And through it all, nobody is treating each other with respect.

I watched almost ten years ago now, as homosexual friends of mine started to become fearful that their rights as ordinary citizens were going to be taken away. They were getting worked up as if we were heading back to the early part of the last century when you could still be fired, kicked out of your home and killed for being homosexual. As they talked, discussed and allowed unreasonable fear rule the idea was brought up that through marriage could the community gain the respect and protection such a validation could provide. As if by gaining the ability to marry, they could be protected from losing their homes and jobs and even their very lives.

Now the silly thing was that they weren’t in any danger of these things. It was rumor and fear running rampant. And the nutjobs in both camps were running off at the mouth, stirring the pot. I watched as the rhetoric was allowed to get out of hand, this side accusing that side of this and that side accusing this side of that. And I watched a President cash in on fear and nonsense to motivate people to vote, which put things in his favor for re-election. I watched in disgust as Washinton D.C gloated in pleasure over making people knee jerk react in the voting booth. I saw two groups of people manipulated.

And it hasn’t ended there.

Watching what is going on in California has been sometimes disgusting and sometimes bewildering. Being LDS, I get some heated comments my way but while people are trying to demonize my church in California, they overlook that for us, its not about who is better than who. Its the law of Chasity for us. Anyone who is outside the bonds of husband and wife marriage has to abstain from sexual relations. Doesn’t matter if your gay or straight. I know that often you’ll see Christians who will bring up how homosexuality was a punishable sin by stoning. They don’t bother to add that any type of sex outside of marriage was treated the same way. If you had an affair, if you were sleeping with your girlfriend or boyfriend or an animal.. you got to die too. I bet you anything most of those idiots shouting absurdities in protest of gay marriage has broken one of these rules.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with gay marriage. I know several gay couples who are raising children and they are providing stable homes for their kids. They work hard at it. Its not an easy choice for them to have kids in the first place and they don’t take it lightly. And I’ve never met a child of gay parents who also chose to be gay. So you can’t throw those arguments at me, it doesn’t hold water. My opposition is purely theological at this time.

I do have a problem with pop culture telling us what we should be doing. Its currently “fashionable” to be bisexual. I’ve had people look at me weird because I haven’t kissed another woman. Sorry. I have no interest and feel no lack for never having done so. There is no curiosity, but I’ve had people look at me as if there is something wrong with me because I haven’t experimented. As if I”m supposed to right? I have a problem with a bunch of middle school children who have no idea about human relationships telling my daughter she’s really gay because she’s mad at men because of events in her young life up to that point. Being angry at men doesn’t make you gay, but these little twits don’t know any better. And the schools aren’t helping. They’ve had their arms twisted and tied in knots. Pop culture has no clue.. because right now its fashionable to be gay. Whether you are or aren’t. I have a friend who was raped by her father for years. She likes to spout off every so often that she was born gay, I had to pull her aside and tell her to stop doing that when I was around. I wasn’t about to tell a room full of people she was raped by her father. But we can easily see why she spurned the touch or company of men.

Some, are clearly born with those feelings. And its tricky to navigate how best to handle all these different elements. But there are two things that are sure. Its going to take a lot of work and there are plenty of people wanting to abuse this issue for political power.

I think its just a matter of time before its legal. But I have some concerns. If its passed as a legal form of marriage. Does that mean the schools have to teach homosexuality as a lifestyle choice? There are already pamphlets everywhere supporting it. Of course, do you see any pamphlets supporting making a different choice? Nope. No wonder kids don’t know which side is up and what it really means when your homosexual or heterosexual. There is not nearly as much taught about how to have healthy relationships in our schools. The attitude of supporting kids in their teenage sexual relationships only leads to kids being exposed to STD’s, pregnancy and disillusionment by bad experiences. There is very little protecting them or showing them what are all their choices. If you teach one type of relationship style.. are you going to teach them all? Equally?

And what about freedom of religion? If gay marriage is legalized will the extremists in that camp try to force all religions to perform those marriages? Or will they let it go and let the different religions follow their own conscience? I don’t think they will let bygones be bygones.

