>^..^<

Well, being that it's the end of the year and all, I feel like I should write something profound. It's been an interesting year and sometimes things just don't always go the way you want. That's probably all I have to say about that. (='.'=)

I'm going to now illustrate this with a photo set of Max and Sophie (I'm thinking of turning this into a flip-book).

Stay in line

Hmmm...I'm pretty happy that 2006 is almost over. Happy New Year to all of you. It seems that many people I know are looking forward to a new year.

I have a splitting headache but had to interrupt feeling sorry for myself so that I could post this.

I bought this sign a few days ago as a Christmas present to myself:

Seriously, how could I pass that up?

You don't think I'm weird, do you?

So...it appears that I have been tagged for this "6 weird things about you" questionnaire that is going 'round the net. Well, at least around in my circles. Around in circles. Around circles. Round circles. Hmmm. Anyway.

Sorry my answers are long. That's, like, a weird thing about me. How much I write, when a shorter answer would easily suffice. Consider it a freebie. However, on to the real list:

1. I have food allergies, regular allergies, car sickness, claustrophobia...etc. So a dinner out with me means no Asian food and picking through the menu (and asking lots of questions or making special requests), I have to sit in the front seat of the car, I have to sit on the outside of the booth...and so on. I'm like that kid at camp who always had to be in the nurse station and came with an enormous shoebox full of pills. That's pretty much me.

2. I think that my cats are Jewish (God's way of trying to get folks of different religions, or different flavors of Christianity to get along). I also think they are nearly human, and understand what I say to them.

3. I often anthropomorphize inanimate objects. So if something falls down, I sometimes feel sorry for it. I also think my truck has feelings. Sometimes I don't want to get rid of something because I don't want to hurt its feelings (you know, like that old vase I am giving to goodwill - I don't want it to feel hurt because I've replaced it).

4. Sometimes I think I have a hearing problem (but I really don't - I can hear just fine, especially when I don't want to). I am so visually oriented that I find it hard to listen to audio books and I always watch movies with subtitles or closed-captioning on. When someone tells me something, I often have to see the words spelled out in my head. I often look at people's mouths when they talk, and if I am not looking at their mouth, or not looking at them directly, I occasionally seem to not be able to hear them, or catch words. Sometimes when I hear people talking, I think they aren't speaking in English. But they are. But then again, sometimes when I accidently switch to the Spanish channel (I suck at foreign languages, so I don't know Spanish), I will listen to it for a minute, and not realize it is not English. I think that's pretty weird, don't you?

5. I have a serious problem remembering my right from my left, and often will think "I pledge allegiance to the flag" so that I can think which hand is my right hand (no, that "L" shape hand thing doesn't work for me; because if you have a problem with right and left, why the heck would you remember off the top of your head which way the "L" is supposed to go?). So when I give you directions, if I say left, I might really mean right. But sometimes I might say left and really mean left, right?

6. Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I will start thinking about words that shouldn't go together, or words that do go together, but individually don't make sense, or seem strange, or words that seem spelled wrong, or alliterative words, or weird questions that suddenly bother me, or big long run-on sentences that I create in my head just like this one. Also I envision long sentences with lots of big words, or a string of small words (and lots of parenthetical statements).

So, that's pretty much it. I'm weird. But so are you, probably (although I bet you don't say the beginning of the pledge of allegiance to yourself when you are giving someone directions).

I'm not going to tag anyone...because...everyone I know is pretty much doing this (or has done it). But if you've not been tagged and would like to tag yourself...go for it.

Some Old Testament fun in a bag...

It's from Judaism.com but I think it would make the perfect Christmas gift for some fundy kids out there...Hey, I mean, I dressed up as a leper one halloween. I can totally see myself playing with this:

A bag of plush toy plagues!

I have to find more stuff to sell so I can buy this for my nephews! I love the thought of little J. and E. fighting over "An icky boil on a piece of flesh!"

Selling my blog to the highest bidder

No, I'm not really selling my blog. Anyway, I wouldn't know what to get with the $.99 I'd get for it.

I can't believe it's almost been a week since I blogged last. I have got to get out of this non-blogging funk.

