we moved.  We have most of the stuff we are unpacking, unpacked.  The garden is started and the bird feeders are filled.  I've set up a chore chart for the kids to start tomorrow, but for the most part they've been very helpful.

But I'd be remiss to say everything is great.  I don't quite know how my husband is going to do this job long term, mostly because this city appears to have given up.  It's very rare to get good customer service; everyone is rude.  And worse, I think that everyone in town is used to having everyone give them rude service, so no one even gets worked up about it anymore.  Evidently the only people who Brian has had complain about it are from out of town (and expect better).

We've heard probably from no less than 10 people "Why would you ever move here?".  One was a person working at Shopko pharmacy for 23 years and drives in a half hour every day.  And she wouldn't have it any other way.

I am a customer service oriented, people pleasing person.  I abhor bad service (and I reward good service).  The only good service we've gotten is at the local Papa Murphy's.  Every time we go they are helpful and pleasant.  And that's it.  Most of the time people don't bother to say please or thank you.  When they do, they come off insincere.

I just don't want my kids to think that's ok.  And I don't want to get so jaded that I act that way, or accept it.  I actually did my big grocery shopping for 2 weeks-$260 worth-up in Stevens Point after receiving such shitty service at our local Copps.  Today my parents came down and we went to the local Shopko garden center.  The worker (a high school kid) was a complete ass and could have cared less.  The plants looked half dead.  We ended up going up to Plover and checked out the local Shopko garden center there.  The plants looked great.  The person who checked us out (a high school kid) was helpful and friendly.  We went in the store to buy seeds, and the person who checked us out (another high school kid) was helpful and friendly.  So WTF?  Why does everyone treat everyone else like shit here?  Can it be fixed?  Am I having to resign myself to drive 25 minutes away to do all my shopping? 

Probably.  I refuse to get treated like shit.

Anyway, onto other news.  I feel like my house is indoor camping.  I woke up the other day with a giant spider crawling on my arm.  When I wacked it against the wall, it made a loud thunking sound. There are so many bugs: flies, wasps (they are getting in the basement, and we can't tell where), ladybugs.  And ticks.  Ticks everywhere.  Every day at least one of us has a tick on them.  We pulled one out of the cat's head.  I just took one off my neck as I type this.  It's terrible.

Our landlord told us that he's renting out the storage units, but the people only come by to pick up their vehicles in the summer and leave them in the winter.  So far, we've only seen one person coming to those.  But he failed to tell us when he was talking about how "he does a little farming in the gardens across the driveway" and his "daughter grows some pumpkins to save for money for school" that he's actually RENTING out the gardens, and we have random people coming by every day.  They don't come up our drive way, but they are right across from us.  And we have yet to see his daughter that grows pumpkins.  Just him.  And lots of random day labor people.


I am not a "call the landlord" type person.  But I swear every time something breaks, I'm having Brian call.  I am not fixing a damn thing in this house.  I'm not.

So I was going to complain about my house.  But I decided I'm going to talk about the good things.

1. I have a whirlpool tub that is giant, with jets.  It's very relaxing.
2. Everyone has their own bedroom, and we have two bathrooms.
3. The appliances are all new, or nearly new.
4. I finally have a dining room, and we finally bought a decent table.
5. I have a nice back deck.
6. We have bluebirds nesting in our yard.
7. We have a nice sized garden.
8. My air conditioning works.

So there.  I ended on a postive note.  And the tick is drowning in alcohol.  Hopefully I will be soon too.