I think we have a very ugly legal battle on the horizon. I know people like to blame Prop. 8 on us Mormons, but there are less than 2% of registered voters who are LDS in California. Clearly it wasn’t just the Mormons who were voting. But it seems to be the Mormons getting all the backlash. I’ve seen both religious and homosexual communities say terrible things to each other. For some, there is no “agree to disagree” And all that name calling isn’t going to warm up the general public who will weigh in on this.

I can’t help but feel there has to be a solution to this. But for the life of me, I can’t see what it is. I worry about the pandora’s box we’re about to open.

I teased Mom that she was just jealous of all the attention I was getting. Made her laugh. I feel like crying.

He’s a child no longer. I feel split. I’m sorry to see my child go. Feeling a little bit of hurt that he’s so eager to leave home. Yet, I’m excited to see him go have this adventure. He’s sacrificed a lot to help me as a single mom and now he has the right to his own life and his own adventure. He gets the chance to go 3 hours away for school which is far enough to have his own life free of parental interference, but close enough for rescue if there is a problem.

As he gets ready to move out I’m hyper aware of all those things I haven’t yet taught him. Did I teach him enough? In a way, having to be the oldest while I worked graves and nights may have been a blessing, he’s had to take care of things on his own and maybe that is the best teacher there could be.

There is excitement for his sake, and wistfulness for mine.

And because we go into hiding, we go places and do things we would never have done otherwise. When I went into my black year the year of my divorce and my dads death, I hid emotionally from everything. My kids went from having a very involved mom to one who hid in her bedroom all the time. I spent every moment online hiding from pain. Doing things and talking to people I wouldn’t have given the time of day to before. I stopped praying, I stopped reading my scriptures and I didn’t keep the Lord close. And I spiraled.

And through all that the Lord stayed by my side. He was there to pick me up when I hit rock bottom. If we want to get out of those dark places, we cannot do it alone. And maybe that is why we are allowed to go into those dark places. So that we can become better and gain a deeper understanding of our spiritual selves if we but open our heart.

I still struggle.

Okay, So, last fall I got busy with Tadpole going to preschool and getting myself into the bridal shows. I almost lost the DJ business until Angels were sent to save me. I cannot begin to thank Robert and Moira for all they have done for my family. I got into most of the bridal shows that I wanted to do and they were very successful.

While I was working the bridal shows I had noticed that a lump I’ve had in the back of my mouth since I was a kid had changed from small and normal to long and red. When I had the doctors check it out it turned out to be Epidermoid Carcinoma. Mouth cancer. Really? I asked God. I”m working my DJ business like you told me to do. To fight for it and you give me this?!! Now?!! I was stunned.

Turned out that bump had been an engorged saliva gland. It went bad. My type of cancer is very rare and tends to peak for the 20 – 40 year old set. One that doesn’t’ respond to chemo or radiation so it was under the knife for me. Now I was told they would have to cut out the area surrounding where the tumor had been for a cancer biopsy and then they would take a flap of skin from my arm, including the fat layer and blood vessels and one of my two arteries from my arm to replace what they had to remove. They failed to make me understand that I would have a scar from my wrist to my elbow after it was all done. I knew I’d have a Y shaped scar on my neck, but when I came out of surgery on March 3rd after 8 hours on the table. I was shocked to see the long incision on my arm.

Because they were doing surgery on my mouth and neck I also had to have a tracheotomy because I was going to be too swollen to breath normally. That is an odd sensation let me tell you. You feel like you have to work to breath. So you breath deeper than you need to. When in reality you can just breath normally and you’ll do fine. You become obsessed with how much air your lungs take in. Because your not used to consciously breathing. Which is dumb again because your still doing an automatic action that you don’t need to think about. But you do anyway. I healed out of my trach two days faster than they were expecting. I was also using 97 to 98 percent lung capacity, they look for 88 to 93 percent. Not bad for someone who had chronic bronchitis for ten years.

My mom came up from Arizona to help me recover because I was going to be on a feeding tube for 2 months and on heavy medication for at least 3. Turned out I have been on the Oxycodon for 4 months and I’m currently weaning myself of the drug. I didn’t get any of the drug high that they kept warning about but my system did become addicted. The migraine headache I had for two weeks when I first started getting off the Oxycodon was terrible. Now I just have a mild ache that gets less each day. I’m still not back at work. ugh. However, they did get all the cancer so I’m good and cancer free now.