I've been really busy trying to find things to sell in my house, cleaning, and trying to find work (er, not necessarily in that order I guess). I'm happy to report that I got work for Monday and Tuesday this week and the next. So that is very exciting. Four days of in-house agency work, and hopefully none of them will cancel. The downside of freelance, for sure.

The last two days I have been putting stuff up on e-bay. The big sellers so far are my... (and this is like a coming out of sorts for me)...Little House on the Prairie series. OK, go ahead and make fun of me. It was my favorite show (and book series) when I was a kid. So I have seasons one through six and I'm selling them. I have this one annoying e-bayer who keeps e-mailing me questions about how much I will sell them for in this or that combination ("How much would you charge for seasons 2-6 together? How much will you charge for season 3, 5 and 6?") and it doesn't matter that each time I keep telling her I can't sell them as a set because they have all already been bid on individually. So then she just e-mails me asking about a new combination. Gah.

But anyway, I have a number of things up and hopefully I will get in some money there. I am keeping my most favorite stuff though (aside from the Little House DVDs), so don't feel sorry for me...it's good to get rid of stuff.

There are a couple more serious posts I want to write, and I will, when I have some time again. Hmmm, unless someone wants to pay me to post? (I know my posts lately have been just so compelling that I could start an e-bay auction for another post, and you all could bid. I know, I might be taking this too far.)

Here's a toast to more work coming my way...or some really crazy end-of-auction bidding war on some of my junk. (clink!)

Like I need your support

Saw this on a message board about cats:

Question:
How can I get my cats to stop jumping on the countertops?

Answer:
STAPLE THEM TO THE FLOOR.

(there were many answers given by different people but that one made me spit my tea onto my keyboard)

and one more:

Question:
How can I get my cat to stop Meowing? We have had him since he was a kitten, He meows all the time and really never stops I don't want to hurt him in anyway, I have tryed smaking him on the butt and using a spray bottle filled with water but nothing has worked and he is still meowing

I do not understand why he is meowing all the time just for no reason cause he always has food & water filled up everyday

Answers:
You try not making one word for a day, and if you do, have some one slap yur dumb ass.

cats meow....what do you want him to do--bark?

maybe he is trying to tell YOU to shut up. You sound like a yapper yourself.......blah blah blah

Which reminds me of a great bumper sticker I saw recently:
National Sarcasm Society. Like we need your support.

My Un-Christmas tree photo series, part 2

Here's my tree, with ornaments. When I get the colored light bulbs for the stand, I'll probably take another picture and bore you with that too. The stand (which you can't see in this photo I just realized, but here's a photo of it) is actually a vintage cast iron stand with three spots for three light bulbs (needs to seriously be rewired but I will just have it turned on when I'm sitting in the room, armed with my trusty fire extinguisher). Anyway, three colored bulbs are on order so hopefully it will all be complete before Christmas, even if it is my Un-Christmas tree.

I suppose like any tree, it has too many ornaments on it. Well, this is my big Christmas decorating hurrah, so I guess I'll just leave it how it is. At least my electric bills won't go up (hi, Pam). ;)

P.S. I would totally recommend being out of work from the point of view of getting things done around the house. Sucks as far as those bills and stuff go, but I've installed an under-cabinet kitchen light (that's been sitting in my basement for four years), alphabetized my DVDs, organized my tools, made vegetable stock to freeze, made myself a wooden Christmas tree (save a tree! make one out of wood!), and completed a few other small projects that have been staring at me for years. It's amazing how much time you have when you don't work. Too bad nobody warned me about it before I started that nasty work habit. It's so hard to quit once you're hooked.

Where Vicki and I agree

Someone named Vicki just posted a comment on a two-year-old post at exgaywatch.com. She writes:

As I read testimonials from gay and ex-gay people, I see a similar trend. Many were sexually abused as young children/adolescents. This must certainly cause people to question sex practices as they grow up, because their sexuality has been violated.
Also, guys and girls who grow up and don't fit the gorgeous "barbie and Ken" look, seek acceptance from peers anywhere they can find it. If someone from the same sex is going to love them for who they are, then they will gravitate to the love. We all want to be loved. Its just too bad that kids are so mean to one another, and the outward appearance is so important to teens. Like the skinny short guy who gets teased in high school. He figures he'll never get a date with girls, so as he grows up he gravitates to boys. We need to love and accept everyone as they are young so they don't have to go looking for love in other places.

I just want to break this down quickly and give my response to this as I hear these kinds of statements all too frequently.

As I read testimonials from gay and ex-gay people, I see a similar trend. Many were sexually abused as young children/adolescents. This must certainly cause people to question sex practices as they grow up, because their sexuality has been violated.

I find it intriguing that since the vast majority of pedophiles are men, when a man molests a boy, it supposedly causes the boy to be attracted to men. Yet, when a girl is molested by a man, it allegedly causes that girl to be attracted to women. That doesn't make sense. Yes, sexual abuse messes people up. No question. But if it really "caused" homosexuality, the percentage of people who are gay would not be as small as it is (I think the current estimate of the gay population in the U.S. is about 3-5% vs. the 25-30% or more of the population who have been sexually abused as children). And, there wouldn't be the confusing issue of why being molested by a man would cause completely opposite outcomes between men and women.

I've written in the past that I am pretty certain that having abuse in one's childhood is actually one of the main reasons that many people enter the ex-gay movement, or attempt reparative therapy to begin with. A while back, Peterson wrote a great post about this called How Sexual Abuse Made Me Ex-gay, and it absolutely represents how I feel on this topic.

Also, guys and girls who grow up and don't fit the gorgeous "barbie and Ken" look, seek acceptance from peers anywhere they can find it. If someone from the same sex is going to love them for who they are, then they will gravitate to the love. We all want to be loved. Its just too bad that kids are so mean to one another, and the outward appearance is so important to teens. Like the skinny short guy who gets teased in high school. He figures he'll never get a date with girls, so as he grows up he gravitates to boys.

I think that many of us who had problems with our peers did so because we already felt different or were perceived as being different and/or bad or wrong.

I had never even had a girlfriend by the time I started the ex-gay program I attended. And I know I'm not alone in that. Many ex-gays or ex-ex-gays had never had any same-sex experiences before we went into the ex-gay ministries, so we certainly weren't loved and seduced "into" it.

It is "just too bad" that so many kids are mean to each other. But this is not going to stop as long as kids are raised to believe that it is OK to make fun of gay people, or it's OK that gay people's lives are being derided, and decided and voted on by the rest of the country. Kids today hear and read and absorb amazing amounts of anti-gay rhetoric all the time, especially from the pulpit and from their parents.

It's most definitely too bad that there are so many kids who barely survive junior high and high school because of torment from their peers. It's too bad so many become suicidal as a result of their sexuality. It's too bad that there has to be special high-schools set up where gay or gender-variant kids can learn in peace and without having to face violent speech or actions on a daily basis (there's a great article in The News Journal in Delaware that looks into the lives of kids who come out in high school and what they face).

And I love the "skinny short kid" thing. A kid like that who grows up thinking he'll never get a date with a girl is almost certainly not going to start "gravitating toward boys." If a guy is feeling like he'll never get a date with a girl, I somehow can't possibly imagine him deciding that instead of having roughly 50% of his peers in the potential dating pool, that he'll limit his options to 3% and risk even more teasing, bullying, harrassment and rejection.

All this stuff isn't even logical, and yet people say it all the time without even thinking about what they're saying. This is the message they take away from the Exodus seminars, ex-gay testimonies, and the short sound bites that people like Dr. Dobson, Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas give to the media.

Vicki concludes, We need to love and accept everyone as they are young so they don't have to go looking for love in other places.

Yes, we do. It would be wonderful if kids could feel accepted and loved when they are young so they don't have to try to "change" something that doesn't need changing. I'd love to see the day that gay people stop going to ex-gay programs because they are looking for acceptance and love from their parents, their pastors, their teachers, their friends, and most importantly, their God. I want to see the day that all gay, lesbian, bi and trans folks can accept and love themselves and don't feel they have to turn themselves inside out just to find love and acceptance from everyone around them. I guess I agree with Vicki on that.