I’ll talk more about the ups and down of recovery in another post but this is just supposed to be a catch up post. During all this my son A applied and was accepted to DigiPen Institute up in Redmond, Wa. He was accepted into their Bachelor of Science in Game Design degree program. All the grants and loans have been approved so his first year is now paid for and we move him up to his new apartment next week.

E is going to be a Junior this year and with her brother moving away to college is finally starting to come out of her shell more. Its almost like she had her brother to hide behind but now has to stand on her own two feet and she’s doing well. I think having my mom up here for 4 months also helped her. They shared a room and did a lot of talking. They became close. Mom has recently returned to Arizona but she is welcome back any time.

So that is where we are at. Trying to get off meds so I can go back to work. Kids adjusting to starting their own lives and wondering… Where did the time go?

The other cool part about movie night last night besides my friend who took me, was that he took me to Cinetopia. OH MY GOSH!!!!
Never been there before or even heard about it. This is how going to the movies should be. Next time, I want to be in the adult only area to see a movie. But even in the general side of the theater, the seats were comfy..I had plenty of room to sit and I’ve got these wide hips to accommodate and they had these hard plastic trays that fit in the drink cups that support any drinks, food, whatever you have. There was a chef in the LOBBY doing some type of grilling that people could take to their seats. If I’m going to pay an arm and a leg for a movie, THIS is the type of theater I want to go to. The owner is building a second one in Beaverton next to Washington Square.

Anyone else marveling at this gorgeous weather we are having? I”m so not ready for 90+ degree temps. I just wilt. So while I have all the lights off and all the fans running so it stays cool I thought I’d share a few thoughts about our upcoming national holiday.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Joseph Smith and the world he grew up in. The world of 1820-1840. This was a fascinating time but what strikes me the hardest at this time of year is how much we are lacking in pride in our own country. In Joseph’s time the War for Independence was only a few decades past. Many had grandfather’s and great- grandfather’s who served in that war. They were proud of what they achieved. Compare that today, we are not as proud of what we are today. We’ve been disillusioned by dishonest politics and by the hurt we cause each other. So many people lack a stable home life and that translates into distrust of everything else. Men and Women use each other for short sexual satiation which causes bad feelings in many because they realize they were just being used. We don’t treat ourselves with respect, so why would we respect those things around us.

We forget that we still live in one of the best countries to live in. Thousands of people every year strive to come to this country, legally and illegally because its better then where they are. I heard once that if you have $100.00 in a bank acct, you are in the top 20 percent richest people in the world. How’s that for some perspective. For all our faults, and every country has them, we have great things as well. What blinds us is the “appearance” that is encouraged to think we are lacking and that we can’t really do anything about it. This is done by those who want power at the expense of our own power. We are a powerful country because we the people make it so. But when we put it in the hands of others, we lose that power. Washington wants us to think that everything happens there, but really, everything happens in that voting booth. We have more power then we realize and we are throwing it away because we are blinded by the “stuff” that we have and getting more “stuff”. We’re consumed by what Brittney Spears is doing and whether Brad and Angelina will “make it work”. Who cares what they are doing. They are living their own lives and I could care less about it in mine. The only time I really care about what entertainers are doing is when I have to vote about it or when I pay way too much money to watch them in a movie theater.

My life isn’t easy. Thanks to the dj business I have more bills then money right now. The joy of starting a business, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have three kids I”m raising mostly on my own and I wouldn’t trade them either. I’m lucky in that I have two involved dads who show an interest in their kids. I’m lucky that I have a firm faith that allows me to know who I am, why I’m here and what the point of all this is.

We have a wonderful country, protected by volunteer soldiers and all that we have to do is work hard to make things happen usually. Life isn’t meant to be easy all the time, you do have to work at it, and in that hard work, miracles happen, joy is found and respect is gained.

Have a Happy 4th of July everyone, remember that its okay to be proud of the country you live in.

New Moon Trailer